Star Carrier (Lost Colonies Trilogy Book 3)

by B. V. Larson

  “Exactly,” Durris said. “Not the safest system in the galaxy, but not the worst, either.”

  “I can’t believe that we’re back here again,” Yamada said. “Last time they were hostile… Should we transmit a welcoming message?”

  Her question gave me pause. It would be a polite gesture, but there were several flaws with the idea. For one thing, when we’d been here before, several Beta warships—each of them a twin to Defiant—had chased us. One had caught up, and we’d been forced to battle her. We were fortunate to have survived that encounter.

  That wasn’t the only reason I hesitated. The Betas might be no more. If the star carrier had come through this system, I doubted the Betas could have destroyed it. As before, they may have left variant forces behind. Calling out to the Betas might well alert this hypothetical enemy to our presence.

  For several long moments, I didn’t issue any orders. I was considering my options.

  The system made me think of Zye more sharply than I’d done since we’d left Earth weeks before. Here we were, visiting her home system again. The strange thing was that, even if she’d been with us, she’d have been no more welcome here today than she was back on Earth.

  “What should we do, Captain?” Durris prompted me at last.

  “I’m thinking. Anything new?”

  “I’m reading flight-signatures around the Beta home world,” Yamada said.

  Moving to her station, I studied the data directly over her shoulder. The command deck was organized in such a way that I was fed only the summary data directly. Each of the substations was manned by key officers who got everything, all the details they were responsible for. The reason for this two-tiered system was that there were simply too many pieces of information flowing around for any one person to track it all.

  Because of this arrangement, I had to move to another station for data in depth or request that it be relayed to my screens. I often chose the former option so I could converse with the specialist in person.

  “Are they scrambling a ship to come greet us?” I asked Yamada.

  “I’m not sure, but I doubt it,” she said. “There’s quite a bit of traffic, and it’s unlikely they’ve spotted us yet. We’re about a light-hour out from Beta right now. Even if they have drones here, spying on us, they can’t have reported in yet.”

  She was assuming that Beta tech was as limited as ours was in the area of communications, and I didn’t correct her. For now I’d continue hoping that the speed of light was an impenetrable barrier for Betas when it came to communications.

  “All right then,” I said, coming to a decision. “We’ll assume they don’t know we’re here—not yet, anyway. Come about to your last planned course, helmsman.”

  Rumbold looked startled. “Are you sure, Captain? That will take us right through the inner planets.”

  “You’re suggesting we should poke along at the system outskirts?”

  “Yes. A long trip in an elliptical orbit would get us there a week from now, but with little chance of detection.”

  I shook my head. “We have to assume the Iron Duke is still out there, laying waste to systems ahead of us. We can’t wait around while people die.”

  None of my crewmen said anything, but I knew what they were thinking: these people are only colonists.

  Fortunately, none of them dared to speak these words to me. As far as I was concerned, we had an obligation to protect all humans. This responsibility was doubly ours due to the fact Earth gov had released the variants on the universe deliberately. It wasn’t as if we’d stumbled into some kind of alien civil war. We’d built and unleashed the very engines of their destruction.

  A dozen hours passed swiftly. We’d stopped using thrusters after the initial burn to get up to cruising speed. But silent engines weren’t enough to hide us when we were soaring through the system openly. Each hour took us closer to their home world. We weren’t on a collision course with it, but it was going to be pretty damned close.

  At some point during this time, the Betas detected us. I was summoned to the deck, and we were treated to an aggressive display.

  “There are at least seven ships headed to intercept us,” Yamada said, struggling to keep her voice calm.

  “Let’s see the projections on the main screen.”

  Red arcs appeared, looking like hair-thin strands of light. Each intersected our ship over the next day of travel time.

  “Any incoming demands?” I asked.

  “Nothing sir—just like Gliese-32.”

  I didn’t look at her. We both knew what she was thinking. The variants might have swept through here with their fleet already, destroying the Betas. But the last time we came through the Beta Cygnus system, they hadn’t bothered communicating with us. Why would this occasion be any different?

  “Durris, have you got a model yet?” I asked. “What does this look like if we go to full burn?”

  He showed me, and the situation looked far less bleak. We’d reach the exit point we were aiming at before any of the enemy ships could catch up. Having a head start was seriously helping.

  “But Captain,” he said, “there may be more ships ahead we don’t see yet.”

  “Of course. The last time we crossed the Beta Cygnus system, it was a ship that was ahead of us that managed to catch up. Keep scanning for that, forward of our position. In the meantime, light up our engines. We’ll have to keep out of their grasp. But don’t push it any harder than you must. I want room to maneuver.”

  “Got it, working up a thrust setting.”

  The next few minutes were tense, but once we got underway, we all felt better. It was unnerving to have seven ships on your tail gaining fast, and any one of them could be your equal in a fight.

  Rumbold seemed particularly happy to be applying thrust again. He hummed, and he mumbled, and he occasionally chuckled to himself.

  “Captain,” Yamada said, “are we going to try to talk to them?”

  I considered the idea. Last time, it hadn’t helped. Any communication could only identify us to the enemy at this point. But I thought it might be worth a try anyway. Maybe we’d learn something.

  “Get Director Vogel up here,” I said. “He’s the expert on variants. Maybe he can get them to parley with us.”

  As Vogel was summoned, I had time to think about the situation. It seemed grim. If this system was as dead as Gliese-32 had been, then there were no more Betas.

  Well, there was probably one more in existence. The only one I knew of—Zye.

  Her loneliness had infinitely increased on this black day.

  -34-

  Director Vogel was obtuse, as usual.

  “About time you asked my advice,” he said. “If these ships are under the control of variant pilots, I’ll get them to talk to us.”

  “How?” I asked.

  He waggled a thin finger at me.

  “With a clever application of keywords. They speak a dialect of Standard that’s subtly different from our own. It’s not binary, don’t get that idea, it’s a more precisely functional version of our communication. Let me demonstrate.”

  I was reluctant to open a channel and let him say whatever he wished, but given the situation, I doubted things could get worse.

  “Open the channel for him, Yamada.”

  She did, and Director Vogel smugly stepped up to the filament-cameras. Hanging down from the roof, they glowed with a bluish light. They followed his every motion like hair-thin snakes.

  “Identification protocol,” he stated. “Director Vogel, Earth system, Phobos complex. Acknowledge.”

  There was nothing in response. He repeated the statement several times, becoming agitated. He tugged at his clothing, but since it was made of smart fabrics, his collar and sleeves quickly slid back into position.

  “I don’t understand it,” Vogel said. “This should work. They should feel an almost irresistible urge to respond in kind and identify themselves.”

  I shrugged, and Vogel kept tr
ying to reach them.

  After the fourth attempt, Yamada signaled me. She wanted to know if we should close the channel.

  “Director Vogel,” I said, “I think we should try something—”

  “Sparhawk?” the speakers boomed suddenly. We all jumped. It was the voice I knew as Zye’s voice—but that meant little. Because Betas were all clones they all sounded the same.

  “Who is this?” I asked.

  “Are you Sparhawk?” the voice demanded again.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m Captain William Sparhawk.”

  “Why do you have this mental deficient calling us? Did you hope to hide behind him? Did you hope we wouldn’t know who you really were?”

  At the reference to being a mental deficient, Vogel ruffled. “I demand to know who’s piloting the ships in our wake!” he said.

  I cast him a dark glance and waved him away from the cameras. Two security people quickly escorted him off the deck.

  “I’m sorry about that,” I said when I stood in the central position, my face lit up with a slightly bluish cast by the twisting vid pickups. “That was one of our scientists. We thought you were—well—we thought you were someone else.”

  “You’re talking about those machines, aren’t you?” the voice asked.

  Whoever she was, this individual wasn’t showing herself.

  “Why are you so afraid?” I asked, deliberately needling her. “Betas are always paranoid, but this time you’re more so than the last time I visited this system.”

  The response was very sudden. An angry face loomed on the forward holo screen.

  “Ignorant Basic!” she said. “I’m no Beta, I’m an Alpha. You’d best remember that.”

  “Captain Okto?” I asked. “Is that you?”

  “You remember? Good. I want you to know who destroys your ship. I want you to feel fear and rage as your decks split apart under your Earthling ass.”

  “Tempers are flaring,” I said as calmly as I could. “I would suggest that we’re wasting our energies on each other. We should be presenting a united front to stop the real menace—”

  “Which one?” she asked. “The Stroj or that war-fleet full of robots you sent out blindly into space? How can you suggest alliance when you created both these threats? Do you take us for utter fools?”

  “Not at all,” I said, “and you do have a valid complaint when it comes to the variants.”

  “We have more than that. You Basics are responsible for everything that’s wrong with the colonies. We understand that now. You seeded us, abandoned us, and now you seek to destroy us. Could your motivations be whimsy or idiocy? Does it matter which it is?”

  “Captain Okto,” I said, “I know you’re upset. I’m sure the variants have done grievous damage—”

  “SHUT UP SPARHAWK!” she raged. “A million Betas have perished. A dozen proud starships have been lost… I’m only glad you’ve provided us with this chance to even the score.”

  She closed the channel. Try as we might, she didn’t allow it to reopen.

  “Well,” Vogel said from behind me, where he’d crept back onto the deck, “that could have gone better.”

  I felt rage bubble up in me, but I didn’t release it. There was no purpose. What was done was done. A potentially allied world—probably the best ally we could have hoped for—had declared a vendetta against us.

  That was the legacy of Earth’s dealings with her colonies. The arrogance of the Council and the Chairman had no bounds.

  Did they really think the colonists were going to forget these acts? If these peoples out here among the stars ever got their strength together, if they ever managed to gather their scattered numbers and turn against us…

  We wouldn’t stand a chance.

  That was the thought which transfixed me. In an instant, I felt I understood what was going on—or at least part of it.

  Whirling on my heel, I approached Vogel with such singleness of purpose he staggered back, suspecting I was going to strike him. In truth, such a thing did briefly cross my mind.

  “Vogel, come with me.”

  I brushed past him and headed for the conference chamber. He followed, muttering to himself.

  When we were alone, I set up a scrambler and began to talk in earnest.

  “I understand what’s going on out here now,” I said.

  “You do?” he asked cautiously.

  “Yes. I want to know if you understand it as well.”

  “You’ll have to be more specific, Captain,” he said. “Please remember I’m only a weak-minded fool.”

  I blinked then realized he was still furious that his intellect had been called into question by Okto. I brushed his concerns away with my hand.

  “Grow up, man,” I told him. “An Alpha called you an idiot. So what?”

  “When it comes to comparative intellects—”

  “Drop it,” I told him. “We have much bigger concerns.”

  “Why?” he asked. “We’re going to slide right past these ships. They said themselves they lost half their fleet to the variants. That lowers the odds they’ll be ahead of us waiting for us in ambush.”

  “I’m not talking about the Betas. I’m talking about the variants and their mission. They’re out here to destroy every colony they encounter.”

  “We knew that.”

  “Yes… but we didn’t know why. Not until now.”

  He blinked at me. “Your discussion with Okto gave you an insight into the motivations of my variants?”

  “In a way, she did just that. The variants aren’t rebels. The variants are obedient, as always. It’s my belief this case is no different, that they’re following their orders.”

  He frowned and squirmed. “That’s absurd. Why would Admiral Halsey order them to mutiny and kill him?”

  I gave him a slow, grim smile. “The variants have implants—right, Director?”

  He paused, staring at me. “Yes… for all intents and purposes, they do.”

  “Just so. Now, who do you think might have the power to reprogram all your variants at once, without your knowledge?”

  “But why…?” he asked. “You believe we did this to ourselves? Such a horrible thought.”

  “I think the Council did it, yes. The Chairman specifically. He tricked the variants, or changed their memories, or something. He turned them against Star Guard and against all our colonies. He sent them out here to destroy them all.”

  “That’s monstrous,” Vogel said. “Genocide? On an interplanetary scale? Why?”

  I leaned toward him. “Now you’re right where I am. It’s one thing to suspect a crime, it’s quite another to have a sensible motive that makes everything fit. Now, at last, I think I understand.”

  “Explain it to me then.”

  “When Okto raged at us, I realized that Earth wouldn’t stand a chance against all our colonies in a united war. Despite having the largest fleet, we couldn’t stop all of them put together.”

  Vogel looked horrified. “So… so we struck first? Out of fear?”

  “Fear? Maybe that’s the right word. I was there when the Council voted to act. To build a great fleet and launch it into the stars. It was my understanding that the purpose of the fleet was to bring order to the chaos that our colonies represented. But they had a different view.”

  Vogel was nodding now. I could tell he’d come to see things my way. I could also tell he didn’t like it.

  “Monstrous,” he repeated.

  “A fair description,” I agreed. “The Council figured Earth couldn’t fight every colonist out here if they were united, so Earth struck first. That way, they could take the colonies down one at a time in a long series of battles. Each time the armada ventured to a new star, our fleet would be bigger than the enemy fleet as long as the colonies stayed divided.”

  “I think you might be right, Captain. The variants will never be defeated if they move quickly and ruthlessly enough.”

  Vogel said this, again with a hint of pride.
I could forgive him for that, even if others wouldn’t.

  “One detail that I haven’t understood,” I said, “is why they killed Halsey.”

  “Maybe that was an error,” Vogel suggested. “Or maybe he didn’t like the change of orders. The variants might have misinterpreted his reluctance to follow orders from Star Guard.”

  “Misinterpreted? Their instructions were illegal and those instructions probably only existed within the minds of the variants. I find it likely that the Council intended for the human crews to die. They would only get in the way when the killing began in earnest. Variants have no conscience, do they?”

  Vogel studied his hands. “It’s hard to know… but then, neither does the Council.”

  “What I do know,” I said, “is that the Council sent me to meet Victory in battle when she came toward Earth. Maybe something had gone wrong by that point. Maybe Victory wasn’t supposed to return to the Solar System at all.”

  Vogel shook a finger at me. “That’s got to be it. The variants might be—troubled by all this.”

  “By ‘troubled’ do you mean completely mad?”

  “Possibly. I don’t know how they might respond to a radical shift in their world-view. They aren’t human—not quite. The Council may have miscalculated. They may have accidentally put Earth on the menu.”

  “That scenario fits the events I’ve witnessed,” I said. “Halsey was sent off to die, but I was allowed to live with Defiant under my command in orbit over the home world.”

  “I suppose that’s a backhanded form of compliment,” Vogel said, his lips twitching into a smirk.

  “Yes…” I agreed. “Then we gave them a second chance at both of us. What better reason to kill us, or make us vanish, could there be than an unsanctioned attack on CENTCOM? But even after all that, they let us out of prison.”

  Director Vogel chewed that over. “Our release wasn’t on account of any kind-heartedness on the part of the oldsters, of that much I’m certain. It was a reaction to stark fear. They must have calculated that they still needed us.”

  “Perhaps they see us as fail-safes. A method of shutting down the variants when their mission has been completed, and they begin to return home.”