Lieutenant Maxim Ivanov watched the pulsing meter on his radar display. A mechanical pock echoed out every other second. He ignored the ambient noise on the dark green display. Their sensors picked up the wreckage of weeks past. Both rock and twisted metal scattered the signal around the Goto Predestinazia as it sailed. The news broadcasts back home now called this fresh debris field ‘The First Lunar Battle’. Ivanov anxiously gripped the joystick as he made minute corrections to their path. Thrusters fired obediently with each twist and tilt of the controls.
“Comrade Ivanov,” hummed Anzhel’s faux feminine voice from the dome speaker in the ceiling. “It is advisable you perform a breathing exercise. Anxiety will only worsen your performance.”
“Computer, mute. Only critical announcements until I say so,” Karhut barked from the commander’s spot behind the piloting console. The older man grumbled something. "Easy now, comrade cosmogator, your time is almost finished. Night Watch will be up to relieve us soon."
"Yes, Comrade Captain. I am fine, I assure you." Ivanov glanced back at his superior, who ignored him and focused on his own computer. Zyzhy, the gunnery officer, sat in the tactical station’s reclining platform. The targeting helm engulfed his head, hiding all but his grimacing mouth. Somewhere on the hull, the Goto Predestinazia's railgun turrets slowly swung to follow wherever Zyzhy looked. The helmet hid a multitude of scars, a luxury not afforded to most of the fleet's veterans.
Within Ivanov's spine, the cosmogator's braid continually transmitted new calculations from its subconscious computer. In his vision, it lifted the radar contacts up out of the screen and transposed them into three-dimensional space. Precise, color-coded shapes, accompanied with equally small labels, produced a miniature battlefield before Ivanov. His non-enhanced comrades would only see the flat radar screen in his console. But, they didn't need to. None of the others on the bridge bore the responsibility of a cosmogator.
A different noise from the radar snapped Ivanov’s attention back to his console. A signal. Right there. Amongst the remains of Earth’s former companion, something transmitted on random frequencies. It hopped between radio waves at random. It wasn’t near the wreckage of the Valley Forge, so it wasn’t a NATO vessel. But, it didn’t originate near the Soviets' defensive line.
This aberration, however, appeared on the radar as a fuzzy, shuddering shape that grew and shrunk erratically. Ivanov glared as it avoided the drifting debris all around it. The shape moved deftly around detritus. Radar pings distorted around its edges whenever they rushed over it. Each wave washed off into space in tremors. It wasn’t until this stranger stopped in space and then peeled off in a ninety degree turn that Ivanov looked up.
Adrenaline sparked within Ivanov's chest, like flint against steel. This is it.
“Comrade Captain, I have an unknown on the grid. Thirty kilometers out.” Ivanov looked back at Karhut. He rattled off the coordinates the computer tried to assign to the aberration. The ship’s machine mind struggled to narrow down it’s actual location. Ivanov looked between his piloting display and his commanding officer nervously.
A frown furrowed over the veteran’s wrinkled face. He glanced at Zyzhy before answering Ivanov. “On the Americans’ line?”
What’s left of it, at least. Ivanov eyed the static-like fields of detritus on his radar. “Yes, Captain. But, it’s not a red-call. It’s broadcasting something, but…” He gave a frustrated wave at his radar with one hand. “Not just on Western frequencies. Or ours. It’s random. Here and there.”
“Random?” Karhut’s glare deepened. Weeks of hearing drawn out firefights over the radio between NATO and Combloc fleets morphed simple mysteries into nightmares in the frayed minds of the sailors. “But, there’s something there?”
Ivanov shrugged. “Yes, Captain. Something. I just cannot tell you what…”
“Perhaps it is a lifeboat?” Engineering Subgroup Leader Darya spoke up from her recessed seat inside the computer bank beneath Karhut. “They use a different signal for distress?”
“We would know about that. They would tell us. No one wants to be stranded out… here.” Karhut’s voice strained with both exhaustion and frustration.
“Can’t, hmmm, kill what you can’t, meh, know,” Zyzhy rasped into his collar microphone. It created a minor cloning effect as Ivanov heard his voice in the corner of the cockpit and deep within his ear at the same time. “I’m sure they think we’d act like them. Picking off the wounded and lost.”
“No,” Karhut growled. “There must be another--”
The Commissar interrupted with a throat-clearing cough into his own microphone. The crew fell silent. “Cosmogator, what is it broadcasting? Let us listen.” The old man’s voice still managed to halt everyone on the command deck.
“Yes, Comrade Commissar," Ivanov obeyed the boat's ultimate authority "Locking it in now.” Ivanov reached across the radar screen and fiddled with its dials. Sweat dripped from his sleeve and dotted across the plexiglass screen. The green forms underneath the drops distorted into glowing shapes. Ivanov cursed under his breath and wiped at it with his sleeve before continuing. A few switches flicked, a button pressed, and then Ivanov nodded. “Main channel, Comrade Commissar?”
“Please.” The Commissar spoke with the calmness of someone asking for a napkin.
Over the crews’ headsets played a soft, eerie tone.
Children’s voices sang to them.
Wide-eyed, Ivanov whipped back and looked at Karhut. The Captain merely glared out the main window as he listened.
It sounded like three children, singing in tritone, attempting to find the correct pitch of a song. Their voices echoed amongst each other and reverbed together almost as if they were in a tunnel. Ivanov couldn’t make out any actual words. Rather, the scratches of whispers lilted back and forth across each voice.
“Cosmogator, can we hail them?” The Commissar asked.
Ivanov flicked another switch. “Channel open, Comrade.”
The Commissar cleared his throat again. “Zdravstvuyte, unidentified vessel. This is the Goto Predestinazia. Please, would you identify yourself?”
I'm in the air over Haiphong. The radar's alive. A formation coming in from over the water. From their side of the demarcation line. Dots on the radar speeding towards us. Other pilots fill the radio with confusion and alarm. I stare at the screen. It was flat. A two dimensional messenger for a three dimensional battle. I wish I had the braid back then. It would have--
The singing lulled into a humming. A single voice spoke through the curtain of noise. Whatever it said, Ivanov’s hair stood on end. It wasn’t Russian, nor was it the chirpy, slurring accent of an English speaker. No one else in the cockpit spoke.
The voice repeated itself.
Then, a scrambling noise like someone rewinding a data tape sounded out. The voice spoke in a different language this time. Something from Europe, Ivanov thought.
“This is the Goto Predestinazia. Would you identify yourself?” The Commissar repeated himself with his usual patience.
The scrambling noise came over the airwaves again.
“Privet, Goto Predestinazia,” The voice wavered between feminine, masculine, and somewhere in between. “You are a Burevestnik-class, yes? Built in the Gagarin Yards?”
The question sent a ripple of murmurs through the cockpit. Everyone bristled at the information known by the stranger.
“Unidentified vessel, whose flag do you sail under?” The Commissar didn’t seem bothered.
“Flag? Flag? Flag?” The voice skipped around in tone and pitch. “Flag? Flag? Flag? Flag? Flag? Flag flag flag?”
Anzhel, their machine mind, spoke unprompted:
“Captain, missile lock detected.”