“And that fool Imallye is planning to set up shop here as well!” Marphissa said. “If they don’t check things out thoroughly, or if the enigmas have finished their major excavations by the time Imallye’s forces arrive, Imallye might be oblivious to the fact that she’s sharing this star system with an enigma force that could wipe out her base at any time with no warning!”
She spun to look at the specialist who had spoken up and was still watching Marphissa and Diaz to see how her report would be received. “Well done. Very well done. You spotted that subtle data and you interpreted it well. Kapitan Diaz, this specialist deserves a promotion.”
“I understand and will comply,” Diaz said, making the old, fearful Syndicate response sound like a pleasant tasking. “Can we bomb that enigma base out of existence?”
“We can’t, not with the bombardment projectiles that Manticore carries. They’re not big enough to get at something as deep as the enigmas apparently are. And I don’t want to tip off the enigmas that we’ve spotted their work by tossing some futile rocks their way. As for whether any of our mobile forces can do the trick, I don’t know. We might need a big asteroid to do enough damage, and that would require a while to divert and reach the planet. We will inform President Iceni. She will decide.”
Marphissa gazed at her display, morose. She perfectly understood the uncertainty of the specialist who had reported the indications of enigma activity on that planet. No one wanted to be the one to inform the boss of a problem. Sure, Marphissa had survived Imallye’s attack at Moorea, but she would be returning with news that the Syndicate presence at Iwa Star System had been wiped out by the enigmas, that Granaile Imallye had refused offers of cooperation, threatened Iceni herself, and attacked Manticore, and that the enigmas were busy constructing a major base at Iwa. If I was bringing this much and this kind of bad news back to a Syndicate superior, I’d be expecting to be sent to a labor camp for being the bearer of unwelcome information. President Iceni won’t do that. But I have let her down. Instead of returning with good news, I am going to be a herald of many dangers.
She was roused from feeling sorry for herself by an urgent tone that drew Marphissa’s attention back to her display. She stared at it in disbelief. “Is that a pickup signal?”
“Yes, Kommodor,” the senior specialist confirmed. “It is coming from the same planet on which the enigma construction is under way, not too many kilometers from the craters that mark the former site of the Syndicate city.”
“An enigma trick,” Diaz scoffed. “It must be.”
“Why would they be calling our attention to that planet?” Marphissa wondered. “How directional is that pickup signal?” she asked the comm specialist.
“It is aimed at us,” the specialist said. “They are highly directional signals.”
“How would someone on that planet, assuming they survived, know that we were out here?” Diaz demanded.
“Sir, if it is standard Syndicate ground forces armor, then it would automatically scan overhead for any visible activity. The visual sensors on ground armor would be capable of spotting the movement of this ship across the heavens when we drew close enough.”
“Could that armor identify us?” Marphissa asked.
“No, Kommodor. Not from that range. It would only know that we were an artificial object. A ship.”
She rubbed her chin and stared at her display, knowing that the next move was entirely up to her. A human might have survived on that planet and be signaling for help. Even if he or she or they had access to extra power supplies for their armor they must be near to exhausting those, and once their armor was out of power they would surely die on the surface of what had always been an inhospitable world. Their armor had seen a ship in space and, desperate, they had signaled for help, assuming or hoping that it was a human ship.
If she were still Syndicate, Marphissa knew exactly what would be expected of her. Do not risk the unit by heading into what might well be a trap. Do not risk the mission by risking loss of the ship. Whichever workers had survived on that planet were not worth diverting her ship’s track. Maybe they had important intelligence, but if so she could send a signal back ordering their battle armor to automatically upload all information their systems had accumulated. With that information in hand, she could proceed on her way without risking Manticore.
But she wasn’t Syndicate anymore, and never had been in her heart.
“What do you think?” she asked Diaz in a quiet voice.
Diaz inhaled deeply, blew out the breath, then answered in the same low tones. “Odds are it is a trap. No one has ever been recovered from a world occupied by the enigmas.”
“But the Syndicate could never mount recovery operations,” Marphissa said. “Eventually, any humans left on an enigma-occupied world would be run down and killed, but they could have remained hidden for a while. Planets look tiny from up here, but to someone on the surface a world is a very big place.”
“It would be dangerous to get close to that world,” Diaz pointed out. “We don’t know what sort of hidden defenses the enigmas might have already installed.”
“Shouldn’t we try to find out? That would be very important to know.”
“It would,” Diaz agreed. “But how do we lift anyone off the surface? We don’t have a shuttle. I can take Manticore into atmosphere, but there is no way of landing a heavy cruiser on a planet’s surface unless you crash it.”
Marphissa pondered that problem, feeling relieved that there seemed to be no way to save that person, but also feeling guilty to be relieved about it. “If there’s no means of—”
“Wait.” Diaz grimaced. “My pardon, Kommodor. I just thought of something. The tow cable.”
“The tow cable?” Marphissa took a moment to understand what he meant. Heavy cruisers, battleships, and battle cruisers were all equipped with long cables that could be hooked to other warships that had been crippled by enemy fire, allowing those damaged ships to be towed back to a repair facility. Even the efficiency-obsessed Syndicate bureaucracy had decided that the costs of tow cables were more than offset by the savings from recovering warships that otherwise would have had to be abandoned. “We could hover low enough for the cable to be just above the surface . . . How long is it?”
“Half a kilometer.”
“Half a kilometer,” she repeated, thinking of a heavy cruiser coming within half a kilometer of a planet’s surface. “Is that idea even technically feasible?”
“I’ll have to have my specialists run the numbers on it,” Diaz said. “The atmosphere on that world is thin, so it might be possible if we cut our velocity down to a crawl. But it would be very risky, Kommodor.”
“I know.” She looked past her display to the blank bulkhead beyond it, thinking. “When Black Jack’s fleet went into enigma territory, they learned that Syndicate citizens were prisoners inside an asteroid and they rescued them. At great risk, they rescued Syndicate citizens and brought them home.”
“It was Black Jack,” Diaz said. “He is for the people, even though he is Alliance.”
“Can we do less than an Alliance fleet?” Marphissa asked. “Can we abandon whoever is on that planet, when Black Jack would go there and somehow rescue them? We are no longer Syndicate. There are people there who need our help.”
“Would you risk this entire crew to save one man or woman?” Diaz asked.
“Yes!” Marphissa nodded firmly. “Have your specialists analyze the proposal, Kapitan. While they are doing so, alter our vector to intercept that world in its orbit.”
“Yes, Kommodor. We will have to brake as we near orbit, so it will take two and a half hours to reach a point above where that recall signal came from.”
Two and a half hours to second-guess her decision. As Manticore’s thrusters and main propulsion pushed her into a new vector, Marphissa looked at the depiction of the planet they were now directly
approaching. If the enigmas deep under that world’s surface were keeping track of events above it, as surely they must be, then they would know that the human warship was now heading their way.
“They are hiding,” she said to Diaz. “The enigmas don’t want us to know they are there. Even if they detected the pickup signal sent to us, they will not want to do anything to tip us off that they are digging inside that planet. So they will stay quiet, watching, and waiting for us to go away.”
“I hope you are right, Kommodor,” Diaz said.
Half an hour later, the specialists rendered their verdicts on the plan. “It is possible,” Diaz reported to Marphissa. “My specialists recommend that we program in the task and allow our automated maneuvering systems to handle everything inside atmosphere, because no one on this ship has experience with maneuvering so close to a planet’s surface.”
“The idea of hovering half a kilometer from the surface of a planet terrifies me,” Marphissa confessed. “It is within safe operating parameters for the ship?”
“Yes, Kommodor.” Diaz checked his display again where the report was visible. “Our main propulsion is so powerful it can easily hold the ship in a hover above a planet of this size. The main fear is making some imprecise adjustment from which we would not have room to recover, but that should not happen with the automated systems controlling the approach to the surface and the hover.”
Marphissa pointed to part of the report. “This is the only way to do it? Have them latch on to the tow cable, haul everything back out of atmosphere, then bring in the cable?”
“Yes, Kommodor. We can’t bring in the cable while main propulsion is going, and we can’t shut off main propulsion until we get back into orbit.”
She sighed heavily. “Let us hope that citizen, or those citizens, have intact armor or survival suits. Can we rig anything on the cable to make it easier for them to hang on?”
Diaz nodded. “My people are putting together a . . . well, it’s a cage. We’ll fasten it to the end of the cable. Whoever is down there will have to grab the cage and climb inside.”
“This is crazy,” Marphissa said. “You’re thinking that, too, aren’t you?”
“I would never tell a superior officer that her plan is crazy,” Diaz said. “I would tell her if I thought it could not be done. We will be sitting ducks, though. If the enigmas choose to attack us while we are inside atmosphere, our velocity will be limited to speeds far below what we normally use.”
Marphissa frowned in thought. “When we reach the planet, I want to do some orbits before descending into atmosphere. Do some high passes, then some low ones, as if we are looking for any sign of the enigmas and want to provoke a reaction.”
“Then when we go into atmosphere they will think that’s just another attempt to get them to show themselves?” Diaz shrugged. “That might work. But it assumes the enigmas think like humans.”
“Captain Bradamont told me that staying hidden was the number one priority for enigmas,” Marphissa said. “I don’t pretend to know why that is, but as long as I know that is how they tend to act, I can use it.”
Manticore reached the planet and went into high orbit, swinging around the globe as if conducting an intensive search. And, indeed, that was happening, as the warship’s sensors strained to spot any sign of whoever had sent the pickup request.
“Let’s go closer in,” Marphissa ordered. “Is the cage ready?” she asked Diaz.
“Yes, Kommodor. It is securely attached. I inspected the cage myself. It will hold under expected stress conditions.”
Manticore slowed and dropped lower, skimming the upper atmosphere of the planet. As the heavy cruiser passed over the region where the pickup signal had originated, an alert sounded.
“We have the signal again,” the comm specialist said. “A burst transmission. Our systems have localized its origin within a twenty-kilometer radius.”
“Can we see anything?” Diaz asked, chewing his lip.
“No, Kapitan,” the senior specialist reported. “There is dust and atmospheric interference.”
“What about the indications of subsurface activity?” Marphissa asked.
“They ceased while we were still approaching the planet, Kommodor. We are detecting nothing artificial on the planet at this time except for the pickup signal.”
“The enigmas are hiding, as we hoped, trying not to betray any sign of their presence. Take us around one more time,” Marphissa ordered Diaz. “Then begin descent into atmosphere, aimed for a point at the center of the estimated position of that signal.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
DIAZ nodded, eyeing his display as one of his hands moved to set the location for the descent. “I will transfer full control to the maneuvering systems in twenty minutes, Kommodor.”
“Comm specialist,” Marphissa said. “Be prepared to contact the source of the pickup signal.”
“Yes, Kommodor,” she replied. “I have the necessary commands already loaded and ready to transmit, but it is likely the Syndicate battle armor will refuse to link with our systems, and the people down there may not know how to override that. But we will be able to establish a voice link and use that to precisely establish their position.”
“Excellent.”
Marphissa leaned back, trying to look relaxed and confident, as Manticore finished most of another orbit and began braking, lowering her velocity to levels her hull would withstand inside the planet’s atmosphere. The heavy cruiser dropped toward the planet, her path a long curve heading downward and around the globe toward the point where the signal had originated.
Kapitan Diaz sat, both hands gripping his seat’s arms as if trying to ensure he would not reflexively enter a manual maneuvering command. “If I pretend our display is just zooming in on the planet’s surface,” he said, “it’s a lot easier to handle than if I think about us actually going this deep into atmosphere.”
“We’re barely moving,” Marphissa heard one of the specialists whisper to another. “Look. Our velocity is being measured in hundreds of kilometers per hour.”
“Try the link,” Diaz ordered the comm specialist.
She entered the command. “We’re not getting a link back, Kapitan. Request permission to go to voice comms.”
“Permission granted.”
The specialist began sending. “Whoever is requesting pickup, we need you to establish your position by answering our transmission. Comply. We require a signal to find you. Comply.”
After several iterations, an answer came, weak and riddled with static. “Almost out of power,” the reply murmured. “Three of us. Where is shuttle?”
“Three,” Diaz said in amazement. “Give me the comm link. This is the commanding officer of the heavy cruiser. We do not have a shuttle. We are bringing our unit down to within half a kilometer of the surface and extending a cable. You must go to where that cable reaches the surface and climb into the cage attached to the end.”
“Cannot go far . . .”
“Continue to transmit and we will drop that cable as close to you as possible.”
“We are ten kilometers from the surface,” the senior specialist reported. “But the distance readings are fluctuating.”
Marphissa checked them and laughed slightly. “That’s because we’re traveling over the surface of a planet and what you’re seeing are altitude readings. Whenever we pass over a higher part of the planet the distance to the surface gets shorter for that reason alone, and past that high part the distance gets longer on its own.”
“That . . . is odd to see, Kommodor. Distance to surface now seven kilometers.”
Marphissa looked at the image of the surface below and was surprised by the sensation of speed as the ship dropped lower with a velocity still in the hundreds of kilometers per hour. The mostly desert terrain beneath the warship appeared to be whipping past below at a disconcerti
ng rate.
“Three kilometers.”
“I really hope we don’t have to go to manual maneuvering,” Diaz said, holding his hands back and away from the controls. “I’m afraid to touch anything.”
“Tow cable is being payed out. One point four kilometers remaining to surface.”
“Huge . . . fire . . .”
“That must be what we look like to them beneath us,” Marphissa said, trying to keep her breathing even. “They’re looking up and seeing our main propulsion pointed almost straight at them.”
Thrusters fired on automatic, gently nudging Manticore to try to position the end of the cable at the same point where the signal was now pinpointed.
“Half a kilometer,” the senior specialist said, his voice a little unsteady. “End of cable has made contact with the surface.”
“Get to the cable!” Diaz transmitted. “Can you see it? Get to the cable and get inside the cage. We can’t hold this position very long.”
“Understand . . . comply . . .”
“We’ve got visual,” a specialist announced. “Three figures. Syndicate ground forces armor. They are moving toward the cable.”
The motion of the three figures below, stumbling over broken ground and rocks, felt glacial. “How long are they going to take to get there?” Diaz grumbled.
Marphissa tore her eyes from the three figures and scanned her display for any sign that the enigmas were reacting. But this close to the surface Manticore’s sensors could observe only a tiny part of the planet. “With any luck, the enigma sensors are focused on objects in orbit and can’t see us when we’re this low.”
“One in.” Manticore shuddered, thrusters firing again. “Something shoved us.”