B
Black smoke spread from the sites of the initial bombardment, whipped into gray whirlpools by stratospheric winds. The urban regions were now a charred black blending seamlessly into the barren Archaean landscape. The invisible swaths cut by the neutron bombardment would be cleared of what complex life remained. This world had been cleansed in a way, restored to its original primeval state. Soon, the ice and wind would reduce the ruins to dust, clearing the path for new settlers to begin the struggle again.
A few nuclear weapons and neutron bursts can only nudge the course of planetary evolution, but are a cataclysmic reply to human folly, Liu thought with a sense of resignation.
Relativity hung in geosynchronous orbit over the silent ruins of Gamma Centauri c, a massive edifice that was but a speck of dust hanging over the planet’s equator. The Peacekeeper traced a rapid, precessing orbit far below them, its own giant frame dwarfed by the swirling clouds and massive ice sheets of the planet.
“Open audio channel to Relativity, IR,” Sanchez commanded.
>Audio channel open.
“This is Peacekeeper, Commander Sanchez speaking. Relativity, respond.”
Infrared comm flashes appeared in the corner of Liu’s sensor vision.
“This is Relativity, Colonel Meng speaking.”
Sanchez breathed a sigh of relief.
“As you know, Colonel, we were damaged due to the auditor’s… recklessness. Orbital repair services would be most helpful.”
A few more tense seconds of silence, seemingly longer than what light delay would require.
“Colonel Sanchez, where is your auditor now?” Colonel Meng asked timidly.
Sanchez’s face was an inscrutable mask devoid of emotion, but Liu saw the minuscule twitch in his jaw, a telltale fracture in his composure. The entire CIC held its breath. A wrong word now would result in their collective and instantaneous death by nuclear fire, rather than the simple, personal death of an execution.
“The Auditor,” Sanchez began, his voice a carefully modulated blend of grief and authority, “is a casualty of the same recklessness that damaged our ship. Her zeal to purify the planet overrode safety protocols. She is in stasis, her condition critical. We are, all of us, victims of that overreach.”
He let the statement hang, a masterful play. He wasn't denying her presence; he was re-framing her, from an active authority to a helpless casualty.
The IR link flashed again after an agonizing pause.
“A casualty,” Meng’s voice was flat, devoid of the earlier timidity. She was testing the story, probing for weakness. “The Ministry of Internal Affairs will require a full accounting. Loss of a MIA auditor is rare.”
A dull ringing began in Liu’s ear. The stasis pod. A Neuronet scan would show the nitrogen purge, not battle injuries. He and Grayson had disabled that chamber’s scanner for emergency purposes, but it could have restored its own function by now. Any routine scan over the decades-long return trajectory would sentence them all to certain death.
Liu’s mind raced, the terrifying clarity from Auditor-72-A9-M5’s unfortunate demise returning. His fingers flew across his projected keyboard, a flurry of commands visible only to him and the ship’s AI.
>Private message. Commander, Executive Officer. Severe damage was sustained during the purification protocol. Datalogs of the stasis chamber may not be accurate. All logs should accurately reflect the real situation. Our survival depends on it.
He knew that Sanchez and Grayson understood the implication.
Sanchez paused for only a fraction of a second before giving his reply. “We understand, Colonel. All logs will be reviewed by the Ministry. We have nothing to hide.”
Another pause. Then, Colonel Meng’s voice returned, dull and cold.
“Understood, Peacekeeper. We will render assistance. Note that your ship is now under the observation of the Relativity.”
The audio channel was terminated. An immediate threat was solved, but a new, more insidious noose was being tightened. They were no longer just mutineers hiding a body. They were a wounded animal, being circled by a wary hunter waiting for them to stumble.
“She wasn’t so tough when the auditor was still… healthy,” Sanchez sneered resentfully to himself.
Sanchez turned from the comms, his eyes finding Liu’s.
>Lieutenant Colonel Grayson, have stasis chamber logs been reviewed for complete accuracy? Sanchez queried on Neuronet, seamlessly holding a mental conversation between the three with the most power to hold the conspiracy. Liu held his breath, hoping that he could use his authority to change the scan settings, erase the logs, do something, anything.
>Commander Sanchez, I have successfully recalibrated the scan settings on the stasis chamber and ensured record accuracy. There may have been some slight damage to the most recent logs, due to the immense stress placed on the ship during purification.
Liu and Sanchez almost smiled simultaneously, but quickly restored their composure. Their relief was manifested as less than a millisecond of a microscopic facial tic.
Another encoded IR flash came from the Relativity to the upper corner of Liu’s sensor feed.
>Relativity to Peacekeeper. Requesting diagnostic files.
This was a routine request after a battle and suffering damage, but the entire CIC looked tense. A dull ringing began in Liu’s ear. They could only hope that Grayson’s more accurate files were a better representation of their wishes.
The encoded IR data stream to the Relativity ceased. For a moment, there was only the silent flow of particulate radiation from the planet's scarred surface. Liu reoriented himself and focused the Peacekeeper’s sensors on the Relativity. It was a nearly inert lump of metal, with only a faint residual infrared and neutron glow emanating from its auxiliary reactor.
>Acknowledged Peacekeeper. Files received. High neutron flux and thermal damage. Burning to match orbit and render assistance.
A few brilliant, pale purple flashes lit on the Relativity’s flank, almost eclipsed by the radiator fins. A long, infrared rich tail of heated plasma and gas extended behind them, glowing like a mythical dragon’s tail. A new vector solution painted itself on the holographic central display.
"Commander," Liu said, his voice tight with anxiety. "The Relativity is initiating a descent burn. They're coming down to our orbital altitude."
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A mixed symphony of relief, confusion and fear rippled through the CIC. Help was coming. But Sanchez, Liu, and Grayson saw the true geometry of the maneuver.
"It's a cage," Sanchez sighed, slowly emptying his entire breath from his lungs.
Every pulse of the Relativity’s reactors was a precise burst of deceleration to nudge itself down from its commanding geosynchronous perch. By matching orbits, the Relativity could more easily transfer personnel and parts, but it also bound the two ships together. The Peacekeeper could no longer wait for an opportunity to strike while eclipsed by the ruined planet.
Colonel Meng wasn't just being helpful. She was applying a textbook doctrine for handling a potentially compromised vessel: Get close, provide assistance to ensure stability, and remove all avenues for treachery.
The Relativity settled into a lower orbit over the course of the next day. It was a vast, dark sibling mirroring their path over the burning ruins. Warning lights, panels and sensors running lights were finally resolvable as distinct shapes, not just sensor pixels. Small reorientations from its reaction wheels and tiny bursts of its auxiliary reactor engine brought it to rest relative to the Peacekeeper, with both ships rapidly orbiting over the planet. Liu instinctively looked away from the blackened ruins passing below him in what seemed to be slow motion.
>Peacekeeper. Confirm reactor status again to ensure safety of repair operations. Major Hernandez’s authoritative voice rang out in everyone’s Neuronet.
>Reactor diagnostics, Grayson commanded. The Peacekeeper’s AI responded immediately as if nothing had happened in the past few hours.
>Neutron flux: negligible
>Residual radioactivity: 1.2 Sv.
>Surface temperature: 339 K
>Electromagnet offline.
>Ga channel structural integrity loss in reactor Plate R-120-5.
>Gross optical misalignment in final laser waveguide
>Relativity deploying logistics robot REL-R-1. Initiate navigation beacon.
>Acknowledged.
A small burst of infrared appeared as a transient plume of warm gas. The skeletal frame of a repair robot began drifting across the last few kilometers between the two behemoths at less than walking speed, perhaps around 2 m/s. At that pace, the final kilometer of its journey would take over half an hour. An interlocking spool of flat titanium-graphite links unreeled in its wake.
On the tactical display, its trajectory was a shimmering, predicted green line, constantly tweaked by faint puffs of gas. The margin for error was a circle with a radius of just 1 meter. Any deviation outside that circle would trigger an automatic abort, wasting hours of deployment time. Liu Yang held his breath as the robot slowly glided across the vast chasm between the two battlecruisers. He could feel a faint, high-frequency vibration through the bulkheads as the reaction wheels made last minute microscopic adjustments. I just hope Grayson can handle this maneuver after the recent situation, he thought.
>EVA team, report to cargo airlock 3. Get ready to secure logistics exchange, Grayson commanded over Neuronet. Liu looked over at Okeke. He was staring dully into the space in front of him.
“Okeke. Time to go,” Liu said gently. Okeke sullenly nodded his head before propelling himself out of the CIC, the stained wrench bobbing gently in his engineer waist harness.
A rapid radio signal emanated from the robot. Liu instinctively knew it was the automated docking protocol. The Peacekeeper shook almost imperceptibly to reorient itself with its reaction wheels. A dull thud was heard as the logistics robot made contact with the Peacekeeper’s hull. All signals green. The two metal beasts were suspended over the turbulent atmosphere, connected by a gossamer metal web.
Unlike the last EVA, this time there would be no mistakes or the issue of a live repair to worry about. The EVA team dutifully suited up inside the cargo airlock with radio chatter that was almost normal.
>Internal sensors, cargo airlock 3, Liu thought. This was the first time he had dared to use direct Neuronet input for a ship command in a very long time. In a way, it felt liberating to him, as if the ghost of the auditor was finally fading away.
The EVA suit-up sequence was complete and the repair synths were activated. Low wheeled robotic frames with flexible arms electromagnetically glued themselves to the walls, rolling at what would be impossible trajectories in terrestrial environments. The magbooted EVA team marched right beside them.
>Relativity, supplies requested have been sent to you, Grayson broadcast on Neuronet.
>Acknowledged. Sending logistics bots over the tether, a member of the Relativity crew affirmed.
An airlock on the Relativity opened. Fragile robotic frames, laden with standardized closed pallets, crawled along the tether in a train. Their dual-sided wheels were tightly spring-locked to the tether’s guide rail. It was an agonizingly slow transfer, but they had no choice. Liu did not dare speed up subjective time. There was no room for haste here.
After what felt like a lifetime, the pallets finally arrived at the airlock door. The soft, nearly inaudible pumps pulled the air out of the entire cargo bay before the hatch slid open to the abyss. Transfer synths nimbly grabbed the pallets and transferred them to their own frame. Neuronet ID tags immediately tagged them in the EVA team’s minds simply by looking at them. Spare Zr modular plating with premachined microfluidic channels. Diamond final optics. Barrels of backup gallium and water. Extra repair synths. There was even some food. The exact content was unlabeled, but that was irrelevant. Anything was better than more liquid injections.
>Peacekeeper, acknowledge receipt. We are taking back our logistics bots now.
>Acknowledged. Peacekeeper out.
The repair robots rolled away at a near glacial rate on the thin tether between the ships. Without waiting for them to finish rolling away from the tether, the suited EVA team began securing each pallet for long term storage. The engineering synths loaded themselves with supplies, ready to begin the long, arduous process of reactor repair.
“This is more like it,” Okeke remarked cheerfully on the audio channel as they watched the robots and their cargo roll out from the airlock, adhering perfectly to the structural plating with magnetic wheels.
“You did good work in the past few days Okeke,” Grayson said without a hint of irony. “Schaefer, you and Okeke are on synth supervision duty this round. Ride one of the bots out for annealing and plate repair. Everyone else, take a break. If things go well, we’ll do optical alignment tomorrow.”
Normally, Okeke would be whining about the extra work, Liu thought. Yet today he said nothing, instead simply nodding his head into the EVA suit’s internal sensors.
They walked out into the darkness with their robot army as the airlock hatch slid closed with a click behind them. Their magboots locked onto one of the robots rolling down the structural spine of the ship, almost as if they were riding an elevator. The Relativity’s logistics robot had disconnected already and began its leisurely drift back towards its mothership, refurling its tether chains along the way.
Suddenly, they stopped. A synthesized voice called out for orders.
>Engineering synths in place. Ready for commands.
Okeke and Schafer stepped off from the robots and onto the last bits of ferromagnetic plating before reaching the reactor. They secured their harnesses to the truss and waited.
>Synth team. Activate annealing, Schaefer commanded.
The engineering synths disengaged their magnetic wheels and began crawling with their feet on the non-magnetic zirconium plating plating. These were nicknamed gecko feet, pads of synthetic metal wool mimicking the nanoscale hairs of a gecko's. In the perfect vacuum of the void, free of dust and moisture, they achieved perfect molecular intimacy with the plating, clinging to them with the power of van der Waals forces alone. Each deliberate step was a precise process of adhesion and controlled peeling.
As they walked, a faint orange glow emanated from below them as they traced heated paths across the neutron bombarded plating. Microscopic crystal defects were eliminated with fiery temperatures as every square centimeter of the plating was annealed to near its original state.
Occasionally, one of the synths would find a microcrack in the Zr plate with its X-ray backscatter detector. From its tool head, a nearly invisible fiber laser would be focused onto the crack. The spot instantly glowed a searing orange-white. Within the perfect vacuum of the chamber, the heated thin layer of zirconium oxide immediately dissolved, allowing the bare metal beneath to flow. In less than a minute, the fissure was gone, erased as if it had never been, the metal restored to a single, flawless crystalline matrix.
Liu breathed a sigh of relief, looking at Grayson and Sanchez. Nothing had gone wrong. The synths were healing the ship, stitch by atomic stitch. Yet he couldn’t shake a grim sense of foreboding, as if this meticulous repair was just the prelude to a far greater, more final breakdown.
