Ghost Fleet

by Isaac Stone

  “Sorry, Captain Sophia,” I apologized. “But I am fascinated by that little woman.”

  She rubbed my back. “Alright, Corwin, I’ll talk with Dredge and we’ll fix the schedule tonight.”

  I leaned down and kissed her on the lips. “Thank you, Captain Sophia. I won’t disappoint you in the future.”

  “I don't expect you will. Lessons need to be learned Corwin,” she returned after pulling away. “You'll have Precious tonight, but Cyril is going to be there too.”

  I was shocked. “That’s one of the new guys,” I gasped.

  “You are correct.”

  “Yes," I replied. “But why?”

  “You need to understand that Precious is married to every man in this ship, just as you are married to every woman. Remember you and Britani when she first conceived? It was hard for the two of you to handle sharing, and it took this sort of arrangement to solve that problem. Cyril is new and eager; he’s done well with the other women since his pledge.”

  I did not speak.

  “Cyril hasn’t been assigned to Precious yet, in case you’ve noted. There was a reason I never had him assigned to her. Would you care to guess why?”

  I didn’t say a word.

  “I have no idea, Captain Sophia,” I said evenly.

  “When you're with one of us, ’Captain’ will do just fine.”

  “Captain."

  “I've noticed the way you swoon around her and the way she makes eyes at you long after you’ve been assigned. We can’t have that on this ship. By spending too much time thinking about Precious, you leave room no room in your heart for the other women on this ship. Pretty soon, Vienna will tell me you made love to her, but clearly thought about someone else. Shaunice will want to know why you took so long checking in with her. Soon, I’ll have an entire ship full of disgruntled women. Can’t have that, Corwin. We are at war. So, do you care to guess what my resolution is?”

  “You'll spend the next three nights with Precious and Cyril, but you will not be allowed to touch Precious. Not once.”

  My heart pounded in my chest, this was just as much a test of my loyalty to her position of command as it was my commitment to the pack.

  “You are going to share the same bed with them. You will give suggests to Cyril as to how to please Precious. You will tell him the moment he arrives at her room what she likes done to her and you will not hold anything back.”

  “Now, do you have a problem with that Corwin Hardrain?”

  I looked at that hand. “No, Captain, you’ve made your point.”

  “Excellent, you may go."

  I stood up to leave, and the jealousy pounding in my skull was definitely something I'd have to address, I could feel my psychic power roiling, and I knew the Captain could sense it.

  “However," she continued. “I want you to know one thing.” I turned to her.

  “You and Precious are going to be parents. I’ve approved the you two making a baby as soon as her next cycle begins.”

  Captain Sophia... she takes with one hand and gives with the other.

  She sent Kane and Widow, along with a batch of our freshly pledged trainees, out to get the Cosmic Seed in the Thunder Horse, the pirate's first solo mission away from the protection and guidance of the Hard Rain.

  “What the hell does Captain need that damn egg for anyway?” Tank asked me later while we did routine work on the FAS ships in the hanger, and before I could answer he added “Oh I got a replacement for Rin.”

  “Who did Captain send you to fill in his slot?” I asked while tightening a bolt.

  “Cyril. One of the new kids with that last crew. Say, didn’t you coach him the other night with Precious? Awful big thing for you to do with a new packmate. Captain usually does that, easier when it's two women. I hope you got through that ok.”

  I winced and grunted. The three nights I spent with Precious and Cyril were over last week, and I was grateful. Captain Dredge assigned Precious and I alone the night before and I was the one allowed to give her the news about making a baby in the future. She was thrilled, and we didn't get much sleep that night.

  None of which made a difference when the Thunder Horse was blown apart as it brought back the Cosmic Seed.

  The ship had left the Insubstantia barrier and made the jump into our part of the sector after it picked up the Seed. Both Captains pulled more strings with UDF than I thought possible to get that thing. No doubt promising to conduct some kind of daring mission with us right in the crosshairs.

  It appeared that the dark sentience behind the invasion also wanted the Seed. It sent three ghost ships to ambush the Thunder Horse around a gas giant on its way back to deliver the cargo to our ship. The pirate vessel entered real space on the other side of the planet Hard Rain orbited, and as soon as they dropped out of Insubstantia the ships emerged from inside the gas giant. The ships were scoured with corrosion, their atmosphere completely gone thanks to melted holes in the hull, but as ghosts they were immune to the deadly environment of the gas giant as well as cold hard vacuum. They had to have sat in anticipation for days, watching Hard Rain in orbit and choosing not to engage until their target appeared. Somehow, the ghost ships knew about the special delivery. The Thunder Horse and its contents were blown apart after a brief but intense ship-to-ship firefight, and though Thunder Horse took out two of the already weakened ships, and the Hard Rain eliminated the third, the enemy had achieved its goal of denying us the Seed.

  Captain Dredge took it hard; she’d been with those women a long time. Captain Sophia took it harder, at least from the tenor of the memorial service we held. There was something important she felt that Seed represented. Whatever it was, it was important enough for the ghost ships to destroy it and the ship that carried it with a hideous display of cunning and firepower.

  Captain Sophia was quiet for days after the Thunder Horse was lost. Not only did we lose a clutch of packmates, but also the former pirate ship made up for the loss we’d suffered when half of our FAS were destroyed along with their crews. It was only the news of the Sidarians joining the fight that pulled our captains and our crews out of their state of mourning.

  The Sidarians send their best pilots out in those starfighters they liked to fly. It was supposed to be a show of solidarity with the rest of humanity. Somehow, the UDF convinced them that we all had a better chance of survival if we fought as a species instead of trying to hide from the constant waves of ghost ships. I was surprised, as the Sidarians had a reputation of despising the UDF, but war does make some strange allies.

  Tank and I even met the man who took out the first FAS that the Hard Rain lost. He came on board one day for a battle conference with the captains and a few other allied ships. It was odd to meet him, this man who was once our enemy, but such were the times. At that stage of the war, the best defensive measure the UDF Navy had was to position all the ships they could outside the Spear Cluster and try to destroy any ghost ship that emerged from it. It was the same strategy that was already not working, but I suppose they thought that with more ships the tighter we could draw the net.

  Initially, the navy tried to position solar bombs around the cluster and detonate them the moment anything was detected emerging from it. This didn’t work so well once the dark matter began to seep out from the cluster and engulf everything in its path. Then the solution was to move the bombs further back and hope the dark matter would make it impossible for the ghost ships to leave the cluster. This didn’t work because the dark matter barrier became so vast around the cluster that it was impossible to move the solar bombs around to the nearest tunnel out of the barrier once one of them formed. Jalilah explained the physics behind the problem to me. It made sense for about three minutes, after which I forgot everything she told me.

  This left the only other option, which was to station fleets of starships around the dark matter barrier that surrounded the cluster. Due to the distances involved, it was impossible to station enough ships to intercept the ghost sh
ips once they emerged from any path that opened through the barrier. The navy could keep it under watch with remote satellites, but too many ghost ships were able to make it out and jump away from any local navy ships for the blockade to be effective.

  Moreover, the dark matter barrier increased in size every day.

  The Hard Rain stayed back as part of the outer defense against the ghost ships. We patrolled our sector and made certain any ghost ship that appeared was destroyed the moment we found it. This wasn't too different from our old border patrol functions. However, we weren’t running down fast smugglers in modified ships, but ghost ships before they could make the jump through the Insubstantia barrier and across the galaxy.

  The best way to catch them was to arrive just as the ghost ship was about to make the jump. At that point, all their power was dedicated to the drive that would take the ship to its destination. If we could catch it the moment it was ready to disappear, it was an easy target. Whenever there was a ghost ship in range, the captains would sound the alarm and order everyone into battle formation. Tank’s crew and mine would be inside our FAS ships and wait until the jump. If she timed it right, we’d launch the moment we were across the barrier. Caught out in the open, the ghost ship was metal fragments in seconds.

  It was an engaging mission assignment, but it weighed on our concentration. You never knew when we might have to go into action. Too many times, I was enjoying my latest assignment when the klaxon began to sound throughout the ship. When it went off, I had five minutes to be suited up and in the command tower of the FAS. Several times, I slammed into one of the other crew members as I tried to get into the ready room. One time I saw Tank shoot by me stark naked as I made my way to our lockers.

  He noted my confused look and said, “Alyx.” I didn’t need to know any more.

  It cut both ways. I tried to communicate with Ely once on a screen and saw a woman behind her operating a missile control panel while she had a towel knotted around her waist. During an alert, you won’t suppose to leave your post once you reached it until given the order.

  None of us was surprised when Captain Sophia was appointed Grand Marshall for all the Allied Orders that made up the order system the UDF initiated hundreds of years ago to deal with the unprotected barriers.

  We learned about it one morning after mess hall during the announcements. A few of us noted a different insignia on Captain Sophia’s uniform. She made these announcements as a joint effort with Captain Dredge.

  This time Captain Sophia made the standard announcements first before she turned it over to Captain Dredge. I listened to them with Amarin, who’d been my assignment the night before. Precious was across from us with Rod, as she usually found some reason to maneuver her and the previous night’s assignment to my table.

  Once Captain Sophia finished with her announcements, Captain Dredge moved to the center of the podium and unfolded a piece of paper. This had to be important if real paper was involved.

  “Captain Sophia asked me to make this announcement, which we received last night,” she began, her raspy voice a bit soft today.

  She looked down at the paper. “I’m supposed to read this as ‘per orders of the United Democracies Front’ and give the names of several people you don’t care about. I’ll cut it short and say that Captain Sophia is now Grand Marshal Sophia in charge of all the Orders. She replaces the last Grand Marshal who went down in a battle near the Krishna stars. May the sacrifice be remembered.”

  “I’ll take it from here,” Captain Sophia spoke to Dredge. “I need to have a few more words with them all. There’s some things I need to say that have to be delivered by me personally.”

  Dredge moved out of the way and allowed Captain Sophia to have the podium to herself. She seated herself on one side of the front of the assembly hall and looked at the floor.

  “I didn’t really want this command,” Captain Sophia began. “It forces me to take charge of the entire Order and I never wanted that responsibility. Captain Dredge will continue to supervise the Hard Rain while I’m away, should I need to leave for any reason. This ship will become her command, and for the time being my flagship, until such time as I choose another vessel in the Order fleet.”

  “When this Order came into being, hundreds of years ago, most of the people who authorized it never expected it to work. They couldn’t believe that an entire group of people could abandon a way of life they’d pursued for thousands of years. Every time someone attempted to demonstrate that there might be a better way for people to marry and raise children, it was either shut down or collapsed from the inside. Our founder knew there could be a better way. It took a warship to show people it was possible.”

  “We don't talk much about the founder of the Starwing Order. He never wanted his name to be used after he passed. History it full of groups who continued to use the name of their prophets long after they’d left this reality, even if the name no longer meant anything. Which is why you seldom hear the name Lamen Smith after you reach the age where you can pledge, or not, one of our order ships."

  “Hell, there isn’t even a statue or picture of him anywhere on the Hard Rain. He wanted it that way. His last words were to the effect that a successful order system would be the only legacy he needed. He never wanted, nor did he get, a cult of personality. He wasn’t even an officer when the ship he was shot down by Sidarian raiders.”

  “Lamen Smith had plenty of time to think over what went wrong over the months it took the navy to bring him back to safety. He realized that only long-term colonies of fighters could protect the outer periphery of the UDF. He came to understand that it would take all manner of configurations, because no one could adequately do the job. This is why there are so many different orders out there.”

  "Starwing was one of his later ideas. He thought that a group of mixed women and men who were all married to each other in a complex arrangement would be the best cure for the problems that came out of long-term deployment. It started with one ship that had two men and two women. Now it’s expanded to a fleet of ships that can hold up to a hundred people. We’re in the middle, but I think Hard Rain has plenty of positive aspects to it as according to size. We are able to have enough packmates to satisfy the men’s’ desire for variety, but it’s tight enough for the women to know security. We have a whole group of children coming up and keep in touch with the ones we’ve married off to other order ships. There are plenty of colonies out there for the older packmembers to join when retirement rolls around. Therefore, I’d have to say Mr. Smith’s experiment was a success. All the while we fight and protect the free-fire zones, for ours is a warrior culture as well."

  “But it's all going to be lost if we don’t bring an end to the attacks by these ghost ships.”

  She turned and looked over the heads of the pack, all whom sat and paid close attention to every word she spoke.

  “When the Cosmic Seed was lost, I feared it was hopeless. The Cosmic Seed was the only weapon I’d seen work against them that the ghost ships couldn’t stop. We’ve beat them before, but only at a tremendous cost.”

  “They won’t stop until the last presence of humanity is destroyed. They’ll follow us across the universe if it means eliminating the human race. Make no mistake; they intend to bring about the complete elimination of the human race.”

  Captain Dredge returned to the podium.

  “There is a weakness in the Spear Cluster,” she began to talk. “The intelligence inside is not as strong as it thinks. It’s reached out to many of us on the ship already. Some of us are aware of it. Some of you may already know of a strange sensation or a bad dream where none existed before. It’s the master of the abyss and assumes this universe is its personal domain. It won’t stop until it has control of it. I won’t get into the why and the how. It’s found a way in through the cluster and seeks to eliminate humanity. We stand in the way of its complete domination of the universe. This is a war to the end. We’re all part of it. There will be no truce
or offer of terms from the other side. It ends when it’s killed every last human or when we destroy it.”

  A hand went among the assembled pack. “How do you know so much about this thing?” Indigo asked. I could see the skepticism on her face. It was shared by a lot of the pack.

  “You've had a lot of experience,” Indigo continued. “No one doubts you relationship with the horrors we can’t imagine.” More than a few heads nodded in agreement.

  “I was forced into a Black Mirror cult, one of the strongest in the Delios system, one that you eventually helped destroy. There I learned many things, knowledge that no person would ever want, it is a wisdom that comes with great cost, one that I would spare you,” Captain Dredge spoke to everyone. "Understand, they are real. It is real. It won’t stop until every last trace of humanity is cleansed from the universe. Right now, it can only send so many of those ghost ships out from the portal into this world. We’ve kept them from coming out in full capacity because it can’t risk losing too many of its forces at once, and yet it has in its power all the ships ever lost in the Insubstantia over the many centuries. It has been building its fleet all this time. However, we get weaker every day. So long as it whittles down our numbers, that thing will win. There is a finite amount of ships the navy can send out. The UDF builds more every day, but, should this continue, they will be worn down in a short time. That thing is aware of it. It has all the time it needs to take care of us. We, on the other hand, only have so much time to find a way to destroy it.”

  Now I could see the pack consider what she said. Dredge was still the former pirate cannibal queen in some of their eyes. Even after she’d pledged into the pack with the other former pirate women, there was still a sense of unease from the others. Captain staked a lot on bringing her into the fold. The UDF came around and now Dredge was co-captain. With Captain Sophia now Grand Marshal Sophia, we were forced to acknowledge Dredge as the one in charge of the ship and crew’s well-being. This was not an easy thing to do.