Galactic - Ten Book Space Opera Sci-Fi Boxset

by Colin F. Barnes

  “Arthur and Lin are both working for them.” He pointed up at the empty bay. “I’m guessing the missing scout ship has something to do with the rescue mission.”

  The inspector seemed to hear Cole’s words, though her scowl remained. “I followed that slippery bastard onto this ship looking for some answers. I thought he was going up to the bridge, which was where I thought you and the others were....”

  “Wait!” Cole said, holding up his hand. “You saw Forester board this ship?”

  She gave a curt nod. “I was in the midst of freeing myself from that godforsaken couch when he came slithering back into the building. I pretended to be unconscious while he searched around.”

  Cole felt a tingle up his spine. He came back while Lin and I were out walking. “Searching for what?”

  “I’ve no idea, and I don’t care.” She spat before composing herself. “Whatever it was he was seeking, he must have found in that hidden lift.

  The cube! Lin must’ve been lying about the contents transfer, and Forester saw through her lie. “So you followed him back here, and...?”

  “Obviously his goal was to commandeer the scout ship,” she said, indicating the empty bay. “I must have walked right past him as he was preparing to disembark. I only realized his game after I set foot on the empty bridge.”

  “Shit!” Cole pounded the butt of his first into the steel leg. “I need you to lower the ship so I can board. I have to check the bridge.”

  Emmerich knelt back down, a wicked grin on her face. “Why?”

  Wow, she must really hate me, even after this revelation. “Look, we’re in the same boat despite our differences. We don’t like each other, and that’s fine. But I’ve lost contact with Cain, and I need to see why. If he’s completely offline, anyone will be able to trace our signal unhindered.”

  “Isn’t that exactly what you want?” She crossed her arms. “To lead the authorities directly here so you can be rid of us—”

  Cole drew his sidearm and fired without warning. The blast grazed the side of Emmerich’s temple, singeing her short hair. Her eyes widened in shock, her hand subconsciously checking for injury. Her mouth opened, but it was Cole who spoke first. “I absolutely missed on purpose.” He kept the weapon trained on her, though it was lowered toward her chest. “I won’t with my second shot, so don’t even think about running. Lower. The. Ship.”

  Emmerich blinked, her shock giving way to anger. “When I step away to manually retract the landing gear, I’ll be out of range of my weapon.” She stood. “Why should I obey you?”

  “Because you have no reason not to!” His patience had reached its end. “If I wanted you dead, I’d have jettisoned your corpse into deep space a long time ago. But my dumb-ass felt sorry for not including you on the decision-making.” His glove creaked as he tightened his grip. “Besides, how do you propose you’ll get down from up there? That’s a long jump, and I’ll be waiting for you when you do.” He paused, considering another possibility. “Or are you planning on flying this ship to safety all by your lonesome?”

  The inspector sighed and shook her head. “You really are one obnoxious bastard.” She casually stepped away from the edge of the payload bay door.

  Cole suddenly wished his aim had been off and accidentally taken her in the eye. He would have gladly risked the climb up the ship’s leg. I’d regret shooting her later, but the instant satisfaction would well be worth it.

  “I suggest you stand clear, Musgrave.” Emmerich’s voice echoed from inside the ship. “Unless, of course, you want me to crush you.”

  Huh. She’s really gonna do it. Cole did as asked. Watching the loading arm slowly retract, the bay door slide closed before the entirety of the ICV-71 eased back to the ground for proper access.

  The ship had barely touched down when he made a mad dash for the bridge. He promised himself to mow Emmerich down if she made any attempt to bar his passage. Fortunately, she was elsewhere in the ship. She can stay there for all I care.

  “Cain?” Cole shouted as he bypassed the lift for the steps. “Can you hear me? Are you still online?” He listened for a response, but none came. What did you do, Arthur?

  Cole stumbled onto the bridge, and plopped himself onto the pilot’s chair. He gave the room and the console a quick inspection but could not find any superficial signs of sabotage. The viewport screen was still fully functional, and all the ship’s vitals appeared intact. It’ll be internal, he thought, taking his chair and attempting to connect with CAIN. That was when he noticed the missing green glow of the AI’s heartbeat.

  “Not good.”

  “No,” came Emmerich’s snide remark. She sat in the chair adjacent to him. “Having you in charge was never a good idea.”

  Cole stared at the inspector, frozen in mid-action. This was the closest he’d been to her without some sort of restraint keeping her from killing him. “You going to be nice?”

  “Depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.” She acknowledged the console. “What exactly are you doing?”

  “Trying to figure out what your boyfriend did to Cain prior to him leaving on the scout ship,” he replied. His brow furrowed, and he added in a murmur, “Why not take the ICV-71?”

  “What makes you think Forester had anything to do with this ship’s AI going down? I never saw him enter the bridge.” Emmerich leaned closer to the console. “Besides, I doubt he could fly this thing, even if he wanted to. Those scout ships practically fly themselves.”

  Cole cast her a thoughtful glance. Hm. She has a point. “Perhaps, but he had plenty of time to sabotage the system before you came to.”

  “What are you saying?”

  Cole enacted a local perimeter detection for a fifty mile radius. “I’m saying he abandoned the cause before Lin and I went outside to discuss the state of the mission.”

  “You idiot.” Emmerich said in her best scathing tone. “What did you think he was going to do? Just walk away empty-handed?”

  She certainly has a way of making me feel like a drooling imbecile. “We had no reason to think otherwise at the time. The mission was a failure.”

  “Apparently not,” she insisted. “Where did that lift lead to? And what was down there?”

  Cole’s breath caught when the perimeter detector picked up several blips closing in fast on their location. There was no time to escape. He turned to Emmerich, only able to offer her a one-word answer. “Trouble.”

  ~

  Lin lifted the collar of her shirt to cover her mouth and nose as she walked through the dust cloud. Her eyes were slits, and she was barely able to see through the haze to the doors leading outside. Cole would still be investigating the source of the disturbance. At least she hoped that was the case. The thought of him having boarded the ICV-71 and departing without her was a very real possibility. He had no reason to continue assisting her.

  She was able to take a full breath outdoors, though she couldn’t help but be relieved to see the ship still resting where Cole had landed it. She was not nearly as comforted by the sight of Inspector Emmerich walking beside him, unbound.

  “Any sign of Rig?” he asked her, his voice tense.

  Obviously some sort of understanding had been reached between the two, for neither seemed to want to engage in any sort of fisticuffs. As for his question, how was she supposed to respond? What had occurred in the laboratory needed to be kept secret. She trusted Cole, but with the mission’s end in sight, the information she discovered needed to remain secret. She shook her head, meeting Emmerich’s cold regard for less than a second.

  Cole swore. “Guess he hitched a ride with Arthur. Can’t say I blame him.”

  “Why do you say that?” She had a feeling the answer would be wholly unsettling.

  “We’ve been located,” Emmerich answered. “Looks like you’ll finally have the opportunity to pin this coup solely on me. Isn’t that right, Dr. Dartmouth?”

  What was I thinking, agreeing to include her? Lin thought, shying away fr
om the inspector. “How much time do we have?”

  Cole looked up at the approaching roar of multiple engines. She watched his shoulders sag and heard a sigh. “Not much.”

  “Your AI monster seems to have been sabotaged,” Emmerich added, though Cole hushed her.

  “Forester must’ve boarded the ship shortly after leaving the nature center,” Cole said, facing her once more. His face was tired now, the weight of the day’s events suddenly pulling him down. “I don’t know what he did, but Cain’s offline.”

  So this is how it ends: in complete failure. Lin thought back to the hidden laboratory and wondered if she had done enough to bury her secret. Her father’s legacy depended on her. “Is it Terracom?”

  Three ships flying in triangular formation screamed across the sky in response. Lin thought she glimpsed a familiar logo on their hulls. “SolEx?” She watched them circle back around.

  “How could they have possibly located us so quickly?” Emmerich demanded. She looked as though she wanted to run for the hills.

  “Forester,” Cole supplied. “It had to be him. He had complete access to the ship. He must’ve sent a distress call to the S3—”

  “No,” Lin interrupted. “It’s not possible they could have received a transmission and intercepted us in so short a time. I believe it was the company entry codes we employed upon entering Mars’s atmosphere. The status of the ICV-71 must have been updated to stolen once the truth of the mission was exposed. SolEx would have immediately changed all passcodes per their safeguard protocol.”

  “Making locating us a cinch,” Cole added. “We just rang the dinner bell.”

  Lin nodded. “We never should have used those codes.” She pressed her eyes closed. “It was just another overlooked variable.”

  “We had to land somewhere,” Cole reasoned. “It would have happened sooner or later.”

  Emmerich shook her head. “No. None of this would have happened had we not strayed from our original course.” Lin stepped back when the inspector moved uncomfortably close to her and Cole. “The two of you might consider me a genocidal maniac, but it wasn’t me who freed the one responsible for the slaughter all those debtors on Terracom 3.”

  Lin’s knees trembled, and she felt lightheaded at the thought of her father. A torrent of emotional guilt slammed into her like a meteor, and she was quickly sinking into the crater of despair. All the stories and rumors about my father... His cult leader alter ego... The signs were always there, and I chose to ignore them. The deaths of those people are on my head.

  She felt a strong hand catch under her arm to keep her from collapsing. The world around her was closing in growing dark. Her limbs went numb. She suspected she was being carried. Her surroundings changed in a blur, and she was vaguely aware of entering the nature center. She may as well have been floating, as her consciousness slipped away.

  “...are coming, Doc...” the voice spoke. “...no point in running...” It could have been Cole. “Cain has shutdown...” Or was it her brother?

  “Who...?” The question came out of her mouth, though it felt as though someone else had asked it. She tried with all her remaining might to focus on his voice.

  “SolEx.” His form had dissolved. “It’s over. They’ve come to apprehend us and bring us back to the S3. It’s probably for the best.”

  None of it made much sense.

  “I’m sorry, Lin.”

  15 - REBIRTH

  The journey back to the SolEx Space Station was peaceful. Accommodations aboard the company transports were more than, well...accommodating. SolEx was the premier logistics company with an exorbitant amount of funds at their disposal. So much so that they operated their own security force, eclipsed only by Military, which was under Terracom’s godlike thumb. As a result, SolEx spared no expense when it came to all areas of their business. Even incarceration carried a flair of posh.

  Cole strolled about his “cell,” enjoying space through his personal viewport. He had been thinking while in the sanctity of his quiet solitude—walked himself through the entirety of the coup—and felt somewhat confident he would be able to clear his name. Whether or not he would retain his job was an entirely different matter. Unemployment would be nearly as devastating a blow as a permanent sentence to the debt colony. He dreaded the thought of approaching his brother, tail tucked between his legs. His outlook was grim.

  The only certainty was the conclusion to Lin’s coup. Both she and Emmerich would be heavily interrogated, and a full-scale investigation would be conducted to discover how deep the roots of their treachery ran. Terracom would launch its own investigation as well, demanding astronomical reparations. A legal nightmare the likes the System had probably never seen was about to commence. Regardless of the outcome, the Musgrave name would again rise in infamy.

  Not bad for my first day as captain, Cole thought. That video log better not have vanished along with Cain. It’s my only hope at dodging corporate slavery.

  He tapped the triple-paned viewport glass, pondering the whereabouts of both Rig and Forester. The mechanic’s disappearance was a complete mystery. He might have hitched a ride with Forester, but Emmerich never mentioned seeing him. If Rig had gone a different direction, then how did he vanish without a trace? The director-revealed-government-spy had proven to be a crafty foe with layers of secrets. He was easily the most dangerous—not to mention clever—member of the coup. He had played both Lin and Cole for fools, and he had successfully completed his mission, crawling back to the dark recesses of the Research sector. Cole would never see the man again.

  The S3 rose small in the viewport, raising Cole’s blood pressure. Freighters, each the size of a small city, were clustered around the station, carrying most of the System’s precious cargo. All of it would be sorted, loaded, and distributed throughout the Milky Way. The practical side of him envied the unsuspecting pilots, longed for their predictable lives and structured routes. He had fought long and hard to secure such a coveted position in the Business sector. SolEx had helped to patch up his soiled past.

  But something had reawakened inside Cole during his time with the “radicals”—a dangerous family quality he had thought to have successfully buried: rebelliousness. His mother was a rebel, his brother most certainly was still, and his father had been murdered as a result of his rebellious nature. Military’s Starforce nurtured this family trait and shaped him into an intelligent weapon, only to inadvertently wield him to their detriment.

  I was cleared of wrongdoing, Cole reminded himself, though he knew his tumultuous past would hurt his chances at playing the innocent card. Cleared though he had been, the court of public opinion had sentenced him to a life of eternal scrutiny. The opinions of billions of people would matter little to him were he to retain his title as captain.

  Is that really what I want?

  A familiar twinge in his stomach rekindled an anxiety that could only be quelled by playing with fire—a fire his time on the ICV-71 had ignited inside him. Despite his attempts to foil the coup, he had to admit it had been exciting opposing Terracom. To continue down such a path would lead him too close to the flame. An all-too-familiar scenario. There was only one practical decision to be made, but how could he ever strike the necessary match if he was trapped in the vacuum that was SolEx?

  He pushed such nonsensical thoughts aside, and prepared himself for the interrogation to come. The ICV-71 was out of commission, Lin and Emmerich were facing an eternity of misery, and AMBER was an indestructible entity. All he had was the hope of maintaining a life as a blue collar nobody. However, to retain his position was to assume that SolEx had not yet completely sold out to Terracom. If their business venture was anything beyond a simple contract, then he was on a fast track to rebuilding the DC-Alpha-6 terraformer all by himself.

  ~

  “We managed to recover the system monitoring backlog from the ICV-71, as per your recommendation, Mr. Musgrave.”

  Cole hated that particular title, but hated his interrog
ator even more. Partially because of her black hole of a personality but mostly because the woman had not the courtesy to even be in the room with him during the investigation. Her lifelike hologram was projected across the table from him, but she was elsewhere. Detective Jen Takara, was it? She’s probably sitting on a beach, listening to the waves and drinking a mimosa.

  Cole adjusted the elastic wrists of the latex polygraph gloves that were two sizes too small for his hands. “That’s good to hear. Did you get to watch all the parts where I was assaulted and blackmailed into assisting the crew?”

  “We are still in the process of interpreting all avenues of the supplied footage. A definitive decision regarding your involvement is still pending.”

  That isn’t comforting. I wonder what they saw that’s giving them pause. He sat forward and rested his forearms on the empty table. “Look, I was under a great deal of stress while aboard that ship. Who knows what I was thinking when three elite members of our company—” he held up three fingers, “—forced me to comply under the threat of death.” He sat back, gesturing vaguely at nothing. “Solar System Express has complete access to my thirteen years of dedication on file, most of them including overtime. I can assure you that I had nothing to do with the conception of this conspiracy.”

  Detective Takara sat, unflinching. Cole figured she was an AI program. “We have no reason to believe you assisted in the development of Dr. Dartmouth’s coup in any way prior to the prototype’s launch.”

  But?

  “Though we are concerned with some of your actions once Inspector Emmerich no longer held control of the ship.”

  Cole’s hands began to sweat, and he knew the polygraph would detect his rising panic. “Whatever my actions, they were governed by the fear of incrimination were I to intervene—whether or not Emmerich was in charge.”

  “We have yet to make any such conclusion,” Detective Takara said. “Regardless, a terroristic assault was allowed as a result of your fears. Warranted or not, many lives were lost, and damage estimates for the lost terraformer are well over a trillion and rising. Director Forester has disappeared without a trace, and two known felons were given sanctuary aboard a company vessel. One is deceased; the other missing and assumed to be dangerous.”