Starflight (Stealing the Sun Book 1)

by Ron Collins

  Kitchell’s mind had been blown, and his approach to Torrance had changed. Suddenly, he wasn’t LC. Now he was sir, as in sharp yes, sir’s or no, sir’s. They worked their way through the story together, and through the “loss” of the last wormhole pod. Torrance showed him the emissions files and some of the studies he had done.

  “Edge?” Torrance asked when they were finished.

  “A lot more than edge,” Kitchell replied.

  “You see why we can’t ever talk about this outside?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “You see why you can’t access these files without my permission?”

  “I see you’ll need to clean up after me, yeah. But maybe you can give me a security code to do it on my own?”

  Torrance gave the kid his own version of the “are you an idiot?” stare—the one he had learned from Kitchell to begin with.

  “All right,” Kitchell said, sitting back from the projector. “When can I get to work on them?”

  “Let’s meet for dinner tomorrow,” Torrance said. “We can talk then.”

  The kid nodded, and looked at the time. “I’m going to log out, then, if that’s all right? Mom’s going to be mad that I’m late.”

  “Sure,” Torrance said.

  “Have a good second shift,” Kitchell said. Then he was gone.

  Alone again, Torrance took a deep breath and put his head in his hands. Had he done the right thing?

  “Abke, can you play my personal audio file E-1?”

  “File playing.”

  Torrance sat back and closed his eyes. The sound was a soft white noise with the occasional crack or blip. No one else would know it, of course, but it was the audio playback of the files he had converted from the Eden data.

  They popped and hummed in an eerie form of techno-jazz that he was finding strangely comforting.

  So what if he hadn’t been able to figure much out from them, yet? Maybe his latest idea of splitting the frequency fields and triangulating locations wouldn’t give him anything, either. But the files were still talking to him, and now he had a co-conspirator to bounce ideas off of.

  He sat back in his chair and closed his eyes as the steady fuzz of 700 megahertz static beat a pattern across his heart.

  CHAPTER 24

  UGIS Everguard

  Ship Local Date: January 23, 2205

  Ship Local Time: 1145

  He was trying to concentrate, but it was still useless.

  Torrance was back at his station at Systems Command, staring at next week’s duty roster. Call it brain freeze, or burnout, or pure laziness, it didn’t matter. Nothing would come. Maybe it would never come.

  His eyes were dry and his brain hurt.

  He hadn’t slept more than a couple hours of lucid grayness last night before giving up and wandering the halls until breakfast. Then he had come to the office and buried his head into the day—which in the past would have been enough for him to deal with whatever shit had happened around him, but now was just serving to make everything worse.

  It was damned frustrating, every day becoming just like the last, his brain going haywire and nothing seeming to be going right. He had lost Marisa. All his playing with the data files was still resulting in a big fat zero. He had put Kitchell into danger, and was now struggling to keep up with the kid’s interest—Kitchell nagged him for partial access to files every night, which was already getting annoying and it had only been a week or two since the kid had “joined the team.”

  And now he couldn’t work.

  He felt…adrift.

  Had he lost it?

  Even the idea of working in the Eden files was mind-numbing.

  He focused hard on the work roster.

  Two crew members had asked for slots in second shift, and another had been sick for three days, which made the overtime roster swell, which brought the finance folks down on him like a bunch of angry sharks.

  Once the duty roster was filled out, Torrance still had to run status reports on every repair system on the ship and compile the routine system-availability metric.

  Crap. His brain would not focus.

  Abke interrupted.

  “Message, sir.”

  Torrance straightened. The fact that he wasn’t progressing made the interruption just that much more aggravating.

  He wanted to be alone.

  “Put it through, please.”

  It was Lieutenant Malloy.

  “Yes, Karl?”

  “Are you okay, sir?”

  “I’m fine. Why?”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  Malloy didn’t have to say anything. Torrance knew his response had been too sharp.

  “I apologize,” he said.

  “No problem. Up for a round on the range?”

  Torrance looked at the duty roster.

  “I can’t spare the time.”

  “Come on, boss. You’re spending all your time holed up in that office of yours.”

  “Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

  “You’re not as dense as you try to put on, LC. You’ve got to get out and have some fun. Do something different. A bunch of us will be down there. Everyone would love to see you.”

  Torrance couldn’t help but grin. Malloy, the great facilitator. The guy knew how to get along with everyone, and he knew how to fade into the distance when it was best for him. For a moment, Torrance was jealous.

  The work in front of him whispered taunts, but even he was smart enough to know it wasn’t going to get done. And for all his bluster, Malloy was right. Torrance could use something to get his mind back on track, and the fact was that he needed the rounds to keep his marksmanship rating up. He was behind on his trials, and it wouldn’t do to give Romanov anything else to use against him.

  Surely he could spare an hour?

  It wasn’t like the work was going anywhere without him, and it wasn’t like he had anything else to do later.

  “When are you going?” he said.

  “Thirty minutes?”

  “Okay. I’ll be there.”

  Abke broke the connection.

  Torrance stood and stepped around his desk.

  “Save my work, Abke,” he said as he left.

  He stopped back at his quarters to slip into a pair of loose-fitting exercise pants and a heavy fleece shirt open at the collar.

  Fifteen minutes later he was the first to arrive at the range.

  It was a small place, considering its purpose.

  The ship had three weaponry centers. One for Shipboard Energy Projection Weapons (SEPW), a Martial Arts Center (MAC) for hand-to-hand physical combat, and this one, the Handheld Energy Projection Weapon (HEPW) systems—specifically handguns.

  Acronyms are us.

  Four stalls were built at the near end, sturdy black structures of anodized metal with waist-high walls separating the shooters. Sighting rods were built into the corners of each stall, ammunition wells lined shelves along the side of each cubby, and a cleaning station was built into the back of the room. Torrance couldn’t actually see the anti-plasma insulation shielding that wrapped around the entire range compartment to protect the ship from errant blasts, but he felt its presence around him as an uncomfortable shell. He didn’t like the idea of such a blanket right now. It made him feel trapped.

  He hadn’t shot for weeks, so he decided to use his free time by cleaning his weapon.

  “I need my gun, Abke,” Torrance said.

  He pressed his thumb to the DNA lockpad and waited for Abke to confirm he was the proper requestor.

  The service bay slid open, and his gun was proffered. It was a Carson semi, a powerful 38-watt plasma handgun the service provided to crew members who might participate in ground maneuvers.

  The weapon was heavy and cold in his hand as he pulled the power bolt to check its safety lock. It was capable of multiple settings—a theoretically nonlethal stage that would block nerve impulses of a human target, a scattered energy beam that created a defensive burn radius de
signed to diffuse incoming energy projectiles, and a focused beam that took a measured charge of the energy that remained in the munitions cell and fired it in a tight-focused beam that some of the crew called “kill or drill.”

  Interstellar Command assigned each crew member a weapon, and required each to do periodic range work or lose their rating. Torrance had been excited when he was first assigned weapon detail, but that had changed after a bit. Shooting targets at the range was generally boring, and he really had no interest in shooting anything else.

  He turned the gun over.

  He didn’t have enough time to break it down completely, so he did a simple contact cleanse and rubdown, then checked his charge levels.

  “Beat us here, eh?” Ensign Whalen said as she and Olissy stepped into the room.

  “Good afternoon, Hallie…Helen.”

  Malloy was thirty seconds behind them.

  “Hey, LC.”

  “Karl.”

  The others went to get their weapons. Torrance picked a magazine from the ammo rack and slipped it into the weapon with a satisfying click.

  “So,” Malloy said when he came to stand next to Torrance. “What’s up with you and Lieutenant Harthing? All the guys want to know.”

  Olissy and Whalen glanced up with translucent expressions of mixed concern and expectation.

  The air in the room got staler, and the walls seemed to close in on him.

  “Why?”

  Malloy smiled. “Just nosy, I guess.”

  “I guess,” Torrance said, ignoring them with a shrug as he stepped to the third stall to avoid the question.

  He slid on a pair of shielded glasses, pushed protective plugs into both ears, and took his position.

  Malloy, apparently deciding not to press the point, stepped into the stall between Torrance and the wall. Whalen and Olissy took the first and second stalls.

  The target was square and split into multicolored regions.

  Torrance aimed at the center and pressed the trigger.

  The gun kicked and a soft thump came through his ear baffle. A ball of blue-green light streaked across the range, and a hole appeared in the blue zone in the far-left corner of the target.

  Torrance curled his lips in disgust.

  He was rusty.

  Practice protocol called for a single shot, followed by analysis prior to the next shot—though the analysis period was generally used to jawbone with whoever else was shooting. But Torrance had no patience for analysis today.

  Instead, he shot again.

  This time the blast hit a green area to the right.

  Shit.

  A sense of angry purpose surged through him. It was a basic urge that scrubbed his mind and made the weapon feel good as the room filled up with the astringent scent of plasma residue.

  He aimed and shot.

  Aimed and shot.

  Aimed and shot.

  The odor grew strong enough to eat at the lining of his nostrils.

  Something released inside him, and he shot again and again.

  He aimed and shot.

  Aimed and shot.

  With each pulse the weapon made him feel better. Each hole in the target carried a powerful sense of righteousness that made his chest expand.

  What the hell did he care about Marisa?

  Aim, fire. Kickback.

  What did he care about his job?

  Aim, fire. Kickback.

  His life?

  Aim, fire. Kickback.

  What about his promotion?

  Was he just supposed to waste his life away fixing toilets and patching code while everyone else passed him by?

  His hand became one with the weapon.

  Aim, fire. Kickback. Aim, fire. Kickback.

  Was he supposed to let a life-form die? Is that what Marisa wanted? Well, screw her, and screw Romanov.

  Aim, fire. Kickback.

  A hole blossomed in the red center.

  Again.

  Again.

  Again.

  The target shredded to tatters under a hail of plasma that fell like hammer blows. Metallic rapture coursed through Torrance’s veins with each shot.

  Then the magazine clicked empty.

  His jaw was clenched tight.

  Torrance breathed a deep sigh of release.

  Malloy, Olissy, and Whalen stood with slack-jawed expressions.

  “Sorry,” he said, embarrassment growing. “Guess I got carried away.”

  Olissy cleared her throat.

  The gun was hot in his hand. He pulled off his goggles, ripped the plugs from his ears, and stepped back to the controller to put his weapon back into its stall. Then he stomped away from the range.

  Malloy was right, he thought.

  He needed that.

  NEWS

  SOURCE: INFOWAVE -- NEWS for the twenty-third century

  RECEIVED: July 24, 2207 UGIS EVERGUARD

  TRANS DATE: March 13, 2206, Earth Standard

  HEADLINE: Universe Three Destroys 1 UG Spacecraft, Hijacks 2

  In an unprovoked attack executed on the day of “Starburst,” the coordinated mission featuring launches of all four of the United Government’s new Excelsior class Star Drive spacecraft, terrorist faction Universe Three (U3) destroyed UGIS Sunchaser and hijacked UGIS Icarus and UGIS Einstein. Of the four spacecraft launched, only UGIS Orion returned safely to UG territory.

  Casualty reports were unavailable, but an anonymous source told Infowave that “it isn’t good.”

  UGIS Sunchaser was the ship that executed the first official faster-than-light mission undertaken by Interstellar Command, that mission being to retrieve Admiral Robert Hatch from the UGIS Everguard.

  Universe Three founder Casmir Francis issued a brief statement regarding the attack: “Where there is no dissent, there can be no freedom.” He has previously stated that he and his supporters created his organization as a response to “the oppressive loss of freedom represented by the unmitigated power wielded by the United Government.”

  Speaking before an emergency session of the collected country-states, Supreme President Laney Mubadid called U3 a terrorist organization and asked for authority to engage them as enemies at war.

  The request was passed 123-2, with thirteen abstentions.

  Planetary votes will be received and compiled over the next few days, but UG forces are already scrambling in anticipation of the results.

  CHAPTER 25

  UGIS Everguard

  Ship Local Date: Jul 24, 2207

  Ship Local Time: 0615

  Radio transmissions are their own form of time machines.

  Given Everguard’s travel speed and the speed of light, this horrendous attack had happened nearly three standard years ago, but the news was just catching up to them.

  Torrance kept the news link turned up so he could hear it while he showered, standing in stunned silence while globs of water wobbled in the air for the few perceptible moments the artificial gravity system took to identify them and hook into their atomic structures well enough to pull them down.

  It was like someone had just punched his gut.

  This was impossible, yet not impossible at all.

  The news played on.

  Several hundred people, maybe a couple thousand across all three ships, almost certainly dead—friends of his, probably, though he didn’t have the ships’ rosters on hand.

  He recalled the majestic chill of seeing Sunchaser off the observation deck. Interstellar Command had been at war since almost the moment she left Everguard’s side, and due to the effects of sub-luminal time dilation, they had never known.

  He grabbed his towel and dried off.

  Damage reports and news of casualties rolled in. Every piece of news drove home the fact that Sunchaser was gone and that Einstein and Icarus were lost to U3.

  God damn it, he thought as he got dressed.

  God Freaking Damn It.

  Torrance sat in his office later that morning, staring without focus at the wa
lls as news feeds played the same story over and over again.

  No one was getting much work done.

  The dream had been a thousand gleaming ships with a thousand glorious colonies inhabiting a thousand new worlds. The dream had been human beings in the Arcturus system working with people in the Scorpius cluster sharing ideas with those in the Rigel system.

  The dream was finding another form of life.

  Developing an understanding of the universe.

  Giving human beings the stars.

  This is what Everguard’s mission had been about. It was what each of the crew had dedicated so much of their lives to.

  But humans are complex creatures. They are individuals of different tastes, different abilities, and different thoughts, and not all are so easily swayed. And it turns out that it takes only a few to derail the dream.

  Now Torrance sat alone in his office, feeling hollow, powerless, and angry.

  “Excuse me, Lieutenant Commander. May I have a word?”

  Torrance gave a start as he came out of his fog.

  It was Security Officer Casey.

  Torrance’s heart gave a jump.

  Casey stood primly in the doorway, his dark uniform buttoned to the chin, his hands held primly behind his back. The security officer’s hair was still short—Torrance had never seen it any other way, and for just a flash he wondered if Casey had it trimmed back a day’s growth at a time.

  “No,” Torrance said, then realized with awkward hesitation that the use of the negative in that response was wrong. “That’s fine,” he said, standing partially and waving Casey to his other chair. “What I meant was ‘No, I don’t mind.’ Come in, please.”

  It was only when Casey sat down that Torrance realized that two of his security officers had accompanied him. They took positions outside Torrance’s office, their backs to the glassy section of the walls.

  “Is everything all right?” Torrance said, feeling suddenly anxious.

  “I hope so,” Casey replied. His eyes were piercing.

  “What do you mean?”

  The security officer stared Torrance down for a moment as if deciding how to proceed, then went directly for the jugular. “I need to know if you had something to do with the attacks on the Excelsior class spacecraft.”