Battlespace (The Stars Aflame Book 1) Read online

  “Granted, Lieutenant, but we’d have no way of knowing that the aliens would take the bait,” Garcia said. Turning to Scott, she added, “We spent a lot of time on those weapon modifications, sir. It’d be a shame not to know whether they were effective. The rest of the fleet could certainly use that data.”

  Looking at Ivanov, Scott asked, “How many probes would you need, Lieutenant?”

  “I’d use all of them, sir. And one of our shuttles, flown on remote. We could set it on autopilot to travel between two of the probes, make it look as though some sort of settlement was being established. Given more time, I’d also deploy our emergency dome, but that would take too long.”

  “It’s unlikely that would fool them for long, Lieutenant,” Rochford warned. “As soon as they entered orbit, they’d work out they’d been tricked.”

  Nodding, Scott said, “Nevertheless, it might buy us a little time. Helm, alter our landing site on the comet to take into consideration shielding us from the alien ship should it fly directly from the wormhole exit to the nearest planet. Lieutenant Ivanov, go ahead and set up your decoy. We’re going to do both plans. We’ll wait in the system for as long as we can and prepare our trap. Hopefully the aliens will be fooled by the probes for long enough to emplace all the charges. Can you give me a time estimate on that, Commander?”

  “Maybe ninety minutes if we hustle, sir. It’ll take at least thirty to complete the detailed sensor sweep.”

  “At all costs complete that sweep before the enemy arrives, Commander. They’d easily be able to pick up that sort of power generation. Once we reach the surface, we’ll go as dark as we can, and wait.”

  “And pray,” Wilson said.

  “That, Lieutenant, goes without saying at this point.”

  Chapter 12

  “Watch out, Lieutenant!” Patel yelled. “Eruption imminent!”

  “Moving,” Novak replied, firing her suit thrusters to kick her clear of the surface, her sensors running wild as they detected the growing seismic activity below her. Even with such a cool star, the comet grew far hotter as it closed on the heart of the system, reacting so violently that there was a real danger that it might tear itself to pieces.

  To her right, the surface cracked, and a tower of ice and steam erupted, high into the sky, the fragments tossed clear with enough force to easily pass escape velocity. She pushed herself away, well clear of the site, then reached for her wrist control, working out the easiest path to the alternate site for bomb emplacement.

  Captain Scott had called for volunteers to head out onto the surface of the comet, set the charges. A dozen technicians were needed to complete the mission, with a rescue shuttle on standby in case Leonidas had to escape in a hurry. She’d been the first to step forward, along with the rest of the survivors of Vanguard. Whether it was because they still felt that they had something to prove, especially compared to the seasoned veterans that made up the bulk of Leonidas’ crew, or whether they still sought revenge for their lost comrades, she couldn’t say.

  As for herself, she couldn’t find a place. Assistant Weapons Officer was less a title, more a theoretical opportunity, and one that she frankly hoped would never amount to anything. Leonidas certainly didn’t need a Science Officer, the only relevant equipment dumped in a storage room, not even assembled. This was something she could do, something she knew.

  “Rochford to Novak,” the soft voice said, echoing through her helmet. “You all right down there?”

  “No injuries, no problems, Commander,” she replied. “We’re heading back for the surface now.”

  “It’s getting pretty wild down in the core,” Rochford warned. “We might have less warning of a future eruption than we hoped.” He paused, then said, “We’ve revised some of our target sites. New coordinates are coming through to you now. Don’t worry about the charges you already placed, we took that into account. You’ve still got eight to go?”

  “We do, sir, and don’t worry, we’ll have them all positioned before our friends arrive. What’s the status of the decoy?”

  “Ivanov and Wilson are putting the final touches on it now. Hell, I’m almost convinced, and I know what they’re doing. It should put on a nice show when the enemy ship gets here. I just hope it works.” There was another brief pause, and he said, “Seismic activity back to normal.”

  “We’re on our way back down. Put the coffee on, Commander. We won’t be long. Novak out.”

  She fired her thrusters again, smoothly gliding back to the surface, her boots crunching on the frosty soil. Reaching for her hand scanner, she waved it around, tracking towards the new site relayed from Leonidas, nodding with approval as the geologic data seeped in. A nice deep fissure, going down a couple of hundred meters. All she had to do was widen the entrance a little, and she pulled out her shovel, hacking carefully away at the ground, careful not to damage her suit.

  A shovel. All the technology, all the advancement, and she was still digging away at the ground with a battered piece of metal. She forced open the crack, peering down into the depths of the comet, her suit lights reflecting on the ice. Then she reached into her holdall, pulling out the charge, and tapped a control to activate it, setting it for remote detonation from Leonidas, before tossing it down the shaft. Precise targeting was unnecessary. As long as it went deep, that would do enough. She tracked it down with her hand sensor, nodding in satisfaction as it slid smoothly to the bottom, then took a step back, anxious not to follow it.

  Her last charge emplaced, she took a moment to step back, looking around the landscape, knowing that her eyes would be the last to see it. Jagged cracks swept across the icy terrain, pillars of rock sweeping into the sky all around her. The desolation was glorious, wondrous, but transient. Some gravitational trick had pulled a ball of ice into the system, sending it into an orbit that would burn it away, a piece at a time. The comet was less than a week from reaching the closest point to the star, and had already lost a significant fraction of its mass, tossed into space to form the mighty tail in which Leonidas was hiding. Three, maybe four more passes around the star, and it would all be over in any case.

  When she was a cadet, she’d taken the second-year cruise around the Solar System, a reward for graduating in the top tenth of her class. While the rest of the cadets were attempting to repair an abandoned relay station on Vesta, they’d crewed a scoutship to Jupiter and Saturn. When she’d seen the rings for the first time, their commander giving them a perfect view from polar orbit, she’d known intellectually that they were only a temporary phenomenon, that sooner or later, gravity would tear them apart, and in a few million years, they would be gone. Had the Folk visited the solar system, they would have been nowhere near their present glory. And Jupiter’s Red Spot, already fading from its height, with a life of only a few thousand years.

  The Professor had been right. All life was transient. Entropy would do its work, no matter how they might fight it. Even if they hadn’t been travelling through this system on a mission of war, the odds of anyone else ever stepping onto this comet again would have been vanishingly remote. There was nothing to see, nothing of interest to learn. The rest of the system, perhaps, with its extragalactic origin, but this comet had been captured far more recently than that, stolen from some other cometary belt as the star flew by.

  She glanced at her watch. They were passing the forty-minute mark, and according to Rochford’s projections, they could expect the arrival of the alien ship any time now. She looked up at the sky, as though expecting it to appear at any moment, then shook her head, glancing instead at the sensor display on her arm. Three charges left to place, and they could get back to the theoretical safety of the ship.

  “Lieutenant,” Patel said, “Have you heard anything from Vidmar lately?”

  “No, I haven’t, Chief. Wait one.” Tapping a control to change frequencies, she said, “Novak to Vidmar, reply at once, reply at once.” She waited for a moment, then repeated, “Novak to Vidmar. Reply at once. Reply at o
nce.”

  “I couldn’t get him either,” Patel replied. “His telemetry looks fine, but there must be something wrong with his communicator. Want me to take a look?”

  “Negative, Chief, I’ll handle it. Supervise the installation of the last of the charges. The sooner we’re out of here, the happier I’ll be.”

  “I’m with you on that. A nice armored hull sounds great about now. Patel out.”

  Novak called up the projected location of Vidmar on her heads’ up display, a dotted line projected over the landscape to guide her to the last-known position of the crewmen, halfway around the comet. With a quick bound, she kicked herself clear of the surface, then fired her thrusters to send her gliding over the landscape, keeping one eye on her sensors the whole time. They were going to a lot of effort to divert the enemy ship, and if it appeared in a hurry, her flying over the world in clear view might ruin everything. She fired another pulse from the thruster, sending her nimbly around a rocky outcrop, then saw the problem.

  A huge pit had opened up in the surface, her scanner revealing that the crust that remained was far too thin to support any weight, would certainly crumble at the first touch. Some of it was already collapsing from the impact of her thruster plumes, and she tapped another control to gain height before tentatively moving across it. She peered into the gloom, trying to spot some sign of the lost crewman, then pulled out her hand sensor again, sweeping it across the terrain.

  “Novak to Vidmar. Do you read me? Do you read me?” A faint roar of static produced the only response, but her sensor picked up a trace of oxygen from below. That could only come from a suit, a puncture that was leaking precious atmosphere into the surrounding vacuum. She looked down again, her eyes sweeping the pit, and finally found what she was looking for, a faint patch of red deep below the surface, perfectly matching the design of her suit.

  “Chief, this is Novak,” she said, glancing at her fuel gauge. “Report status.”

  “One charge left, Lieutenant, and Powers is lowering it now.”

  “Get a spare tank of thruster fuel and come over here on the double. And a length of cable, as well. I’ve found our wayward crewman, but he looks to be in a pretty bad way. I’ve got enough fuel to get down to him, but nowhere near enough to come back up, not with the extra load.”

  “Understood, ma’am. I’ll be with you in five minutes.”

  Shaking her head, she replied, “He can’t wait that long. I’m going down now. Get here as fast as you can, and prepare to pull us both out when you do. Have someone warm up the medical systems on the shuttle, as well. Vidmar isn’t responding, and I don’t trust the telemetry we’re getting from his lifesystem. Hopefully the fall just knocked him out, but I’m not taking a chance.”

  “Ma’am, maybe you should wait until…”

  “Proceeding now, Chief. See you in a minute. Out.” She fired another pulse of her thrusters, positioning herself over the wrecked suit, then fired another slow pulse to set her on descent trajectory. She looked at her fuel gauge, cursing herself for using her thrusters with such abandon before. Spacesuit thrusters weren’t really designed for this sort of work, but the heavier maneuvering units were so cumbersome that few chose to use them. It hadn’t appeared to present a problem until now.

  She carefully slid under the surface, her helmet lights reflecting from the icy walls, careful to avoid the rocky projections that jutted out in all directions, sharp enough to do serious damage to her suit in the event of an impact. Her fuel warning light flashed on as her helmet lights illuminated the prone figure of Vidmar, and she could see a faint trace of gas escaping into space, a rip on his back. He’d have never been able to reach it, even if he had been conscious, and she quickly fumbled with her suit repair kit for a patch, slapping it in position over the hole.

  Turning him over, she looked at his face, his eyes closed, mouth slightly open, as though he was asleep. She looked at his suit status panel, and smiled. He’d turned his pressure way down, trying to conserve his air as long as he could. His antenna had been smashed, ripped away, and the connection to his short-range transmitter had been breached. The telemetry track had simply been repeating its last data input, again and again.

  She quickly checked over the rest of his suit, slapping another patch on an area above his ankle that she was uncertain of, then looked at his thruster tank. Empty, just like hers. She looked around, trying to see if there was any way she could climb out of the hole, but the walls were smooth at the top, the outcrops of rock too long, too brittle to support any weight. Left to herself, she might be able to jump it, but not with the additional load represented by Vidmar. All she could do was wait for Patel.

  Glancing at her watch, she looked up at the sky, the stars shining brightly through the gaping wound in the surface. The cave had a beauty all its own, the ice reflecting the light from her helmet with a rainbow of colors, a chemical stain that had a strange effect on the surroundings. It was one of the most astonishing sights she had ever seen, but she couldn’t enjoy it, not with one of her people lying at her feet. He’d used up most of his oxygen lying in the dirt, would be dead in a matter of moments if they couldn’t get him safely to the shuttle.

  Finally, a shape drifted overhead, and Patel tossed a cable down towards them. She quickly strapped it to Vidmar, then attached her own safety line before waving at the flying figure, the slack on the cable pulled away as they rose into the sky, Patel firing his thrusters in a succession of rapid bursts to pull them safely clear of the trap.

  They swung dangerously to the side, and Novak kicked out with her legs, pushing them clear of another tower of rock, just in time to avoid a collision that would have killed them both. Finally they soared clear of the surface, and Patel guided them to safety, dropping them onto the first firm ground before nimbly joining them on the surface, executing a bow.

  “I’m thinking of trying for the Interplanetary Olympics,” he said. “I think I’d have a good chance in the weight-lifting.” Gesturing over the rocks, he said, “The shuttle’s on the way. I figured it’d be faster for them to come to us. How’s Vidmar?”

  “A hole in his suit he couldn’t get to. Smart kid, he turned down the pressure as low as he dared to eke out his life support as long as he could. As far as I can tell, he’s simply asleep, but I’d rather we had Doctor Nguyen around when he wakes up.”

  “Agreed,” Patel replied, as the shuttle soared over the horizon. He paused, then looked up, out into the distance, and said, “You see that, Lieutenant? One o’clock, high.”

  She looked in the indicated direction, and spotted a new star in the heavens, larger than anything she had seen in this system. And just about in the direction of the shadow wormhole that had brought them here.

  “Ensign, get down on the deck, right now,” she replied, the shuttle executing a landing far faster than normal, keeping low to the horizon the whole time. “Shut everything down, and I mean everything.”

  “Aye, ma’am. Locking down.”

  “They’re a little late,” Patel said, looking at the ship. “Must have just entered the system. I’m surprised Leonidas didn’t warn us.”

  “If they’d said a word, they’d have shown their hand,” she replied. “Let’s get inside. If we’re going to sit around waiting, I’d rather do it in my shirt-sleeves with a cup of coffee in my hand.” She paused, then asked, “The charges?”

  “All good. Powers got the last one in place. We’re as ready as we’re going to be.”

  “I hope so,” she replied. “We get one shot at this. It had better be a good one.”

  Chapter 13

  “Report, Commander,” Scott said, turning to Rochford.

  “Enemy ship has completed transition, sir, and is currently holding position.”

  “Scanning the system,” Ivanov replied.

  Garcia frowned, and said, “They’re well out of range at the moment, sir.”

  “That’ll change,” Scott said. “Status of the charges?”

 
“Armed and ready, sir. One touch of a button and the whole damned comet will go up. I’ve had a signal from the shuttle, and the emplacement crew is locked down and ready for immediate launch. Should I bring them home?”

  Shaking his head, Scott replied, “They’re better off where they are for the moment, and I don’t want to risk our friends out there spotting the engine plume, even for a short hop like that. They’ve got life support to last for days, and I don’t think we’re going to be waiting anywhere near that long.”

  “Attitude change,” Sullivan reported, her eyes locked on her console. “Slow rotation, towards the planet. No sign of power buildup yet.”

  “Take the bait,” Ivanov muttered. “Come on, take the damned bait.”

  Scott sat back in his chair, once more attempting his usual calm demeanor. Inside, he was more nervous than he had ever been. He was confident that the detonation on the comet would at least damage the enemy ship, but his main job remained to buy time, time for the battle fleet to move into position. On the chance that their attack failed, he had to give Admiral Singh a chance to finish the job.

  She’d asked for a week. So far, he’d given her less than three days, and that was the absolute minimum to at least put some sort of squadron into the sky. Failing that, nothing would stand between the alien ship and Earth itself, and he had no real confidence in the antiquated orbital defense network, left underfunded for decades, just as the fleet had been.

  If you want peace, prepare for war. He’d been hammering that message home to anyone who would listen for the last five years, and took no satisfaction in being proven right.