by Jeff Wheeler
He retrieved a small brown box from the top shelf and offered it to me. “Not everyone is as industrious a saver as you. Here. This should cover the rest.”
Had he known? I had contributed the largest donation to the smuggling funds, but I hadn’t told anyone, feeling sheepish about how much money I’d saved. The crew already made light of my spending habits whenever we docked at an outpost.
“It’s what is inside the box,” said the Captain.
Remembering myself, I popped the lid and found a recorder inside. I flicked it on, bringing up the display, and stared.
“The schematics to an Alcaltan battle cruiser?”
“The new one, put into service in the past year,” he replied. “I had intended to wait before bargaining with it, so that the Alcaltans would be less likely to tie it to the attack we made six months ago.”
This would certainly pay for everyone’s families, not just for the information, but to smuggle them out as well. There would probably even be money left over. Certainly there were some Alcaltan malcontents who could put this to use and would pay handsomely for it.
“Thank you.”
He nodded and walked back to his desk. “That is only to pay for costs remaining after the crew has contributed all they can. Anything left over is to be added to the communal funds for the Bloodborne and Pyre Rock.”
“Understood.”
I turned to go when a sudden thought occurred to me.
“Captain! I forgot to ask. Do you have family back on Earth?”
“No.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. Thank you, again.”
* * *
I didn’t tell the rest of the crew of the Captain’s contribution, especially when it occurred to me that the only person on the Bloodborne more miserly than me was the Captain himself. The battle cruiser plans had come from his personal collection of trophies, which shouldn’t have been much larger than any of ours, except that we tended to pawn things we didn’t want as quickly as possible, and the Captain tended to dispose of his spoils as gifts or bargaining chips.
Finding a buyer for the schematics was the frightening part. I didn’t know how the Captain could stand it, trading for ship parts and illegal weaponry on a regular basis. I did have connections, though, and a few inquiries took me to an Alcaltan weasel who claimed to have a wealthy client.
My mom wouldn’t have recognized me, haggling over battle cruiser plans as if they were a scarf at a swap meet. I struck a deal, and with several members of the crew present for protection, we exchanged the schematics for two large crates of surya. The Alcaltans used the rainbow crystals to perform large, untraceable transactions, but I’d never seen so much at once.
With the profit, we doled out cards of lumil and handfuls of surya to individual weasels, but never in sight of each other, never letting them know that while we asked one to look into ten people, we were asking another to look into eight. The Alcaltans did not value familial relationships as much as humans did, and we counted on them to not piece together the reason for our inquiries, but as we waited for news, we could not help fearing that they would.
When their reports arrived, I was grateful.
Roughly a third of our list could not be tracked down, their whereabouts unknown even to the weasels. Others they confirmed dead, but they were able to locate forty of our family and friends in varying degrees of health. My mom was alive. She was over fifty now—despite everything she must have endured, she was still alive! She hadn’t moved from Concord Grove, terrible though it was. My brother was in a labor camp. The Alcaltans were comfortable with exchanging food for work, so my brother was probably healthy, but for how long?
A sense of malaise settled over the crew. For some, they had lost family all over again, and we worried over the state of affairs on Earth in a way we hadn’t since the earliest days of our exile. No matter that we had been forced off the planet—we didn’t hate our home—but if I could not have Earth, I at least wanted my family.
We were overdue for a raid, but the Captain refused to launch the Bloodborne. He didn’t tell us why with any words, but I knew from a look and his silence that we were in no shape for combat. I found myself doubting again whether I should have brought up my plan to the Captain, but I remembered his words about offering hope only to take it away, and I wasn’t going to be the person who let the Captain down.
I told the crew to prepare for a rescue. Maybe we couldn’t save everyone, but we could save someone.
Hush was my favorite information weasel, and the only one that I trusted enough to handle my family, so much as I trusted any of them. He was still an Alcaltan who made a living as illegally as we did, an opportunist. I just hoped he would consider our dealing with him beneficial enough to keep his end of the bargain.
Forty people, I told him, on one Alcaltan transport, to rendezvous with us on Varuna in the Kuiper Belt. I didn’t care how he got everyone on board, but it had to be safe passage for all of them, intact, without harm. To this weasel I gave enough surya that his bulbous eyes misted a milky brown in contentment, with the understanding that he would get an equal amount if the selected humans arrived safely. Alcaltans had faces like earless elephants, and Hush signaled his approval with the shaking of his long snout.
The Bloodborne had come equipped with two shuttles, both with meager weapons and limited range. They were designed to convey guests to and from a planet’s surface while the Bloodborne remained in orbit, though in an emergency they can and have been used to hop between planets in the same star system. If passengers were willing to get cozy with each other, we could squeeze forty people plus crew onto two shuttles for a short trip from Varuna’s surface.
“We just need to get the Bloodborne close enough to launch them,” I told the Captain.
We stood in what had once been an Alcaltan officers’ meeting room. The ceilings were high and rounded, built for the aliens’ greater height and sense of aesthetics, but we’d torn out their furnishings and replaced them with our own, fit for human dimensions. Kellen and the Captain had often met here to discuss strategy. Now the Captain and I had a map of the greater Sol System displayed on the holo before us and I pointed him to the ovoid ball of rock that was to be our rendezvous point.
“I would have liked carrying them out farther than the Kuiper Belt, but that would have required export clearance, and it wouldn’t have been likely we could have gotten forty people past security for that.”
The Captain nodded in approval. The Alcaltans weren’t concerned about intrasystem smuggling, only between stars. A transport out in the Kuiper Belt could easily be on mining business. It was good cover. Humans had been occasionally used for that kind of labor.
“Still,” he said, “the Alcaltans have early warning probes at the edge of the star system. They’ll recognize the Bloodborne’s drive signature, even in the Kuiper Belt. The dreadnought’s too large a ship to slip by without notice.”
“Even if they have patrol ships in the area, it will take them time to react. It always has. We’ve never worried about them recognizing us before.”
“We don’t normally hit star systems this secure,” said Captain Mercer. “Earthspace is still heavily fortified from the war. They know the Bloodborne, and you can bet they will send more than six ships after us if we get close to Earthspace again, but they might not react to a different ship, especially a smaller one that isn’t on their most wanted list.”
“The frigate?” I asked.
We’d finished the retrofit, but no crew had been assigned. A few of us had gone out on test runs, and though dated by Alcaltan standards, it was perfectly serviceable for us, if a bit cozy compared to the cavernous Bloodborne.
“Caleb says the test flights have gone well,” said the Captain. “All systems check out, and he commended your handling of the bridge. Even if the Alcaltans identify it as the one stolen en route to decommissioning, they will not know that renegade humans are aboard. There’s a decent chance they will wait for you to iden
tify yourselves.”
“Ourselves? Captain, aren’t you going—”
“The Bloodborne is my ship. This is your plan. I want you to take the frigate to Varuna and handle the rescue. You may bring enough crew to staff the key posts on your ship and maintain a security team on the ground. Volunteers only.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, my voice cracking. “Of course.”
So when I boarded the frigate for our mission and stepped onto the bridge, I did not go to the helm as my training would have suggested, but to the command dais in the center of the chamber. It had already been made over with chairs and consoles to our height. The main screen was a wide wraparound display in the Alcaltan fashion, since the aliens’ eyes rested on the sides of their heads. I would have to swivel the captain’s chair to see everything around me.
This should have been Kellen’s, I thought, as I stood looking at the high-backed chair. I had no doubt that if he’d lived, the Captain would have given him command of the frigate. Instead, the first person to sit in this chair for a real mission would be the relief pilot of the Bloodborne. I’d only helmed the ship once in combat. I wasn’t part of the Captain’s regular bridge crew.
But the rescue had been my idea. The Captain was right. I had to be the one to see it through.
My volunteer crew filed onto the bridge, taking their places in the stations that ringed mine. Valerie had the scanners, Peter was weapons lead, and Manuel, our helmsman. Hitomi was our best Alcaltan mimic, so we placed her on the comm, to delay any hostile response for as long as possible. Caleb insisted on being the frigate’s engineer. He had overseen the retrofit, so it only made sense to take him along, and he’d brought three assistants with him.
In total, we had twenty crew on board, a fifth of our entire population. We had to come back.
With a deep breath, I sat in the chair meant for Kellen and ordered us out.
* * *
Varuna loomed before us, a pale red egg tinged with crisp bits of ice. Manuel put it up on the wraparound as he guided the frigate into high orbit. It looked sedate enough, but I knew better than to trust my eyes. The planetoid itself was a blind spot, blocking our view of anything that might be hidden behind.
“Anything on the scanners?” I asked.
Valerie shook her head, barely even looking up from her console. “No ships registering in our immediate vicinity, but we’ll want to complete a full circuit around the planetoid to be sure.”
I looked at the time set to Alcaltan standard. We were early, a habit born of the need to lie in wait for our prey. It would have been nice if the transport had been early as well. I couldn’t stop the uneasy twinge in my gut, knowing that the safety of our families could not be guaranteed until they were on board with us.
“Manuel, prepare to take us down to low orbit once we finish our circuit, assuming nothing turns up. Peter, drop a missile pod.”
“Sure thing, Alexa.”
“On it, Alexa.”
I watched the pod fall away, carrying a compliment of missiles with it. It would settle into its own orbit, away from us, and ready to launch a single salvo. It was a good way to catch an enemy off guard, striking it from a direction it did not expect.
“Alexa!” said Hitomi. She cradled a hand against the ear of her headset. “There’s chatter on the Alcaltan emergency band.”
My gut turned to ice. “What’s it saying?”
“It’s hard to tell. The speaker’s very excited. Not military, but it’s trying to alert them. Something about a chase with three ships. No, four. They’re all in our sector of the belt.”
Four ships racing through the Kuiper Belt? They must be lighting up the Alcaltan warning systems like fireworks.
“Valerie! Can you find them on our long-range scan?”
“Already checking,” she said.
Manuel caught my eye but didn’t say anything. We were still in high orbit. Low orbit would hide us better from a long-range scan, but we wouldn’t be able to scan as well either, not with a planetoid blocking our view.
“Any luck?” I asked.
“Nothing yet,” she replied.
If the ships weren’t heading our way, we could ignore them. They would have nothing to do with our smuggling run. But if our transport was involved, we couldn’t afford to stand by.
“Cargo ship,” said Hitomi, eyes unfocused as she concentrated on the audio feed. “Mining-class transport. Smugglers on board.”
“That sounds like it could be ours,” said Peter.
“I know,” I said.
What could they have done to arouse suspicion? I thought I’d offered enough surya that there would be no reason for the smugglers to risk the safety of their passengers. We’d paid double for the forged paperwork, and Hush would not get his bonus if the transfer was not complete.
“I still don’t see them,” said Valerie.
And that meant that we couldn’t run to their rescue.
“Hitomi! Have they given out coordinates on the emergency band?”
She shook her head, but I could tell by the way she curled into herself that she did not like what she was hearing.
“A heading, please!” I said to her. “The tattler must be giving some frame of reference. Manuel, get us out of orbit. We can’t stay here.”
Valerie inhaled sharply. “Cap—” She turned to me wide-eyed, with reflexes telling her how to address the person in the captain’s chair, but Captain Mercer wasn’t here. It wasn’t even Kellen, whom we’d called Lieutenant. It was just me.
“Commander!” she said, recovering. “I’ve sighted the transport! It’s being pursued by two cruisers and a corvette.”
Peter turned in my direction. “Alexa! I can have all weapons online in two minutes. What do you want us to do?”
The energy from the charged weapons would give us away. We could handle a single corvette, the frigate was big enough for that, but against two cruisers, we were just outclassed, outgunned.
“Alexa!” someone shouted. I didn’t know who. “Alexa!”
“Commander!” Peter snapped.
I hadn’t realized I’d stopped breathing.
The odds were bad, but the Bloodborne had faced worse escaping Earth. If we didn’t try to rescue our families, they wouldn’t have any chance at all. The Alcaltans would execute them for trying to escape. We knew that.
“Valerie, you have coordinates now?” I asked.
She nodded. “Already sent to Manuel.”
“Manuel, set a course for the lead cruiser. Peter, keep the weapons offline a little longer. We need to be sure of the situation first.”
The frigate shuddered as Manuel gave us a good burn. My gut turned all sorts of somersaults, none of which had to do with the motion of spaceflight. Yes, the Bloodborne had faced worse escaping Earth, but the Bloodborne had had Captain Mercer in command.
“Valerie,” I asked, “can you bring up a combat map of the four ships on the main holo?”
“Done,” she replied.
The three-dimensional grid displayed our potential battlefield and the four ships, all of which were headed in the direction of Varuna. I grimaced. One of the ships matched up with the schematics of a Mezzen freighter. That would be our transport.
“We’re almost in missile range. How much closer are we going to get?” asked Peter. “Chances are their crews are preoccupied with trying to catch the transport. If we fire now, we’ll be able to catch them by surprise.”
“But if this isn’t our transport, we’re going to be jumping into a fight with the odds against us,” I said. “Hitomi, have they noticed us?”
She shook her head. “Nothing as far as I can tell. The emergency band has gone silent. The situation has been reported as ‘under control.’ ”
“That’s a good thing,” I said, with a confidence I didn’t feel. “It means we won’t have to deal with more than these three ships.”
Peter was right. We could fire first and strike them before they could react, but if we didn’t s
core a fatal hit on more than one of them, we’d still be outnumbered, and I doubted that we’d down a cruiser in an opening salvo. Those things were armored enough that we’d only bust a few bulkheads, with no guarantee we’d break through to the vitals. I couldn’t risk such an attack for less than absolute certainty of the transport’s identity, and there was no way to determine that without hailing it.
“Hitomi,” I said. “Open a channel to the Alcaltan patrol ships and ask them under what circumstances they are chasing that transport. If they need our ID, go ahead and use the real one assigned to this ship. As far as they are concerned, we are a frigate returning to Earthspace for evaluation after being retrieved from pirates. Our goal is to give ourselves an excuse to hail the transport without drawing fire from the patrol. If it’s not our transport, we’ll withdraw. You know the pass phrase.”
She nodded, hesitation melting away as she slipped into character. A languid expression crossed her face as she hit the comm and burbled out a salutation that sounded like a phlegm-filled mutter. I couldn’t follow Alcaltan as well as Hitomi did, but she did a remarkable job of sounding as though she had just stepped into an undesirable problem she could not avoid.
The exchange passed for an intense two minutes, then moved to an extended pause. Turning off her mic, Hitomi explained that the Alcaltans were verifying our ship ID.
“Are they concerned about us?” I asked.
“Not yet. Seems within protocol.”
Peter sat ramrod straight in his seat, hand resting on the lever that would power the cannons. His other hand had one finger on the comm that connected him to all the gun crews on the ship. He spoke softly, notifying them that they were on standby and should prepare to open fire on the lead cruiser at any moment. In the event that communication with him was compromised, they should assume hostilities with the Alcaltan patrol and use manual override to return fire.
“I have permission to speak with the transport,” said Hitomi. “Opening a channel now.”
She launched into another broadcast, her attitude miffed and domineering, and I knew the patrol would be listening in.