by Geoff North
The SIC nodded solemnly. “Believe me, I have. You may be willing to die, but do you want Tarrace to suffer as well? Do you want my grandchildren to live under alien subjugation for the rest of their lives? To hell with the mission? To hell with your conscience.”
Edmund steadied himself against the doorframe. “We can’t do this… We just can’t.”
“We can, and we will.” Barret went to his son-in-law. “The Alderamins have to be stopped. It’s why we stole Retribution… It’s why we’re out here.”
The SIC stood next to his commander for another half minute, waiting for the younger man to decide. When Edmund spoke again, Barret knew he’d won him over. “They won’t voluntarily step away and let us do it. Ambition’s crew will fight us.”
“No, they won’t. Kelly has already gone to work. I’ve ordered him to sabotage the ship’s entire life support system. He can shut down the air supply at a moment’s notice. If Drac and his people resist, they die.”
Edmund glared at him. “You did all this behind my back. Retribution and its crew are mine to command.”
“You’re still the commander. You can order Kelly to disassemble the sabotage. But consider this… We’re sitting helpless in space. Soon more enemy ships will arrive. Retribution will be destroyed, and Ambition with it. We have the means to guarantee at least one ship can carry on. Lives will be lost, but Retribution will be able to fulfil its mission. The Alderamins must be stopped. There’s no other decision to be made.”
SIC Barret opened the door and stepped down out of the shuttle. Edmund went back to the bench and sat. The rest of his crew would need to be informed.
Then he would have to meet with Rastaban Drac and break the news to Ambition’s captain.
Chapter 24
“Look around you, kid,” August Hegstad stopped in the center of the street. “Thanks to your mom and her damned revolutionists, this whole planet is about to die again.”
Loke had come to a halt beside him. He didn’t have much choice, seeing as how the man had one fat fist wrapped into the collar of his jacket. That was fine, Loke thought. Soon he would be free of Hegstad, his whole family would be. They were almost out of Daedalia district. It was the richest part of Deimos City, the place where all the government officials and science people worked. His home was another four blocks to the west. Loke could see two giant ships rising in the distance over the poorer dwellings and ruined buildings of Lowell district. He wondered if the people bound for Earth onboard could see his home from so high up. They wouldn’t be missing much if they hadn’t.
Hegstad gave him a hard shake. “I told you to look around, not start daydreaming.” He pulled Loke after him. “Come on, there’s an entrance into the sewage tunnels ahead.”
Loke half-jogged to keep up with the man’s long strides. He may have been drunk, but he was quick enough on his feet. “This isn’t where I went into the tunnels before.” He hiked a thumb back over his shoulder. “It’s back that way, closer to my home.”
“Then we’ll backtrack through a little more shit and piss. That bother you kid?”
Loke shook his head.
“Wonderful.” Hegstad dragged him down a smaller street, more of a darkened alley between two buildings. He stopped halfway and pointed to the ground. “Open it.”
Loke stared down at the heavy metal cover set into the dull pink pavement. “I can’t lift that. It weighs more than I do.”
“Probably double your weight. Open it.”
Loke dropped to his knees and struggled to work his fingers under one edge. He got a good grip and tried to lift. The cover didn’t budge. “This isn’t fair. My mom already had the other one open.”
“Do I have to everything for you?” Hegstad planted a boot into the boy’s shoulder and pushed him away. Loke clutched at his side as he hit the ground, more worried about the gun in his pocket falling out, than he was of hurting himself. Hegstad bent down with a grunt and removed the cover. “So help me, if you’re lying about any of this—if you can’t show me where your mom and the others met…”
“I’m not lying, it’s all true.” Loke went in first, taking hold of the cold rusted ladder rungs, and lowering himself down into the darkness. “Everything’s still down here just like I told you, the maps, the guns, and the bombs.”
Telling Hegstad where his mother’s meeting had been held and what he’d overheard them talking about hadn’t been enough to drag the fat magistrate out of his office. Loke had to embellish the truth slightly. He hadn’t seen any guns or bombs, but it didn’t mean there weren’t any.
Loke dropped down the last four feet into mud. He looked up into the circle of daylight and watched Hegstad work his way on the ladder. Loke reached in his pocket. I could do it now. I could shoot him in his fat ass and he would break his neck in the fall. He decided not to. There was the chance of missing his target. Loke had never fired a weapon off in his life. Or worse, Hegstad might fall right on top of him.
“Unless your head’s part of the ladder, you’d better step back.”
Loke moved to one side just as Hegstad’s foot slipped on the final rung. He fell the last few feet, landing into the mud on his rear end. “God damn it!”
“Are you all right?”
He lurched back onto his feet, brushing muck from the seat of his pants. “No, I’m not all right! This crap’s gonna leave a stain—a goddamned big one.”
“It’s just a bit of poop and pee. Does that bother you?”
Hegstad pushed him further into the tunnel. “Don’t get smart. Show me where your mom met her friends, and if I don’t like what I find, only one of us is climbing back up out of here.”
That’s the plan.
Loke led the way. He didn’t have a clue where he was, and it didn’t matter. There were access ladders leading up to the surface every one hundred meters or so. He would kill Hegstad down the darkest tunnel, where people up top wouldn’t hear, and then he’d find the nearest source of light to climb up into. No one would ever find the magistrate. Anyone that cared about him—and Loke figured that number was low—would be headed for Earth in the next few days.
Hegstad was muttering behind him. “Darker than hell down here.”
Loke’s hand gripped the gun handle in his pocket. It was slippery, covered in sweat. Here. Do it right here. He pulled the weapon out.
August Hegstad turned on a flashlight. “There, that’s bett—you little bastard!” He threw the light into Loke’s face. It smacked into his forehead. The gun slipped out of his hand. Loke fell into the tunnel wall, slid along its wet surface, and ended up flat on his back in the mud. He didn’t get the chance to move an inch after that. Hegstad lunged through the dark and landed on him, blasting the air out of Loke’s lungs, and pinning him into the stinking sewage.
“Thought you could kill me?” Thick fingers wrapped around Loke’s scrawny neck. “Your mother’s behind this, isn’t she? That bitch put you up to it.”
Hegstad’s face was inches from Loke’s. He managed one last breath through his nostrils. The sour liquor smelled worse than the raw sewage. The fingers tightened. Loke’s head began bobbing up and down as Hegstad throttled him. Stars appeared in his eyes, a rushing sound began filling his ears, followed by a loud pop.
Hegstad’s eyes opened wide. The crushing pressure against Loke’s windpipe lessened. The flashlight beam was shining directly into the magistrate’s face. His one cheek was speckled with blood. He rolled off Loke, clutching the side of his head where his ear used to be.
Loke gasped for air and heard the yowl of a cat. Charm’s cat.
“I had to do it. He was going to kill you.” His twin sister still had the gun trained on Hegstad. She flashed the light into Loke’s eyes. “I followed you, knew you were going to do something dumb. But this… oh no, Loke, what have I done?”
He tried to speak, tried to warn her, but something felt broken inside his throat. Hegstad was writhing in the mud a few feet away, squirming like a fat worm. His one foot
shot out and hooked around Charm’s ankle. She toppled over, the gun and flashlight lost a second time.
“Blew my goddamn ear off!” Hegstad screamed. “I’m gonna kill you both down here, and then I’m going after your mother.”
The rushing sound was still filling Loke’s ears. It got louder, drowning out Hegstad’s curses. He rolled over onto his hands and knees and felt the tunnel shaking. A blast of cold water smashed into Loke, ripping him out of the mud. The last thing he heard was his sister’s cries as his head sunk beneath the surging rush.
Chapter 25
Vin Vir was infuriated. “If this is how the people of Earth treat their own kind now, I don’t want to return there. We’d be better off turning this ship around and taking our chances with the Pegans.”
“We wouldn’t be leaving you defenseless,” Barret said. “Some of your weapons launch systems could be converted to handle our ripper missiles. Lt. Kelly has informed me we have a hundred to spare. With the added firepower and Ambition’s chemically fueled drive, you could continue on for the Sol system.”
“A hundred thousand more missiles won’t make much of a difference,” she shot back. “We’ll all have died of old age before we make it to the outer fringes of this system at space normal speed.”
They had all gathered on the bridge. Commander Edmund, SIC Barret, Dr. Strong, and Lt. Kelly, all from Retribution. Vin, Gacrux Crucis and his twin brother, Becrux, along with Nash, Dr. Hal Gulum, Argus Cor, and Kalin Aurig, stood defiantly before them. Ambition’s captain sat above all of them on the command dais. He hadn’t uttered a single word during the heated exchange. Rastaban Drac had glared at Edmund throughout it all. Finally, he broke his silence.
“This matter isn’t even open to debate, is it?”
“This isn’t a hostile takeover,” Edmund said. “Your ship will be left intact, your people capable of continuing the trip home.”
Drac pointed at the holstered waists of Barret and Kelly. “Your officers are armed. None of mine are. If we say no, I suspect they’ll be willing to use force. It doesn’t get much more hostile than that.”
Barret cut in before his commander could reply. “We don’t have any other choice, and neither do you. There is no home for you to return to. There won’t be a home for any of us to go back to unless the Hunn are dealt with.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Dr. Gulum said. “Civilization may have taken some hard knocks in the last few centuries, but Earth’s still there. That warship of yours out there is proof of it.”
“There’s no civilization under alien rule,” Strong said. “Yes, our people may survive, but humanity will have been lost. That’s what it’ll come to in another decade or two. The Hunn already have a foothold in the Sol governments, and their influence is spreading.”
“We didn’t steal Retribution to escape that influence,” Barret added. “We’re out here to cut it off, destroy it completely. Your ship can help us accomplish that.”
“And our crew will die,” Drac said. “Maybe not today, maybe not for another year, or another seven centuries, but Ambition’s people will eventually perish. Not exactly the most optimistic outcome I can imagine.”
Vin took a step up the dais towards him. “You’re not actually considering giving into this, are you?”
“They haven’t left us with any other choice.”
“Perhaps there is another alternative,” Nash spoke. “Commander Edmund, what is the maximum crew capacity of Retribution?”
“Two thousand. Most of our systems are on automatic with just over a hundred hands running her now.”
Nash turned to his captain. “I suggest we transfer the entire crew to Retribution and abandon Ambition altogether.”
“Impossible!” Barret snapped. “There isn’t room. We don’t have the resources to support that many people. They’d all starve in under a year.”
Nash continued with his reasoning. “We have enough food in storage to bring that could sustain both crews for five years. With Retribution’s main propulsion system fully functioning, the journey to Alderamin would take less than four years.”
Drac started down the dais steps. “It could be done, with a year to spare.”
Edmund was shaking his head. “It would only delay the inevitable. We wouldn’t be able to sustain ourselves on the trip back.”
Drac stood before him. “A return trip none of you expected to make. This works, Commander… you get your chance to destroy the Alderamin home world. The Sol system will be saved. None of us will live to see it, but at least humanity will have worked together to get it done.”
Chapter 26
The Pegan transport ship roared up into Alderamin 4’s lower atmosphere, pushing through the thick oxygen-methane clouds, powering to its maximum to reach the stars above, and escape the planet’s gravitational grasp from below.
All Captain Sulafat could do was sit back and watch it happen. Hadar Cen was in the passenger seat next to him, silent, staring down into his lap. Both men were still in shock; the captain reeling from the senseless extermination of an additional twenty-seven Ambition crew members, and Cen grappling with the death of the woman he loved.
Tor and Wez were directly in front of them, seated in the transport ship’s pilot and co-pilot sections. Neither of them knew how to pilot the alien vessel, but the two men had more flight experience than Sulafat and Cen. If the need arose for a manual touch—if the prime key card slotted into the automatic drive computer somehow failed at this most critical stage of their escape—the dishonored general and the squadron boss would be in control of their fates.
“We should’ve stayed with her,” Hadar finally said as the ship shook all around them. “I should’ve saved her.”
Tor glanced back over his shoulder. “You saw the size of that thing. All four of us together couldn’t have made a difference. If we’d tried, none of us would be headed home now.”
“How do you know which way we’re going?” Wez asked. He pointed at the confusion of control panels before them and the indecipherable readouts lit up on the screens over their heads. “Even if we understood the language, and could point this ship home, Earth is more than sixty light years away. We may not die on Alderamin 4, but we ain’t gonna last all that long in space either.”
“The Alderamin Rift,” Sulafat said. “She’ll have programmed the card to take us into it.”
“Excuse me, Captain?” Wez raised an eyebrow at him. “Did you hit your head during liftoff? What the hell is an Alderamin rift?”
“This ship isn’t headed for Earth, it was programmed to return to the Pegan system.” The shaking started to subside. The transport ship had ascended past the planet’s thermosphere into the upper exosphere. “When the Hunn were inside my head, I remember them asking something about rifts. It didn’t make any sense at the time, but Sher—Jule told me I’d figure it out eventually. It’s how we traveled five and a half light years from Pega to Alderamin 4 in less than a week.”
Tor was nodding his head. “I remember the Hunn asking me about the rifts, too. It’s some kind of space-time shortcut between star systems, isn’t it?”
“A shortcut, yes!” Sulafat leaned forward and gave the pilot seat headrest a triumphant smack, confirming Tor’s theory. “They never developed a means of faster than light travel, they opened a doorway.”
A loud klaxon sounded in the cockpit. Alarm lights flooded the cabin red, and flashed over the control boards. Wez pointed to one of the only dials in front of them that made any kind of sense. “We’re losing altitude! The ship’s still at full power, but something’s forcing us back down.”
“Tractor bean from the planet’s surface?” Sulafat asked.
“We’re too far up for that. I think it’s coming from above us.”
Hadar groaned. “I knew I should’ve saved Jule! We were supposed to keep her alive.”
“Sol-damn it, Cen,” Tor snapped. “Forget about your alien girlfriend. We have bigger problems here.”
“N
o, you don’t understand. Jule had to stay alive long enough to disable the planetary shielding. Without her help, we’ll never make it out.”
Sulafat unbuckled his seat restraints and crawled between the two men in front. “We’re not going back.” He studied the controls quickly. “How much additional power does this thing have?”
Wez shrugged helplessly. “Some. None. Your guess is as good as mine.”
“This looks like thrust control.” Sulafat reached for the largest lever he could see.
Tor knocked his hand away and took hold of the lever handle. “Get back in your seat, Captain. This might work, and it might not. Either way, the ride’s about to get intense.”
Sulafat had barely secured the clasps down before a second round of alarms sounded. Emin had pulled the lever all the way back. The transport ship started shaking again, more violently. “That’s it!” Tor shouted to be heard over the mounting groan of the ship’s hull. “Full power!”
Wez gripped the co-pilot seat armrests. “It isn’t enough! We’re still going down!”
There was a sudden lurch. The straps grabbed into Sulafat’s shoulders, preventing him from smashing up into the cabin ceiling. Tor was still yelling in front of him. “Thruster fuel’s been exhausted. I think the whole damn thing’s run out of power.”
Wez kept his eyes trained on the alien altimeter. “We’re dropping like a rock, hitting the lower atmosphere again.”
It felt as if Sulafat’s lungs were in his throat. “Can you steer us back in… fly us down to the surface instead of driving straight into it?”
“There’s nothing to work with here,” Tor said. He threw his hands up helplessly. “No control bars, not a single stick of any kind. All we can do now is pray the Pegans programmed the ship with an automatic emergency landing system.”
For a moment, Sulafat wished the Pegans had done no such thing. I lost my ship. Failed my crew. Maybe it’s well past time I stop trying.