Forged in Space Read online

Chapter 2

  Picking his way along the maze of corridors toward the maintenance department, Jack noticed how neglected some parts of the Scorpio were. The ship was functioning, but some areas were ignored with its military manpower being stretched. In one corridor, Jack noticed a small leak in one of the bundles of pipes that ran along the top of one wall. The dark, sticky liquid that leaked out in one lazy drop splashed into a large puddle on the floor, and the smell of stagnant water filled the corridor. The pipe had clearly been leaking for a long time.

  If the leak had had a significant detrimental effect on the functioning of the Scorpio, no doubt a maintenance technician would have been dispatched to deal with it. In another time, the leak would have been fixed immediately to preserve the fabric of the ship, but not now. The maintenance department clearly had more pressing matters than one minor leak. It looked unsightly and was a symptom of the general degradation of the military due to the war with the Chitins.

  Jack turned a corridor and realized he was lost. He looked this way and that in the hope of spotting a familiar sight. There were no signs here at this junction, only series of faded colored lines that had once directed foot traffic through the ship to some location or another.

  Jack had only been aboard the Scorpio for a week and he had only been permitted to use certain areas of the ship. The bunk stacks, the mess, and the Marine deck where the entire Scorpio Marine battalion assembled for parade.

  Jack paused in this corridor. It was empty. He could hear no voices or footsteps, only the distant hum of the ship’s power cells and the drip of fluid to the puddle below. The Scorpio was a large ship, one of the original twelve fleet destroyers. They were massive ships second only in size to the fleet’s three enormous, city-sized carriers.

  Jack realized he couldn’t stay lost for long, even on a ship this size. He picked a color from the lines on the floor and followed. Yellow was good, it reminded him of the fields of home, when he had had a home, before everything changed, before the Chitins.

  At the next junction, Jack found himself at a three-way crossroads. The corridor went on, the yellow line moving forward along the corridor. Other lines ran left and right along the corridor that cut across the one he was in. And in one corner of the junction was stairway that gave access to the deck above and below.

  A crewman came walking along the corridor, seemingly in no rush.

  “I’m looking for maintenance,” Jack said as the crewman approached.

  The crewman rolled his eyes and brushed past Jack.

  “Can you point me toward the maintenance department?” Jack asked.

  The crewman grabbed the handrail of the stairway and started up the stairs. “We have a maintenance department?”

  Jack thought about following the crewman and pestering him for help.

  “Thanks for your help.” Jack called after the crewman sarcastically.

  “Any time,” came the echoing reply.

  Jack stood at the junction and looked at each option. He guessed he could stand there for a bit longer and hope someone willing to help came along. Or Jack could pick a direction and walk. Big as the Scorpio was, it wasn’t endless. Sooner or later, Jack would come across the right department. Down looked interesting.

  The corridor below was dark. All lights were out. Further along, a light flickered on and off. “Guess I’ll get to see plenty of faulty wiring working maintenance,” Jack said aloud.

  Voices echoed along the corridor. And then Jack heard the sizzling sound of someone cutting the ship’s composite bulkheads. It sounded like a maintenance crew at work, so he walked toward it. In the next corridor, Jack found himself splashing through a large puddle of dirty water. The whole corridor smelled damp and echoed with the sounds of splashing water. The voices grew louder. Jack heard a loud shout of frustration and swearing.

  Jack turned the corner and saw a three-man team working on a system behind the composite bulkhead. All three were looking through a hole cut through the corridor paneling.

  “We can’t just patch it there. Once the system kicks up, the whole conduit will rupture.” One of the three was speaking, his head fully inside the hole. He wore maintenance coveralls with a Master stripe on the sleeve.

  “We haven’t got a replacement on board,” the second, taller man said. The top half of his coveralls was tied by the sleeves around his waist. A grubby vest that had once been white was stretched over his tight gut. He stood behind the master and was looking inside.

  The third was a youth, just recruitment age. He had long hair and a fine wisp of hair on his top lip. He held an electron scalpel, activating and deactivating the fine blade and staring at it.

  “We can install a pneumatic pump at that conduit...” said the man in the grubby vest.

  “The gunners are going to want to aim the damn things as well, Slim,” said the master. “It’s no good. We are going to have to fabricate a new conduit. Strip out that old loader in the secondary aft airlock and...” The master drew his head out of the hole in the wall and saw Jack.

  “Not enough work for the Marines to do any, is it, dough head.” The master looked at Jack.

  “Maintenance?” Jack said. He spoke so quietly, the words trapped in his throat. He mentally kicked himself for not speaking up more forcefully.

  “Yes,” the master said. “I’m Doyle. What do you want, Marine?” Master Doyle spotted the boy playing with the electron scalpel. He carefully took it from the boy and handed it to the tall man.

  “Don’t tell me, you are the new maintenance crew? A one-man crew?” Doyle turned to his tall colleague. “I ask for relief for weeks and then they send me a kravin’ headache. You ever held a wrench, dough head?”

  Chapter 3

  Master Doyle led the way back to the maintenance department. He sent his tall colleague to the secondary aft airlock at one junction, then walked through the maze of corridors with Jack and the boy who had been hypnotized by the blue electron blade. In one corridor, a wall opened out into a large hangar. It would have been big enough for a game of interdepartmental football if the area wasn’t filled with work benches and the many large pieces of free-standing equipment. At the far end of the hangar, Jack saw one member of the maintenance crew working at a bench.

  “Where is everyone?” Jack asked, thinking the rest of the department were out fixing the many minor problems the Scorpio seemed to have, not to mention the general untidiness he’d seen about the ship.

  “Slim is in the secondary aft airlock stripping out some materials. The kid never leaves my side.” Doyle jerked his head toward the youth. “Reyes is over there working on our pet Chit.” Doyle pointed at the figure at the workbench in the distance. Doyle noticed the shock on Jack’s face. “Don’t panic, soldier. It’s strapped down. It’s not going anywhere. And neither are you. And now we are four. Four maintenance technicians and about a thousand square meters of destroyer to look after. If you thought this would be easier than life in the battalion, you are even more stupid than you look, dough head.”

  “I didn’t ask to come here, sir,” Jack said. “I was sent here.”

  “Someone must really hate you,” Doyle laughed. “And don’t call me sir. I’m not an officer. Call me Doyle. Or Oily.”

  “Or shithead,” the boy said.

  Doyle turned suddenly toward the boy. “What?” he growled.

  The boy cowered, lowered his gaze, hunched his shoulders, and backed away. “Slim calls you shithead.”

  Doyle reached out, grabbed the cowering youth by his coveralls, and dragged him close. Doyle laid a big hand on the boy’s smooth cheek. “That’s not a nice thing to say.” Then turning to Jack, “Call me Doyle. Now, what can you do, soldier?”

  “I fixed a drone once.”

  “Saints and mothers bless us all.” Doyle raised his hands and looked up. “Someone useful for once.” He pointed to a bench in the middle of the hangar. “That drone needs a new AI. Strip one out from the junk pile—” Doyle pointed to a distant pile of j
unk. “—and fix up that drone. Fire control wants to blow it up when they test the port side battery later so they don’t need it to be pretty, they just need it pretty quick.”

  Jack looked at the drone and the junk pile, then back to Doyle and the boy who stood fully in Doyle’s shadow.

  “Do you need a manual?” Doyle asked Jack.

  “No. No, thank you,” Jack stammered.

  “Thank you?” Doyle growled. “Thank me when they send you back to the battalion to get shot up.” Doyle pointed again. “Drone! AI! Work! Now!”

  Jack opened the drone AI service hatch and hooked up the diagnostic tool. The AI was dead. Jack remembered working on AI systems in university, one module a week for a half session on Thursday mornings. He’d picked up the basics. The interior of this drone was old and untidy. He tested the surrounding components to check it wasn’t a short or that a new AI wouldn’t automatically blow once installed.

  The maintenance hangar was quiet. Doyle and the boy had left and only Jack and Reyes remained. Reyes was dressed in a coverall with a large protective head-guard. Jack looked over and saw a long tentacle writhe up off the work bench in front of Reyes.

  “Our pet Chit,” Jack said to himself. He’d thought Doyle was messing with him, but it looked as if it were true. Another long tentacle, an unmistakable Chitin tentacle, rose off the bench, coiling back up and dropping.

  Jack walked over to the pile of scrap to try and dig out an AI unit. His eyes were drawn every time a Chitin tentacle rose off the bench. He looked across the junk pile and spotted a few junked systems that would have AI installed. He checked a broken power suit. The AI unit was functioning. It was lower grade to the standard drone AI, but if it was going to get shot up anyway, what did it matter?

  From the corner of his eye, Jack saw three Chit tentacles suddenly animate and thrash around violently. Reyes was backing away then moved quickly toward the Chit.

  Jack remembered the first time he’d seen a real life Chit close up. He remembered how hard they were to stop, even with a pulse rifle. Reyes seemed in control until a tentacle lashed out and struck Reyes’s head-guard. He fell and the three tentacles writhed and thrashed on.

  Jack ran over to the fallen Reyes. He avoided the thrashing tentacles and reached out to help Reyes. The technician was already standing up and reaching out to a control panel that was wired to the Chit.

  “Kravin’ feedback problems every kravin’ time,” Reyes said and then punched a button on the panel. The Chitin’s writhing tentacles flopped down hard. Reyes pulled the head-guard off.

  The first thing Jack noticed were her cheeks, flushed red with frustration and anger and effort. Then he noticed the thick brown hair falling out of the head-guard to tumble over her dirty coveralls. Then he noticed her brown eyes staring at him.

  “Who are you?”

  “Jack,” Jack whispered.

  “What are you doing here, Jack?” Reyes asked, turning to the Chitin.

  “I’m the new maintenance guy. Who are you?” Jack heard his question and realized he sounded like a lovestruck kid, not a battle-hardened Marine. He blushed as he realized that was exactly what he was.

  Reyes was a few centimeters taller than Jack and few years older. She was clearly clever and bold, and she filled her coveralls in a way that made Jack interested and uncomfortable, nervous and keen.

  “I’m Reyes. Sarah Reyes.” She unzipped her coveralls and pulled it off her shoulders. She tied the arms around her waist. Her t-shirt strained over her chest as she heaved a heavy sigh and studied the Chit. “And this is Fido, our new pet.”

  “Is it…dead?” Jack leaned in for a closer look

  Reyes grabbed a bottle from the bench behind and popped off the cap. “Something in there is.” She tipped her head back and drank greedily, water spilling out of the side of her mouth and trickling over her sweaty skin. “I think what we know as a Chit—” She poked the fleshy tentacle. “—is just an exo-suit of some kind. The actual Chitin is in there somewhere.”

  Jack stepped up and looked at the instrument panel wired to the Chit. Cables were strapped on and stuck into the Chit at various points. “You sure it’s dead?” Jack asked.

  Reyes nodded and took another drink.

  “Where did you get it?” Jack asked, touching one of the tentacles.

  “We captured it when we were attacked at grid three-five-eight. A Kraken, a small Chit craft, attached itself to the hull and cut in. We had a dozen of the bastards running around. This one was killed. Doyle had it brought here.”

  “The ship was boarded?” Jack asked.

  “Yeah. They took five people.”

  “Took them? Where?”

  “Oh, they didn’t get very far. The captain shot them down when they tried to get away. You see, they wanted to study us. It was a smash and grab raid, right. But they ended up giving one of them to us and now we can study them. You know, they say they must be intelligent because their weapons are so much more powerful than ours, but I’m not so sure. A bird isn’t more intelligent than you because it can fly, right? It’s just an ability.”

  Reyes pulled her coveralls back over her shoulders and grabbed her head-guard off the floor. “Unless you want Doyle kicking your ass all up and down the Scorpio, you better get busy with something.”

  “I’m fixing that drone,” Jack said enthusiastically, hoping to impress the intriguing Sarah Reyes.

  Reyes pulled on the head-guard. “Have fun,” she said and then stepped up to the Chit and the control panel. “Don’t let me keep you.”

  But Jack was not going to be able to get away from Sarah Reyes, no matter how far he went. There was something about her he couldn’t get out of his mind. He backed away slowly, watching her, mesmerized by her every move.

  Jack eventually made it back to the drone and attempted to bury himself in work. He would show her how good he was by making this drone work even better than it had before, even if it was only for a few moments before it was incinerated or fragmented by the Scorpio’s guns.

  Working in maintenance was going to be harder than he had feared, and more exciting than he had thought it could be.

  Chapter 4

  The holostage at the center of the command deck showed the Penthus system. The gas giant, scaled down, sat at the center of the display. The planet’s three major moons were displayed at their relative positions around the giant. The Scorpio appeared on the edge of the holostage projection, scaled up to be visible.

  Captain Pretorius stood at the edge of the holostage, with Commander Chou to his right. The display screens at the operation stations around the command deck flashed various details of the Scorpio’s status. Some were manned, but many were given over to AI. The command deck had once been a busy hub, the beating heart of the ship, and Pretorius had been at its center. Now, the crew was depleted to a virtual skeleton staff. Pretorius had taken over jobs he had once delegated to his command officers. Now his command staff consisted of Commander Chou and himself. AI was able to monitor data and give alerts. AI could throw out a strategy quickly. Human conversation was slow and clumsy, but Pretorius trusted the ideas that emerged from the mess. Trusting his ship and his crew to a computer was not in his nature.

  Pretorius knew of a captain of a corvette who had dismissed his entire command and had taken over direct control of all operations, linking with his AI through a neural processor. It worked for a fighter or a cruiser pilot, but Pretorius didn’t think it suitable for a battleship.

  “All stop.” Captain Pretorius looked at the Penthus system as Commander Chou issued the orders to flight control to bring the ship to a full stop. Chou was a capable commander and would soon have his own ship. Pretorius trusted him to take the necessary steps to take care of the ship. The captain didn’t have to order the activation of gun batteries and active scans. Chou ordered it.

  It was too much ground for one ship to cover. Only a few years ago, even a brief scouting mission would have been done by a flotilla, consisting o
f a destroyer plus several frigates and corvettes, and possibly even a carrier if there was a hint of danger. Pretorius was not going to take any risks.

  “Launch surveillance drones, Mister Chou. Launch them all. Full spread. I want to see around every corner.”

  “Aye, Captain.” Chou issued the orders, tapping his info panel on the holostage and sending messages to AI through his neural processor. The holostage image around the Scorpio lit up as a dozen fine orange lines spread out from the Scorpio, marking the flights of a dozen surveillance drones. They moved swiftly away from the ship, extending the sensor range and giving a line of sight to the far side of the moon Kratos.

  Pretorius watched the drones move away. It would be hours before he had even a fragment of information on the Penthus System. Kratos was his target, but Chitins could be hidden anywhere. There were two other major moons, and several minor moons that were no bigger than some asteroids. There was also the gas giant itself. The Chitins lived in the atmosphere of the gas giant, Zelos, and there was no reason not to believe that a Chitin craft could easily park within the upper atmosphere of Penthus.

  The Chitins themselves could not exist in that atmosphere as they could in the clouds of their home world any more than a human from Eros could exist in the cold, thin atmosphere of its sister world, Eras. But a Chitin craft could quite conceivably hold station in the upper atmosphere. Pretorius eyed the holographic representation of the giant with suspicion. First, he needed to verify that the nearest moon was clear of enemies. Then he would check the next, and then the next. He would keep a watchful eye on the swirling clouds of Penthus. The Chitins always attacked from cover, and the Penthus system had plenty of cover.

  The first of the drones achieved a position to give a sensor reading from the far side of Kratos.

  “Far side of the target is clear, Captain,” Chou reported.

  Pretorius tapped on his console and focused in on the target moon. He positioned the moon at the center of the display and fed all live data to the image.