Star Carrier (Lost Colonies Trilogy Book 3)

by B. V. Larson

  Yamada sighed then nodded. “I’m in too. I don’t see a way out of it. I don’t want to be erased or tricked into playing the part of a slave any longer.”

  Durris shook his head as he studied the glimmering computer table between us.

  “This isn’t what I signed up for either,” he said. “But I’m going to go along with Vogel’s crazy plan. Not because I think it will work, or even that I think it’s right, but because I can’t stomach the idea of Earth sending out more variant fleets to slaughter people pointlessly.”

  I nodded, accepting his statement without comment. The rest of the group swore their allegiance, with or without fanfare, to the plan.

  Soon, the meeting was over. Just like that, we’d become rebels. Mutineers…

  Traitors.

  -62-

  Getting back to Earth took a few weeks, but it wasn’t all that difficult. We started off by following the Beta ships at a respectful distance. After three jumps, we knew where we were and took our own path.

  When we arrived home at last, we were prepared physically but not mentally for what must happen. Vogel had worked tirelessly with Yamada to outfit every crewman and variant with an update-blocker. Our implants were back in and sore to the touch, but they could no longer be used to alter our memories of past events.

  CENTCOM contacted us the moment we entered the Solar System.

  “Defiant,” said traffic control, “good to see you made it home. Please transmit your report. We’re uploading your update now.”

  We were ready with a carefully falsified set of files. Durris threw up his hands when it came to transmitting that pack of lies.

  I stepped forward, reached out and touched the transmit tab. The reports began uploading to CENTCOM’s servers. Since we were far from Earth, it would take hours to reach them.

  “We’re really doing this?” Durris asked me.

  “You can have your implant patched back to normal,” I told him, “if you wish.”

  “Where will I wake up then?”

  “In a ship full of traitors, no doubt. Physically, you’ll probably be on a bunk in the brig.”

  He blinked in surprise. “You’re that dedicated to this, Captain?”

  “XO, listen to me. I’ve met these people, you haven’t. They’re holding Zye captive even now, a member of Defiant’s command crew. That act and countless others are illegal.”

  “Zye…” he said. “You’ve mentioned that name before, but I have no memory of any such person.”

  “That’s precisely the point!” I said, then controlled my voice. “Are you in, or out?”

  “I’m in,” he said after a moment’s hesitation. “I’m sorry. I promised, and I’m still in. It’s just—it’s against my nature. It’s so hard to do this.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “It’s hard for me, too.”

  “Captain!” he called after me as I moved to exit the deck.

  I turned to face him.

  “Watch out for that Director Vogel. I don’t trust him.”

  “Good advice. Thank you.”

  Despite my words, I’d come to trust the director. I’d relied on him throughout these final steps. He’d overseen much of the detailed work of hacking our implants, falsifying records, and so on. Now, he was going to play an even bigger role.

  When I reached his laboratory pod, he was waiting. There was a variant on the operating table, cut open.

  “We have to have more troops,” Vogel told me. “We’ll have to get to Mars to pick them up.”

  I stared at the variant on the table. “Must it be these creatures?”

  “There’s no other way. If we take Defiant herself into orbit and drop missiles on Earth, the Star Guard battleships will take us down in return.”

  The variants and the council had been busy since we’d left over a month earlier. They’d built a twin to the Resolution. The new battleship, christened Fearless, was accompanying her sister in far orbit. In time, more ships would be built, and they’d fly to the stars to finish the task the first fleet failed to accomplish.

  “All right,” I said. “We must act naturally. Keep fixing the variants we have aboard. They’ll be our carriers.”

  He agreed, and we parted ways. It was only a few hours later when I was summoned urgently.

  “Captain Sparhawk,” Yamada said in a surprisingly even voice. “CENTCOM would like a word with you.”

  “All right, I’ll take it privately in my quarters.”

  We were still too far out for a real conversation. With a few hours lag-time, I was forced to just listen to the incoming transmission. The face that appeared on my screen to deliver the message was a surprise.

  “Aunt Ellen?” I said aloud, but of course, she couldn’t hear me.

  She began speaking then—and it might have been more appropriate to say that she was screeching.

  “William J. Sparhawk!” she cried. “I can’t believe this! You were always such a truthful boy. Why send us a packet of falsehoods? Why claim victory when we’ve suffered such a tragic defeat?”

  There was no point in answering her as she was light-hours away. Instead, I waited wearily for the rest of it.

  “You’ve ruined us,” she said. “No one is going to buy the idea that a pack of rabble-rousing peasants in the out-systems managed to destroy the greatest fleet humanity has ever built.”

  She fell into a dramatic fit of hard-breathing, and she was clearly fighting back tears.

  “We’ve only rebuilt two of those battleships,” she said. “At great expense, I might add. The fervent hope here on Earth was that two would be enough to replace our losses. Imagine the Chairman’s shock when he learned you’ve managed to lose them all! The Sparhawk name might never be cleared.”

  Internally, I felt a wave of relief. She wasn’t aware of the depths of my deception. She’d come to the conclusion I was involved in this disaster somehow and had assumed I’d covered my tracks for political reasons.

  But then, the more I thought of it, the more I came to understand her outbursts. She was acting. She wanted to make sure that none of the taint of this catastrophe affected her directly.

  My lips wanted to twitch upward in a smile as she went on hysterically for some time, lamenting the loss of so many brave spacers and so forth. It was obvious she was recording this and planned to distribute it.

  Dutifully, I listened to the whole thing before making a neutral response that was consoling, if not apologetic. At no time did I accept responsibility for any of it.

  When I’d transmitted my reply, I closed the channel and allowed myself to grin. I was back home, and the political maneuvering had already begun. The good thing was they’d yet to figure out that we represented a real threat.

  We made it most of the way to Mars before CENTCOM began to get suspicious. We’d told them we were damaged and in need of repairs. They’d accepted this, to a point. But they changed their minds when we stopped off at Phobos.

  “Vogel,” I said, contacting him directly with my implant, “Earth is aware something is wrong. Grab every variant you can, ignore any transmissions from Earth, and get back aboard Defiant immediately.”

  He didn’t argue for once. In fact, he scrambled to obey.

  There were any number of ways our plans could have been hinted at. Phobos staffers might have reported that our ship was in remarkably good repair. The updates Earth was sending us were bouncing off our implants, and the local net had already reported the error.

  Some unknown error might have even come up during the official review process of our after-action reports. The reports had hidden flaws in them. Things that didn’t add up when inspected closely.

  Or, the answer could have been even simpler. One of our crewmen could have had a change of heart or experienced a slip of the tongue while transmitting private messages to family members back on Earth.

  It really didn’t matter. What did matter was the fact that the brass was beginning to suspect we weren’t what we seemed to be.

/>   I weighed my options as Vogel frantically loaded his variants aboard. They marched up the docking tube like a long line of ants pouring through a tunnel.

  It seemed to me the best option was to keep moving closer to my target. Not rushing, but never slowing down, either.

  I’d fly Defiant right down into that hole in the ground they inhabited if I had to.

  -63-

  We reached Earth several days later. We parked in orbit, but we didn’t dock with Araminta Station immediately.

  A series of calls came to my implant from various officials. My parents were among them. Those were the hardest conversations of all.

  “Father,” I said, pushing my lips into a vague smile. “It’s so good to see you again.

  “Son, I’m glad you’re home—but I wish it was under better circumstances.”

  “I agree,” I said. “The Stroj proved more difficult to defeat than we’d hoped.”

  He stared at me for a moment with narrowed eyes. “You were there?”

  “I was there indeed,” I said.

  He let out a long sigh. “I’d hoped that detail wasn’t true. Damn it, boy! What were you thinking?”

  “Excuse me, Father?”

  “Listen, it’s time you grew up. Politically, I mean. You can’t keep a command in Star Guard without being at least aware of political threats to your position. You should have pulled out of the Stroj system the moment you saw our fleet was going to lose the engagement.”

  I felt the red heat of anger rising up my neck, but I managed to control it. I wanted to release an outburst. My parents never thought of the civilian dead, the loss to the spacers’ families, or even the personal pride of any starship captain. They only thought of the details that reflected poorly on their reputations and careers. I didn’t think they were necessarily bad people, but they had a peculiar blindness when it came to the suffering of the common man.

  “Father,” I said, “I wasn’t at liberty to flee the scene. Imagine how that might have looked if the news nets had gotten ahold of such a story.”

  He shook his head. “Yes… I guess it was a no-win situation. But try not to get yourself into any more of those, okay? It will take the rest of this year and maybe the next to regain our reputations.”

  “Our reputations?” I asked. “I thought we were talking about me?”

  “Of course we are. But you’re part of a bigger whole, the Great House of Sparhawk. You can see that, can’t you? Everything you do out there reflects back upon all of us.”

  “The same goes in reverse, Father,” I said quietly.

  He looked at me sharply. “What’s that?”

  “It’ll wait. We’ll talk when I get home.”

  “Yes… well… all right. Make sure you alert us when you’re about to arrive. We’re planning a tour of southern Asia soon. I hope it doesn’t interfere.”

  “I’ll let you know,” I said, and I cut the channel.

  My parents… they would never change. It was clear they meant to dodge me again. This time, I was apparently too hot for them to even be seen on the same continent with me.

  I took a moment to remind myself of the world they lived in. If they made a mistake—a big one—they might become unpersons themselves. I now believed they knew of that possibility, and that they’d known about it for a long time.

  Oddly, this made me feel better about my past. Their secret worries helped explain their behavior throughout my life.

  They were in a dangerous spot—all the high-level politicians on Earth lived in constant fear. Their secret rulers, the people behind the publicly visible Great Houses, had to be terrifying to families like mine.

  My face took on a grim aspect as I began planning my next moves. This wasn’t going to be easy or clean. It was going to be unpleasant.

  Historically speaking, entrenched powers rarely gave up easily. Not unless they had no recourse. They had to be beaten, driven out of their holes into the light, and stomped down like roaches.

  That was what I had planned for the Council, but even so, I knew roaches weren’t easy to kill.

  “Captain?” Yamada’s voice spoke into my implant.

  “What is it?”

  “You’ve got a priority call. Shall I patch it through once you get to your quarters?”

  I hesitated then cleared my computer top. The images of troop formations and landing vectors vanished.

  “Patch them through,” I said.

  A figure appeared at my side. It was my Aunt, the Lady Grantholm.

  “William,” she said, “listen to me very carefully. I need you to accept an emergency patch through your implant. There’s something wrong with your ship’s network.”

  “How do you know this, Aunt Ellen?”

  She stared at me flatly. “William… let’s not play games. No one is in the mood. Have you noticed you have two battleships tracking you? Flying ever closer to Defiant?”

  I shrugged. “We’re all in Earth’s orbit. It’s positively cramped up here with such large vessels.”

  “Again, more nonsense,” she said, “will you accept the update or not?”

  This put me in a tight spot. My mind was racing. If I refused, I was as much as declaring my intentions now—too early.

  “I’ll go you one better,” I said. “I’ll come down to visit the Council in person.”

  “Why?”

  “Come now,” I said. “It seems clear to me I’m on the verge of becoming an unperson. I’d like the chance to see the Chairman and his comrades face-to-face—to make a case for myself. Let me at least report directly to them. I wish to tell them what really happened out there in the Stroj system.”’

  She looked at me sharply. “Are you saying you lied on your reports?”

  “I’m saying some things are too delicate to put into publicly transmitted documents.”

  She frowned thoughtfully. “All right, I’ll ask the Chairman. You’ve been here before without causing a major incident… Yes, this might be just the thing we need to clear this matter up. To bring the Sparhawk name out of the gutter and back into the light!”

  She smiled as she finished these words, but she didn’t look me in the eye.

  The channel closed, and I stared at the walls.

  I’d already been sentenced to unpersonhood. That much was clear. All that talk on her part about clearing the Sparhawk name… well, how better to do that than to remove the stain on my family’s honor entirely?

  Heading to the command deck, I oversaw the preparations. All our old plans had to be tossed aside.

  Durris object strongly. “You can’t just walk in there alone, Captain,” he said.

  “That’s exactly what I must do. But first, we’ll stop off at Araminta Station as we’ve lost our shuttle. We must get a new one.”

  “You’ve heard about the battleships? They’re stalking us as clear as day. We can’t defeat two—hell, we couldn’t take one of them in our current state.”

  “Stop worrying, XO,” I said. “I’m the one who’s going into danger. You’ll be in command while I’m gone. If I don’t succeed, your orders are to unshield every implant on this ship and allow them to update you all. That way, none of you need suffer for my actions.”

  He looked stubborn, but he was a Star Guard officer. He finally nodded and looked down. “You’re planning to surrender, aren’t you?” he asked. “To beg for our lives in return for yours.”

  “Something like that… but first, we have preparations to make.”

  I began outlining the nature of my new, altered plans, and he looked increasingly surprised the further I went into detail.

  After we visited Araminta Station and picked up a new boat, the crews complained. “This isn’t a shuttle,” they said. “It’s a pinnace. It will barely fit in the hangar.”

  “We’ll have to make do,” I said. “Rumbold, would you be so kind as to program my ship to land at these coordinates? I know you’re very familiar with the navigational software on these little ships.”<
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  “Indeed I am, Captain,” he said, and he climbed aboard to do as I’d asked.

  The pinnace was almost as long as the hangar itself, and it crowded the rest of us up against the walls.

  Durris appeared soon afterward with Director Vogel. They had variants with them who were transporting large pods.

  “The supplies you ordered, Captain,” Durris said, waving the variants toward the open hold of the pinnace.

  “Very good, XO.”

  Director Vogel approached me while I was going through a preflight checklist.

  “Captain,” he said in a husky whisper. “You have to take me with you. Your plan won’t work otherwise.”

  I glanced at him. “What plan?”

  He coughed. “I’m not a fool. You’re obviously—”

  “Director Vogel, I don’t want to seem rude, but I’m very busy right now.”

  “Look Sparhawk. I won’t let this go. You must take me down!”

  “Why?” I demanded, looking at him squarely and lowering the computer scroll I’d been tapping at.

  “I know what you’re up to. It probably won’t work, but there’s no chance at all if I’m not there.”

  I stared at him. “Are you threatening me?”

  “If I have to. My life is on the line here, same as yours.”

  After a few seconds of thinking it over, I nodded at last. “I promised to go down alone. You’ll have to hide in the hold with the cargo. If you’re discovered, I’ll toss you overboard myself.”

  “Understood,” he said, and he scrambled up the ramp past working variants.

  Soon, the navigational work was done by Rumbold, and the cargo was fully loaded. I stepped into the forward cabin and took my seat at the controls.

  Durris gave me the green light, and I lifted off, exiting Defiant’s hangar. Within minutes, I left Defiant, the battleships, and Araminta Station all behind.

  Their hulls were silvered by the rising sun. On a better day, I might have found the view perfectly entrancing.

  -64-