No Man's Space 1: Starship Encounter (9 page)

Midshipman Gomez ran to one of the virtual windows on the shuttle. The so-called window was actually a screen that showed the external cameras’ views. He pointed at a small bright star in the distance. “I’ve read about this,” he said excitedly. “It’s part of a constellation. What’s its name? My dad always talked about it, but I can’t remember the charts. Can we get any closer to Orion, sir?”

Banner rolled his eyes and ignored him. He’d insisted that we shouldn’t take any midshipmen on our trip because they weren’t ready.

Considering our situation, we needed the North Star’s midshipmen to get more used to naval life. Society didn’t allow us to promote any of the common crew unless they went through an exhaustive battery of tests before the Admiralty, so no lowborns ever earned a proper officer’s rank unless they single-handedly defeated an entire army. If we wanted officers, we needed the midshipmen: the kids who woke up in the middle of the night because they had nightmares, the kids who broke into the pantry to steal our chocolate reserves, and the kids who looked at us lieutenants through admiring bright eyes. Banner and I were every kid’s dream: getting command well before our turn arrived.

Oh, wait.
I
held command. Banner was just my acting commander. It must’ve been very frustrating to lose six lieutenants and the captain, but not to gain command.

I’d brought Gomez in case Banner decided to act stupid. Taking a kid with me reduced the chances of mutiny and of being shot. Nobody wants to kill anyone in front of an innocent-eyed kid. Bringing Gomez along had been a selfish move, and I’m not ashamed to acknowledge it. I’d also brought York, Kozinski and Flanagan along, because they seemed to dislike me less than they disliked Banner.

I was flying the ship with my neural controls and Banner was my co-pilot, but he hadn’t supervised any of my maneuvers. He wouldn’t have cared if I’d plotted a course straight into the nearest sun. He was too busy showing his dislike for everyone around him. He’d admired O’Keeffe and he’d shown respect towards him, but how could anyone expect him to treat an engineer well? We were the outcasts of society.

And I was in command, and I still hadn’t messed up too much. And I’d been close to capturing a fleet of Cassocks with a handful of men and a couple of sneaky tricks. I’m sure that he hated the situation. And me. Had he expected me to drop command after the first morning? It wasn’t going to happen.

“Think the governor’s alive?” Banner asked.

Oh, so now he wondered about his physical integrity? He’d made me fly to the middle of nowhere to rescue the governor because he was definitely alive and well. He could’ve mentioned the possibility of death sooner, you know? I’d have had the perfect excuse not to join him.

“Do you think he’s met the Cassocks?” I said. “He won’t be alive if he has.”

Banner gulped, and his expression darkened. His mind returned to the moment of his capture, to his captivity, and to the feeling of losing all hope. The North Star wasn’t supposed to survive the attack. If my men and I hadn’t been reckless and insane enough to rescue him, he’d have died slowly and painfully. I didn’t like Banner, but I was sorry for him.

Even short captivities at the hands of the Cassocks can change a man’s outlook on life. Many men spend their days trying to avoid a second capture, ensuring that they’ll never feel defenseless again. We’d all heard the stories about torture and painful deaths aboard Cassock ships, and the thought of it can change a man’s priorities. Banner hadn’t suffered at their hands, but men don’t always handle the prospect of suffering well. To some, the thought of being hurt at some point in the future is much worse than actual pain. This was Banner’s case.

“I don’t care if he’s alive,” Banner said. “We must try to look for him and his crew, and to report everything back to Earth. The port’s under siege and gets raided too frequently for my taste. We need to go out there and see what’s going on.”

“And that’s the perfect reason for the two seniormost officers aboard the North Star to leave the port aboard a flimsy shuttle,” I said sarcastically. “Scouting missions are perfectly safe.”

“You can go back to the port if you like,” Banner said. “I’ll take care of the mission.”

“I’ll stay,” I said. “But
you
can go back if you’re scared.”

“I’ll stay too.”

I wasn’t going to back down from taking risks, and neither was he. This was like a drinking game, only that we were risking our lives, the chain of command of one of the Navy’s ships of the line, and possibly Aurora Port’s integrity.

Did Banner realize that our egos were making us break most of the Navy’s recommendations about command? Captains could take their commanders on missions if they had a bunch of lieutenants left. We were being reckless and childish by trying to impress a lady, but I wasn’t going to back down. I’d backed down too often during my life, and it had only led me to becoming an engineer.

My prudence had also kept me alive. Is this why many brave men don’t reach retirement age?

Whatever it was, I wasn’t going to let Banner show off at my expense again. Lady Elizabeth may have shown an interest in his stupid bravery, but I could act stupid too. I was actually getting better at acting stupid: attacking frigates with a handful of men, jumping into a rescue mission aboard a shuttle, and not returning to port before getting attacked. I’d say I was climbing the stupidity ranks.

As for the rest of the crew, Flanagan was very tense in one of the seats behind the cabin, and he kept standing up and approaching us to check that we weren’t going to commit suicide in the middle of space. He walked towards us, checked the screens once more, enabled a couple of extra interfaces, and sighed in relief.

“I’m an engineer, Flanagan,” I said. “I build these things.”
And I’ve flown half of my life in simulators. How different can it be?

“No offense meant, sir,” Flanagan said, “but building them isn’t flying them.”

Banner looked at Flanagan’s well-worn clothes and weathered face, and showed a dislike for his appearance. His scan lasted for less than a second, but it reminded me of the way that the upper classes usually analyzed me. Hatfield had told me about their ability to judge a person based on their appearance, and he’d said that they’d never take me for one of them. Perhaps he was right; I’d never be able to judge anyone within a second.

Though I’d have liked to pass off as rich every once in a while. It’s no fun to get so many sneers from everyone.

“He’s doing fine, Flanagan,” Banner said curtly. “Why don’t you sit down and stop bothering the captain?”

Captain? Since when did Banner consider me the captain? And why had he jumped in my defense?

Flanagan grunted and sat back down.

“First flight?” Kozinski asked him.

Flanagan grunted back. He’d served in the Navy for more than half of his life. How could anyone think it was his first flight?

Oh, this was Kozinski asking.

“Shut up and stop annoying him,” York reprimanded him. “He’s in a bad mood, and I don’t want to drag you out of another fight. Got two black eyes out of your fight last month.”

Kozinski laughed.
Who, who, who
. “Was a good fight. Punched Coleman straight in the gut. And lower.”
Who, who, who
.

Gomez had barely seated down in the whole trip. He climbed onto his chair with his knees to look behind his backrest and started exploring the leather. “We don’t have any escape suits, do we? Like the parachutes or life vests on Earth. What happens if the shuttle breaks?” He jumped off the chair, crouched beside it, and tried to find something under the chair. “Do we just die, or do we have a back-up plan.”

Flanagan stared at him sternly. If Gomez had been one of the powder monkeys, he’d have ended up with a warning slap on the back of his neck. He was a young gentleman and an officer, though, so only the bo’sun could hit him if the captain ordered it. Our bo’sun was dead and I wasn’t going to name a new one to make the kids cry.

Gomez ran to the back of the shuttle. “Can we see the ships in plain sight, or do we have to run them through a filter? I like the program that turns ships red. They’re easier to spot in space. Don’t know how they do it, though. I’d love to learn. Engineers are fun.” The kid had too much energy to let anyone else talk.

“Why don’t you tell the kid to sit down, Wood?” Banner asked me. “I didn’t mind for most of the first hour, but he’s getting on my nerves.” His hand subconsciously crept up to the electric sword on his hip.

I didn’t care if he was right. Nobody was going to zap Gomez.

“Gomez,” I called.

Gomez ran to the cabin and gave me an armylike salute. He squared up and grinned proudly at me. “Midshipman Gomez ready for action, Lieutenant Wood. Captain Wood, sir.”

Banner snorted at the kid’s lack of proper naval training. Gomez looked at him, confused, but didn’t seem affected.

“Have you assaulted our chocolate reserves?” I asked.

Gomez turned red and his right hand went straight to his pocket. A tell-tale sign. He hadn’t just assaulted the Navy’s food supplies; he was carrying the stolen goods on him. “No, sir.” The lad even sounded innocent.

“Hand it over to Lieutenant Banner,” I told him. “You know the penalty for stealing from the rest of the crew, and I’d rather not start a gauntlet right now. I don’t want you eating more sugar until you can act as if you hadn’t eaten any. I don’t want the crew starting a mutiny just because you can’t sit still.”

“But sir,” he complained. “I’d taken it before the Star was attacked. And now we don’t have enough men to eat it. You wouldn’t want us to throw it away once it’s rotten, would you? It’s a crime! Think about world hunger. We wouldn’t be nice people if we didn’t eat the food we get. It’s ungrateful!”

Did he ever shut up? Gomez always talked quickly and full of energy.

“Hand it over, Midshipman,” Banner told him.

Gomez complained and started digging into his pant pockets. He took out several handfuls of chocolate, and then searched under his double-breasted jacket, where he hid many more stolen chocolate bars in a hidden pocket. He finally sat on the floor, took out his boots, and emptied the chocolates onto a neat pile on the floor. The chocolates started floating without any gravity to pull them down; they didn’t have magnetized materials around them.

He was carrying several pounds of chocolate on a short mission. How much did he plan to eat in a single day?

“A dentist’s dream,” I said.

Gomez was still red-faced and looking at his loot floating before him. He hesitated between offering an explanation or simply manning up to whatever consequence I sentenced him to. He was too young for the latter, so he quickly opened his over-excited eyes and said, “I don’t know where it’s all come from. I’d taken a lot less with me, you know? I haven’t eaten that much chocolate in all my life. That’s like… a mountain, isn’t it?”

“Shut up before the acting captain orders Flanagan to cane you,” Banner told him. “He’s in an awful mood today.”

Gomez jumped back and quickly sat down straight on his seat. He fastened his seatbelt and glanced at Flanagan in fear.

Banner closed the cabin doors. “Younger brother,” he said. “Half-brother, actually. Father said that he didn’t have the soul of a widower. Nothing like a good old threat to get rid of an energetic kid.” He smiled to himself.

He hadn’t relaxed since we’d rescued him from the Cassocks. Perhaps he’d realized that command wasn’t easy for anyone, or maybe he’d decided to be nice to me so that nobody suspected him once I was found dead in my room.

In either case, I didn’t care. We’d faced the Cassocks, our ship was broken, and we needed to work together.

The speakers beeped with a warning: we were about to bump onto a solid object, but everything around us was dark like normal space, with a coat of stars many light years away. I turned on the reverse engines to slow down and avoid the object.

Banner sat up and turned on his co-pilot’s interfaces. He ran a scan of our surroundings, but we found nothing but static. Too much static to be real.

It didn’t give me a good feeling. I released one of our drones and set it to perform a close-range check of the area. It came up with several unidentified objects, much larger than the North Star. They were slowly headed to Aurora Port too slowly for typical ship speeds.

Banner’s eyes widened in fear and he gulped slowly. “Cassock ships aren’t this large,” he said. “It has to be a mistake.”

Drones didn’t make mistakes. If readings were anomalous, they performed a second reading before outputting any results.

We’d flown straight into an unidentified fleet, and it wasn’t friendly.

We needed to get back to the port before them and get ready for whatever they planned to do. Lucky that we were flying a shuttle, because we were small and nobody would consider us a threat. We’d have died if we’d flown the North Star.

“Beat to quarters, Flanagan,” I said as soon as we got back to the port. “I want every crewman up and ready to fight. Gomez, tell port security to secure the main streets, prepare their defenses and perform a shields check. We’ll take over command during the fight.”

“But sir,” Gomez said, “we don’t even know if they’re friendly. They might just be flying by.”

“Ten friendly ships without hailing?” I said.

We’d encountered an entire fleet heading straight in our direction. The Navy’s regulations required captains and commodores to warn before approaching a spaceport to avoid raising any alarms during their approach. The only exceptions occurred whenever a ship had communications problems, but they had to make themselves visible to sensors and to human eyes and remain at an adequate distance until a port delegation boarded them to provide a temporary communications system.

I didn’t care what fleet the ships belonged to, but the North Star had been boarded by Cassocks and we hadn’t detected them. Those ships used a similar cloaking technology.

“Won’t this annoy Lady Elizabeth?” Banner asked. “She won’t like it if we start taking her father’s place. The governor’s supposed to lead battles to defend his port, and his family is in charge in his absence.”

“The governor’s gone missing,” I said. “He’ll like to come back to the port instead of finding its ruins. Lady Elizabeth can’t lead the defense against ten ships.”

Or more. We’d detected ten by setting our drones to scan the area, but more could come later or before. We were blind to their technology, so they could hide wherever they liked and we’d only detect a fraction of them.

I’d felt awesome after defeating the Cassock frigates, but it was starting to sound like a lucky move now that another battle approached. How was I supposed to take command of a civilian spaceport and a broken ship of the line and fight ten enemy ships that I couldn’t even see?

The men expected me to lead them, though, and that’s what I was going to do.

I got rid of Kozinski and York and told them to fetch all our men who could be hiding in taverns and whorehouses. The pair knew all the special ladies in town better than anyone else, and they’d find my men. If they stayed around, they’d keep asking questions and blaming each other for everything.

“Banner,” I told the lieutenant, “fetch our pilots, recruit the port’s security men who have received flight training, and get anyone who knows how to fly a fighter. I need two squads of fighters and shuttles.”

“Do you plan to make me fly against the enemy?” Banner folded his arms and raised an eyebrow at me. “What can a team of wasps do against ten mammoths?”

“Sting them, track them, and blow up every satellite in the area as soon as they get close to them. We might not be able to fight, but no ship likes to fly by a nuclear explosion.”

“That’s mad,” he said flatly. “Each of those satellites costs millions. You can’t blow them up even if you’re defending the port. The government won’t like it.”

“Would you like to fly the Star back to Earth and hope that we’re lucky and get away?” I asked. “Have a better idea? I’m all ears.”

Banner’s face turned from rage to resentment, and then to resignation. He’d finally realized the chain of command and knew that he had no choice but to cross his fingers and hope that I didn’t kill everyone aboard the port.

“Fighters?” He nodded, realizing the gravity of the situation. In the last battle, he’d been captured without even realizing. His body tensed. He wanted to stay aboard the port to be safer and avoid entering another Cassock ship. He had no other option. He let out a long, resigned sigh. “I’ll do my best.”

“Try to do better than that, Banner,” I told him. “I know where you end up when you do your best.”

He sneered at me, looked down at my clean yet weathered boots, and curled his upper lip at me before leaving.

He’d have gotten in trouble for that sneer if he hadn’t been the only senior officer under my command. I couldn’t afford to lose his help.

Once everyone was assigned to work, I summoned my engineers, told them to forget about the North Star, and asked them to make as many explosives as they could. We couldn’t create artificial shields for the port or improve our defenses, and we couldn’t build a wall like ancient civilizations had done to protect themselves from attackers. We were defenseless; our only way to fight back was to blow up silly satellites whenever the enemy got close to them.

Airborne fights suck, but space fights suck even more. You can’t hide, you can’t fly away, and you don’t even have proper clouds to break eye contact with the enemy.

“This won’t work, sir,” Gupta said. He was one of my top engineers and he’d even gone to a real college. He was blunt enough to demoralize everyone with his pessimism. “How do you plan to bait the ships to get close to the satellites?”

“Wasps.” I said the first thing I could think of. I said it confidently so that everyone thought that I’d lost my mind. Nobody asks you to explain things if you’re mental, and they try not to contradict you in case you turn violent.

Gupta squinted his eyes, tried to understand whatever I’d said, and eventually gave up and kept working.

I don’t like acting mental, but it was the easiest way to save hours of explanations. Have you ever tried to get engineers to solve something quickly? It rarely happens, and they get scared and ask even more questions before a fight. And yes, I was an engineer and that’s exactly why I knew what to expect of them. Engineers aren’t suited for battle, that’s all.

With some luck, we’d get enough explosives and a couple of nuclear heads as a surprise. It wasn’t enough to fight so many ships, but Cassocks aren’t stupid: if they think they’ll lose too much in a battle, they’ll retreat.

That is, hoping that our enemies were Cassocks. We hadn’t seen their flag. Or any part of them, actually. They were invisible to our sensors and to our eyes.