Absolute Zero (The Sector Wars, Book 1)

by Nicola Claire

  She showed me footage a drone must have taken of us just sitting there, watching and doing nothing. And then showed me the sequence of commands she used to send the footage out across the galaxy.

  To Rhodia and the synths.

  To Malee and the Mutt armies.

  To what was left of the Zenthian homeworld.

  “It’s a shame really,” she said. “We had other plans for you.”

  This wasn’t Cassi. This was the Zenith.

  “But you proved hard to kill, and instead of being a martyr, you’re now a convenient scapegoat.”

  My death on Delphini B would have made the news on New Earth. Gramps would have retaliated in some manner. That was just Gramps. Diplomacy was all well and good if it worked, but when it didn’t… Gramps practically invented the term ‘overkill.’

  But now war had come to our door anyway. Brought there, supposedly, by me.

  “Serves the same purpose, I suppose,” the Zenith using Cassi’s speech algorithms said.

  “You won’t get away with this,” I snarled.

  “Captain Jameson,” the Zenith said. “We already have.”

  I struggled in the seat restraints, but they refused to budge.

  “One last thing,” Cassi’s voice said. “Surprise!”

  Pi Mensae had some surface-to-air missiles. They may not have seen the drones coming, but they could see us.

  They’d fired everything they had.

  “T-minus three minutes to impact,” Cassi said, cheerfully. “Now, that’s how you go out with a big bang, Kael. I would never have thought…”

  Silence.

  “Cassi?”

  Silence.

  “Cassi!” I reached forward and tried to touch my vid-screen. I couldn’t do it. It was too far away, and the restraints were restricting my movement.

  “Zy,” I said. Her head hung limply. “Zyla!” Nothing. “God damn it, Nav. Wake the flux up! We’re about to be blown into a million pieces. ZYLA!”

  She shot bolt upright and blinked.

  “I can’t reach the console, Zy. You’re gonna have to do it,” I said.

  She blinked at me, tears filling her too-large eyes.

  “Babe,” I said, “There’s not much time.”

  “Don’t call me ‘babe’,” she retorted, reaching her vid-screen without even having to try. Thank God for those giraffe Zeniths! “‘Love’ will do,” she added. “Or ‘darling.’ But not ‘babe.’ I am not a baby. I am sixty-three New Earth Standard years old.”

  A match made in heaven.

  “‘Love,’ huh?” I said, eyeing the approaching warheads and sweating a bucket. “I’ll have to remember that.”

  “Make sure you do, Captain,” she replied and blasted the SAMs to dust.

  She sat back and let out a breath of air that I swear I could feel the weight of right along with her.

  “Cassi is gone,” she announced, breathing heavily. “The Basic is there, but Cassi is gone. That’s why I could use the weapons system.”

  “Then shoot those mother-fluxing drones down, Nav,” I ordered.

  She leaned forward again and then stopped.

  “Zyla?”

  “We could learn a lot from one of them, Kael,” she said.

  “Stuff that! Shoot them down, Zy, and for Christ’s sake, do it before they leave the system!” My heartbeat was thundering; we were so close to screwing this all up.

  Twenty-three million today. How many tomorrow?

  Zyla entered a command and the railguns fired.

  The drones began winking out of sight — my heart just about stopped beating — but not before the railguns had locked on and managed to hit them; one by one.

  Where once a drone had been, and then nothing, was a mini-explosion, quickly snuffed out by the vacuum of space.

  It was stunning.

  “Take that!” I shouted, finally able to celebrate something going right for once.

  “Direct hits,” Zyla confirmed. She looked right at me and smiled.

  Now that was stunning.

  “You did it, Nav.”

  Her smile fell. “Too little, too late, Captain.”

  It was the understatement of the century; twenty-three million — or near to it — dead down there. But we’d stopped the forward assault of the drone army into the known systems.

  We’d done something; even if those that could watch were still watching and saw us blow up thin air. No one would write ballads about the Harpy taking out a fleet of drones after they’d bombed the shit out of a planet.

  We’d still been recorded above Pi Mensae doing nothing as the drones nuked the planet’s surface.

  Too little. Too late. Just like Zyla said.

  “Can you release the restraints?” I asked, feeling numb.

  “Yes.” The restraints fell away.

  “Where the flux did Cassi go?” I asked, standing; I wanted out of that fluxing chair. “She left mid-sentence.”

  The sound of pounding feet on the gel flooring reached me, and I spun to look through the bridge hatch. Marvin appeared, closely followed by Odo.

  “It might be wise to hightail it out of here, Cap’n,” Odo said, sliding into the engineering seat.

  “We could offer aid,” I said.

  “Zenthian battleship on approach,” Zyla announced. “They did send someone.”

  Too little. Too late.

  It had probably been her dad, though. Which meant he might have survived the Trojan horse. I fluxing hoped so. Zy needed some good news to hang her hopes on.

  “Camo?” I asked.

  “Activated.”

  “Alright,” I said, sitting down again. “Why the hell have we got control now and where has Cassi gone?”

  “Ah,” Marvin said, raising a hand as if in class and seeking permission to talk.

  We all turned to stare at him.

  “That might have been me,” he admitted.

  “What did you do?”

  “He saved us, Cap’n,” Odo said, defending his new-found buddy.

  “And how, may I ask?” I snapped.

  “Dad’s code,” Marvin said. “I hacked your AI.”

  “What?”

  “He used the wrong one earlier,” he rushed to say. “But I knew which one could do it, so, yeah, I did it. You know, when she went crazy.”

  “Where is she?” I demanded.

  “Well,” he said. “Here’s the thing.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and scowled, waiting. Zy blinked those big eyes at him. And Odo covered his mouth so he wouldn’t laugh.

  Laughing was so not welcome right then.

  “I didn’t have time to change the code,” Marvin admitted reluctantly. “So, I had to use it as it was already written.”

  “Explain,” I said.

  “I sent her back to Chi Virginis, Captain. My father has Cassi.”

  Epilogue

  We made it out of the Pi system before the battleship got close. As it was approaching from Zenthia Actual, and we were leaving to head toward Chi Virginis, we were using different jump points at opposite ends of the system.

  Zy successfully hacked the jump point entry, and the Basic took us in.

  Everything turned white, and when the world coalesced back around us, nobody said a thing. It was as if the universe had changed and we were careening headlong through an alternate slipstream.

  The swathe of stars that streaked past in exo-space on our vid-screen didn’t help to alleviate that feeling.

  The ZNA were behind it. Behind the drone attacks that had taken close to twenty-four million lives. Maybe more; we hadn’t had word from Zenthia Actual yet.

  It was an act of such shocking magnitude that none of us knew how to process it. Twenty-four million lives.

  Their own species.

  But the Zenith who had tracked me down on Delphini was clearly the one Cassi had intimated was behind this. And when I described him to Zyla, she’d simply nodded. She knew him.

  From the ZNA.
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  “I don’t get it,” Odo said into the subdued atmosphere of the bridge. “Why kill so many?”

  “The ZNA wants to blame Zenthia Actual for it,” Zy said.

  “So public opinion is turned against the High Council,” I added.

  “And then they’ll get the freedoms they seek as the will of the people,” Zy finished.

  “OK,” Odo said. “I get that. But what about the Belt? How does that fit into things? Couldn’t they have just sent drones out from Zenthia and made it look like it was coming from Zenthia Actual?”

  I scratched my days-old beard, thoughtfully.

  “That facility they held you in, Zy; it was poorly run,” I said. How the hell had the ZNA navigated the Belt?

  “Maybe they wanted you to rescue me.”

  “Another tie to the council on board the ship that dropped the bombs?” Everyone winced. So did I, internally. “Yeah, could be,” I reluctantly agreed.

  “It’s very complicated,” Marvin said.

  “Politics often is,” I offered.

  “My father always says that politics is the easiest game in the universe. Use a stick when a stick is required. Use a carrot when a carrot is required.”

  “It’s the knowing when to use each,” I told him.

  “I still think it’s complicated. Navigate the Belt and then send drones back. Try to kill you on Delphini B and then, when that fails, change the plan to using you to take the blame instead. But ensure there’s a tie to the High Council anyway by making it easy for you to rescue the High Councillor’s daughter on Zenthia. That way she’d be on board the ship when you met the drone fleet above Pi Mensae and did nothing to stop the bombing. Complicated, see?”

  “Well,” I said, “When you put it like that.”

  No one said anything for a moment.

  “It’s too complicated,” Odo finally agreed.

  “Does it matter?” Zyla said, staring at nothing. “Over twenty-three million of my people are dead. Who cares who did it. It’s done. And I can’t believe that it’s over. They wanted the Harpy to take the blame, but they were happy to blow us out of the sky afterwards. The damage is done. We might have taken out the drones that were attacking Zenthian planets across the known systems, but we won’t be able to enter any system without getting blown to shreds ourselves.”

  “Except Chi,” I said.

  “You think the pirates don’t have loved ones on any of those planets?” Zy snarled.

  I held her angry gaze long enough for calmness — and a little sanity — to return.

  “I think it’s our best shot, Nav,” I said.

  “And Cassi’s there,” Odo added.

  “That’s not Cassi, Odo,” I said.

  “It’s not her fault, boss. And if she were anyone else in the crew, we’d go for her; help her. Wouldn’t we?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, we get her back.” He looked at Marvin.

  “I’ll help,” the Mutt said. “But it won’t be easy.”

  “And we’re not in the best bargaining position,” I muttered.

  Malcolm could demand practically anything.

  “Get some rest,” I said. “That’s an order. ETA to Chi system, Basic?”

  “ETA to Chi system is t-minus five hours, Captain.”

  Space travel was fluxed.

  “Get some sleep,” I said.

  Everyone slowly shuffled off the bridge.

  I waited until they were gone and then slumped in my chair, head in my hands, and just breathed.

  I’d failed her. I’d failed Cassi. The infiltration protocol hadn’t worked. Well, it had. But I’d not been quick enough to use it. The Zenith had gained control and locked my commands out before I’d woken up to the possibility.

  It shouldn’t have been possible, though. Zyla had said the ZNA knew about the third-gens, but to know about them and do that? Two very different things.

  The third-gens were the most advanced artificial intelligences in the galaxy. This shouldn’t have happened.

  How the flux had it happened?

  And why hadn’t I seen it coming and protected Cass?

  I slammed a fist down on the command chair armrest and stood up. We’d dealt with the drones, but somehow we were still in the middle of a war.

  “Notify me of any anomalies,” I instructed the Basic.

  “Alert sensitivity is at the highest setting, Captain.”

  “Anything else to add?” I asked quietly.

  “Negative, Captain.”

  No ‘sweet dreams’ or ‘you betchas’.

  I walked off the bridge and made my way down a deck.

  I could hear noise coming from inside the mess. I followed the sounds and found the crew drinking. Synthetic Rhodian whisky but better than anything else. I entered the room, and Odo lifted a glass in my direction.

  “Care to join us, Cap’n?” he asked.

  “Don’t mind if I do.”

  “Rule number one,” he announced, handing me a glass of whisky. “No talk of war or fluxing drones in here.”

  “OK,” I said and tipped back my glass.

  “That’s the way to do it,” Odo declared and topped the glass up again. “Rule number two,” he added and sat down with his own glass. “What happens on the Harpy, stays on the Harpy. This is your family.”

  “To family,” I said.

  “Family,” everyone repeated and downed their whiskies.

  Six synthetic Rhodian whiskies, a couple of shots of something fiery from Gilese B, and a whole case of beers from The Delph later, and we hit the Chi Virginis jump point exit.

  The headache I was suffering from didn’t abate when the flash of white hit me. But I was suitably all out of giving a flux when a row of pirate ships turned their railguns and plasma arrays on the Harpy.

  “Honey, we’re home,” I said over the wide-beam comms.

  “Power down your weapons and heave to,” a gruff private voice said. “Prepare for boarding.”

  “Or, you know, you could tell Malcolm his little pet corvette is back.”

  “Malcolm doesn’t give a shit about a New Earther vessel responsible for killing over twenty million people.”

  “Twenty-three,” I whispered.

  “Heave to and prepare for boarding.”

  I looked at the rest of the bridge. The desire to strike back was almost too much to ignore; the injustice of the situation crippling. But then I saw the worry on Marvin’s face and the impotent anger on Odo’s. And then my eyes met Zyla’s.

  “What do you recommend, my love?” I asked.

  Odo snickered, which was partly why I’d said it. Marvin blinked a few times and reentered time and space.

  Zyla huffed out a laugh.

  “Let’s play it the pirate way,” she said. “Nothing else has worked for us.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said, powering down the weapons and cutting flight. “We’re still alive, aren’t we?”

  “And together,” Odo said.

  “And together,” Zyla agreed.

  And then wide-beam comms activated and Malcolm’s voice came over the speakers.

  “About time you got here, Jameson.”

  “Got held up at Pi Mensae,” I told him.

  “Not something to shout about, I should think.”

  “Shit, Malcolm. I plan to shout it to the heavens until someone fluxing listens to me.”

  “Well, then,” the Mutt said. “You’re going to need some help.”

  Just what did the pirate have in mind?

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  Want To Find Out What Happens Next For The Crew Of The Harpy?

  The crew of the Harpy are back and this time they’re armed for a battle.

  Half the known systems want to kill them. The other half wants to be them. It’s hard trying to save the universe when the universe can’t make up its mind.

  But when a gap appears in the Belt enticing every known species to peek through to the other side, things go from bad to worse.

  And that’s not even taking into account the rogue Originator Class vessel out of New Earth.

  Secret science stations, nimble gunboats, and a missing High Councillor; you’d think the crew have enough on their hands. But there’s more. The hack code that took out Zenthia Actual, seat of the High Council of Zenith, is homing in on the crew of the Harpy. And it’s as if it knows who they are, where they are, and what sort of threat they are to its goals.

  Either Kael and his crew keep one step ahead of their enemies. Or they get stomped on. Nothing like running for your life in a universe falling apart.

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  See Where It All Started For The Inhabitants Of New Earth

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  Solar flares have been hounding Earth for more than a decade but the time has finally come for humanity to make its escape. No one expected it would be easy. But they didn’t count on the greed and corrupt power of those who control their new world.