by Webb, Nick
“I know.” He looked over as footsteps sounded in the corridor outside.
Walker’s hand went to her sidearm. With open war now a possibility at any moment, she had stopped hiding the fleet, opting instead to move it regularly. The protection of human settlements was paramount, and so segments of the fleet had been moving between the stations and bases, forming plans and readying themselves to intercept Tel’rabim’s next move.
And in the meantime, Walker waited for the assassination she was sure was coming. She had been certain of the attempt even before the vote of no confidence, and with Essa putting himself forward now….
Walker rested a hand on the sidearm, steady as the footsteps approached. There was a quick knock, and she could hear Ahlstrom’s voice outside the door. “Admiral?” the deck chief called out.
“Enter,” she replied, lifting her hand back to the table.
Ahlstrom strode into the room, already talking. “Admiral, I need to talk to you about McAllister. I know he’s the best CAG option we’ve got, but—” Ahlstrom’s eyes widened as he saw Nhean seated across from her. He’d clearly thought she was alone.
“Go ahead, chief,” Walker said.
“Oh, I can come back. This isn’t as pressing as, well, whatever you have going on at the moment.”
“This?” Walker casually waved her hand toward Nhean. He did not seem to appreciate the gesture. “Mr. Tang was just leaving, weren’t you?”
“Yes. Excuse me.” Nhean had what he came for, presumably, and so he retreated out the door.
Chapter Eight
Ganymede
Perseverance Station
Admiral’s quarters
Walker sighed. The past few days had been a depressing mix of uncertainty and—though she hated to admit it—uncharacteristic loneliness. After Nhean’s news about the “glorious” rise of Jupiter’s Sword (Walker gagged slightly on the image of Essa as the benevolent military hero) within the ranks of the UN, she had rethought their current strategy. As much as she hated to do it, she knew it would be best for the fleet to make a show of military strength and support for the civilian government.
She loathed kowtowing to the illogical needs of the political elite. That’s why she didn’t ever do it. But she had sent Delaney along with a detachment of ships to Carina Station at Mars in order to partially defray the accusations she knew were coming. Admiral Walker, brilliant, but cold. She didn’t care about the lives of the civilians. She wouldn’t even place defenses at Mars.
Well, she did, and she had. But only because it made strategic sense to spread her and Delaney apart while they were uncertain where the next Telestine strike would be.
Add Delaney’s departure with Larsen’s mission to Mercury … and Pike’s own journey to Carina Station to drop off Parees and then who knew where … and the piles of paperwork and reports waiting for her on her desk … and Walker allowed herself to indulge in one brief, split second of lonely self-pity.
It was a mistake.
The moment she lowered her head, she heard the insistent buzz of her private comm link. “Walker,” she answered. “Go ahead.”
Walker strode to the door and pulled it open. “What is it?”
“He’s making his move.” Commander Ahlstrom’s face was white. “Tel’rabim. His fleet is headed for Mars.”
Her heart squeezed. She stepped back automatically to let him into the room, watching as he began to spread printouts on one of the tables. “How fast?”
He gave the only important answer. “Too fast.” He hesitated. “Delaney will intercept in time, but he’s only got a few: the Intrepid, Juno, Cairo, Washington, Samson, Carolina, and Stockholm. I called the Alabama in from Ceres, but—”
“But there’s a chance Delaney can hold out until then, and even if he can’t, we need to be there to save the rest of them.” She pushed herself away from the desk. “Send out an alert to all crew members. We leave in twenty minutes.”
“Yes ma’am!” Foster bust back out the door at a full sprint. She was going to have to give him a few lessons in protocol, she could already tell.
Walker walked at a quick clip through the hallways as she made her way to the bridge. Her earpiece began beeping before she even arrived. She nodded at the comm officer on her way through to the command center, and Nhean’s voice filled her ear.
“Hello Admiral. I think may have something for you.”
“Nhean, this is not a good time.”
“And when is it a bad time to learn that someone is giving you brand new ships to use?”
“What? Explain yourself.”
“The Venus Sovereign Fleet contains the best technology and latest programing. Let’s say that my … investors are curious as to how these improvements … work in practical, real world situations.”
Walker did not know how to reply.
“They will be at the docks as soon as they are cleared,” Nhean continued smoothly.
“Wait,” Walker interjected. “Why are we taking your ships to Mars? I thought my use of them at Mercury was a one-time thing?”
A pause. She could almost see him grin. “You’ll see,” came the reply.
Chapter Nine
Near Mars
Aggy II
Cargo bay
“Hand me that one. No, that one.” Pike jabbed with his finger. “There. Gabby—no, James, you stay where you are.” He gave his crewmate a sharp look. They’d found him on the Telestine flagship over Mercury with an ebbing heartbeat and one leg broken where a bullet had torn through the thigh bone. None of them had expected him to make it, least of all Gabriela, who’d ducked through the gunfire to reach him, pressing her fingers over the wound in his leg. Terrified by the brush with death, Gabriela tended to snap, and James, unable to work and mourning Howie, was given to black moods.
If the new crewmembers didn’t make a dent in things, it was going to be a miserable few months. Hell, the apocalypse might be a mercy. Pike accepted a crate from Katya, a stocky woman with bright green hair and a surprisingly quiet demeanor, and scanned the cargo hold for Deshawn, the other new recruit. Very tall, with wavy black hair worn long in a braid, Deshawn looked far too skinny to lift a single crate. How he managed it, Pike still did not know, but he did, and Rychenkov had liked the man on sight. Smart one, that boy, he’d said. Knows it’s better to look weak and take people by surprise.
“This is the last one,” Deshawn said now, handing the crate to Pike where he crouched at the raised cargo compartments. Deshawn looked around the now-empty cargo hold. “Are we picking up more cargo at Carina Station?”
“You never know what opportunities will crop up.” Pike closed the door of the compartment and latched it, then hopped down onto the main floor. “Always best to be prepared. Rychenkov runs a tight ship.”
The newbies, Katya and Deshawn, nodded. Their captain might be full of jokes and his characteristic drama, but he had no tolerance for anything other than first-rate work. Any ship Rychenkov commanded, however old or rickety, would be spotlessly clean, in perfect repair, with a well-organized cargo hold.
“I’ll get to the engine room,” Katya said.
“I’ll go with you,” Gabriela offered. She did not look at James where he was leaning against the wall. He was pale, beads of sweat standing out on his forehead.
“You go on,” Pike told Deshawn. He waited until the rest of the crew was gone before offering James an arm.
The man looked at it with ill humor. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not,” Pike said brutally. “Rychenkov brought you along because he knows it’d kill you to be stuck on a station, but you can’t work yet.”
“Piss off.” James pushed himself up on his own.
“If you want to play the hero, you’re gonna lose that leg,” Pike advised him. “Let it heal.”
“You go play with the Rebellion for a few days and now you want to come back and tell everyone what to do?”
That stung, as James had known it would.
“Stay here, then,” Pike said harshly. “Spend all morning getting to the stairs. Have fun with it. I’m sure we’ll all be real impressed.”
“What do you care?” James’s voice was almost a hiss. He began to limp for the stairs, not looking back. The break had been set in the med bays of Nhean’s ships, and it was as close to a miracle as any of them were going to get just now—but it wasn’t nearly ready to walk on.
He didn’t belong in the Rebellion. He didn’t belong on any station. He couldn’t go back to Earth—and now he didn’t belong here, either. The Rebellion had tainted him, James was making that clear enough, and Pike felt a dull fury rising up in him.
“What do you want from me?”
“I wanted you bastards not to start a war,” James muttered. “Wars kill people. Figured you’d get it, of all people. Guess I was wrong.”
Pike turned and left without another word. He took the stairs two at a time to get to the main level, knowing that his speed twisted the knife for James, and not caring. He nodded to Parees, who was leaving the cockpit, and dropped gracelessly into the copilot’s chair.
“What’s eating you?” Rychenkov asked. He was fiddling with the controls at the desk, more out of habit than anything else. Nhean’s ships didn’t require much in the way of guidance for a deceleration burn.
“Nothing.” Pike leaned his head back against the rest and stared out the window. It was unsettling, being able to see into the black. Normally, he didn’t fly on ships good enough for a window—good ones were damn expensive. Even with the bulk of Mars in the center of the window, it made the tiny room seem colder, somehow—or maybe that was the spotless control panel and the new chairs. This place didn’t look lived in yet. “Cargo’s set. If we get another shipment.”
“People.” Rychenkov’s voice sounded old, far older than he was. “We could ship people. They always want to move when there’s a war on. We could take them to Vesta—or back to Ganymede.”
“There’s nothing for them there,” Pike protested.
“What is there for them at Mars?”
“The money they would have spent on the fare, for one thing.” Pike’s eyes scanned over the control panel, somewhat distractedly. This ship practically flew itself. “You saw what happened at Io.”
“That’s why they want to run. Wherever they are, they want to run somewhere else. We can help. And … relieve them of some credits at the same time.”
“There’s no running from bombs that can take out a whole planet.”
“Is it so wrong to let them hope?” Rychenkov gave one of his eloquent shrugs, and frowned at the look on Pike’s face. “Are you going to look like that all the time now? What is it? You miss her?”
Pike wasn’t entirely sure which her Rychenkov meant, and he wasn’t about to make a big deal of it. “It’s fine.”
“It’ll be better when that spy is gone.” Rychenkov shot a look over his shoulder. “That man—Parees. Something is off about him.”
Pike shrugged and shook his head. “Probably picked it up from Nhean.”
“Nah, that one’s normal enough.”
“What’s normal about living on Venus and having a secret military fleet?”
“Every generation has its generals. The servant, though….” Rychenkov looked over his shoulder again, shaking his head.
“Well, you’ve got….” Pike leaned over to check the timer to Carina Station. “About forty minutes, then he’s gone.”
“Good.” Rychenkov turned his head to a blinking light and pressed the comm button. “This is Captain Rychenkov of Freighter Aggy II, who is this?”
“This is Commander Delaney of the Intrepid.” The voice was crisp. The faint sound of klaxons sounded behind it. “We have word of an inbound Telestine fleet, reaching orbit within the next few hours. Our sensors are already picking them up in deceleration burn.”
“What?”
Rychenkov shook his head at Pike. “Commander, is there time for a stop at Carina Station?”
Footsteps sounded behind them, and they turned to look. Parees had dropped his pack at the bottom of the ladder down from the living quarters and was at the cockpit door, frowning.
“We’re not stopping,” Pike said. He cut off Delaney. “Commander, thank you for the warning.” He reached out and cut the call.
“Our employer,” Rychenkov said pointedly, “asked us to drop him at Carina Station.” He jerked his head at Parees.
“There is a Telestine fleet inbound.” Pike pointed to the shimmer on the Earth-side of Mars. “And Delaney? His ships? That’s the old fleet. Exile Fleet. They don’t have backup. My guess? They’re not going to have backup. The best we can do is turn around and get out of here.”
Parees shook his head. “You can still drop me off at Carina Station—if there’s time.”
“See?” Rychenkov lifted his eyebrows. “He says he wants to keep going.”
“And I’m saying he won’t.” Pike’s tone surprised even himself. “Once they chew through that fleet, who’s to say they won’t do what they did to Io? Maybe it’ll be Mars, maybe it’ll be the stations. Phobos. Deimos. Whatever. But we’re not leaving him because we’re not stopping.” His eyes met Rychenkov’s, and his face made his meaning clear. He is on this ship. That makes him our responsibility, whether we like him or not.
There was a pause.
“Fine,” Rychenkov said. He tapped a series of coordinates into the computer. “We’ll go to Vesta.”
Pike only nodded. He dropped his head into his hands and rubbed at his forehead as the automated warning blared through the cabin. All crew, brace for acceleration burn.
“Thank you.” The voice was soft.
Pike jumped. Somehow, despite arguing over the man, he’d managed to forget that Parees was in the room. He looked over his shoulder and met black eyes under a buzz cut of black hair, now clearly visible after several days of growth.
Parees looked faintly stunned. He swallowed. “Thank you,” he said again. He ducked his head and hurried away, as if almost afraid to remain. He was eerily quiet as he grabbed his pack and climbed back to the crew quarters.
“See?” Rychenkov shook his head, “Weird man, that one.”
Pike kept his head craned, looking at the empty hallway. When he settled back in his chair at last, it was with an image of Parees’s face still in his mind. From the man’s expression, he had not expected anyone to do such a thing for him.
For some reason, that reaction bothered Pike more than it should have, though he couldn’t say why.
Chapter Ten
Mars, High Orbit
EFS Intrepid
Bridge
“One minute to contact.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant Min.” Delaney laced his fingers behind his back and stood tall, staring at the view screen. The holographic readout was not yet up on the desk. He was old fashioned; he liked to see his enemies with his own eyes.
Was he ever going to get used to this? He looked around the familiar bridge and felt his fingers tighten. A new crew, new faces—so many had signed up since the attack on Mercury—and yet, it was all still the same. There was the breathless tension as they waited, outmatched and yet still fiercely proud of what they were. There was the single-minded competence that made Delaney’s throat ache every time he saw it. There were two ways to go to one’s death: like an animal, scared and helpless, lashing out but with no hope of prevailing … and with quiet acceptance, turning the simmering anger and hatred into something useful.
They were going to take as many with them as they could. His message to the old fleet had said that. They were rusty buckets of bolts, these ships—that had gotten a laugh—but the value of the ships wasn’t the metal plating or the bullets, it was the soldiers who manned them. He had held the comm unit awkwardly as he spoke those words. He was an old man, and more, he wasn’t made to give inspirational speeches. But now, at the end, they had to know they were dying for a purpose. They were keeping humanity’s most pop
ulous colony safe, giving their species a fighting chance, and with luck and blind determination, they could hold long enough for Walker to come and finish the job.
Luck favored the determined. If that wasn’t a saying, it should be, he thought.
“Coming into range, sir.” Min tapped buttons to bring up the holographic display. “We’re reading four carriers and seven destroyers.”
Delaney cast a quick glance at Min. The man had risen quickly on the late Commander King’s crew, only to be transferred not long before Mercury. Delaney wasn’t sure if Min was quiet by nature, or if his manner was due to the chance escape from death on King’s ship. Either way, the man was competent and not inclined to gossip, and Delaney liked that about him.
“Is there a big flagship? Like at Mercury?” His eyes had not wavered from the view screen. The ships were still pinpricks out in the black, only recently resolved from the shimmering backdrop of stars.
“No, sir. I don’t think they had another one of those.” Min hesitated. “Maybe we can take them all down before they can build another one. Retake Earth.”
“Maybe.” It was the best he could say to that, but then practicality warred with the need to give these men and women hope, and Delaney sighed as he made the concession to hope. They were all going to be dead soon enough—did it matter if they went to their deaths with a shining vision of the future in their heads? “We have a lot of new ships.” He made sure his voice carried. “And we found out they aren’t so good at tactics. Yes, I think we can take them down, if we put our minds to it.”
“Aye, sir.” Min’s face glowed. He didn’t know Delaney well enough yet to know the flat tone of the lie in his voice. “Your orders?”
“The Juno will stay with us. Have the other five form up in a blockade behind us.” Delaney found a cold smile from somewhere. “We’re not just going to sit here and wait for them. We’re going to meet them on the way.”