Dreadnought (Lost Colonies Trilogy Book 2) (22 page)

-32-

Two days later we arrived at the breach. To us, it appeared as a sinister and uncertain region of space. It was invisible, but still somehow oppressively dangerous in our minds.

The pirate ships had left us well behind by this time. They’d crossed the barrier nearly seventeen hours earlier. We had no idea what they’d been doing during that interval. They could have traveled far toward the exit—or perhaps they’d prepared a trap for us.

The problem was they were undetectable on the far side of the bridge. It was my opinion they were setting up an ambush in there. Waiting for us to crash through, so they could light us up with every weapon they had at close range.

Yamada said something as I pondered the approaching bridge.

“What was that, Commander?” I asked.

“Sir, I’m getting trace tritium readings,” she said more loudly.

“There’s nothing odd about that,” I said. “Standard fuel traces left behind by—”

“Captain!” she interrupted, now sounding alarmed. “I don’t understand it, but I’m picking up these readings from
beyond
the barrier. The traces lead to either side of it.”

My mind froze as I registered what she was saying. My eyes darted to the timer—we had one minute twenty-nine seconds to the breach point.

“Emergency evasive action!” I shouted. “Turn away from the breach! Get us out of here, Rumbold.”

His bulging eyes were like those of frog. “We can’t now, sir—”

“Do it!”

He attacked his controls, unlocking the course they were set for. We lurched, feeling the tearing of our insides as G-forces were applied without mercy.

Despite his efforts, we were still heading into the breach. At significant speeds, it’s hard to make a sudden turn.

Rumbold was talking, but the rising roar of the engines obliterated his words.

“Zye,” I grunted out, “take over if anyone passes out.”

As if I were a prophet, we lost two of the command crew in the next few seconds. Durris, down in the navigational pit, slipped and slammed his head into the metal tableau. Suzy Gelb was leaning over him—at least she seemed unharmed.

As I watched, another ensign came through the main hatch—a powder-monkey—and she did a flip right over the railing, unable to stop herself.

Zye got up on steady feet in the midst of this chaos. Taking six careful and decisive steps, she reached Rumbold. She pushed him out of his chair unceremoniously and took the helm. He rolled away, limp and unconscious.

I wanted to shout orders, but I could no longer make intelligent sounds. My vision was dimming. I could see the blood vessels in my eyes, it seemed.

Then slowly, things came back to normal.

“We’ve avoided the breach, captain,” Zye said from above me.

Her round face filled my vision.

“Good,” I said.

“May I ask why that was necessary?”

“It was a trap,” I said, sitting up and having a coughing fit.

“A trap? I don’t understand.”

Around me, half the crew was unconscious. A few others stirred weakly.

“The tritium trail… the Stroj never entered the breach. They stealthed at the last second, and they slipped to the side. From a distance, from our point of view, it looked like they’d vanished into hyperspace.”

“Ah…” she said, intrigued. “The Stroj are tricky. I have to give them that. Beta ships often fall for such deceptions.”

“You mean you knew they might pull something like this?”

“It was a possibility.”

“Then why the hell didn’t you warn me?”

She looked puzzled. “You’re the captain,” she said. “No captain wants to hear that they’ve made a mistake.”

“Well, Zye, I do. Next time, please enlighten us earlier if you suspect there’s a danger to the ship.”

Her eyes drifted toward the forward screens.

“Sir, I believe we’re in danger.”

I followed her eyes, and I saw the last four pirates converging on our flanks.

They were coming out of stealth and firing all at once.

“Battle stations!” I shouted, stabbing the PA button and trying not to cough. “Zye, continue evasive action!”

I had no idea how many of my crew were still functional after the last high-G swerve, but anyone who was still on their feet had to perform now.

The battle alert status flashed up on our screens, and klaxons sounded. At least someone was still listening to me.

Yamada crawled back into her chair. Her hand had reached up from the floor and initiated the alarm.

“You don’t look so good,” I said, noting the blood matting her hair and her tunic.

“I’m fine, sir. Just had the wind knocked out of me.”

“Good. Call our backup helmsman to man the helm. Rumbold is out cold.”

“On it.”

“Zye, get confirmation from the gun crews. We need them online immediately.”

“No response, sir,” she said. “Our shields are down, too.”

Alarmed, I looked at her, then the panels. “The power couplings are all wrong. Durris? Are you still with us?”

“I’m here, sir.”

I couldn’t see him, but by leaning forward I found him lying on his back on the floor where he’d fallen near the nav table.

“Get up and get into action. I need you.”

“Sorry sir—I think I have a spinal injury.”

It was then I noted the odd cant of his neck.

“Dammit,” I breathed. “Ensign Gelb, take over navigation.”

Suzy nodded and stood over Durris, working the big table. I was impressed that she was able to stand despite the ship’s lurching about. Her taut body clung to the table and she looked very fit and shapely. I could see right away why Durris had chosen her to be his aide. She was as attractive as she was competent.

Forcing myself to my feet, I walked forward and worked Zye’s tactical boards. Zye was still at the helm, and we couldn’t afford to be left flying blind.

In the meantime, the ship continued to swerve and bounce. We were taking incoming fire and dodging all at the same time.

A rainstorm of sound began to ring on the outer hull. It sounded like rocks hitting a steel roof.

Reaching Zye’s station, I managed to get the shields going by diverting power from the engines. At least the shield capacitors were still operating. All the weapons banks were blinking yellow, unable to fire.

“What’s wrong with our cannons?”

“We’re moving with violent course changes,” Durris said painfully from the floor. He was rolling around now and then, and I could only imagine what that felt like with a broken neck. “The cannons won’t deploy if the lateral Gs are too high. They’d be damaged.”

“Where’s the override?”

“Captain, I don’t recommend—” Durris began.

Using my fingers like claws, I hugged the console. I turned to Zye.

“Zye, how do I override all the safety systems and open the gun ports?”

“The selection is in the menus under attack options,” she said calmly.

Cursing, I finally found it. I stabbed my finger on the screen option repeatedly until the cannons were forced to display a green ready-symbol.

“Nearest ship… lock,” I said. I fired the second the control system allowed it without another override. The big guns sang, and one of the pirates disintegrated.

Grinning with bloody teeth, I tapped at the console furiously. The cannons swung around and began to track the next target. I lost my lock almost immediately.

“Damn, what’s wrong now?”

“They’re breaking off, sir,” Zye said.

“Cowardly bastards. Hit us, hurt us, and run. That’s their game.”

Zye swung us around to follow the fleeing enemy, and our violent maneuvers stopped. We were now the hunters again, rather than the hunted.

One by one the pirates winked out, turning on their stealth systems. I wasn’t able to target them any longer, but instead allowed Zye to work the tactical boards. She tried to predict their positions and fired more barrages—but we hit nothing.

Medical people reached the command deck about five minutes later. Durris was still on the floor, breathing shallowly, but conscious. They went to work on him immediately, as his injuries were among the worst we’d suffered.

When they had him on a grav-stretcher and through the hatch, the leader of the medical team faced me. “The command deck is clear, sir,” said the corpsman.

“Good,” I said, but as he passed my chair I snaked out a hand and caught his arm. “How about Durris?” I asked. “What’s the prognosis there?”

“I’m not a doctor, Captain, but I think he’s going to live.”

“I know that! Will he walk again? Will he be paralyzed?”

The corpsman shrugged helplessly. “He’s paralyzed now. But the disconnection isn’t total. I don’t know how it will go, Captain. The auto-doc boxes can work miracles… sometimes.”

I let him return to his duties. Staring at the big forward screen, I rubbed my chin and muttered dark curses meant for my Stroj enemy.

-33-

First Officer Durris was absent from my next command meeting.

“Let’s discuss what we’ve learned,” I said. “The enemy—”

“Is running rings around us,” interjected Lady Grantholm.

“That’s an unhelpful statement, Ambassador,” I said sternly.

“But an accurate one. That last attack almost finished us—but the real threat was the trap. They almost got us all without firing a shot.”

“There’s some truth to what you say,” I admitted. “But they failed. As a result, we took some hull damage and they lost a ship.”

“We did lose six more crewmembers,” Yamada chimed in. “Not all are fatalities, but they can’t serve. That’s a serious blow.”

I gave her an irritated glance. “I can see how this is going to go,” I said, looking around the group. “You’ve all lost heart, haven’t you? You’ve decided we can’t catch the Stroj, and that we should turn around while we can.”

“That pretty much sums it up,” Rumbold said reluctantly, from behind a pair of shockingly bloodshot eyes.

“Well, on this ship, there’s only one Captain. We’re in hot pursuit, and I’m planning on finishing this conflict.”

They looked baffled.

“How, sir?” Rumbold asked. He spread his hands wide. “The enemy is out there—but their ships are invisible.”

I smiled. “No, not entirely. We’re following their tritium trails. That’s how we spotted their change of course away from the trapped breach in the first place.”

Everyone looked at Yamada. She shrugged.

“It’s true. We can tell where they’ve flown. After adjusting the instrumentation, it’s like following jet contrails.”

“What?!” demanded Rumbold. “Why haven’t you fired on them, girl? We should hit them hard before they figure out that we know where they are.”

“It’s not that simple,” Yamada said. “The trail is somewhat intermittent, and predicting their exact coordinates from such limited data is almost impossible.”

“In short,” I said, “we can generally tell where they’re going, but our information isn’t good enough to use for targeting data.”

Rumbold sat back with a growl of frustration, crossing his arms over his ample belly.

“Captain, the group has elected me to voice our concerns.”

At that point, I ran my eyes around the assembled crew and my aunt. They were all listening, but no one seemed surprised. That meant they’d talked privately among themselves.

I felt my temper rising. This mission had suffered setbacks, yes, but—

A beeping came from Yamada’s communications cuff. She had an implant, but as our communications officer it was extended by a cuff to connect to the ship’s systems.

“Check it,” I said.

She did as I asked, sliding her fingers over the section of the conference table that was in front of her. She reacted in surprise.

“I think you should look at this, Captain,” she said.

She tapped again, and a three-dimensional image rose up from the table to spin slowly between us. The image was the ugly form of Lorn’s head.

“The Stroj are trying to contact us?” I demanded.

“Yes.”

“Don’t open the channel, not yet. See if you can get a fix on their location.”

She shook her head. “I did that immediately. They must have dropped a probe behind them and just activated it to transmit this message.”

Nodding, I leaned back. My index finger made a spinning motion in the air.

“Play it.”

She gestured, and the head began to speak.

“Earthmen,” Lorn said. “I commend you on your hunting skills. It does the heart of a Stroj good to see that the Basic stock of humanity hasn’t been watered down to the point of oblivion. Unfortunately, this game is now at an end.”

As the message was a recording, not a live interview, we couldn’t interact with it—at least not yet. Sometimes these messages had a basic AI to them.

“We’ve left the system by the time you will have received this message. It’s a pity, but I’m required at this point to retreat and report. My orders are no less strict than are yours, I’d imagine.”

“What the hell is he talking about?” I demanded. “Can they have exited the system?”

Yamada shrugged helplessly. “We don’t know all the breach points. Maybe they found one and took it.”

Growling in frustration, I had her rewind the message several seconds and play it again. We’d missed something.

“Due to your persistent hostility, and the loss of the majority of my ships, protocol has forced my hand. I’m returning to my homeworld to report your actions. You should be apprised that a formal state of war will exist between the Stroj and Earth once I make my report.”

My heart sank. My officers were white-faced. Sure, we’d all known that the pirates weren’t in love with us. But a formal declaration of war? That was the exact opposite of our reasons for coming out here in the first place.

The head spun around, leering at us in turn. It was an alarming effect, because even though I knew the AI running the apparition couldn’t really see us, it felt as if it could.

“You’ve fired on our ships,” the vile head continued. “Aggression upon meeting is to be expected. We get that from many local powers. But you’ve gone far beyond that acceptable action. You’ve violated our hunting grounds and pursued us over multiple star systems. Those details, once reported to the High Council, will automatically result in a general declaration of war. Now, you may ask this program questions. It is capable of limited responses.”

It was such a malevolent apparition that I was tempted to shut it off. My hand reached out to do so.

“Wait!” Ambassador Grantholm said.

The head spun around to face her. My hand paused, then lowered to the table.

“Why would you attack us over this small conflict?” she asked.

“Stroj follow an algorithm,” the head explained. “We find it very successful. When we attack, if we are defeated, we rebuild and come back later. But, if we ourselves are successfully assaulted and driven from our claimed territory, we gather as would any angry nest and destroy the intruder. Following this simple series of steps has led to our domination of many colony worlds.”

“Lorn,” I said, “why are you telling us this?”

The head turned to me. Did it recognize me? I wasn’t sure, but the effect made my skin crawl.

“You may ask why I’m telling you this,” the head responded, clearly reacting to my words with a prerecorded script. “Why should I provide you with a warning?” Suddenly, the head took on a feral grin. “This is a self-indulgence, I admit. I want you to water your suits with your bowels! You’re all going to die for the trouble you’ve caused me, and I wanted you to be the first to know this. Fear me in your bones! Prepare yourselves to be skinned and—”

My finger swiped the cut-off, and the apparition faded away.

“Why’d you turn it off, Captain?” Yamada demanded. “It might have given us more valuable intel.”

“No,” Zye said, “it was only meant to torment us.”

I took in a deep breath. “Well, you heard Lorn in his own words.”

They looked at me expectantly, and I shrugged.

“We have no choice. His ships must never reach the Stroj homeworld. If they do, we’ll be at war.”

The group looked glum.

“But Captain,” Rumbold said, “how do we catch him?”

Turning to Yamada, I stood up suddenly and gestured for her to follow me. “Come, sensor op. We have work to do.”

Once back on the command deck, my crew went to work. We traced the tritium to the very last molecules. This took time, but we managed it by the end of the next watch.

“It has to be here, sir,” Yamada said. “But there’s nothing on the Connatic’s star charts. Not even one of those ‘beyond this point there be dragons’ type warnings.”

I had to agree, as I’d looked carefully at the charts for hours.

“Do a full scan. Use active sensors. Use everything we’ve got.”

“But sir,” she protested. “If we do that, and the enemy are nearby, they’ll see us for sure.”

I scoffed. “They jumped us before. If they were planning an ambush, I’m sure they’d have sprung it by now.”

“Possibly, but in order to scan for a breach we don’t know about, I’ll have to fully drop our shields. We’ll have zero protection.”

I suddenly got her point. Maybe this was all just another trick. Maybe the head, the message, the dead trail of their engines had all been left to get us to lower our shields. The enemy could then reappear and slam us like sitting ducks.

On the other hand, the enemy was escaping us every minute, every hour. If we waited any longer, we might never catch them.

“Do it,” I said. “Zye, warm up the cannons and get us into motion. Hit the accelerator the second you see any hint of Stroj ships.”

We began the scan. Several tense minutes passed. At last, a hundred thousand kilometers off, a breach glimmered on our sensors. It was an unstable one. The rim of it shifted and roiled.

“That’s the smallest, most squirmy breach I’ve ever seen,” Yamada said. “It could be another trap, sir.”

“Is it drifting?” I asked.

“Yes, a little.”

“Plot its position several hours back. Give me a projection over time.”

She did so, and the results were impressive. The tritium trails merged with the breach point—or at least they had done so some hours earlier.

“They did their best to hide their tracks,” I said. “Still, they left behind that message. Why would Lorn leave such a thing behind to taunt us?”

“Maybe it’s just as he said,” Rumbold suggested. “Maybe he’s just a bastard, and he wanted us to squirm.”

“It’s possible,” I said, examining the twisting breach. It looked like the head of a snake on my screens.

“Let’s do it,” I said. “We’ll see if the enemy has left us a trail on the other side.”

Zye immediately laid in the course, and Rumbold steered us toward it.

Yamada licked her lips. “Captain? I’m concerned. Are you sure you want to charge through another unknown breach?”

Smiling, I gave her a confident chuckle. “Of course I do. Put up our shields in the meantime. We don’t need to use our most sensitive detection equipment any longer.”

“What if they aren’t there?” she asked me.

“Then I’ll turn around and take us home, that’s what.”

She looked relieved. Maybe she’d thought I’d say that I’d follow the damned Stroj to the ends of the cosmos.

The truth was I did feel that way—but it wouldn’t do to let the crew in on my state of mind.