The voice of Captain Harold Burns filled the room.  His voice, forever immortalized in human history for his fateful first contact with the Rak’Lan, was a gravelly bass, slightly distorted from the attenuation of the radio waves traveling from the orbit of Jupiter.  “Earth Control, this is survey ship Mojave Sunrise.  You’re not going to believe this, but there’s a space station between Europa and Jupiter.”  There was a pause, in which he was obviously talking to his crew.  “Are you guys sending the video feed back?  Record everything from this point on and beam it home.”  Burns cleared his throat, his voice straining to sound more official.  “I show our current distance from Earth to be about 4.8 AU or just about 38.5 light minutes.  Sound general quarters.  I want all off-duty personnel at their stations now.”

“Sir!” Another voice called.  That was Communications/Sensors Officer Barbara Deming, another voice that was instantly recognizable to most of humanity.  “I show two of the vessels turning toward us.  I’m picking up some kind of weird magnetic flux above and beyond the orbital junk here in-system.”

“Hail them, Barbara.  Use the universal greeting program.”  There was a pause and the sound of a clearing throat.  “Broadcast this over the intercom:  Ladies and gentlemen, this is an unprecedented moment in human history.  It appears that we have made first contact with an extra-terrestrial race.  I want everyone at their stations until we determine their intentions.  Stay calm, stay focused, and let’s represent humanity to the best of our abilities.  Burns out.” 

There was silence for a moment. The video feed we were shown was taken from the cameras located in the bow of the ship.  It was magnified to the limit of our capability, and even then, a layer of image enhancement had been required to reconstruct what the Mojave Sunrise was too far out to see.  Two of the vessels had moved so that they were in position to intercept.  The remaining two vessels moved in between the Mojave Sunrise and the Rak’Lan station, presenting their sides.  A thin flare of blue light appeared behind the two vessels poised for interception.

“Any reply, Barbara?”  Captain Burns sounded tense.

“Negative, sir.”  There was the sound of someone working furiously at a control station.  “I’m picking up a general spike in overall background radiation.  The ship AI indicates it started immediately after they initiated boost.”

“Delta vee?” Captain Burns asked.

“Uh…it’s opening up, sir.  They’re boosting at about 1.5 gee.  Time to intercept is less than four minutes.”

“I wish they’d declare their intentions,” Burns said quietly. 

The general public had heard everything to this point.  The only other things that had been released to the mass media were images of the Mojave Sunrise, a twisted and gutted derelict, slowly turning in a decaying orbit around Jupiter.  Civilian experts had speculated that the last images had been captured by a sensor pod or communications relay that had been launched before the destruction of the ship.  Shannon’s hand stole into mine as the presentation continued.

“Spectral analyses of their hulls indicate carbon, beryllium, titanium,” Deming said.  “The outer layer of their ships appears to be a uniform coating of industrial diamond, around five to six carbon atoms thick.  Their drive signature looks like they have a fusion power plant.  Most of the radiation is alpha and beta.”

“Can you confirm that?”

“Not without getting closer, Captain.  Some of those are big particles.”

Burns’ sigh was audible in the recording.  “I guess that’s going to happen whether we like it or not.  Is there anything else?”

“Uh…we’re being hit by a focused neutrino beam, sir.”

“What the hell does that do for them?”

“Maybe it’s a communication method or a scan, sir.  The AI can’t make anything of it.”

Burns’ voice was suddenly decisive.  “Helm, I want all stop.  Put us in a stable orbit around Jupiter.  I don’t want these bastards to think we’re hostile by running right down their throats.”  We could hear him take a sip of a beverage.  “Time to intercept?”

“One minute, thirty seconds, sir.”

“Once we’re in a stable orbit, rotate the ship so that we can launch sensor pods away from our friends.  Have them start beaming what they see back to Earth as soon as they’re in position.”

“Yes, sir.” 

The video split into three sections.  The center section was what the cameras in the bow of the Mojave Sunrise were seeing.  The sections to the left and the right were showing the perspectives visible from the cameras in the communications pods.

We could see the approaching Rak’Lan ships, sleek and mirror bright, slicing through the Jovian system with the cobalt blue trail of their drive.  As soon as the Mojave Sunrise presented its side to them and entered a stable orbit, their drives cut off.  Small adjustments to their trajectory began to occur as they endeavored to match the new course set by the human vessel.  The bow mounted cameras of the Mojave Sunrise swung slowly across the face of Jupiter until they were peering into deep space.  The video perspective switched to the two communications pods, leaving the third perspective out.

The Mojave Sunrise looked skeletal and dark compared to the Rak’Lan ships.  The crew modules were not superficially different that those you’d find on a space station.  Everything was tied to a rigid carbon frame, specifically designed to withstand the stresses caused by constant acceleration.  Four massive venturi pointed aft, connected with a complex series of tubes and modules to the skeleton of the ship.  This was the engine system fed by the mass converter located behind the crew modules.  Jupiter, a ruddy ball of mixed browns, filled the perspective of both pods, an odd counterpoint of beauty compared to the functional ugliness of the Mojave Sunrise. 

“Barbara, broadcast this on all frequencies to the incoming ships:  This is Captain Harold Burns, of the Earth Ship Mojave Sunrise.  We come in peace.  Please state your intentions.”  Captain Burns had a firm voice, but there was a slight quaver in it by the end.

“Sir!  They’re matching trajectories with us.  Delta vee is dropping rapidly.”

“How close will they be?”

We could hear Barbara hurriedly working.  “They’re going to match our orbit exactly, sir.”  Her voice was shocked.

“Confirm that, Barbara.”  There was a tense moment of silence.  Through the video feeds, we could see that the Rak’Lan ships were approaching either side of the Mojave Sunrise. 

“Sir, the AI says that the most likely outcome is that they will precisely match our orbit.  There are apertures on both ships.  If they continue present heading the openings will be on the sides that’ll be facing us.”  Openings, tiny due to the distance involved, began to be visible on both ships.  There were some final course corrections as the ships stopped dead relative to the Mojave Sunrise.  “They are at zero delta vee, sir.”

“Helm,” Captain Burns said.  “Give us maximum boost.  I don’t care where.  Boost us out of the plane of the ecliptic and we’ll shape orbit for home once we’re away from the Jovian system.”  He coughed.  “I don’t intend to be boarded.”

“Yes, sir.”  Through the video, we could see tubes growing out of the Rak’Lan ships like pseudo pods.  “Sir…helm is not responding.  It’s dead, sir.”

“What?  Get us out of here, Samuels.”

“I can’t sir.  There’s no response from the helm.  Engineering indicates the drives have been powered down.  They can’t restart the mass converter, sir.”

“Jesus Christ,” Burns said.  There was a massive metallic clang that was audible through the recording. 

“Sir…I show hard seal against the hydroponics module starboard and the geological lab on the port side.”  Barbara Deming’s voice was still calm, somehow.

“Sir,” Samuels asked.  “What do we do?”

There was an uncomfortable moment of silence before Burns spoke again.  When he did, his voice was full of weary resignation.  “Barbara, put this over the intercom:  Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to be boarded.   I want all engineering personnel working on getting our drives back up.  All security forces meet at the small arms locker for instructions and disposition.  I want all those not on the security force or in engineering to report to the crew lounge.  Burns out.”  We could see a small cloud of vapor around each tube as the Rak’Lan cut through the crew modules to make a hard seal.  “Samuels,” Burns said.

“Yes, sir?”

“You have the conn, son.  Seal the hatch after Barbara and me.  Don’t open it unless I return.  See if you can broadcast the internal video feeds to the communications pods.  I want our people back on Earth to get a good look at what we’re dealing with.”

“Yes, sir.”  There was a pause, and then the sound of a hatch opening.  “Sir?” Samuels said.  A third video perspective became visible for us.  It showed the cramped control module of the Mojave Sunrise.  A young man, hardly older than those of us in the auditorium, was making some quick adjustments at a control console.  He floated in weightlessness, using his grip on the console to turn toward Burns and Deming as they left the module. 

“Yes?” Burns said.  His coverall was stained at the chest and the armpits with sweat, but his stern, gray-haired visage was carved from stone.

“Good luck, sir.”

He nodded and floated out of the hatch.  Samuels moved to seal it behind him.

The external views faded away.  Video feeds from the crew lounge and the small arms locker replaced them with a tastefully orchestrated fade. 

The crew members in the lounge numbered twenty-three.  They were a mixed bag of scientists and technicians, most of them trained in extra-terrestrial geology and mineralogy. Since their primary mission had been to assess the possibility of using Jovian materials for construction activities based in Earth orbit, there had been no need to send even a token police force.

The “security force” that Captain Burns had referred to was just a few of the crew who had received small arms training.  Some of them had held previous jobs in free-fall construction gangs, while others had been recreational hunters, athletes, or those after a little extra pay.  None of them had any training beyond a workshop provided by Lockheed and Coyote-Dugan. 

There was a stir in the locker area as Captain Burns and Barbara Deming floated through the hatchway.  Burns moved with a graceful economy of motion that belied his apparent age.  It was obvious that he was experienced with maneuvering in free-fall.  Barbara, a woman approaching middle age but still in great shape, followed behind, somewhat less gracefully, her movements tightly controlled.  Several crew members began to ask questions, talking over one another.  Two of the crew could be seen talking to Barbara, but she shook her head firmly and said no emphatically enough that the microphone in the room picked it up over the sounds of persistent questions.

“People!”  Captain Burns said.  “People, please!  Listen up.”

The murmurs subsided as the men and women in the locker area arranged themselves in a lose semicircle in front of Burns.  “I don’t know how to say this.”  His shoulders heaved with a resigned sigh.  “We’re being boarded.  I have no clue what the intention was.  If our engineers can get the drives working, Samuels will try to boost us out of here.  If not, we’ll have to face down our ‘guests.’”  There was a strained chuckle around the room.  “I want everyone to be armed.  Do not show any aggressive action unless they show it first.  We’re going to try and talk our way out of this and learn something.  Understood?”

There were reluctant nods from the small crowd.  They opened the weapons locker and began to pass out pistols, two shotguns, and an assault rifle.  There were enough weapons for everyone to have at least something.  Burns ran an approving eye around the room.  “We’ve all done free-fall drill on firearms.  Remember, this isn’t like shooting on earth.  Remember the training you’ve been through, and we’ll be fine.  Your rounds are frangible, so don’t worry about blowing a hole in the side of the Sunrise.”

“Captain?” Samuels’ voice sounded over the intercom.

“Go ahead, son.”

“We have armored aliens in the ship.  They appear to be heading aft to the engineering module and forward to the control module.”

“Give me a video feed on the terminal back here,” Burns said.  We could see him bend over a screen.  A third video feed appeared, giving us a birds eye view of what we now knew were Rak’Lan soldiers, carrying a typical combat load out—weak assault rifle, dart pistol, and segmented armor.  “Okay, folks…they’re moving from starboard to the front and from port aft to the engineering module.  Barbara, take half the crew and interdict the engineering compartment.  Try to communicate with them, but if they try to break in, use your judgment.  I’ll take the rest of the crew forward to the control room.”

The crew split up, the video shifting to follow each group as they made their way to their objectives.  In spite of myself, I was impressed with the way the crew moved in weightless conditions.  I wasn’t sure that a platoon of marines, with all of the training that we had had in weightless combat, could have moved more efficiently through the modules of the Mojave Sunrise. 

Barbara Deming’s group was the first to reach their objective.  Four Rak’Lan soldiers had stopped in front of the hatch which sealed the engineering module.  One of them was placing something that looked suspiciously like plastic explosive around the edges of the hatch, while another one anchored him by pushing his legs through a handhold on what would have been the ceiling if they were under acceleration.

“Excuse me,” Barbara said from behind them, hefting one of the shotguns.  “My name is Barbara Deming.  I’m an officer on this ship.  We invite you to—“

With no visible expression, one of the Rak’Lan turned toward her, leveled his assault rifle, and triggered a burst of fire.  Barbara’s mouth opened in a wordless scream of surprise as her torso became a bloody ruin.  The impact of the projectiles put her body in a slow spin, blood gushing out of her entry wounds with the arterial flow that indicated mortal wounds.  Her blood formed perfect spheres before deforming into a chaotic spray of liquid as the force of her heart pushed her bodily fluids into the weightless environment.

“Shit! Shit! Shit!”  The corridor dissolved in chaos as the three crew members with her opened fire simultaneously, two pistols and an assault rifle sending a hail of projectiles into the massed Rak’Lan.

It was a massacre.  Our projectiles were designed to fragment on hitting anything resembling a hard surface to avoid punching a hole in a crew module.  They sacrificed armor penetration and some degree of lethality for safety.  The bullets were designed more for crowd control against a mutinous crew than for combat against armored foes.

After the initial fury of the attack subsided, the Rak’Lan leveled the assault rifles at a human target and sent an economical burst of fire at each one.  In less than three seconds, four corpses floated in the corridor.  There was a suspension of blood droplets that would sometimes make contact with the Rak’Lan armor and deform against it, making circular stains.

There was an angry murmur throughout the auditorium.  I could feel the anger and the rage rising in me at the sight of my fellow humans so carelessly obliterated.  The Rak’Lan finished their work, kicked off of a bulkhead, and hid around a corner.  From our perspective, we saw the thin, grey putty glow white.  The hatch floated loosely, cut cleanly wherever the putty had been.  A team of engineers looked up from their control panels surrounding the mass converter.  “What the fuck?” one of them said as the Rak’Lan moved into the module.  All of the engineering crew stopped what they were doing to peer at the intruders.

The silent tableau continued for a moment before the Rak’Lan raised their rifles in unison and murdered the engineers.  Satisfied, they moved to the controls and began to look over them.

The group led by Captain Burns was one module away from the Rak’Lan when they heard the distant sound of gunfire.  On the video, we could see Burns blanch and then stop his forward progress. “You all heard that,” he whispered. “We’re going to go around that corner.  Pick a target and shoot to kill.  I’m not sure whether they started it or we did, but I can be certain they’re not going to be willing to talk.”

“Are you sure, sir?  Maybe it was a misunderstanding.”  This came from the largest of the party, a burly orbital construction worker.  He carried the only shotgun in the group.  He was definitely scared.  I had seen that same look in the faces of my fellow marines before stepping into combat.  It was that last minute appeal, a hope that somehow there might be a stay of execution. 

“You have your orders,” Burns said.  He regarded them all for a moment.  “On my mark:  Three, two, one!”  On one, he sprang around the corner, using his legs to push off of a bulkhead.  His pistol snapped upward, automatically targeting the gap between segmented armor carapace and helmet.  He absorbed his rebound on the opposite wall, waiting for that moment when he was completely stationary to fire.  His first round took the rearmost Rak’Lan in the neck.  The alien’s arms splayed outward like a bizarre parody of a swordfish.  He looked like a puppet that had just had its strings cut.

The remaining Rak’Lan turned to face the threat from behind.  As Burns completed his initial shot, the other three members of his party entered the corridor, their limbs tangled with one another in their excitement and nervousness.  Burns cringed as they took a precious second to untangle themselves and bring their weapons to bear.  In the space of that moment, they were torn apart by the concentrated fire of the remaining Rak’Lan. 

The shotgun went off as the construction worker’s dying spasms pulled the trigger.  The roar of it temporarily deafened Burns as he kicked off of the bulkhead, moving backwards through the module, bringing his pistol to bear between his feet.  We watched in horror as a well-aimed shot struck Burns in the sole of his left foot, the impact spinning him around and making him lose his carefully planned trajectory to safety.  We could see a terrible exit wound just below Burns’ knee. 
Desperately, Burns fired in his spin.  I knew from my own training that it was nearly impossible to aim when your body was out of control in a weightless environment, but somehow, Burns managed to score a hit on one of the Rak’Lan, tagging him in the throat.  The projectile, designed to fragment, shredded the throat his target. 

Burns slammed into a bulkhead, his shoulder and his head bearing the brunt of the impact.  He shook his head to clear it, and groaned as the two remaining Rak’Lan seized his legs and held him at arm’s length.  They exchanged a look, said something in a strange warbling language, and then backhanded him across the face with a gauntleted hand.  Burns spat on the one who had slapped him.  “Fuck you,” he said very clearly. 

It was a bit of an irony to me that the second thing a human ever said to a member of another sentient race was a profanity.

The Rak’Lan pulled a container from his belt that looked like an aerosol can and squirted it in Burns’ face.  His eyes rolled back in his head.  He went limp.  Hastily, the Rak’Lan applied a rough tourniquet to the exit wound just below Burns’ knee.  They towed him behind them as they made it toward the control room.

The video perspective changed again to show Samuels sitting at a console, watching the carnage occurring in the rest of the ship.  We could tell by watching over Samuels’ shoulder that the group in the engineering section was conducting a repeat of their previous massacre on the unarmed scientists and technicians in the crew lounge. 

Samuels used a key to open a locked box underneath the Captain’s chair.  Inside was a pistol, which he leveled at the door.  We could see the stark terror in him.  His hands were quivering, and sweat was pouring down his face.  The door to the control module opened with a clang of discarded metal, the Rak’Lan having burned through it just as they had in the engineering module.

The Rak’Lan floated through the hatch, towing their cargo of a limp Captain Burns behind them.  We could see Samuels take a deep breath and steady himself against a console.  He fired two shots before the Rak’Lan could settle themselves, the first taking Captain Harold Burns neatly in the temple, the second taking his own life as he put the pistol under his chin.

There was complete silence as the video perspective faded away from the bodies floating in the Mojave Sunrise to an external view.  The video speed increased as we saw a fast-forward video of the Rak’Lan ships putting distance between themselves and the human ship.  A flurry of missiles erupted from the sides of the Rak’Lan ship, gutting the once elegant Mojave Sunrise and leaving a derelict in Jovian orbit.

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