by Terry Mixon
He had to admit, this was not where he’d expected things to go. He utilized the handholds built into the side of the little craft and climbed up to the acceleration couch. He didn’t have very much experience with small craft.
In fact, he’d never been inside the cockpit of one before. He’d expected more controls, though. As in more than blank, featureless panels.
The canopy above his head lowered and locked into place. He heard the woman climb into the area behind him, and her canopy lowered as well.
The small craft came to life and lifted off the deck. It turned and flew through the protective field into space at a gentle pace.
As soon as they cleared the bay, he noticed there was something attached to the orbital’s hull. Some type of metal band. A large, thick one.
“What is that?”
“You ask a lot of questions without giving me any interesting answers of your own, but I’ll let you put them on account. Keep watching. It’ll become obvious in a moment.”
As the fighter craft drew away from the orbital, he started getting a better look at the metal band. It was attached to a ship that nestled against the orbital. One that looked vaguely familiar.
“Is that…”
“The recovery ship you’ve been using to transport ore? It is, indeed. It took a little bit of modification, but it managed to move your orbital just fine too.”
A chill ran through his body. He turned and scanned the heavens.
“Are you looking for a planet?” she asked helpfully. “I’m afraid we’ve left Dresden far behind.”
The small craft began rotating slowly, giving him a look at everything around them. There was no planet. They had taken the orbital out of Dresden orbit.
“I’ll grant you that’s clever,” he said, “but it’s not going to make any difference when Fleet arrives. They’ll keep looking until they find us.”
“I’m certain you’re right. Unfortunately, they’ll still be looking in the Dresden system for a while. We’re no longer there.”
The chill became ice that settled at the base of his spine. “What do you mean?”
“I think you can piece it together. That ship is more than capable of flipping with a huge cargo. It was designed to move superdreadnoughts and larger freighters from system to system in the Old Empire.
“It took a little bit of work to expand the arms to encompass the orbital, but we managed. We’ve departed and taken the entire orbital with us.”
“That is quite a claim. One that I’m not willing to believe. Even though there weren’t many ships in this system, each of the flip points is guarded. You didn’t just sneak out with our orbital in tow.”
Annette laughed. “We absolutely did. Though, I admit it took some force to get past the battle station and three destroyers at our target flip point.”
The little craft turned again. What it exposed took his breath away. It was a Fleet warship unlike any he’d ever seen. Sitting near a large freighter of a class that seemed familiar, it looked much bigger than the rare heavy cruiser that had passed through Dresden. Certainly larger than the light cruisers that normally led their guard forces.
“What you’re seeing is our flagship,” she said before he asked. “That is the Fleet Carrier Audacious. She’s a modified superdreadnought hull. I realize that the AIs aren’t forthcoming about larger vessels, so you might not have seen one before.”
He eyed the ship worriedly as it grew larger in front of them. “Superdreadnought? What is a superdreadnought?”
“Let’s just say that it’s the next size up from the battlecruiser,” she said with some amusement. “And if you haven’t heard of those, they’re significantly larger than heavy cruisers. Audacious dates from before the Fall. We’ve put her back into service, and that’s where this fighter came from.
“Full disclosure, my actual duties are to command the fighter wings aboard that ship. You see, Raul, I’m not lying to you. We’ve come to retake what’s ours. If you want to know more about that ship and us, you’re going to have to answer a few questions on my terms.”
As the massive vessel grew larger before them, he decided that he had no choice but to believe she was telling him some version of the truth. If so, this wasn’t a game anymore. Or perhaps it was. Just a significantly more dangerous one.
He allowed himself a small smile. Well, he’d always told himself that he could play at any level. Now was the time to prove it.
7
The probe is starting to pick up readings from the planet,” Angela said.
Kelsey turned her attention away from the system schematic she’d been studying. According to the latest update, they still hadn’t found any flip points in the system. That was worrying.
She could’ve checked the scanner readings for herself, but what was the point of having a crew if you did everything? She was forcing herself to delegate.
“What have we got?” she asked.
Her XO threw a scanner image up on the main screen. “I think there might be a ship in orbit.”
That made Kelsey sit up and take notice. She tapped into the feed the probe was sending back. The new object might be a ship, but if so, it wasn’t under power. There were no detectable fusion plants.
It could just be a captured asteroid, but she didn’t think so. Not with their luck.
“I assume there’s no indication of scanners from the bogie?” Kelsey asked.
“No. If it’s looking, it’s only using passive scanners.”
Kelsey knew the odds of any vessel detecting one of their probes with passive scanners was insignificant, but that didn’t mean impossible. She’d best be cautious.
“Launch two more probes and bracket the planet. I want to be sure there aren’t any other surprises in orbit.”
The probes approached the planet slowly and carefully. Once the first had made it into close range, it was apparent the object was a ship in a stable geosynchronous orbit. Still no fusion plants. The ship was probably a derelict.
One that certainly seemed to have discovered the weak flip points long ago, if there truly were no other exits from this system.
“Bring us into orbit, Jack. Keep us on the other side of the planet from the derelict. Can you identify what kind of ship that is, Angela?”
“It’s in the Imperial database,” she said. “It’s a Capella-class cruise liner. Top of the line back in the Old Empire. She could move ten thousand passengers in style. Maybe twice that if you packed them in. Even more if you strained life support to the breaking point.”
That wasn’t what she’d expected to find out here. The stories of the ghosts had led her to expect an Old Empire Fleet ship.
A few minutes later, they had a visual. It looked undamaged and unpowered. The probe’s passive scanners indicated that it was cold and lifeless. Its passengers and crew had either died or departed.
“What can you tell me about the planet?” Kelsey asked.
“It looks as though it might be habitable, if you stretch the definition a bit. Somewhat cold for my taste, but beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose. At the moment, most of the planet is experiencing heavy winter.
“Only the equator is relatively warm. We don’t have enough information on the planet’s orbit to determine if it goes closer during part of the year or perhaps even farther away, but there’s almost no axial tilt. If the orbit is relatively circular, this place is an icebox”
Kelsey watched the images of the planet slowly rotating beneath them. There was some green—mostly around the equator. She didn’t know what temperature was more prevalent closer to the poles, but it certainly looked cold.
“Any radio transmissions or power signatures?”
“No, ma’am. Everything quiet on that front.”
“Okay,” Kelsey said. “Task two probes with mapping the planet. If there’s something man-made down there, I want to know about it. Keep the third probe watching that ship.
“Then I want you to take a team over to examine the
ship. I want to know how it got here and what happened to the passengers and crew.”
Angela raised an eyebrow. “I’m shocked that you aren’t insisting on leading the expedition yourself.”
“Oh, I want to, but I just can’t justify it. Being an adult sucks. As boring as it sounds, I need to keep an eye on the big picture.”
Somehow, someone on that cruise liner had figured out how to use the weak flip points. If they’d had good luck, their descendants were living on the planet below. If not, then they’d all died in orbit.
“How long until we know if the planet is habitable?”
“I can give you a little bit more information now. The atmosphere seems breathable. It looks as though the equatorial temperature is above the freezing point of water. I suspect most places on the equator are pretty comfortable right now.”
“What about the poles?”
“Damned cold. We’re talking Arctic freeze. There’s evidence of glaciers coming pretty far down into the two hemispheres. If I had to make a wager, I think the money is on this being a chilly place to live.”
Kelsey nodded slowly at the picture. “You don’t think it gets much warmer than this?”
“Further observation might change that, but I’m not inclined to think so.”
“How much landmass on the equator are we talking about?”
Angela shrugged. “There are a number of scattered islands—some of them pretty big—and one sizable continent. Plenty of room for survivors.”
“Focus your attention there, then. I want to know if we have any people living down there.”
“The continent is heavily forested. We may not be able to easily spot them.”
“Do the best you can.”
Kelsey composed a message to Zia Anderson and attached the scanner readings they had of the cruise liner. By the time they had more information, the other ships would be to the planet. One way or the other, she hoped the ship had an interesting story to tell.
Veronica Giguere tried to listen to Levy without calling him a liar to his face, but it was hard. He kept insisting on telling her nonsense stories about survivors of the old dictatorship and how the artificial intelligences behind overthrowing the dictator were evil.
Please. She was a Fleet officer. She knew who the lords were and how they maintained and nurtured the Empire. That didn’t mean they kept humanity in a state of slavery and ignorance. That was simply bull. They kept society orderly and efficient.
Were there problems? Of course. Where human beings lived together, there were always problems. For the most part, the lords kept humanity from eating its own entrails. One only had to look at the dregs of society to see that.
“How can you say any of that with a straight face?” she asked when he’d finished. “I’d call it propaganda, but even someone from the lower orders would recognize that stuff couldn’t possibly be true. Those are the paranoid ravings of a lunatic.
“Why don’t you tell me the truth? Someone subverted Fleet. Which world is funding your little outing? More importantly, what do you actually hope to accomplish by ambushing your fellow officers like this? You know I’ll never rest until I take you down.”
The man shook his head. “To be honest, you’re something of a long-term project, Commander Giguere. You’ve lived in your society your entire life, so I don’t expect change to come easily. In fact, I suspect that convincing you I’m telling the truth is going to be a long and difficult process.”
He sipped his coffee. “Why do you find it so difficult to believe me? I can present any number of my fellow officers that will tell you exactly the same thing. I can even find crewmen that will tell you so. Thousands of people. Surely we’re not all deluded.”
She looked around the officers’ mess and once again examined the men and women dining around them. They looked so normal, but she knew that was a lie. They couldn’t be. Every single one was a traitor.
How had Levy or his masters convinced so many people to betray their oaths? Was Fleet really that rotten?
Veronica knew Fleet wasn’t perfect. There was entirely too much politicking and currying of favor for her taste. Add to that the fact that larger commands were rare, and you had an environment that was almost toxically cutthroat. About the only thing off-limits was actually planting a knife in someone else’s back.
Yet that was life. Nothing worthwhile came without fighting for it.
The man shrugged when she said nothing. “As I said, I don’t expect this process to go quickly or even to be successful in every case. All I can do is try. My intention is to expose you to the truth and let you draw your own conclusions.”
She gave him a cool smile. “That seems a little difficult considering I’m locked away in a cell all by myself.”
“That changes today. I’m relocating you and your senior officers to new quarters. They may not be much more spacious than the brig, but they’ll allow you to interact with each other in a more comfortable environment. I’m also giving you access to the ship’s computer. The library is quite extensive.”
She sighed. “So you’re going to give me unfettered access to your propaganda? Why bother? We can’t trust anything you people say or the documents you provide.”
“Once you see the sheer volume of information, I think you might change your mind. If nothing else, perhaps it will be entertaining for you to dissect the ‘propaganda’ I’m providing for you.
“With the exception of military secrets, I’m also going to make certain you have an opportunity to question either myself or someone else of your choosing about what you find. You’ll have complete access to your crew to be certain that we’re seeing to their needs, too. Surely that’s better than sitting alone in your cell twiddling your thumbs.”
She couldn’t very well argue with that. Three weeks being by herself had almost driven her mad. Of course, she was also familiar with Stockholm Syndrome. The longer he kept telling them his story, the more likely that some of them begin believing parts of it.
Not that she was certain how anybody could give any credence to the story he was putting out.
“Since you’re going to be answering my questions, I have one for you,” she said. “I saw several of your people with implants pretending to be marines that first day. Why would you have your officers pretend to be crewmen?”
“We’re not pretending. Every single human being on our ships has implants. Crewmen, officers, and civilians. Only one person that I’m aware of doesn’t have them, and she’s a special case. Does that sound like your Fleet to you?”
It sounded like insanity. Only idiots trusted the lower orders with a loaded weapon, and she included implant access in that list.
“I can question anyone I like?” she asked.
“Pick anyone in this compartment or we can walk anywhere you’d like on board this ship. You can stop anyone you like and asked them whatever strikes your fancy. If it’s classified, I’ll make the decision on whether or not they can answer, but I won’t put words in their mouths.
“In fact, I suggest you ask unusual questions. What they do for living. Why they’re fighting against the Rebel Empire. That’s what we call you, by the way. It’s because we consider ourselves to be the true Terran Empire.”
Well, if he was going to be so forthcoming, it shouldn’t be very hard to trip someone up. All she needed to do was get away from the people he had groomed to give his false answers. Someone from the lower orders—as the crewmen would be—certainly weren’t sophisticated enough to deceive her.
“Very well. Let’s play your game.”
8
Talbot stuck his head into Carl’s lab and knocked on the frame of the hatch. “How’s it going?”
The young scientist looked a bit frazzled when he turned from his screen. He held up his fist. “I swear to God, the next person to ask me that is going to catch this on the nose.”
Talbot laughed. “So that’s the way it is. They told you we found a ship, right?”
; Carl’s expression brightened. “They did? That’s excellent news, though I’m certain Doctor Leonard is going to be very disappointed to learn that someone else discovered weak flip points.”
“It doesn’t count if you don’t make it back,” Talbot said. “Your girlfriend is searching the ship right now, but it certainly doesn’t look as though anyone is living there. Either they’re living on the planet, they died off, or they went back where they came.”
“No. I’m just about certain these weak flip points actually do lead to other locations, but not without technology the Old Empire didn’t have. Do you understand anything about how flip drives work?”
The marine nodded. “A little. The engines express energy along a certain frequency that triggers a weakness in the space-time continuum. The ship moves from one end of a wormhole to the other.”
“That’s right, as far as it goes. What Doctor Leonard suspects—and what I’ve come to believe is probably true—is that we can focus the energy even more precisely along certain wavelengths. That may open up other potential destinations. In effect, a weak flip point is actually one with multiple wormholes terminating in the same volume of space.”
He cleared away a spot on the table. “Think of it this way. This cup is a weak flip point. If we come along and express energy in a broad spectrum as we currently do, we can trigger it to take us to my stylus. If we do the same at my stylus, it will take us back to my cup.
“However, there might be other wormholes present, and the distorted gravitic reading comes from some kind of harmonic dissonance as they try to express themselves. If we can narrow the energy frequency to most closely link to one of the secondary wormholes, perhaps it will open a wormhole leading to this data chip.”
Talbot sighed. “I hear you talking, but it doesn’t make sense to me. How is that even possible?”
Carl’s face told him that he wouldn’t understand the answer, but the young scientist gamely tried to tell him anyway.
“I could give you lots justifications, but it boils down to an educated guess based on the evidence. The only way to be sure is to make it work. Tell me about this ship.”