Retreat And Adapt (A Galaxy Unknown) (13 page)

"Don't keep us in suspense, Brian," Admiral Poole said. "Who?"

"The Uthlaro."

"But Jenetta knocked their heads against the bulkhead and wiped out their entire military force."

"But we didn't level the planet's surface, so they still have all their scientific resources and industrial complexes in place."

Silence in the room was complete as everyone considered Holt's statement.

Finally, Jenetta broke the silence. "Our first priority must be to find a defense, and until the
Yenisei
is returned to Quesann where our metallurgical experts and chemical analysis people can study it, we can't begin to know how we'll combat this threat. We'll worry about finding out who is ultimately responsible once we're able to meet these ships on our terms. Augustus, alert all captains, both SC and Territorial Guard, that they must avoid contact with any ships whose appearance is similar to the ones we observed in the vid logs. I don't want any additional confrontations until we have a way to mount a decent defense."

"You want me to tell them to run away?"

"No Space Command captain likes to run from a fight, but it's better than losing our ships and people needlessly. From what I just saw, we don't stand a chance against those weapons."

"Should we continue to search for the
Salado
?"

"Yes. There may be crew members still alive in airtight compartments. At the very least, we'll have additional information from the logs and additional samples of the damage if we need it. But I don't want any new contact with the enemy until we have a plan of attack that gives us a fighting chance. Keith, we need to know everything possible about those three ships. Have your people magnify the images from the logs, enhance them, and examine them under an electron microscope if necessary. We saw a sample of their firepower. It's prodigious— but was that the full extent of it? What's their reload time, or is it a one-shot weapons system? How large are the ships and what's the estimated crew size? Plus anything else you can discern or estimate."

"My people are already working on it, but I wanted to show the logs to the Board members as soon as possible."

"Good. Any answers would be appreciated. I haven't felt this helpless since I found myself in a Raider jail cell."

~ May 14
^th
, 2286 ~

"Captain, contact off the larboard quarter," the tac officer aboard the scout-destroyer
Gambia
announced loudly."

"Helm, all stop. Leave the envelope intact."

"Aye, Captain," the helmsman said. "We're stopped. Our envelope in still active."

"Tac, how far is that contact?"

"Two million, seven hundred forty-two thousand, eight hundred six kilometers, sir."

"Is it under power?"

"Negative, sir. I'm not reading a power signature."

"Size?"

"About the size of a scout-destroyer."

"Tac, send the coordinates to the helm and com. Com, notify the
Vistula
and
Yukon
that we're going to investigate, and feed them the location."

"Aye, Captain," both said.

"Tac, sound GQ. Helm, cancel the envelope and take us to the location of the contact at Sub-Light-100. Hold us at twenty-five thousand kilometers."

"Aye, Captain."

Commander Wilson Teffler leaned back in his command chair and buckled his seat belt just as the sub-light engines kicked in. The inertial compensators absorbed most of the sudden acceleration, and the lurch was barely noticeable. The seat belt was for when the ship started to slow, just in case the inertial compensators failed.

At one hundred thousand kilometers per second, the
Gambia
closed with the target in less than half a minute. Unlike traveling at FTL speeds where a temporal envelope was used, sub-light travel didn't just end when the engines were disengaged. After achieving Sub-Light-100, the helmsman canceled the thrust and swung the rotating engine nacelles around to face backwards. At the appropriate point, he began applying power to slow and stop the ship.

"Twenty-five thousand kilometers, sir," the Helmsman said.

"Tac, put the image of the target up on the front monitor."

"Aye, sir."

A second later, a close-up image of the
Salado
appeared on the full bulkhead monitor at the front of the bridge. The image was enough to elicit a gasp from everyone who saw it. If compared to nineteenth-century vessels that had fought a battle at sea and lost, the ship could be said to look like one that had been sunk and then raised after fifty years on the bottom of the sea. It was that terrible.

"Any signs of life, tac?" Commander Teffler asked.

"Negative, sir. Nothing showing on the board. It's possible that someone could be alive in a stasis chamber or escape pod."

"Helm, take us in to one thousand kilometers." On ship-wide announcement, Teffler said, "Attention crew, this is the captain. We've found what looks like the
Salado
. We'll be sending teams over to look for survivors. Remain at your GQ posts unless you receive orders to the contrary."

To his XO, sitting in the chair next to his, Teffler said, "Deploy the teams, XO. I want every inch of the
Salado
checked for signs of life. Have the Marines go in first and check for rigged explosives before the engineers move in to recover the system logs."

"Aye, Captain," the XO said as he called up the duty lists and began to assemble the teams.

"Captain, the captains of the
Vistula
and
Yukon
are asking to speak with you," the com chief said.

"Put them on my left-hand monitor, Chief."

A second later, the monitor was showing a split screen image with Commander Ashlyn Flanery of the
Vistula
on the left and Commander Shawn Fischer of the
Yukon
on the right.

"Is it confirmed, Wilson?" Flanery asked immediately. "Is it the
Salado
?"

"It's confirmed, although I wish it wasn't."

"Like the
Yenisei
?" Fischer asked tersely.

"Yeah, it looks as bad as the images of the
Yenisei
that we saw, if not worse. We're preparing to go aboard and search for survivors, but there're no signs of life at this point. I think we're going to need a lot of body bags."

"How can we assist?" Flanery asked.

"Your people could start the external examination, Ashlyn. I'm sure that HQ is going to want the images as soon as possible. Shawn, it would great if you could perform picket duty. Whoever did this might still be lurking around."

"Sure thing, Wilson. We'll circle the area three billion kilometers out."

"Thanks, Shawn. Well guys, let's get to work."

In the
Gambia's
shuttle bay, a pilot was performing a walk-around with the head mechanic while Marines in EVA suits lined up before boarding. Normally, the Marines would wear the new body armor when boarding another ship, but the
Salado
was open to space and they would need the extra protection of an EVA suit. An engineer, also suited-up in an EVA, would ride over in the airlock. When the shuttle reached the
Salado
, the engineer would leave the ship and attempt to use the
Salado's
outside control panel to open the shuttle bay door. The engineer carried a small auxiliary battery pack to provide power if the
Salado
's power cells were completely drained.

Twenty minutes later, the Marines were beginning a careful search of the
Salado
. The monitor on the
Gambia's
bridge was a patchwork of small images from the helmet cams. The sights were gruesome. As on the
Yenisei
, the crew had died almost instantly as the atmosphere was evacuated through numerous holes in the hull and bulkheads.

Meanwhile, the
Vistula's
engineers were taking images of the exterior damage and collecting samples of the crumbling hull material. Knowing the normal strength of the material, they couldn't believe that weapons fire had been able to degrade Dakinium this way.

The
Yukon
was on its eighth pass at Light-9790 speed three billion kilometers from the
Salado
, when the tac officer said loudly, "Captain, I have a contact at maximum DeTect Range."

"Sound GQ. How many ships, Tac?"

"The contact is still too distant for detailed data, sir."

"How much time do we have before they can be in range of the
Salado
?"

"About fifty-two seconds at its present speed."

"Damn. Com, get me the
Gambia
and the
Vistula
."

"They're on, Captain."

Fischer looked down at the monitor by his left hand. The other two captains were looking at him apprehensively.

"There's an unidentified contact heading this way. I'm assuming it's one or more enemy ships. Start building your envelopes. We have fifty seconds before they reach us at present speed."

"We don't see it," Flanery of the
Vistula
said. "It's not on our DeTect monitors yet."

"Nor ours," Teffler said.

"I can't possibly recover my people in less than ten minutes," Flanery said.

"I need about thirty minutes," Teffler said.

"We don't have even one. Tell your people to get inside the
Salado
and find undamaged life pods. Then have them use the stasis beds. We'll return when we can. Tell them not to respond to your message and to maintain strict radio silence."

"I won't leave my people," Flanery said flatly.

"Nor will I," Teffler said. "We'll have to fight."

"Open your eyes and look at the
Salado
. We have no defense against whatever weapons did that. For that reason, Standing Orders are to avoid contact. If we stay here, we lose our ships and our entire crews. Think of the hundreds of other lives you hold in your hands, not just the teams aboard the
Salado
."

"Dammit, dammit, dammit," Teffler grumbled through clenched teeth, then shouted excitedly, "Helm, build our envelope."

"Helm, build our envelope," Flanery said to her helmsman. A second later, she said to Teffler and Fischer, "Our shuttle bay door is still open. We're closing it so we can build the envelope."

"My envelope is already built," Fischer said, "so I'll try to distract the enemy ship to give you a little time."

"You're not going to engage, are you?" Flanery asked.

"No. And I won't drop my envelope to fire torpedoes. I'll just stop a second and fire my lasers to see if I can stop him or pull him off course by faking an attack. If he fires on us, I'll be gone before his missiles can clear the tubes."

"I hope it works," Flanery said. "Uh— thanks, Shawn."

"Good luck, Shawn," Teffler said. His face still showed the frustration he was feeling, but Fischer knew it wasn't directed at him.

"Good luck to all of us," Fischer said.

* * *

Nicole Ravenau stepped lightly into the shuttle and walked to her seat, trying not to evince the pain she felt. Her spine was on fire, and every step today had been torture. The pain she experienced as she eased herself down into her seat was almost unbearable. She had done everything she could to mask the beauty of her face and body and was now trying to suppress contortion of her features because she didn't want to draw attention to herself through sympathy or concern for her health. But inside she was screaming in agony.

Over the past few weeks, Ravenau had toiled to move her agenda forward. She had first worked to secure an incontestable copy of Strauss's fingerprints. A janitor had supplied a water glass from Strauss's office, a busboy had pocketed a dessert dish from the restaurant in Strauss's apartment building as he cleared the table following Strauss's meal, and a Raider clerk had supplied a fingerprints image and DNA record from the corporate files. After Ravenau had cross-matched the fingerprints and verified that she had a correct set, she paid off the people who had supplied the data. A hired assassin would ensure the janitor, busboy, and clerk never told anyone about their activity once Ravenau was away from the planet. Each death would appear to be an accident.

Before Strauss could integrate Ravenau's lab with the Raider Central Lab, Ravenau worked with her scientists to create a new body for her. She dreaded the thought of undergoing another year of almost constant pain, but she had decided to return to a male form. She had completed the Age Regression procedure, and having undergone the Age Prolongation procedure long ago, she could now probably depend on having five thousand years to perfect a full immortality procedure. The sex change should guarantee that her sexual frustration problems were behind her. A side benefit of the procedure was that with the Carvers looking for a woman, she would once again be invisible to them.

Just before Ravenau left to catch her shuttle flight to the passenger liner in space, she had set the timer on explosive charges hidden in the lab. When her people met for the scheduled meeting later that day, the entire building would disappear in a blast that might even destroy the surrounding buildings as well. It would be assumed that had Ravenau died with the rest. She hoped it would be enough to convince Strauss. In any event, she intended to disappear until her body changes were complete. No one outside of a few lab personnel knew what her new appearance would be, and they would all be dead before morning, along with the destruction of all the records.

* * *

The assassin didn't know who had hired him, or why, and didn't care. He usually worked for the Raider Corporation, but he took jobs on the side as well. He had a reputation for being one of the best at dispatching people who had a full security force protecting them, so offing a few nobodies would be a cakewalk. Since starting down a slippery slope by outlawing all guns, restrictions had progressed until private citizens were prohibited from even carrying metal keys, paperweights, or a sock full of coins. But anyone who wished could still get a free whistle from their local police department. Still not satisfied, politicians used the argument that the hands of a martial arts expert were deadly weapons and made martial arts study and practice by private citizens illegal. Every thief, rapist, or murderer knew that as long as he didn't target an off-duty cop, security person, or former Marine, he would have little trouble doing whatever he planned to a law-abiding citizen.