Wasp Hand Read online

  Perhaps that would split them apart.

  He hadn’t intended that...but the universe did not give a damn about intentions.

  “I would have liked to have seen it with you,” said March.

  “Well.” Adelaide grinned. “Never say never, right? And I did promise to show you the Malborix Woods on Calaskar. I bet Censor would give you a few days before your next assignment.” She leaned over the table and took his hand of flesh. “If we have to wait a few weeks before we see each other...I’m willing to give that a try if you are.”

  “Yes,” said March, and she squeezed his hand. “I’d better finish up. Vigil, how long before we reach Vesper’s World?”

  The Tiger’s computer pseudointelligence responded with a cool female voice. “We will reach the terminus of our hyperspace tunnel in the Vesper system in fifty-seven minutes, Captain March.”

  March nodded. “I had better get started on the checklist.”

  “Think we’ll have any trouble in the Vesper system?” said Adelaide.

  “I doubt it,” said March. “But I’ve been wrong before, and I’ve never regretted being prepared and careful.”

  “That’s a good attitude,” said Adelaide as March stood. “I’ll be in here working on my book.”

  March frowned. “Why not do it in your cabin?”

  “Sound system’s better in here,” said Adelaide. “A girl can’t write without music.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” said March, getting to his feet. He couldn’t imagine writing a book. It sounded as enjoyable as cleaning every toilet and sanitizer booth on the Tiger by hand. And at least if March did that, he would have clean toilets and sanitizer booths at the end of the process.

  “Hey,” said Adelaide. “Wait a minute.”

  March stopped and looked at her. “Yeah?”

  She jumped to her feet, gave him a quick kiss, and sat back down. “That’s all. As you were, Captain March.”

  March smiled and left the galley, heading for the flight cabin at the bow end of the dorsal corridor. The flight cabin was a small, narrow room, with four stations – the pilot, the co-pilot, the engineer, and the tactical officer, though in an emergency all ship functions could be controlled from any station. March took his usual place at the pilot’s station, his body sinking a little into the foam and acceleration gel that cushioned the chair. The displays came to life, charts and text scrolling across the displays, while holograms of blue light shimmered into existence.

  “Vigil,” said March. “Let’s get going on the hyperspace exit checklist.”

  “Acknowledged,” said the pseudointelligence, and March worked through the standard checklist for exiting hyperspace. He made sure that the fusion drive and ion thrusters were ready to operate, that the inertial absorbers and the gravitics were fully functional, that the radiation and kinetic shields were ready. March also made sure that the Tiger’s armament was ready to be charged – the four forward-facing plasma cannons, the railgun, the dorsal and ventral laser turrets, and the stern-mounted flak launchers. He didn’t anticipate trouble at the Vesper system. It was well within the boundaries of the Kingdom of Calaskar, the colony had a space station with several starfighter squadrons, and the Royal Calaskaran Navy regularly sent patrols through the system.

  Nonetheless, March had never once in his life regretted preparations.

  He had done this checklist a thousand times before, with Vigil running diagnostics to double-check his results, and March found his mind wandering back to Adelaide. God, he really was infatuated, wasn’t he? Almost certainly Censor would have another task for March as soon as he brought Adelaide and the relics back to Calaskar. He thought about what Adelaide had said, how she would wait for him to return between missions. Would such a relationship work? March wanted it to work, but bitter experience had taught him that one rarely received what one wanted.

  His life had not prepared him for this. He had no living family, and his longest previous relationship with a woman had only lasted a few months, and that had been eight years ago. That fact had never troubled him, but it bothered him now. It bothered him because March realized that he wanted Adelaide in his life, and he wasn’t sure he had the skills to do that.

  Well, he would just have to improvise.

  It was almost a relief when Vigil began the final countdown. It was a welcome distraction from his doubts.

  The hyperspace tunnel would deposit them at the outer edge of the Vesper system, beyond the orbit of the system’s second gas giant. From there it was a five-hour flight to their next hyperjump point, which would take them to the Antioch system and the core systems of the Kingdom of Calaskar. March toyed with the idea of stopping at Vesper Station, but he quashed the idea at once. The Tiger had sufficient supplies and spare parts for the rest of the trip. If there were any Machinist agents or sympathizers on the station, they would not hesitate to kill Adelaide and try to steal the relics in the strong room. The mission had to take priority.

  Maybe he could come back with Adelaide someday, and they could visit the colony and see the mesas together.

  Or maybe he was just fooling himself.

  March listened to Vigil count off the last seconds of the hyperspace transit, and when they reached the terminus point, he grasped the hyperdrive levers and cut power. The Tiger exited its hyperspace tunnel and returned to normal space. March triggered a sensor sweep, reaching for the navigational controls to start Vigil on calculating the next hyperspace jump.

  Red text flashed across a half-dozen displays.

  “What the hell?” said March.

  “Proximity warning!” said Vigil. “Multiple craft detected, configuration unknown.”

  “What the hell?” said March again, staring at the sensor displays.

  He did not know what to make of the readings that appeared on his screens.

  March was familiar with hundreds of different starship configurations, both human and alien, and he had never seen ships like the ones that appeared on his screens. For that matter, Vigil’s databases contained information on every class of starship currently known, and thousands of different models of starships going back all the way to the first colony ships to leave the solar system of primeval Earth.

  In the years that March had been flying the Tiger, the ship’s pseudointelligence had never once been unable to instantly identify a class or type of starship.

  “Accessing archival records,” said Vigil. “Search underway. Stand by.”

  March stared at the images on his screen, and disturbing facts pushed through his surprise.

  The ships were not actually ships.

  They were registering on the sensors as life forms.

  He had fought and destroyed Machinist starfighters, and he always thought that the fighter craft of the Final Consciousness looked like ugly cybernetic insects. The six ships the Tiger’s sensors now picked up looked like actual insects, albeit alien and misshapen. The largest of the ships was the size of a corvette of the Royal Calaskaran Navy, and the five smaller ones were a little larger than a heavy fighter. All six ships looked a bit like wasps, their hulls greenish-gray and adorned with strange patterns of red lights. Something about their appearance made March’s skin crawl. He realized it was an instinctual reaction, like the revulsion at seeing a decaying corpse or a carrion feeder.

  It was also a reaction to the unknown, and the readings on the insect-like ships were bizarre.

  Most starships, whether human or alien, used defensive energy shields to screen out debris and radiation. The Tiger didn’t detect any shielding on the insect-like ships, but it registered a powerful gravitic distortion around each vessel. It was so strong and so specific, in fact, that it ought to serve as a defensive shield. To judge from the radiation levels, some of the strange bumps along the organic starships were weapon emplacements, probably some sort of plasma-based weapons.

  What the hell were unknown alien ships doing in the Vesper system?

  No, not unknown. March had
seen them somewhere before. Not that he had ever encountered them, but he had seen ships like that. Something historical, that was it. March did not have much interest in history, but he had seen ships of that type in a video or a book about ancient history.

  “Database search completed,” announced Vigil. “Vessels identified. One Eumenidae scoutship and five Eumenidae interceptor starfighter class organic vessels. Extremely dangerous. Defensive measures recommended.”

  “Eumenidae?” said March. While Vigil had been searching, he had been preparing the ship for battle, activating the kinetic and radiation shields and powering up the weapons. He did recognize the name Eumenidae. An alien race called the Eumenidae had waged a terrible war against one of the ancient human civilizations, either the Third Terran Empire or the Fourth, March could not remember which…

  The door to the dorsal corridor hissed open, and Adelaide stepped into the flight cabin.

  “Jack?” she said. “I saw the weapons power up. What’s...”

  She froze as she saw the sensor displays, and fear went over her face.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “The Wasps. That’s a Eumenidae scoutship.”

  “Wasps?” said March.

  Adelaide filled in the history for him.

  “It was the Fourth Terran Empire,” she said, seating herself in the co-pilot’s acceleration chair. The displays powered up as her fingers flew over the controls. “The biggest, most powerful, and most technologically advanced interstellar empire that humanity ever built and the Wasps destroyed it. The Eumenidae came out of nowhere and destroyed it. Their nestships conquered thousands of worlds and killed decillions of people. The Fourth Terran Empire fell, and the last imperial admiral rallied the fleets and destroyed the Wasps, burning the worlds they had conquered to ashes. He became the first Emperor of the Fifth Terran Empire. But there hasn’t been a Wasp ship seen in human space for thousands of years. There has never been a Wasp ship seen in Calaskaran space.”

  “What are you doing?” said March, glancing at her fingers as they danced over the controls.

  “Um,” said Adelaide. “Taking over as tactical officer and co-pilot. Jack, if those Eumenidae figure out we’re here, they’ll try to kill us.”

  His first impulse was to order her out of the chair and back to the galley.

  But...she knew what she was doing, didn’t she? The records that Censor had given him said that Adelaide was a qualified starship pilot, and she had piloted the Shovel to Xenostas and back to Rustbelt Station. Given that she had traveled to Xenostas with a crew of graduate students, professors, and video producers, she had likely done the bulk of the piloting work. And she had handled the Shovel well during the battle at Rustbelt Station, though the big freighter had been overmatched by the heavy starfighters the Graywolves had sent after her.

  March made up his mind in a split second.

  “Right,” he said. “Start working on firing solutions for the weapons. Focus on the fighter-sized craft.”

  “On it,” said Adelaide. Her voice had returned to the cool, controlled tone he had heard during the firefights at Rustbelt Station.

  “Vigil,” said March. “Start calculating an emergency hyperjump out of here.” He set the dark matter reactor to cycle at once, charging the hyperdrive with dark energy. “One light minute in any direction away from the Vesper system.” It wouldn’t take much dark energy to manage a hyperjump over such a relatively short distance, and they would be close enough to the Vesper system’s star to minimize the risk of navigational error.

  “Acknowledged,” said Vigil. “The hyperdrive will be ready for an emergency jump in two minutes and twenty-nine seconds.”

  That was longer than he wanted. The Eumenidae ships hadn’t noticed the Tiger yet, but that wasn’t going to last.

  “Jack,” said Adelaide. “What are we going to do?”

  That was a good question.

  He started to tell her to do a tactical scan on the alien ships, but she had already started it. She really did know what she was doing.

  “I’m going to do a full dark energy scan of the system,” said March, keying in the scan. “The Wasps...they use dark energy to travel through hyperspace?”

  “I think so,” said Adelaide.

  “That will give us a complete number of Eumenidae starships in the Vesper system,” said March. “With that and the tactical scan data, we’ll head for the Antioch system and tell them what’s happening. The Royal Navy can send a task force to deal with the Wasps.”

  “It might be too late for that,” said Adelaide. “If there’s a scoutship here, they might have a nestship heading for Vesper’s World. If a nestship gets to the planet, it’s too late. The Royal Navy will have to burn the planet from orbit...”

  Tactical alerts flashed across March’s displays.

  “They’ve changed vectors,” said March. The five starfighter-sized ships were turning towards the Tiger. The sensors picked up gravitic fluctuations around the ships, along with radiation levels consistent with plasma weaponry. “Get the targeting solutions up. Switch the laser turrets to point defense and target the plasma cannons and the railgun at the fighters.” March swung the Tiger to face the incoming fighters, feeding power to the fusion drive and the ion thrusters. “You know what kind of weapons these things have?”

  “Plasma weapons,” said Adelaide, tapping at her controls as she fed him firing solutions. “Missiles. Except they’re not really missiles. All their technology is organic and...here they come!”

  Each alien fighter fired a pair of missiles, the projectiles homing towards the Tiger. At least, they seemed to accelerate and function like missiles. The Tiger’s sensors registered them as organic material. March didn’t know what they would actually do if they hit the ship, and he didn’t want to find out.

  “Starting attack run,” he said, spinning the Tiger towards the incoming fighters. The Wasp craft had stayed in a loose chevron formation. “Lasers and the flak launchers on point defense. I want firing solutions for the fighters on the starboard side of their formation.”

  “Acknowledged,” said Adelaide, voice cool and calm. March found himself admiring her cool under fire. But, then, he had known that about her already, hadn’t he? Coolness under fire was something that could only be learned the hard way.

  And she had learned it the hard way.

  The missiles hurtled towards the Tiger, and March banked the ship hard to port, going into an evasive pattern that sent the blockade runner spiraling towards the incoming fighters. Adelaide activated the laser turrets, and they drew power, sending their invisible beams towards the missiles. It proved more effective than March had hoped. Whatever strange organic material comprised the missiles partially reflected the lasers, but not enough to stop their cutting power. The turrets disabled three missiles in rapid succession, and then two more. By then the remaining missiles were close enough that Adelaide triggered the flak launchers, and a cloud of reflective particles blasted out of the Tiger. More missiles slammed into the cloud, detonating prematurely, and other missiles scattered, their targeting thrown off.

  By then the Tiger was close to the incoming fighters. An enhanced visual appeared on one of the displays, and March thought they did indeed look like giant twisted wasps, albeit wasps highlighted with a strange red glow. He wondered if the organic ships had pilots, or if the entire ship was a living creature that controlled its own flight. His other displays lit up as Adelaide fed firing solutions to the pilot’s station, and March adjusted the ship’s vector and squeezed the triggers.

  The Tiger’s four plasma cannons opened up. The Wasp ships broke formation, dodging around the plasma bolts, and one of the fighters darted right into the path of the railgun. The ship shuddered as the railgun spat a tungsten rod into one of the Wasp fighters. The gravitic distortion threw off the vector of the tungsten round, but that only made it more destructive, like a ricocheting bullet opening a larger wound. The shot ripped open the side of the fighter, and the Wasp ship tore
apart in a spray of gas and a thick greenish liquid that froze at once in the vacuum.

  The remaining four fighters scattered and began firing their plasma cannons at the Tiger.

  At least, March thought the weapon was a plasma cannon. The energy discharge crackled up the fighters’ entire hull, and then it burst from the nose of the vessel towards the Tiger. He put the ship into another evasive pattern, and he dodged most of the plasma bolts, but three of them hit the ship, draining away a fifth of the radiation shield’s charge. Those fighters might have only two plasma cannons each, but the bolts hit hard. Too much and the radiation shield would collapse, and the plasma bolts would rip through the ship.

  The best way to avoid that, of course, was to destroy the enemy fighters before they could collapse the Tiger’s radiation shield.

  The ship came out of its spin, and Adelaide sent him a firing solution for the plasma cannons. March squeezed the triggers, and all four plasma cannons spat bolts into the void. This time, his aim was accurate, and the bolts hammered into the nearest Wasp starfighter. The strange gravitic distortion around the fighter scattered the energy of the blasts, and March wondered if he would have to use the railgun to destroy all four of the remaining Wasp fighters. Yet like the Tiger’s radiation shield, the gravitic distortion seemed to have only a limited amount of energy. The distortion faded, and the plasma bolts punched into the fighter, tearing it apart. March adjusted the Tiger’s vector and squeezed the triggers again, using another firing solution that Adelaide sent to his console. A second fighter tore apart in a spray of organic debris.

  The remaining two starfighters scattered, circling around the Tiger.

  “No missiles inbound?” said March.

  “No,” said Adelaide. “But look at those bumps on the side of the fighters. Only appeared in the last two minutes. I think they’re growing new missiles.”

  “Growing?” said March. Right – organic technology. But if the fighters had to grow new missiles, that gave them an opportunity. “Switch the laser turrets from point defense to target the nearest fighter.”