<For those of you greenhorns out there who aren’t familiar with the term, before NSAIs were used to ensure docking procedures were scrupulously and painstakingly accurate, a-way back in the twenty-second century, humans did that task. They were called Yellow Shirts because—>
<Wait. Let me guess,> Jonesy’s voice interjected from his position in the cradle beside Jason, his tone dry. <They wore yellow shirts.>
<Ah, a student of history, I can tell.> Jason grinned as Shannon sent him the AI-equivalent of a snort, and he could just imagine the eyeroll Calista was mentally sending his way.
He crept forward until the shuttle hovered less than two meters from the dock, the man with the sticks gesticulating, bumping, and gyrating the whole way.
<Okay, guys, we’re on,> he sent to Jonesy and Shannon, and received a firm nod from the human and a mental thumbs-up from the AI embedded within the shuttle, right before the ship lurched as the docking clamps latched onto them and began reeling them in.
<They better not be messing with the paint job,> Shannon grumbled, and then her avatar shot an accusing finger toward him, pinning him with a glare before he had a chance to reply. <Do not tell me it doesn’t have a paint job, Jason. I know that. I designed this ship, you know.>
He raised his hands in the air with a smirk. <Wasn’t about to, ma’am.>
She snorted. <Yeah, right. Pull the other one, it has bells on.>
The banter cut through the tension they were all beginning to feel, as the dock mated with the shuttle’s airlock, and the ship confirmed a positive seal.
Jason lowered his hands, making a fist with his left one, looking down at the thin band of black that ringed his third finger. The device was the brainchild of the two engineers, a Faraday cage made from Elastene to mask the nano hidden inside.
Twisting to glance back at the other man, he asked, “Okay, Q, you sure this’ll pass undetected?”
Jonesy’s brow furrowed, and he shot Jason a puzzled look. “Q?” he asked, and Jason barked a short laugh.
“From an old-Earth vid my grandma Cary used to watch. Her grandmother got her hooked on them back on High Terra when she was a little girl. I watched it because it had a lot of pew,” he explained, cocking an imaginary gun at Jonesy. “Q invented things for spies and secret agents.”
Jonesy looked intrigued, then shrugged. “Well, technically, that’d make Shannon Q. I just assisted.”
Jason scratched his head in thought. “Nah, she’d be M.” He shot the holo a wicked glance. “Or Moneypenny.”
<Money—> Shannon’s avatar popped up on the holo display before him, hands on hips. <I’ve seen your stash of old-Earth vids. I am not Moneypenny. If anything, I’m Q and Jonesy’s R.>
Jonesy looked from one to the other, mystified, and Shannon threw up her hands.
<Nevermind. Back to important things.>
“Right, well,” Jonesy said, “No, you shouldn't have anything to worry about with the Faraday cage. You have the instructions we sent to operate it?”
Jason tapped the side of his head. “All Link-controlled, yes.”
A sound from the dock caught his attention, and he glanced from Jonesy to the shuttle’s hatch.
Guess I’m up first.
He unstrapped and floated slowly toward one of the bulkheads, the dock’s much lighter gravity indicating that the current ‘down’ direction was in the direction of their airlock. Bounding gently toward the exit, he crouched and awaited the knock that would indicate the dockhand was ready for him to open.
He raised an eyebrow and looked over at Jonesy when a few minutes passed with nothing happening. The engineer just shrugged and raised a hand in the universal ‘got me’ gesture.
<Shannon?>
<Scanning,> came the terse reply, and then <Seal is good. You can open up. I’ve released a passel of colloidenes around you, so if anything makes it inside Sable Wind, we’re ready to neutralize.>
“Okay, then. Here goes.”
He toggled the airlock to open—and came face-to-face with the business end of a flechette gun.
AN OUNCE OF PREVENTION
STELLAR DATE: 09.11.3246 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: ESS Avon Vale
REGION: Galene nearspace, Tau Ceti
Back on the ship, Landon prowled the perimeter of the bridge, forcibly quelling the compulsion to check on the status of each member of Phantom Blade. He hated being left behind and kept out of the action—especially with not one, but three away teams headed into potential combat situations. He also hated that his teammates were outside his envelope and away from his ability to personally ensure their safety. And lastly, he hated that the situation stirred in him old demons that he thought he had wrestled into submission decades ago.
The rational part of his mind understood it was not his responsibility to safeguard every member of the team, but the irrational part insisted on keeping tabs on each person.
While one part of his mind monitored the comm feeds Kodi had open for the Eidolon, Sable Wind and Mirage, another part of his mind was busy envisioning what was happening at each location. He calculated the amount of time it should take the Eidolon to negotiate the distance between the ship and the planet’s surface. After that, he shifted to the shuttle, sitting docked at Ring Galene, and calculated the amount of time it should take Ring security to confirm that Jason was ‘nano-free’. Finally, his mind cycled to the fighter, as he mentally ticked off the amount of time it would take to slip past the blockade and stand watch over the Eidolon.
He forcibly arrested those processes, reminding himself that he should be focusing on various ways the Avon Vale could level the playing field a bit more. Strands of picket ships and a ring of GSC cruisers and corvettes around Galene were a bit much for one ship to handle on its own, even if it did have three exceedingly stealthy aces in its proverbial hole. From what they’d divined, the GSC ships were firmly under Henrick’s control.
The FSTC picket, however—it was conceivable that they might be convinced to join the Avon Vale against the GSC. Or at the very least, persuaded to stand down if Landon was forced to engage.
He scanned through the database of military engagements that he’d stored up from decades of service in the ESF, and something from the years he and Logan had spent on the edge of Centauran space in Mendoza’s black ops program came to mind, triggered by the search parameters ‘lone defender among enemy ships’.
During their years twinned and joined to the ring of asteroids on El Dorado’s heliopause, Logan and Landon had seen Brigadier General Mendoza authorize myriad asteroids outfitted with fusion engines and remotely controlled railguns. Everyone had known they wouldn’t fool an opposing force for long, but when a significant number of fusion emissions lit up on enemy sensors—all headed on an intercept course, their returns indicating a power output mimicking that of a warship—many an invading navy might blink. At least that had been the prevailing hope.
Mendoza had reasoned that the asteroid decoys would force the enemy to abandon stealth and show their strength. Her plan called for the remote railguns to function as a variation on a war of attrition. Their presence on the powered asteroids would cast doubt on their threat status, and when the asteroids engaged, would force the enemy to expend munitions against vast chunks of uninhabited rock.
Mendoza’s reasoning gave Landon an idea….
<York,> he reached out to the AI currently in charge of engineering during the teams’ deployment, <I need an estimate on how long a job will take. Factor in as many hands as you need to get it done.>
He sent the AI the manifest for the stockpile of MFRs and small tactical nukes that Jonesy had put together during the last six months of their trip.
<Take a look at the items in Ship’s Storage Area 1724, if you will, and tell me how quickly we can clad those nukes in Elastene. Factor in small maneuvering thrusters, too.>
He paused a moment, then added, <Same with the MFRs. And program them so we can send an override command to their l
ockouts that will release containment of their localized micro plasma cores. Make them into nothing but Elastene-clad engines that will go critical and detonate on our signal.>
There was a surprised pause on the other end, then, <What are you thinking of doing, sir, if I might ask?>
<I’m thinking about seeding that blockade with a few deterrents that will cause those GSC vessels to think twice about firing on any ship departing the planet, by the time the Eidolon is ready to leave.> Landon’s voice turned hard. <And I want to be ready to defend our people on Ring Galene, too, if necessary.>
<You got it, sir,> York said promptly, and then his presence on the shipnet faded.
Once fabricated, a cloud of smallish ultra-black forms began streaming from the Avon Vale’s cargo bay amidships. Hundreds of small puffs of air were buried in the greater energy signature of the Vale’s fusion engine wash as they reoriented themselves on a trajectory that would take them within range of the ships patrolling along the blockade.
Some of those radar-spoofing small masses stopped short, forming a chain that would enable their masters to communicate by a whisker-thin laser beam from the parent ship to the fleet of tiny munitions. The rest continued on their journey, seeding their destructive capabilities between the planet they orbited and the ships, oblivious to the threat they posed.
<Those little packages don’t add up to all that much, really, considering the munitions any one of those ships carry,> Landon thought to himself. <But if we find we need them—and I play this right—those GSC ships may discover that the old adage about there being no real surprises in space combat is truer than they ever knew possible.>
TARGET PRACTICE
STELLAR DATE: 09.11.3246 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: GSC Blockade between Ring Galene and planet
REGION: Galene, Tau Ceti
The shuttle carrying formation material to the planet was flying dark, relying on its ultra-black surfaces to keep it from being spotted. The amount of electromagnetic power reflected off its surfaces was so miniscule, it was measured in the thousandths-of-a-percent range.
Combined with the heat-shedding properties of Elastene, the odds of them being seen were vanishingly small. So small that, even though the fighter, Mirage, had launched at the same time that Terrance and Logan had departed in the Eidolon—without the benefit of their encrypted IFF beacon—even they would have no chance of spotting their sister ship.
The shuttle had no trouble slipping past the FSTC picket beyond Galene’s moon, and as they cleared the last vessel, Terrance breathed a sigh of relief, his eyes riveted to the boards of the pilot’s cradle he’d strapped himself into—although he wasn’t pilot-in-command.
He was a passable pilot; he’d had Marta give him pilot’s mods at the same time she’d embedded Kodi, and he’d kept his certification current in the Eidolon’s sims.
But he had a keen grasp of his own limitations, and he was more than happy to have the vessel under Logan’s capable control—especially in moments like this.
He accessed the cabin’s optics from his cradle in the cockpit to check on his charges. So far, the journey had been uneventful; Chilters, McCone and George, the medics accompanying Marta knew the stakes and none cared to disturb the concentration of the flight crew.
Even Beck, strapped in beside Marta, remained silent.
Terrance still hadn’t quite figured out how the cat had managed to wheedle his way onboard, yet there he sat.
<Approaching blockade in five,> Logan announced, and Terrance tensed as they neared the GSC vessels.
Their flight path had them a good hundred-plus kilometers away from the nearest ship in the blockade. Logan had made micro-adjustments to the Eidolon with minute puffs of air from the shuttle’s thrusters that had it curving in a gentle, shallow arc between a cruiser and a fast attack corvette. They passed between the two vessels without incident, ten thousand kilometers above the planet’s surface.
Logan timed his course adjustments to make maximum use of the cover provided by the debris in medium and low planetary orbits. His use of the controls was sharp and efficient. It lacked nuance and the deft, intuitive touch that either Jason or Calista would have brought to their flight, but Logan more than made up for that with his exquisite precision.
As the Eidolon passed beneath a discarded object that looked like an abandoned pair of fuel tanks, the AI used short bursts from the thrusters to adjust the shuttle into a shallow corkscrew that would allow the tanks and other nearby pieces of debris to hide its descent into low planetary orbit. Once there, the plan would be to minimize aerobraking by repeated thruster pulses, slowing the shuttle until its Elastene cladding could more easily disperse the heat of reentry.
<Stars, these people have a lot of junk up here,> Terrance sent, his comments limited to the shipnet, now that his pilot’s mods had been activated.
<Think this is mostly recent stuff?> Kodi asked as Logan threaded the needle between various objects, both large and small.
Terrance shrugged. <I would hope so. I’d hate to think this is business as usual.>
<I suppose the ring’s been jettisoning things suspected to have—>
Kodi abruptly cut off the thought as the shuttle’s sensor suite flashed a warning on the plas cockpit. <What the…?>
<Brace for maneuver!>
Logan’s voice cracked across the shipnet, cutting through Terrance’s shout of, <We’re being targeted!>
<Not us,> Logan corrected tersely. <It’s target practice on the tanks we just passed.>
Sure enough, the GSC cruiser nearest them was firing maneuvering thrusters and aligning its forward weapons with the drifting tanks. Logan had seconds to respond before the GSC ship switched from painting its target to blowing it out of the black. The ship’s two fusion engines roared to life and, just that quickly, the jig was up.
Terrance grunted as he was thrown back into his cradle as the Eidolon went from a steady velocity to an instantaneous fifteen gs. The burn lasted barely a second, but Terrance knew that the blockade’s network of ships and drones would have clearly seen the MFR burn prior to the shots detonating on impact.
That was confirmed by Eidolon’s sensors, as he saw they were now being painted by more than one source. Fighters came spilling from the cruiser, and an alert flashed on scan, indicating it was time to intercept.
<Hang on,> Terrance called to the medical team strapped into the passenger seats.
<I’m calling Mirage,> Terrance sent to Kodi and Logan, and felt Kodi reach for the tightbeam.
<Comm open.>
At Kodi’s terse words, Terrance’s voice cut across the combat net. <Eidolon to Mirage. Cheshire. Say again, Cheshire.>
‘Cheshire’ was the call sign for the team’s backup plan, a disappearing act they would stage if things went balls-up, as they had just done thanks to a single vessel’s one-in-a-million decision to take up target practice on the one piece of orbiting space junk directly in line with their location.
Terrance thought he might have made out an acknowledging click before the comm was shut down and the ship swung wildly around, Logan making a run for the surface.
Rail fire chewed its way through the void between the two craft, most of the projectiles passing harmlessly by as Logan maneuvered them out of the path of the projectiles. Some were unavoidable, and the ship’s Elastene substrate worked hard to divert the kinetic energy of each impact and to disperse the heat throughout its elastic metal foam.
<It’s going to be close,> Terrance heard Kodi say.
He didn’t respond, his focus fully on completing the parameters of the condition he had just ordered.
Out of the tens of thousands of pieces of debris out here, what are the odds?
He kept his eyes glued to the ho
lo display as Kodi armed explosive devices that would provide the visual sleight-of-hand. If all went well, they would fool their pursuers into thinking a lucky strike had ruptured its fusion containment, immolating the shuttle, leaving nothing but a debris cloud behind.
<Detonation in thirty seconds.>
* * * * *
Calista’s mouth compressed into a firm line as she watched the drama playing out above and to her stern.
<Dammit,> she sent to Tobias. <Of all the times for some idiot to decide to take pot shots at a piece of metal….>
<The odds were low that this would happen,> the Weapon Born admitted, <but that’s why we have contingencies.>
She nodded, then brought up the exigencies Cheshire required. They were to drop a string of micro-drone focusing devices, each one programmed to maintain geostationary position between the Avon Vale and the bunker just outside Kusharo Springs, at the base of the Zao Mountains.
Once in place, the string would allow Phantom Blade to maintain secured contact with the crew of Eidolon via tightbeam transmissions. They would transit from bunker to drone to ship, freeing Calista and Mirage to exfil the area and fly to the ring, to support Jason’s part of the operation.
Calista checked her chrono; if all went well, she’d emplace the drones and slip back across the blockade within the hour.
CRASH SITE
STELLAR DATE: 09.11.3246 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Furano Fields, Nakajima Prefecture
REGION: Galene, Tau Ceti
Embedded the way he was in the shuttle, Logan felt as if the ship’s skin were his own, the aerobraking maneuvers elevating his temperature as he rode the shuttle hard into atmosphere. He waited impatiently for his outer surface to cool enough to provide maximum stealth before igniting the charges. He felt the burn of the explosives as they detonated, even though he’d shielded his sensors from them.
The craft bucked and jolted as it was tossed about by concussive waves it never would have felt in space. Logan cut the fusion drives, shutting down the fusion reactors—and with them, the craft’s ability to compensate for such perturbations.