Relative Gravity / Chapter 05 (Text)
FENIX
ISS Dominus | Tartarus Sector
By the time Fenix found his squalid new bunk, changed into his insipid command uniform, downed another fistful of painkillers, sprayed his cheek with an anti-inflammatory, and returned to the bridge, they’d matched speed 500 klicks off the unknown freighter’s dorsal side.
Not too close, but well within weapons range. If anyone was actually aboard, they’d be shitting their suits.
The bridge crew was alert but relaxed as he stepped off the gravvidor, though none of them acknowledged him. They'd been putting the Dominus through its paces for months, and while the ship wasn’t ready to invade the Assembly, the crew was. At these short ranges, they had an overwhelming power advantage—not that they needed it, that freighter was in shambles.
He took his spot beside the captain. She didn't acknowledge him either. The first officer station controls sprung up on his screens as he sat down, giving him an overview of the ship's systems and surroundings, highlighting external threats.
His job was to synthesize data and reports from the other officers and provide guidance to the captain, but until now, his screen had never shown him anything more concerning than a clog in one of the mess hall toilets.
A zoomed image of the freighter filled the front wall, and Fenix noticed “Velocity Junkie” written down its side in English. He didn’t even need it translated to jiti.
Fenix cleared his throat. “I can read English,” he announced. “It’s called the Velocity Junkie.”
He glanced around, waiting for the crew to acknowledge his brilliance, but none of them seemed to be listening.
“Thank you, Commander,” Nakayama said, and her tone was more than enough to clue him in that everyone already knew his big revelation. “The translation systems managed that already. A thorough report on the interloper is available on your mission screen, if you’d care to check it. Do you need a refresher on the operation of your workstation?”
“No, sir,” he said, trying to keep the spite out of ‘sir.’
He put his head down and opened the report on his screen. They’d sure got it right putting “Junkie” in the name. It was barely holding together.
The ship was long and boxy, layered with hull patches and reinforcement straps and external cabling. He was amazed it had survived the weeks of acceleration it would have needed to insert at ISCO.
The freighter had only two remotely modern components: the engines, and that gravity lance strapped to the cargo scaffolding on its ventral side. It had already fired the gravity lance once, and a timespace core was zipping around Tartarus.
They weren't cultists, they were pirates, out to snatch themselves a fortune in free energy. But the sensors showed the pirates' containment drive was still hours away from collecting the core.
He almost felt bad for them. All this effort for nothing–less than nothing. It wasn't likely they'd get out alive.
"They don't appear to be armed, sir," an officer announced. His uniform was trimmed in light blue, so Fenix knew he was from tactical. Or security. One of the two. Fenix had talked to the guy hundreds of times over his six months on the ship, had conducted one-on-one weekly meetings with him, but still couldn't conjure his name.
And he wasn't the only one. Fenix glanced around the bridge, unable to put a single name to a face.
All his life he'd met people, all day long, and never saw any of them ever again—he'd stopped remembering names years ago. People were wallpaper, background noise. Something to be scrubbed off at the end of the day.
Except—no, there was Ensign...shit. The pilot. From the shuttle not a half hour earlier. Legrande? Yeardly? He already couldn't remember.
Next time. He'd be sure to remember next time.
He looked back up at the big screen. So far, the freighter hadn't done anything. Didn't look capable of much at all.
"I'm surprised that ship can hold atmosphere," Fenix muttered.
"I'm not taking any chances." Nakayama said, then she turned to the tac officer. "Lock torpedoes and prepare to fire on my order."
The officer nodded, then spun his seat to target the freighter.
Torpedoes? Why use blunt instruments when they had a scalpel on-board? They could cripple the junker with a single precision shot from the plasma cannon, and have prisoners to take back to the general.
He was surprised the captain had missed it. He’d been too eager with translating the freighter’s name, but this was a worthwhile suggestion. This would turn the captain’s opinion of him back around.
He leaned forward, steeled his jaw, and as military as he could muster, said, "Captain, wouldn't the plasma cannon be the better option here?"
She didn't even look at him. "Yes, Commander," she replied, her voice flat, "the plasma cannons would be a better option here, if they weren't off-line for charge-release upgrades."
His temper flared, but he fought his face calm. Why did he even bother?
"Right," Fenix said, and leaned back into his crèche.
"Which you'd know,” she continued, “if you had read even one of the daily briefings you've received in the last month."
He closed his eyes and tried to ignore the quiet judgment radiating out at him. From now on, he'd keep his mouth shut and not speak unless directly spoken to. For real this time.
After an awkward moment, the tactical officer said, "They're sliding into ISCO-1's shadow, sir. If we fire, we risk damage to the mining platform."
“Hail them again," Nakayama ordered the comms officer. "Tell them to stand down and prepare to be boarded. No more warnings."
"Aye, sir," the woman at the comms station replied.
Fenix squeezed his jaw, bounced his foot on the deck. He was already done with all of this. Only, what? Five minutes of playing obedient whelp and he couldn't handle it anymore. How was he supposed to survive a whole year?
He knew the Dominus had a job to do, and that protecting the strategic timespace supply was a top military directive, and blah, blah, blah, but all this seemed like overkill. In the grand scheme of things, who cared about a single timespace core? It's not like Tartarus was in danger of running out.
The gravity lance had been stolen not much more than a month ago, which meant those pirates would have been burning since then—pushing gees the entire time—just to get up to speed and make orbit. Honestly, it was an act of reckless fucking badassery, swooping in and trying to pull one over on the Collective. And under General al-Jarrah's nose no less.
Fenix couldn't help but appreciate the sheer brilliant audacity of it—no matter how futile it was sure to end up. They must have thought they'd be protected by the realities of velocity and distance, too far away and moving too fast for anyone to get close enough to challenge them before they gathered up the timespace and escaped. They hadn't counted on the Dominus making velocity and distance irrelevant. Bad luck on them.
Of course the pirates had to be dealt with. Even if the Dominus' existence wasn't top secret, no one could be allowed to defy the Collective. It was a sign of weakness, and weakness wasn't tolerated.
Fenix didn't much care what happened to the pirates one way or another, but he couldn't help rooting for them. A little, anyway. Enough that he didn't want to see them end their run at the wrong side of a torpedo volley. Though, knowing the general, being captured would be worse.
The general loved making examples out of people.
The pirates must have been thinking the same thing, because a moment later the Velocity Junkie's reorientation thrusters fired and its engines kicked on. It was a fossil, but it could still move.
"They're running," the tactical officer narrated. He paused for a moment before announcing, "They're accelerating at seven-g, dropping out of orbit and heading towards the event horizon."
Well, that was that. No way the captain would follow them towards Tartarus. She wouldn't risk anything happening to the Supreme Sovereign's prize ship. The Dominus could just track them from ISCO, wait for them to realize they were in a no-win situation and pull up, or take the only other option and head nose first into oblivion. Whatever direction they went, there was no way out.
"Inform me as soon as they're clear of the platform," Nakayama said. She was itching for a fight.
No matter how hard they burned, the pirates couldn't outrun torpedoes. They'd have to see that. The only solution was surrender. Still, the freighter continued to pull away, speeding toward the event horizon, maybe thinking they could slingshot around Tartarus, gather speed, and try to escape that way. But there was no outracing the Dominus.
They'd already lost. They just didn't know it.
Though, come to think of it, they probably did know exactly how bad their position was. Diving towards the surface of a black hole definitely seemed like a desperation move.
"I have a clear firing line," the tac officer reported.
This was Nakayama's chance to prove to the general and the Supreme Sovereign exactly how well she could serve the Collective. She was ambitious to a fault, and Fenix knew exactly what she was thinking as clearly as if he'd been inside her head: she'd apprehend the pirates, return the stolen gravity lance, and keep the timespace stockpile safe, earning commendations and plaudits all round. She was probably already imagining the weight of the medal hanging on her chest.
"Wouldn't a torpedo strike cause a debris field that could interfere with mining operations?" Fenix asked, breaking his latest vow of silence only moments after making it. He'd try not to say or do anything blatantly insubordinate, but he knew he couldn't just sit by and let Nakayama earn herself another gold star.
The captain pursed her lips as she considered the question, probing it for any sign of sarcasm or hint of disobedience.
"Target the engines," she told the tac officer. "Low yield. Just enough to hobble them. I want the gravity lance back in one piece and the Assembly pirates alive for the general to execute."
You could say what you wanted about Nakayama as a person, and he had, to her face, but she knew how to succeed in General al-Jarrah's military. Probably figured they'd make her a double captain or whatever.
The Velocity Junkie was diving fast, but with a starting orbit already less than 700 kilometers from the event horizon, there wasn't much room left to hide.
"Even if you do cripple them, we'll need to get a hell of a lot closer to Tartarus to retake the lance," Fenix said. "Are we sure the ship can handle the stress?" He figured the captain would be thinking this already, and hoped the question would reinforce her concern and nudge her to keep their distance.
At this point, it wasn't even so much about the visceral thrill of watching the pirates get away, his concern was pure self-interest. ISCO was close enough.
Nakayama angled her head at an officer with a uniform trimmed in light grey. He knew that one: Operations.
"The ship is more than capable of handling the stress," the ops officer said, probably more for Fenix's benefit than the captain's.
Fenix opened his mouth to object further but closed it just as quickly. While he had a reflexive soft spot for the underdog, and wanted to do everything he could to mess with Nakayama, he was on a short leash.
Underdogs or not, the pirates had got themselves into this. Whatever happened was on them. As far as he was concerned, the quicker this was over with the better. Every second that passed meant they'd need to dive even closer to Tartarus to retrieve the lance.
"Torpedoes locked, sir," the tac officer reported.
"Plot an intercept course," Nakayama told the helmsman. "I want us within boarding range the moment that ship is disabled." Then she pointed to the tac officer and said, "Fire."
