The Mind Field (2 page)

Sokolov returned the stink–eye from earlier. He did it better.

Fortunately, Javier was immune as well.

“It does,” he said after a moment. “
A’Nacia
.”

Javier knew better than to say the first thing that came to mind, or the first profanity.
Are you insane?
was a given with these folks. That didn’t stop him from thinking it. Loudly.

“Uh huh,” Javier replied, sucking on his teeth and lower lip. He took a long sip of tea as the other three people in the room turned and stared at him.

“What?” he said finally. They were really starting to mess with his
wa
this morning. Uncool.

“I would have expected more of a reply, Aritza,” Sokolov said with his head cocked. “Surely you, of all people, have an opinion. You always do.”

Javier scowled sourly back at him, and then shrugged. “If you want to raid a haunted graveyard, there’s not a lot I can do at this point to change your mind.”

Sykora gave him an especially exasperated look today. She was all spit–and–polish commando bad–ass. In her eyes, Javier was constantly in and out of insubordination. Sometimes, she reminded him of his first ex–wife. The green eyes didn’t help.

“Lady,” Javier said, forestalling her whole argument, “the captain talked himself into it. He can talk himself out of it. Not like you people ever listen to me, anyway.”

She arched an eyebrow at him anyway. It was a lovely eyebrow. She really wasn’t that bad looking, if you liked amazons. Javier would still have to be even more drunk than her to consider it.

He sat back and sipped his tea instead.

Sykora turned to the Captain instead. “Haunted, sir?” she asked politely.

“Old sailor’s tale, Sykora,” the captain replied. “One of the last battles of the Unification Wars was fought over
A’Nacia
. It was a terrible affair.
Pyrrhic
. One of those famous last stands for the last of the holdouts against the
Union of Man
.”

“I see,” she said. “
Neu Berne
does not cover that particular event, apparently.”

Javier resisted snorting out loud.

Neu Berne
had started the next round of warfare after that, the one that led to the breakup of the
Union of Man
, the Great Wars that only ended eighty–some years ago.
Neu Berne, The Union
, and
Balustrade
had all pretty much wiped each other out in the process, leaving the
Concord
as the only large political entity left to pick up the pieces. It had inherited galactic hegemony, almost by accident. At least it was far less of an imperialistic power than the others had been.

“So why do you think it’s haunted, Javier,” Piet asked suddenly.

Javier blinked. He had forgotten the man was there, he tended to be so quiet.

“Ships that go there disappear, never to be heard from again,” Javier shrugged. “Plus, major battlefield, with something like five separate national fleets destroyed there. Lots of ghosts around.”

Javier turned to the Captain. “Why?”

Sokolov put on his Captain face, all the charm that reminded people he was in charge. Serious charisma.

“Because we’re better armed than the average raider that goes in there,” he began. “We’re also going to be really sneaky about this, a lesson I learned from Aritza. And we have a Science Officer who’s going to keep the ghosts and bad guys away.”

Javier snorted, “I can’t even keep pixies at bay.”

“I beg your pardon?” Sokolov’s whole face turned confused.

“Never mind,” Javier replied. Pirates, and Philistines. All of them

Part Three

Captain Zakhar Sokolov sat quietly in his command chair and drank coffee from his battered tin mug. He had seen Aritza’s custom–made cup, and considered having it copied, but thought better of it.

Aritza needed something to make him feel like he had some control over his life. Since being captured nearly a year ago, he had managed to carve out a niche for himself as a member of
Storm Gauntlet’s
crew. He was well respected, generally liked, and several people, including his chief ground combat officer, Sykora, owed him their lives.

Zakhar refrained from reminding her of that. Touchy, touchy subject.

But Javier also brought a brightness to the bridge, even if he was mostly a complete goofball. He was a competent goofball when he wanted to be. Right now, he needed to be.

Zakhar was mildly surprised at how well the Science Officer was handling the current operation. He had been expecting a running commentary of rude remarks from that corner of the bridge instead of silence. Perhaps he should turn on a microphone nearby and see if the man was muttering them under his breath. Perhaps later. No good would come of it now.

The Navigator, Piet Alferdinck, called the countdown. “Emergence in fifteen seconds,” his voice rang out. This was the only time the man was loud. Other times, he was as quiet as Aritza was loud.

Right now, everybody was quiet. Zakhar wondered if Javier had been telling them ghost stories. It was something he would do.

Storm Gauntlet
fell back into real space with a lurch that even the gravplates couldn’t forestall. Something about the change in physics between universes occurring faster than the machinery could compensate for.

Zakhar settled himself back in his chair. So far, nobody heaving their guts up into a handy trashcan. It happened occasionally, more inner ear and psychology than bio–medical.

“Navigation,” Zakhar called regally, “bring the engines on line and ahead slow.”

“Belay that order,” Javier snarled from his station.

Zakhar jumped as far out of his seat as his belt would allow.

“Nobody do nothin’,” Javier continued savagely.

“Aritza,” Sokolov barked, “explain yourself. This is my bridge.”

“Yes, is it,” Javier agreed without looking up from his console screen. One hand snaked out and touched a blue light flashing madly on his console. “And somebody out there just lit us up with a nice, solid weapon lock.”

“Have they challenged us?” Zakhar asked, much less angry.

“Not yet,” Javier replied. “Or rather, if they have, it wasn’t on any of the standard channels.”

“Where would it be?” asked the Gunner. Her hands were poised on her controls, but she was waiting patiently.

Javier looked over, fixed her dark eyes with one beady eye of his own. “Whatever you do, Mary–Elizabeth Suzuki, do not deploy turrets or open a launch bay,” he said, deadly serious.

Zakhar was surprised. He didn’t think Javier did deadly serious.

This must be really bad.

“All hands,” Zakhar said, reinforcing the point and letting the bridge computer transmit the message ship–wide, “stand down. We have a situation outside the ship we are investigating.”

He closed the channel and looked as his Science Officer. It already felt like one of those days were he was going to owe the man big again. How would they keep him aboard once he paid off his debts and was free?

“Javier,” he asked, “what’s your theory?”

Javier looked both ways, as if double–checking that nobody was about to do anything. He started to say something when a sudden chime on his console got his attention.

Zakhar felt the emotional lurch as Javier turned back to his screens instead of speaking. The whole bridge seemed to sag, waiting.

He watched Javier pull an earpiece and stick it in. The man listened for a few moments, shook his head, and muttered something under his breath so profane even Sokolov blinked.

“I found their transmission,” Javier announced. “It’s in Bulgarian, down on one of the lower, older channels hardly anybody uses anymore. That’s the good news.”

“What’s the bad news?” Zakhar asked conversationally.

“It’s an automated sentry challenge,” he replied.

Zakhar used the same word Javier just had.

Mary–Elizabeth cocked her head at the two men. “Could you two explain that for the mere mortals around here?” she asked with a sarcastic edge that sounded remarkably like what Javier would have used. Obviously, the man was rubbing off on her. The professionalism would be good, but not the attitude problem.

Javier turned to Zakhar and raised an eyebrow.

“You found it, Javier,” the Captain said. “You explain it. Do we know if it works?”

“No,” Javier blew out a breath. “The only way to know that is when it fires, or fails to. I could live the rest of my days without knowing, thank you.”

“Talk, mister,” Mary–Elizabeth barked. “I’m getting tired of you yammering. Gimme data.”

“Yeah, yeah. Fine.”

Javier pushed a button on his console and the main screen suddenly showed a schematic of the local area.
Storm Gauntlet’s
purple star sat in the middle, surrounded by other stars of various colors.

“We just jumped into a live minefield,” he announced sourly. “I am beginning to map things based on their own signals, while not generating any of our own. Fortunately, we came in dark. The minefield is intelligent, but not fully sentient. It isn’t sure if we’re a newly arrived asteroid that just wandered into range, or an enemy starship it should kill. On channel 392, it is asking us for the correct authentication code to safely transit the kill zone.”

Zakhar watched him pick up his mug and empty it in one go. It was going to be that kind of day.

“Why would sentience be bad, Javier?” Mary–Elizabeth asked.

“Because it would probably just shoot us anyway, Suzuki,” Zakhar answered before Javier could.

“Oh,” she said quietly. “Can it kill us?”

“Shields were down for the jump,” Javier said. “Powering them up most assuredly triggers something, somewhere. There were dreadnaughts at the battle of
A’Nacia
, so there are probably guns big enough here to gig us like a frog.”

“Gig?” someone asked from over near the engineering seats.

“The term our Science Officer is looking for is
splatter
,” Zakhar replied. “That’s a much more accurate, technical term. Boom.”

“Recommendation, Captain?” Javier asked politely.

This day was turning into an absolute surprise as other sides of Aritza’s behavior came out for the first time.

“Go ahead,” Zakhar replied. Internally, he noted how much the two of them sounded like old Concord Fleet Officers, which they were. The piracy veneer apparently wasn’t that deep, after all.

“Can we start shutting down systems? Turn the air temp down so we have longer before we have to dump heat? Power off things that might accidentally generate a signal outside the ship? That sort of thing?”

Zakhar considered it. All things that made sense, since nobody knew what might trigger a lethal surprise. They might not know until it killed them, and then only for a few seconds.

“Agreed,” he said. He keyed the general comm live. “Engineering, Bridge. We’re going to start powering down some systems to run quieter. Please coordinate with the Science Officer. And tell people to dress warm.”

“Yes, Captain,” came the polite, diffident voice of Andreea Dalca, the Engineer.

Zakhar looked around the bridge. Command decision time. “Everybody shut down your stations and drop down to emergency crew only. The rest of you are still on duty, so go do paperwork or something.”

Zakhar counted ten seconds until the only people on the bridge were himself, Aritza, and Sykora, the Dragoon. He didn’t say anything to her. She was going to stay and keep a watch on everything the Science Officer did. At least she had stopped wearing a sidearm on the bridge. Most of the time.

The room went dim as Aritza brought the lights lower. Conserving power now meant conserving heat. He was going to need to grab a jacket out of his day cabin in a bit, but he had enough layers for now.

“Okay, hotshot,” Zakhar said to the back of Aritza’s head, “how do we get out of this one?”

“I promise you, Captain,” Javier turned to look at him, “you will be the second one to know.”

Part Four

Djamila was used to complex multi–tasking. It was practically a requirement to be successful at what she did.

She could, for example, track two different moving targets and fire accurately at both, pistols in both hands and one eyeball following each. She was capable of zero–gravity maneuvers that had earned her the nickname
Ballerina of Death
from her teammates, back in her days with the
Neu Berne
Navy.

Right now, she was flexing individual muscles in her legs to keep them warm and loose, while she sat quietly at a dark console on the bridge and knitted. It gave the hands something to do while the legs worked. The mind was watching Javier Aritza, their much–vaunted Science Officer with his custom coffee cup, pace around a three dimensional projection of the local environment.

When asked, he had explained that pacing made him look at things from different angles in a way that just spinning the projection around didn’t do. She could respect that. It was one of the few times the man was a proper professional. Now, if only he could be like that more often, she might actually like him. Hell might freeze over first, but that wasn’t her problem.

She looked down as her hands auto–piloted their way to the row marker. The project was well on its way to being a sweater at some point. Much sooner than she had expected if they were going to spend many more hours drifting and tumbling slowly. Pretty soon she would have to break it off as she got to the bottom of the sleeve holes. But not for a while.

As she started on the next row around, she looked more closely at the projection. Djamila wasn’t nearly as capable with the sensors as Aritza, but she understood enough to ask competent questions. And he had apparently appreciated trying to explain things to her, because he would get into the middle of a sentence and suddenly break off to go type furiously for several seconds before talking again.

The projection was starting to take shape. Different color stars appeared, strengthened, sharpened.

Apparently, minefields in space were like defensive fortifications on the ground. And she was an expert at those. Defense in depth. Overlapping fields of fire. Enfilade. Variety in range engagements. Lateral support. Stealth. Guile. Ambush.