by Troy Osgood
Gravity on a spaceship is weird. It’s centered on the ship itself, whatever the manufacturers consider the deck. What is down for one ship would be up for another or sideways for a third. It makes things interesting when approaching space stations and planets.
As we flew through space I leaned back in my chair, feet up on the console, and drank an ale. What I called an ale anyways. Tradelan works pretty good most of the time. It takes the word in the other language and substitutes the closest word in yours. So what I was drinking was an ale, it also wasn’t. That was just the only word that came close to the translation.
Because of the translation issue, while Tradelan allowed the varied beings of the galaxy to communicate, it still led to a lot of miscommunication. Which more often than not was answered with blaster fire.
This particular ale came from a planet called Ture and was pretty good. The closest to true Earth ale that I had found. And this far out in Deep Space it was easier to find.
My console started beeping and I sat up. The lights on the comms were flashing, indicating there was an incoming message. Not live, a recording. Someone had sent a message out into the Galactic Feed to my address. It was just luck that the Wind was in-system currently, otherwise I might not have gotten it until after the next hop, wherever and whenever that would be.
The Feed was the galaxy wide, at least the known galaxy, system of connected satellites and relays. It bounced data across the stars. Anything from messages to entertainment, news and pictures. Each system paid a tax to have the Feed satellite’s there, but they were all willing to pay it. No inhabited system went without, even the Tiats. While they had their own system they still used the Feed.
Glancing at the delivery mark I was surprised. One of the last people I would have expected a random message from. Well we were still on good terms, and did communicate, it wasn’t just for social calls.
I wondered what my former commander, Colonel Terrence Jessups, wanted.
CHAPTER TWO
I was in the Earth Expeditionary Forces for ten years and most of those were spent in Special Operations. All of that time was spent under the command of Colonel Jessups. He was pretty much responsible for me being who I am. When I had joined, at eighteen and just out of high school, I was the stereotypical troubled kid. It had been my mother, my sister and me. We had it rough and I’d fallen in with a bad crowd.
A bad decision led me to the best one I had ever made.
I’d been given a choice; jail or the military. I chose the military and everyone, including me, was surprised to find I had a knack for soldiering.
Except the following orders part. That I had never really learned. But my skills made up for that and led me into Special Operations. Jessups took that wild kid and turned him into a soldier. I’d risen quickly up the ranks and had left as a Captain.
Without Jessups, I wondered where I would have ended up. Nowhere good that was for sure. I glanced around at the Wind. Some would have said that I hadn’t upgraded when I left the 2Es, might have taken a step back, but I was happy and free. On my own.
Putting on the headset I keyed the transmission and watched Jessups appear on the screen. Gray haired in a close cut military style, brown eyed, more crows’ feet and wrinkles around the face than the last time I had seen him. Jessups was looking weary. He’d been looking that way the last few times but now it was really noticeable. He was run down. Tired. Should have been long retired but the man knew too much and was too good. The 2Es wouldn’t let him leave. Not that he really wanted to. The Forces were his only family.
“Captain,” the message started and just hearing his voice almost made me jump out of the chair and stand at attention. “I am messaging for two reasons. I cannot go into many details over the Feed as encrypted as it is.” Here he paused. To send me a message meant he couldn’t use the standard military codes. The Wind didn’t have the software to decrypt them. Jessups was trying to figure out what he could tell me. “The first reason is to inform you of the deaths of three members of your old unit.”
That caught me by surprise. The deaths must have been recent as I did check in with some old war buddies now and then. For three of them to die around the same time and recently, as they must have been or I would have known, was pretty suspicious and I could see why Jessups would want to inform me. I wondered how many others of the old units were getting similar messages.
I saw that there were data packets attached to the message. Those would be the news items on the deaths.
“The other reason is we believe connected to the first.” Again Jessups paused, staring at the screen. It caused me to look at him instead of at anything else. “The rock is active.”
Jessups leaned away from the screen, giving it a nod. That was the message. Nothing else. I could tell by his posture that it was all delivered.
It took me a couple seconds to figure it out, which was all the time Jessups gave me in the message. He started speaking again.
“I am stationed at the new colony if you would like to get together to raise a drink to old friends. I will be there for a month.”
The message ended and I opened the data packets.
Anyone that intercepted the message would know that Jessups had given me some coded phrases. There was no way to hide that. They’d comb through the packets, dissect them, looking for whatever information Jessups would have passed on to me. They wouldn’t find anything. There was no information.
Everything Jessups had to pass on, he had in the message.
Just four simple words.
The rock is active.
But there was so much more in the message. Jessups was always a fan of hiding messages in plain sight. The intelligence division wanted to be tricky, always coming up with new and complicated ways of passing information from one source to another. Jessups, and myself, we preferred the simple ways.
He used the plural ‘we’ when saying that the first reason, the deaths of my old unit mates, and the second were connected. This meant that it was the 2Es that thought it. The intelligence division more than likely.
‘New colony’ meant that he was on Rewe, a frontier world and Earth’s newest colony. There was a sizable Expeditionary Forces base there. The ‘raise a drink’ meant that he wanted to meet with me, face to face.
I skimmed the packets. Each was an obituary and news article on the death of three men. Jon Herrin, Harald Devry and Stuart Thoms. Three good soldiers. Three good men. Each had died from various accidents. Also in each packet was a file, more details on their deaths. Police reports. Skimming those I quickly realized that none of the deaths was an accident.
Made to look like accidents, but they weren’t. They were assassinations.
I knew what those looked like. I’d done my fair share during the Spec Ops days.
It really didn’t shock me. Aside from Devry, the other two had still been active duty. There was a cold war going on with the Tiat. After the truce and the end of the Third Galactic War, we had settled into an uneasy peace with them. That didn’t stop either side from still trying to wipe the other from the galaxy. Some of my missions had been against Tiat operations. The Tiat were bastards. We were as well, but nowhere near as bad as the Tiat. Reprisals, from both sides, were common.
What was surprising was the frequency of the deaths.
I had been right. They were all recent and pretty close together. Not a coincidence. They had been targeted. Which was odd, as one was retired and the other two weren’t that high up the food chain with the 2Es. Not high value targets.
Not worth the effort.
There was also the fact that all their names, including mine, would have been redacted and not on file. Not supposed to be anyways. It was information that no one should have had access to. But if it existed in some computer, someone could always get at it.
That was one of the reasons I tended to keep to the area of the galaxy known as Deep Space. Out on the fringes and away from all the activity. Keeping a low profile. Try
ing to anyways. Because of Kaylia I knew I was probably on the Tiat’s radar but did they connect the freight hauler with the 2Es soldier?
Jessups had said that it was assumed the deaths were connected to the other part of his message and I knew he was right.
The rock was active.
There was only one rock he could be talking about. One place that the three dead men, Jessups and me would have been connected.
An asteroid located just a few systems, and hops, from Tiat controlled space. It had been used by them as a development factory. Lots of nasty stuff created there. Thankfully none of it had been used.
Thanks to Jessups, Devry, Thoms, Herrin and myself.
*****
I thought about ignoring the message. Going deeper into the fringes and staying there.
I wasn’t a soldier anymore. Not my fight. I could defend myself if the Tiat came hunting. Getting involved would just put me fully back on their radar and in their sights.
Low profile.
Tuyo Minor came into view. Half the size of Major but with twice as much nastiness. More valleys, more inhospitable. But the mining was better.
We had a job lined up. Quick delivery to a system a few four to five hour hops away, the Youtin system. Not much in the way of credits, but it was money.
Youtin would also put us that much closer to a hop to Rewe. It would still be a couple days and more time without a job or income.
Just more reasons to not go.
As I followed the coordinates from Minor’s Dock Control to the landing pad I was already doing the calculations that would take us from Youtin to Rewe and already angry at myself.
CHAPTER THREE
The white of wildspace became the black void of space with nothing visible ahead of us. We’d hopped into the fringes of the Rewe system. It shared the same name as the only inhabited planet. A colony world with a small population of natives.
It had been discovered about ten years ago by an Expeditionary Forces vessel and us earthlings, Terrans, had laid claim to it. It had taken about four years of skirmishes and battles before the claim had been solidified. Three gas giants, one desert and one earth like planet with one lifeform that was near civilized. At least as judged by the standards of the galaxy. The native Rewens had never really advanced far or grown in population. Which was odd. No one had yet been able to find out why.
Really, no one cared. It was essentially vacant and the system was the edge of known space so a perfect jumping off point for exploring further into the galaxy. The planet didn’t boast many natural resources so unlike the other colony worlds, or moons, Rewe’s real purpose was as a staging ground. Sure there were colonists, people setting up settlements across the planet but Earth’s government tried to ignore them. They only cared about the 2Es base.
I’d been to the system a couple of times. First was before it was a true colony world, during the height of the claim fighting. Some deliveries but the funnest had been about two years ago when I helped out a friend in the Territorial Protectorate with a pirate problem.
Well not really fun. The pirate part wasn’t the fun but the couple days after were. I hoped that Kristin was still stationed on Rewe.
Kaylia stepped onto the bridge and my thoughts drifted away from TP agent Kristin Higareda and to what I was doing. This was a mistake, I knew it. And the kid’s presence, taking her seat in the co-pilot’s station, reminded me of it. My main goal in life now was to protect her and coming to Rewe was not going to do that.
But I had to do something.
Those men that had been killed, they were brothers. And I needed to know why they had been killed and what that could mean for me.
And Kaylia.
*****
A nice and green world, lots of bodies of water, Rewe was very flat. No hills or mountains, which made for a constant wind across the plains. Pretty in its way. Very small, fourth from the sun, the climate was pretty moderate. Lots of rain though.
Last time I had been here, there had been no cities of any size to be called cities. Just collections of buildings scattered across the plains. But in just a year or so a real city had grown up. Population of a hundred thousand or so. Made up of two and three story buildings, utilitarian, not much to look at. It was a true frontier world. Lots of different species came here to mingle with the human colonists. Most came to get away.
The largest structure was no longer the spaceport. It was the 2E base.
But I wasn’t getting a look at either. Or the planet.
This trip I was stopping at the space station in orbit.
The larger ships don’t have the ability to enter a planet’s atmosphere so they can’t land on that planet. To allow for these ships, the systems that could afford to ended up building giant space stations at the edges of the systems. A side benefit was it kept the in-system traffic down. The stations all basically followed the same designs to make them easier to use. All to make commerce better. Credits made the galaxy run, in space and on planet. Everything was done to make the transfer of credits easier, not the lives of the billions of people.
The Rewe station was different. Not a place for merchants, it didn’t follow the standard design. This was a military station and that was how it looked. Unlike the merchant stations, which were long cylinders, this station was squat. Kind of globe with the top and bottom flattened. There was a docking ring around the middle but it wasn’t as big as the merchant stations. Two large gun platforms were mounted on the flat parts of the globe with smaller emplacements along the docking ring.
It hadn’t been built the last time I was here and wasn’t as big as I thought it would be. The crew wasn’t large so there wouldn’t be a need for much in the way of creature comforts. The planet and all it had to offer was close enough for that.
The ring was empty, as I figured it would be, except for one large ship. A Kry made vessel, heavy freighter that looked pretty beat up.
I transmitted the Wind’s ID codes. Didn’t bother with calling the station’s dockmaster, I knew I was expected. Sure enough, without any questioning I got landing authorization. A couple bays down from the Kry freighter. If this had been a merchant station, I might have let Kaylia do the manual dock but not here.
We got closer and I turned the ship so our aft end was facing the docking ring. The Wind was a giant wedge in shape with the aft end having slight angles on the two decks. The lower one had the ramp with a smaller door in it. Multiple cameras gave me a good view of the airlock now extending out from the docking ring. Using the thrusters I slowed the Wind and adjusted it so the airlock fit around the ramp.
There was a bump, the ship moving slightly, as we connected with the airlock. The maglocks engaged, the black gasketing resting tight against the ship’s hull, and we were secured.
hit a couple buttons and put the Wind into standby.
“Let’s do this,” I said to Kaylia and got up from my seat.
I just knew I was going to regret this.
*****
Didn’t take long to regret it.
I opened the Wind’s hatch and came face to face with blaster rifles. All pointed at me by six armored 2E infantry soldiers.
Somebody must have forgotten to tell them I was invited.
I felt Kaylia grab my shirt and shift so she was fully behind me. I kept my arms out to my side, palms turned towards the grunts. Good thing I’d left my weapon in the bunk.
Not much had changed in the standard 2E uniform in the last five years. Dark green with black lines down the sleeves. Black blaster resistant armor pads at the knees, upper and lower legs along with the lower arms and elbows. The same chest covering tactical armor with various pieces of equipment attached to it. Pretty empty right now as these were on-station soldiers. I knew there would be clips on the back straps for other equipment to be connected. Things like environmental tanks. They all wore the green helmets with dark visors. Couldn’t see in but they could see out along with lots of other useful information on the helmet’s
heads-up displays.
“Hello,” I said with a smile.
None of them moved but I did watch someone walk out from behind the soldiers. He was in a base uniform, clean and crisp and also unchanged over the years. About six foot, brown hair, clean shaven. Dark green pants, matching dark green jacket that was closed. Black trim down the long sleeves and down the front along the zipper. Patches depicting rank and unit were on the arm. Belted to his waist was a standard issue blaster.
An officer.
Even worse, a non-combat officer.
He stood there, just off to the side, hands clasped behind his back.
“Captain Lancer,” he said in greeting.
“Hi,” I replied and nodded at the weapons. “Can you?”
“No,” the officer replied. “You are authorized but she is not,” he said and pointed at Kaylia who still hid behind me.
I rolled my eyes. Ridiculous.
Kaylia was just a kid, what were they expecting? This was the response I would expect from a visiting Tiat. I mean, Kaylia could be dangerous, but this was an overreaction.
“Okay,” I told the officer and turned back towards the ship, taking the kid by the shoulders and steering her into the hold. “We’ll just leave then.”
I heard the airlock door open behind the soldiers and didn’t bother turning. I had a feeling I knew who it was.
“Lieutenant,” a voice said. One I recognized. Full of command and annoyance. “What are you doing?”
I turned around, trying not to smile. I still held Kaylia behind me hough.
Colonel Jessups looked the same as the last time I saw him in person, over five years ago. Just older. Lots older. He looked worse then he did in the video. Very worn out, tired and old.
“Sir,” the officer said snapping to attention. “Just following protocols. Captain Lancer brought an unannounced being on board the station.”
Jessups sighed.
He stood straight, arms clasped behind his back.
“I will personally vouch for Captain Lancer’s associate,” he said in a tone that dared the officer to argue.