“Wait.” Diaz grimaced. “My pardon, Kommodor. I just thought of something. The tow cable.”
“The tow cable?” Marphissa took a moment to understand what he meant. Heavy cruisers, battleships, and battle cruisers were all equipped with long cables that could be hooked to other warships that had been crippled by enemy fire, allowing those damaged ships to be towed back to a repair facility. Even the efficiency-obsessed Syndicate bureaucracy had decided that the costs of tow cables were more than offset by the savings from recovering warships that otherwise would have had to be abandoned. “We could hover low enough for the cable to be just above the surface… How long is it?”
“Half a kilometer.”
“Half a kilometer,” she repeated, thinking of a heavy cruiser coming within half a kilometer of a planet’s surface. “Is that idea even technically feasible?”
“I’ll have to have my specialists run the numbers on it,” Diaz said. “The atmosphere on that world is thin, so it might be possible if we cut our velocity down to a crawl. But it would be very risky, Kommodor.”
“I know.” She looked past her display to the blank bulkhead beyond it, thinking. “When Black Jack’s fleet went into enigma territory, they learned that Syndicate citizens were prisoners inside an asteroid and they rescued them. At great risk, they rescued Syndicate citizens and brought them home.”
“It was Black Jack,” Diaz said. “He is for the people, even though he is Alliance.”
“Can we do less than an Alliance fleet?” Marphissa asked. “Can we abandon whoever is on that planet, when Black Jack would go there and somehow rescue them? We are no longer Syndicate. There are people there who need our help.”
“Would you risk this entire crew to save one man or woman?” Diaz asked.
“Yes!” Marphissa nodded firmly. “Have your specialists analyze the proposal, Kapitan. While they are doing so, alter our vector to intercept that world in its orbit.”
“Yes, Kommodor. We will have to brake as we near orbit, so it will take two and a half hours to reach a point above where that recall signal came from.”
Two and a half hours to second-guess her decision. As Manticore’s thrusters and main propulsion pushed her into a new vector, Marphissa looked at the depiction of the planet they were now directly approaching. If the enigmas deep under that world’s surface were keeping track of events above it, as surely they must be, then they would know that the human warship was now heading their way.
“They are hiding,” she said to Diaz. “The enigmas don’t want us to know they are there. Even if they detected the pickup signal sent to us, they will not want to do anything to tip us off that they are digging inside that planet. So they will stay quiet, watching, and waiting for us to go away.”
“I hope you are right, Kommodor,” Diaz said.
Half an hour later, the specialists rendered their verdicts on the plan. “It is possible,” Diaz reported to Marphissa. “My specialists recommend that we program in the task and allow our automated maneuvering systems to handle everything inside atmosphere, because no one on this ship has experience with maneuvering so close to a planet’s surface.”
“The idea of hovering half a kilometer from the surface of a planet terrifies me,” Marphissa confessed. “It is within safe operating parameters for the ship?”
“Yes, Kommodor.” Diaz checked his display again where the report was visible. “Our main propulsion is so powerful it can easily hold the ship in a hover above a planet of this size. The main fear is making some imprecise adjustment from which we would not have room to recover, but that should not happen with the automated systems controlling the approach to the surface and the hover.”
Marphissa pointed to part of the report. “This is the only way to do it? Have them latch on to the tow cable, haul everything back out of atmosphere, then bring in the cable?”
“Yes, Kommodor. We can’t bring in the cable while main propulsion is going, and we can’t shut off main propulsion until we get back into orbit.”
She sighed heavily. “Let us hope that citizen, or those citizens, have intact armor or survival suits. Can we rig anything on the cable to make it easier for them to hang on?”
Diaz nodded. “My people are putting together a… well, it’s a cage. We’ll fasten it to the end of the cable. Whoever is down there will have to grab the cage and climb inside.”
“This is crazy,” Marphissa said. “You’re thinking that, too, aren’t you?”
“I would never tell a superior officer that her plan is crazy,” Diaz said. “I would tell her if I thought it could not be done. We will be sitting ducks, though. If the enigmas choose to attack us while we are inside atmosphere, our velocity will be limited to speeds far below what we normally use.”
Marphissa frowned in thought. “When we reach the planet, I want to do some orbits before descending into atmosphere. Do some high passes, then some low ones, as if we are looking for any sign of the enigmas and want to provoke a reaction.”
“Then when we go into atmosphere they will think that’s just another attempt to get them to show themselves?” Diaz shrugged. “That might work. But it assumes the enigmas think like humans.”
“Captain Bradamont told me that staying hidden was the number one priority for enigmas,” Marphissa said. “I don’t pretend to know why that is, but as long as I know that is how they tend to act, I can use it.”
Manticore reached the planet and went into high orbit, swinging around the globe as if conducting an intensive search. And, indeed, that was happening, as the warship’s sensors strained to spot any sign of whoever had sent the pickup request.
“Let’s go closer in,” Marphissa ordered. “Is the cage ready?” she asked Diaz.
“Yes, Kommodor. It is securely attached. I inspected the cage myself. It will hold under expected stress conditions.”
Manticore slowed and dropped lower, skimming the upper atmosphere of the planet. As the heavy cruiser passed over the region where the pickup signal had originated, an alert sounded.
“We have the signal again,” the comm specialist said. “A burst transmission. Our systems have localized its origin within a twenty-kilometer radius.”
“Can we see anything?” Diaz asked, chewing his lip.
“No, Kapitan,” the senior specialist reported. “There is dust and atmospheric interference.”
“What about the indications of subsurface activity?” Marphissa asked.
“They ceased while we were still approaching the planet, Kommodor. We are detecting nothing artificial on the planet at this time except for the pickup signal.”
“The enigmas are hiding, as we hoped, trying not to betray any sign of their presence. Take us around one more time,” Marphissa ordered Diaz. “Then begin descent into atmosphere, aimed for a point at the center of the estimated position of that signal.”
Chapter Eight
Diaz nodded, eyeing his display as one of his hands moved to set the location for the descent. “I will transfer full control to the maneuvering systems in twenty minutes, Kommodor.”
“Comm specialist,” Marphissa said. “Be prepared to contact the source of the pickup signal.”
“Yes, Kommodor,” she replied. “I have the necessary commands already loaded and ready to transmit, but it is likely the Syndicate battle armor will refuse to link with our systems, and the people down there may not know how to override that. But we will be able to establish a voice link and use that to precisely establish their position.”
“Excellent.”
Marphissa leaned back, trying to look relaxed and confident, as Manticore finished most of another orbit and began braking, lowering her velocity to levels her hull would withstand inside the planet’s atmosphere. The heavy cruiser dropped toward the planet, her path a long curve heading downward and around the globe toward the point where the signal had originated.