“The second we get out of Alcubierre, we go cold on the engines,” Colonel Campbell reminds the helmsmen. “Shut it down and coast ballistic. EMCON check, please.”
“Everything’s cold,” the weapons officer says. “All active radiation sources are full EMCON. Once those engines shut down, we’ll be a black hole.”
“I want this ship to do its best impression of an asteroid. Just a rock, coasting through space. No spaceship at all.”
We’re all in battle armor (the grunts) or EVA vacsuits (the fleet personnel). Colonel Campbell stands in the center pit of the CIC, watching the consolidated readouts on the screens of the holotable that serves as the hub of the ship. I’ve never been in a ship’s CIC dressed in full combat hardshell, and the feeling is more than a little unnerving. My brain is primed to expect the imminent chance of sudden death or dismemberment whenever I’m in armor, and I’m not used to that expectation right here in the best-protected part of an armored warship. Behind me, Dmitry is holding on to the railing that surrounds the pit, looking supremely out of place in his angular Alliance armor with its mottled paint scheme.
“Alcubierre transition in one minute.”
This is the most dangerous part of the mission. We are going to blast out of the Alcubierre node at a few kilometers per second, with everything shut down except for the optical sensors, transitioning back into the solar system blind to whatever may lie in wait for us on the other side. If the Lankies have a seed ship parked right across the inbound node, we are hurtling toward a closed door at a full run, and we will disintegrate and turn into a smear on the hull of a seed ship in a millisecond. At least it will be over so quickly that my brain will never be able to process the nerve impulses from my body before I cease existing.
“On my mark, stand by to kill propulsion. Bring the optics online as soon as we are through. Anyone turns on a thing that puts out active radiation, you are going out the central airlock.”
“Standing by for propulsion shutdown,” the engineering officer says.
“Alcubierre transition in thirty seconds.”
“Don’t expect any last speech from me,” Colonel Campbell says. “I don’t intend to buy it today, and I don’t give any of you permission to do so, either.”
There’s some light chuckling in the CIC. Humans being what we are, I am quite sure that everyone on this ship is thinking about the possibility that we all may have only a handful of seconds left to live, including Colonel Campbell. But I also know that the skipper would rather pet a Lanky than show fear or doubt in front of his crew. If he’s making his peace, he has made it privately in his own mind.
“Ten seconds.”
I close my eyes and think of Halley. If I am about to end, I want her face to be the last thing on my mind before the lights go out.
“Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Transition.”
I feel the momentary dizziness I usually experience after an Alcubierre ride ends, and the low-level discomfort that has been in every part of my body for the last few hours falls away. We’re through, and we’re not dead. Yet.
“Kill the drive now,” Colonel Campbell barks. “Get me optics on the main display.”
The thrumming noise from the ship’s fusion drive winds down quickly as the engineering officer shuts down the propulsion system. Nothing is shooting us to pieces, and we haven’t run into anything solid. Maybe they left the doorway unguarded, I think. We’re about due for some good luck for a change.
Then the optical feed comes up on the holotable display, and there’s a collective intake of breath all over the CIC. Behind me, Dmitry mutters something in Russian that can only be a swear.
Directly underneath Indianapolis, the huge glossy bulk of a Lanky seed ship stretches for what seems like miles. The optical sensors under the ship triangulate on the vessel and project a distance readout: 2,491 meters. The distance display changes as we hurtle away from the Alcubierre transition point and into the solar system. The Lanky is on a reciprocal heading, passing below and going the way we came. On the holotable, a polite alarm chirps, and a readout overlay appears on the display: “PROXIMITY ALERT.”
Indy is coasting faster than the Lanky is going, but even with our combined separation speeds, it takes Indy eight or ten seconds to clear the bulk of the Lanky ship. In that time, nobody in the CIC makes a sound, as if we could draw the Lankies’ attention just by making noise. For all I know, we might—no fleet vessel has ever been this close to a seed ship and lived to tell about it.
“Bogey at six o’clock low, moving off at fifty meters per second,” the tactical officer says in a low voice.
“Yeah, I can see that,” Colonel Campbell replies. “Too damn close. Get me a three-sixty now.”
The holotable display changes as feeds from various sensor arrays organize themselves in a semicircular pattern, stitching together a panoramic tapestry of the surrounding space. The Lanky seed ship takes up a disturbingly large section of space below and behind us, even as we are coasting away from the behemoth at hundreds of meters per second.
“There’s more of them. Visual on Bogey Two and Bogey Three.” The tactical officer reads out a bunch of Euclidean coordinates. The tactical display at the center of the holotable’s array of overlapping imagery updates with three orange icons. One of them, slow moving, is almost on top of the blue icon representing Indianapolis, only slowly inching away from us. The other two are farther away, but moving faster. One is above and to our starboard, the other below and to our port side. Colonel Campbell shifts some of the holograms around with his hands and expands them until he has a good view of Bogey Two and Three side by side.
“Bogey Three is on a perpendicular, passing to port aft,” the tactical officer says. “Bogey Two is closing laterally from our starboard. Bearing five-zero degrees, closing at two hundred meters per second.” He looks up from his display and flicks a hologram over to the main tactical readout on the holotable.
“Sir, Bogey Three is on a collision course. If our speed and heading don’t change, our paths will intersect in twenty-three seconds.”
“Bring propulsion back online,” Colonel Campbell orders. “Hold the burn until the last second. We’re too damn close as it is. I don’t want to light off a signal flare earlier than we have to. Prepare for course change, make your heading zero-five-five by positive zero-four-five. At the last second, helm.”
“Aye-aye, sir,” the helmsman says.
“Is patrol pattern,” Dmitry says behind me. “Like sharks.”
“Exactly like sharks,” Colonel Campbell says. “They’re circling the node, waiting for food. And we’re the minnow.”