Beyond the Gates of Antares, page 14
The nanosphere of the Lumen was charged with purpose as the ship dove for the planet’s surface. The soul of the vessel was bent to a single purpose; the eradication of the pirate stronghold coming alive below.
As they swooped down on their prey, Pehn was glad to hear the Freeborn ship acknowledge his order. They slowed their progress, widening the gulf between them.
The Lumen would handle Stihl and his stronghold. The Even Hand could watch, and then return to their people with the news that the PanHuman Concord had fulfilled its obligations.
The Lumen’s engines pulsed, pushing it forward, as her plasma batteries began to glow with accumulated energy, ready to unleash the fury of a sun on the rock below.
***
Ko-Rhan was nearly fidgeting with anticipation. The armored doors remained shut, the mechanical sounds of their inner workings seeming to go on and on without hope of ever opening.
His future awaited him on the other side of this moment, and it could not resolve itself fast enough for his peace of mind. He found his formal dress boot tapping impatiently on the decking and forced himself to stop. The guards standing behind him, plasma carbines at the ready, were as still as statues, their discipline apparent, and he refused to show any sign, to them or to the recorder drones hovering behind, that he was any less controlled.
At last, after what seemed like an eternity, the deck beneath his feet started to vibrate, and a crack of blinding light flashed through the thick doors as they began to part.
Ko-Rhan refused to shield his eyes from the glare, and so squinted into the brightness, imagining the brave visual he presented to the recorders, standing tall, silhouetted by the lights of the boarding terminal. He smiled, imagining that picture splashed across every news feed in the Pharaxi fleet.
As the doors opened, four shadowy, backlit figures emerged from the wash of light. Behind him, ko-Rhan could feel his guards tense, their weapons firm.
The grumbling of the mechanisms faded, and a stretch of silence scratched across the admiral’s nerves. Before he could say anything, however, the injured pirate slumped against the figure supporting it. They both went down with a muffled grunt.
The honor guard moved out to either side, their weapons steady, and the two pirates who had remained standing raised their hands. Ko-Rhan scanned their faces quickly, but didn’t recognize either of them. He moved toward the two figures on the floor, aware of his guards’ nervous tension. But he needed to play the part, especially with the drones recording every moment. He could not be seen to hang back.
As he approached the pair on the floor, he saw that the injured man wore a dull, brown coat with an uninspired cut; just the kind of gear the fashion-blind corsair captain was known to favor. The hair on the bowed head was white, shaven along one side to reveal implanted ducts and ports that most civilized vardosi hid behind masks and plates.
It was Rollen Stihl. It had to be. The man was famous for flaunting his cranial augmentations like some uncouth Mhagris barbarian.
Ko-Rhan schooled his features into a mask of calm contempt as one of the drones hummed around to catch his profile. He opened his mouth to declare the notorious pirate a captive of the Pharixi, then stopped.
Something was wrong with the man’s profile. It lacked the aquiline nose and proud forehead of the famous pirate. His skull was freshly shaven; the ports too basic and too few.
The crewman who had collapsed with the supposed captain looked up with a savage grin on her long face.
A face he recognized from countless security reports.
Alyce Aymes, Stihl’s quartermaster and second in command of the Loyal Courser, rose before him. She was tall, towering over the admiral, and there was no sense of surrender in her stance now.
The man he had taken to be Captain Stihl rose as well. He was a stranger, his face no more recognizable than the nameless pirates behind him, their downcast faces rising with grins of their own.
But the worst expression was on the hard face of Aymes, as she looked around, noting the guards, the drones, and finally the admiral.
She barked a laugh that caused him to jump despite himself.
***
Pehn felt the launch of the defensive drones from the base below through the Lumen’s IMTel shard. A gently-rising cloud of sensor contacts drifted upwards, through the thin atmosphere of the dead planet, targeting the two ships in orbit.
“Engage defensive systems?” The soft voice of the weapons officer was tentative, and Pehn looked at her with one raised eyebrow as he realized that the warm sense of consensus and certainty of the IMTel shard was colored with a vague confusion.
There was something wrong with the situation below, and enough of his people were aware of it that it was affecting the usually-placid aura of the shard.
“Are there more weapons down there? Any other sign of activity?” He turned to look at the flickering holographic display, running and changing like ink spilled on glass in response to his thoughts, bringing the surface into close relief.
The cold stone of the planetoid’s crust was riven with buckles and fissures. Hidden within the cracks, folds, and creases were several armored entrances, at least one large enough to accept a medium-sized starship.
As he watched, he saw four flashes of light spill out onto the pock-marked plains as hatches lifted open, the nose cones of missiles sliding into launch position.
“Fire on the drones!” He heard the rising concern in his voice and cursed, but the data streaming into his mind identified the missiles as capital-class weapons, nearly as large as those carried by the Lumen. If they were as advanced as they appeared to be, they posed a very real threat.
How had a filthy Freeborn pirate managed to acquire such weapons? The Freeborn were as capable of fielding advanced tech as anyone else in the Determinate, but he had never heard of a pirate acquiring even a single such ship killer.
The weapons officer released control of the ship’s systems without comment. Sprays of plasma and graceful arcs of solid slugs fell down through the gravity well toward the rising drones, tearing the first flight into burning shreds before it could even pull free of the atmosphere. However, several more waves swept up behind the clouds of destruction. On the surface, the four launchers were venting gas in preparation for launch.
“You need to punch a hole through the drones. Take out the missiles before they clear their tubes.”
Va’Rana’s inhuman voice rasped against Pehn’s nerves as he sat rigidly in his chair. The drones were firing now, but it was a dispersed spray of harmless light, the range too great to pose any real threat.
Although the attacks were blinding his sensors to the launch sites below.
“Concentrate all fire on the center of the drone mass.” He leaned forward, trying to ignore the looming NuHu at his side.
If those missiles launched, they would reach cruising speed in moments, crashing through the masking cloud of drones without any warning at all.
He watched as his plasma batteries and defensive cannons narrowed their focus, burning a glittering hole in the center of the drone screen.
He felt a jolt in his back; feedback from the ship’s IMTel shard. The Even Hand had fired its weapons, despite his orders. They must have panicked in the face of the rising drone cloud, or perhaps their sensors were strong enough to have shown them a glimpse of the missiles below.
Still, the Freeborn ship firing into the Lumen’s well-planned solutions could confuse his systems just when he needed his ship to be performing at peak efficiency. In their desperate attempt to save themselves, the Freeborn could doom them all.
“Tell those damned barbarians to keep their —”
The lights within the command center shifted to amber again, with the additional reddish tinge of damage alerts.
“Sir, we’ve been hit.”
“What? Where?” The drones could never have closed the distance to the Lumen so quickly. A glance at the display showed him the armada of drones burning away beneath his ship’s continued barrage, nearly 100,000 yan below. There was no apparent damage to the forward sections.
But even as he focused on the distant battle, he felt a strange, cold emptiness behind him. It was as if some dire threat loomed there, just out of sight.
Just out of sight.
He knew what had happened before the sensor officer began his report. “Commander, the control node for the aft sensor arrays has taken a direct hit.”
He felt the blind spot shifting and closing as the IMTel shard brought other arrays online, sending information flowing around the damaged node.
Whatever their reasons, it had been a bold move. But a C3 warship like the Lumen could not be permanently damaged with such a strike. The nanosphere within the ship facilitated adaptation and repair, and even as he growled, turning toward the weapon sections to order the Even Hand’s destruction, the image floating before him was shifting to show the traitor floating serenely off the Lumen’s stern.
He had no idea what kind of trick the Even Hand was attempting, but there was little to be gained in trying to puzzle out the motivations of the Freeborn.
The Lumen’s forward weapons arrays continued to bore through the dwindling cloud of drones, but there was more than enough power remaining to brush the Even Hand into oblivion.
“Bring aft batteries to full power.” His snarl was vicious, but he didn’t care. The Freeborn had begged for his help. For them to turn on him now indicated some greater gambit at play, and if there was anything he hated more than betrayal, it was the petty political games of the lesser clans and tribes of the Determinate.
He became aware of the forward batteries, having cleared away the drones, pounding the launch sites on the surface into glowing slag. There would be no danger from that quarter. He directed the weapons to scorch the entire complex, just to make sure.
He would destroy the Even Hand and return to Concordian space; to the rational world of the C3, leaving the untidy chaos of the Freeborn far behind.
***
The Even Hand was not a purpose-built warship, but rather one of the countless colony ships of the vardosi. It carried far more weaponry than any civilian ship of the Panhuman Concord, the Isorian Senatex, or the Algoryn Prosperate, but it had never been designed to go toe to toe with a Concordian battlecruiser.
Unfortunately for Commander Pehn Kowroon and the crew of the Lumen, the current captain of the Even Hand had spent years preparing for this encounter. Her forward batteries, with hours to refine their targeting solutions, had been more than capable of knocking their prey’s aft sensor node offline. Under the guidance of their IMTel’s auto-repair functions, the damage would be repaired shortly, but it would last long enough.
As soon as the sensors aboard the Lumen were blinded by the damage, a pair of large cargo doors amidships on the Even Hand opened and an enormous bullet shape was pushed out into the cold light of the void.
Crewmen swarmed around the object, making last minute adjustments to the drive systems at the rear of the weapon, while others took readings from the heavy containment pods that had replaced the massive warhead. An intense, blue-white light bathed the crewmen and the flank of the ship in stark relief, casting long, menacing shadows across the hull.
They worked with exacting precision, each movement planned and refined, rendered as minimal as could be. Each knew exactly how much time they had, and the stakes should any one of them fail.
They made no mistakes, withdrawing smoothly back through the cargo doors.
As those doors closed, the weapon’s drives lit up, and the menacing shape began to slide toward the Lumen.
***
Pehn eased himself back into his chair and tilted his head toward Va’Rana, giving the NuHu a grudging nod.
“I stand corrected, Mandarin. I should have been more discerning about our companions. We’ll eliminate them and be on our way.” The blind region in his sensor net was nearly closed, and in a moment the full might of the Lumen would be unleashed upon the other ship.
Va’Rana nodded, folding his long, spidery hands over his chest.
“Sir, there’s something detaching from the Freeborn vessel. The return is inconclusive, but—”
“Hostile launch detected!” The words were spoken as the shard vibrated with the knowledge, the two sensations crashing together in his mind.
“Launch? What kind of launch?”
Freeborn ships followed no formal build plan, but he had seen no indications that the Even Hand mounted any type of launching system.
But it was too late. Something flashed within the holographic imager, and he felt a sharp, jarring sensation through his link to the shard.
For a moment, there was nothing but cold deadness as he forced his awareness of the link down, bringing the command center back into focus.
“Damage report!” He spun in place, pushing past the tall NuHu, standing as if stunned. Pehn stalked to the status terminals. “What’s wrong?”
The woman bent over the display was flustered and confused. The disquiet of the crew was infecting the shard. “Sir, there’s been a hull breach on deck C, just aft of section 12. Violent decompression, seven crewmembers were lost, but no secondary detonations.” She looked up at him, a pathetic gleam of hope in her eyes. “No damage beyond the impact, sir!”
He stared down at her, then back over his shoulder at the imager. It now showed a line-schematic of the Lumen, a small patch of red flashing along her aft quadrant.
“That’s it?” He wanted to laugh. He felt the shared consciousness of the IMTel smoothing out around him. The Even Hand had taken her shot, and it had not been enough. Their weapon had malfunctioned, and with that reprieve, he would finish this unseemly farce.
All he needed to do—
“Sir, the imager!” His eyes snapped back to the diagram of his ship.
The red smear of damage was gone. Could the IMTel shard have affected repairs so soon? But then he saw that the schematic of the area had not been restored, but was blotted out entirely.
“What—”
Va’Rana screamed, wrapping his long fingers around his misshapen head, collapsing to his knees.
Pehn looked down to the Mandarin writhing on the ground and back to the imager.
The dark stain was spreading, like a veil being pulled across the map of the Lumen, hiding it from view.
Va’Rana’s scream rose again, hopeless terror and agony echoing off the low ceiling of the command center.
“Commander, I have no connection with the dark portions of the ship.” The disembodied voice of the ship’s IMTel shard, seldom heard over the ship’s comm system, echoed dully. Despite the level tones, he detected a note of panic there that terrified him.
Pehn realized what was happening then, but his mind refused to accept it. Even when the darkness on the imager swept forward, around the command center, isolating it from the rest of the ship, he denied the reality unraveling around him.
“Sir, I have no contact with systems in the dark zone!” One of the security officers mumbled the words through clenched teeth.
“Defensive systems are offline.”
“No contact with sensors or weapons!”
And now the danger of a fully integrated nanosphere became apparent as the panic began to spread.
Dull thuds could be felt through the deck. Distant, popping detonations announced the use of mag weapons.
And then the crew of the command center began to shake violently as a sense of pain and surprise swept through each of them.
The IMTel shard was being shredded beyond the blast door. The sense of purpose the shard had always imparted to the crew had been replaced with a dreadful, existential terror.
“Commander.” The shard’s voice was unsteady, warbling arhythmically up and down the register. “Commander Phen, I have no … Commander you must … Comman … Comman … Com—Com—Com—C-C-C-C-C-C-C-c-c-c-c-c-c-c…”
Va’Rana screamed again, and this time he was joined by several other crewmembers as they clamped white-fingered hands to their heads.
Phen drew the sleek, reassuring weight of his plasma pistol and checked the indicator light. It glowed with a warm green reassurance.
And then it flickered.
With a grinding moan, the blast doors to the command center, buried deep within the Lumen’s armored hull, opened.
It was as if a chill wind blew through the chamber. An acrid taste burned the back of his throat, and the tiny indicator light on his nanosphere-dependent weapon went dark.
And Va’Rana howled in soul-wrenching agony.
Pehn was torn, desperate to keep his eyes on the gaping door, but horribly fascinated with what was happening to the Mandarin.
As the nanosphere of the Lumen was burned away around them, Va’Rana’s long, thin frame crumpled in upon itself. Without the tiny machines to support his mutated physiology, his body was failing.
The grand being, so aloof and powerful, had, in an instant, been reduced to a mewling pile of wretchedness.
Movement at the door caught Pehn’s attention, and he found himself raising his weapon despite the cold knowledge of its uselessness.
Several hulking, bestial creatures swept into the room; stocky, brutish looking weapons sweeping the command center.
Mag guns.
Primitive ones, not dependent on a nanosphere.
The guns went off with violent cracks; solid plugs of dull metal smashed several of his crewmen out of their chairs.
One brave security officer rushed at the snarling beasts and took three slugs in the chest. More enemy warriors swept in, another wave of gunfire filled the room, and Pehn was alone with the enemy, the Mandarin, and his dead.
“Who are you?” There was no comforting sense of community in his mind, now. The nanosphere was gone, the shard was as dead as his command crew, and Commander Pehn Kowroon was all alone.
Alone as he had never been in his life.
