Thomas remained standing, and he leaned over the table, hands on the hard surface. “And one of the needles failed?”
The AI nodded again. “We found one of the Statu. I had my executive lieutenant remove the helmet.” Constantine stared across the room at the screen showing space and Greblok in the distance. If Treena didn’t know better, he was far more than an AI representation of the man; he was Constantine Baldwin. If they could make Treena alive with a machine, what could they do with Thomas’ real grandfather’s memories?
They waited, Treena subconsciously holding her breath.
“It was a human. There was a human inside the Statu suit,” Constantine said.
Eleven
“Where are they bringing us?” Abbil asked. The woman had come a long way in the short hours since she’d awakened in a panic beside Brax.
“I have no idea,” Brax admitted.
So far, no one had entered the room they were all waiting in. Brax had done a head count, and there were two hundred and eleven of them filling the space. Twelve were dead, and Brax and Penter had helped separate the bodies from the others.
He glanced at the corner of the room where the lifeless lay, the others giving the dead wide berth. Three people were missing pieces of their bodies. One man, a foot; a hand on a child; and an ear on an older woman. The wounds were cauterized, but it was only something to worsen their already tragic tales.
“I’m going to search for a door again,” Penter said, walking the perimeter of the room. Brax had nothing better to do, so he started in the opposite direction, slowly and painstakingly combing the wall for signs of an opening. The walls had sharp edges, the entire surface bonded together with a strong compound. He was careful to avoid cutting himself, and by the time he met Penter on the other side, they were both exhausted and angry.
“If they don’t give us water, I suspect there will be more deaths soon,” Penter said, and it was as if they were listening.
The ceiling spread apart directly in the center of the room, and Brax urged the resting Bacals away from the incoming gray-armored suits. No wonder they hadn’t found any doors. They were below the ceilings. A platform lowered, with the Statu standing around it. There were four of them, thin guns in the outer two’s hands. They didn’t speak as the second pair rolled a cask of liquid forward, setting it down with a ladle on top.
“Where are we going?” Brax dared ask, standing tall. He was taller than any of the Statu, almost by a head, but they were armed, and he was in no position to make demands. But they ignored him and returned to the platform.
“You bastards! You killed my family!” a Bacal man shouted, running at the Statu. He was dead instantly as a beam struck his chest. The left Statu only fired once, directly at the man’s head, and waved the gun around after the body hit the floor, as if to challenge anyone else. When the entire crowd remained still, they lifted away, leaving their captives alone once again.
“Damn it!” Penter said, rushing to the body. The man was obviously dead, and the people nearby were eager to move away from the corpse. “Such a shame. What did he expect to do?”
Brax felt for the victim. He’d been filled with such a rage that all logical actions were pressed aside. The dead man had only thought of his family, and now he would join them in the Vastness, if one were to believe in the Zilph’i ways.
“Help me move him,” Brax said, not wanting to trouble the other Greblok folks with the burden. Penter grunted as they heaved the body to the edge of the room. That made thirteen.
They returned to find the cask already opened, people drinking from the barrel, shoving at one another.
“Everyone back!” Brax shouted, taking charge. “You’re acting like animals.”
The people ceased shoving one another and stared hard into his eyes.
Penter stood beside Brax, helping him out. “What’s happened to you all? Is this how a Bacal deals with adversity? No! We’ll get through this. If you haven’t met him, this is Lieutenant Commander Brax Daak of the new Concord flagship, the Constantine. Yes, the very same name as the great Captain Constantine Baldwin. We’ve all heard the stories of the Concord’s victory over the Statu, and his own grandson is now in charge of the ship. He will come for us. Greblok was to be ushered into the Concord, and they won’t turn their backs on us.”
Brax was surprised by how much information Penter had absorbed in their brief discussions over the last few hours, but he had a way with words, for a guard. Brax saw hope flash across some of the faces nearby, and he hoped that the captain was going to help them. He wasn’t holding his breath, but in the meantime, these people needed him.
“That’s right.” He stood in front of the water and tried to smile. “Everyone, please form a line. There’s enough water for all. If you can’t stand in line, raise your hand and we’ll bring it to you.”
Brax wondered how many of them were on this ship, and where they were being taken.
____________
Tarlen had managed a few hours of sleep and returned to his investigation of the ship. He’d been on Decks Seven and Eight, observed the training facilities, had been banned from entering the fancy restaurant in its off hours, and discovered a study hall and library where one could research anything in peace.
He was now on Deck Three – under the courtyard, he thought – at the edge of the starship, and he stopped a man he understood to be a Callalay walking by, a tablet in his hand.
“Excuse me,” he said.
“What can I do for you?” the man asked.
“What’s in there?” Tarlen pointed at the wall. There were huge doors leading to it, but he couldn’t seem to access them.
“That’s the hangar where we keep the fighters. Are you a JOT?” the Callalay man asked with a smile.
“In a way,” Tarlen said, indicating his green collar. If it could get him into the hangar, he’d have said anything.
“How about I show you?” The man folded the tablet and clipped it to his belt, moving to the doors. He leaned over, staring at a computer screen. “Clearance 9651332.”
“Welcome, Lieutenant Basker,” the computer said, and the doors hissed wide.
Tarlen stepped inside, and his jaw dropped. This was the biggest room he’d ever seen. Five amazing ships were parked inside, and the room was dimly lit.
“This is the hangar,” the man told him. “We have five fighters. Normally, there would be around twenty or so on a cruise ship.”
“Why are there so few?” Tarlen asked.
“This was an unexpected mission, rushed out, and it was only supposed to be a diplomatic visit, welcoming Greblok into the Concord,” the man said. “Go ahead. I can see you’re interested.”
Tarlen didn’t wait. He rushed to the edge of the huge hangar and stood beside one of the fighters. It was black, the Concord logo etched on the side in white stencil. His head didn’t even come up to the rear thrusters. The ship was sleek, long, and lean.
“There are wings for suborbital control,” Lieutenant Basker informed him. “They don’t get any better than this.”
“Have you flown one?” Tarlen asked.
“I should hope so.” Basker set a hand on the ship they were looking at. “This one is mine. Flown in over fifty missions, mostly Border runs. I wasn’t expecting to even be here.”
“Whose are these?” Tarlen asked, indicating the other four.
“These three are my team’s. The last one is more ceremonial than the others,” he said proudly.
Tarlen walked over to it, seeing it was a slightly different model, maybe an older iteration. “Whose is this one?”
“That is our esteemed captain’s. He used to be one hell of a pilot,” Lieutenant Basker said.
Tarlen hadn’t known that. “Used to be?”
“Well, that was over a decade ago. He’s been promoted a few times since then,” the man added.
Tarlen wanted nothing more than to step inside the cockpit, to feel the ship around him as he raced through sp
ace, fending off Tubers.
“How do you become a pilot?” he asked the man.
“Are you really a JOT?” Lieutenant Basker asked.
Tarlen shook his head, coming clean with the man. He told him all about the attack, and how he wanted to find his sister. The man listened with grace, and Tarlen was grateful for it.
“Well, son, there’s no way to tell if we’ll find your sister, but I’ve been given the orders. We move out in the next hour. Constantine is heading past the Border,” he said.
“What does that mean?” Tarlen asked.
“It means we’re heading past the Concord’s reach. It’s dark space out there. Anything goes, and even more concerning are the unknowns we might face in the process,” Basker said. “But the Code states that ‘without the thrill of exploration, we are but lowly bottom dwellers in the sea of space’.”
Tarlen thought hard about the words and nodded, accepting them.
He didn’t want to be a bottom dweller. He wanted so much more.
____________
“Take us out, Junior Officer Zare,” Baldwin ordered. He watched the world through the viewer, doubting he’d ever return to Greblok again.
He was about to disobey direct orders to return to Nolix, meaning there would be consequences. Something felt wrong about his conversation with the admiral, and finding out there was a human inside a Statu suit in the War set off so many alarm bells in his head, it was still ringing.
“Constantine, please shut down all transponders on the ship,” he told the AI waiting at the edge of the bridge.
The man flickered, vanishing one instant and appearing the next. “I have deactivated the transponders, sir. We will have gone dark to the Concord.”
“And no one can send messages out, correct?” Tom asked.
“That is correct.”
Tom was concerned that a troubled crew member might give them away to the Concord. The general population of the ship wasn’t supposed to be aware of their actual orders, so he wasn’t sure there would be an issue, but he couldn’t be too careful. If anyone asked, he’d have their superior advise them it was a glitch in the new ship’s untested software.
“Zare, set target and hit hyperlight,” he told the officer, who nodded and did as instructed.
The ship didn’t so much as lurch as the camera showed stars stretching before them. “Ven, what do we know about the systems we’re heading through?”
Ven was in his standard seat at the second helm position, beside Zare, and he turned to talk with Tom. “We’re first moving past the local system and will be out in under an hour. The Concord does have a partner along our trajectory, and we will be near their world in…” He tapped the console at his fingertips and continued, “Six hours and twelve standard minutes, sir.”
“Who are they?” Tom asked. He’d never been out this direction. It was far removed from their most active and central hub.
“The Emial from Ipran, sir,” Ven answered.
Tom had heard of them. He even thought he’d seen one or two of the Emial on board his ship, working in the kitchens. “We stay the path. If we stop, the Concord will learn we’re off course,” he ordered.
“Yes, sir.”
The Border was huge, spanning millions of light years, and encompassing more systems and planets than he could comprehend. The majority of their Border Wars took place far away, almost the distance of the known universe. But that was the key word: known. There was so much past the Border, including deadly nebulas, asteroid belts, and exploding stars, not to mention the hundreds or thousands of undiscovered races of beings.
The few the Concord had encountered had been less than thrilled to find there was a powerful group running such a massive sector of space. Still, the battles at the Border were rarely dangerous. He glanced at Treena Starling beside him, assuming she’d tell a different tale.
In her case, two hundred crew mates had been killed at the Border by a newcomer hellbent on making a name for themselves by attacking the Concord. In the end, they’d been hunted down, and Tom saw that the Prime Minister had ordered two vessels to attack their home planet. The files on the mission were classified above Tom’s rank. He didn’t need to read them to know the Concord would have destroyed the world and all its inhabitants. One didn’t attack and extinguish a cruise ship without retribution.
Tom was using that same logic as his excuse for disobeying his orders. He needed to find out where the Statu were headed, and how to stop them. Even if the Prime didn’t think that Greblok continued to be valuable to the Concord, word like this spread quickly across their partner worlds. Tom could already smell the uprising, and he was going to do what it took to prevent that from happening. The Concord couldn’t afford to have infighting, especially with the Statu returning so suddenly.
“Captain?” Ven asked.
“Sorry, Ven. Say again?” Tom blinked hard. He hadn’t slept in the last day, and it was beginning to wear on him.
“Shall I send probes ahead?” Ven asked.
“Of course.” Tom watched through the viewer as tiny blue thrusters shot probes away. They flared brightly as their attached singularity pulses sent them through folds in space.
“I’ll advise any useful readouts as the information returns,” Ven said.
“Captain, I wish we had those jumpers on this ship,” Reeve Daak called from her position at the edge of the bridge.
“Don’t we all,” Tom said. The technology was too far away. They could use the black matter to blast something minor into another system, like a melon-sized probe, but the power necessary to move an entire ship would rip a hole in space, creating chaos. Reeve would understand that much better than he did, but the concept wasn’t lost on him. He was happy enough with the hyperlight their Star Drive allowed them.
“Captain, we’re on the way, and I can tell you haven’t slept in a long time. Go and rest. I’ll stay on the bridge,” Treena Starling told him.
He was about to ask when she’d slept last until he remembered that she wasn’t really there, that she was a brain in another room, controlling a lifelike body that sat beside him in the commander’s seat.
Tom nodded. “You’re right.” He stood up and ran a hand over his stomach. “I’m going to rest. Keep me posted on any developments.”
Tom walked off, turning for a moment to stare at the viewer. Stars danced in the distance as they raced through open space, heading toward the blinking, moving target of a Statu warship.
Twelve
Tarlen wandered the corridors and finally made it to the medical bay. He’d forgotten about it in the excitement of the last day and was glad when the doors opened. He spotted Doctor Nee across the room, talking to a woman lying on one of the patient beds.
Back home, there were doctors, and Tarlen always hated going to see them, mostly because it meant something was wrong. His practitioners didn’t have a setup like this. Theirs were stone slabs with vials along the wall. Have a sore throat? Drink this, Tarlen.
Here everything was stark white, as clean and vivid as Doctor Nee’s smiling teeth or his hair. “Young Tarlen, what a pleasure it is to see you again,” he said so genuinely, it made Tarlen flush with pride.
“Hi, Doctor. I wanted to come by earlier, but I’ve been so distracted by the ship. It’s amazing,” he said, lacking the vocabulary to truly express his feelings.
“You’re accurate there. What can I do for you?” Doctor Nee asked.
The woman remained on the exam bed, and Tarlen glanced at her. “You can finish. I’ll stay out of the way.”
“Why don’t you take a seat, and I’ll be with you in a moment,” the doctor suggested, and Tarlen moved to the other end of the medical bay, finding four chairs in a row. There were some closed doors at the rear of the room, and one had a dim light underneath it, drawing Tarlen like a night insect to a flickering flame.
The doctor was still with his patient, so Tarlen stepped lightly across the hard floor and set his hand on the door’s cont
rol panel. Finally understanding how they worked, he opened it to see the alien from the cryo chamber sleeping inside. There were machines all around, and Tarlen noticed the being was bound around the wrists and ankles with a glowing orange beam of light.
Tarlen was fascinated by the sleeping person across the private room, and stepped inside. A hand gripped his shoulder, holding him back, and he jerked his chin lower to see the doctor’s glove.
“What are you doing in here, Tarlen?” Doctor Nee asked, his voice calm, even though Tarlen could tell he was angry.
“I’m sorry. I saw the light on and wanted to see how it was doing,” Tarlen said.
“He,” Doctor Nee corrected. “I’ve established it’s a male, though the organs are slightly different than those of most races.”
“Is he going to be okay?” Tarlen asked, and the doctor released his grip.
“It would appear so. I haven’t brought him out of sedation yet, but I’m going to begin the process soon,” the doctor told him.
“Can I stay?” Tarlen asked.
“I’m not sure that’s a wise idea, son,” Doctor Nee said, setting a gloved hand on Tarlen’s shoulder.
“Why not?”
“You’ll only be in the way, and we have no idea what to expect. He was agitated before, and I assume he won’t be much more cooperative now.” The doctor walked to the bedside, leaning over the mysterious sedated being.
“What about translating?” Tarlen asked him, remembering the clicking speech the man had used in the cargo hold.
“We need a baseline to work with. Once we have him awake and calm, we can begin the process,” Nee told him. The doctor tapped a console on the wall and spoke into it. “Kelli, please join me in our guest’s suite.”
A minute later, a short human woman entered, smiling mirthlessly at Tarlen before moving to the other side of the patient’s bed. She wore her hair short and sported a different uniform than the ship’s other crew, hers white with no collar color.
Baldwin's Legacy: The Complete Series Page 12