Blood and Fire Read online

  “These young heroes—and heroes they truly are—have learned to love their mission. Whatever it is that energizes these people,” Parsons concluded in her letter, “it is not only a source of enormous hope, I believe it will eventually prove to be the fuel for our victory over the Morthan Solidarity. I do not know if this feeling can be trained or taught, but once experienced, it can never be forgotten or expunged from a human soul.”

  Admiral O’Hara had replied, “Captain Parsons, thank you for your note. I intend to share your thoughts with all of the other captains under my command. I can see now that I was right to insist that you take the Star Wolf. I had expected that there was much you would teach her crew. I am pleased to find that you are learning as much from them. Carry on.”

  Probes

  “Thirty seconds to horizon—” called Tor.

  Parsons checked her own display. Even though she knew exactly what she would see, she had long ago gotten into the habit of confirming everything herself. “Good,” she said. The hatch behind her popped open. Without turning around, she said, “We’re now officially in range. Did you have a nice nap, Mr. Korie?”

  “Yes, Captain, I did,” he replied stiffly.

  She gave him a questioning look. Was he still smarting at having been ordered to rest?

  “It was an interesting experience, sleep,” he said blandly. “I’ll have to try it more often. Thank you for the opportunity.”

  Parsons allowed herself a hint of a grin, a wry expression. Korie was clearly not without a sense of humor—he could even allow the joke to be on himself. That was good to know. She nodded and turned forward, all business again. “Let’s get a close look at the Norway. Commander Brik—?”

  The Morthan Security Officer and chief of strategic operations straightened up and turned to face the captain. When he stood on the Ops Deck, he could turn toward the Command Deck and be eye-to-eye with his superior officers, so he had made his post a work station directly ahead and to the left of the captain’s command chair. “Aye, Captain?”

  “Launch a spread of three probes. Monitor them all the way in.”

  “Aye, Captain. Launch bays armed and ready. Stand by.” He turned back to his console and began reading calmly off his display. “Probes are hot and green. Launching on my mark ...” He snapped open a plastic protective cover, and flipped a red toggle. “We are armed. Three ... two ... one—” There was a row of buttons next to the toggle; three of them were lit. He pressed the first one, paused, pressed the second, paused again, then pressed the third. With each touch, the hard thump of a torpedo launch thudded through the ship.

  Captain Parsons’ coffee rippled in her mug; she replaced the cap and put the mug back in the holder in her chair arm.

  At his station, Brik continued to watch his displays. “Probes accelerating. On course. Probe one has acquisition of target ... Probe two has acquisition of target ... Probe three has acquisition of target. Flyby in seventeen minutes. Deceleration begins in thirteen. Confidence is high, and all three units are in the groove, five by five.” He punched up the next program in the series and reported, “We have acquisition of all three signals. We’ll have a half-second delay at maximum range.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Brik.” Parsons retrieved her coffee and turned her attention to the holographic display in the center of the Ops Deck. It showed the bloated red spheroid with the orbit of the Norway tracking around it and a separate line showing the interception course of the Star Wolf. Although they were now decelerating at full power to the plasma drives, they were still more than half a light second away from the other ship. In six hours, their respective trajectories would be almost matching. Less than two hours after that, they should be close enough for final approach and docking.

  The physics of the problem were trivial. HARLIE could have the answer on the screen before a person finished asking the question. But the logistics of the problem were complicated by IKE-34’s primary, the bloated red star. Once per orbit—once per artificial “year”—the Norway would have to pass through the streamer of flame being pulled out of the red star by the blue. This was clearly a “fail-safe” orbit. If something went wrong on the Norway, if she were disabled and couldn’t break orbit or if there was no one left alive to give the order, she would be destroyed by her passage through the fire.

  The Norway’s large orbit gave her a long “year”—more than fortyeight months—so she had clearly been on station for some time; she was just now approaching her time of passage. Within a few days at most, she would be gone. The Star Wolf’s timing was fortunate—or maybe not. They still didn’t know what they would find aboard her.

  This was the troubling factor in Captain Parsons’ calculations. How badly was the Norway incapacitated? Could she be saved? Was she so badly contaminated that she should not be saved? If they were to make the attempt to save her, would they have time to decontaminate the ship? Assuming the contamination was of a controllable nature. Nothing was known. Everything was assumption.

  The procedure books provided some useful guidelines to follow, but every situation was unique. And this one was probably off the map, out of the manuals and deep into unknown territory. Captain Parsons wasn’t afraid of the challenge; on the contrary, it both intrigued and excited her—but she was also aware that a high-risk situation meant the possibility of fatalities and that was the one part of the job she could never be comfortable with. The human cost. No matter how careful the precautions they took, there were always possibilities.

  Her coffee had gone cold again. She replaced the top on her mug and put it back in its holder on her chair arm.

  She turned her attention back to her display. The probes continued to accelerate, racing ahead, sacrificing themselves in a high-speed interception, crossing the path of the Norway as close as possible, scanning her in a series of high-speed flybys, and then shooting off irretrievably into flame and distance. The signals from the probes would tell them if there was still life aboard the Norway.

  If there was, they would continue their interception. If not, then Parsons had the option of breaking off and heading back out to space. In this case, it would mean shutting down the plasma drives, ceasing to decelerate and continuing up and out past the course of the Norway, away from the red giant and out beyond the gravitational corona where they could safely jump back into hyperstate—and continue on to their next rendezvous.

  Parsons bent to her personal display and watched as the tracks of the probes approached the orbit of the Norway. There were two blips on each line—the first blip was the projection of the real-time position of the torpedo, the second blip was the time-delayed information received from the missile. At this distance, the blips on each line were less than a half-second apart.

  “Receiving five by five. Thirty seconds ...”

  “Put it on the main display.”

  The forward view opened up, became the view from the leading torpedo. To one side was a dim pink glare; the corona of the red star. To the other side, darkness. The glare washed out everything else—all except a single pinpoint of light, moving slowly downward toward the center of the image, growing brighter ...

  “Twenty seconds.”

  A green target circle appeared around the moving object. Down the left side of the image, acquisition numbers scrolled up in a blur too fast to read. A telescopic lens shifted into place and the shape of the distant vessel became clear.

  “Ten seconds ... nine ... eight ...” Tor counted methodically. “Five ... four ... three ...”

  The flyby itself proved to be anticlimactic. The probes were traveling so fast in relation to the Norway that the starship flashed past almost too quickly to see. The display showed a quick flare of reflected light—the probe-torpedoes had aimed pseudo-white lasers as they’d passed. The three probes had bracketed the starship in an equilateral triangle. Their combined scans would provide the Star Wolf with a three-dimensional view of the ship, in case there was visible damage or other conditions that might affect the
rescue operation. Their internal scans should also show if there was any evidence of life still aboard the vessel.

  “All right,” said Parsons. “Let’s look at the visual first. HARLIE?”

  The forward display flickered to show the probe-torpedo flyby again, this time in slow-motion. The torpedoes had passed within a kilometer of the crippled vessel, close enough to light it up as bright as daylight with their spotlights. Three separate views of the ship floated past, first one, then another, then the third. The red star was visible as background in one scan, as a crimson reflection in the others.

  HARLIE repeated the images in an endless cycle, occasionally pausing or expanding them into close-up examinations. Each of the torpedoes had run multiple high-speed cameras, each with different capabilities. There were also infrared and radio-detectors, gravitational lenses, microwave and radar scanners—plus several devices so esoteric that they were simply referred to as X-modules, and their outputs were considered gifts from God.

  “No apparent visible damage,” said HARLIE. “Some weathering from the local coronal effects, but that’s to be expected. Stand by please. I’m collating the internal scans. Preliminary infrared analysis shows the vessel is radiating heat in a manner consistent with viability, no apparent anomalies. Deep-spectrum scans show the presence of oxygen and nitrogen and carbon dioxide within the hull. Microwave scans show movement—not as much as we would expect from a fully-manned vessel, but movement nonetheless. Some anomalies here. A lot of low-level noise, higher than usual for a normal background reading. The torpedoes queried the ship’s autonomous system and received no reply. Life support systems are still operative, but most of the rest of her internals appear to be inactive.”

  HARLIE paused for a beat, then concluded, “Even without collation, I would give high confidence to the possibility of survivors aboard the Norway. Conditions for the maintenance of life are present and there is evidence of movement consistent with human life. We are also detecting the presence of magnetic containment fields and repulsor lenses.”

  “Thank you, HARLIE,” said Korie to his headset. “I want to see the raw data now, and the collation as soon as it’s finished.”

  “The collation is ready now,” the intelligence engine replied. “Which would you like to see first?”

  “Let’s start with the collation.” Korie was already turning to the display on his workstation. He grunted to himself and his expression went grim.

  When he looked up, Parsons was waiting for him. “Your estimate of the situation, Korie?”

  “Proceed to final approach and use that as a go/no-go.”

  “I concur,” said Parsons.

  “I’ll have to brief the mission team.” Korie looked unhappy. “We’ll have to go in.”

  “Don’t take anyone who isn’t Class-X certified. This is going to get nasty, isn’t it?” Her expression turned grim. “How’s your itch?”

  Korie reached around as if trying to scratch his back. “Right there,” he said. “Between the shoulders. All the way down to the bone.”

  Approach

  From a distance, the Norway looked normal.

  The Star Wolf had come up and under the other ship, referenced to the plane of the ecliptic. She had deliberately overshot the common interception point by several thousand kilometers and was now decelerating in the final stages of her approach to allow the Norway to “catch up” to her.

  Captain Parsons had chosen this approach to allow maximum observation of the distressed vessel before final contact was made. “Let’s run a seven-layer series of scans, full-spectrum, in-depth, the works,” she ordered. “That’ll give the Mission Team an extra hour to prepare special-need equipment. Alert Dr. Williger; I’ll want her on the Bridge to help evaluate the data. Commander Tor, put out three more probes—let’s get some additional perspectives. Make sure those probes are highconfidence, and let’s use tactical units as well as bioremotes. Lt. Goldberg, have you been able to raise contact? No? I didn’t think so. Commander Korie, let’s continue the assumption of an extremely toxic Class-X situation. Strictly by the book throughout. No exceptions.”

  “Aye, Captain.” Korie turned back to his headset. “HARLIE, do you copy?”

  “Yes, Mr. Korie. I have already amended the checklists and procedures to be consistent with the captain’s orders. There are several situations in the book, however, where the standard procedures are inconsistent with the captain’s instructions. While it is unlikely that we will be confronted with such situations, I have amended the procedures for this operation in favor of caution over expediency. It seems to me that is the captain’s intention. Is this correct?”

  “Yes, HARLIE, that is correct. You done good.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Korie.”

  On the forward display, the Norway was looming huge. She was identical in structure to the Star Wolf, but her engines were lighter and her armaments were fewer, almost nonexistent. She bore the markings of a scientific research vessel.

  HARLIE spoke then, as much for the log as for the Bridge crew. “Still no contact with the Norway. Her autonomic system is running unevenly. Her intelligence engine is either unable or unwilling to respond. The ship appears to be adrift.”

  Parsons nodded. Like most captains, she took the lethetic intelligence engines for granted. Korie was the only officer she’d ever met who treated the machinery with the same courtesy he gave humans. Perhaps that was one of the reasons he was able to coax so many extraordinary behaviors out of HARLIE. But even if it was only just another one of the quirks that made Korie “our son of a bitch,” Captain Parsons was willing to tolerate it.

  HARLIE spoke up suddenly, “There is one interesting anomaly, Captain.”

  Parsons looked up sharply. So did Korie. And every other officer on the Bridge. “Go ahead.”

  “There are active repulsor valves throughout the Norway. I am not sure why.”

  “Let’s see a schematic,” Parsons said, almost in unison with Korie. They exchanged a glance. “Sorry, Captain,” Korie said.

  “No apology necessary,” she answered. They both turned to the display on her workstation where HARLIE had brought up a simplified graphic of the Norway. The repulsor valves were shown as a cluster of throbbing red bubbles located just aft of the engine room.

  Neither Parsons nor Korie said anything for a moment while they studied the display. Finally, the captain broke the silence. “They’ve divided the ship.”

  “That’s what it looks like,” Korie agreed. “People on one side. Toxic something on the other.”

  “Yes, but which side is which?”

  Korie shook his head. “It depends on ...” His sentence trailed off.

  “If you were going to host a very dangerous experiment on board this ship,” Parsons mused, “where would you put it—forward or aft? Med Bay or Cargo Bay?”

  Korie weighed the possibilities. “Cargo Bay is easier to evacuate. Just open the hatch and drop everything into space. If this stuff—this thing, whatever it is—is that toxic, then I’d put it in the Cargo Bay. On the other hand ... Med Bay is forward of the Bridge, you could put additional research labs in the cabins forward of Med Bay, use the Airlock Reception Bay as a decontamination section, and seal the whole thing off from the rest of the vessel. It depends on how big and how toxic this thing is and how hard it is to control. It could be either side.”

  They studied the display in silence for a moment, as if there were a clue in it they had somehow missed. Korie stared at the schematic of the starship. The engine room was located in the aft third. There were equipment bays behind the engine room, and the Cargo Bay was situated behind that. The repulsor bubbles were just forward of the Cargo Bay, centered on the autonomic core of the vessel, so the division of the ship was unequal, more than two-thirds back.

  Either the danger was confined to the Cargo Bay and the rest of the ship was habitable. Or—it was in the forward part of the ship, which meant that the crew was trapped in the Cargo Bay. Korie pointed
. “If it was in the forward part of the ship, then it got out of control and raged aftward. If it was in the aft part of the ship, then the survivors isolated it there and they’re in the forward division—but then why were there no responses to our signals? And why didn’t they evacuate the Cargo Bay to space the minute it broke out?”

  “So you think the survivors are aft?”

  “I can argue the other side equally well,” Korie said. “It was aft, got into the autonomics and made it impossible for the crew to control the ship. They isolated it, but they can’t evacuate it.”

  “What does your itch say?”

  “My itch doesn’t like either side of this equation. If we guess wrong—” He didn’t have to complete the sentence.

  “You want to flip a coin?” Parsons asked.

  “No,” said Korie. “Let’s go with my first guess. The crew would have given themselves the larger part of the ship and isolated it in the Cargo Bay. The survivors are forward.”