<OK, let me show you the data I have been going over.>
“On what?”
Geoff smiled as he stared out the window at the unmoving hunk of metal in front of them. He lined up the edge of the window with the end of a scorch mark on the side of the hull. Mal said they were slightly drifting, and he was curious if the movement was noticeable. It was at least something to keep him busy while they waited for rescue.
<I picked up a strange sensor reading, back while we were scanning the debris, an extremely low electromagnetic emission.>
“Right, which was when we stopped the ship and attempted to focus on the area.”
<I think that was the problem. Geoff, we need to get sensors outside of this ship, out of our limited field of view.>
Geoff stopped eating, concentrating on Mal’s words.
“Why?”
<I think this was done on purpose.>
Mal sounded deadly serious, and Geoff could feel his intent over the link.
“Like someone sabotaged the ship?”
A million scenarios ran through his mind as he put down his snack. None of them made sense. It was most likely that this had been an oversight in the rush to get spaceworthy vessels out in the black to help control the damage from the battle. An exhausted engineer performing an inspection was more plausible than a nefarious person out to disable a tug.
Mal was quick to put his thoughts to rest.
<Nothing like that, I think this was an ambush.>
That was an angle Geoff had not considered. Granted, there had been some intense fighting in the area, but it was long over.
“Impossible. There isn’t anyone out here to ambush us.”
<I admit I don’t have a lot of solid evidence, since we don’t have any sensors, and all I can see is the side of the ship in front of us. But here’s what I have so far.>
“OK.”
Geoff got comfortable again, knowing this may take Mal a while. He checked his scorch mark and thought it might have moved. It could also be that his head was a little more to the left than when he’d set this up. He slowly began to see the flaws in his little experiment.
<We are in the middle of a large debris field with both ISF and Orion Guard ships.>
“It’s just ISF ships here. They don’t send us in to recover anything near an OG ship.”
Geoff thought back to the scan data from their initial approach into the area. The nearest OG ships had been a few thousand kilometers away.
<Exactly. So here in the middle of a graveyard of ships, we suddenly and unexplainably lose power?>
“That could be due to any number of reasons. This is an old ship. It’s possible something tripped or shut down that is above my level of expertise. Maybe that was the ozone I smelled in the engineering areas.”
<In the seconds before the power outage, there was zero, and I mean zero, fluctuations in any piece of equipment on this ship. Everything was running exactly how it should have been. Which is why I think this was a focused EMP attack, designed specifically to take us down but not out.>
“EMP was my first thought as well, but after the suit came online, I figured that wasn’t possible. Could it be that some ship nearby lost containment, and we got hit with a pulse blast?”
<Possible, but I saw nothing on the sensors that would indicate such a thing.>
“But you were focused on the debris, trying to figure out that contact.”
<Focused, but not ignorant of everything else around me. What if they wanted us right where we are, pointed in this specific direction?>
“Starting to sound complicated.”
<Not really. It would be fairly simple to pull this off.>
“How?”
<First, you find a position for the ambush. Somewhere the ship won’t be able to be scanned from a distance.>
“We are on the wrong side of this ship for Recovery One to be able to pick up us visually.”
<Correct. If this was Orion Guard, they may have been watching our recovery procedures, so they’d know we would do a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree flyby before we moved an object. They could take a very low emission power source and put it on a small piece of debris. Maybe only a square meter in total. Once placed, they could set the debris on a slow spin, and when we are in position, activate the signal.>
“Small power source, rotating so the debris blocked its signal. I could see how that would appear intermittent.”
<Once they got us in position, I am guessing they fired a focused EMP. That would explain almost everything. All the electronics are down, and there is no sign of physical damage.>
“Not all the electronics. My suit is still functioning.”
<Exactly why I think it was a focused EMP. If they fired it at the engineering section, that would guarantee a ship kill. Just about every conduit on this ship runs through there. It also explains why your suit is still functioning. If it had been connected to the ship, the effects of the EMP would have traveled through the connection, frying the suit.>
“Shit.” Geoff sighed. “What, you think some OG crew is out here watching us? Trying to take one last ship down?”
<Think about it, Geoff. You’re on a destroyed ship that is part of a now nonexistent fleet in the aftermath of an unimaginable battle. Best-case scenario is that the enemy finds you and you spend the rest of your days as a prisoner. Worst-case is you slowly die in space as your suit begins to fail. With those options, people become desperate, and desperate people are dangerous. At this point, your only hope is to capture an enemy ship. You have to find some piece of enemy wreckage to hide on until a ship comes around to check the area. S&R procedures around the galaxy are pretty standard, so they knew there were some areas of wreckage we would have to scan closely. You can’t expect the ship to just take you in, as they would have the ability to immediately isolate a rescued enemy. This means you’d have to assault the ship. Think of the skills and determination needed to maneuver through thousands of kilometers of a debris field to identify a section of a ship that the enemy would deem valuable enough to look at. Right here, there are three sections of a ship, which are mostly intact and would have been the most populated and critical. No matter what, we would have had to come scan these. >
“That command module was a mess of debris that could have weakened the sensor returns, forcing us to take a closer look at the area. Plus, there would be a lot of good hiding spots in there.”
Geoff’s eyes popped open as he had a realization.
“I don’t think this is just the regular crew of a ship. This is their equivalent of at least a Marine strike team. They have the skills to identify critical areas of a ship, and the ability to navigate long assault drops. The most likely case is some kind of special operations group. Hell, maybe they were over here attempting to breach one of our AI-controlled ships in order to get our tech.”
<Now you’re getting it. Look at how we are set up. This is a perfect ambush position. They are in the sensor shadow of a large piece of debris, which gives them a place to work unnoticed, both setting the trap and assaulting the ship. They have intact sections of a ship around them, virtually guaranteeing that some vessel will come here eventually.>
“All of this takes some serious tactical knowledge and some genius level planning to pull off in such a short amount of time. Maybe that’s why they fucked it up.”
<I don’t think that is the case.>
“We got hit with an EMP. Whatever they set off for their trap completely killed the ship. Plus, this ship can’t enter the dark layer; it’s just an insystem tug. Seems like a pretty big fuck-up to me.”
<Geoff, think about this. What’s the one thing you need for a trap to be effective?>
“Bait.”
<Right, and we’re it.>
A PLAN
STELLAR DATE 04.06.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: ISS SO211A
REGION: Orion Guard Debris Field, New Canaan System
The scorch mark Geoff had been watching s
uddenly moved a few degrees to starboard at the same time he heard a loud bang from the hull.
“What the fuck was that?”
He let the last of his snack drift away.
<Sounded like an impact. I’m not picking up anything suggesting an air leak.>
Geoff began cycling through all his available sensor feeds. Everything was looking just as it had a few seconds before, with one change.
“OK, I see it. Looks like a chunk of hull plating nicked us. Probably just aft of the cockpit; at least that’s what I think, based on the rotation we picked up.”
<Geoff, I need you to move the sensor closer to the window and try to keep a low profile.>
“Why, what’s up?” He began removing the sensor box from the bulkhead where he’d ‘mounted’ it earlier. He hadn’t done that good of a job, so he wasn’t surprised when he was easily able to take it down.
<I thought I saw something and I want to check it out. See if you can get me aimed toward the starboard window. Keep me low so I can see at a pretty high angle.>
Geoff went back to the area around his seat, only slightly embarrassed at the amount of litter floating around the area. He stayed low to the deck and angled the sensor suite so it was looking out of the window. From this different vantage point, he could see the bottom of the command section.
He could also see someone moving on it.
<Shit.>
“Yeah, I saw him too. Big dude, armor, setting up some kind of crew served weapon.”
Geoff knew Mal’s earlier words made sense, but it was only just now that the gravity of the situation hit him. Mal was right, they were being set up as bait.
<Geoff, this is bad. We need to warn someone. We need to get our communications online.> As Mal spoke, his words came faster and faster.
“How? Everything is fried! Short of going outside and screaming, I am out of options.” Geoff realized as he said this that he wasn’t helping the situation.
Mal was already starting to show signs of panic, and Geoff probably wasn’t all that far behind him. Sure, he’d spent a long time in various military organizations, but only as a shuttle pilot, and even then, usually just ship to ship. It wasn’t the most exciting career in the military, but it kept him safe and allowed him to fly every day.
<Geoff, get me back to my original position.>
Geoff moved Mal back to his original position, looking out of the main window. He tried to secure the AI using the same tape as before, but was having limited success.
<OK, yeah, this will work. Our rotation has a bit of roll to it. Get back to the NSAI closet now.>
The way Mal said ‘now’ let Geoff know he needed to move, and quickly.
“What am I doing in here?” he yelled when he got to the closet.
<First, we are going to disconnect three of the batteries and get all of the cabling pulled out of that run that you can. We are going to need a lot of it.>
“What’s the plan, here?”
He already had panels off the bulkhead and was yanking cable out of the run, glancing back every now and again to make sure none of the lights on the NSAI node went out.
<We’re going to make a one-time burst transmitter and send a signal back to Recovery One. We need to warn them.>
While Geoff was pulling cables, Mal was running calculations to determine the best way to build a makeshift antenna. He was also calculating their rate of rotation and desperately looking for a way to get this off the ship without the Orion Guard soldiers seeing them. If they did, it could have disastrous consequences for Geoff and himself.
“Sounds great, but aren’t we missing something? You know, like an antenna and a working radio.”
Geoff had a sufficiently large pile of cable next to him. He was no engineer, but he knew enough to read the cabling diagrams on each access panel—it was basic knowledge all pilots had in order to make emergency repairs. This time, though, he made especially sure to pull cable from only non-critical systems.
<I can walk you through it later, but suffice it to say, we are going to need one of the NSAI nodes. I am going to reprogram it to transmit a message at full power using the antenna we are going to build. The batteries should give it enough juice to get the signal out.>
“It’s better than sitting here waiting for this shit to go down and doing nothing. Where do I start?”
Mal rushed Geoff through the construction of the antenna and receiver. While he was instructing the pilot on what to do, he was also reprogramming the NSAI to send the message, composing the message itself, and calculating various launch angles and rates of departure. He had quite a few variables in his plan, and he needed to get a few more measurements before making his final adjustments.
Geoff finished assembling the device while Mal was still reprogramming the NSAI. Like most of his work, it left a lot to be desired, but it was functional. A few hundred feet of cable had been tightly wound to form a rudimentary antenna, and the batteries had been spliced into the NSAI’s power supply. All of the pieces were held together by a liberal application of bonding paste. Mal admitted that the signal may not be completely readable, but if anyone looked at the direction it was coming from, hopefully they would realize sentients were still in the area and had not reported in yet.
Geoff had his suit fully sealed and was in the rescue airlock looking at the sealed outer door in front of him. Mal’s plan didn’t sound too solid to him; it seemed like it counted on a lot of guesswork.
“Mal, I’m in position.” He looked over his shoulder at Mal’s only working sensor, currently wedged in between some conduit.
<OK, good. We have about a minute until we are lined up. As soon as we are on the launch vector, you are going to hit the manual release, venting the airlock to space. How is the transmitter? >
“Still sitting exactly where I left it.” With the artificial gravity out, all Geoff had to do was place the device exactly in the middle of the inner door, and there it stayed. “You sure this is going to work?”
He wasn’t entirely sure himself. There were too many random factors at work here. He gave this plan a fifty-fifty shot of even getting the transmitter out of the airlock.
<Reasonably sure. When the chamber vents, the transmitter will be pulled out to space. Once the countdown expires, it should be at a safe distance, and it will send the transmission at full power for as long as it can. I’m hoping it will play at least twice.>
Geoff grabbed the emergency release lever, ready to yank it down at a moment’s notice.
<NOW!>
As soon as Geoff hit the release, he saw the transmitter fly by, straight out the center of the airlock, just as Mal had predicted.
“Transmitter is away, looks like it flew straight out.”
<Get that outer door closed now! We can’t let them see us!>
Geoff leaned out the side of the craft, as far as his safety tether would allow. He grabbed the edge of the outer airlock door and swung it back into place. Once it was seated, he re-engaged the manual locks.
“Got it! Outer door is sealed. I’m going to hit the emergency release on the inner door. You sure this isn’t going to damage your sensors? They won’t get dislodged when the airlock pressurizes?”
Geoff knew there was going to be a rush of air into the compartment when he opened the door. He was just glad the manual releases for the door were well out of the way and wouldn’t swing into him.
<I should be good. If not, we will have to take another sensor from the NSAI closet.>
“I’m more worried about your smudgy case. When I hooked everything up, I threw some bonding tape on the connection. That extension cable isn’t coming off you without a fight, and I don’t want it to yank you off your pedestal.”
<I’m sure I’ll be fine. Get the door open, and let’s get back to the bridge.>
Geoff again hit a manual release, and the door violently swung in as the atmosphere exploded into the room. He felt, more
then heard, a loud pop as the layers of the EVA suit compressed as air rushed into the chamber. Violently recompressing a chamber like that is not something he would ever want to do without protection.
<Venting the airlock didn’t affect our drift in too noticeable of a way,> Mal said as soon as his sensor cluster was back in place on the bridge.
“No chance of the OGs seeing what we did?”
Geoff was looking out the windows, craning his neck to see all the angles. He didn’t see anyone out there, but that didn’t mean they did not see him.
<I am going to say slim to none. I haven’t seen another once since we caught glimpse of that one earlier. Once he was done concealing that weapon, he just disappeared.>
“You think they would really do something to us if they saw what we did?”
<I’m not sure, but at the least, they would have altered their plan. Wait, did you see that flash of light?> Mal asked suddenly.
The shadows on the side of the ship in front of them changed slightly and lightened, making them appear less threatening for a split second.
“You sure it wasn’t the device exploding? That wiring job I did wasn’t up to any type of code,” Geoff said, before lowering and deepening his voice to a gruff whisper, “whatsoever.”
<I don’t think so; the direction was all wrong. See if you can look to our lower starboard side.>
Geoff maneuvered through the small bridge, making his way to the window.
Before all this, he would have characterized the bridge as cozy and peaceful, but now it just felt small and oppressive. He wouldn’t admit it to Mal, but he wanted to get out of here in the worst way.
“How long will it take the signal to reach Recovery One?”
<No more than a few seconds.>
“You sure about that?”
<Math doesn’t lie, Geoff. Why do you ask?>
“Because there is a shuttle moving into position above us. Are you getting anything on the Link?”
Link devices were hardened against all but the most intense of EMPs. No one had any desire to have a mess of hot burning circuits that close to their brains. However, due to their small size, most Link units had a very limited direct contact range.