by David Ryker
“Who the hell is shooting civilian ships?”
Loreto stormed through the hallways and the crew struggled to keep up. The clanging, dripping, drilling sounds of the Vela echoed around him.
“On my ship!” he boomed. “Who gave the order?”
They entered the bridge, bathed in an unfamiliar half-light. Loreto looked up to see the banks of consoles, all manned by blank faces. Cavs and Vanis stood next to the pulpit.
“You left me in charge, sir.”
He heard the confidence in the young officer’s voice. He’d left the kid in charge as a demonstration of good faith, a sign of trust. Not to blow up civilian ships while the admiral was away.
“You shot a civilian ship out of the sky, Cavs?”
Vanis stepped forward, hunching his shoulders and trembling.
“That… that’s not what happened, sir, th-the–”
Loreto held a hand up to the man without looking.
“We’ll get to you later. I left Cavs in charge. He can speak for himself.”
Apart from the regular clanking sounds of the old ship, Loreto felt the silence coating everything in the bridge like a blanket. There was a tension in the air.
“Well?” he snapped, hoping the kid would crumble under pressure.
But Jimmy Cavs eased his stance, shifting his weight between his feet.
“I wanted to fire a warning shot,” he said carefully. “But the calibrations were… off. Comms weren’t working. We had no other choice.”
The half-light from the bridge felt as alien as the Exile ship. There was a reason he kept it dark on the Vela. It helped him hide the rust. Cavs didn’t twitch, his sharp cheekbones casting shadows across his olive skin. Even now, Loreto had trouble figuring the kid out.
“I left you in charge, Cavs,” he said bluntly. “What the hell are you doing?”
Vanis pushed himself forward again, offering a wavering hand.
“S-sorry, sir. But the scavengers? We thought it best if they didn’t, you know… take the wreckage and sell it.”
Holding a moment, Loreto looked at Vanis. He’d looked over the man’s file after Olmec. Scruffy and awkward, sharp as a razor and slow to say it. The man wouldn’t last a moment on any other ship. But he’d proved his worth on the guns and he knew math better than most anyone the admiral had ever met. There was a precision in his timidity.
“There’s a dead ship full of dead men out there, Vanis.” Loreto spoke quietly. “Dead by my guns. I’m looking at two of the men who run my guns, am I not?”
“There was no other option,” Cavs stated flatly. “You weren’t here.”
Loreto felt every eye on the bridge consider him. As much as he liked the kid, this kind of insolence couldn’t be tolerated. Not in front of the crew. There were some things that were essential to the running of a good ship and an established chain of command was one of them.
“No other option?” He squeezed the words with contempt. “You could have flanked them with the Wisps. You could have sent the Sirens. I left a goddamn gunnery officer in charge, Cavs, because I thought that he—of all people—would know how dangerous our cannons can be. You had plenty of options.”
The muscles in the young officer’s face didn’t twitch. The shoulders bridled, Loreto noticed, but Cavs kept himself flat.
“We did the math!” Vanis squealed. “We knew we couldn’t trust the guns so we tried extra–”
“You weren’t here,” Cavs interrupted in a quiet voice that filled up the bridge. “I made a decision. The ship was not reliable. Ever since that codex–”
“Don’t blame the codex, Cavs!” Loreto raised his voice. “You made that decision. No codex made you do that. You own it!”
The crew saw Loreto point an accusing finger at the junior officer.
“They were scavengers, sir,” Vanis tried again, wincing.
“Is scavenging a capital crime, Vanis?” He didn’t look away from the gunnery officer.
“No, s-sir.”
“Is scavenging a capital crime, Cavs?”
Loreto stared into the unflinching face for what seemed like an eternity.
“No, sir.”
“How many scavengers were on that ship, Cavs? How many people did you just execute? And did you think about how we’re going to explain those deaths to the colonies they come from? How we’ll explain it to the Senate? Scavenging isn’t a crime we kill people for, Cavs. We’re not murderers.”
Loreto knew the whole bridge was watching. Not ideal. But what was he supposed to do? Cavs had made a serious blunder and now there was a huge mess to clean up. He didn’t want to dress the kid down in front of the entire crew, not again. But this was serious.
“Admiral,” Cavs whispered with precision. “You’re just angry at me. Angry at me for all of your terrible decisions. Because they beat you. That’s why you’re shouting at me. Admiral.”
Loreto stared at Cavs. No one spoke to him like that, not on his ship. He expected the anger to seize hold of him, to wrestle him from his senses, maybe make him lash out. But the words didn’t rile him; they stabbed him in the gut. They hurt, he knew, because they were true.
“You’re treading a very fine line, officer.” Loreto returned the whisper. “You took those lives and you’ll carry them with you every day of your life. You won’t need me to punish you. You’ll find out what real punishment is soon enough.”
In a way, Loreto pitied the kid. It felt better than admitting he was right.
“It’s my fault,” Loreto conceded and rubbed his temple. “Maybe it’s my fault for leaving you in charge. I should have left Menels to look after the Vela…”
But I wanted to show you that I trusted you, Cavs, Loreto thought. He’d been an officer a long time; he’d seen kids like this before. They needed a gentle, guiding hand. They needed to feel like they were trusted, like they were in control. That’s what turned kids into real officers: responsibility.
“Sir.” Hertz coughed behind him. “Sir, we’re picking up a distress signal.”
Loreto didn’t look at the projection or at Hertz. He looked at Cavs. The kid’s tight lips flickered into a half smile for just a moment.
“What is it?” Loreto asked, his voice hoarse. “Aliens?”
“Escape pods, sir.”
Three red dots had appeared on the map. The corralled scavenger ships floated beside the wreckage.
“They must have escaped,” Hertz said, delighted. “Escape pods, sir. They got out alive!”
Loreto turned around to Cavs and said nothing. The young officer looked at the floor.
“We fired warning shots,” he admitted. “Well wide of them. We monitored their positions, could see the pods firing. Then one of the guns misfired. The whole ship has been unpredictable, but we’ve collected diagnostic data. The codex–”
“Go get them!” Loreto shouted, interrupting the explanation.
He felt tired and embarrassed. He was just a weary fool who’d tried to make an example out of a kid in front of the entire crew. Obstinate, proud, ashamed, and in charge. Loreto knew he was being stubborn but, he assured himself, it was for the benefit of the ship, the crew, and the whole damn species. The chain of command needed to be preserved.
“You can leave now, Cavs,” he muttered.
Loreto just wanted to sleep. He finally turned around, looked up at the red dots being collected by the Wisps. Cavs stood next to him, not moving.
“Can I help you, officer?”
He wants an apology, Loreto knew. He’s not getting one. Not in front of everyone. Not on the bridge.
Cavs stood with his feet shoulder-width apart and his eyes levelled straight ahead. Coolant dripped rhythmically in a distant corner. An unnatural silence took hold of the bridge.
“I want to know what happened on that ship,” he said loudly.
A damned reasonable question, Loreto thought. He’s doing it on purpose, trying to be the bigger man on my ship.
“Fletcher lost,” Loreto said blu
ntly, loud enough for everyone to hear. “His entire Fleet is dead.”
The barrage of panic flooded through the room, building up into an anxious crescendo. Sharp intakes of breath, desperate mutterings, worried exchanges. Loreto hadn’t wanted to tell them like this. He’d rehearsed a speech in his head but he welcomed the distraction from his embarrassment.
“But what else happened?” Cavs asked. “You were out there so long.”
“Ask Hertz.” Loreto rubbed his entire face with his hand. The tiredness was consuming him. But there was no time to rest. Thinking, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d laid down and actually slept.
“But the codex,” Cavs insisted. “It’s still a problem–”
“I got copies.”
“For the other ships?” Cavs broke his cool, level tone. “How could you? They’re uncontrollable!”
“Because we have to do something, Cavs.”
“But–”
“Dismissed, officer,” Loreto scowled at him. Don’t push it, kid.
“But–”
“Dismissed.”
Loreto turned around and looked up at the projection. The red, blinking escape pods turned green and began to move back toward the Vela.
“I’m going to the hangar,” Loreto announced. “Hertz, take the bridge. Tell them what happened. Find me a way to talk to the Senate.”
He exited quickly, leaving Hertz to deal with the fallout. The captain was a people person. Loreto knew he could depend on his friend, but he was becoming less sure about himself. I’m really struggling, he admitted. I’m lashing out. I don’t know where I’m going, what I’m doing. I let the Symbiot through. There’s blood on my hands. I might have broken my whole damn ship by using that alien codex. Now I’ve got three more in my pocket. Hell of a plan. Dumb mistake after dumb mistake.
He walked alone through the empty corridors of his ship. News spread fast on the Vela. Everyone would be gathered together, talking. He didn’t stop to check the rust on a doorway or to listen to the purr of the engines as he passed. He made straight for the hangar.
But there was something not right. The lighting. The speed at which the doors opened. Even the taste of the air. All of it felt strange. Altered. Not quite as normal. Maybe it’s just the tiredness, he thought. But maybe Cavs is right. Maybe that damn Exile tech is starting to change things.
He couldn’t stop thinking about Cavs. Loreto didn’t run his Fleet like the other admirals. He valued independent thought over mindless automation; he wanted his crew to speak for themselves. If that meant speaking truth to power, then so be it.
Cavs had crossed a line, he knew, but he hadn’t been wrong. I punish him for that, Loreto thought, and I’d just be punishing the kid for my mistakes. I’m already losing him; I can see it in his eyes.
Without trying, the admiral’s mind travelled ahead. To the box they’d brought back with them. To the remains of Eddie Pale. I can’t afford to lose another one, he told himself. Pale deserved a pilot’s funeral but they didn’t have time to follow traditions, to burn the body up in the engines and fire it behind them into space. The pilot became part of the ship, propelling his friends forward with his final act. I don’t give a damn if he didn’t actually pass the test, Loreto decided. He was a goddamn hero. I just hope he didn’t die in vain.
He walked the length of the ship alone, a twenty-minute journey. His footsteps clanged on the metal mezzanines which took him above the engines and the gravity drives. The hangar sat at the rear of the ship and the crew below him seemed to flood in the other direction, swimming upriver toward the bridge. The news about Fletcher was spreading, he knew. They were all telling one another. He would send out a message explaining everything when he had a moment.
Finally, he arrived outside his destination, thoughts still dominated by his confrontation with Cavs. I’ll do better, he swore to himself. He opened the door and felt the cold air on his face. The hangar was the part of the ship closest to the dead space outside, closest to the cold. He walked past the lined-up Wisps and shuttles, their wings folded upward to better fit inside the Vela. Cranes loomed above them, built into the distant ceiling, their robotic arms moving silently, refueling the ships and adjusting cargo. At the far end of the room, the giant airlock was sealed shut, waiting for arrivals and departures.
The room was empty and quiet. So far from the rest of the ship, the dripping coolant and constant hum of the engines competed against the raw silence of space. Even if there was no one around, one man remained.
“Kelch,” Loreto greeted the man swinging down from his crane.
He was an old hangar monkey, one of the men who spent their lives covered in engine grease, with callused fingers and missing teeth. They swung around and jumped and owned the hangar. Kelch was the oldest of them all. He didn’t wear a shirt. Loreto could see his ribs between the gray hairs and bruises that covered scars. His hair frothed from the top of his head, pushing upward with the pent-up energy of a finely-tuned Wisp engine.
“Ah, Admiral.” The man’s tongue hardly moved as he spoke. He wasn’t used to talking to others.
“Got the survivors?”
“Got ‘em right ‘ere.”
He followed Kelch behind a stack of machinery parts. There were six people, two women and four men. They’d been tied up, their hands wrapped behind their backs.
“Did you offer them food, Kelch? Anything to drink?”
“Don’t mind if I do,” he laughed and produced a hip flask from his pocket, drank deeply, and offered it to Loreto.
“No. Thank you, Kelch.”
He knew better than to try and tame Kelch and his pit crew. They might have been insane, they might have been the bane of his pilots’ lives, but they kept the entire Fleet running at all times. A chaotic, necessary malevolence.
“Who are you?”
Loreto turned from Kelch to the survivors. Rough, hard-living people. They wore scavenger clothes: tool belts and tough materials. Lots of layers because they were used to the cold conditions. They’d learned to live with less air and less attention, making a life for themselves where they could, collecting any debris they found and selling it on the black market.
“Questions,” Loreto said. “I’ve got questions.”
They were arranged on the floor. Loreto hadn’t asked for them to be handcuffed. That would have been a Kelch move. The hangar man wouldn’t have trusted scavengers around his precious machines. Even now, he loomed over the largest of the men, his bulging eyes right next to the man’s face.
“We don’t want none of your questions,” one of the women shouted. “We got rights! You can’t do this to us!”
“Goddamn Federation thugs,” another spat.
Kelch leapt across the hangar floor and cleaned up the spit with a filthy rag and a furious look on his face.
“And who’re you with the questions?” the biggest of the men asked.
The others tried to look through the sides of their eyes at him and they listened. So this is their leader, Loreto thought. He knew their accent well. The kind of accent that stayed out near the Pale. Bristly, uneven tones, spoken mostly with the tongue, rolling all the rougher syllables and hawking up phlegm from the back of the throat.
“Are we supposed to be impressed?” the man continued.
The thwack of the hand across his face made Loreto flinch. Kelch’s weathered skin was so rough, it would be like being hit with a strip of leather.
“Show some respect, scavvie scum,” the hangar man spluttered. “That there’s Admiral Loreto.”
The name had an effect; it always did. Loreto sighed. He saw them mouthing the words ‘Red Hand’ to one another. Wherever he went, his name travelled ahead, for better or for worse.
“Where did you come from?” Loreto asked.
“We was just tryin’ to–” one began.
“Where did you come from?” He spoke over them. He was tired, and he just wanted answers.
I need to know, he reminded himself. If
news of the invasion has spread, there’s going to be chaos on the colonies. It’s best that they don’t know. At least until we can talk to the Senate.
As Kelch eyeballed the man, the scavenger leader wilted.
“All over,” he admitted. “We come from all over.”
Not really an answer.
“And you flew out from where?”
Silence.
“From where?” Loreto repeated. The tiredness was so heavy, he could feel himself sinking into the ground. He found an engine piece and sat on it, eye level with the big man.
No response. Slap. Kelch giggled. Loreto looked at him and shook his head. He didn’t condone that kind of treatment of prisoners.
“Sorry, sorry.” Kelch bounced on his old toes. “Don’t like these scavvies, do I?”
The scavenger spat blood on the floor and answered before Loreto could ask again.
“Inca.”
Inca. Loreto had been worried about that. Inca was less a colony and more a den. A rotten little hell-hole of a place. He knew it well.
“And who told you there was anything out here?”
“No one.”
Loreto tilted his head back, groaning.
“So, you just came to this empty stretch of space,” he asked. “All the way out here by the Pale, for nothing?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re lying.”
The man shook his head.
“You are lying,” Loreto told him. He was too tired for details.
The man shook his head. Kelch slapped him again.
“Kelch!” Loreto shouted. “Stop!”
The man shrugged his awkward shoulders.
“Got him that time, boss.”
“Don’t do it again.”
The man spat blood and Kelch threw himself to the floor and mopped it up.
“Listen, Red Hand.” The lead scavenger grimaced. “We don’t know what weird stuff you Federation freaks are running out here, what kind of weapons you’re testing or whatever. We just want what’s ours.”
Loreto relaxed a little. They didn’t know about the aliens. Which meant people on Inca didn’t know about the aliens. Which meant that most of the colonies wouldn’t know.
“None of it’s yours,” he said. “You’re just scavengers. Vermin. Vultures feeding off destruction.”