by Geoff North
Something big jumped up onto the wing causing the entire ship to shift. Hail could see it turning from side to side, spreading the light on top of its monstrous head across the rocks and into the shadows, searching for them. A second being appeared under the wing, crawling rapidly on metal fists and knees.
One of the probing lights found them. It blinded Hail as he pulled the trigger a third time.
The exploding ship tore the aliens to pieces and blew Hail and Kella onto their backs.
Kella was the first to speak a full ten seconds later. “We’ve sure made… a mess of this scouting mission, haven’t we?”
Hail was lying flat on his back, staring up at the stars through the slit of gorge rocks. “Yeah, we’re a couple of screw-ups, alright.” He heard her giggle through the speakers. “You sound… better?”
“Nothing like running for your life to give you that extra boost. Don’t get me wrong… I still feel like crap, but I’m not quite ready to die yet.”
“Good to hear.” They helped each other back up. “Where to now?”
“Nothing up top.” Kella pointed further into the black gorge below. “You called it before, kid. We keep going down.”
Chapter 25
“Faster than light?” Vin asked again.
“A lot faster.” Rastaban nodded excitedly. “For a full minute. We’re in low orbit around Mantus.”
Vin sat up and shook her head. The last time she had seen her best friend, he was the one lying in a medical center bed. Now he was standing over her. “It’s all so hard to believe. CS Ries and so many others… gone.”
Every bed around them was filled with injured and dying crew members. Doctors and nurses were moving about quickly, attending to as many patients as they could with limited staff. Vin could hear Hal Gulum off in the distance barking out orders, attempting to coordinate them as best he could.
“You’re lucky you weren’t one of them. If that robot hadn’t gotten hold of you and the Captain—”
Vin swung her legs out of the bed. “The Captain! He’ll be expecting me to be with him.”
Rastaban tried to make her lie back down. “Hey, you haven’t been cleared to leave yet.”
She found a clean uniform at the foot of the bed and began dressing. “I’m not staying here.” The clothes were command black, not science blue. “See? I have a new job now.”
“I’m sure that whole ‘Captain’s Assistant’ thing can wait. You need to rest.”
“To hell with rest. If anyone should still be in bed, it’s you. Have you looked at yourself in a mirror recently?”
“I try not to,” Rastaban answered quietly.
“I’m sorry, that was a horrible thing to say.” Vin had one boot on and dropped the other back to the floor. She hugged him. “Has Dr. Gulum scheduled your reconstructive surgery yet?”
“Too much going on for that.” He pushed her away after a few more moments. “Too many people with bigger problems than mine.”
“You will have it done though, right?”
Rastaban shrugged. “Looking like a freak has its advantages. People have started taking me more seriously.” He pointed to the ruined side of his once beautiful face. “With a mug like this I can rise up pretty quickly in the ranks.”
She finished buttoning her tunic and started for the nearest exit. Rastaban jogged behind her, sidestepping around nurses and aids along the way. The elevator door opened and they stood back as two orderlies pushed a gurney out. A white sheet drenched in blood was covered over their patient. Vin and Rastaban stepped in and the doors closed. “Command level,” Vin instructed. “Why are you following me?”
They started to move. “General Emin ordered me to join him on the bridge half an hour ago.”
“You don’t follow orders all that well.”
“I wasn’t going anywhere until I was sure you were okay.” Rastaban smiled at her, but only half of his face moved. The scarred side of his mouth remained stuck in a scowl. “Now we can go together.”
“It’ll likely be a short shift. When the Pegans find us…”
Rastaban shrugged again. “At least we’ll be together in the end.”
“I just can’t get rid of you, can I?”
The elevator rumbled upwards.
Chapter 26
Ly Sulafat sat at the head of the conference table in the same chair he’d voted against war with the Pegan civilization. The chair had a slight wobble to it and a noticeable lean to the left where some bigger object had collided with it on its way out into space. An object. Maybe one of his section heads.
He was facing the emergency bulkhead—that massive block of steel that had dropped down into place ten seconds too late. If crew quarters were still equipped with automatic atmosphere shields like those in the fighter garages, lives might have been saved, perhaps all of them. But the auto-atmos had been stripped from non-essential areas generations before to conserve energy.
Conserving life should’ve been their number one priority…I could’ve seen to it myself and had them re-installed years ago. Just another failure on my part to see things done right.
He looked around once again at what used to be his living quarters. Pictures had torn away from the walls, and fragments of glass had ground into the short carpet everywhere. Most of his treasured books were gone. A few dozen torn-out torn pages and a couple of bent covers remained, wrapped around broken furniture legs and jammed into air vents. The books had been ancient before Ambition had even left the Sol system seven centuries ago. Dozens of captains before him had cared for them. Now they were frozen tatters, floating in the vacuum of space a hundred million kilometers behind the man that would most likely be the last captain to ever command Ambition.
He stared back at the blank steel slab, feeling sad for the loss of so much human history, and devastated at the senseless deaths of people he cared for—one whom he loved dearly, even though he hadn’t told her in decades.
“Captain… General Emin reports a hundred fighters from garage 2 have set up a defensive net around the ship. One hundred thirty remain docked and ready for immediate deployment. Four are unfit to fly but repairs are underway.”
“Nash,” Sulafat replied softly without looking away from the bulkhead. “For such a big machine, you don’t make a lot of noise. I didn’t hear you come in.”
“You appear lost in thought. Quite understandable.”
“I saw them coming before Sheratan… I froze and she called the warning.”
“Command isn’t an on-going test.” The robot’s big metal feet crunched glass into the carpet as he strode over to stand next to him. “The crew isn’t judging you.”
“The hell they aren’t. They’ve been judging me for years, and with good reason.” Sulafat leaned forward and rested his head into his hands. “I never want to see your face again.”
“Captain?”
“Those were the lasts words I said to her before… before—”
“You didn’t mean it. You couldn’t have known the Pegans were going to attack the next moment.”
“But I did mean it. I was disappointed in her… infuriated. I let my emotions get the best of me. And I didn’t react quickly enough when the attack began. She died because of me… because I’m too old and slow to command this ship into war.”
“The ship is now safe due to your actions. Hundreds of additional lives were saved with your decision to keep the fighters in garage 2.”
The chair creaked as Sulafat stood up. He went to the bulkhead and placed an open palm on its surface. “Sheratan should’ve been in command of this vessel when we arrived to this system. I’ve been fighting against this senseless conflict for as long as I can remember. What kind of warship captain thinks like that?”
“The last twenty-eight.”
Sulafat turned slowly and raised an eyebrow at the android. “What are you talking about?”
“Admiral Neil Lennix was the first commander of Ambition when this journey began, and the only one that b
elieved in the war. Every captain since has, in some degree, been against it.”
“Every captain? How could you possibly know that?”
“Every captain told me.”
It was easy to forget sometimes that the robot had been actively serving aboard Ambition for the better part of a millennium. He had seen and heard it all. Every captain’s decision, all of their doubts and misgivings. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“You never asked.”
Sulafat bent over and picked up the remains of a book older than Nash and Ambition itself. Three quarters of the pages had been sucked away from the hardback’s spine. “War of the Worlds.” He tossed it onto the conference table. “I believe Lennix brought it onboard himself.”
“He did,” Nash confirmed.
The chair made an unhealthy creak as Sulafat sat back down and considered things thoughtfully. “If the Turnback Revolution hadn’t occurred, the cryonic storage canisters would’ve never been irrevocably damaged. The Admiral might very well be sitting here now, instead of me.”
“But the revolution did occur, Captain. Admiral Lennix and his associates are still frozen away on Sciences section, level 88.”
“I know, old friend. I know.” Sulafat looked up at the robot. “You knew the man… tell me about him.”
“He was only in command for the first four years of the voyage. Once we’d cleared the Kuiper belt, the Admiral, Major Tomas Weston, and the five mining corporate owners of Ambition voluntarily entered cryogenic suspension. They were to be revived once we entered the Pegan star sys—”
“I know all about that,” Sulafat rolled his hand in the air. “I asked about Lennix. What was he like?”
“He was strong, well trained. He possessed a keen military mind.” Nash paused. “But he wasn’t well liked by the rest of the crew. Most of them referred to him behind his back as the ‘Asshole Admiral’.”
Sulafat was almost smiling. “Perhaps we need someone like that now to get us out of this mess.”
“Captain, I’ll only ask this one more time. Are you well enough to command?”
It sounded like a threat, but Sulafat knew it was genuine concern. This would be his last opportunity to step down and let someone else take over. He could hear Sheratan’s voice in his mind. You could’ve walked away years ago, why quit now?
“Probably not, but I’ll see this through to the end anyway. Get a work crew down here and have this place cleaned up.”
The door to the bridge stairway opened and Vin Vir stepped into the ruined quarters. “Reporting for duty, Captain.”
“Vin. It’s good to see you back on your feet. Are you ready to help me win this war?”
“I’m not sure what good I’ll be to you, but yes, sir.”
“Self doubt.” He smiled up at Nash. “There’s been too much of that on Ambition for far too long.” Sulafat put an arm around his new assistant’s shoulders and started back for the stairs. “The only way past it is by working together.”
Chapter 27
The Captain took his chair and looked about the bridge. They were an officer short. “Where’s General Emin?”
“He left a few moments ago with Rastaban Drac,” Argus answered. “He’s meeting with his CS in fighter garage 2 to go over tactics with the remaining bosses and chiefs.”
Sulafat had promoted Tor over Seginus Boo as military leader. Seginus would be good and pissed off that he hadn’t been chosen to fill Shain Agle’s boots, but the Captain didn’t give a damn about the Command Second’s feelings. Ambition’s military needed a drastic shakeup—every section on the ship needed one—and Tor Emin was the right man for the job. He could be unpredictable and downright violent if pushed too far. The Captain saw that as something they all needed now. It had taken guts to vote for the war minutes after being promoted by the man against it. He was loyal, but not blindly so. Tor was a lot like Sheratan, and Sulafat needed more people like her.
“The General told me to tell you one more thing, sir,” Argus continued. “Since Geth Cules was killed in the garage 1 explosion, there are no more serving colonels aboard Ambition. He doesn’t see the need to promote anyone else to the vacant positions since our forces have been cut in half.”
There were now less than six hundred men and women serving in Ambition’s military. Tor and Seginus could lead them well enough with the help of the remaining squadron bosses and platoon chiefs. It was an efficient decision. Sulafat nodded his approval. “I agree, the less officers butting heads, the better.”
“And what about you, sir?” Argus asked a little fearfully. “I mean no disrespect, but you don’t have a Command Second serving under you anymore.”
Nash was standing down by the Captain’s side with Vin. Sulafat leaned over and slapped what looked like a shoulder. “My new CS is right here.”
“I’m a robotic aid, not an officer.”
“You’re a robotic aid and an officer now. If you need any help with the human side of things, you can refer to our young Vin Vir there.”
Vin looked more shocked than she had when Sulafat had made her his assistant. “Captain?”
He grinned at both of them. “Two Command Seconds all in one. I couldn’t be in better hands.”
Gacrux Crucis entered the bridge holding a computer pad. There was a stack of papers stuffed under one of his arms. “I have something you might want to see.”
Sulafat met him at the empty weapons station. Gacrux spread the papers across the console and handed the pad to his Captain.
“What am I looking at?” Sulafat asked.
“I think it might be a way to take the fight to the Pegans.” He pointed to the small display. “This is an interior image of the DMP column on Ambition. Protons are pushed through at a high rate of speed and enter the collapse chamber down here.” He tapped the bottom of the screen so Sulafat could see an expanded picture of the ship’s main propulsion system.
“How many times are you going to explain to me today how this ship moves?”
Gacrux chuckled. The other bridge officers gathered around as he poured over the papers. “These are schematics of the fighter fold drives, smaller of course, but they work on the exact same principle. Laris’s sacrifice may have shown us a way to defeat the Pegans entirely. If we intentionally disrupt the proton flow before they reach the collapse chamber—”
Sulafat stopped him. “Hold on a second, I’m not sure I follow… Are you suggesting we use our remaining fighters as collapse bombs?”
“Not the fighters, Captain.” He pushed the top papers away, revealing more schematic images beneath. “Our video drones. They’re equipped with rudimentary fold drive capabilities as well, on an even smaller scale.”
“How big of a black hole could one of these drones produce?”
“It isn’t about size, necessarily. The gravitational disruption would be just as powerful, but its duration would be much shorter.”
Vin had worked long enough in the Sciences section to picture it her head. “Mini implosions. Instantaneous collapses, and then nothing. Little pops disrupting space-time, sucking in whatever’s too close.”
“Exactly!” Gacrux exclaimed.
Sulafat picked one of the papers up and studied the video drone’s interior representation. “How many drones do we have left?”
“Sixty-four active and over two hundred in storage.” Gacrux looked at the stunned faces around the weapons station. “It seems like a lot, but this was a mining vessel before it was a warship. More than a dozen Earth companies with representatives onboard were continually exploring for resources in the Sol system.”
“It’s why this ship was named Ambition,” Nash pointed out.
“Ambitious indeed,” Sulafat said quietly. “Well done, Gacrux. I didn’t want this war, but you’ve shown us the way to win it. Get those drones out of storage. It’s time to head for the Pegan home world.”
Chapter 28
Hadar was still in the room with the screen broadcasting ancient Earth vide
os of conflict, brutality, and all out war. The metallic restraints around his head and throat had been removed. He could move his arms and legs, and he could stand up and walk around. But Hadar wasn’t allowed to leave. If he attempted it, or became even slightly violent, the restraints would be put back in place. The bug-eyed little being had even threatened to experiment on other parts of his body with the tools still laid out on the table.
He was given what looked like porridge in a bowl to eat. It was salty enough to make his eyes wince.
One of the taller aliens had stayed with him. It had remained silent the entire time until Hadar went to place the bowl on the floor after just one swallow. We aren’t trying to poison you. We know enough about your species to provide you with proper sustenance during your stay.
“And how long will that be?”
You should feel honored… the first of your kind to make contact with another civilization.
Hadar picked the bowl back up and ate some more. It tasted terrible, but he was starving. Parts of his mouth were still numb from the drugs; globs of the food spilled down onto his chest. “Your civilization attacked my people. You killed Kraz Corvus.” The alien didn’t respond. “Kraz Corvus was the gunner I was flying with. He was an ugly old bastard, but he could make me laugh. He has two daughters back on Ambition.”
Your ship is called Ambition. Even its title reveals the nature of your people. Greedy. Ruthless. War-mongering.
Hadar wanted to curse. He had told the Pegan more than he should’ve. “Strap me back down if that’s what you have to do. Fill me with more drugs and drill back into my brain. I’m not saying another word until I’ve been returned to my people.” He threw what was left in the bowl to the floor. The container shattered and the salty porridge splattered across the Pegan’s skinny grey legs.