by Geoff North
Tor placed the fingers of one hand on the glass window before him. “Major Tomas Weston. He was second in command when Ambition set out.”
“And he will be again.” Chort pressed a button on the wall and a door opened. “Come inside and get a better look at him.”
Tor hesitated. “No, this isn’t right. Perhaps we should let the Captain in on this. We could all work together, our generation and theirs.”
“It’s a little late for that.” Chort pulled gently at his arm. “The Captain is old and weak. Tomas Weston and these others are young. This is their time.”
Tor followed him inside. The top half of each cryonic canister cover was constructed of heavy glass. They looked down into the first few, seeing the faces of men and women frozen centuries before.
Tor stopped in front of Tomas Weston. The blue light inside made him look even colder, literally a block of human ice. “He… doesn’t look anything like me.”
“He has your jaw, and he is a big bastard.”
Tor stood there for a few more moments unable to say anything else at all. This is my ancient ancestor. He’s the reason I’ll betray my people… my Captain.
“Allow me to introduce a distant relative of my own,” Chort said quietly. He patted the canister next to Major Weston’s. “This is Olivia Bertrand. She was—still is—the Vice-President of Operations for the mining company, Ganymede Unlimited.”
An attractive woman no older-looking than forty lay inside the canister. A fine layer of white frost had settled over her short black hair. It had settled on the narrow eyebrows and full lashes. Her lips were thin and mauve-colored. Attractive, yes, Tor confirmed to himself, but hard-looking. Sheratan Ries could’ve passed as her descendant before the round-faced Chort Leo.
Tor glanced over at the last canister next to Bertrand’s. There was no blue light within. There was no one laying inside. “You’ve done it,” he gasped. “You’ve actually revived one.”
“Through Sol’s good graces, he’s done more than that.”
Tor spun around and saw Zosma Lion standing in the open doorway. Beside him was a tall, silver-haired man wearing a medical-issue gown. He appeared to be roughly Tor’s age with wide shoulders and powerfully built arms. His skin however was deathly white. He stepped forward slowly with the help of a cane. The man’s dark and bloodshot eyes penetrated into Tor’s.
“My name ish…,” a line of drool spilled from one corner of his mouth. “My name is Admiral Neil Lennix.” He wiped the saliva away and stuck his chin out confidently. “I am the Commander of Ambition… you will help me take her back.”
It wasn’t a request. Tor lowered his eyes to the floor and answered anyway. “Yes, sir.”
Chapter 31
“What is your name?”
The blond-haired woman’s fingers trailed down Hadar’s cheek and took hold of his hand. “My parents named me Jule. On my fifteenth birthday I added the second name, Adeen.” She pulled him along and pointed to a distant grove of tall trees. “Those are adeens. They grow forever, and never stop reaching for the clouds. The tallest one there is over a thousand circles old. I like the idea of that, always reaching high and never dying.”
“You speak my language, like those other Pegans… the grey ones.”
“The interrogators?” She laughed. “They aren’t Pegans. They aren’t even human like you and I. And I’m speaking your language because you haven’t learned mine yet.”
Hadar stumbled along beside her in a daze. This couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t be here, walking in grass with a beautiful woman holding his hand. “Is this a trick of some kind?” She looked at him questioningly. “Am I still strapped into that chair? How do I know you aren’t drilling back inside my head or pumping me with drugs to see all of this?”
She squeezed his fingers. “This is real. I am a true Pegan, and you are walking on my world. I’m truly sorry for the way you were treated. If I had any say in it, those barbaric practices would end. But I’m just a diplomat. First contact and security procedures are handled solely by the militia.”
Hadar couldn’t take anymore of it. He pulled his hand from hers and dropped to his knees. He felt faint, light-headed. Jule Adeen knelt beside him and picked one of the purple and yellow flowers. “Here, smell this.”
Hadar closed his eyes and smelled. It reminded him of the scent of the flowers grown back inside the horticultural levels on Ambition. It reminded him of home. He breathed in through his nose a second time, deeply. The smell grounded him. The light-headed sensation began to pass. He opened his eyes again and felt a longing to be back with his people. They had called it homesickness a very long time ago, but Hadar was the first human in centuries to experience it firsthand.
“Do you wish to go back inside?” Jule asked.
Hadar shook his head. “No. Not back inside.” He turned and beheld the immense block of a building he’d been held captive in for the first time. “I never want to go back in there again.”
She helped him stand back up. “You don’t have to. There’ll be other buildings, but that one has finished with you. The interrogation part of your stay with us has ended. We’ll help find you more suitable quarters in the city. You can remain safe with us for the rest of your life if that’s what you wish to do.”
“City?”
“Come see for yourself.” She ran away from him, away from the distant forest and up a hill covered with more waving grass and wild flowers. Hadar was in no condition to run after his ordeal. He kept the young woman in view and met her at the hill’s top a minute later.
“There,” she said. “That’s the city of Sharell… it’s named after the first planet in our system, the one your people call Grannus.”
Hadar had never walked on grass, or witnessed an open sky above his head until a few short minutes ago. Seeing an actual city sprawled below them in the distance was no less awe-inspiring. Steel spires a hundred times taller than the adeen trees stretched away as far as he could see. Hadar focused in and saw a few specks of movement—ships rising up noiselessly from the buildings and dropping down from the clouds.
“A city.” He looked at her. “Sorry, it’s all still a little overwhelming.”
“That’s understandable. You’ve been cooped up in that ship of yours for a long time. What you’re seeing is only the perimeter. The city center is still over a hundred kilometers away.”
Hadar turned away and stared back down towards the building he’d been interrogated in. “None of this makes any sense. You say I can stay here, safe, but you attacked our scout ships. Your people killed my friend. They probably destroyed the others, too.”
“That isn’t true.” She stepped in front of him. “I believe your intentions in all of this were honorable, but Earth did come to Pega to start a war, you can’t deny that.”
He shook his head. “The three ships Ambition sent ahead were reconnaissance only. I’ll admit that military conflict was still being considered, but the people I was sent out with were only observing. You attacked us.”
Her light eyebrows furrowed together. “No. We sent ships out to intercept you—we had decided to end the centuries-long communications freeze and welcome your civilization. One of your fighters fired a long-range nuclear missile twelve hours before ours forces met your ships. Five of our vessels were destroyed in the blast… fifteen people killed.”
“That can’t be right. Our orders were to observe…” Hadar’s words trailed off. Nail had disappeared moments before Bite and Bee were hit. He’d called out to Tor Emin and Rastaban Drac but received no reply.
“Your people started this war, Hadar Cen. You will remain on Pega. You will be kept safe and treated well as a prisoner of war.”
Chapter 32
Rastaban emptied the glass and ordered another drink.
Ma Ades re-filled it. “You don’t come here all that often, and when you do it’s usually for just a single shot or two.”
“I’m waiting for someone,” he said sullenly.
“Hey, don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the patronage. This place has been pretty much empty since all the hostilities broke out.” She swept an arm through the air to indicate how much the Black Hole’s business had suffered.
Rastaban glanced over his shoulder. “It’s completely empty. Your establishment’s living up to its name.”
“You can say that again.” She pulled a second glass from under the counter and poured herself a drink. “Mind if I join you?”
“It’s your bar.”
Ma took a sip. “You’ve been waiting for this ‘someone’ for over an hour. You sure she hasn’t stood you up?”
“That someone is my commanding officer, and she’s a he.”
The door slid open and Tor Emin stepped through. Ma rolled her eyes. “Oh you poor bastard. I’d be pounding the liquor back even faster if he was my boss.” She plopped a third glass onto the counter.
Tor motioned it away. “Nothing for me. This isn’t a social visit.”
“Yeah? Well then you still owe me for the busted table and chairs.”
“Later, Ma. When all this has been settled, I’ll personally see this dive gets completely refurnished.”
Ma brushed her thick hair back with one hand and finished her drink. “That’ll be the day.”
Tor pointed to a table in the far corner. “Rastaban… we have to talk in private.”
Ma poured herself another drink and shooed the two away. “Go then, Sol forbid I stop you.”
Rastaban started for the corner. Tor paused and grabbed the bottle and two glasses from the counter. “If it makes you feel better.”
“It doesn’t. Paying for it once in a while would.”
“Soon, Ma, that’s a promise.” He winked at her and walked away.
“What the hell’s going on?” Rastaban mumbled once the two men were seated. “You ask me to join you on the bridge and then send me straight here.”
Tor motioned for him to lower his voice even more. “I was held up… family matters.”
Rastaban’s good eye opened wide. “Chort’s still going through with it?”
“Lennix has already been revived.” Tor filled the glasses to the top and pushed one towards him.
Rastaban’s hand shook as he drank it down. “I never thought the day would come… The Seven coming back to life.”
“You knew it was close when we set out on the scouting mission. The plan to bring them back as soon as we entered the Pegan system had been decided years ago.”
“Scouting mission, my ass.” Rastaban pointed to the scarred side of his face. “This is what I got from your scouting mission.”
“Easy now.”
Rastaban poured another drink. “Firing a nuke at the Pegan ships wasn’t part of the plan. We were supposed to take them on face to face. I only went along with the sneak attack because you were mission leader. It wasn’t your call to make.”
“So I initiated things a little early. It’s what the Seven would’ve wanted.”
Rastaban wanted to punch him between the eyes. Two things would happen if he tried it; Tor would kick the crap out of him, and he would end up back in the medical center. Rastaban did not want to end up back there with even more damage to his face. “We could’ve honored our responsibility to the Seven and achieved peace with the Pegans. That won’t happen now. You’ve jeopardized everything.”
“That nuke didn’t take all of them out,” Tor countered. “The Pegans caught up with us and fired upon Bee and Bite. I tried to defend them.”
“Bullshit. You thought I was so busy flying the ship I couldn’t see what you were up to? The Pegans didn’t shoot Corvus and Hadar’s wing away. You did that, admit it.”
Tor’s face went white. “Keep your voice down.” He leaned forward, close enough that Rastaban could see the sweat lining his forehead in the dark bar. “It had to be done. If Chort was unable to thaw the Seven out… well, we just couldn’t afford to have any witnesses come back from that mission and report what really happened.”
“Bite’s wing collided with my canopy cover.” He pushed away from the table noisily and pointed to the purple scars covering the left side of his face again. “Did you intend for this to happen as well? Are you that good of a shot, General?”
“Hey, Emin!” Ma smacked the counter hard enough to get their attention from the far side of the room. “Are you going to start another fight? You’re the only two in the place!”
Tor turned and saluted her with the bottle. “No fights, Ma.” He refilled Rastaban’s glass and whispered. “Sit back down and shut your mouth for a minute.” Rastaban sat. “I never intended for that to happen. But you knew what we were really doing out there—you should’ve been prepared. You should’ve had your helmet on.”
“Murdering our own people wasn’t part of any plan I was ever let in on.”
Tor finally swallowed his drink down. He filled the glass again. “It was a last minute decision—me, Chort, Zosma, and a few of the others held a meeting… It was decided there could be no witnesses. If you weren’t a member of the cause, you weren’t coming back, period. I was against it, but they made sense, and as much as I hate to admit it now, it was the right thing to do.”
Rastaban had been shaking his head slowly through the entirety of Tor’s reasoning. “No, it wasn’t. Listen to you—siding with Chort and Zosma… Zosma, damn it! He’s a Sol-worshipping freak.”
“Yeah, he’s a freak, but he has ties with the Seven, just like you and me.”
Both men sat in silence for the next minute, sipping from their glasses. “I can’t go through with this,” Rastaban finally said. “The Captain has to be informed. We have to come clean and tell the entire crew what we’ve been up to all these years.”
“I’ll murder you before you make it to the door,” the General warned. “And then I’ll break Ma’s neck, and dump both of your bodies into space.” He leaned forward and grabbed Rastaban’s wrist. “It would be easy. It’s just the three of us here. No witnesses.”
Rastaban gave in to the threat and the increasing pressure around his wrist. “What… What do you want me to do?”
“You’re going to your quarters after this. You’ll keep that ugly mouth of yours shut and remain there until I call for you again. Can you do that for me?”
Rastaban nodded.
“Good.” Tor let him go. “Remember… the Council keeps an eye on all of its members, all of the time. You’re one of us, Drac—you swore an oath. One word from you to the Captain, or that nosy Vin Vir…” He raised his eyebrows to finish the threat. “Are you absorbing all of this?”
Rastaban nodded again.
Tor stood up. “It’ll all have been worth it when Ambition’s original command crew is back in charge, you’ll see. Even the Pegans will thank us in a few decades—what’s left of them—when an Earth government is running things.”
The newly-appointed General made for the door, clunking the empty liquor bottle on the counter along the way. Ma went to the table and gathered up the glasses. “You need another drink, or are we finished here?”
“I’m finished,” Rastaban answered. “Most definitely.”
Chapter 33
Sixteen hours had passed since Ambition’s faster than light jump through space into orbit around the moon of Mantus. Sixteen hours in which Gacrux Crucis, his brother Becrux, and dozens of other crew members from propulsion and sciences had rigged a hundred and thirty-two video drone fold drives to stall and overload by remote control. They were half done. The ship still contained a mighty arsenal of conventional weapons, but this was Sulafat’s guarantee the war could be won.
If it came to that.
Sixteen hours was a long time for a leader to think things through. The Captain sat in his command chair, brooding how to inform his crew that the threat of war might be all they needed to avoid any further conflict. He had been wrong before, and people had died. The Pegans had attacked them minutes after he’d voted against a military strike. Sulaf
at had the authority to override the Baker’s Dozen vote, but would the people follow him? Would they see his last-ditch attempt at peace as strength of wisdom, or just another sign of weak indecision?
He was finished second-guessing himself. They would follow his commands and give peace one more try. And if some didn’t like it, to hell with them. They could be confined to their quarters, or see the rest of this through in the brig.
Sulafat clicked a switch on his armrest, opening a line to the entire ship. “Attention all crew members. We now have the means to defend ourselves against any further Pegan attacks. Our ship has taken damage, but she lives on.” He paused, and the bridge crew stared at him expectantly. He considered his next words carefully for a few more moments and finally continued. “I wish the same could be said for the seven hundred and fifty-two members of our family lost in the last eighteen hours. I don’t want their deaths to have been for nothing… I believe we can steer away from this path of destr—”
Kalin Aurig at navigation interrupted. “Sensors have just picked up the signals of over a hundred enemy vessels. They’ll be on us in minutes.”
So much for peace. “I want ten of those collapse bombs launched towards them in thirty seconds.”
Gacrux’s voice sounded over the comm system. “Already loaded in the torpedo cannons and programmed to intercept.”
“Fire when ready.” No more second-guessing. As much as it pained him to see an interstellar conflict escalate, Sulafat would not risk the life of another single crewmember so long as he had what might be the upper hand.
Vin Vir was at the weapons station. “Port torpedo doors seven through twelve open.”
The Captain nodded at her with silent approval. She had relieved the exhausted officer serving there less than half an hour ago. Sulafat knew more about her than Vin suspected. The young woman was smart enough to fill almost any bridge position, he was sure. Why she had chosen to pursue a career in sciences over command baffled him, but having her here with him now was all that mattered. Whether she could handle the pressure remained to be seen.