by Geoff North
“Fold drive implementation in one minute.”
“This could’ve waited,” Barret mumbled.
“New enemy contacts detected,” Major Weldheim called out. “Six Pegan warships approaching on our starboard side.”
Edmund stood. “Battle screens.” The three-hundred-and-sixty-degree display dropped down into place. “How long until they’re on us?”
“They’re less than fifty thousand K out,” Weldheim reported. “They could begin firing on us at any moment.”
Edmund looked towards the empty weapons section. Where the hell is Gertsen? “Ada, put up our shields and take full control of weapons.”
“Affirmative, Commander. Disengaging fold drive implementation.”
“We don’t need to fight them,” Barret said. “Continue fold drive count-down. We can outrun the bastards.”
“All six ships have opened fire,” Weldheim reported. “Heavy plasma torpedoes… first impact in twelve seconds.”
“Evasive manoeuvres, Marie,” the commander ordered. “Weldheim, take over at weapons section. Ada, get a hold of Lt. Gertsen on security level. You’ll find him in the detention center We need him back at his post, now.” He turned to Barret. “I’m not running anywhere until these ships are dealt with.”
A string of burning globes streaked across the port side battle screen. “That was close,” Lornay Simmons, said. “But now that we have full mobility again, Retribution should be able to handle those ships in closer quarters.”
Barret wanted nothing to do with the alien vessels bearing down on them. “We can’t risk damaging our drives in another battle, son.”
“And we can’t use those drives while under attack. We’re doing this my way, SIC.”
“The detention center is empty, Commander. There are only three Retribution crew members located on the security level presently, and Bennoit Gertsen is not one of them.”
“The detention center can’t be empty. Where’s the Ambition prisoner? Where the hell is Zosma Lion?”
“I do not have any records for a Zosma Lion in my data banks.”
The enemy ships had broken into three groupings. Weldheim tracked them on the weapons screen. “They’re attempting to surround us.”
“Open fire on the closest one.”
“Commander, Ambition has disappeared!” Simmons said.
Edmund was beginning to feel frustrated with his officers; Strong was on the bridge at the most inappropriate time, Barret was fighting back on his orders, Gertsen was missing, and now his head navigator was tracking the progress of a vessel headed back for Earth. “Concentrate on the ships trying to destroy us, Colonel. Ambition is no longer our concern.”
She wouldn’t let it go. “I don’t mean that the ship travelled out of range… it’s literally disappeared. Ambition has vanished altogether.”
One of the enemy ships blew apart on the battle screen. Its massive aft end slammed into the hull of the Pegan vessel next to it. Retribution shuddered as debris rained against its shields. Edmund grabbed onto the table to keep his balance. “Ada, are there more ships out there? Could Ambition have been destroyed?”
“Negative, Commander. There are only five enemy vessels within sensor range.”
Lt. Gertsen and Zosma Lion were missing. Now an entire ship three times the size of Retribution had dropped out of existence as well.
Edmund didn’t have time to figure the mystery out. The Pegan ships began unloading every weapon in their combined arsenal into Retribution’s straining forward shields. The concentrated barrage cut through. The commander was thrown hard to the deck floor. Main power died, and auxiliary controls and lighting took over. Smoke filled the bridge. Edmund coughed, rubbed at his eyes, and tried crawling back to his feet. His fingers dug into a body.
He turned Penelope Strong onto her back. The doctor’s face was covered in blood. Her lifeless eyes stared up into the ceiling. Barret dropped to his knees next to Edmund. He gathered the woman into his arms and cradled her gently against his chest.
Edmund left them there. He made his way to the weapons section and pulled the overwhelmed Weldheim aside. There would be thousands more casualties if he didn’t act fast.
Chapter 34
The children had set away from the reject encampment an hour before sunrise. The last burn pellet hadn’t lasted near as long as they hoped it would. It had merely split in half like a rotted egg and given off an hour’s worth of pathetic heat. The smoke smelled worse than the drying sewage left in the drainage ditch.
At least their clothes were finally dry. Charm still had the holey blanket wrapped around her. Loke had found another one in the last reject shelter they came upon a kilometer east from where they had stayed the night. The twins needed to preserve all the body heat they could. It was a calm and still morning, but the sky was clear, plunging the temperature well below freezing.
“It’s a chimney,” Charm said.
“It’s a mountain top,” Loke shot back for the third time.
They’d been arguing for the last ten minutes about a distant formation on the eastern horizon. It was still difficult to see anything that well in the dim pre-dawn light. Rocks less than fifty meters ahead appeared like distance mountains until the twins were standing directly in front of them. The twisting river bed they followed could’ve been a great grey serpent, writhing through the rust-colored dirt.
“There aren’t any mountains in the east,” Charm said. “You’ll see soon enough.”
The drainage ditch took a sharp turn to the south. The children walked along its banks for another half kilometer. A speck of yellow-pink red light appeared in the southeast. The sun had finally started to rise. It wasn’t all that bright, but it was enough to paint the landscape before them from dreary shades of black and grey, to dull browns and deep reds.
Loke pointed excitedly to the formation. “Look! There’s another one!”
The sun’s rays struck the distant object, and revealed a second one behind it. The children ran a little further ahead until the curving wall of a third terra-forming factory chimney came into view.
“Told you,” Charm said. “How far you figure to Deimos City now?”
“Not far.” Loke blocked the light out with one hand and squinted along the flat bit of horizon between the sun and the chimneys. “I think I can see a few buildings already.” He grinned at his sister. “We’ll be home for supper.”
The cat squirmed under Charm’s blanket. She let it go, and the twins watched it race off towards the drainage ditch. “Lucky knows where home is too,” the girl said proudly.
They watched Lucky disappear over the edge. Loke rolled his eyes. “I told you to hang onto her. Now she’s going to go picking through all that crap on the bottom.”
Charm ran after the cat. She slowed at the bank’s steep edge, remembering how easily it had broken away the day before. She went down on her hands and knees and crawled backwards over the lip. The dirt cliff didn’t crumble as Charm lowered herself down. The packed dirt was as hard as rock, frozen solid during the cold night.
She saw Lucky at the bottom, gingerly padding along the strip of brown ice left behind from the flood of raw sewage. The cat stopped at a clump of black and began sniffing it. “Get away from there!” Charm yelled. “That’s so gross.”
Loke called down to her. “What’s that thing she’s smelling?”
Charm moved gingerly out onto the ice. She shooed the cat away and discovered the black clump wasn’t something nasty like a piece of frozen poo. It was a device of some sort. She kicked at it—a few slivers of ice shattered away from its top edges. Her eyes widened. “It’s a communicator!”
Loke scrambled down the embankment. He pulled a sharp rock sticking most of the way out of the frozen mud and made his way out onto the ice. Charm continued kicking at the communicator with the toe of her boot. “You’ll never get it out like that,” he said, pushing her aside and sinking to his hands and knees. “Gotta work your way around it.” He bega
n chipping at the ice a few centimeters away, digging out a small trench.
“That’ll take forever,” Charm whined. She spotted a bigger rock sticking out of the bank. Loke continued striking at the dirty ice while his sister worked the bigger stone free. Gravity took a hold after she’d scraped enough soil away. It rolled down to the bottom with a few heavy thumps. Lucky circled around Charm, meowing anxiously as the girl struggled to lift the stone. She could only manage to get it up to her knees, her arms and legs shaking.
Loke looked up and saw his sister waddling towards him, her arms hanging straight down, her fingers hooked under the massive chunk of rock. It must have been more than twenty-five kilograms—half his sister’s weight. He scrambled back as Charm slid the last few inches and heaved the rock up to her belly with one last herculean effort. She released it with a grunt, and the stone slammed into the ice, barely missing the communicator.
The handheld device broke free as stinking brown liquid oozed up from the cracks. Loke picked it up carefully by one corner.
“Does it work?” Charm asked, still bent over trying to catch her breath.
“The insides are all frozen. Won’t know until it warms up some.” He crawled off from the ice and wiped the worst of the brown gunk away into the dirt.
“It ain’t gonna warm up,” she complained, still gasping heavily. “It’s getting colder out here, and I can’t breathe all that good anymore.”
That’s because the chimneys have quit puffing gases into the atmosphere, Loke thought. If we don’t get home fast, we’re either going to freeze to death or choke. He didn’t tell her that, though. Loke unzipped his jacket a little and shoved the communicator up under his armpit.
Lucky was pawing cautiously at the broken ice, attempting to drag something else up from under the ice. Her claws caught into it, and pulled it out.
Charm grimaced. “Eeww. Think I’m gonna puke.”
“What is it?” Loke zipped the coat back up under his chin and went back onto the ice.
Lucky was circling what looked like a dead snake. She batted at it again, and a few strands of grey stuck into one of her claws.
Charm started to gag and turned away. “It’s his hair,” she gasped.
Loke shooed Lucky away and kicked at it, half-expecting the severed dreadlock to jump up from the ice and wrap around his ankle. “Definitely August Hegstad’s.” He turned slowly, studying the steep banks around them. “He must’ve drowned around here somewhere.”
Charm was already climbing up out of the ditch. “I don’t wanna see the rest of him.”
Loke ran after her. He didn’t want to see the magistrate’s bloated corpse either.
The twins walked for another half hour without speaking. It was too cold to talk, and there was too little air left to waste. Deimos City was less than five kilometers away. They could now see the Daedalia Planum government building looming over the smaller apartment complexes and houses on the city’s west end. They’d seen three ships heading into the sky over the last ten minutes. The mass exodus was continuing into the new day. A sense that they would be left behind, presumed dead and forgotten, spurned them on even faster.
The communicator started to vibrate under Loke’s arm. He dug in under his jacket and fished it out with shaking fingers. “It’s working again,” he gasped.
“You gotta call Mom, let her know we’re okay.”
Loke’s hand hovered over the tiny keypad. He stared at the buttons uncomprehendingly. “Our number… I can’t remember what it is.”
Charm called out the numbers through chattering teeth. “Seven, three, zero, zero, four, seven. Add another zero and another three when it asks for the district.”
“I know the district code.” He tapped the numbers in, feeling embarrassed.
His sister patted him on the arm. “Don’t feel bad. The cold makes it hard to think clear.”
The device made a faint buzzing sound. A green light flashed at the top. The call was going through. They heard their mother’s voice answer over a wash of static. The communicator crackled, and cut out. “Stupid thing must’ve got wet inside,” Loke said, tapping at the tiny display screen furiously. It squawked and the screen lit up again. Tarrace Edmund’s worried face appeared. She was talking quickly, but the children couldn’t hear her.
“Mom!” Charm shouted. “We’re okay!”
“Quit yelling,” Loke said. He turned the volume dial on the side to full and struck the surface a few times with his knuckles.
Their mother’s voice broke through, loud and clear. “—ere have you been? I’ve been searching everywhere! The authorities are searching all over the city!”
“We’re not in the city,” Loke said. “But we will be soon. Something bad happened. We’ll explain everything when we get home.”
Charm grabbed the communicator away from her brother. “August Hegstad tried to kill Loke! Then we got washed away in a flood. He’s dead out here somewhere, but we’re okay! Lucky’s with us, too!”
Tarrace looked understandably confused, but the children could also see relief on her face. “Hurry up and get back here.” She paused, and then the screen suddenly went black.
Charm shook the communicator. “Did it die?”
“I don’t think so… I think she ended the call.”
Their mother’s face popped back up on the screen. “Hurry as fast as you can. The evacuation has been cancelled! The government has reached an agreement with the revolutionists.”
The children looked at each other. “We don’t understand,” Loke replied. “What does that mean?”
“It means none of us have to leave Mars. We can stay here in Deimos City… We can stay home.”
The screen went black a second time. The children took turns tapping and shaking the communicator, but their mother didn’t reappear. Loke finally stuffed it back under his coat, and the two set off again towards the city.
Another ship lifted off in the distance.
Charm stumbled along beside her brother, watching the billowing contrail shoot up into the upper atmosphere. “If the evacuation was called off, how come ships are still leaving?”
Loke didn’t have an answer for her.
Chapter 35
It hadn’t taken Nash long to figure out where Ambition was, and how far it had travelled. The bright orange orb settled at the center of the main viewing screen was the star of Alderamin. The ship’s interstellar mapping computers had confirmed it. Five point three seven light years from where he had been to where he was now. It had all happened in under a minute.
Nash completed running a thorough diagnostic of Ambition’s systems. The ship had endured its trip through the time-space rupture remarkably well. There was no structural damage to the hull. The main fold drive column—though totally inoperable after Retribution’s scavenging—was stable. The chemical engines were still running, pushing the ship closer towards the Alderamin sun.
There was a black spot in front of the star, a perfectly black circle blocking out the smallest fraction of light. “Computer, reduce ambient star brightness by a factor of six, and magnify this system’s outermost planet to display stage ten.”
The light on the view screen started to fade, and the black spot grew. There were three other planets orbiting in closer to the star, but Nash was only interested in the one he knew could support life.
Alderamin Four.
It was a sphere of purple and grey, caught in swirling bands of green. This was the Hunn-ephei home world. This was where Retribution was now headed. It would take them years, unless Nash showed them a shorter route.
He went to helm control and the entered in the coordinates that would plunge Ambition back into the rift.
A voice called out over the speakers. “Is there anybody here? Report… Are there any officers left onboard Ambition?”
Nash could instantly identify the voice of any Ambition crew member that had ever served in the last seven hundred years. But even without audio recognition built int
o his system, the android would’ve known the man speaking now. “Admiral Lennix. You have been unfrozen… again.”
Neil Lennix remembered Nash’s voice as well. “Unit Three, my old friend. I was beginning to think this old ship had been totally abandoned.”
“Admiral, please tell me who revived you from cryonic storage.”
“I don’t think I’ll share that information with you, Three. You stabbed me in the back, and sided with Ly Sulafat.”
Nash moved quietly to the sciences section and began searching for the admiral within the ship. Before being frozen a second time, Dr. Gulum had implanted monitoring chips in Lennix and his co-conspirators, including the traitorous Chort Leo. The idea had been suggested by CS Vin Vir—a ‘just in case’ precaution she’d called it. Rastaban Drac had agreed, and approved the procedure.
“Don’t take it personally,” Nash said. “It is true, I assisted Captain Sulafat and much of the crew in their struggle against you, but it was necessary. Your original order to destroy the Pegan civilization was derived from corporate deception. It was an illegal mission born out of lies.” Nash locked onto the chip’s signal. Lennix was still in the cryonics facility. “My decision to stop you could hardly be considered an act of back-stabbing. Now please, tell me—who revived you from cryonic storage?”
“Listen to you—a goddamned machine with a sense of an honor,” Lennix hissed throughout the bridge. “I’ll give you one more chance to redeem yourself, Three. Tell me where we are. Tell me what’s happened to the ship.”
Nash threw his words back at him. “I don’t think I’ll share that information with you, Admiral. Tell me who revived you from cryonic storage.”
“Perhaps I should tell you.” There was a long pause. “Yes, I believe I will. Zosma Lion brought me back. He had someone with him, a young man named Bennoit Gertsen.”