Cloak of War Read online

  “Go wide on battery one. Keep battery two a tight pattern.”

  “Sir,” Dmitri responds. I check my keys to make sure he’s got it right. I don’t know these guys like I should.

  “Lead is breaking,” Larson says.

  It’s a slow-motion train wreck. The tip of the Omega pattern is one unlucky son of a bitch. He gets hit first. Whoever is in position next in the sphere sidles on up. Then the back of the pattern shrinks while the nose stays strong.

  Starburst. Sucker-punch. Three of the lead missile boats go down.

  “Move up!” My voice is too loud. I gotta stay cool. The captain is always cool. I gotta be a walking, talking, ice cube of ultraliquid nitrogen.

  Another carrier dies. This one a marine unit, the Paelae. Wisps of fiery silk stretch across the gap. Torpedoes suddenly explode on the back of the Tyrolean line. My heart skips three beats. I forgot about the fish the heavies sent out. Talk about a rabbit punch.

  Garibaldi cheers.

  Hell, I cheer too. The bastards weren’t expecting that.

  Then the diamonds dance.

  They never do this. They never come any closer. This is it. It’s already a nose-to-nose brawl. What are they gonna do, bite us on the ear?

  Then I see it. More torpedoes coming in on their ass. More little bundles of joy. If they stay put, they’re sandwiched.

  The order comes. Break pattern. Spread. Starburst. Get clear. Now now now.

  I go to call it, but Larson already has the order. The ship pivots up. But our inertia is bringing us right at them.

  Fucking physics, man. We might cheat the laws a bit, but ol’ Isaac Newton gets the last laugh.

  The Tyrolean line bounces. How long will it take this close? A second maybe? Not even.

  One comes in on us. And I mean right fucking on us. I can’t even tell the ship class. All I see is black hull, that dull sparkle like frost on the road. Turrets stud the side, nasty-looking things. Beams form. I watch the light suck in, and then it disperses. It’ll fry us in a second.

  “Fire!” I yell.

  Dmitri is frozen. His hands hover over the keys while his eyes are locked tight on the screen. He’s cracked his egg. I don’t even know how many times he’s faced this down. Missile boats, baby, you run out and send out that sucker-punch.

  I hit the key. The batteries let loose, and my feed is suddenly all bumblebees of yellow and white. The missiles are gone; trails of smoke are the only thing left.

  We get a rare treat. It’s not often you get to see impacts with the naked eye. That big bastard almost looks surprised. The missiles detonate in rapid succession. The wide battery carves holes everywhere. The other battery, though—oh boy, it’s a beauty. They hammer in, a punch right from the hip, pushed through with the shoulder, all your weight on it. A beauty. A real beauty.

  She shows us her guts for a moment. Armor peels back. We’ve knocked the wind out of her.

  Then she takes notice. Lasers stab out. A single-point battery opens fire. Hell, they even swing with a neutron cannon.

  Larson prays loudly, his voice a rapid-fire staccato burst of Hail Marys.

  Can the featherweight dodge the heavyweight? Yeah, for a few punches. But we’ve got about sixteen kilometers to go until we’re in the cover of the main line.

  A neutron cannon grazes the hull. My hairs stand on end; the whole ship feels polarized. More fire pours from the enemy line and hammers into ours. Armor disappears.

  Our big boys are taking haymakers left and right. I focus on our plot, wait for the reload, and wonder what kind of shells the hostiles are shooting.

  Command priority comms sounds once more. “Screen the line!”

  That’s a fancy way of saying, We’re leaving. You keep the boxer occupied.

  Dmitri sobs. Garibaldi doesn’t say a damn thing. Larson prays.

  “Right at ’em!” I call out. I’m already setting up the next barrage. This is our job now. Keep them occupied. Our fleet has to bounce, and fast. If we don’t get close, we’ll get popped.

  Are we breaking? I think so. They’ll probably bounce back a few hundred kilometers and reform. The Tyrolean line is riddled with featherweights like us.

  Then I see her. The White Queen. She’s plowing down the line, giving a full weight broadside as she goes. All of the other ships seem content to lumber in, punch as they go, and show an armored prow. Not her. There’s hatred in her fire. She lances into hulls that are dying. Punctures ships that are trying to flee. Wrath. Fire. Burn.

  Lines of fire stab into a cluster of marine transports fleeing from the Paelae. Those little armored beetles disappear. I hate the Queen. With a quick swipe, I set her as the target.

  “Fire!” I yell again. This time, Dmitri hits the program. The missiles flare, and we’re still running the gap, dancing like a butterfly. Another graze hits us. More armor flakes off.

  I hold my breath and watch as the White Queen takes our missile barrage and shrugs right through it.

  God, she’s moving fast. Her cannons fire. She’s so close I can see her scars. Wounds, old things, corroded by time. Up close, she’s like a corpse.

  Her first shot goes wide. I almost feel honored she’s wasting a full-on blast on my little ship. The second one, though, strikes.

  It’s a blow to the heart. A punch so hard she’s broken our spine. The ship’s computer tries to resolve it without any luck. Too much. Another lance of fire burns through the bridge. Our tiny space is suddenly lit up. Dmitri dies. Larson too. Garibaldi leaps out from his console as gas vents from his suit.

  The bridge goes dark—nightmare dark.

  “Secure ship!” I call out. It takes me a second to reach Garibaldi. I strip one of his repair patches and try to seal him up. He keeps thrashing. I can’t do it. I punch him in the back of the head and scream at him. I don’t want to die alone.

  He stops thrashing. His suit readout shows he’s dead. A fire is burning, despite the vacuum, inside of one of the consoles. I kick off to the back of the bridge and open the hatch. Time to get to Engineering and evac properly.

  Shit.

  The ass of the missile boat is gone.

  The White Queen slides by barely five hundred meters away. I stare up at that leviathan of a ship. She’s chasing after our fleet now, raging into our line.

  Then, one by one, I see our ships glitter in the darkness and bounce out of the system.

  The fleet from the Tyrolean Protectorate follows suit.

  I’m the last man in the ring.

  Alone.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The fleet is halfway gone before I realize what’s happening. All I can see is the twinkle in the dark as each of those distant starships flee the ring. The Tyrolean line keeps firing at the stragglers, the wounded ones, the ones who can’t flee.

  I clasp on to that doorway for a long time and watch, hoping they’ll come back in and take the field. Instead, I stare into the black. Deep space is black. Almost unbearably so.

  We get so used to seeing space augmented through display feeds that it takes on an almost cartoonish tint. Icons and thermal readings show the data we need. Spaces filtered through a lens to take off the edge.

  When that’s gone, man, it’s dark.

  The battle happened so far out that the sun for this system is just another star among a sea of stars. Not that it matters; I don’t have a sextant or a boat to sail it by, anyway.

  I’ll be honest. It takes me a good long while staring into the dark to finally get over it. A part of me wants to pop open the mask, breathe vacuum, and drift away. The only things that keeps me going are the thought of rescue or the fear of capture.

  Tyroleans do take prisoners, and from what we’ve heard through neutrals, they are treated well.

  “Right, here we go, Jager. What do we do?” I have to talk to myself. My only company is three corpses.

  I can’t stare into space anymore. Instead of a field of littered wreckage, it is just empty. Empty and black.

  “Ge
t off your ass, boy. Stock, what do we have?” I rummage through the bridge and use the meager light on my suit.

  First, I pull out the emergency air supply. At the very least, I won’t asphyxiate—or not for a while. By then, I’ll likely die of dehydration. There isn’t a drop of water to be found anywhere. No food either. Tucked in the back is an emergency pinger. We always considered it a joke. I mean, c’mon, who’d ever be able to use that thing?

  I stare at that little box. One button reads TEST, the other reads HELP. I press TEST, and a green light blinks.

  “Well, this seems simple.” Who’s listening, though? I look up instinctively into the dark. My eyes haven’t adjusted yet, and it’s like staring into a wall of blackness.

  So I hit the HELP button. A green light blinks back at me and doesn’t stop. I figured it’d do more. Maybe it’s saying something, but I certainly can’t hear it.

  Protocol is to sit and wait. Help will come. I’ve never really thought about when it doesn’t. I can’t have been the only guy to get left behind. Hell, there must be a dozen other ships like mine. Have to be.

  But I have no power. Zero propulsion. No comms, other than the beeper.

  I dig further. The bridge is tight, and the corpses have to go. Sorry, Larson, Dmitri, Garibaldi. Can’t say I knew you all that well. I say a few words and check them for anything of use, and off they go.

  After a bit, I pull out a bunch of wire and lash it to my waist. I have a terrible fear of drifting away. As lonely as the wreck is, the thought of drifting into nothingness is too much.

  “Keep looking, Jager. Keep looking.” The wall panels come off easily enough. They built these missile boats light. More wires. Electronics. The guts of anything modern, and none of it useful to me.

  Then a tone sounds in my ear. A dim overlay flares in my vision. Someone is on the emergency frequency. The digital filters can’t sync it up; interference alarms blink on my overlay.

  I throw down the panel in my hands and clamber outside. The moment I clear the hull, the words come in clear.

  It’s Henna. “Can you hear me? I can get your ping, anyone?”

  “Henna! It’s Jager. Where are you?” I look but see nothing. How long have we been drifting apart? She could be a hundred kilometers away. But she has power. A whole reactor’s worth. I’ve got nothing.

  “Captain!” She sounds as relieved as I feel.

  On a hunch, I climb back inside and kill the beeper. I’ve found Henna; hopefully no one comes to find us.

  We exchange pleasantries and realize neither of us know where we are.

  “I can probably rig a flare, burn something, arc out a wire, and you can look for it,” I say. I’m grasping at straws. Her voice sounds so far away.

  “I can’t see.”

  “It’ll be a big arc, I’ve got some batteries, I’m sure I can—”

  “No. I really can’t see.”

  The excitement flows out of me.

  “I’m blind, Captain. Arc flash. I can’t see anything.”

  We discuss it and figure that the boat was sliced in two by a terawatt laser. Only a fraction of that beam touched her optic nerve, and it was torched right through.

  “But I can see,” I tell her. Is that hope? Maybe a pinch of leadership? I need to feel something. Now it’s even worse: two people, both totally alone.

  “Right, but?”

  “Can you rig one of the landing lights to blink?” Henna has to know that ship like the back of her hand. She’d been with the Old Man for over a year.

  I can hear her thinking. It takes a minute for her to respond.

  “Yes, I think so.”

  While she works, I climb out onto the hull. My wire umbilical dangles stiffly behind me. The boat is a straight-up shit show. From front to back, she wears enough scars to look like some back-alley cat. A dead one. I finally perch on top of the missile racks and stare out into space.

  Where are you? C’mon, Henna. I turn my head from side to side. There’s no blinks. No lights. Nothing. I scurry around the hull. Finally, I stop and take a breath. She’ll tell me when to look.

  It’s about this time I remember about the moisture separator alarm. Or rather, about this time it reminds me. It’s leaking water into my suit.

  I can’t vent the suit. I can’t empty it out. Worst case: I inhale it and drown in my own sweat and exhaled moisture. For now, I can feel that my clothing is wet. I’ve got no drinking water. I’ll survive. But for how long?

  “Look now, do you see?”

  I scurry like a chimp. Up and around.

  Snap! End of the tether, and finally I see it.

  Way out, I can’t even guess how far, I see a dim light blinking.

  “Now what?” Henna says.

  Good question, I want to reply. Then I look around me. Missiles. I’m surrounded by angry little swarms of armed, fueled, loaded missiles, all snugged up tight in the racks.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “I’ve got an idea, Henna, but I’m going to need your help.” I want to tell her I’m going to need a hell of a lot more than that, but might as well start there.

  “I’m all ears.”

  “Clever girl,” I say, and then immediately feel bad. “Sorry, I mean—”

  “Gotta look on the bright side, right?”

  “Right. Now, Henna, Master Engineer Copper Henna. So you know more than just the reactor core and such, right?”

  “That’s right,” she replies slowly.

  “Missile systems too?”

  “Yes…”

  Beneath me is a honeycomb of launcher doors. They’re all sealed up tight, midway through loading another rack. Each one is a fairly dumb little rocket, a lot of propellant, a little bit of brains, and a nice big warhead. Hopefully I can shitcan the warhead—not much use for that thing.

  “So here’s what I’m thinking. I’ll pull out the missiles, strip the explosives, and use the casings as propellant to get my part of the wreck moving toward you. Good, right?” I start prying at the covers with my hands. They’re all covered in safety warnings and such, and about then I stop and wait for her reply.

  Which is a little slow coming. I wonder for a second if I forgot to press the push-to-talk button in my glove.

  “Well…”

  One thing in life I’ve learned is that when someone starts a sentence with “well…” it means they think your idea is bad. They have a long list of reasons why it’s bad, and they’re just trying to be diplomatic about stating it.

  She continues. “There’s a pretty significant set of safeguards. You can’t just light a fuse. And we don’t even know how far away we are or the course we’re drifting apart. How will you hold them? How will you control them? We’re moving apart with every second. I mean, what can we do?”

  Desperation. I can hear it in her voice. Can she hear it in mine? I hope not.

  “Henna, listen to me. We take this one piece at a time. It’s not a good idea. It’s probably a bad idea, right?”

  “Right.”

  “But it’s an idea.”

  “I know, it’s just…”

  “Overwhelming?”

  “Yes,” she says quietly.

  “I feel the same way. But we got this. In order for this crazy plan to work, I’m gonna need your help.”

  “All right, I’ll try.”

  First things. I can still see her beacon, but it’s not anywhere close to me. How close? No clue. The range on the suit radio can’t be terribly far. When the battle lines were engaged, we had to be a good thirty kilometers from the main line. I’m willing to bet that there’s survivors there too; they just can’t hear us.

  I take stock of what’s outside. Cameras. Shielded sensors. A few shiny discs. Laser collimators. “Can we use the collimator?”

  It takes her a second to reply. “There’s a manual mode for calibration. But you’ll need some power to get it on. Are the backup batteries online?”

  I crawl back inside the ship and pull my way through the bridge.
Squish squish. The water squirms around my leg. First I track down a battery and lug it next to Garibaldi’s console. Even in the zero-gravity environment, it’s an awkward tug.

  A moment later, I’m staring at a bundle of connections.

  I have no idea what I’m looking at. Outside I go, get a lesson in ship wiring from Henna, and go back inside.

  It takes a minute to strip the wires and wrap them around the battery terminals. Surprisingly enough, I’m greeted with a maintenance screen telling me how terrible everything is. Thank you, Mr. Computer.

  In the next hour, I crawl out, get a bit of information from Henna, struggle until I can’t do anymore, then do it all over again. It’s not that I wasn’t trained on this sort of thing—well, I had a little training, but my specialty was Command. Seems pretty damn useless about now, and I guess I shouldn’t have spent Ships Engineering 101 watching reruns of the rocket races…

  It’s not that I didn’t wake up one day and decide to be a warship captain. I, along with the rest of the graduating class of Stockton Regional Merchant Marine University, was drafted into the navy. Lucky, really. I could have been drafted into the army, marines, orbitals, even the Silent Service. God forbid I’d live in one of those gasbags.

  The way I saw things, life was gonna be easy after the Uni. Get a cozy job running a freighter out and about. Eventually join the family business. Maybe even go out for interstellar certification. The war didn’t seem like much then, a lot of hurf-blurf. Should’ve guessed when the class before me was drafted, 100 percent of them.

  After more in and out, I finally get the collimator running. Henna explains that it sends out a laser beam and measures the time to get it back. Problem is that’s all in another computer bank, one without power. So instead I have to use the manual focus.

  “You’ll need to steer the laser turret, point it at the blinking light, get a good return, then do another shot. I’ll run the numbers, and we’ll see if we’re moving apart. Got it?”

  “I think so,” I mumble back.

  “Listen, it’s like focusing a flashlight. You know, the tight beam—”

  “I know,” I say back to her. I picture the little handheld I had in school, with a twist-top lens.