The Prodigal Sun (5 page)
Authors: Sean Williams,Shane Dix
Tags: #Science Fiction, #Fiction, #Space Opera
“I understand.” Blinking to clear her vision, she stumbled for the ramp and the lander. Cane met her halfway, raised his arms in mock surrender as her pistol swung at him. Then he smiled. The calm with which he did that, his ability to instantly relax once a moment of tension passed, disturbed her. It was more than control. It was almost inhuman.
His resistance to epsense was no less remarkable. Armada cadets received a basic training in mental defense, but no one she knew of, least of all herself, had the degree of control necessary to resist a reave as he had—and she hadn’t—without actually being an epsense adept as well.
“Hull’s punctured,” she said with a calmness she didn’t feel. “Not far away. The airlock is sealed. We’re here to stay.”
“Understood.” He steadied her with a hand on her arm, then continued down the ramp. Moments later he returned with the semiconscious Eckandi draped over his shoulder. “The mind-rider will need him when she regains consciousness,” he explained in response to her sharp look.
“Mind—? Oh, the reave.” The outdated term threw her for a moment. He was making sense, though; the Surin would need someone to give her sensory input, preferably neither her nor Cane. “What did you do to her?”
“Nothing serious. She will awaken shortly.”
Roche wasn’t sure how she felt about that, and couldn’t fight the sensation that she was being backed into a corner: first Cane, and now two others. Her mission was in enough jeopardy without complicating things further. But without saying anything, she hurried the short distance to the lander itself. When Cane had ducked through the inner airlock, she keyed it closed and made sure the seals were tight.
A short companionway led to the cockpit and its standard, if slightly out of date, hemispherical layout: five acceleration couches, centrally placed in rows of two and three; main controls located ahead of the front row; pilot’s position right and backup to the left, auxiliary systems away to either side and rear. There were no viewports this far forward; heat shields covered the nose completely.
Roche dropped into the pilot’s couch, made the fundamental adjustments to suit her physique, and placed the valise on her knees. “Out of curiosity, Box,
can
you fly this thing?”
“Good.” She turned in her seat to see what Cane was up to. He had strapped the Eckandi into the chair in the center of the rear row and lifted the Surin from where she lay on the floor. The girl, limp and even smaller than Roche had guessed, went into the seat on the far side of the cockpit from Roche. “We have a reave on board, Box.”
“If she wakes up and takes me over, you have my permission to fly the ship on your own. I don’t want us stuck in limbo again waiting for her to decide whether or not she should trust us.”
Cane strapped himself into the copilot’s seat next to her, and Roche belatedly realized that she had been talking aloud.
“The briefcase,” he said. “It’s some sort of computer, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” She cursed the slip. “It’s going to fly us out of here in—how long, Box?”
fuel reserve will self-destruct at any moment.>
“What? Klose gave the order to scuttle the ship?”
Before the Box could reply, Roche had to grasp at the armrests as the frigate’s gravity stabilizers failed completely.
“Shouldn’t we be launching, then?” If the stabilizers had gone, the main energy pile wouldn’t be far behind. And if the Box was right about Klose’s order to free the antimatter reserve—
She was suddenly aware of perspiration beading her forehead.
Roche forced herself to stay calm. “To hell with decorum, Box. Would you just get us out of here?”
“Yes. So?”
“Box!” It was an exclamation of disbelief, nothing more. She had passed beyond panic.
“Just don’t cut it too fine—”
“Brace yourself!” Roche shouted to Cane, remembering that she alone could hear the voice in her ear. “We’re launching!”
Riding a wave of energy as mighty as that on the surface of a small sun, the lander ejected itself into space. Roche closed her eyes against the sudden pressure, and put her fate into the Box’s hands.
3
DBMP
Ana Vereine
‘954.10.30 EN
0765
From his coffin in life support, Captain Uri Kajic viewed the assault on the
Midnight
via his ship’s various external sensors with interest.
The battlefield was complex. At its heart, the angry speck that represented the COE frigate spun like a primitive atom in primordial soup. A ring of Dato fighters harried this defensive position, swooping closer with every pass, supported by the greater might of the three raiders and, further back still, the Marauder itself: the
Ana Vereine.
Occasional stray bolts spun free from the intense web of destruction woven by the raiders about the blazing frigate. Some were deflected from the
Midnight’s
remaining shields; others might have originated from the frigate itself. Although most dissipated harmlessly, the potential remained for an unlucky mishap. The narrow channel through Sciacca’s World’s asteroid field had been mapped in advance and was updated every millisecond by the Marauder’s battle computers—but every new, unplanned explosion altered the orbits of nearby asteroids and increased the risk of collision.
When the
Midnight’s
antimatter reserve suddenly spilled free of its containment and annihilated the ordinary matter surrounding it, that risk increased tenfold.
“Pull the fighters back!” Kajic ordered, sending the command hurtling down electromagnetic paths to the bridge in the Marauder’s primary nacelle, where his holographic image appeared a moment later. “Prepare for impact!”
His second in command, Atalia Makaev, turned away to relay the order. The expanding bubble of energy reached the
Ana Vereine
, making it shudder. Kajic’s image flickered slightly with the energy surge, but otherwise remained steadfast. The officers on the bridge gripped their stations as the disturbance washed over them, steadying themselves against the lurching motion. When it eased, and the ship’s g-field restabilized, the normal bustle resumed.
“Report!” Kajic was unable to suppress his impatience. If the ship had been holed, he would have known immediately, but there were thousands of smaller ailments that might slip by unnoticed. The inevitable lag between his orders and their enactment was never as irritating as it was in battle.
“Telemetry reports—” The ship shuddered again as the shields sustained another impact, draining power. Makaev waited for her superior’s image to reconfigure itself properly before continuing. Not that it was necessary—Kajic could receive the information with or without the presence of his hologram—but it was considered polite. “Telemetry reports that the
Midnight
has broken into seven substantial fragments.” She paused again, adjusting the communication bud in her left ear. “Their trajectories have been noted and extrapolated.”
“Damage to the raiders?” Although Kajic’s primary concern was the
Ana Vereine
, the information available to him showed an alarming void where moments earlier a dozen fighters had been.
“
Paladin
has sustained minor damage.
Lansquenet
reports no incident. Awaiting word from Captain Hage regarding
Galloglass
.”
Kajic sighed, folding his simulated hands behind his back—using body language consciously, as just another means of communication of the many in his repertoire—and did his best to radiate calm. On the bridge’s main screen, the brilliant fireball that had once been the COEA
Midnight
boiled away into space, leaving a shower of particles and radioactive dust in its wake. The larger fragments that telemetry had noted were ringed in warning red to aid navigation: bull’s-eyes where perhaps gravestones should have been.
Kajic knew from intelligence reports that every COE frigate carried a crew of four hundred and fifty, each with families scattered throughout the Commonwealth of Empires; some of these people might conceivably have had ties with the Dato Bloc, no matter how distant. The
Midnight
had also been carrying a score of transportees...
Gone, all of them, in a single blinding explosion as the
Midnight’s
pile went critical.
Gone also—and more important—was his hope of executing his mission smoothly and without error.
“Captain?”
Atalia Makaev regarded him with a steely expression. It always felt to Kajic as though she were looking into his soul, seeing all of his personal doubts, searching out his weaknesses.
“Yes, Atalia?” he said.
“We have regained contact with Captain Hage. Communications are currently restricted to coherent transmissions.
Galloglass
’s main communications nexus was overloaded by neutrino flux at the peak of the explosion.”
He nodded. “As would be expected, given the
Galloglass’s
close proximity to the
Midnight.
It was ready to dock the moment the frigate’s shields fell.”
“With all due respect, sir,” said Makaev. “The self-destruction of the
Midnight
should have been anticipated.”
Kajic noted her thin, almost imperceptible smile with some irritation. “It was not a consideration,” he said. “There was nothing within Captain Klose’s professional or personal profiles to suggest that he would take such drastic action.”
“Nevertheless, Captain,” said Makaev, “he did self-destruct.”
Kajic hesitated, fixing his stare squarely upon her for almost a full minute. He had his doubts about her true role aboard the ship, and how that role related to his own, but this wasn’t the time to let suspicion interfere with duty.
“Bring us back to yellow alert,” he said eventually. “Stabilize our orbits and commence repairs. I want all fighters returned to the
Ana Vereine.
We must be ready to leave at a moment’s notice.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What of the target? Has a sighting been confirmed?”
“Debris scanning is under way.”
He returned his attention to the data flowing from the sensors. “Replay the destruct sequence. Bring reserve computers on-line to plot the dispersal pattern and extend scan accordingly. It has to be out there somewhere,” he said. “I want it found.”
“Sir.” Makaev’s left arm snapped a salute; then she turned away.
On the main screen the fiery death of the
Midnight
returned to haunt him. He could have accessed the data directly, but for the moment he preferred the luxury of viewing the information from a distance, allowing him a more...
Human
perspective.
The outcome of the battle had indeed taken him by surprise. A protracted engagement had always been a possibility; on that point the tacticians agreed, and Kajic had prepared himself for Dato Bloc losses—but not for this. Not for the complete annihilation of the frigate and all its contents.
detain or disable COEA
Midnight
His orders, hardwired into his circuitry, sprang into his thoughts unbidden. With his mission suffering such a spectacular setback, he was not surprised that they had. They were intended as a prompt, to surface with any doubt or uncertainty over the success of his mission.
capture and return Commander Roche and AI JW111101000
They continued—and would keep doing so until his thoughts were once again focused upon his mission, and all reservations concerning its success were dispelled.
priority gold-one
He shrugged aside the mental prompts and concentrated upon the recent battle:
Operationally, the strategy had been a simple one, and had been well executed. With the DBMP
Lansquenet, Galloglass,
and
Paladin
in support, the
Ana Vereine
had translated with extreme precision to the coordinates provided. The
Midnight
had been exactly where the Espionage Corps had reckoned it would be—too far in-system to make a run for the nearest anchor point, and foolishly vulnerable in Sciacca’s World’s orbital ring. Decelerating, outflanked, and outgunned, the
Midnight
had, ultimately, no choice other than surrender—or so reason would have had it.
The destruction of an Armada frigate in COE space, by its own hand or not, unplanned or not, had all the makings of a major diplomatic incident. A high cost, even if the mission ultimately proved to be successful—which was still by no means certain.
While the bridge bustled around him, Kajic accessed Klose’s files and restudied the captain’s profile. Klose’s service record, stolen by Espionage Corps spies from COE Armada databanks, was long and unremarkable. CEO of an old frigate, normally given unimportant duties, Klose had been marked as a conservative living off remembered glories, full of hubris, disrespectful of the “new breed” of well-educated military administrators, stubborn and authoritarian—much like the Commonwealth he served. The possibility that Klose had also been unstable was something Kajic had not considered—had no
reason
to consider. There was nothing in the man’s records to warrant it.
Klose had taken his own orders—to prevent the Dato Bloc from capturing the AI—to the absolute extreme. He had done so knowingly, choosing death before surrender, and had taken his crew with him, regardless of what their individual choices might have been.
Unexpected, yes. But if Kajic had not counted on Proctor Klose’s reaction, then the opposite was also true: Klose could not have anticipated Kajic’s own response to the situation. He had no intention of letting the destruction of the
Midnight
prevent him from fulfilling his mission. Nor would he permit any interference from the prison planet itself to stop him. Nothing was going to get in the way. Not even his often debilitating fear of failure.
priority gold-one
He forced the fear down, away from the surface. If there was one thing Kajic was, it was focused on the mission.
His orders had been explicit, and ranked in order of priority. These three priorities had been stamped into the fine mesh of bio-implants infiltrating the tissues of his living brain to ensure that there could be no possibility of misunderstanding their significance. No matter how omnipotent he felt at times—with his mind roving the labyrinthine networks of the
Ana Vereine
—priorities A to C were a constant reminder of his limitations, of just how much he owed the machines in his coffin.
Life. Senses. Command. Duty:
(A) - capture the AI;
(B) - capture Roche;
(C) - perform (A) and (B) with as much stealth and speed as possible.
Focused.
“Atalia?”
His second returned instantly to his side, as though proximity to his image actually meant something. Microphones and cameras scattered throughout the Marauder provided him with the ability to communicate with anyone, anywhere, at any time he wished. She, of all the people on board, should have known that. Had she forgotten this, he wondered, or was it a deliberate action?
But then, he reminded himself, this was one of the many things the experiment was designed to test. Was effective command dependent on genuine physical presence, or could it be simulated? Could a simulation breed resentment, even fear, among those it was supposed to deal with most effectively?
“Sir?” Makaev’s voice was as controlled as it always was.
“Dispatch shuttles to examine the larger pieces in situ.”
She frowned. “If we do that, sir, we will be unable to leave until the shuttles have returned.”
He manufactured a glower and turned its full force on her. “Are you questioning my orders?”
“Of course not, sir, but—”
“Then see that they are carried out immediately.”
Makaev turned away and relayed the order to a subordinate while Kajic watched the
Midnight
explode an uncounted time and let the anger percolate through him.
He would not allow this temporary setback to get on top of him. He would not allow himself to doubt that he was capable of fulfilling the expectations of those who had designed him. He would not,
could
not, afford to fail.
It was just a matter of time.