Remnants of Trust

“I think,” Elena told him, “that presuming on an old acquaintance would be incalculably foolish. So I will be a boring mechanic in my reports, and she can check off a box, and she and I can smile at each other with our fingers crossed behind our backs.”

Trust was the biggest casualty of the events of the last year. Elena, despite her years of experience in the Corps, used to trust her superiors to be in the right, at least as far as their intentions were concerned. The loss was a small one, he suspected, but it was a loss all the same, on the heels of far too many others. “Elena,” he began, “you know I—”

A high tone sounded, and the wall readout flashed red. He stood, but across from him Elena was already moving, sweeping away both of their documents with a wave of her hand and pulling up a tactical view of Galileo. Out the window the field dimmed and dissipated into stars, and they hung still for a moment as the ship changed their flight plan. Then the stars blurred and they were in the field again, and if he had not heard the alarm he would have thought nothing had changed.

A priority Central distress call.

All ships in the vicinity, help us.

“Status,” he said tersely. Above his desk, his ship rendered a reconstructed tactical display of a starship similar in design to Galileo, only three times the size: a great sprawling eagle rather than a sparrow. The CCSS Exeter. He stole a glance at Elena, who was staring at the display, her jaw set. In addition to being the Corps ship that had patrolled the Third Sector the longest, Exeter had been Elena’s first deployment. She still knew people who served there.

Emily Broadmoor, Greg’s chief of security and infantry commander, entered the room as Galileo gave status. “CCSS Exeter reports being under attack by twenty-seven Syndicate raiders. Current readings count twenty.”

Twenty-seven. He could not recall ever hearing of a Syndicate tribe so large.

“Additional status is available,” Galileo added helpfully.

Jessica came in, trailed by Greg’s medical and comms officers. He caught her eye. “Give us what you’ve got,” he told his ship, as Jessica moved to stand beside him.

The display animated with twenty-seven small ships, replaying the status relayed by Exeter’s sensors. The small ships spiraled in eerie unison, blasting somewhat futilely at Exeter’s solid hull. Exeter was firing back with external weapons, but her response was sluggish, and the raiders looped and dashed and avoided more shots than they took. As they all watched, one raider split from the others, heading abruptly toward Exeter’s belly. Exeter shot at the small fighter, a single gun, over and over again. She missed each time.

The little ship pitched and yawed like a drunken soldier, and for a moment Greg hoped against hope that it would miss Exeter entirely. But as they watched, it sped up and lurched into Exeter’s side.

Greg’s office was lit by the playback of the massive blast, and when it faded there was a flaming crescent carved out of Exeter’s side, debris flying out of the gap. One-third of the starship had vanished. That the ship had survived to send a distress call was a minor miracle.

Greg’s fists clenched involuntarily as they watched the remainder of the reenactment. He knew it was already over, but he found himself waiting for the battle to go differently, for their gunner’s aim to improve, for some impossible sign that Exeter would recover. Instead, a single raider flew, unmolested, into Exeter’s wrecked side and attached itself like a limpet to the open wound. The remaining raiders kept circling the starship, drawing Exeter’s meager fire. Five of the tiny ships flamed out in the path of the starship’s crippled weapons. Someone with some skill had found their way to the targeting controls.

Or maybe, Greg reflected, thinking of the futile shots before the impact, they were just luckier than they had been before.

A moment later the reconstruction looped back to the beginning, and Greg dismissed it. “Audio?” he prompted.

A voice began to speak, garbled by digital artifacting. “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday,” a deep voice said. Greg recognized Captain Çelik. “We are under attack. Syndicate raiders. We’re down to one gun, no shuttles. All ships in the area, please respond. Emergency. All ships—”

The voice broke off.

Christ.

The Syndicates had never moved so boldly against Central. There were skirmishes, sure—over the past year, there had been a handful of swipes taken at Corps starships, but nothing remotely this aggressive. Their goal had always been theft and escape, not engagement.

What the hell could have prompted this?

But the why of it was secondary for now. “ETA?”

“Three minutes, fifty-eight seconds.”

Too long. “Has anyone else acknowledged the Mayday?”

“The PSI ship Orunmila will arrive in one minute and seven seconds.”

With Orunmila’s help, Exeter might stand a chance. Thank God, he thought, for spiky, suspicious PSI captains. He looked up. “I want two ships on deck for a boarding party. Two platoons, armored. That limpet likely means they were boarded. And Bob, I want a full medical team in with the infantry.” Surely there would be survivors. Surely there would be some hope to salvage out of all of this. “Mr. Mosqueda, I want all comms in and out monitored, and I want to know what they heard before they got hit. Chief,” he told Elena, “you’re on weapons, and watch out for jammers. I don’t know why Exeter couldn’t defend themselves, but if those bastards try that same trick with us, blow them apart. Commander Lockwood, you’re with me. I want this over fast, everyone. We’re not losing anyone else.”

He watched them disperse, all efficiency and purpose, and tried not to imagine the crew of Exeter, not three minutes earlier, doing exactly the same thing.

CHAPTER 3

Elena ran down the hall, thinking back to the last time she had been in a firefight. The battle had been on a much smaller scale, but the odds had been overwhelmingly against her, and the outcome had been far less certain. Strange how little she remembered of the actual shooting. Most of her memories were of her companion: levelheaded, experienced, strong, and good-humored, even in the face of what had seemed like certain death. He had stood with her, unwavering, despite the fact that she had brought him all of his trouble, that he had known her only a day. Here, diving into a fight to save what was left of Exeter, she thought of how invulnerable she had felt when she was with him, how she could fight anything. She let the memory flood her bloodstream, leaving her cool and determined. You’ve done this before. You can do this again.

She entered engineering, her eyes sweeping over her crew. They were already at their stations, subdued but composed, even the new kids who were dumped on Greg before they left Earth. She tried to remember how many battle drills she had done with them. She tried to remember if battle drills had helped her at all the first time she had been shot at. She didn’t think so. Real-world battle had little to do with drills, and everything to do with who you were underneath.

She would have spared them this early test if she could.

Ted Shimada, her second, was waiting to take her aside, pulling her away from the others before she could reach the main weapons console. “What do you think we’re facing here?” he asked, his voice low enough to keep the others from overhearing.

She studied his expression. Ted’s reputation as a clown was not entirely undeserved, but she had known him for more than ten years, and she knew his clowning masked a sharp and observant mind. He was one of a short list of people whose judgment she trusted absolutely, and the only one—with the possible exception of Greg—whom she would trust to look after her engines. He would have noticed the same anomalies in the replay of Exeter’s hit that she had.

“Your paycheck and mine says the bomber was a drone,” she replied, “although whoever was remoting the thing didn’t know what they were doing. Most of the others are drones, too, but based on the flight pattern I’m guessing those are autopilot.” That would give Galileo a tactical advantage; autopilots in drones that size were almost always less imaginative than human operators.

“Especially with most of those Syndicate bastards too cowardly to risk their own skins hitting a Corps starship.” His jaw worked, and he looked away from her for a moment. “Shit, Lanie.”

“Later, Ted.” She put her hand on his arm, just for a moment. “Let’s get them out of this first.”

Easy enough to say.

She turned to the weapons console, taking in the bank of green indicators. She could see, in her mind, over and over, the replay of Exeter’s destruction. There might be survivors—if the ship’s environmentals had survived to seal in the atmosphere—but there would be many, many dead. And she would know their names.

Not now.

She heard the engine’s harmonic change as the field generator began to spin down, and then Greg’s voice over ship-wide comms: “All hands, enemy engaged.”

They dropped into normal space.

She had expected to see Exeter, to be facing its destroyed underbelly, burned and twisted metal over the exposed bones of the ship’s structure. Instead, she saw a massive, unfamiliar flat bulkhead scattered with lines of windows, and a swarm of those Syndicate drones firing into the dark hull. She glanced over at the generated tactical view to find they had emerged on top of another ship, larger and bulkier than Galileo, its graceful, hybrid lines identifying it as the PSI ship Orunmila. She beamed a silent thank you to its captain. If Orunmila had not been so close, she was not sure they would have found anything left of Exeter at all.

“Launch shuttles,” Greg was saying. “Emily, draw those snipers off the PSI ship. Galileo, head to Exeter’s other side.”

Galileo moved upward until she cleared Orunmila, then sped opposite the PSI ship to Exeter. Elena watched Galileo’s troop shuttles appear on the tactical readout. Exeter was still fighting, albeit with only one weapons bank—automatic defenses, or did they have crew left to man her remaining guns?—but the bulk of the raiders were focused on Orunmila. Elena frowned. “Why aren’t they protecting the boarding ship?” she asked.

And then she saw it.

Their flyby allowed her an unobstructed view of the raider that had attached itself, leech-like, to Exeter’s charred hull, and she swore when she saw where it was clamped. “They’re over Exeter’s generator battery,” she said grimly, her comm open so Greg would hear as well. Galileo couldn’t shoot at the raider, because taking out that ship would take out the generator, triggering an explosion that would then take out Exeter, Galileo, and Orunmila—not to mention irradiate the travel corridor for weeks.

“I see it, Chief,” Greg said. “Anything from Exeter at all?”

“Their comms are all dead.” But they were still firing that single gun, and making more shots than they missed. She didn’t think their traumatized automated system would be making such accurate shots. Surely there were still people inside, alive, fighting. People who could handle invaders on foot.

Then again, maybe it was only wishful thinking.

Elena saw half a dozen drones peel off Orunmila to follow Emily’s shuttles as they docked on Exeter’s intact side. Ted tracked and shot two of them, and Orunmila three; the shuttles handled the last one, maneuvering themselves against Exeter’s dark hull. “Stay on them, Ted,” Elena said, but Ted was ahead of her, taking out every drone that angled for an attack. One of the raiders caught the wing of one of the shuttles as it docked; she winced, but the shuttle fired in return, and the drone disintegrated in a silent flare.

Who’s hurt? Who’s hurt? Who’s hurt? But there was no time for that now. “Galileo, what’s the status of the limpet?”

“Engines are on standby,” Galileo said. “Internal atmosphere and gravity normal. Field generator running two-thirds above recommended levels.”

She switched her comm to the captain. “Greg, bring us around by that attached ship.”

“We can’t fire on her,” Ted warned.

“Not until she detaches,” Elena agreed. “But when she does, she’s going to rabbit. She’s half spun up already.”

His eyes widened. “A ship that small? She’ll pull herself to pieces.”

“And save us the trouble,” she said grimly. “She’ll need to pull away from Exeter to build the field without the whole thing going up.”

“Not a suicide mission, then.”

“When have raiders had the nerve for suicide?”

He threw her a nervous grin, and hovered over the tactical readout. “Galileo, target that ship. As soon as she’s minimum safe distance from Exeter, take her out.”

“Minimum safe distance is undetermined,” Galileo said calmly. “Calculation depends on unknowns.”

Galileo meant cargo, and possibly fuel levels, not to mention potential booby traps. “Manual targeting, then,” Elena instructed, meeting Ted’s eyes. “Watch that ship. Watch how it flies. If we assume they want to survive, they won’t take a risk. There’ll be a tell.”

She hoped she was right.

“The limpet is powering up,” Galileo said helpfully.

“Ted,” Elena began, “keep your—”

Before she could finish, all of the remaining drones turned in unison toward Galileo, and, like a flock of southbound birds, began flying with determined speed directly toward the ship’s midsection.

She swore and fired, Ted next to her doing the same thing, but there were too many of them. Galileo’s weapons caught drones, over and over: twelve, eleven, ten … but they were firing too slowly, and her mind’s eye saw Exeter: one second whole and intact, the next second flaming scrap. All those people dead, and here she was now with her own people, just the same …

… and the great, alien shape of Orunmila rose between Galileo and the oncoming raiders, so fast that fully five of them immolated themselves against her hull. Elena trusted the PSI ship’s pilot to do her job, and kept firing, her eyes flicking among the remaining raiders, watching them flame into nothing one by one.

“The limpet has detached,” Galileo said.

Four raiders.

Three …

Two …

One.

“Status of that ship!” she shouted.

“FTL field is powering up. Entrance in three seconds.”

It was too close. The risk of discharge against Exeter’s remaining power sources was huge. So much for no risk, she thought, furious with her mistake. They would not be in a position to take a solid shot anyway; if they caught the ship as the field was enfolding it, they might all get pulled to pieces.

Galileo spoke again. “Orunmila is targeting the raider.”

Blindly, Elena opened a channel to the PSI ship. “Orunmila, you can’t fire on that ship! Exeter’s generator battery is on that side, and the field—”

But it was too late.

Elena watched, helpless, her eyes leaving the tactical readout to look out the window. She saw the small bright projectile speed toward the escaping raider as the raider began to glow that familiar blue-white, the sharp edge of the developing field becoming defined around it. Maybe it would escape, and Orunmila’s shot would go wide, dispersing itself harmlessly into the vacuum.

I don’t think this is going to be that kind of a day.

The shot connected, and Elena held her breath … for nothing. The field folded cleanly around the Syndicate ship, and it vanished.

An unfamiliar voice came over Elena’s comm. “Galileo, this is Orunmila.” The woman’s voice was warm and melodic, her accent subtle, all soft consonants and low vowels. “We fired a tracker. Our apologies for alarming you.”

Suddenly Elena could breathe again. “Our apologies for doubting you,” she replied. “And thank you.”

“And you, Galileo.” The connection dropped, and it was only in the silence that Elena wondered if that musical-voiced woman had been Greg’s irritable Captain Shiang.

Elena flew Greg, Jessica, and three computational experts in a shuttle designed to carry four. Ordinarily Jessica would have made an acidic joke about the close quarters, but Elena’s usually irrepressible friend was silent, her normally sharp green eyes watching absently out the window as they approached Exeter’s carcass.

Which is what it is, Elena kept telling herself. Despite the oxygen and gravity still intact in pockets. Despite the fires still sputtering out from the shattered systems that still had a power source. A full third of the ship’s structure was gone; the rest of her could have been in perfect shape, and Central still would not have elected to repair her. Exeter was fifteen years old, near the end of her expected life span; but even a newer ship would have been decommissioned and listed as scrap. Despite their reliance on technology and science, the Corps was not without its institutionalized superstitions, and nobody would ever knowingly serve on a ship that had lost a battle like this one. Exeter, just that morning humming and perfect and home to four hundred people, was as dead as if there were nothing left of her at all.

Elena had been bitterly unhappy during her deployment on Exeter. Her escape to Galileo had felt like fleeing a prison. But she had friends who had stayed behind, had thrived, had loved the place as their home, just as she loved Galileo.

She fixed her eyes on the schematic of Exeter that the shuttle had superimposed over the front window, looking for an open docking conduit. She avoided the urge to look over at Greg. She knew he was worried about her, but he would never say anything in front of the others. He knew all about her experiences on Exeter—well, almost all—and he understood the curious attachment that came with one’s first deployment. He would know she was upset, too, know she wanted to run through the ship and find out how many of her friends had died. He would also know she would not indulge the wish, that she would do her duty to the best of her ability. And he would count on her to tell him if she couldn’t cope, even knowing what the admission would mean to her.

She was recognizing more and more often lately how well he knew her, despite all the ways he did not know her at all. A year ago, before she had learned she knew nothing of him at all, the thought would have been comforting.

Greg commed Commander Broadmoor shortly before they docked. “Where are we?” he said.

“We’ve got thirty-seven survivors so far,” the security chief told him. “No raiders yet. There are dead spaces between us and Control that we’ll need to physically bridge. And the core is silent, which means we’re stuck on external comms. The faster we can get past that, the easier it’ll be to sweep the ship. Do you have Lock—uh, Commander Lockwood with you? We could use her expertise.”

Up until seven months ago, Jessica had reported to Emily Broadmoor, and the security chief still sometimes forgot to address her with her new rank. Elena had been worried, in the beginning, that Emily would resent Jessica’s being promoted over her, but as it turned out Commander Broadmoor was pleased. “Amazing hacker,” she had confided to Elena, “but as a subordinate? What a pain in the ass.”

Elena docked the shuttle, and one by one they lowered themselves into what remained of the CCSS Exeter. The corridor was dark apart from the dim light coming from the shuttle, and she pulled a loop of emergency lights from her toolkit, pressing the glowing blue strip to the wall. Here the corridor was untouched, the wall and floors undamaged, the only evidence of injury the stillness and the dark. She could hear the hiss of the environmentals, but none of the mechanical hum of the engines. Which made sense, she realized belatedly: the engines were gone. The environmentals were likely running on batteries, and she struggled to remember how big a bank Exeter carried. “The systems won’t last more than twelve hours,” she told Greg, doing the math in her head. “We need to pull some emergency packs over from Galileo.”

He commed back to their ship as Emily came around the corner, a dozen infantry flanking her. She gave them a crisp salute, and turned immediately to Jessica. “Think you can get us talking, Commander?” she asked.

Elena and Greg left the technical people to their work and moved to the infantry. These were combat soldiers: broad, well-muscled, and well-armed, and Elena hoped they would be superfluous. Greg picked off half of them and put them under Elena’s command. “I need you to get down to engineering,” he told them, “or what’s left of it. Chief, see what you can find there, if there’s anything we can postmortem. And I want to know what that limpet left behind at the entry point. The quicker we can identify the tribe, the quicker we can shut the bastards down.” He met her eyes then, for the first time since they had been sitting in his office idly writing reports. Ten minutes ago? Five? “You stay on the line, Chief. Understand?” He didn’t wait for her answer, but turned to frown at the infantry. “All of you. Thirty seconds goes by without someone telling me what’s going on, I’m assuming an emergency situation and we go after you, weapons hot.”

Nods all around. Elena stepped into the group, feeling oddly slight despite being taller than four of them. She knew what worried Greg: Exeter had almost certainly been boarded. And without knowing why the raiders had come, they had to assume something—or someone—had been left behind.

CHAPTER 4

Exeter

Guanyin had never been on a Central ship before. Captain Çelik had offered once, when she was just twenty-one and in the early stages of her training with Chanyu. She had desperately wanted to go, but Chanyu had politely vetoed the idea, and Çelik had not asked again. Now, wandering Exeter’s dark, unfamiliar corridors, she wished she had pushed the point, had seen what this lifeless, colorless structure had looked like when it was functional. She might have been able to lead the mission without feeling like she was walking through a tomb.

She had eight of her security people with her, including Cali, who was following a resentful three steps behind. Cali had expended a fair amount of energy trying to convince Guanyin to stay behind, beginning with stating her value as the ship’s captain, and eventually resorting to referring to her pregnancy. But that was not what had made Guanyin shut her down. When the appeal to Guanyin’s maternal instincts had failed, Cali had gone for politics.

“You step on a Corps starship, you’re sending a message,” she had said, in front of the assembled landing team. “You’re implying alliance. Commitment. Never mind Captain Çelik—have you thought about what their command chain is going to think?”

This, she thought, is why you will never be anyone’s first officer, Cali. But even as the rational thought was running through her head, she lost her temper completely. “Who are you to tell me I should leave them to their own devices?” she had snapped. Aida’s head had come up when she said it, and she realized he had never really seen her temper before. A learning experience for him, then. “They are in trouble, and like any other ship in trouble we will help them. And we, Lieutenant, means me.”