That made El turn around. “Nah. That ship’s likely a smoldering ball of nuclear fire.”
“It might be,” said Hope. “I don’t have the codes.” She looked at Penn. “But it doesn’t matter. If the comm’s up, we could get a signal out.” What she knew, and El knew, and Penn knew, was that the Guild Bridge was also down. That wasn’t the point. The point was that the Gladiator might be told to make an automated jump.
“A signal?” said Penn. “Perfect. I’ll need a console.”
El was looking at Hope with a what the actual fuck expression, but she was one of Hope’s few friends, the very few, and so she said nothing except, “Take the Cap’s. He’s sleeping off whatever party you had down there.”
“I’m surprised you’re not sleeping,” said Hope. “Not tired?”
“Wired,” said El. “I won’t sleep for days, not after a combat drop.”
“You said you weren’t Navy,” said Penn, sagging into the other acceleration couch.
“Not anymore,” said El. “You guys are assholes.”
“We could draft you at a moment’s notice,” said Penn, not looking up from the console. He was patting the front of his uniform, until he found — perfect — a data sliver. He tucked it into the console.
“With my combat record?” said El. “You wouldn’t dare. Besides, you try that shit and you’re walking home.”
The holo cleared, sat dark for a few moments, then came to life with the injured cries of the Gladiator. Systems down. Drives damaged. Weapons offline. Reactor still online. Some flight controls. Limited, but there. She’d crawl out of orbit, but not a lot farther. What was left of her couldn’t hold enough atmosphere to fill a coffee cup. Lots of telemetry readings, still good RADAR and LIDAR. A functional PDC, singular, for all the good it would do. No working railguns or lasers. Torpedoes spent. “Huh,” said Hope. “What did they hit her with?”
“Rocks,” said Penn. “They’re big on rocks. It seems like they peel of a piece of their own ship … hell. This is classified.” But he looked tired, like he wanted to tell them things, because he wanted to tell someone.
“We need to know,” said El, giving Hope a glance, “in case we ever get the opportunity to take off again.”
“Here we go,” said Penn, finding the comm systems. Hope watched the holo as he linked it to the automation systems. He started an upload of his data, and in a blink of an eye, it was done. He cued up an order to dispatch the Gladiator — which Hope, on a hunch, stopped on her wrist console — then slumped back. “Done, or as near as without a more personal delivery.” This last with a pointed look at El.
Hope wasn’t a hundred percent sure why she’d stopped the Gladiator’s dispatch. Penn seemed too eager, if anything. Sending a ship straight towards human space didn’t seem sensible with alien eyes watching. No point in talking about that now; she had what she wanted and there wasn’t any point getting in a tussle about the Gladiator. Penn would be upset, and yell, and nothing would change anyway. “Sounds good,” said Hope, brushing a wisp of pink hair from her eyes. “You guys want a beer now, or what?”
• • •
Engineering. Her haven. Her space. No one came here.
Oh, sure. The captain did, sometimes. Grace had, once or twice. Kohl, when he was tearing out the Tyche’s heart, helping with that emergency transplant — those scars had healed, courtesy of the Gladiator. El, never. El was front-of-house; Hope worked in the kitchen.
Whenever people came here, they never stayed. It might have been the smell, or the primal fear of standing next to a live reactor. The thrum of the drives, insistent here in a way they couldn’t be anywhere else. It could just be the smell of grease and the fear of grubbing up a good flight suit.
Either way, it worked just fine for Hope. Especially for times like this.
Her holo chattered to life as she and the Tyche had a conversation. She got the data dump that Penn had sent to the Gladiator. The man was some kind of amateur spy, if he was a spy at all; Spycraft 101 had to be not using someone else’s deck when sending top secret comms. It could just be the man was as desperate as he looked, and it could also be that he expected none of them to survive, so what was the point?
Medical documents. Bioscans, before the shit turned real and there was nobody left to do the scanning. Tests against live subjects. Tests against dead ones. Theories on organization, social culture, technology.
That last, she could understand. She opened the file. It was sparse. Because they didn’t seem to have a technology, in the typical sense.
The Tyche beeped at her, reminding her she wasn’t done. “Oh, sorry,” she said, giving her console a pat. Before she had the reward of a decent technical document, she needed to give the captain something he could use. The Gladiator’s codes. She coded a message for his console, fire it off complete with here’s how you unlock the remains of a Navy warship instructions, and the flipped back to the files she wanted to read.
Light on the detail, but that would probably happen if you were being invaded by a bunch of aliens. Keeping your sciencing on point would be tricky in that kind of situation.
The Ezeroc’s ship — the asteroid — had popped into the system without a drive trail. Initial reactions were as expected: yo, hey, that’s unusual, but it’s just a rock, so whatevs. Hope pushed a strand of hair aside and kept reading. The planet crews were a little confused when their comms arrays went down. No response from the Guild Bridge, but you know, there were protocols in place. The Republic would send a ship, replace the transmitter, and it’d be unicorns and rainbows before the week was out.
The ship never came. Or, it had, but they hadn’t been able to see the Ravana. Didn’t even know she was there. Hope suspected the Ravana had seen what was happening on the surface though. Something that had made the ship signal for help. It supported El’s spy theory though. A standard freighter wouldn’t linger; they’d just cut and run. And a standard freighter wouldn’t risk all hands to get a message back faster than was wise. The Ravana, here for Penn as well as dropping off the transmitter? Maybe. Files didn’t say, all one-sided intel at this point.
The Ezeroc didn’t seem to use conventional thrust. Their ship moved like it was under the control of an invisible hand. It also moved like G forces were things that happened to other people. The damn thing had come into orbit after putting on the brakes at what looked like a sustained 15Gs. Do that to a person and they’d detach a retina, or maybe stroke out. Conjecture: the bugs were tough. Hope noted that on her console.
She paused, looking over at Grace’s broken sword where she’d dropped it beside her. Hope unsheathed the broken blade. Conjecture confirmed.
Initial small arms conflicts looked promising, yada yada. Hope scrolled through a couple pages of military dick-measuring. No real clue on communications structure. They seemed coordinated, focused, and pretty much ate the colony for lunch in just a few days. There’d be a bunch of brass back in the Republic who’d like to understand how that was possible. It’d make repressing uprisings with subversives like Hope much easier.