by Nick Webb
“The pleasure was all ours, Velar.” He smiled as warm as he could, and turned to Volaski. “Captain,” he said with a curt nod.
Before long, the ship lifted off the deck and flew out of the bay, pausing momentarily at the bay door as the transparent air lock bulkhead slid into place behind her. Moments later, she was through the out-bay door, heading towards the rest of the caravan.
Jake reached into the bag and drew out another hat, tossing it at Ben’s chest. “Hey! Don’t look so down. This’ll be fun.”
“Is fun what we’re supposed to be having right now? We just buried 132 people,” Ben replied with a furrowed forehead.
“Hey, I’m not going to spend the rest of my life moping. Live a little, Ben. Life is to be lived, not spent mourning the dead.”
“Well I hope no one has reason to mourn us because of this little adventure,” said Ben, picking up the sack at his feet.
Jake breathed out a puff of air as he hoisted the other sack over his shoulder. “Me too, buddy. Me too.”
CHAPTER THREE
ANYA GRACE HAD NEVER HIRED anyone in her life. She hadn’t even applied for a job before. Six years ago she’d turned in her application to the Anchorage Resistance fleet recruiting station, handing the form to the recruiting officer, who subsequently said, ‘welcome aboard’, without even looking at it. The need for new fighter pilots was so great at the time that just about anyone who could drive a hovercar without hitting a moose could be a pilot in the Resistance fleet.
Before then, she’d lived at home, in Alaska. Her mother had long since disappeared, and her brothers had grown creepier and more abusive by the day, threatening her with retribution from whatever Roman god was in charge of their version of hell—Hades? Thor? She could never keep them straight. She could never keep straight why they threatened retribution, either. Was it her refusal to worship their gods? Her short hair, which they deemed sinful? More likely, she surmised they were mad that she didn’t respect whatever power or authority they supposed they had over her. They wanted control over her, and she wouldn’t give it.
Not willingly.
Scanning the list of applicants, she crossed off several names. She’d crosschecked the entire roster against the computer’s service records and decided against anyone born off Earth. At least for now. She needed to get a feel for who was trustworthy. Almost a third of the crew was from a world other than Earth, and many of them came from worlds with no history of rebellion, which might mean they were loyal to the Empire. Then again, since that same benevolent Empire had assigned them to the doomed Phoenix, Anya supposed that really there was no love lost between the non-Terran crew and the Empire.
But it always paid to be careful.
Flying a fighter required absolute trust from your co-pilots and fellow squadron members. Anything less would result in a sub-par performance at best. At worst, the result would be more needless deaths.
Scanning further, she crossed off a few more people with known health and psychological issues. Nothing could go wrong in one of those birds. Nothing. Any momentary lapse of judgment, any sudden medical issue that sprang up unexpectedly in the cockpit—all of those things would inevitably lead to death. A quick, gruesome death. They could take nothing for granted and leave nothing to chance. Eventually, if circumstances became increasingly dire and they needed more pilots, then standards could be lowered.
But not sooner.
She commanded the computer to rank the remaining names in order of their score on a rubric that combined overall test scores for reflexes and cognitive speed, their health and age—younger trainees always seemed to pick up fighter pilot skills faster and at a higher level than older trainees—and finally, the remaining miscellaneous skills the applicants had noted themselves, such as firearms training and wilderness survival. One never knew when circumstances would force the pilot to eject and crash land on some god-forsaken world where the only thing to eat was maggots, roots, and your own piss.
The thought whisked her mind back to Alaska, to the month her parents had left her in the wilderness. She’d mouthed off again, and rather than the usual teenage retorts, she’d insulted Minerva, her mother’s favorite goddess. Within the hour she found herself dangling from a rope ladder hanging out of her parents’ hovercar in the middle of Denali National Park at the peak of Moose’s Tooth mountain. She’d screamed out for them to let her back in, yelling that the police would haul their asses to jail for child abuse, but she would not take back the insult.
She refused to apologize.
And as a result, they cut the ladder when she was two feet off the ground and shot away into the sky.
It was an interesting month, to say the least.
When the computer had finished its ranking algorithm, she glanced at the screen, frowned, and crossed off the last half. She clicked on the remaining seven names for further study.
Fifteen minutes later she rubbed her eyes in frustration—the bios and service records of each applicant left her with a sick feeling in her stomach. None of them would have been let within fifty meters of a fighter cockpit back on Earth. “This is going to be a long month,” she said to her empty flight deck office.
The list of names and faces stared back at her. On a whim, she inserted several of them into the list of current pilots. Just to see if they fit. If they felt right.
“Quadri, Jason L. Grace, Anya T. Ashdown, Gavin C.,” she said, reading the names and staring at their faces.
Did it feel right?
She blew her breath at a stray lock of hair in frustration. Out of curiosity, she opened her own file. These were Imperial records—they ought to have wonderfully kind things to say about her, especially given her prolific scorecard in bringing down Imperial bogeys during the war.
Scanning the service record, she sighed. Nothing incriminating at all. How disappointing. Just one censure. She smiled as she remembered that day, just two years ago. Her ass-wipe of an Imperial Wing Commander ordered her to report for duty two hours early, but only gave her ten minutes notice. Of course, she received the call with plenty of time as her barracks were only two minutes away from the fighter hangar. But she ignored it all the same. Just to piss the little prick off.
At the bottom of the service record, several administrative codes finished out the document. Length of time her name had been in Imperial records: ten years. That was no surprise, as most inhabitants of Earth were deemed high risk for agitation and rebellion. Cross referenced service records with other Imperial organizations: none.
She looked closer: it actually read None*. Asterisk?
Bringing up the legend for interpreting the document she scanned for the meaning of an asterisk in that field.
Asterisk: has family or close friends with Imperial service records in other organizations.
She tipped back in her seat, thinking. No, not one of her immediate, or even distant family had ever been employed by the Empire or served in any Imperial capacity. Nor her friends. Hell, she didn’t even have any friends.
With a few clicks, she ran a cross referenced search against the rest of the Imperial database stored on the Phoenix computers. Surely the source of the asterisk would turn up.
Access denied.
Dammit.
She flipped off the computer and made her way to the fighter bay, mulling the new mystery over silently before she realized she was getting distracted. No. They were still in danger. She had to train those new recruits.
Mysteries could wait.
***
Gavin Ashdown could hardly contain his excitement. He hadn’t even considered applying to the newly announced fighter pilot training program, but rather only did so because he was not about to let Jet score higher than him on a test of his hand-eye reflexes. The girl could hardly fly a virtual capital ship, much less an actual fighter.
And yet there before his eyes was the list posted on the outside of the fighter deck, and halfway down, the name Gavin Ashdown. Right below his own name, he s
pied Jet’s as well, but didn’t recognize any of the others. Oh well. At least there was one person he would know there.
But there was one other thing he realized seeing his name there, something he hadn’t even considered until he entered his application. He was free. Free from the galley, free from officers and enlisted men grumbling about their food and about the service. Free from the cook.
Gavin bolted down to the mess hall and burst into the galley. “Did you see?”
The cook, holding a huge spoon dripping with tomato sauce with his perpetual cigarette hanging out of his mouth, wiped his nose with a sleeve. “See what?”
“I was accepted! They’re going to train me as a fighter pilot!”
The cook shrugged indifferently. “Don’t get your hopes up, kid. They only put out a call for applicants. There’s no way they’re going to accept all of you. Hell, I’d be surprised if they pick more than one of you.”
Gavin wouldn’t let the man get him down. “Well even if they only take one, I’m going to be it. There’s no way I’m spending the rest of my time in space working in this shithole.”
The cook glared at him, then thrust a broom into his hand. “Watch your mouth. And get to work.”
“But I’m not on for another half an hour!”
“Kid,” he said, turning to sulk at him with his sunken eyes and sagging cheeks. “Do you think this is the face of someone who cares?” He pointed to the floor. “Sweep.”
Gavin grumbled, but couldn’t wipe the spreading grin off his face. The first training session started that afternoon, right after lunch. He did the math in his head. That meant exactly four more hours working for the sniffy old cook. Four more hours to freedom.
***
It wasn’t easy, or pleasant, but Senator Galba managed to conceal half his face, and disfigure the rest of it. The first aid kit in Willow’s quarters provided the gauze and bandages that covered his left eye and forehead, and his own fist proved handy for the black eye now gracing his right. His long, luxurious hair simply had to go, and Willow’s hair clippers proved up to the task of giving him a nice, military-approved buzz cut.
No one could recognize him. And no one would.
He glanced down at his smart uniform, freshly stolen from the quarters of some dead Ensign down the hall by his love, and patted out a few wrinkles.
On second thought he balled up the material in his fist and put the wrinkles back. The more harried and disheveled looking, the better. He must not look like one of the senior ranking members of the Imperial Senate, but as a lowly tech worker on board a Resistance starship.
Tech worker—he smiled. He’d started out in tech, before pursuing his political ambitions. The grunt work didn’t last five months, of course, since with one complaint to his father, he’d been elevated to a staff member position for some low ranking Senator. The elder Galba knew all the right people, having served for years in the Senate himself. Such were the perks of the aristocracy on Corsica.
But that tech knowledge just might come in handy. The doors to Willow’s quarters slid open as he approached, and he turned left down the hall. First things first—he had to find a terminal and gain access to the ship’s schematics and layout.
A sign he passed on his right called out to him. Tech Supplies. The placard looked askew, as if hastily glued to the door or possibly knocked loose during one of the many explosions during the previous week. The ship had been to hell. Galba smiled. It was up to him to make it worse. Make the Rebels feel the price of destroying all his hard work for the past five years.
Ever since the Emperor approached him and revealed The Plan.
The door slid open noiselessly; he hurried inside at the sight of another crew member turning the corner down the hall.
The lights flickered on as the door closed. There. On the shelf. A neat hand-held bag, complete with data pad and terminal access tools. Dozens of other boxes of supplies, chairs, and fire extinguishers lined the walls and floor—he even caught glimpse of a weapons locker in the corner as he waded through the sundry supplies to snatch the tool-bag.
Once back out in the hallway, he continued aft. A crew member passed, and nodded curtly at him, and Galba nodded back, avoiding the man’s eyes. He smirked inwardly at the idea of the other man walking past the second most powerful figure in the galaxy.
Second most powerful? Had it come to that? At least. Sure, the Emperor had his consuls and secretaries, and regional governors, all trying to juggle the far-flung and sprawling Empire while maintaining stern relations with the rest of the Thousand Worlds. But he, Galba, was above them all. At least, that was what the Emperor had told him. Only he had been trusted to head up the Truth and Reconciliation Committee. Best to live up to the man’s expectations.
The end of the corridor teed up against a larger hallway, this one with higher traffic. That wouldn’t do. But sure enough, right where Willow had thought, there was a door marked Systems Engineering. He walked up and poked his head into the room as the door slid past.
Empty.
Willow said there were at least twenty of these rooms scattered throughout the ship, each capable of acting as a mini-command center in the event of a radiation leak in main engineering or other such eventualities. But for the most part, they were vacant. He just needed a computer terminal, he’d claimed, to amuse himself. Play some games. Distract from his boredom.
Now, time to find the nearest power conduit. Those made for rather attention-grabbing explosions.
Time for some games.
***
Megan Po jogged through the lower levels of the ship, nodding and smiling at the crew members she passed. She needed the exercise, and besides, what better way for the ship’s new XO to get to know the ship inside and out, top to bottom? It was her duty. She plotted out a mile long course through half of the ship’s lower decks, steering clear of the elevators and instead climbing the access tunnel ladders to reach another deck.
She’d seen some of the damage on an inspection tour she’d taken with Mercer immediately after their escape from the Caligula, but now, running through the forward section of deck twenty-six, she gaped at the wreckage still visible from the collision with the other ship. Automated hull repair robots were still busy at work patching the outer hull, but the repair crews had not even started on that deck yet, being too occupied with restoring weapons and gravitics.
She wondered if they’d ever be able to fix all the holes without docking at a real shipyard somewhere, but she knew that would be impossible with the Empire still hot of their tail.
But her run had one more purpose. She’d planned her route to take her past the mess deck. Deck fifteen. The one section of the ship dedicated to recreation, food, and entertainment for the ship’s weary crew. The deck that the Fifty-First Brigade, commanded by Sergeant Tomaga, had been allowed to make use of during their stay.
Ben had been opposed to the idea, of course. Sensible, careful Ben. She smiled thinking of him. He reminded her of her own little brother back in California, prim, proper, serious, and an eye for style. She’d always thought his callsign ‘Manuel’ had been a mistake—Glamor-boy would fit him better!—but she knew she’d never hear the end of it. For all his fastidiousness, he had a macho streak, probably picked up from all the combat masters and marksmen he’d studied under while living in Texas with rich parents.
But Ben had relented to Mercer on the idea of giving the band of soldiers free reign of the mess deck. Mercer insisted that if they were to treat the soldiers like prisoners, that they’d have a hot mess on their hands pretty quickly, and instead wanted them to feel as at home as possible.
And now Megan was going to check up on their receipt of the extended hospitality. As she approached the entrance to the mess deck, two armed marines—stationed there as a precaution—saluted her, and she waved a salute back before going through the sliding doors.
And walked straight into a fight.
Luckily, it was an organized fight, as fights go. A c
ircle of marines, split equally between the crew of the Phoenix and the Fifty-First Brigade of the Caligula, stood hooting and jeering at each other and the two men in the center. One man she recognized. Sergeant Jayce, who she’d met earlier during a tour. Tall, muscular, and remarkably sassy for a gruff, young marine, he’d shown her respect, but only just enough to keep from being thrown in the brig.
His opponent was one of the men of the Fifty-First. Vaguely Asian, the man was Jayce’s equal in size, and possibly his superior in physique: the man tensed his washboard abdomen as he let loose a flurry of fists at Jayce, whose nose was bleeding. Jayce returned the blows, charging the man and colliding with him so they burst through the circle and slammed against the wall, where he proceeded to pummel the other man’s stomach with a series of quick jabs.
It was a fight, for sure, but it was not a dirty, no-holds barred fight—Po recognized that at least. From the looks of it, the two men were engaged in some sort of match. A bloody match, but a semi-organized match all the same.
“ATTENTION!” she barked, standing just outside the circle.
Instantly, the yelling, the jeering, and the hollering all ceased: half the men and women in the circle snapped their backs up straight and stood at stiff attention.
The two fighters, however, continued pummeling each other, unaware of the change around them.
“Sergeant Jayce! Stand down. That’s an order,” she said again, in as stern and commanding a voice as she could muster. Her voice surprised even herself, and it finally got the attention of the two fighters, who stepped away from each other, bleeding, and glowering with stifled tension.
“What the hell is going on here?” she asked, glancing around the circle before resting her eyes on the bloody Staff Sergeant Logan Jayce.
“A fight, sir,” said the heaving man.
“Really?” She tried to keep her voice sarcastic, but not petty or girly. She knew the men would not respond to a high, snippy tone. “Looked like a bitchy hissy-fit to me.”