Trissk donned his prized possession – a functioning vacuum suit older than he was, much patched – and tested its seals. Another layer of plastic tape closed off a pinhole and then it puffed up around him before he lowered the pressure once again. It will hold long enough.
Behind him Chirom paced restlessly; in that impatience the two Ryss seemed alike. “You are sure Desolator will not interfere?”
“I am sure of nothing, Elder. I only know I have ventured into this area many times to salvage equipment and it has never paid me any mind. It is the best location to emplace the communicator.”
“Then let’s be about it. We cannot afford to have anyone discover us.”
Trissk stared at Chirom in surprise. “No one knows of this place...correct? You did not tell anyone?”
The elder shook his mane.
“Then have courage, Elder,” Trissk said with youthful confidence. “We do this for the Five Clans. You must go now.” Sealing his helmet, he waved Chirom back through the pressure door that would serve as a crude airlock. After the elder closed the hatch, they both twisted the locking handles that sealed Trissk in the room.
On the other side a large hatch hulked. This one was held in place only by the atmospheric pressure in the room, but that condition soon changed as Trissk opened the manual air evacuation valve. A criminal waste of oxygen, nevertheless it was the only way he knew to cross into the damaged, airless parts of the ship.
Once the air leaked into space, the door came open easily, and he stood looking at an angle into the emptiness below. To the left and right he saw the cross-sections of decks and the great vertical gash where long ago Meme hypers had torn a huge rent. About forty-five degrees of sky were visible, which was insufficient for his purposes.
Dragging the heavy, jury-rigged communication module carefully with its spool of trailing cable, Trissk stepped over the threshold and set his boot onto the deck outside. Another careful pull and he was able to tip the comm over the lip of the doorway. Now it was a matter of delicate maneuvering of the machine, over and what felt like down. With the ship spinning, centrifugal force made outward and downward the same. He walked step by careful step across broken and twisted decks, stanchions, supports and machinery until he reached the edge of the armor.
This was as far as he could go without risking a fall outward into space, even with magnetic boots. Desolator’s outer shielding contained very little ferrous metal, except for some exotic superconductor sheathing. Most of it comprised a neutronium-carbon crystal alloy stronger than either, so Trissk would have to set up the communicator here. He estimated almost half the sky was visible, wheeling slowly as the great ship spun. It would have to do.
Magnets held the machine to the wall while he squeezed adhesive from a tube to set it in place. Another irreplaceable resource, he thought. This is why we must make contact with someone, else the Clans slowly die inside this insane wandering wreck. Eventually the food, the spare parts, even the heat will run out, and then we will eat each other as we did in the Days of Defeat. I refuse to let that happen.
Adjusting the transceiver for maximum field of view, he switched the device on and hurried back to reverse the exit process. As old as the suit was, he never knew when it would spring another leak.
He found Chirom back in the workshop, tapping at the keyboard of Trissk’s control computer. He suppressed a flash of irritation at this intrusion; he had to trust the elder now or everyone there was doomed anyway. Five hundred or so Ryss represented barely enough genetic diversity to rebuild their race, and though many such groups had loaded themselves aboard every available ship as their home system finally fell to the Meme, no one knew whether any others had survived.
Perhaps the only Ryss in the entire universe lived here.
“It looks to be working,” Chirom said. “I am no technologist but I can read a screen. Everything but the arc directly to the front and rear is visible at least some of the time. Unfortunately, the most likely area for the system dwellers to be is directly ahead.”
“Let me,” Trissk said, taking over the stool when Chirom stood up. Precise finger-taps quickly brought up a detection overlay. “There. That is an artificial source, at this comet. They must have a sensor station there.”
“Why hasn’t Desolator destroyed it?”
“Why does Desolator do anything?” Trissk retorted, then turned to look the elder in the face. “Should I send a signal?”
Indecision fluttered through Chirom’s whiskers. “It’s not our signal that concerns me. What will Desolator do if a foreign entity sends a response?”
“Try to take it over with a code attack, as it has in the past. But I have a plan. My signal will reach the foreign communicator first, and attempt to inoculate it with an unbreakable encryption.”
“You can do such a thing?”
Trissk lowered his eyes. “I am not sure...but I believe so.”
“And what if the encryption is not unbreakable?”
“Then we have lost nothing, and Desolator will control another machine. Elder, we must try. We have too long been afraid to take risks.”
Chirom looked oddly at Trissk for a long moment. “You are much like your dam, you know,” he said. “Brave, intelligent, and headstrong.”
“You knew her well?”
“Well enough. She glorified me once, when it was her time.”
Trissk’s eyes brightened and he searched the other male’s face. “Then you could be...”
“Your sire? No, the timing is not correct, and in any case it is unseemly to speak of such things,” Chirom said stiffly. “But your dam was special. Had she lived, things might have gone differently.”
“Tell me –”
“Not now. Prepare your transmission and send it. Then I must get back or I will be missed, if I am not already.”
“Yes, Elder.” Trissk clamped down on his curiosity and uploaded the file to the transceiver, then entered the command to send. “Done. It will take fourteen or fifteen smallspans.”
“I will go, then, and return when I can. If there is news...come seek me out, discreetly.” As he left, Chirom bowed to Trissk as if to an equal, a shocking thing.
He could be a great leader, Trissk thought, if only others would listen to him. But part of leadership is making that happen. What is it that makes people listen? Thoughts of politics consumed the time it took for the signal to go and return.
***
“Sound General Quarters, information-attack protocols,” Mirza called. “Get engineering teams to take manual control of the engines and weapons; lock out all computer controls until they are scrubbed. Sensors, can you show us what’s going on?”
Tanaka shook his head. “With bridge computers offline the holotank is down. All I have is opticals. I’m trying to get some basic radar and lidar plots...”
“Keep on it,” Mirza encouraged. “Johnstone?”
Without looking Rick Johnstone replied, “Sir, I locked down the bridge computers. The rogue commands seem to be coming from the auxiliary bridge, and I can’t make contact with anyone there. I suggest you send a security team. Anyone linked there might have been compromised by the info-virus.” Gingerly he pushed his plug back in.
“The bridges are made to be hard to get into,” Absen mused. “Might want to start some engineers working on severing their data connections.”
Mirza acknowledged, “Yes, Admiral. Perhaps Tobias can take charge of that? Pass the word to the Marines.” Nodding, the Steward raced off. “And get a medic up here to see to Okuda.”
A man with the red-and-white caduceus arrived a moment later and began attending to the helmsman.
“I have some video now,” called Tanaka. The bridge’s main flatscreen flickered to life, showing empty space. Jerkily the camera panned until the attacking ship was centered, tiny in the vastness of space. It zoomed in stages until the enormous vessel filled their view, spinning slowly around its long axis.
“Aux bridge has been isolated,” Johnstone called from CyberComm. “We should have control back.”
Abruptly klaxons whooped throughout Conquest, and consoles lit up with warning lights. “Energy attack,” snapped Ford. “From the Krugh!”
“What?” General Kullorg was on his feet in an instant, staring at the man at the Weapons station.
“Krugh has fired on us, sir,” he repeated without looking. “I’m rolling the ship,” he went on. Doing so was a standard defensive tactic to spread any hits across more armor.
“It must be the info-viral attack,” Johnstone said, his eyes still closed. “I’ve cleaned up most of our systems...I’ll try to help Krugh.”
“Shall I return fire?” Ford asked. Then, “Dammit, we need a helmsman.”
“I can function,” Okuda rasped from the deck. Painfully he rolled over and sat on the edge of his cockpit, feet dangling inside. “Just help me down.”
The medic started to object until Kullorg reached over and grasped the back of Okuda’s skinsuit, gently but effortlessly lowering him into his seat, as if with a small child.
“Leave him be,” Absen said to the medic. “Just stand by.”
“Thanks,” the helmsman gasped, opening a small compartment and taking out an auto-injector. Grunting, he jammed the thing into his thigh, flooding his body with emergency battle-stimulant. Running his hands across his manual controls, he soon seemed his usual imperturbable self, save only the beads of sweat on his bald head.
“Captain, Krugh is still firing on us, though only with its main particle cannon. We’re taking significant armor damage and we’ve lost several secondary systems, two point defense lasers, a shotgun...and three casualties.”
“I must speak with them,” Kullorg rumbled.
“That won’t help, sir,” objected Johnstone. “The ship is obviously not under their own control. I am sure they're doing everything they can. And Sekoi don’t use links or implanted cybernetics, so their minds are not at risk, only their computers. Unfortunately it looks like the enemy virus went through them almost without opposition. Sir,” he addressed the Hippo general, “do you know why that might be?”
Kullorg’s expression became unreadable. “I have suspicion.” He exchanged glances with Admiral Absen, who nodded. “Perhaps ship is of a race enemy to the Meme. If so, our computers would be familiar targets, as software is based on Meme code.”
“Seems reasonable. Johnstone, any chance of you shutting down Krugh’s weapons systems?”
“I don’t think so, sir.” Johnstone’s voice drifted into irony. “I never designed a viral attack against our allies.”
“Captain,” Absen said, exchanging glances with the General then turning to Mirza, “we have to take out Krugh’s particle beam and be ready to selectively target their other weapons if they are used against us.”
“Yes, Admiral,” Mirza replied. “Ford, do it. Take out their primary. Minimum force.”
“With pleasure,” he muttered. Kullorg took a deep breath of anger, and Ford cursed himself for his comment. Whatever his feelings about the Hippos, they were still allies. “Firing coordinated laser strike."
More than twenty times the size of Krugh, with weapons to match, it took only one point-blank blast of Conquest’s beams to vaporize the offending weapon. “Ene – ah, engagement successful,” Ford reported, keeping his eyes on his boards.
“I have comms traffic from Krugh...they say they should have manual control of all systems within twenty minutes,” Johnstone reported.
Suddenly the holotank flickered to life, and the bridge watch let out a collective sigh of relief, though the display took several minutes rebooting and populating with its iconic symbology. Once its rebuild was complete, it became obvious that the enemy ship was accelerating, but slowly.
“Do you think that’s the limit of its drive power?” Absen asked.
“At a guess, probably,” Okuda answered. “The heat readings seem to indicate only a limited amount of energy available; it has just one fusion drive operating, at partial capacity. By comparison, Conquest has six main drives and thirty-six maneuvering thrusters. A ship that size should have at least as many.”
“What does ‘limited amount of energy’ mean, say, in comparison to Conquest?” Absen asked.
“Roughly comparable to ours. By estimate that ship should be about twenty times Conquest’s mass.”
“So five percent of their full capacity.”
“Unless they’re playing possum,” grumbled Ford, always the contrarian.
“Possum? What is this possum?” Kullorg asked.
“He means they might be concealing some capability,” the admiral answered. “How could it have even gotten here at such a slow speed? When it was first sighted it was almost at rest relative to the star, but there was no deceleration flare detected.”
“Perhaps it just drifted in to the system over the past few weeks?”
“No, we would have seen something that big,” Tanaka at Sensors replied. “We have active radar sweeps of the entire sphere, updated every thirty hours or so. That’s the window – it had to have arrived within the last thirty hours, and gotten two thirds of the way in from the edge of the stellar wind bubble before being seen. Something doesn’t add up.”
“Some kind of cloaking technology?” Mirza speculated.
Absen shook his head. “Unlikely with so much damage. What about a cyber attack on our sensor nets? Can we be sure of our own information?”
“I’ve been running diagnostics,” Johnstone replied. “If that was it, I can’t detect it.”
“What matters it?” Kullorg rumbled. “It is enemy. Once Krugh is under full control we must attack.”
Absen chewed his inner cheek, thinking. “We have a lot of time to decide that, General. Humans have elaborate first contact protocols and decision trees based on everything our intelligence services think of. Jumping to conclusions could invite a battle we do not need. Perhaps the cyber-attack was just their attempt to communicate and understand us. Perhaps it’s an automated system programmed to attack everything it encounters. Perhaps...we just don’t know.”
Kullorg grunted. “Perhaps, perhaps. As soon as Krugh is secure, I will go, communicate with my government,” he said darkly, then crossed his heavy arms, a very human gesture.
Is this all it takes to crack our fragile accords? Absen thought. There is still so much I don’t know about how the Sekoi think. If it weren’t for Ezekiel Denham and his assurances of their sincerity, I would be really sweating now, instead of merely concerned. At least I hold the cards here; Conquest could smash Krugh without difficulty, and humans control the moon laser.
Fifteen minutes later the Hippo general shuttled over to his heavy cruiser.
***
When Jill entered her tiny flat it took her a long moment to realize something was out of place. Adrenaline flared through her, activating a cascade of cybernetic systems that turned her into a weapon within a fraction of a second.
On her left hand, her ferrocrystal claws came out, poking through her fingertips with familiar pain. Nanites immediately sealed the razor wounds. With her right, she slipped her personal pistol out of the small of her back, an ancient PW5 that she had carried with her for decades.
Left hand extended slightly, she kept the handgun close to her body in her right, where it couldn’t be grabbed or struck, and looked around the main room that housed the kitchen, dining and living areas. She wondered what had tipped her off, and sniffed slowly.
Ah.
“Come on out, Spooky. Been hitting that Hippo garlic pretty hard lately?” She put the gun away and withdrew her claws.
“Yes,” came the answer near the refrigerator as she put the gun away. “It’s a weakness around humans, but it actually masks the man-scent to the Sekoi. Beer?” The Vietnamese highlander turned with two bottles in his hand.
“Oh, my,” Jill breathed as she stepped forward to take one reverently. “Where the hell did you get this?” After three years of wartime economy, luxuries were scarce and expensive. “No label?”
“I own a small beverage company now in Blorun,” naming the large Hippo town closest to them, some three hundred kilometers to the south. “This is a test batch. My bioengineer assured me it is compatible with both their biology and ours.”
“Well then, let’s find a bloody opener!” Jill scrabbled in a drawer.
“Oh, come now, Jill,” Spooky replied, and slowly twisted the top off his with cybernetic strength. “Just have to take care not to snap the neck. Cheers,” he said as he lifted his bottle to his lips.
Instead of twisting, Jill gave him a crooked grin and extended her middle finger, then re-extruded one claw and pried the bottle top off. “Up the Irish,” she replied, and tasted. “Oh, that’s good, Spooky. Add it to your list of talents.”
“The rest of a case is in your fridge.”
Jill paused in mid-sip, then took a slow swallow. “Thanks...but now I’m starting to think this is not just a social call.”
“You’re right. How’d you like a bit of action?”
She licked her lips, conscious of his casual scrutiny. “I told you I was done with all that special ops crap back on Conquest, and the answer still stands. When I get back into it, I’ll go with Marines.” Her lips came up in an unconscious snarl. “I always know where I stand with them.”
Spooky set his empty bottle in the sink and fished two more out of the fridge. “I don’t know what I ever did to you to warrant such vitriol, Jill,” he said evenly.
“You don’t call two hundred million dead people reason enough? And pinning it on someone else?”
“Did I betray you personally? I didn’t drop a nuke on Los Angeles and kill your family. Not that you spoke to them much anyway. You’d already made the Corps your home, and left them behind. Survivor’s guilt is all you’re feeling, even now.”
“That’s rich – you, psycho-analyzing me.” She emphasized the first part of the word to make it a pun. “I got past their deaths a long time ago.” Jill paced across the small main room, turned to face him from the farthest corner. “But even if I would have before, I’m a mother now. I have more important responsibilities. Besides...what kind of covert op could there be now? We won.”
“Who said it was a covert op?” Spooky asked mildly. “I just asked you whether you wanted to get back into action.”
She sighed. “If I wanted to, I could request a few months in space, but that’s not really action. So it’s not a covert op?”
“It is a covert op.”
Jill stared at him. “You’re an asshole, you know?”
“It’s been said. You want to hear about it, or go back to mommy-ville?”
She ground her teeth for a moment, then let up when she felt her jaw creak and a molar crack. That tiny mistake decided for her.
I’m getting out of practice. I need a rest from rest.
“Fine, tell me.” She threw herself on the sofa, leaving Spooky to perch on a barstool. “Go on.”
“Something just entered this system.”
“What?” Jill sat up suddenly, almost spilling her precious brew.
Spooky smiled faintly, nostrils flaring, but did not answer.
She prompted, “Okay, you got me interested. Keep talking.”
He nodded. “It’s a huge ship. Bigger than that Meme Guardian, but it’s not Meme. It’s mechanical, and in bad shape, but it’s already exhibited some technology that we don’t have.”
“How the hell do you know all this?”
“Oh, come now.”
When it appeared he would not answer more, Jill ramped up her glare until he relented. “I have sources in EarthFleet and the Sekoi military both. Several hours ago both networks lit up with the news. It’s only a matter of time before the media gets ahold of it.”
“So what? EarthFleet will handle it. What does that have to do with us?” She realized she’d already changed pronouns from me to us, and she saw Spooky’s eyes smile when he realized that too.
“Shortly after I learned of this, I also learned of an unauthorized transmission sent from a small island near the equator, aimed out into space, no known target. EarthFleet doesn’t know, and the Sekoi don’t seem to care. The former does not surprise me, but the latter does.”
“What...why?”
“What and why indeed,” Spooky agreed. He held up a hand and counted on fingers, thumb first. “Possibilities. One, the planetary government sent it; two, they know about it and are keeping it from us; three, they know about it and don’t care; or four, they don’t know.”
“And you want to find out. But how? We’re two humans among billions of Hippos. Nothing we do is covert. This sounds like a job for your native agents.” Jill laughed at the slight rise of Spooky’s eyebrows. “Of course you have indigenes on your payroll.”
“I’m just pleased you worked it out. You really haven’t thrown away all your interest in the clandestine world.”
“Oh, stop blowing smoke,” Jill replied, but couldn’t help feeling secretly pleased. I’m actually enjoying this, she realized. Damn. I’m hooked. “So why not just tell the Sekoi and see how they react?”
“That is one option...but I want to take a look for myself.”
“Just you and me?”
“And Ezekiel.” Spooky held up a hand before she protested. “We need his ship. It’s the only thing that will get us there without anyone noticing.”
“They won’t notice a Meme ship flying around? It can’t be that stealthy.”
“Oh, we’re not going to be flying.” He handed her a piece of paper. “Grab what you need, and meet me at these geo-coords in one hour.”