“You know, Ensign? I don’t think so. But then again, it’s what we all signed up for, didn’t we? For battle and glory, or revenge or what have you.” She knew what her motivation was when she first joined. The searing memory of her husband’s stiff body still freshly engraved on her mind. And the rest of them. She continued speaking, so that the thoughts wouldn’t surface. “Why did you join?”
“The Empire destroyed my world when my grandparents were still children, Commander. They turned it into a radioactive wasteland that won’t be safe for human habitation for thousands of years. Our people pledged to return, but as they reached out to the stars, they made another pledge. A pledge to never lift up the sword against anyone. It’s strange, Commander, when an enemy invades and utterly destroys, and then the victim blames itself for the violence and promises to amend its ways.”
“So you joined the fleet to explore then? To see new worlds and cultures?” Po noticed some odd readings from her board, and could only think to absentmindedly ask obvious questions.
“No, Commander. I set out to end the Empire. With whatever tools I have at my disposal.”
Po glanced up in surprise. “So you don’t eschew violence? Like the rest of the people of Belen?”
“I will not strike another human. I will not wield a weapon and draw blood. I will not raise my voice in anger. But an ion beam cannon? A railgun turret? Will I relay orders to weapons crews to use them against the machinery of the Empire? I will. My father nearly disowned me when I joined the Resistance. He said I was rejecting our traditions. Our culture. Our beliefs. But I think to stand by and let the Empire continue to exist is an even deeper betrayal of our beliefs.” She paused, and looked up, a quizzical expression on her tattooed face. “Does that make sense?”
“A little, I guess.” Po turned back to her console. An odd power build-up on the sensor array….
“It sure didn’t to my father. My mother sent me with her blessing, but even she didn’t quite understand my reasoning. She prayed her rosary and begged the saints to change my mind. She promised a life of service to Saint Anton, the patron saint of Belen, if he would come to me and turn me from my chosen path. But here I am.”
Her smile made the leaves and branches splaying up onto her face contort, making Po wonder how early Belenite youth received their tattoos. It was comforting having the young woman around—like having a personal spiritual advisor, someone who could look down on any situation and reassure them all that it was in god’s plan or Minerva’s plan or Buddha’s plan, or whatever other deity the young woman was attuned to.
An explosion rocked the ship. Po had gotten used to the relative calm that had settled in after the battle, and she could feel the blood drain from her face. “What was that?”
Ensign Ayala scanned through the damage report streaming in from the computer. “It’s the sensor and communications grid down by engineering. Something overloaded. And now our transmitters are broadcasting a jamming signal. It’s like white noise is overwhelming every band, sir.”
Po grimaced. “Well that’s going to put a damper on Admiral Trajan’s mood.”
***
Several minutes after the secondary rattling and reverberations from the explosion settled, the door to the bridge slid open and Jake Mercer strode in. Po glanced at his collar.
“He didn’t.”
Jake couldn’t even muster a smile. “I’m afraid he did.”
Po shook her head. “But I would have sworn … I would have bet my life savings on him choosing Ben. So the Captain’s dead then?”
“Yes. And really, so did I. It came as a complete shock.” He wondered if he’d be able to lie to Po. He’d discovered over the past three years that she was uncannily perceptive. It was like she could read peoples’ minds, know exactly what they needed to hear, and then tended to put an arm around your shoulder and proceed to solve all your problems. Eventually, her callsign, Grizzly, had morphed into Mama Grizzly, and then just Mama.
She cast him a knowing glance. “But all the same. I’m happy for you. I’m not sure how we’d have managed … otherwise.” He could tell she chose her words carefully for the sake of the surviving bridge crew, who huddled at their stations, shell-shocked and unspeaking. As he looked around at them all, he knew something had to be done. Something had to be said. If their morale stayed this low, they’d be killed within the hour, too demoralized to do anything about it.
He approached the captain’s chair. His chair. Gripping the armrest, he still didn’t feel quite prepared to sit in it, and so he stood behind it, and started looking at each crew member in the eye one by one.
“Captain Watson passed away twenty minutes ago. Before he died, he named me Captain of thePhoenix, and ordered me to get the ship to safety. Ladies and gentlemen, fellow officers,” his eyes drilled into the helmsman, a young man who couldn’t be over twenty. Jake could see the fear in his eyes.
“My friends. In the short time I’ve served with you, as I’ve come to know you over the past week, I’ve come to realize something. All of you have passed through trial by fire. I served with many of you before Dallas. You’ve known victory, you’ve known defeat. But there was one thing that bound us together, and that was our solemn oath to each other that as long as one of our fellows was in bondage or oppressed, we would not rest, we would not give up until that brother was freed and could stand on his own two feet.”
As he spoke, he noticed the change in the helmsman’s eyes. The fear turned, almost imperceptibly, to determination as the young man set his jaw firm and frowned. Jake moved his eyes over to another man sitting at tactical, his face crusted with dried blood from a gash on his forehead.
“But we hit a snag, and had to postpone freedom for awhile. We had Reconciliation, which the Empire used as a pretext for suppressing us further. But then, when I was assigned to the Phoenix, and I met you good people, I knew I’d come home. Because when I look into your eyes, I see people who never give up. I see people who don’t back down.”
He shifted his eyes to Ensign Ayala, who fingered away a stray strand of her bleached white hair that hung in her face. “I see people who I would bleed for, people I would sweat for, people to whom I pledge my life and my sacred honor. Today, we’re going to fight once more. Some of us may not live to see the fruits of our labors, but I swear to you,” he paused, letting his words sink in as he shifted his eyes one last time to Po, who stood at the head of the tactical octagon, a shadow of fierce determination replacing what had before looked almost like suspicion. Did she know? No. She couldn’t know.
“But I swear to you,” he repeated, “that we will win, we will get to safety, and that some day, in a week, a month, a year, I don’t know, but we will return, and we will free our planet once and for all. I promise you.”
The silence pervaded the bridge like the calm before a storm, but it was a restless silence, as Jake saw the eagerness in his crew’s eyes. Not bad for his first time, he thought. He’d never imagined himself giving a motivational speech in his life. His thoughts momentarily flashed back to his father on the filthy couch, and their last meeting where he’d vainly tried to convince the man to make something of himself.
“You all know what you need to do. Let’s get to it.” He looked down at his console and saw the indicator light for the internal comm flash, telling him it had been on during the entire speech, and glanced up at Po, who smirked and shrugged her shoulders. “Captain Mercer out.” He thumbed off the speaker. “Thanks,” he said to Po. “I hadn’t thought about that.”
“We’ve got your back, Captain.” She looked around the bridge. “All of us.”
Gripping the arm of the captain’s chair, he steeled his will, and slowly sank down into the erect, padded seat. It felt comfortable, but alien, as if it were not his. As if it had a mind of its own and would betray him. Like it would whisper to someone passing by that its occupant was a usurper. A phony.
“Thanks. I’m going to need it.”
By some un
spoken signal, the bridge crew erupted into a flurry of activity, each officer busying themselves with their station, or, barring specific instructions, began clearing away debris or stalwartly pulling the dead bodies back to the conference room.
“Po, report. What’s going on out there?”
“Right before you walked in there was an explosion near the sensor and communicat—” she began before Jake interrupted.
“That was me. Our half-mustached friend in engineering did it on my orders. And the jamming signal?”
“It’s working, sir. No communications are getting in or out.”
“Do we still have sensors?” He glanced down at his command console.
“It’s iffy. From what I can tell, the Caligula is still about half a klick off our bow and holding steady. TheRoc looked like it was being boarded by some imperial carriers, and the Heron looked to be in pretty bad shape. Everyone else is gone.” The Roc. Crash was on that ship as its XO. His best friend, though they’d barely seen each other over the past few years.
Gone. Six of nine ships. Just gone. And yet it gave him hope—this whole situation reeked of Admiral Trajan’s hands. Nine advanced battleships, at the peak of technical innovation, and yet Trajan was willing to throw it all away just to mop up the remnants of the Resistance. That gave him hope. It meant that the Empire was scared, that the Resistance had more influence, more power than it thought it did.
“Any sign of the Caligula arming herself?”
“Hard to tell, sir. Sensors are a little wacky right now.” Po took a moment to reach up to her hair and wrap the loose half back up into the bun. He couldn’t help but be surprised at her composure and steady grace under fire, but realized a moment later that she’d had it all along, from the moment she’d become his gunner in that fighter back in the Viper hangar back on Earth.
“Just let me know, Mama,” he said, using her callsign, and Jake could see the hint of a grin touch her steely face. He punched the comm button. “Engineering, Captain Mercer. Where are my engines, Bernoulli?”
Chaos sounded out from the speaker, and for a moment Jake was taken aback before he realized that this chaos was far different from the cacophony of jumbled sounds coming from the speaker the first time he’d called engineering. This was the sound of frenzied, but focused work.
“Friend! Captain, eh? So Watson is dead then?” he paused, taking a deep breath. “Well then, I guess you’ll have to do.”
Jake rolled his eyes. “Thanks, friend. Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“Jake, we are close. But there is something you need to know. Something the rest of the ships need to know. The neodymium, Jake, it’s the neodymium. It was contaminated with gadolinium, sure, that’s a common contaminant. But there was a huge amount of promethium in there too. Like two percent. Jake, this isn’t just low grade neodymium here. This is intentional sabotage.”
So. Trajan wasn’t just planning on blasting the Nine out of the sky. He was going to let the Resistance do his dirty work for him.
“Can it be fixed? Dammit, Alessandro, it’s been over an hour.”
“Yes! Yes, Jake it can. At least, we can adjust the gravitic field—put it in the older configuration, you know, the one that only permits long distance shifts and—”
“Fine! Do it! Spare me the details and get it done, Commander.”
“But Jake, you’ve got to warn the Roc, and the Heron, that if they try to shift away then they’ll initiate an anti-matter chain reaction. We’ve got to signal to them the new gravitic field configuration I’ve come up with. It’s their only chance, Jake.”
He was right. But all bands were currently jammed by their “accidental” explosion near the sensor grid.
“Fine. Send up those calcs, and I’ll forward them on. You focus on getting us the hell out of here. Mercer out.” He jumped out of the captain’s chair and spun around to face Po. “We’ve got to get this over to those ships.”
“But the jamming signal … we can’t just—” A look of realization dawned on her. “Oh….”
“What?”
“Send a fighter.”
Her words hit him like a railgun slug. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it. “Lieutenant Grace, Captain Mercer. You copy?
Silence.
“Lieutenant Grace, Captain Mercer. Do you copy? What’s your status?” Again, no reply.
Dammit.
***
Lieutenant Anya Grace peered up over the dashboard and out the front viewport. Even through the half-vacuum of the fighter bay she could hear the sound of gunfire. That at least indicated to her that the ship’s automated hull-patch drones had been busy with her handiwork on the hull behind the fighter.
“You see anything?” Ensign Nivens whispered.
“You can talk normally in here, Ensign, they won’t hear you.”
“I said, do you see anything?” he said, much louder this time.
“Dammit, Nivens, don’t be yelling in my ear.”
The young man threw his hands up and scowled.
“Take a look for yourself, Ensign,” she said, pointing up at the viewport.
She poked her head up with him. A squad of ASA suit-clad Imperial marines huddled next to the entrance to the fighter bay, and Anya surmised that the rest must have gone through, and were now engaged with whatever force Jake had put together at the last minute.
Jake. She rolled her eyes. She’d heard his rah-rah speech a few minutes ago, but instead of inspiring her, she’d only laughed, silently mocking his jingoistic pat on the back. Captain Jacob Mercer. She still couldn’t believe it. How could the over-eager lieutenant from that Florida joint’s bathroom be commanding the most advanced battleship in the fleet? It boggled her mind.
“There’s bullets flying out of that door!” Nivens said, his eyes wide.
“No shit?” She dropped her voice into a sarcastic tone. “Man, there must be like a battle going on or something.” She whacked the back of his head with her hand and sat back down under the console. “Look. We’ve got to do something. We can’t just let them get up into the ship and have free reign. They’re here to kill.”
“What do we do?”
She glanced up at her pilot’s seat. “We use what tools are available to us.” Just like in the wilderness. As she hoisted herself up into the seat, she remembered the first time she’d climbed up into the tree she’d called home for two weeks, after her parents had dropped her off in the Alaskan wilderness with nothing but her clothes. That would teach her about not blaspheming the ancient gods, they’d said. That would teach her to rely on them, by casting herself at their mercy for her very survival.
What it taught her instead was how to survive. How to rely on herself and only herself.
“You’re going to blast them with the fighter’s guns?” Nivens looked bewildered.
“Got a better idea, Ensign?”
He stammered. “No, it’s just that the fighter deck is kind of a tight space to be using a fighter’s guns.”
“Good. That means we’re more likely to hit the bastards. Come on, climb up. There you go,” she said, waving her hand as if shooing away a poodle. Nivens reluctantly eased into the gunner’s seat and began working the controls.
“All right, weapons are online,” he said.
“Good. Firing up conventional thrusters now,” and as she said it, the engine roared to life, which had the unintended consequence of drawing the surprised stare of ten imperial marines huddled around the door to the fighter bay. “Oops. Now, Nivens, fire!”
Nivens squeezed the trigger and let loose a barrage of streaming red gunfire. The deadly tracks, flaming much brighter in the half-vacuum of the bay than in the full-vacuum of space, streaked across the fighter deck and mowed the frenzied marines down into a bloody pulp. “Ha ha! Nice shooting, kid!”
But before Nivens could celebrate with her, an answering barrage of assault rifle fire peppered the cockpit’s front viewport, creating an unnerving array of cracks. Anya duck
ed. “Shit. Didn’t really think that one through, did we?”
“I saw it coming. Didn’t you hear me? I said, you’re going to blast them with our guns? But did you list—”
“Can it, Ensign,” she said, and started entering in coordinates to the gravitic drive, flinching every time a new volley hit the viewport. “I’m going to shift us over there, right in front of the door, but shift us forty-five degrees so you can get a clear shot. Set your fire for a wide-burst pattern. Take out as many as we can in the anteroom behind that door.” She entered the final numbers. “Ready?”
“Yeah. Ready.” The Ensign bit his lip in quiet anticipation.
Anya punched down on the initiate button, and the ship shifted, sending up a spray of flying debris once more as the deck plate got caught in the pronounced tidal warping effects of their localized gravitic field. “Now!”
Ensign Nivens squeezed the trigger again, catching another group of marines in an incontestable stream of gunfire. Nivens turned his eyes from the gore.
“Don’t look away! Aim, dammit!”
He snapped his eyes back to the doorway, gritting his teeth and closing his mouth tight, in what Anya supposed was a valiant attempt to keep his stomach contents down.
She’d seen gore before, and it didn’t faze her anymore. Enough late night sacrificial ceremonies with her parents and their friends had numbed her to it. The victims were only ever goats and dogs, but they bled and brayed just like people do when they’re cut.
“Ok, hold up, Ensign. I think you got them.” She peered out into the smoky gloom of the anteroom, trying to discern movement.
A brilliant, searingly bright flash nearly blinded her. “Down!” she roared, grabbing Nivens’s collar as she flung herself to the floor, even as the plasma-rpg exploded against the front viewport. Wickedly sharp pieces of clear composite showered them, puncturing them, and Anya felt vague poking sensations all over her legs and back.
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