by Erik Wecks
The commander turned his masked face toward Jo. Jo couldn’t make heads or tails of the beeps and clicks that followed. As he talked, the commander removed what looked like a protein bar from his suit and dropped it on the barrier, whose width could be measured in only a few microns. The barrier efficiently sliced the bar in two, leaving a piece on each side. Fearful, Jo nodded her understanding.
The Timcree with his hand on her neck pushed her forward and said, “You go, now.” He spoke with a cadence that made him hard to understand.
Jo squeezed herself behind the barrier. She was about three quarters of the way through when a drone appeared behind the Timcree. Brazen and secure, it flew directly around the corner without concern. Even as it took aim, the Timcree who had been guarding Jo reached up and shoved her quickly through the small opening. The guard followed behind her. In one fluid motion, the Timcree expertly contorted his extremely long frame into the gap.
Jo recognized this to be her opportunity to attack. While transiting the barrier, he was vulnerable. Fearful and filling up with rage, she started forward.
The Timcree realized his vulnerability and met her eye.
Jo hesitated because she was surprised to see visible fear, but she could find little anger. Her compassion and curiosity got the better of her, the moment to act passed, and the Timcree was soon through. He quickly drew his weapon and pointed it at her again, pressing his thin lips together until they disappeared.
The commander backed into position, ready to cross. There was little hope for the remaining intruder. The drone had him in its sights as it turned the corner. Still, he did manage to get off several rather large slow-moving rounds before being hit by a stunning blast. The long Timcree crumpled like a marionette. The commander did better.
Jo was by no means an expert on munitions, but she had never heard of rounds behaving like those of the Timcree. They came out of their large-barreled weapons with a kind of thunk. At first they seemed to be incredibly slow moving. Jo could actually see them flying toward the target. As they flew, they disintegrated into a thousand pieces. It was only when they stopped and retreated as the drone advanced that Jo realized they must be AI controlled. Before the drone could aim again, it was surrounded by a cloud of spinning and maneuvering rounds. They looked like a swarm of bees. While it was hard to see them attacking, they must have been successful because the drone retreated from the swarm, unable to get off a second shot.
Once the drone had backed around the corner behind them, the commander started to move toward his downed soldier, but a squad of Marines came around the corner just as he was taking his first step, and he thought better of it. Instead, he chose the safety of the enclosed area behind the energy barrier.
Once inside, the commander squared up and turned to face the oncoming Marines, placing his hands on his hips.
The second Timcree once again grabbed Jo by the nape of her neck. He, too, faced the oncoming Marines, this time pointing his weapon at her head, his hand clearly trembling.
Considering the situation, Jo was surprised she hadn’t puked yet. Her heart pounded, but she also had an unexpected sense of watchfulness, almost as if she were waiting for some sign, some call to take action. The situation was dangerous, but she no longer believed that the Timcree intended to kill her or themselves. They had come for a reason. She was sure of that.
Undesirable in civilized places, Timcree tended to gather in the same kinds of spaces sought by the Ghost Fleet. Jo knew that the fleet had tracked their movements. They had a pretty good idea on which airless moons and asteroids they lived. By all estimates, the scattered Timcree could pose no real threat to the fleet. Their technology was meager at best, and their existence brutal, which made this whole raid—whatever its purpose—completely nonsensical to Jo. The Timcree risked a massive retaliation for little, if any, gain that she could see. It was hard to imagine what four raiders could take from a hospital ship to make this worthwhile, but she was pretty sure there must be a reason just outside her understanding.
The corporal in charge of the team of four Marines shouted as the barriers dropped. “Stand down! Drop your weapons!”
In response, the Timcree commander slowly put his weapon on the floor, and at the same time held up a small holographic projector he had in his other hand. Even as another small group of Marines came running up from a second corridor to their left, a meter-tall image of the Timcree attack ship below them erupted into the space between the two groups. Inside, a fully suited Timcree stood with his hand near the control pad for the airlock, while Amanda sat on a small bench, grimly ignoring the danger.
Jo gasped. Dear God, if he opens the airlock on that ship, he’ll depressurize the engine room on Gallant!
The Marine stopped and licked his lips. “What do you want?” he barked at the Timcree commander, brandishing his weapon. Jo could sense his desperation as he tried to stay in control of a situation well beyond his pay grade.
Don’t be an idiot! Please don’t be an idiot! Jo thought at the Marine.
The guard holding Jo answered. “Medicine nanites! We need medicine nanites! We pay.”
So that’s it, thought Jo.
“You won’t get anything! Now put your weapons down and release your hostages!”
The commander shifted a little. Even behind the mirrored suit, Jo could tell he was sizing up the corporal. Tense seconds elapsed before a couple of quiet clicks issued from his suit.
The corporal looked shocked at the sound.
The Timcree behind her spoke. “We no negotiate with you. We negotiate with commander. We wait.”
The Timcree soldier on the ground started to shift, coming to after being stunned.
Jo saw the corporal’s face turn red. This is the dangerous point, thought Jo, and then the call to action came. “Corporal, you know who I am, right?”
The soldier squinted at her. “Should I?”
“I’m Josephine Lutnear. Tell your commanders.”
Jo watched the small but unmistakable signs that the corporal had just taken her advice and used his heads-up to report her identity to whatever Marine commander was in charge of this operation.
The Marine’s aggressive attitude changed. His eyes widened a little as he got a look at Josephine’s file and her connections to the fleet commanders.
He decided not to play the hero and stepped away, leaving the two contingents of Marines to guard the Timcree while he communicated up the food chain.
When he came back his eyes were still hard and narrow, but he said, “You know the prince?”
Jo simply nodded.
Satisfied, he said grimly, “I’m to escort you to a negotiating room. This way.”
Behind and above her, she heard her captor speak, “Eik Adliker!”
By way of acknowledgment, the commander in front of him simply raised his long forearm, signaling his underling to be quiet. The commander nodded his ascent to the Marine, and in a careful dance of aimed weapons, the corporal led them away.
A long hour later, Josephine rested in an empty hospital room with her captors in an isolated wing of the ship. The commander occupied the patient bed. Sitting upright, facing the door, he had barely moved since he came in. Her minder sat in the only other chair in the room. Somewhere along the way, he had forgotten to point his weapon at her. She could have walked out. Curiosity kept her.
That left the floor for the stunned Timcree and Jo. The Timcree lay in the corner, shaking under a blanket, recovering from his ordeal. While designed to keep the victim alive, stunners weren’t exactly friendly to the body. At a minimum, the victim ended up with a massive migraine and confusion as the brain tried to unscramble its overloaded wiring, but the jolt from a stunner wasn’t exactly easy on tissues either. It always left bruises and had been known to break ribs.
Jo had tried to help when they entered the room, suggesting that the wounded Timcree be given the bed. No one had listened to her. Now, as he moaned in discomfort, Jo decided to try again. Sta
nding up from where she squatted, she stepped between the commander and the door, forcing herself into his line of sight. Putting one hand on her hip and pointing to the floor with the other, she said, “Listen to me! Your soldier’s hurt. He needs help. I’m a doctor. I can take care of him. I can make it better.”
The commander didn’t answer. In fact, he didn’t even move.
Instead, his assistant spoke up, blinking slow-moving lids over yellow-slitted eyes. “You help? Why?”
Turning to her guard, she appraised him anew. “I’m a doctor. It’s what we do. We help people.”
“Timcree not people. We not human.”
“I help everyone, then.”
The Timcree blinked again.
The third Timcree groaned on the floor.
Unperturbed, the assistant asked, “How you know how to help Timcree? We different inside.”
It suddenly occurred to her that neither Timcree had told her she couldn’t help. They just hadn’t given her a straight command to do so. Having lived in a military environment for the last six years, Jo chided herself for unconsciously waiting to be told what to do. She moved to the stocked drawers in the room. “Not that different.”
Jo thought she saw a slight smile on the Timcree’s face as she retrieved an injector and a pain dose from one of the drawers. She was just about to inject a pain blocker into the Timcree when the door opened and two adrenaline-fueled Marines advanced into the room, rifles leveled.
Her surrogate father, Admiral Halloway, strode in behind them. He spoke with deadly calm to the Timcree commander. “Let my sailors go, or I will shoot yours!”
The assistant spoke. “Give us medicine nanites. We pay. Then she go.”
Jack pointed toward the Timcree on the floor. The Marines aimed their weapons. Seeing Jo holding the injector, he said, “Stand back!”
Jo never took kindly to orders, least of all from Jack. She continued her work, injecting her patient. She squared her shoulders, raised her eyebrows, and tried her best to speak calmly. “No. I won’t stand back. No one is going to die today. If they had wanted to kill me, they could have done so long ago. If you shoot him, you’ll have to shoot me.”
Jack’s face turned blotchy with anger. His jaw seemed to throb as he chewed on words that would not come. Finally, he whispered, “Stand up.”
Jo recognized the danger in his tone and decided she’d made her point, and besides, she’d given her patient the pain blocker he needed. She stood.
Jack turned his attention to the Timcree commander. His voice was even and strict. “I think you mistake me. This isn’t a negotiation. Let my sailors go, or I start shooting people.”
The commander shifted in his seat on the bed. For a few seconds, he turned and communicated with the Timcree assistant who whispered back.
The assistant gestured to Jo. “You know her?”
Jack didn’t answer and continued to look at the commander. “You have about five seconds.”
The assistant spoke. “We do this. We do not want to hurt anyone. We need medicine.”
One of the Marine’s heads-up devices pipped at him. He spoke. “The hatch to the penetrator is open, sir. The other hostage is safe. The Timcree has laid down his arms.”
Jack squinted at the assistant, his jaw set tight, hands still on his hips. “No intentions to harm anyone? Then why did you attack a hospital ship?”
Carefully, the assistant also laid down his weapon. He opened his mouth to answer but didn’t seem able to find the words. Finally, he gave up and stayed silent.
Jack didn’t seem ready to cool down. “Jo, stand behind me.”
Jo hesitated, torn. Right now she really wanted to keep feeling loved, to have Jack make her feel safe, but she worried that if she stepped out of the room, the Timcree might simply be bound and thrown into the brig. That wouldn’t sit right with Jo. These weren’t criminals—even if they technically had done something bad.
So instead of leaving, she looked at her father, gently shaking her head. Carefully, pointing to the Timcree writhing on the ground, she spoke almost at a whisper, “He’s hurt. Now that no one is being threatened, I’d like to do my job.”
For a moment, she thought he would object. Then she saw the curiosity in his eyes. He also wanted to know why the Timcree were here. His lips remained pressed into a tight line, but he gave her a single curt nod of his head.
Jack returned his attention to the commander. “Why are you on this ship?”
Again, the assistant answered. “We need medicine nanites. Mothers and children sick, dying. No get well.”
The commander held up his hand, silencing his underling. After a moment, he let his hand rest in his lap again. He spoke in perfect English, modulated by the electronics of the suit.
“The Timcree have no quarrel with the Ghost Fleet. For the last six years, we have gone about our separate ways. If we wanted a quarrel, we could have had one. If we wanted you to leave our space, we could have told the Unity where to find you. Until now, we’ve had nothing to do with you. Only need has driven us to break the separation between our two peoples. Consider this carefully.”
The commander paused for a beat and then went on. “Our people are dying. Healthy people, people in their prime, not the ill or old. Slowly now, but more every day. Last year it was one here or there. Then this year it was one each month. When I left, one a week was dying, with many, many more falling ill. Most live no more than a few weeks, a few last longer. They all die. The Kree in this system are not alone. I have heard of this same disease in other places, always the same story. Timcree get sick and they die, but it does not happen to the Gravlanders.” The commander let the implications linger. “Some are beginning to say that it is a gene redactor come back, or that the corporations left behind a time bomb in our DNA that will now wipe us out.”
Without giving himself time to think, Jack spoke, shaking his head. “That’s impossible. The last known gene redactor was destroyed four hundred years ago.”
Until they were freed, large portions of the Timcree genome had belonged to the corporations that had created the Timcree. When a Timcree was punished or tried to escape, the corporations used a gene redactor to remove the parts of their genome owned by the corporation. The effect was a slow and painful death.
The commander sat a little straighter. His shoulders squared. “That may be so, but it does not matter. The Timcree will not survive it.”
Jack’s brow furrowed as he frowned. His voice dripped with sarcasm. “You attacked our fleet, damaged one of our vessels, and now you want to negotiate with us? Explain to me how that’s supposed to work.”
The Timcree commander shifted on the bed. He recrossed his arms and spoke slowly. “The Timcree are a proud people. We are not humans, and most of us will not take help from humans, unless in the most dire need, and even then it is shameful. Do you understand? Medicine freely given would taint the very people it saves. That would never be accepted by our people.”
For Jo, that explanation explained much about Timcree behavior. But Jack looked even more incredulous. “No matter what your reasons, I doubt I could convince the admirals to freely help you now, even if I were so inclined. This was a really stupid plan, one that’s most likely to end with you in the brig.”
He paused, waiting.
The commander sat still, letting the comment stand without rebuttal.
Jack puffed and held up his hands. “Okay. No response. You said you could pay for the nanites. What do you have to offer? I doubt it will be enough.”
The commander spoke without moving, but his voice carried just a hint of sarcasm. “Tritium.”
Jack took a step back. “How much?”
“Six tons at standard pressure.”
Jo hadn’t spent any time studying the engines on the Ghost Fleet, but even she knew that six tons was a large amount of fuel, capable of running the fleet for perhaps a year or more.
Jack squinted. “Six tons?
“Now you know
my desperation,” the Timcree said matter-of-factly.
Jack nodded his understanding. His arms fell loosely to his side. He shook his head. “But I’m even more confused. If you’re offering six tons of tritium, why not just hail us and ask us to trade with you?”
Again the commander shifted uneasily. Even through the suit, it sounded as if his words were painful to him. “It would be better at home if my people thought that I had stolen the medicine or at least forced you to give it to me. There is no taint in stealing from a Gravlander.”
Jack’s cheeks flushed a little. Jo knew he wasn’t at all happy with the answer, but it didn’t seem to be enough to put him off the scent of a needed resource. “I see. So if you could have gotten away with stealing it, you would have.” Jack stood there for a moment, silent. Jo wondered if he was thinking about his own past, when he was once the person trying to steal. “Well, I will have to check with my superiors, but I think that we will be able to sell you a quantity of nanites. It seems we both have something the other desperately needs.”
The commander slapped his thighs in a gesture that Jo took for agreement and satisfaction. However, he spoke hesitantly. “There is one other item… Our medicine is crude. We could find a way to use these nanites to treat our people, but I worry that it will take us a long time. I am not sure that we have that time.” He let the statement trail off.
“Are you suggesting that we treat your people?” Jack asked, slightly aghast.
“Unfortunately, no.” The commander shook his head. “Most Timcree would not accept Gravlander healing. It would take a great many more deaths before my people would come to the Ghost Fleet. In the past, there has been too much hurt. No, I was wondering if one of your people might be willing to come with us.” It was hard to tell in the suit, but Jo thought that the commander’s head turned ever so slightly her direction. “One doctor, or even a nurse, might be of great service.”