Sons of the Starfarers: Omnibus I-III

by Joe Vasicek

  “You think you’re tough now, when the element of surprise gives you the upper hand,” she continued. “But what are you going to do when the Imperials come back? And they will come back, make no mistake about that. To them, this campaign is just a minor setback. They won’t let it happen again. And when they do come back, this ragtag bunch of misfits that calls itself a flotilla doesn’t have a comet’s chance in Hell of standing up to them.”

  “Says who?” someone shouted. Mara’s eyes locked onto him, making him flinch.

  “You think I’m wrong?” she said softly. “You think the Flotilla will last until the end of this campaign? If it’s falling apart after two decisive victories, how long will it last once we start to lose?”

  She looked out over the crowd as if challenging anyone to step forward and contradict her. No one did.

  “You’re all here because you have a score to settle. And once you do, where will you go? Home? Back to the Outworlds, as if this whole war was just one big adventure? I’ve got news for you, people. Freedom isn’t something you pay for, it isn’t something you haggle for. Freedom is something you die for.”

  “We did our part,” one of the Iayans grumbled. “Why should we pay any more than we already have?”

  She looked out over the crowd, clearly holding them all in contempt. “My father was killed at Bacca. I settled my score there. The only reason I’m still here with you fuckers is because I thought you were actually fighting for something. I see now that I was wrong. But at least I’ll die free. That’s more than I can say for any of you cowards who desert us now.”

  With that, she turned on her heel and left, leaving the room in an uproar. Aaron hurried after her.

  “That was amazing!” he said, struggling to keep pace with her lengthened stride. “You were—”

  “Shut up,” she told him in Deltan. “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Why not? You were incredible back there. Most of them were on the fence, and I wouldn’t be surprised now if they—”

  “Why are you still here?” she asked, turning on him. “Is this still just some sort of grand adventure for you?”

  She stopped so abruptly that he ran into her, nearly falling over.

  “W-what do you mean?”

  “Why are you still fighting this war? Is it to prove your dick is as big as anyone else’s in that room?”

  “What? No! Of course not!”

  “Then do you still have a score to settle with the Imperials? Because I have news for you, Aaron—things only get harder once you do.”

  Aaron thought about the henna girl, locked up on an Imperial battleship somewhere. Had they woken her yet, or was she still locked in the ice? Either way, he had to get her out of there. If that was his “score,” then no, it hadn’t been settled yet.

  “Yeah,” he said, swallowing. “But now that my brother’s involved, I guess I’m fighting for him too. In fact, I guess we’re all fighting for each other.”

  “Spare me the sentimentality.”

  “But it’s true!”

  “For now, maybe. But what are you going to do when the chips are down, and you know you’re going to die? I don’t mean in the cockpit. I mean on the floor, with a hot gun in your hands and your comrades bleeding out all around you.”

  He clenched his fists. “I’m not going to abandon you like those Iayans. We’re all in this together, right up to the end.”

  “I suppose,” she said, nodding. “But you’d better watch how much you use that neural stimulator, or you’ll fry your brain so bad you’ll get us all killed. I know you lied to the commander.”

  His cheeks went hot with anger and embarrassment. “Are you saying I—”

  “Shut up, Aaron. We both know why you screwed up. The only reason I didn’t rat on you is because you’re right—we can’t replace you. Not at the rate that our pilots are abandoning us, anyway. We need you, so for all the holy stars of Earth, don’t get us all killed.”

  “I-I won’t,” he stammered, unsure how to respond. “I’ll do my best.”

  “Good. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to cool off before I do something I’m going to regret. Get some food, Ensign.”

  With that, she turned and left him bewildered in the corridor.

  Scattered and Lost

  Aaron nervously tapped the armrest of Paladin-4’s pilot seat as inane chatter from the other pilots filled the channel. The Flotilla hadn’t jumped yet—they were still awaiting order to launch. As the tedious moments before the battle wore on, the chatter took on an air of nonchalance, as if they were all trying to prove their machismo by showing off how bored they were.

  Just one more battle, Aaron thought to himself as he gripped the flight stick. One more battle in this campaign, and I’ll see Isaac again. The henna girl, too—if this one went as well as the last two battles, he’d soon have his chance to rescue her. Now that the moment of decision had come, though, he found himself looking forward to seeing his brother even more. Samson had said they’d see each other at Colkhia, which meant that Isaac was probably there already, posing as star wanderer. All Aaron had to do was survive this next battle, and they’d be together on the Medea again, laughing and sharing stories about the war. And with luck, the henna girl would be there with them.

  His stomach flipped, and the taste of vomit filled his mouth. He was so nervous he couldn’t even pretend to play the boredom game with the other pilots.

  “All right, boys,” Commander Noah said over the come. “Cut the chatter—we’re initiating jump now. Stand by.”

  A wave of sudden nausea all but bowled Aaron over. He closed his eyes and swallowed hard, choking it down as it threatened to overwhelm him. He felt as if the universe were spinning around him, and he was the only thing standing still. His perception of space and distance swam in his mind, giving him an awful, dizzying headache—worse than any other jump he’d made. Just when it seemed as if his head would explode from the pressure, the spinning stopped and the nausea died down. He opened his eyes.

  The channel was deadly silent. Through the forward window, all he could see were stars. They seemed unusually bright for a star system. The last time he and Isaac were at Colkhia, they’d seemed a whole lot dimmer. That was probably just his mind playing tricks on him, though. He gripped the flight stick with sweaty hands and made ready to release the docking clamps.

  The launch order never came. The seconds ticked down on the mission clock, marking almost half a minute since the jump, and still nothing but silence.

  “Uh, Commander Noah?” the voice of Paladin-2’s pilot came over the channel. “Do you want us to launch?”

  It took Noah about eight seconds to respond, but it felt like almost an hour.

  “Negative, Paladin-2. Negative. Stand by for orders.”

  “What is happen?” Aaron asked, his voice almost cracking. “What wrong? Why not launch?”

  Commander Noah didn’t answer his question. Aaron clenched his fists and slammed them against his armrests, unable to wait any longer. He brought up the local scanner readout on his main display and ran a detailed sweep, even though they were still docked with the Aegis.

  The sweep brought up nothing. Not a single ship, friendly or otherwise. He frowned and tried again.

  “All right, Paladin wing, this is Commander Noah. We have orders to stand down. Repeat, stand down. Cut your engines and return to barracks. The launch has been aborted.”

  The channel exploded with profanity as the show of boredom dissipated like air in a vacuum. Aaron said nothing, though. His cheeks paled as the full import of what he saw on the scanners sunk into him.

  The Flotilla was gone. His brother and the Medea were nowhere to be found. And as for the henna girl—

  “Hold on—hold on! All of your questions will be answered at the mission debriefing. Whatever went wrong, I’m sure there’s an explanation.”

  There was indeed. Isaac had failed.

  * * * * *

  The briefing room on the A
egis was filled to capacity. The seats in front were all taken by senior officers, and junior officers crowded the doorway, forcing Aaron and Mara had to stand. From the looks on their faces, things were grim—very grim.

  “Over here,” said Commander Noah, waving them over. Apparently, he’d been able to save a row in the back for the Paladin wing pilots. There was only one seat, though, so Aaron took it while Mara sat on the floor next to him. He considered standing up and offering it to her, but before he could do that, Commander Ajax took the podium. Instantly, the room went silent.

  “All flight wings and commanding officers, report.”

  “Bridge officers present,” said a white-haired woman with a face as hard as space iron. Aaron recognized her as the Aegis’s XO.

  “Engineering present,” said another man.

  “Weapons and countermeasures, all here.”

  “All drone wing pilots here, too, sir.”

  Noah stood. “Paladin wing, present and accounted for.”

  Commander Ajax nodded sharply, and the officers resumed their seats.

  “Thank you for assembling so promptly,” he began. “I’m sure you all have many questions, so I’ll keep the first part of this meeting as brief as possible. When we attempted the jump to the Colkhia System twenty-three minutes ago, a Resistance agent was supposed to be waiting for us with an active jump beacon, bringing us out of jumpspace at the attack coordinates. Something has apparently happened to that agent, and he was unable to activate the device in time for the jump.”

  Isaac, Aaron thought, his stomach sinking. His head started to ache, and the edges of his vision began to blur.

  “Because of this, the Flotilla has been scattered across approximately half a light-year of space. Our current position is approximately 150 light-hours from Colkhia in the direction of the Good Hope Nebula. We have not detected any other ships in our vicinity, and must assume that we are alone.”

  The debriefing room erupted. The junior officers and pilots talked hurriedly among themselves, while the senior officers rose to their feet, their faces redder than an M-class star. Aaron’s headache grew, and he lifted a hand to his forehead.

  “Did you catch all that?” Mara asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Most of it.”

  “Do you need me to translate?”

  As his headache grew, the Gaian became harder to understand. Ajax was calling for silence now, but his words were all blending together, and the more he tried to make sense of them, the worse Aaron’s headache became.

  “Yeah, I’d appreciate that,” he said. Mara nodded and rose to one knee, bringing her to his eye level.

  “Commander Ajax is explaining that we have a contingency plan for this sort of thing,” she translated. “He says that if the agent fails to activate the device at the designated time, he will make a second attempt eight hours later. That should give us enough time to prep the drives and try another jump.”

  “What about the Imperials? Won’t they pick up our jump signatures?” In eight hours, everything with eight light-hours would know exactly where they were.

  “He’s answering that now.” She paused for a moment and it seemed as if the whole room was listening with bated breath. “He says that we’re scattered across a wide enough space that that shouldn’t matter. Not for the second jump, at least. The likelihood of an Imperial scout ship picking us up is miniscule, and so few of our ships must have jumped inside the Imperials’ scanning range that we’ll still have the element of surprise with the second jump.”

  “And what if the second jump fails?”

  As if on cue, the room erupted into frenzied commotion once again.

  “He says we only have one more jump. If the second one fails …” Her voice drifted off.

  “What? If the second one fails, then what?”

  She took a deep breath. “Then enough of the Flotilla will be in detection range to alert them to the attack. The Imperials will know that we’re here, and after that, the battle’s a wash.”

  Aaron leaned back in his seat, heart racing. All around him, arguments raged as the debriefing fell into chaos. He closed his eyes and fought back against his headache long enough to work through the implications. If Isaac didn’t get the jump beacon up in time, then all the ships in the Flotilla would jump in close enough to be within sensor range, but too far out to launch a coordinated attack. Or any sort of attack at all, really. Some of them might come within firing range of the enemy positions, but without the same concentration of force the Flotilla had at Iayus and Bacca, the Imperials could easily bring more firepower to bear. And without the element of surprise, the Imperials would have time to concentrate their own forces—or worse, launch a devastating counterattack.

  Isaac, he thought, his cheeks paling as his heart hammered louder than the commotion all around him. What happened to you? Are you all right?

  “A lot of the senior officers want to abort the battle,” Mara explained. “But Ajax says we can’t do that. We’ve lost contact with the rest of the Flotilla, and if the second jump fails, we won’t make contact before the Imperials know we’re here. Plus, we won’t get another chance like this. We have to push forward now or risk losing Colkhia forever.”

  “We’re still going for it, then?”

  “Looks like it. What choice do we have? Ajax says that if all goes well, we’ll make the attack as if nothing had ever happened.” From the grim look on her face, though, it didn’t seem like she believed it.

  “Isaac will get that jump beacon up,” said Aaron, as much to himself as to her. “He’s never let me down.”

  “But what if he’s dead?” Mara asked. “What if—”

  “He’ll get it up,” Aaron repeated, clenching his fists. “I know he will.”

  Mara bit her lip but said nothing. Around the room, the commotion died down as Commander Ajax took control of the meeting once again. Aaron had heard enough, though. He rose to his feet and left the room, his heart pounding so fast it seemed as if his chest would explode.

  “Aaron, wait!”

  Isaac would get that jump beacon up and running in time. He had to. Because if he didn’t, that would be just unthinkable.

  * * * * *

  The next eight hours were the longest in Aaron’s life. They fell in the middle of his sleep shift, but he couldn’t rest. Neither could the others in his platoon, apparently, from the way they all tossed and turned. Only Hektor’s snoring broke the tedious stillness of the dark.

  They rose at the appointed hour and went through all their pre-flight checks. The soldiers dressed, ate an energy supplement, and suited up for battle while Aaron counted down the minutes as they passed. His hands shook with nervous energy, and his eyes felt sore and tired from the sleepless nightshift. After swallowing down the tasteless energy bar, he made his way to the drop-ship launch bays.

  All throughout the Aegis, the corridors were bustling with energy. A tense silence had fallen over the whole flagship as everyone prepared for what would no doubt be the decisive battle of the campaign. On Paladin-4, though, all was still. Aaron was the first to step through the airlock, and he climbed around the retractable wall seats in the cabin to the cockpit. The controls were dark, the stars outside the forward window peaceful.

  He paused for a moment to let the stillness sink into him. He hoped it would do something to calm his anxious emotions, but all it did was make them worse. He took a deep breath and powered up the ship’s subsystems.

  “Paladin wing, this is Paladin-1,” Noah’s voice came over the intercom. “Please complete all preflight checks and transmit logs when ready. Setting mission clocks now to T-minus fifteen minutes.”

  This time, the channel was silent. There was no banter among the pilots as they completed their checks, no cavalier shows of machismo. They all knew what was riding on this jump—and what it would mean if it all fell through.

  Come on, Isaac, Aaron thought, tapping his fingers against his armrest as the hum of the engine reverberated sof
tly through the bulkheads. Don’t let us down. If it had been anyone else with the jump beacon, he wouldn’t be nearly as nervous. Somehow, though, knowing it was his brother made the wait that much worse.

  He finished his checks and transmitted the logs to the Aegis’s central computer, then sat back and stared at the mission clock as the seconds counted down. Behind him in the cabin, the soldiers took their seats and fastened themselves in. A few of them tried to crack some jokes, but the mood was too somber for any of them to gain much traction.

  After what felt like a hellish eternity, the clock finally counted down to one minute. He toggled it to display the seconds and counted them down as the engines rumbled, ready for launch.

  “All right, Paladin wing. This is it,” said Commander Noah. “Let’s cross our fingers and hope that our agent comes through.”

  “He will,” Aaron whispered. He closed his eyes and made the sign of the cross. Come on, Isaac! Do it!

  The jump wasn’t nearly as stomach-wrenching this time, probably because they were crossing a much shorter distance in space. Still, it was further than they’d make in the Medea—too far to jump in-system with a safe degree of accuracy. But the jump beacon would negate that, because it would pull them out of jumpspace right into the heart of the action. When Aaron opened his eyes, he’d see the rocky gray orb of Colkhia’s main planet, with the Imperial forces scrambling to deploy. He took a deep breath and clenched his eyes, making the sign of the cross again and again.

  “Oh, shit,” said one of the pilots. Aaron’s stomach fell.

  He opened his eyes and found himself staring into the same starfield as before. It was only slightly dimmed by the presence of a large yellow-white star, too close to blend in with the others but too far to suggest that they’d arrived. He checked the scanners—no sign of any planet or gravity well. No sign of any ships either.

  They were alone. Isaac had failed.