Guardian (War Angel Book 1) by David Hallquist (best contemporary novels .TXT) 📕

getting out of each other’s way with an agility that can only be trained over time. No one’s bothering to look at the half-dressed flight officer trying to seal his suit as he runs along trailing water (I hope it’s water, anyway). No, everyone’s worried about getting to their station in time to stop a possible nuke on its way. If we live, we can laugh about it later.

All around us, I can feel the carrier maneuvering. The Westie is a big old slow thing, barely able to make more than 3 Gs, so it’s easy enough to keep running, but the ever-shifting direction of gravity has me banging into bulkheads as I run down the corridor.

I’m almost at the flight bay when I realize something—I’m wearing nothing under my flight suit. When it pressurizes, it’s certainly going to be uncomfortable. When I’m under high-G, it’s going to be downright painful.

Oh, well…

* * *

In the mech bay, I finish strapping into my frame, and Chimera goes through the pre-flight preparations. Outside, they’re loading us all into launch-guns to get as much extra velocity as they possibly can.

Commander Rackham hits us up with a virtual briefing through our cyber-sensorium. The world explodes into a three-dimensional, detailed depiction of the Earth–Luna system. A series of dots are racing up from Earth’s southern pole on a highly eccentric orbit along a path that’s bending as I watch. We’re a set of dots in a close equatorial orbit.

“A few minutes ago, the four Saturnine ships we were looking for finally showed up.”

Aw, no. Not now. Why does Saturn have to show up now of all times? The enemy can be downright adversarial.

“These are Chronos-class Saturnine heavy cruisers, which have approached in the chaos of the battle with disguised transponder signals. They’ve engaged and destroyed the Lunar cruiser Indomitable, losing one of their own in the fighting.”

Impressive. Either the Lunars are better than we thought, or maybe the Saturnine aren’t as good as we feared.

“Escape craft from the Indomitable came down in the Indian Ocean, and a joint rescue team of Terran and Lunar craft are on the way to pick them up. Another small craft left the Lunar cruiser just before its destruction. Saturnine forces attempted to destroy the unknown vessel, and it’s evaded all enemy fire and is currently accelerating on the way out of the Earth–Luna system.”

The ship is a weirdly smooth and organic-looking thing of almost pure black. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. Maybe the Venusians might build something like that, since it looks grown rather than built, but I don’t think they built it. It looks…alien. Could it be? Is it an extra-solar spacecraft? Look at it move! It could be…the performance on it is certainly unlike anything manned I’ve ever seen. No exhaust trail at all, maybe a reactionless drive is powering the thing…but that’s impossible.

“We’ll launch and intercept the Saturnine cruiser and the unknown craft. We’ll order them to stand down and prepare to be boarded for attacking our allies and intruding on Lunar space. If they fail to comply, we’ll use force to cripple them and board them.”

Board a Saturnine or alien ship? It’s never happened before. They must need the information inside. What do they know about the alien ship? What do the aliens know about this war? Is the whole war over this alien tech, after all?

“We’ll get updates as soon as we know more. Good hunting,” he concludes.

The gravity pours on as we launch out into space.

* * *

We are boosting along at maximum gravity, leaving our fleet behind. There’s no way the Weston can keep up with us, and only the frigates and attack ships can come close to our speed. It still won’t be enough. We’re on an intercept path from the equator, and we’ll come close to crossing paths with the alien—I mean unidentified—craft. We’ll come close, pass, then we’ll get left behind. There’s just no way we can match the performance of that thing. Then we’ll cross paths with the Saturnine cruisers. I’ve been wanting to get some payback from Saturn, but facing a whole cruiser squadron wasn’t quite what I had in mind.

Our whole wing is racing along just above the Earth’s atmosphere. The bright blue horizon of the living world fills the view below us, blocking the oncoming craft. We’ll cross paths with both soon, each going the other way. Then, if we’re still alive after that, we’ll turn around and pursue the Saturnine cruisers, and either get them to surrender (highly unlikely), disable them (also unlikely, but possible), or run them out of the Earth–Luna system.

I focus on my breathing and ignore the way my hastily donned flight suit digs into me. While six gravities for me is nothing, we’re probably going to be doing this for over an hour. I don’t see those cruisers just stopping because we asked them to, so, at best, we’re looking at a long chase.

The alien craft should be coming over the horizon any second now. Somehow, we’re supposed to capture that, too…

Here it comes—that weird, alien ship that we won’t actually call “alien.” It pops over the horizon with no drive flame or exhaust at all. In spite of that, it’s accelerating like mad, swinging around the Earth, using the planet as cover and to help boost it into deep space where we could never catch it. It’s impossible for a ship to accelerate without some kind of reaction. How’s it doing that?

This must be what it’s all about—that ship and its technology. Whoever controls it decides the future of the solar system and all of humanity. A war between worlds has been building up for a while, but this is what’s going to set it all off.

Wing Commander Rackham is warning the alien ship, ordering it to stop. It just keeps coming. We