Dry, No Lube Ch. 09: Invasion

* * *

"Leith says no change on the contact, ma'am. This is the fifth hour now." That was Bexar, on the commo station since the shift change at 0800: Legette was OOD now, which did not exactly inspire Pixy's confidence. Legette was okay, but she was a little too fond of Crystal. It made her fidgety, but she seemed to be doing a decent job updating the rough courses to the Leith's contact. On a whim, Pixy had the sniffer out, seeking any other Fleet vessel in range to see if it could help out: neither Tirving nor Leith had great speed, so Legette's intercept course was a really far reach.

Almost any other warship would be faster, but so far, nobody was replying to the sniff.

Something on the Plot nagged at Pixy. The aspect and distance of that far contact reminded her of something; a quick search of her implant turned up nothing, though. She thought about polling the bridge crew for their thoughts, but she hated appearing ignorant and it wasn't likely they'd know anything. "Targeting?" she called.

Luzhenka had stayed at her post, which was exactly the kind of officer she was. "Ma'am?"

"Take that contact's course and plug the variables into the known-point indicator program on the star plot. Something about it seems odd. Or familiar. But the computer should be able to give us a full analysis."

To her credit, Luzhenka did not arch an eyebrow, still less roll her eyes. Serving under Pixy Pfeiffer taught bright lieutenants that they should hide their emotions when hearing her whims, not least because her whims often paid off. "Aye aye, ma'am. Might take a few minutes."

"Sure. Send it to my 'slate when it comes through." She twiddled her thumbs, yawning as the bridge crew moved with their usual cluttered efficiency all around her. Nearly three years she'd been here, in command, and that was almost the longest time she'd spent on any ship, ever. And with nothing new on the horizon, either: the word was that Fleet was quite pleased with the success of the P/E concept, but few officers wanted the billets. And, worse, with targets starting to get so efficiently erased, the program might become a victim of its own success.

So what was next for her? She'd been promoted, formally, to full commander just the year before, and Pixy had taken care that nobody on the ship found out. But she was beginning to get that restless sense that, just perhaps, she ought to be politicking for her next job. Juno's sudden reassignment had reinforced that feeling; she had a sense that the Tirving, and Pixy's place on it, might not be the same at all with the steward gone.

She sighed, brooding up at the Plot, that twinkly little contact still not quite behaving like anything she'd seen before, but somewhat... Her mind raged, leg once again bouncing unheeded as she sought for something. She had no idea what until her tabslate winked with Luzhenka's analysis.

The intermittent contact showed an extrapolated relative targeting plot between forty-two and forty-six by eight, with a bearing between times 11.7 and 12.1, at a median range of around three million kilometers.

She gaped down at the numbers, her mind slotting the pieces into place: a long-ago bearing, strange and sketchy at first, but then gaining resolution. A Fleet Bulletin, forgotten in the coding table, with suggested plot values for new contacts. A desperate plan, years back, involving her and Klonmyre tracking and intercepting a Cathos Vremein Disruptor Hive...

Her chair whined as she whirled it around. "Commo!" she boomed up at Bexar, who stared back down wide-eyed, "raise Amisuul aboard the Leith. Tell him I want a snapshot calculation for his contact, using his own sensors with a known-point indicator. Ask him to fucking expedite that shit!"

"Ma'am? A known-point indicator?"

"The program in the star plot!" She swung back around, her mind on fire now, remembering those values from before. The contact was too elusive, too far out of range for Tirving's own sensors to pick it up, but her guess was quickly turning into a certainty, her leg tapping in crazed rhythm. "Tell me what he comes up with the moment he does." She closed her eyes, remembering. "Should be something like forty-five by eight point seven, times twelve bearing, at a range of 3.2 million klicks. Or thereabouts."

"Aye-aye, ma'am." The comms people bent to their consoles as Pixy summoned the OOD with an impatient gesture.

"Go run another intercept course on that contact. Check your math." Legette raised her eyebrows. "Now, please. I anticipate a maneuver soon, using that course. So get it fucking right."

"Yes, ma'am." She hesitated. "Should I have the ship rigged for maneuvering?"

"I don't know. Should you?" Pixy shrugged evenly. "Your captain has just told you we're likely to be maneuvering. We're currently moving at velocity factor nine and you're the Officer of the Deck. Should you have the ship rigged for maneuver, based on whatever disruptions are likely to occur when you change course at this speed?"

She swallowed, then leaned over to key the Mass Intertube. Her diffident voice grated through the ship. "All hands stand by to rig for high-speed maneuvers."

Pixy nodded. "You see? It's fun to make decisions, isn't it?" Had she ever been that tentative, that cautious?

Fuck no.

The tech up on the commo bulb muttered into Bexar's ear, and then the officer gave his report. His voice was a little odd, like he couldn't quite believe what he was saying. "Latest tracking from Leith, ma'am. That contact appears to be almost exactly where you were predicting. Forty-five by nine, times twelve bearing, at a range of 3.34 million klicks." He hesitated. "How did you know, ma'am?"

"That's why I'm the captain and you're not. Because I'm a fucking genius," she snapped. Her leg, once again, had stopped shaking. Her voice cracked out fast, firm commands. "Remind Captain Amisuul of what those numbers mean. Mention the term 'Disruptor Hive.' He'll get it. Then, pass along my recommendation that he redefine that contact as a target. Lastly, advise him that we're about to come around to intercept, and tell him it's my desire that he conform to our movements." She sniffed. "You can get the course from the OOD when she issues the order," she added, with a meaningful glance at Legette, "which will happen very, very soon..."

"On it, ma'am," murmured Legette, bent over the helmsman, and Pixy felt herself relax slowly back into her seat. "Should be a ten-hour transit, depending on the target's movements."

"Very well." The decisions were made. Now it was time to hope the Rabbi was giving Crazy Jack enough boarding information to make him feel comfortable sending soldiers to attack an enemy vessel. "OOD, pass the word for the XO. Time to make some plans."

* * *

"Are you going to tell me why you're so pissy, or should I guess?"

Pixy blinked as she stalked out of her private latrine after a particularly satisfying dump, the stars even more elongated than usual through the hull. Jatsupa had suggested a high-speed course, and she'd agreed; already, Crazy Jack had been living up to his nickname, enthusiastically giving some volunteers a crash course in boarding, even declaring he'd lead them himself as his farewell to his battalion. Pixy had been chuckling, having taken part in the command conference whilst perched on her hydroponic toilet, and she was still enjoying the irony as Juno brought her up short just outside.

The girl had been preening ever since her promotion: Chief Petty Officer at twenty-five was rare, no matter who you were. For someone with a Galactic Medal of Valor, it was unheard-of: most of those people were promptly brought back home as living propaganda monuments. But Juno had pushed to stay out here at her captain's side, a choice that had touched even a heart as cold and withered as Pixy Pfeiffer's.

But this? Too much. "You can put a 'ma'am' after that, Chief, and try again," she rasped, her post-toilet chuckle vanishing.

Juno stood by Pixy's bunk, arms crossed over her slight chest, glaring. "You didn't thank me for your matzoh, earlier," she pointed out stubbornly. "You always thank me."

"Yeah. Well. Thanks for the matzoh, Juno. Is that all?"

The steward rolled her eyes. "This is what I'm talking about, ma'am, you being pissy. You know they've been hounding me to go work for them ever since we were on the fucking Desperado. I can't say no forever, especially with..." She bit her lip and looked away, but Pixy pounced.

"With what?" she demanded. "Out with it. If fucking Rennels is giving you secret-squirrel assassin level intel bullshit through some kind of back channel, I want to know." She felt her lip curl in contempt, the collected thoughts and warnings of the past few weeks picking up ominous speed in her mind. "What's happening? Why does he need you in the Hearth?"

The steward nodded, her face still looking out at the stars. "Yeah. There's a back channel," she admitted at last, quietly, "and this is all I'll tell you: when it happens, ma'am? Stay away from the Core Worlds."

"When what happens, Chief Juno?" Pixy's voice was a grating hiss. "Tell me. What's happening in the Hearth?"

Juno took a deep breath, putting distance between them. "My circuit ship is going to be picking me up in three days," she began, "and it's a special ship. Just for me. Does that tell you how important it is that I accept this new assignment?"

Pixy glared, fuming, knowing she could search through decades' worth of expired manifests before she found an example of a dedicated circuit ship being sent specifically to pick up an enlisted sailor, however senior she might be. "A special ship," she repeated in disbelief.

"Ma'am?" Juno sighed, looking back at Pixy. "The way things are going? The shitstorm that's about to happen near Sol?" She shrugged, never given to hyperbole. "I'm the most important person on the ship."

"Go fuck yourself." It came out without Pixy even realizing it was there, but it did come out. Juno smiled, nodding.

"Yeah. Thank you for endorsing my orders, ma'am, and good luck." She turned to go. "I'm going to start getting my stuff together. Should I pick a new steward and train them up?"

"I'll find my own, Chief." The distance between them was a solid wall now. "Thanks."

"No problem." She turned with her usual catlike prance, gliding from Pixy's quarters without looking back, leaving nothing but confusion and vague fear in her wake.

* * *

"So go over your plan one more time, Major," Pixy sighed, the stimtabs pushing her into the kind of tiredness that, alas, was so normal for warship captains. She sat at her table with McMerckx sprawled beside her and Jatsupa across with Rabbi Bermudo, the four of them looking suspiciously up at the man who'd volunteered to lead the boarding party. Submajor McTivars commanded McMerckx' heavy weapons company, and he looked like the kind of guy who'd left his brain on a counter a long time ago and proceeded, ever since, on nothing but balls and chutzpah.

This is where we're at, Pixy thought bleakly, her gloom starting to prod at the back of her mind. Sending suave, musclebound primates to do critical missions.

"We follow the chaplain's playbook," McTivars shrugged, as though nothing could be simpler than an ad-hoc midspace intercept and combat boarding. "Close on the enemy with one of our landing shuttles. Then you guys hit it with a multipurpose torpedo. We launch a flextube, which bites onto the breach. We float across in the tube and eliminate all resistance."

"Yeah. The flextube." Pixy exchanged a long glance with Commander Jatsupa, the two of them thinking of the lifetime of shuttle mishaps every Fleet officer carried with them. "It's unlikely to bite right away, and might not at all. What then?"

"We back off and you hit the drives. That should stop the ship for another way to soft-dock."

"Okay, and when the bite comes loose while you guys are in the tube, scattering you into interstellar space with no hope of recovery?"

McTivars smiled in a way that made Pixy imagine he thought of that as a good outcome, while Crazy Jack merely smiled. "That's what medals are for, Captain Pfeiffer."

"Jesus H Buddha." She couldn't stop it from slipping out, just as she hadn't been able to keep from telling Wrae Juno to go fuck herself. By the time she got her mouth shut again, she realized everyone was looking at her. "I mean... really? A platoon of untrained soldiers are going to attack an unknown, probable enemy vessel through a half-bitten flextube in lightspace? In, what, spacesuits?"

"I covered that, ma'am," Major McTivars pointed out brusquely. "And it's not a platoon. It's a company minus."

"Oh. Well. That makes the whole plan feasible. That way, we only risk about seventy men instead of thirty." She glanced at McMerckx. "You're good with this?"

He stirred. "I'll be there with them. So I better be." He cocked his head. "Didn't you once abandon a shuttle in near-lunar space and parachute down to the surface with no reasonable expectation of survival?"

She started. "Yes, but..."

"And didn't you once block an enemy rocket with another shuttle, then die when you abandoned that one?"

This time, she bristled. "Hey. Don't dredge that shit up."

"My point is, responsible behavior with shuttles is not always desirable. No?" Pixy sagged back in her chair, realizing he was right: her whole career was largely due to doing stupid things with shuttles. "Look, Captain, you're the one who suggested we do this in the first place. With respect, it seems a little late for you to be hedging now..."

"I know, I know." She glowered at the plot repeater on her wall, scowling. "You're right. Three hours, Major, and we should be within extreme torpedo range. Their aspect suggests they are no faster than us, though more maneuverable. My gunnery officer is planning his torpedo strikes based on that assumption." She sighed. "That tube better fucking bite."

Jatsupa nodded, quietly reciting the shuttle-pilot litany for deploying flextubes. "Pull forward along 20% of the shuttle's length. Match velocities by beam and confirm with target globe. Align explosive sights. Launch tube. Apply at least two thousand Newtons of outboard force to test the bite. Enable soft-dock clamps. Apply inboard thrust for optimum closure, such that the tube has no kink greater than thirty degrees..." He sighed. "I never liked flextube maneuvers."

Pixy nodded. "No one does. Who's your pilot? Better be fucking good."

"Our best guy is a warrant officer named Sheva. He flies our medics around. They're the ones with flextube experience." Crazy Jack glanced at McTivars. "Any other questions, or can we officially start bending this target over and fucking it in the ass?"

"Dry," McTivars shrugged, "and completely without motherfucking lube." He nodded. "Beg your pardon, chaplain."

Pixy exchanged a glance with her XO.

* * *

At the last minute, Commander Laredo actually had a good idea: using the Tygon Interceptors to try to corral the target ship. "Huh." Pixy chewed on the suggestion for awhile, seeking a flaw she could use to yell at her fighter commander, but in the end she had to admit to herself that the plan might help. "You think you'll need all the fighters?" she asked doubtfully. By this time, with just over thirty minutes' anticipated closure, they had a good idea of how large the target was.

"Nah. I'm fine with three." Laredo spent a few more moments on a brief, jargon-filled tirade designed to convince Pixy of how little the captain knew about fighters before ending with a decisive nod. "I'll go coordinate with Commander Leodmannsegge."

"You do that." Commander Asshole was short by now, his transfer orders set in stone, but he was still in charge of deconflicting all the shuttle space. "Launch at the same time the torpedo does. Hang back in case we miss, but as soon as you see it impact, just cut in front and dare him to keep coming. Weapons status green, at that point." Both women scanned the velvet haze of near space, squinting against the starlight. Pixy glanced aside at where nearly every other bridge officer was doing the same. "Anybody see the fucker?" she called out.

"The ship does." Luzheka yawned, then bent back to her viewer hood. "The targeting system is certain it has a perfect fix."

"The targeting system," Pixy declared, "can suck my left tit." She had little faith in enemy ships she could not see with her own eyes. Down below and behind her, in the vast hollow tunnel that ran the length of the ship, Crazy Jack and his even crazier men were already packed aboard their shuttle, doing last-minute rehearsals with the flextube, their spacesuits probably already rank with sweat. She felt nervous for them, in the generic sense, but overall she was expecting them to do well enough if they could get aboard.

For by now, it was certain that the ship they were closing on was a Cathos Vremein, most likely a scout. And the Cathos were not known for fighting well when cornered; they usually let their technology do the talking, but for all that, their scoutships were ludicrously easy to detect and capture. As Pixy should know: she'd grabbed the very first Cathos Vremein disruptor drone, way out on the Perimeter, and brought it back so that humanity could find out who its new enemy was.

"Twenty minutes!" The OOD didn't have much to do here. Every primary officer was on the bridge for this, including both the XO and the captain, so Mr Velzeboer was mostly just strutting around with the telescope under his arm, calling off time checks.

Pixy twisted around with an irritated glare. "You know you can feel free to go hang out in your quarters? Or get a meal? Or hell, you could even go stand a watch in your nav pit, and see how Mr Malavongsy gets this shit done." Of course, it was Subcommander Malavongsy now, a screwup that made Pixy grimace to herself. That was another officer who was short, just waiting on a circuit ship so he could go to some other warship and be an XO. "Just don't stand right behind me and yell, please."

"Sorry, ma'am."

"Don't apologize. Just vanish." She stared out at the starfield, the innumerable pinpricks,, searching for an anomaly: a point of light with no Lerbal parallax, the sign of an object moving at nearly their own speed. Their enemy. Pixy grew more and more nervy as the minutes passed. She could obviously order an attack based on nothing but the targeting system's electronic eyes. She'd even done it before. But it always made her a little skittish. So she peeled away her concerns, her thoughts, leaving her gaze unfocused against the uncaring majesty of space, seeking the difference while trying not to think about the difference.

But it was a junior nav tech called Sverri Fumigoto who finally caught sight of their quarry. "Got it," he rasped from the bottom of the bridge globe. He jabbed a thick finger at the transparent hull. "Right there."

"Eyes on it, Ms Luzhenka, and keep them there!" Pixy called, trying to catch what Fumigoto had seen, and at last there it was: a dimmer twinkle against the billion other twinkles, but this one was sharper than the rest. "There it is," she murmured to the XO. "Got him."

"Looks that way, ma'am." He glanced over toward her, then nodded. "I'll go oversee the torpedo shot?"

"Yes. Go ahead," she gloated, feeling it now: Tirving wasn't even a Fleet combat ship, not the kind meant for intercepting and destroying enemy vessels, but Pixy knew she had this one dead to rights, and she was certain she could take it even if it meant five tries with the damn flextube. She nodded to herself, staring at her target, then glanced again at Luzhenka's riveted face.