Star Carrier (Lost Colonies Trilogy Book 3)

by B. V. Larson

  -37-

  The next hour or so was tense, but things eased off as we continued to put distance between our stern and the Beta vessels.

  The enemy crews weren’t able to capitalize on their ability to take more G-forces in this environment. Just as we’d done, they’d detected the gas and suspected there might be more substantial particulate matter in this pocket of hyperspace. If that was true, flying too fast could overwhelm their shields and destroy their ships.

  Since Defiant had been moving faster than they were when we’d entered hyperspace, we kept gaining slightly as we all accelerated to a maximal safe speed. At that point, we coasted ahead of them.

  The only problem with my strategy was finding a way out. If we ran out of hyperspace before we found the exit, we would be in trouble. We’d either have to turn and fight, or we’d ram into the theoretical wall of this universe. Either way, we’d be destroyed.

  The Beta ships followed doggedly for sixteen more hours before our missiles reached them. I’d ordered Durris to program them to go fairly slowly so as to maximize the suspense.

  I could only imagine the worry my three missiles were causing the Betas. Normal warfare practice required an overwhelming barrage to be applied to a single ship in order to ensure a crippling blow. The fact I’d sent only one missile each against all three of their ships had to be giving them fits. Betas weren’t imaginative, and they didn’t like unknowns.

  Accordingly, they began firing a disproportionate amount of countermeasures, anti-missiles and point-defense turrets as our missiles closed on their position. In very short order, all three of our missiles were destroyed.

  “Fire three more,” I ordered. “Set them for maximal velocity this time.”

  Rumbold boggled at me. “Still trying to make them duck, Captain?”

  I nodded.

  He went off into another gale of laughter.

  “They won’t fall for the same trick twice, surely…?” Yamada asked.

  “Watch them,” I said. “They’re suspicious people. They’ll make up a reason for our actions if none is evident.”

  “Yes…” Durris said, beginning to catch on. “If I was worried about an enemy behaving like this, I might impute all kinds of evil into these actions.”

  “Such as?” I asked, honestly curious.

  “I’d assume the first barrage had been devised to reveal our defenses. That they were sent at low velocities to tease out everything we had. Now, three more fast missiles on the way…? They could only be smarter weapons. Missiles made much more dangerous because we’d shown them all our tricks. That’s what would keep me awake at night.”

  I smiled and said, “Good. If we can’t beat them, at least we can torment them.”

  Rumbold frowned and squirmed in his seat. I could tell he wanted to say something, but he didn’t quite feel it was his place to do so. “Permission to speak freely sir?”

  “Granted helmsman,” I said, “tell me what’s on your mind.”

  “Well, Captain,” he said, “I’m not sure why we’re tweaking their noses this much. It’s a hoot, certainly, but what purpose does it serve?”

  “It will keep them flying after us for one thing.”

  All my command officers glanced at me as if I was insane. I smiled back.

  “You want them to keep coming?” Rumbold asked.

  “Yes. I’ve been worried they’d turn back. It’s reckless of them to continue this pursuit, don’t you think? They’re leaving their home world undefended behind them. For what purpose? Spite?”

  “But why, Captain? Why do you want them to chase us to the ends of the universe?”

  “Because I believe we’re going to run into our real enemy sooner or later. When that moment comes, I’m hoping reason will dawn for the Betas. They may hate us, but in truth, we’ve done them no real harm. If I can talk them into joining us in battle against someone they truly hate…”

  “Ah,” Durris said. He’d been listening in. “I understand, but it does seem like a risky strategy.”

  “Risky?” asked Rumbold, turning away and shaking his head. “It’s more than that.”

  I sighed. “Yes, there is a hint of desperation in this move, but we’re in a very serious situation. Iron Duke and her escorts won’t show anything but cold ruthlessness toward us and the Betas alike.

  “You’re the captain,” Rumbold said resignedly.

  Durris appeared some minutes later at my side.

  “XO?” I asked. “Have you computed a way out of this patch of space yet?”

  “Not yet, Captain.”

  “Well then, have our missiles struck the enemy ships?”

  “Not for another hour—I wanted to talk to you about something else.”

  I’d suspected as much, but I let him twist in the wind a moment longer. “All right, then, by all means, speak.”

  “Uh… could we talk in private, Captain?”

  I granted his request, and we headed down to the officers’ cantina. I felt I could use a few minutes break before anything else unexpected happened.

  When we were alone, Durris leaned over the small, circular table that was equipped with magnetic cup holders to clamp our drinks down.

  “Sir, have you gone mad?” he asked.

  “That’s a rude opener, Commander.”

  “I know, Captain. I know, and I apologize. But we seem to have forgotten our original orders. We’re supposed to be determining where this string of breach-points leads to and locating the renegade fleet along the way if possible. We’re not supposed to be causing interstellar incidents with neutral powers.”

  Toying with my mug, I considered his words. “The situation is more complex than you may realize,” I said.

  “Do you think the variants won’t stop after they destroy all the colonists?” he asked.

  “Do they have to?” I asked, suddenly intense. “Is Earth all that matters in your view? If so, I reject your ethics. We are Star Guard. We are sworn to protect humanity. All of humanity.”

  I was referring, of course, to our original oath of office. Every Star Guard officer declared himself the defender of our entire species upon receiving his commission.

  “You’re talking about the Guardsman’s Oath?” Durris asked, incredulous. “It’s an anachronism.”

  “Really? A few years ago, before we reconnected with our colonies, I might have agreed with you. But not today. I’m now of the opinion the oath represents wisdom from the past. I think our predecessors could foretell the future. They knew this day might come. That Earth might someday be reunited with her children.”

  He squinted at me for a time. “Earth has found her colonies again, that’s true. But I must say your position is even more radical than I’d thought. We’re not just following our orders in an independent manner, are we?”

  “We’re following our oath of office,” I said carefully.

  “Do you intend to involve Earth in a civil war out here among the stars?”

  “Hardly. We created the variants. We gave them ships. We sent them out here to destroy indiscriminately.”

  “Ah…” he said, as if suddenly understanding. “This is about the Connatic, isn’t it? I know you had a fling with her, Captain. I understand if your emotions—”

  I stood up suddenly. Durris was getting under my skin.

  “Don’t patronize me on my own ship XO,” I warned.

  I wanted to tell him everything—all about Zye, who he’d forgotten, the secret Council in their underground chambers, the rewriting of history through our implants… But I was at a loss as to how to get him to believe me. So I just stared at him sourly for a few seconds.

  Then, I had an idea. “Come with me, Commander.”

  He followed numbly, looking concerned. I led him to the lab where Director Vogel and Dr. McKay were operating on another of the variants. We watched quietly for a time before they closed up the creature’s flesh and artificial carapace.

  Durris looked ill, but I didn’t have time for s
uch things.

  “Director Vogel, we have to take Commander Durris into our confidence. In fact, I want his implant altered the way ours have been.”

  Durris and Vogel both looked at me in alarm.

  “How did you know…?” Vogel asked, but then he shook his head. “I guess it’s obvious. Yes, I altered my own implant the way you did with yours. My entire team has been protected, too.”

  “What are you people talking about?” Durris asked. His hand strayed to the back of his neck in a nervous, almost defensive gesture.

  “Could you please explain?” I asked Vogel.

  He did so gladly. Inside, he had the heart of a professor. He led Durris through recent occurrences that had been altered by the Council, and even demonstrated by playing vid files of events that everyone on Earth remembered differently.

  “That’s not how it happened!” Durris said, incredulous. “I saw the reports with my own eyes!”

  “No, you didn’t,” I said, jumping into the conversation. “I’ve figured that part out. The imagery you recall was never broadcast. You won’t find vid files of these events—such as the attack by a pack of Stroj on CENTCOM recently—anywhere on the net. Curiously, they’re rarely searched for, and when they are, they can’t be found.”

  “Exactly,” Vogel said, “the mind is an amazing thing. It’s almost eager to fill in lost memories with false ones. What you know about the attack on CENTCOM is a falsehood. Those ideas were planted by web stories you read, or which you were told about by others who read them. Excuses for the lack of actual video usually amount to declaring them all matters of World Security.”

  “Usually? Are you saying this sort of thing happens often?”

  “Not every day,” I said, “I’d say it only happens a few times a year, as needed. When events must be covered up, or people need to be forgotten, they edit our reality.”

  “But how?” he demanded.

  “Through your morning updates. While you sleep, new memories are installed. Unwanted ones are removed.”

  “But…” he said, staring at the evidence Vogel had laid out for him, carefully designed as it was to convince anyone who was a thinking person. I could tell he didn’t want to believe it. “Who would do such a thing?”

  “People who want to control us. People who believe they know best how to run the world—who should live and who should die.”

  He looked at me with haunted eyes.

  “What are we going to do about this, Captain?” he asked.

  His voice was that of a man lost in the woods, but that’s exactly where I wanted him. I hadn’t been sure Durris could accept this harsh reality. Many people would rather believe a comfortable lie.

  It was one of his enduring traits, however, that he liked to know the real truth almost as much as I did.

  -38-

  One by one, I brought all my key officers down to Vogel’s chambers and convinced them. Yamada was next after Durris, then Rumbold.

  Oddly enough, Rumbold took it harder than the rest. He was a romantic at heart, and he didn’t like the idea of having been robbed of his memories for decades.

  “It’s just not right, Captain!” he exclaimed, pacing and gesturing with sudden chopping motions of his hands. “Are you certain about all this?”

  Yamada stepped up, as Rumbold didn’t trust Vogel any farther than he could throw him.

  “It seems to be true,” she said. “I’ve found trace evidence in the computer systems on Defiant. Possibly, this ship has the only system they couldn’t fully erase, because so many of her component parts were built on Beta. They aren’t based on Earth technology, and therefore, they’ve resisted a clean sweep.”

  “Unbelievable,” Rumbold said, “I didn’t think the oldsters capable of this level of deceit.”

  This caught everyone’s attention.

  “I never said who was behind it all, Rumbold,” I said quietly.

  His eyes flicked to me, then down to the deck. “No. No you didn’t… but you didn’t need to. I’ve been around a long time. Only Vogel has been alive longer. There always were rumors. Back in the old days, people disappeared. I’m talking about the Cataclysm, back when I was young. When someone vanished back then, you shut up about it.”

  “I remember those times,” Director Vogel said, “I was still an intern.”

  “Yes,” continued Rumbold, “and I was a young man dreaming of becoming a spacer. It started when the world government was established after the Cataclysm. People figured those who’d disappeared were dissidents. After a time, the process seemed to stop, and we all relaxed.”

  “Only, it didn’t stop,” Vogel said. “Your captain has opened all of our eyes. The purges, the disappearances… The altering of history goes on every morning when our minds are updated with the latest world view our masters want us to have.”

  We all eyed him, thinking about it.

  Rumbold slammed a fist into his palm. “It’s just plain wrong. I’ve often wondered why the people put up with our government. Why they don’t rise up, protest, or kick anyone out of office—not even their clones? No offense, Sparhawk.”

  “None taken.”

  “Well then,” Durris said quickly. “The question becomes: what are we going to do about this?”

  “First,” I said, “we’ll find out what’s at the end of this trail of breadcrumbs Halsey has left behind for us. I’m hoping it will be something worth the journey.”

  “But Captain!” Rumbold said, stepping close. His bloodshot eyes stared into mine. “Shouldn’t we head back to Earth right now? Surely, with Defiant in our hands we could do something to change it all!”

  I looked around the group. They looked worried, uncertain, lost. I shook my head. They were shocked and disillusioned, but they weren’t revolutionaries.

  “Now isn’t the time for drastic action, Rumbold,” I said. “Let’s first attend to the duty we’ve all been sworn to perform: the protection of humanity at large.”

  They fell into line as we marched back up to the command deck. No one spoke, and I knew they were all lost in their own thoughts.

  When we arrived and filed to our stations, sending our replacements below, we quickly took stock of the situation.

  All of the missiles we’d fired at the enemy ships had been destroyed without damaging their targets.

  “Your bluff has run its course, Captain,” Durris informed me. “The enemy ships are increasing speed in pursuit.”

  “A dangerous choice,” I said, “but at least they aren’t turning around and heading home.”

  Some of my staffers looked at me as if I was crazy, but I didn’t care. I had bigger matters to attend to.

  “Captain!” Durris called out triumphantly, “we’ve got something! A solution—we’ve found the way out of this hyperspace.”

  I looked at him, impressed. “That was fast. Who can I thank?”

  “I’ll be damned… The solution was sent to the battle computer over the ship’s public net.”

  “Ah… Vogel then, in a spare moment?”

  He shook his head. “No sir, the solution was worked out by K-19. Can you believe that?”

  Oddly enough, I found that I could believe it. We punched the answer into the navigational system, and the ship lurched onto a slightly new course. Defiant would now strike the breach point at speed and exit into another star system approximately thirty-two minutes from now.

  Time went by at a crawl. When we were only five minutes from reaching our goal, a message came from Okto.

  I was uncertain how to handle the situation. I considered delaying as once we were through the breach the channel would be cut off automatically. For a few moments, I dithered.

  With a sigh, I finally signaled Yamada to open the line. We were very close to the exit by the time she did so. Due to the distance between our two vessels, there wouldn’t be time to have a real conversation. It would take too many light-seconds for our respective transmissions to pass back and forth between our ships.

>   “Captain Sparhawk,” Okto greeted me from the forward screen. She appeared to be unexpectedly pleased with herself.

  Everyone on the deck watched the screen. How could they not? The Betas were doggedly chasing us, determined to see us destroyed.

  “I’m sending this message for my own personal gratification. I hope you don’t find it in poor taste during your final moments.”

  Frowning, I glanced over at Durris. He shrugged in return.

  We turned back to the large, round face of Okto as she beamed at us. She was unable to see us, and her message amounted to a prerecorded announcement. Obviously aware of this, she went on, but not without pausing dramatically first.

  “You might wonder why, when you fired harmless missiles at us in an insulting manner, we didn’t respond in kind. It was because we didn’t want you to change anything about your behavior, or your course.”

  For some reason, I began to feel a trickle of sweat inside my suit. What was this huge woman hinting at?

  Without meaning to, I glanced at the countdown. We had only a single minute left before we hit the breach and broke through into a new star system.

  The smiling Alpha continued talking. “We’ve calculated that you’ll be too close to the exit of this ER bridge when you hear this transmission to do anything about it. Just let me say that it’s been a pleasure chasing you to your cowardly finish. No kill could have been more satisfying. Knowing that your final moments will be spent in hopeless terror makes the situation all the sweeter, and I thank you for that—oh, and when you reach Hell, Sparhawk, please give my regards to Zye.”

  That was it. The message ended, and the channel closed.

  We sat in stunned silence. We had less than forty seconds to go.

  “We can still divert, Captain,” Durris said. “If we do it right now, we might miss the breach!”

  “That could be what she wants, Captain!” Rumbold shouted from the helm. “We might run out of hyperspace in this pocket, it’s hard to say. We’ll slam right into the wall if we screw this up.”