Solfleet: The Call of Duty (29 page)

The wall
screen went dark for a moment. Hansen sat back in his chair again and got as
comfortable as he could.

“
Bridge
recorders on, Captain,
” an unfamiliar voice said as the screen came back to
life.

A new image,
as three-dimensional as possible for a 2-D wall screen, replaced that of
Lieutenant Johnson. The bridge of the starcruiser
Rapier
, as seen from
slightly above the aft-most access doors. Solfleet had been installing multiple
perpendicular rings of 3-D cameras into the most sensitive areas of its vessels
for decades. Had he wanted to, Hansen could have used the controls on his
desktop console to manipulate the image and view the vessel’s bridge from
virtually any angle. But as it was he could already see almost every officer
and duty post in the semi-circular command center, as well as the ship’s main
viewscreen, so he left it alone. The only exception was the communications
station, located along the aft bulkhead, below and just to the right of the
cameras that were providing his current point of view.

“
Thank
you, Mister Bellinger,
” the captain responded. “
Put the vessel up on the
screen. Standard view.
”

A slightly
elongated object, not much larger than one of the colored pinpoints of light
that shined in the velvety background of space, but barely half as bright—presumably
the vessel that the captain had just made reference to—instantly appeared in
the center of the
Rapier
’s main screen. Hansen couldn’t make out any
identifying details and was about to zoom in for a closer look when the captain
took care of the problem for him. Fleet Captain Vance Erickson, if Hansen
remembered correctly.

“
Magnify
it, Lieutenant,
” he ordered. “
Let’s get a good look.
”

“
Aye,
sir,
” Bellinger answered. “
Magnification factor ten.
”

A split
second later the vessel filled the
Rapier
’s viewscreen. It was still a
little hazy, but Hansen could make out enough detail now to determine that it
was a Tor’Kana battleship. Only seven Tor’Kana heavy vessels were known to have
survived the invasion of their home system long enough to jump into deep space
and escape. Five of them had already been recovered and would soon be folded
into the fleets of the other member worlds. Now the
Rapier
had
apparently found number six, though it didn’t look too healthy. So unless there
were more of them out there that no one knew about, only one remained to be
found.

“
Can you
sharpen that up a little, Mister Bellinger?
” Erickson asked.

“
No, sir,
not at this distance,
” the younger officer answered. “
She’s drifting away
from us pretty fast, so it’ll take another minute or so. But if you’re
wondering, sir, that is in fact a Tor’Kana battleship.
”

“
Thank
you, Lieutenant, I can see that. What about a damage report. Are we close
enough for a preliminary scan of her major systems?
”

“
Aye,
sir. Scanning now.
” A moment later, “
One of her jump nacelles has been
sheared completely off. I’m seeing small bits of debris floating away from the
ship, but not nearly enough to account for the nacelle, so it either floated
out of range already or it was vaporized. The other three appear to be intact,
but are cold. The fusion engines and maneuvering thrusters are offline, too,
and are venting small amounts of plasma. Looks like they’ve been venting for some
time, too, and the dispersal pattern is very irregular. If I had to guess, sir,
I’d say they were completely defensive, on the run, and taking evasive action when
whatever happened to them happened.
”

“
What
about her weapons?
”

“
We’re
still too far off to tell, sir.
”

“
Helm,
increase velocity,
” the captain ordered. “
Close in and bring us alongside.
”

“
Aye,
sir,
” the helm officer answered. Hansen didn’t know her.

“
Reduce
magnification to normal.
”

“
Magnification-one,
sir,
” Bellinger acknowledged as he complied.

The image of
the Tor’Kana battleship shrank once again, but to a size slightly larger than
before, and as the
Rapier
grew closer, it began to grow visibly.

“
Surface
gun emplacements are all damaged or destroyed, Captain,
” Bellinger
reported. “
Looks like the main gun is dead, too.
”

“
Torpedoes?
”

“
Aft
tubes are open, banks completely exhausted. We’ll have to swing around her bow
to get a reading on the forward banks.
”

“
Helm.
”

“
I’m on
it, sir,
” the woman responded.

“
There
are numerous hull breaches in the aft compartments and along the length of her
keel,
” Bellinger continued. “
As best I can tell, approximately thirty-five
percent of her interior has lost atmosphere.
”

“
Radiation
levels?
”

“
Within
safety limits as far inside as our scanners can penetrate, but not by much. And
all the internal power appears to be shut down.
” As the bow of the Tor’Kana
vessel swung into view, he reported, “
Forward tubes have been blown open,
Captain. The banks are all empty. They must have fired their torpedoes right
through the closed ports.
”

“
Good
thing they don’t arm right away,
” Erickson commented.

“
Yes,
sir.
” Bellinger made a quick adjustment, presumably to his scanners,
hesitated for a moment, then turned in his chair to face his commanding
officer. With a grim look on his face, he said, “
Captain, the escape pods
are all still in place, and there’s the wreckage of at least nine shuttles
inside what’s left of the hanger bay.
”

Erickson
rose to his feet and took a few steps toward the screen. “
Are you reading
any life signs onboard?
”

Bellinger
turned back to his instruments, made some more adjustments, then answered, “
I
think so, sir, but these readings are awfully weak. It may just be the
radiation interfering with our scanners, but...
”

“
Any sign
of enemy presence onboard?
” Erickson asked with sudden urgency. “
Life
signs? Tics on the hull? Anything?
”

“
No tics,
sir, but unknown as far as life signs,
” Bellinger answered, shaking his
head. “
I can’t get specific enough readings.
”

“
What
about other vessels in the area?
”

“
Long
range sensors aren’t picking anything up, sir, but you know how that goes.
”

“
Yeah,
don’t we all, Lieutenant. Mister O’Connor,
” Erickson called as he turned
and stepped back to his chair, “
sound standby alert.
”

“
Standby
alert, aye, sir,
” O’Connor, presumably one of the communications specialists,
responded from out of the picture.

Erickson sat
down, then thumbed a pad on his command console, which seemed to grow out of
his chair’s right arm. “
Captain Erickson to Security.
”

“
Security.
Lieutenant Colonel Zucker here, sir.
”

“
We’ve
found another Tor’Kana vessel, Colonel, but it’s in pretty bad shape. Go to
Medbay, grab as many field medics with training in Tor’Kana biology as your
boarding craft can carry, suit up, and get over there. As it stands right now,
this should be a non-combat rescue and recovery mission, but go with standard
hostile zone protocols all the same. We don’t want any surprises.
”

“
You got
it, sir.
”

The image of
what appeared to be the inside of some sort of airlock suddenly replaced that
of the
Rapier
’s bridge. Except for the single low-intensity spotlight
slowly playing over the bare, metal-looking walls, the area was pitch dark. A line
of data at the bottom of the screen indicated that the slightly grainy, green-tinted
monochrome image was coming from Lieutenant Colonel Zucker’s helmet-cam.
According to the chronometer in the far right corner, only twenty-three minutes
had elapsed since Captain Erickson had given the order to board the vessel. They’d
done so much more quickly than Hansen would have thought possible. Very
efficient.

Zucker’s
spotlight momentarily came to rest on a small black panel labeled with
yellow-green Tor’Kana script—Hansen was right, it was an airlock—but the
helmet-cam had been designed to mimic the user’s eye movements with perfect
precision, so Zucker’s was constantly shifting from side to side. Its light
drifted over the bare bulkhead to his right, then passed across the
identification panel again and fell upon the space suited figures of the other
members of the boarding party’s Security Forces troops. Their faces were hidden
in the dark behind their helmet shields, but the seriousness with which they
were treating the operation was clearly evident in the individual weapons they
were carrying—the sleek, easy to handle VK-19 recoilless laser-pulse rifle,
which served as the standard zero-G combat weapon fleet-wide, an HS-21 squad
assault weapon, even a pair of HE-100 35mm grenade launchers. In short, they
were armed to the teeth.

Back in the
days when he served in combat, Hansen had never liked the laser-pulse rifles.
He’d understood why they needed them, of course. After all, firing a
non
-recoilless
weapon in a zero-G fight meant floating backwards, out of control and away from
whatever protective cover and concealment you might have been using, and that
was never a good thing for a soldier. But laser pulses, while extremely painful
as they burned through a target’s flesh, had a nasty habit of cauterizing the
wounds they inflicted, which prevented excessive bleeding, so it almost always
took multiple hits to bring a stalwart target down.

And the
Veshtonn were nothing if not stalwart.

“
Take
your positions, everyone,
” Zucker ordered as he and his camera looked back
at the inner airlock door in front of him.

The cramped
space seemed to rotate 180 degrees to the right as Zucker turned around and
backed himself up against the bulkhead, putting the inner door to his immediate
right. Hansen caught a brief glimpse of the outer doors—closed now, no doubt to
protect against the loss of any atmosphere that might remain inside—but Zucker
quickly looked back to his right, at the inner door again.

“
Let’s do
it, T-J,
” Zucker said.

“
You got
it, boss.
”

One of the
troops, most likely the ‘T.J.’ whom Zucker had just spoken to, stepped away,
moving out of the picture. Moments leter the inner door rose up into the high
ceiling, out of sight, and Zucker’s light beam fell against the far left wall
of the otherwise pitch black inner room. Zucker waited for a few seconds, then leaned
forward and peered inside the vessel—it was pretty dark in there—but he quickly
backed off again before Hansen was able to focus on anything in particular.

“
Activate
HUDs,
” Zucker said. A second later a series of green lines and odd shapes appeared
on the wall screen—on the inside surface of Zucker’s face shield, Hansen reminded
himself—artificially diagramming those portions of his surroundings that weren’t
illuminated sufficiently to see with the naked eye. The trooper directly across
from him on the other side of the door appeared as a red figure with a small
point of blue light flashing in the center of his chest—a ‘friend-or-foe’
indicator, identifying him as a friendly.

Hansen had
never liked them, either. Two hundred years after their first introduction to
the battlefield, they still couldn’t be completely counted on not to fail. Nor
should they ever be, in his opinion. How many good soldiers had they lost over
the decades, killed by friendly fire because their indicators had malfunctioned?
Soldiers had become far too dependent on them for their own good.

“
Point of
view, weapon,
” Zucker commanded.

The image
switched to one seen from a lower angle and flowed across the screen from right
to left as Zucker raised his rifle and aimed it around the corner to get a look
inside without exposing himself to any dangers that might be waiting for them
there. His HUD reconstructed the room and outlined everything in it. A large,
dim red mass lay motionless on the floor several meters ahead of his weapon,
indicating the presence of organic material. There was only one thing it could have
been.

“Oh my God,”
Hansen muttered.

Zucker
trained his weapon’s sights on the body and squeezed the trigger halfway to
acquire a target lock. A set of cross-hairs appeared and remained centered on
the unmoving red mass, even as the image wavered slightly when Zucker’s arms
moved. “
Identify and analyze tactical,
” he said.

There was a
very slight pause as his computer pack took a series of scanner readings
through the rifle’s target acquisition unit and extrapolated the data, but the
response came as close to instantaneously as was possible under the circumstances.
“
Species: Tor’Kana,
” the artificial voice reported. “
Gender: male.
Status: deceased. Analysis: Negative armaments and explosives. Threat: none
apparent.
”

Lieutenant
Johnson’s image suddenly appeared in a small, unobtrusive window near the upper
right corner of the wall screen. “
They found the same thing all over the
ship, Admiral,
” he said as the video footage continued, its audio
temporarily muted. “
Some were found alive, but the vast majority were dead.
Here’s the main part I wanted you to see.
”