Abysm (7 page)

C
HRISTOPHER
R
YCHEN SHOOK HIS HEAD
in disgust. He’d hoped they wouldn’t do it. He’d hoped Fullerton would stand up to Winslow and refuse to destroy a major asset, one which could have civilians on board—and almost had. The evacuation had been completed barely two minutes before the attack.

Fullerton had no way to know Messis I was empty, but he’d fired on it nonetheless. The officers under Christopher had always insisted Fullerton was an unprincipled ass. It seemed he should have listened.

“Admiral, sir. We’ve got reports of explosions at HQ, at the Communications and Data Center.”

“Dammit, how many times am I going to have to rebuild that base?” He connected to his second-in-command on the ground. “Brigadier Drechsler, report.”

“Sir, we believe a single stealthed ship penetrated HQ defenses and fired on Comm-Data. We’re not registering any additional attacks—and I’ve got confirmation. We were able to expose the infiltrating ship and bring it down.”

“Good work. Commence rescue ops at Comm-Data and inform me when you’re able to identify the ship and any survivors.”

“Understood, sir.”

Rychen turned to his left and placed a holocomm. The governor of Messium materialized instantly. “Admiral Rychen, who the hell just blew up my space station?”

Rychen suppressed a groan. It wasn’t the governor’s station as such, but rather a jointly-built-and-operated initiative by the Messium government and Northeast Regional Command. But the man had always been quite proud of it. “Governor, that would be Admiral Fullerton. I have reason to believe he did so on orders from the prime minister.”

“Because of Solovy’s manifesto? Did they believe she was in residence?”

While it would have been a nice side benefit for them, not exactly.

“Possibly, Governor. However, they have also attacked Regional Command Headquarters. Luckily we were able to eliminate the attackers, but not before they destroyed a major structure. There could be more hostile ships we haven’t yet detected, and there is currently a sizeable force twelve megameters distance from the planet and closing.”

“Rychen, are you telling me the Alliance military is attacking its own colony?”

“No, Governor. I’m telling you the Alliance
government
is attacking its own colony. The Alliance military stands ready to defend you. We only need your permission.”

There was a weighty pause. “You mean you and Admiral Solovy.”

“And all those serving under us.”

“I wasn’t inclined to take a public position on this little spat, but they blew up my space station. And now you tell me they’re on the ground, too? If this is the start of a civil war, God help us all. Admiral Rychen, please rid Messium of this threat. I’m activating my Defense Grid authorization and transferring control to you, so you may use its capabilities as needed.”

“Thank you, Governor. I assure you, it will be deployed solely as a last resort.”

He killed the holocomm and shifted to the open screen to his right. “Admiral Solovy, you are a go.”

S
IYANE

Alex magnified the radar screen as they neared the conflict zone.

Mark Mom’s ship.

Miriam had named it the
Stalwart II
. Alex’s chest fluttered as echoes of long-ago memories, delightful and terrible alike, washed over her.

The ways in which her mother honored her father in this cause were as equally wonderful as they were heart wrenching.
Volnosti
—Russian for the principle of liberty and freedom and one of her father’s most zealously held tenets—marked every ship, uniform, standard and pronouncement of the campaign.

One green dot bloomed larger than the others on the radar, and she pushed the memories into a deep corner while banking toward the dot. It flew near the rear of the formations, as a command ship should be, but not
enough
near the rear.

What was her mother thinking? She’d said it herself before the final Metigen confrontation: she wasn’t a battlefield commander. She was a strategist.

But it was worse than that. The Volnosti forces were outnumbered. The Earth Alliance military had nearly unlimited vessels to throw at any problem, and they’d done so here. Yep, she needed to be here to help.

The lessons of the critical engagement against the Metigens began to come back to her. Battlefield tactics. Maneuvers and the counters to them.

Valkyrie:  You’re remembering because I have prioritized those routines.

Morgan:  And because I’m helping.

Alex:  Smartasses, the both of you. Thank you.

The
Siyane
was fully stealthed, so she cracked her neck and moved into position above and to port of her mother’s ship. Objectively, it had plenty of protection. But as noted, their side was outnumbered. On second thought—more battle memories—she moved a bit farther out, into the fray, and began searching for potential incursions.

Ugh, this was all too sluggish. Too slow. Before she’d realized she’d done it, she’d slipped into the walls of the
Siyane
.

And she could see
everything
. The deluge of information generated by two fleets threatened to overwhelm her, but she worked to scrutinize a limited, pertinent set of factors. Her goal was to intercept enemy vessels intent on damaging or destroying the
Stalwart II
.

Within a few seconds she knew what to hunt for. Even the Metigen cloaking technology the ships used, as advanced as it was, could not hide perturbations in the fabric of the space-time manifold. What was invisible in three dimensions became apparent to her elemental perception.

There. An Alliance interdictor had crept past the demarcation line which for now continued to hold. Publicly a standoff was in progress, but privately the enemy would try to eliminate the Volnosti leader nonetheless. Bastards.

She spun and dove on an intercept course.

Morgan:  The smaller Alliance vessels are weakest at the juncture of the impulse engine and the main hull frame. Find a seam in the adiamene there and you might be able to damage it.

Alex:  Kindly keep to yourself how you know that.

Valkyrie:  Even I know that.

All the talking grated at the edges of her nerves. It interfered with the experience, forced part of her mind out of the elemental realm. She dialed down the volume and embraced the atoms whizzing past her skin as she sneaked up behind the enemy craft.

Fine, it was weakest at the juncture of its impulse engine and the hull.

She lined up and fired.

The target lit up in a silver-white shimmer as her fire washed over its defense shielding. The pilot jerked 23° vertical almost instantly, but she stayed glued to its tail. This far behind enemy lines it had no friends to come to its aid.

The vessel’s presence was exposed by the bath of her laser, and two of the fighters protecting the
Stalwart II
now fired on it as well. Confident its shields were weakening considerably, she honed the focus of her fire.

She imagined she was the laser itself, and she sought her target. The tiniest little seam existed between the adiamene of the hull and the layer protecting the engine, hardly wider than a few atoms.

But she could see atoms.

She flung herself—the laser—into the gap.

The interdictor didn’t explode; the adiamene was far too strong. Instead its engine was severed from its body and flung away on an opposite trajectory. The momentum carried what remained of the vessel forward on its previous course, but the pilot now had no control. It slammed into the hull of the command ship with a tremendous
thud
, then bounced off and began falling into the void. Eventually two escape pods were jettisoned to drift behind enemy lines.

She left the cleanup to the support craft and returned her attention to the region surrounding her mother’s ship. Where there had been one, there would be more.

“Alex? Why aren’t you answering me? Caleb, why isn’t she answering? I seriously am in danger of getting sick, inertial dampeners or no.”

Caleb rubbed at his temples and tried to ignore the queasiness in his stomach as the least of his concerns. “Alex isn’t here right now.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She didn’t get around to telling you about this new trick, did she? We’re all nothing but spectators now.”

He glanced back to find Kennedy gaping at him wide-eyed and pale. “What new trick? Alex, what didn’t you tell me?”

“She can’t hear you. Well, maybe a little, but even if she can I doubt she cares. She’s, um…her mind is mostly in the walls of the ship right now. She’s not flying it with the controls so much as with…herself. I don’t know, it’s…existential.”

He forced a closed-mouth smile. “And very powerful.”

Kennedy’s brow furrowed, an expressive act on a typically expressive face, but her only verbal response was a soft, “Oh.”

Noah attempted an awkward chuckle. “She’s not going to crash us through one of the enemy hulls, is she? Cause, we’ve already done that.”

“We have. I…probably not.”
I don’t have the slightest clue. When she’s in this state she’s completely beyond my reach.

But he conceded her total control of the ship could be the best approach in the current situation, so he didn’t plan on causing a scene. He’d complimented her on her flying skills earlier, but he’d never seen her fly with such skill and finesse as she did now. When she
was
the ship, perhaps no maneuver was beyond her capabilities.

His stomach lurched as they pinwheeled through space, the effect on the human body of those maneuvers apparently not being a concern for the pilot.

Space was, by and large, empty, but Alex still struggled not to get hypnotized by the molecules being knocked around by all the ship hulls as they played their games of cat and mouse. If she didn’t have a larger purpose, she might have become so.

When she’d tuned out the Noesis chatter, it had the side effect of turning down the Volnosti comm channel as well. But now, as the distance between the two sides narrowed and the formations tightened, she concentrated on listening.

Admiral Fullerton (
EAS Jefferson
):  “To all vessels not under my command: you are in violation of Assembly Directive 2323-427D and BANIA Regulation AAS 38131.499.885b. These violations can be considered acts of war. Stand down and surrender for courts martial proceedings.”

Admiral Solovy (
EAS Stalwart II
):  “I do not recognize the validity of BANIA or any regulations and directives which follow from it. You have, without provocation or cause, attacked a peaceful civilian station operated by Earth Alliance citizens. This is the act of war, not anything I or those with me have done or said.”

Forced to reside partially in ‘real’ space in order to listen, Alex now grew vexed. Her mother’s ship appeared to be untouchable—and even more stunningly beautiful in the elemental space—but the Volnosti ships were ridiculously few in number. She couldn’t find Rychen’s dreadnought anywhere.