Secrets of the Sphere (Battlecruiser Alamo Book 27) Read online

 “I read,” the precise, clipped tones of Midshipman Imoto replied.

   “Stick to me as close as you can, and make sure to watch your engine controls. If you start sliding down that gravity well there's nothing I can do to bring you back. If something goes wrong, don't try any fancy flying, just head back to the barn at the closest possible vector. Got that?”

   “Understood, ma'am,” he said.

   She focused her attention back onto the flight path ahead, watching as the trajectory danced around, her navigation computer struggling to cope with the situation it was reading. Nobody had ever dreamed that they'd be flying this close to a black hole. Not for decades, even centuries. An expedition to the nearest singularity to Triplanetary space had been mooted a few times, but the extreme distance to the nearest had rapidly ruled it not.

   Now that they were lost in Andromeda, that didn't seem to be a problem any more. The science teams had gone to their instruments with glee when they'd first detected it, but even that seemed to be changing now, a general awareness of the nightmare watching them growing by the day. She looked up at the hole again, the flare of light the only evidence that there was anything there at all, a portal from which there was no escape.

   She was a fighter pilot, not a physicist. Everything she'd been told stated that nothing but destruction awaited anyone who flew too close, but a part of her still wondered if there was something more down there, whether the old stories about such anomalies being a path to another universe, another reality might indeed be true. Something almost compelled her to find out for herself. It would be easy enough to tap her thruster control, slew down towards the hole, to learn once and for all the secrets of the singularity.

   Shaking her head, she turned back to her instruments. There might be a reason why people didn't tarry too long in systems like that. The compulsion to know was strong, stronger among starfarers than any others, and it was a perpetual struggle to overcome her exploratory instincts, even with the knowledge that they would lead her to her doom.

   Sweeping to the side, her fighter's thrusters fired to kick her clear of the hole, keep her on a straight and steady course that would take her well distant of the silent, growing menace on her flank. Warning lights were flicking into position on the console, the stresses of the increased gravity field starting to take their toll on the hull, damage that the engineering teams were already preparing to repair when they made it home. Assuming, of course, that they did make it home.

   Sixty endless seconds passed as she pioneered a path around the perimeter of the hole, her sensors finally in a position to look behind it, to spot the structure on the far side that had been the source of all their woes. It was almost an anticlimax, a latticed facility with modules scattered around, a dozen fighters of the same design that they'd faced before scattered all around, ready to launch at the sight of any apparent threat. A threat such as that they posed to the station ahead.

   “How the hell did that get there?” she asked. “Our drones...”

   “It wasn't there before,” Harper replied. “We'd have seen it. Take a look at the structure at the rear, the heavy reinforcement. There's nothing there now, but my guess is that it held a one-shot hendecaspace drive.”

   “Is that possible?”

   Harper paused for a moment, and said, “They were working on the prototypes when we left. With the goal of using them to place deep-space facilities with a single shot, to save time on outpost construction. You wouldn't want to use manned vehicles. Not with no way home. And yes, they've been making significant strides on automated hendecaspace jumps recently, though again, they certainly aren't at the position that they would risk lives to it.”

   “The Hegemony hasn't, either,” another voice, one of the sensor technicians, replied. “I'm not picking up any residual atmosphere, nothing at all. The only heat sources are coming from the reactors.” She paused, then added, “And looking at the trajectory plot, it's going to fall into the hole in a few days. Four, at most. This was never intended to be here for long, ma'am. Just a one-shot weapon targeted at Alamo.”

   Murphy looked up at her controls, and said, “Kris, I've got a shot at it from here. There's nothing more you can do in the shuttle, unless you think that you can hack your way into the local network. I recommend you execute a gravity turn and head back for the ship. You can probably link up with McCormack's formation to get an escort for the ride home.”

   “What are you going to do?” Harper asked.

   “Like I said, I've got a shot, and I'm going to take it. If I tighten my trajectory, I'll get enough of a gravity boost that I'll be able to launch a strike at that station without risking intercept. They won't have time to vector those drones onto me.”

   “The risk...”

   “We can't just let them sit out here, ready to strike at a moment's notice. We're going to have shuttles going back and forth from the Sphere when we start our evacuation, and the odds of us getting everyone home with those bastards waiting to pounce aren't promising. At the very least I ought to be able to force them into launching their birds earlier than they wanted.” She paused, then added, “Kris, I know that you're the ranking officer, but if I'm blunt, there's not a damned thing you can do to stop me.”

   With a faint chuckle, Harper replied, “I guess not. I'd tell you not to take any stupid risks, but I guess that's a bit redundant given the current situation. Happy hunting. Out.”

   Murphy watched the scanner as the shuttle began to curve in a wide arc, gaining height as it swung around the black hole, keeping the thousand-diameter distance mandated by the scientific team. They were moving too rapidly to intercept, and just as she'd hoped, the drone fighters opted to ignore the helpless craft. Throwing a control, she adjusted her view to look at the rest of the squadron, now retreating to Alamo with six drones in hot pursuit, far enough ahead to guarantee that they wouldn't come under attack. Everything was going perfectly. She just had to finish the job.

   Throwing on her targeting computer, she tapped a trio of controls to override the warning alarms as she rapidly plotted her attack on the station, fine-tuning her course to give her the best shot of putting her missiles where they needed to be. A cursory examination of the structure revealed several weak spots, not least that a constant boost was required from its thrusters to remain clear of the singularity. One interruption, and the whole station would slide into the abyss, Newton, Einstein and Hawking conspiring together to plot its doom.

   Forty-five seconds to target. As she expected, six of the drone fighters lit their engines as she soared into position, racing towards her in a futile bid to destroy her before she could engage them. She had no intention of permitting them to distract her from her attack run, and a light tap of the thruster send her soaring higher, throwing off their trajectory, leaving them struggling to keep up. A flickering red alarm winked on her panel, the navigation computer reporting that she didn't have enough fuel to return to Alamo. That didn't matter; she was on a safe trajectory now, and a tanker could pick her up at its leisure, sometime within the next six hours. A long wait, but worth it if she could make her strike succeed.

   Twenty-five seconds to target. She was out of sight of Alamo now, would be for at least an hour before passing clear of the gravitational disturbance of the hole. Doubtless Harper was reporting her attack to Francis, and she permitted herself a brief smile as she pictured the look on the senior officer's face when she told him of her intentions. Not that he was a bad officer, or a bad commander, but that part of her that enjoyed thumbing her nose at authority came to the fore with increasingly regularity.

   Fifteen seconds. The interceptors couldn't reach her now, and she held her finger over the launch controls, knowing that she couldn't beat the computer but unable to resist the temptation to try, a fail-safe measure that every combat pilot used, regardless of the training that told them it was unnecessary. At last, her fighter rocked back, missiles racing towards their target. At
the last second, the remaining fighters launched, but they'd left their attack too late, and her missiles dived remorselessly towards their goal, slamming into her carefully selected positions on the superstructure, the force of the explosions ripping and rending into the facility, tearing it to pieces and leaving a slowly-expanding cloud of debris where the enemy facility had been.

   Her brief flicker of satisfaction faded away as she looked at the trajectory plot, face falling as she saw the path the six drone fighters had taken. An intercept course for Alamo, diving close enough to the singularity that they wouldn't spot them until the last minute. A human pilot wouldn't have dared take the risk, but the mechanical minds that commanded those craft know no fear, would instinctively trust the cold calculations of the trajectory plot.

   Six minutes to Alamo. And if they went that close to the gravity well, they'd either miscalculate and spiral to their doom, or reach the far side with enough velocity that the ship wouldn't have a chance to stop them. She sighed, looked up at her navigation computer again, and started to enter a sequence of override codes, bringing her fighter back around on a long, low pass, an intercept course with the drone fighters. It would require most of her fuel to pull off, but she could just reach them as they passed into the gravitational threshold of the singularity.

   As she pulled her ship onto its new course, ignoring the sequence of flickering warnings, she glanced across at the dark tactical console, her ordnance expended. That left only one option, and with a computer pilot, it would be far more difficult. She'd have to play chicken, dive at the drones and hope that they decided to break formation, make a move that would either send them spiraling through space away from Alamo, or send them down into the depths of the black hole. More warning alarms sounded as the computer realized what she was planning, used every argument it knew to attempt to talk her out of it, but she didn't have a choice. Her actions had placed Alamo in danger, and it was her responsibility to see that it survived her mistake.

   The seconds trickled down as she once more soared close to the black hole, noting that she was passing within the thousand-diameter limit, sweeping near a zone from which she could never return. Up ahead, the drone fighters continued inexorably on their course, racing towards Alamo, ignoring her for the moment, as though the computers couldn't believe that anyone would take a risk as great as that which she was running. Less than thirty seconds remained, and she dived into the heart of the formation. At the final instant, five of the fighters broke away, racing in different directions, but a sixth remained, lurching to the side, choosing to sacrifice itself to bring her down.

   She frantically stabbed a finger on a thruster to alter her course, but she'd left it an instant too late, and the enemy fighter caught her on the rear hull, sending her spinning out of control, engine shattered and destroyed. The cockpit lights winked out, replaced with the dim emergency illumination, and a cascade of damage report swept over her heads-up display, cataloging the disaster she was now facing.

   Her sensor data gave her one brief flicker of satisfaction, the remaining fighters now unable to close on Alamo, destined instead to wander helplessly through the system forever. At least she'd done that much right. She reached for her thrusters, then looked at the trajectory plot, and let a thin smile dance across her face. Maybe this was as it had been meant to be.

   A part of her had wondered what lay at the bottom of the hole. Now she was going to find out.

  Chapter 8

   “Shall we get started?,” Francis asked, as he sat down at the head of the table, the other senior officers assembled in the briefing room. It felt like a corporal's guard, far too many of the department heads missing. No Carpenter, Lombardo, Foster. Or Salazar, more to the point, and Harper looked at the empty space where the commander would sit, hoping that he was still alive, cursing the wound that had kept her from accompanying him on the mission.

   “McCormack,” Francis began, “Have we any idea what happened to Lieutenant Murphy?”

   “Nothing concrete,” the squadron leader replied. “The battle took place out of sensor range. Long-range recon indicates that the station Shuttle One spotted has been destroyed, no sign of drone fighters, or any of our people. I hate to say it, but we'll probably never know what happened.” She paused, then added, “Though I must conclude that Lieutenant Murphy wouldn't have taken precipitous action unless she felt the safety of the ship was at stake. She saw a chance to destroy the station, and she took it. And as a result, it is my belief that Alamo is no longer in imminent risk of attack.”

   “Any other thoughts on that?” Francis asked.

   Scott frowned, then said, “I think there's more to it than that. I don't think those drone fighters were actually here to destroy Alamo.” Before anyone could protest, she raised a hand, and added, “Though certainly I suspect they'd have taken a chance to do so if they could. I think they were hoping to wear down our defenses, and keep us pinned down, distracted. While we were worrying about the risk of shuttle intercepts, we'd have been tied to the Sphere. Certainly we're going to find it a lot easier to pull our people out of there now that we haven't got them to worry about.” Glancing down at the desk, a report flashing on the screen, she added, “We've identified a single small starship out on the edge of the system, too distant to do anything but monitor the situation, or perhaps send delayed orders to other facilities, but the Hegemony are watching, sir. Getting ready to make their move.”

   Nodding, Harper said, “More than that. I don't think they want to destroy us.” Turning to Maqua, the Neander implacably sitting at the end of the table, filling in for the missing Operations Officer, she added, “I've gone over the telemetry data again, and I've come to the conclusion that what happened to Monitor was, to a degree, an accident. I think they want to capture Alamo.”

   “That would make sense,” Scott added. “We know that their goal here is technological. They want to bootstrap themselves, and Alamo is sufficiently advanced that they'd gain three or four decades. And it would be a lot easier than trying to untangle technologies thousands of years ahead. They've got every motivation to take the ship intact.”

   Francis looked around the table, and said, “We're still waiting to hear back from Captain Salazar. The last report we had indicated that his ship had completed a safe touchdown after evading missile fire.” Looking at Harper, he added, “There's nothing we can do for him at the moment, but I've got an engineering team on the surface accelerating work on Flyer Three, just in case, though I doubt very much that it can be ready in time.”

   “I agree,” Maqua replied. “That leaves the rest of the personnel.”

   Taking a deep breath, Francis added, “We're going to obey Captain Salazar's orders to the letter, people. I don't want more than a dozen people on the surface, and no more expeditions are to be dispatched for scientific investigation.”

   “Wait a minute,” Scott said. “The Sphere is our best lead to get home. If we can't work out the location of a wormhole that can take us back to our own galaxy, then...”

   “We can't make use of a wormhole if we're dead, Lieutenant, and the Sphere has been there for a long time. Long enough that we can ride this situation out and see what happens. It is my belief that a Hegemonic attack is imminent, and I don't want to be loitering out here for hours waiting for a couple of scientists to find their way home. Understand this.”

   “We can take them in a fight…,” Scott began.

   “A single ship?” Francis replied. “Certainly. Though we might well take damage which will hurt us in future engagements. They know that as well as we do. They won't send one ship, or even two. If they come, when they come, it will be in force. And I agree, their goal will be to capture Alamo. I have no intention of permitting that to happen.” Turning to Santiago, he said, “I want you to position charges throughout the ship, rigged to detonate on command from the bridge. If it looks like we're going to lose her, I'll be damned if I allow them to tak
e advantage of that.”

   “Aye, sir,” the engineer said with uncharacteristic softness.

   “However,” Francis continued, “I will happily state here and now that I have no intention of sitting here and waiting to die. If an enemy force arrives that I don't think we can handle, then I will pull this ship out and jump to another system.” Turning to Harper, he added, “I want it stressed to everyone remaining in the Sphere, Lieutenant, that while I will make every effort to retrieve them, the ship has to come first. I want volunteers only down there.”

   “They understand, sir,” she replied.

   “Is there anything else?” he asked, looking around. Harper locked eyes with him, and he almost imperceptibly shook his head, before continuing, “Dismissed, then. Lieutenant Maqua, start coordinating the evacuation of the Sphere.”

   “I thought Lieutenant Harper…,” the Neander began. He looked at Francis, then said, “Aye, sir. I'll see to it right away.” The officers filed out of the room, leaving Harper and Francis looking at each other, the former pushing a datapad onto the desk.

   Francis raised a hand, and said, “If Pavel was here...”

   “Then he'd be giving exactly the same order,” Harper replied. “So would I. Nevertheless, I want a chance to go after him.”

   “If Flyer Three...”

   Shaking her head, she interrupted, “There's no way it can be ready in the time, especially with Lombardo missing. And I don't buy that they simply set down. That Flyer has remained stationary for the best part of a day, and they'd have headed home by now if they could. Something's gone wrong. I know that I could get volunteers for a rescue party to set out in one of the buggies.”

   “You're looking at an eight-thousand mile trip, Lieutenant, and you'd be lucky to do it in a month. Aside from which, we don't know what Pavel and the others ran into, and without that knowledge, the odds are that we'd be sending you right into a trap. Request denied, Lieutenant. And I expect that to be the end of it unless you can come up with a viable plan. If Flyer Three is complete in time, then you can take it out and see what you can do. But I will not permit you and a collection of others with more loyalty than sense to throw your lives away on a hopeless cause.”