Angles of Attack (Frontlines #3)(25)
“You were right,” I tell him when I’ve caught my breath and we’re taking off our gloves again by the side of the mat square. “That wasn’t the best idea I’ve had today. That SRA hand-to-hand training must be something else.”
“Is not Alliance training,” he says. “I spend six months in military prison once. Other man in cell, he was boxer. Before military, he fight in underworld ring, for money. He teach me how to punch the color out of a man’s hair. I go easy on you because I am guest here.” He smiles and hands me back his gel gloves. “You are not bad for soft little imperialist tool. We fight for six months every day, you learn to punch better, da?”
“Da,” I agree. “If we’re still alive in a week or two.”
Overhead, the ascending two-tone whistle of a 1MC announcement sounds, and we all interrupt what we’re doing to listen.
“Attention all hands. This is the CO. We are minus two hours and ten minutes from the Alliance transition point. I want everybody suited up and ready to man combat stations. That means everyone, not just the grunts. All hands, prepare for vacsuit ops. Staff Sergeant Grayson, report to CIC with our guest at 0830 Zulu.”
The announcement ends with a descending whistle. Staff Sergeant Philbrick looks over at me and purses his lips.
“Vacsuit ops? We’re all gonna go EVA and push this thing through the node by hand?”
“Beats me,” I reply. “You heard the man. Best we hit the showers and put on hardshell.”
“Copy that. Let’s go, squad,” he addresses his men, and they all gather their kit with the controlled urgency of combat troops switching to battle-alert mode.
I turn toward Dmitry. “Back to the berth, and into your armor. And Dmitry . . . don’t turn on the comms and data in your suit until we’re in CIC and the colonel gives the order.”
“No trust at all,” Dmitry says. “Maybe there is hope for you still.”
CHAPTER 6
“Combat stations, combat stations. All hands, prepare for battle. Alcubierre transition in two minutes.”
I know that we aren’t really going faster than light speed—in an Alcubierre bubble, the ship moves at subluminal speed while the drive shifts the space around it—but it still feels like we’ve been racing through space for the last few hours. A ship keeps the forward momentum it had when it entered the bubble, and Colonel Campbell hit the node at four gravities of acceleration with the fusion engines going at flank speed. When we pop out of the bubble on the solar system side in a few minutes, we’ll be shooting out of the node like a ship-to-ship missile.
“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.”