2952-07-24 – Tales from the Service: The Director’s Angels
Ris Bleier struggled to restrain Captain Bermudez, while Giffards and Lund scrambled to divine the nature of the alarms from the flashing indicators and fitfully winking screens of Howard Helios Hughes’s cockpit. “Get ahold of yourself, spacer!” He tried to shake her, but despite her smaller stature, she was nearly as strong as he was; Ris was hardly young anymore, and he didn’t exactly frequent the gyms back on The Sprawl. “What is it?”
“Power surge of some kind in the system.” Giffards seemed to think that the question was for her. “Can’t pin it down.”
“They’ll kill us!” Bermudez got one arm free of Ris’s grasp and lashed out toward the controls, but she wasn’t close enough to touch anything. “We’ve got to run!”
“Reactor readings are normal.” Art Lund hurriedly stood from the copilot’s chair to make room for Rahat Kuriega, who slid into the seat immediately, and helped get hold of Bermudez. “Let’s get her out of here, Boss.”
Ris nodded and the pair manhandled Bermudez down the corridor toward the lounge. Though still breathing heavily, she slumped against Ris and allowed herself to be carried most of the way, limp and unresisting, eyes open but unfocused. They dropped her into one of the thickly padded chairs, and Ris stood guard over her while Lund went to fetch a cup of cool water from the food-fab.
“Whatever it was, it’s settling down now.” Giffards’s voice filtered down from the sound system. “Damned dodgy conduit repairs, probably. We’re running a full system sweep.”
“What about the thermal source?” Ris shuddered, remembering how close they were to a vast derelict more than likely full of alien dead.
“Fading fast.” Kuriega made an uncertain sound in the back of his throat. “Whatever was there isn’t anymore. No sign of it.”
“That thing’s hull is a metal forest.” Giffards broke in. “It could be some sort of hull-walking drone that scuttled off when we had that power surge, and we’d never find it again.”
“External hull drones for repair makes sense, with hulls as thick as this.” Kuriega’s voice grew distant, as if he were imagining how such a device would be constructed. “Fairly autonomous, I’d guess. Maybe enough internal power to live a few weeks after the ship dies.”
“No.” This whispered denial, Ris realized after a moment, was spoken by Bermudez. When he looked back at her, he saw that she had closed her eyes and lowered her head. “It’s a trap. We need to leave.”
“A trap?” Ris bent down to look at Bermudez. She had been unhelpful the entire journey, so he wasn’t going to blindly accept her advice now, even if her words made the hairs on his neck stand on end. “For us? How do you know?”
Bermudez shrugged, but did not respond, not even to raise her head. Lund returned with the water, and Ris left her to return to the cockpit, a frown settling into his face. Had she done more snooping with his agent’s information than was healthy before delivering it? If so, why had she seemed so pessimistic about their chances of finding anything? Or perhaps this was something she recognized from her past adventures?
When he returned to the cockpit, Ris found the alarms silent and the displays once again working normally. Giffards turned around to give her boss an apologetic shrug. “No accounting for the quality of ships like this, I guess. Damned terrible timing.”
“Bermudez thinks this is a trap.” Ris shook his head. “She wouldn’t say why.”
“Reachers setting traps?” Kuriega tapped his chin with his fingers. “I don’t think we’ve ever seen them do anything like that. It doesn’t seem like them.”
“No, it doesn’t.” Ris nodded. He’d re-read several of the most recent Reacher encounter reports in the hours it had taken to approach the derelict so it was fresh in his mind; nothing in human experience painted the Reachers as the sort to set snares for other sapients. “Are we clear to proceed?”
“Around to the hull breach?” Giffards shook her head. “I don’t see why not. But if we’re at risk of another surge, I’m going to take us out to a healthy distance.”
“Agreed.” Ris waved his hand. “See what we can get with the floodlight and the telescopes from a klick or two.”
Giffards pulled back on the controls, and the shiny, fluted metal hull swept out of view. When it reappeared, it was already noticeably further away; they were viewing the Reacher derelict almost directly aft-on. From that vantage, they could see the full extent of the spines and protrusions jutting outward from the hull; they seemed longer and spindlier, seen against the smallest cross-section of the ship itself.
Soon, the damage swum into view for the first time in some hours. Viewed with the naked eye, the gash in the ship’s belly was all the grimmer, and there was no doubt that the bent streamers trailing from this rent were torn pieces of the interior, the once-functional parts of this Reacher ship. Ris could only shudder as he imagined the soft-bodied Reachers themselves bursting like blisters when they were sucked out into the void. How many of these rare sapients had perished? What had happened to cause such devastation?
“Still no activity.” Giffards took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. “Going alongside.”
“Look there!” Kuriega pointed ahead. “Did you see it?”
Ris tried to follow the gesture, but saw nothing. “What did you see?”
“Something moving among the spines.” Kuriega leaned forward. “Small and shiny.”
“Another drone?” Giffards gestured to Kuriega’s console. “Can you get it on the ‘scope?”
Kuriega bent to his work, and Giffards cut Hughes’s drive to make his task easier.
Ris, though he hadn’t seen anything, was beginning to wonder if there was something to Bermudez’s trap theory. A band of pirates hide dozens of strike-craft among those hull spines – and Hughes was, aside from a small laser point-defense turret on the dorsal hull, unarmed. Who was setting the trap, though? And who was their intended prey? Surely it wasn’t a little private-chartered runabout, but what would happen to them if the theoretical ambushers thought themselves discovered?
“There’s another one.” Giffards’s pointed finger dragged Ris out of his thoughts just in time for him to see something bright disappear into the thickest tangle of spines. Whatever it was, it was quick, and it certainly wasn’t attached to the hull. “Free flying. There goes your hull drone theory, Mr. Kuriega.”
“Strike craft analogues?” Giffards shook her head. “We’ve never seen the Reachers use anything that small.”
“Someone must have beat us here.” Ris lowered his voice, though there was no way of being overheard by whoever was flying that small craft. “Someone who is trying to keep a low profile.”
“Bermudez managed to sell the coordinates twice after all!” Giffards scowled. “There’s no telling what those scavengers have-”
“Not scavengers, I think.” Ris turned away. “But she knows something.”
Bermudez hadn’t moved in the time Ris was forward; the cup of water sat on the chair-arm next to her hand, untouched, and Lund was sitting opposite her, glancing nervously up at the cabinet where the first-aid supplies were kept.
“She’s scared, Art, not hurt.” Ris took a chair and pulled it close to Bermudez. “Scared of whoever beat us to this wreck. Which means she knows something.”
“Pirates? Syndicate scavengers?” Lund shook his head. “I’ve seen her dossier. She’s not tangled with any of them, at least, not that left a trail.”
“No. I think this is something in our department.” Ris stared hard at the spacer. “Xenos of some kind she’s run into out here.”
Lund nodded. “Kyaroh, maybe? They’d be happy to pounce on a wreck like this.”
Ris shook his head. “No. Bermudez, you should have told us.”
Lund leaned forward. “What is it, Boss?”
Bermudez looked up, her dark eyes wide. “They’re here. Angels. We can’t-”
Once again, the lights went out, but this time, they stayed out, and not even the emergency lighting strips came on. In the dead silence that followed, Ris could distinctly hear the thump of something latching onto Howard Helios Hughes’s hull.
What relations there are between the Reachers and the Angels is unclear, but it seems likely that these two sojourner peoples in the Reach have some dealings with each other, as they have with us.
Ris’s account is the first hard evidence of their interaction; not only were Angels the first responders to a wrecked Reacher ship, but they were clearly guarding it from scavengers of all outside species.
Nobody onboard Hughes that day has given a clear account of what happened when they were boarded by at least one (possibly more than one) Angel, but they were permitted to go home in peace. Certainly, the Angels were not likely to explain their business to these intruders, but Ris’s after-action report does indicate obliquely that the Angels assured him that there were no living Reachers aboard the derelict, and that only few perished when it was damaged. Whether other Reachers rescued them, or the Angels did themselves, we may never know.
Ris’s report theorizes that the Angels were using the Reacher derelict as a honeypot trap for something or someone they hoped to ensnare, but what exactly their prey was, even he could not guess.
