Third Player

by Warren James Palmer

  Gulag saw what the mutant woman was trying to do, and he was having none of it. Colmarrie was lining herself up to be in charge of the Dominator, and she was doing it by winning the officers over to her cause. He admired her guile, but the ship was still his, and would remain so for as long as the crew, trained in running Dominator, remained loyal to him. He had to get his shit together or lose the prize.

  ‘Which is why,’ he interrupted before Colmarrie finished, ‘I shall find us a course home with the help of my people, who are trained in the running of the ship. But, while I’m busy controlling the Dominator, it’ll be necessary as you say, to forge a complete crew. Which is why I am making you Colmarrie, my executive officer.’

  The imposing mutant woman turned and stared hard at the clone, then a small smile appeared on her face. ‘Well met clone!’ she thought at him. She knew that the majority of the ship’s crew were still loyal to Gulag. She wasn’t in a position to effect a take-over, at least not yet. ‘So be it—for the present, at least.’

  The clone swept around the table with his eyes, daring anyone to challenge his authority. He saw Josh Brabazon look at the marine captain then give a small, almost imperceptible, shrug. Excellent! He may have taken a pounding, his self-confidence might be shattered, but the ship remained his! He might have to face a psychotic computer, mutiny, his own sanity, and return them all to recognizable space, but right now, the ship was still his. So how come he felt like the hand of death was always on his shoulder?

  He buried his doubts and looked at the engineering officer. ‘So Ikutisk, what’s the status of our main engines? When can we get underway again?’

  The engineer looked at the notes on his palm-pad. ‘Well sir, the main engines went into emergency shutdown and all power was diverted to status fields to maintain the singularities the moment you err…warped space sir.’

  ‘Are the singularities still correctly centered in the fields?’ Josh Brabazon asked anxiously.

  ‘Yes they are,’ the engineer confirmed. ‘The multi-dimensional nature of singularities meant that they were unaffected by the warp. They’re stable, but it’ll take time to bring them back on line.’

  ‘How long will that take?’ Gulag demanded impatiently.

  ‘Between thirty-six and forty-eight hours sir.’

  ‘Do we have any maneuvering power at all?’

  ‘A minimal amount only,’ Brabazon answered for the hard put-upon engineer. ‘We have enough power in the engines to roll and turn the Dominator, but that’s about all we can do. Until the singularities are fully back on line, we’re basically adrift.’

  Gulag tapped on the table top impatiently. This was bad news, he’d been hoping they could get underway immediately. He felt instinctively that they had to be on the move as soon as possible, but they weren’t going to be able to go anywhere for quite a while—shit!

  ‘Josh,’ he asked the wiry scientist, ‘can you help Ikutisk and try to shave a few hours off that estimate? I want propulsion as soon as possible.’

  Brabazon shrugged and replied, ‘Yeah, okay. I’ll do what I can.’

  ‘Good. Now, have we any clues as to where we might be?’ the clone demanded of his navigation officer.

  She shook her head. ‘No sir. I’m sorry but none of the star configurations match the stellar maps in the data bank. I’m not even sure we’re in the same galaxy cluster as Dyason. We could be anywhere sir. However, there is a star system relatively close by. We re-entered normal space at near light-speed, and our current heading is taking us toward this star system.

  ‘How long until we get there my friend?’ Colmarrie asked the officer.

  ‘We’ll be at the edge of the system in just under twenty-five ship hours.’

  ‘Once we’re in this system, is it possible that you’ll be able to identify it by the size and type of planets?’ Gulag asked her.

  ‘It’s a possibility sir, but I won’t know for sure until we get there. The system definitely has some planets orbiting around the sun. However, we’ll need to get closer for the sensors to be able to make any kind of in-depth analysis,’ she replied.

  ‘Okay get to it, and tell me the moment you have any more information. That counts for the rest of you as well,’ he said to the others in the briefing room. ‘Well, we all know what we’ve got to do, so let’s get on with it!’

  Everyone got up and shuffled out of the room, except Colmarrie. She turned and looked at the clone she had, until so recently, considered to be her mortal enemy. ‘That was well done Gulag. There may be hope for you yet,’ she thought at him. ‘Now let’s get down to business and talk.’

  ‘Fine, let’s do that mutant,’ he replied and they bowed their heads in mental discussion.

  After a hectic twenty-five hours, Gulag and Colmarrie stood next to each other on the bridge of the Dominator. All those on--board the ancient vessel were, for the time being at least, working side by side to bring the ship’s systems on line. When Gulag warped the Dominator out of the orbit of Dyason he stranded several different groups on-board. The majority of the crew were people hand-picked by Gulag from the Imperial services, although their allegiance was now to him, and the ship rather than the Imperial military. It was these people who had resurrected Dominator from its tomb.

  The next largest group on-board were Colmarrie and her mutant fighters. These heavily armed resistance fighters from the wastelands of Dyason came on-board when Dominator launched from the southern deserts. Gulag feared that if push came to shove, these rebels could easily overpower his crew and take control of the ship. Unless, of course, he could enlist the help of the Terran WDF (World Defence Force) marines who came on-board from Excalibur. It was a rag-tag crew, who could end up slitting each others throats at the slightest upset.

  Which was why Colmarrie and Gulag stood together. If they appeared to be co-operating, at least in front of the rest of the crew, then they stood some chance of keeping the different factions under control. Gulag surveyed his domain—at last he felt he had some control over the situation. He was far from happy about his alliance with the mutant woman, but necessity could make for strange bed-fellows. Josh Brabazon and Ikutisk had slaved over the propulsion and power system. They’d managed to supply enough juice to recalibrate all the sensors, however, it would still be another eleven hours before the singularities were back on line. Until then, they were restricted to maneuvering power only.

  Gulag was concerned that they’d heard nothing out of Dominator’s sentient computer. Shalosk, the systems analyst, had just finished a complete scan of the memory banks and found no problems. Everything appeared to be working normally, but only to panel and keyboard commands. They couldn’t talk to Dominator and Dominator wasn’t talking to them. It was a problem that was weighing heavily on Gulag’s shoulders. At the back of his mind was the constant thought that the computer could lock them out of the controls, and become psychotic again, at any time. If and when that happened he couldn’t be sure what would be the best thing to do. He guessed he would just have to cross that bridge when he came to it.

  The main viewer showed a magnified image of the star system they were approaching. The sun was a small star that burned with a more intense white light than the sun that bathed Dyason. It gave out cold, feeble rays that, judging by the ice-bound planets that were caught in its orbit, were insufficient to generate the spark of life.

  ‘This is a cold, lifeless place,’ Colmarrie said with feeling, shuddering slightly. ‘Is it logged in the ship’s astro-bank?’

  Halken, the navigation officer, shook her head with a frown, ‘I’m sorry ma’am but I’ve found no match. There’s nothing in the charts that comes anywhere near it. We may have more joy as we get nearer and we’ve more data to work with, but I’m afraid it’s not looking good.’

  Gulag cursed under his breath. This was what he was afraid of, the dimension they’d warped through had no relevance to normal space, so there was no reason to expect that when they were spat out, they would be anywhe
re near their entry point. What made matters worse, was the fact that none of them, except Josh Brabazon and the marines from Excalibur, had even been in space before. Truth be known, he couldn’t even be sure that his inexperienced crew were even reading the information from their scanners correctly. It was no wonder they were completely lost.

  ‘Keep scanning the area Halken,’ he told the nav-officer with a confidence he didn’t feel. ‘I’m sure you’ll find a match eventually.’

  Colmarrie gave him a sideways glance, but he chose to ignore it. The doors to the turbo-lift whispered open and an exhausted looking Josh Brabazon stepped onto the bridge. He staggered to a spare couch and collapsed in it.

  ‘You look tired friend Josh,’ Colmarrie said with genuine concern. ‘You must not work yourself into the grave. You are far too important to us for that.’

  Brabazon looked up at the giant woman and grinned weakly. ‘Don’t you worry Col, I ain’t about to kick the bucket just yet. How goes it here?’

  ‘We are presently scanning the approaching star system, but without any success,’ she informed him. ‘We still don’t have any sort of fix as to where we are. What news do you have about the engines? When can we get underway?’

  Brabazon lifted his battered baseball cap, scratched the top of his scalp and shrugged. ‘Well, there’s not a lot more I can do. The status fields are working up to full strength. Once they’ve done that we can ease the singularities back toward each other, and we’re ready to rock and roll.’

  Gulag frowned at the human phraseology and asked impatiently, ‘So how long exactly, until we can hyper-jump?’

  ‘Well the engines will be ready in another nine hours,’ Brabazon told him, ‘but even then we won’t be able to go anywhere.’

  ‘Why not?’ Colmarrie asked in surprise.

  ‘Because there ain’t no point in making a hyper-jump unless you know where you are, and where you’re jumping to… Otherwise any jump we make could end up with us reappearing in the centre of a star…or worse.’

  The mutant gave Gulag a long dirty look and the clone cursed. Shit! He’d forgotten all about that. How could he have been so ignorant? Now he’d made himself look stupid in front of the whole crew!

  Noting the friction between the clone and the mutant, Brabazon got up and made his way to the navigation console. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘let me take a look at those readings and see if there’s something out there I might recognise.’

  He pulled up a couch next to Halken and began to examine the data. Gulag dropped into the captain’s chair with a sigh of exasperation and watched the scientist as he poured over the readings. After a few minutes he looked up and said, ‘Well there’s nothing out there that we can get a fix on, but there’s something very interesting close to the second planet of that system.’

  ‘What is it?’ Gulag demanded.

  ‘I’m putting it on the main viewer now.’

  A cold blue and white planet appeared in the top left-hand corner of the viewer, the small sun’s harsh rays reflecting a mass of ice. But that wasn’t what caught the clone’s eye. What fixed his attention was the glint of light on what was unmistakably, another ship, that was slowly tumbling end over end. Then he caught sight of another vessel, different in size and shape, but definitely a starship, also tumbling through space. Then he saw another, and another, until he realised that the system they were heading into was littered with the hulks of derelict starships.

  ‘By the gods!’ he exclaimed. ‘What is that place?’

  ‘I don’t know mate,’ Josh replied his voice cold, ‘but I can tell you one thing—whatever it is, we’re heading straight for it…’

  Colmarrie stared transfixed at the viewer unable to believe what she saw. Gulag broke his gaze and snapped at the nav-officer. ‘Change course! Get us away from that place! Whatever you do, keep us away from there!’

  Josh Brabazon reacted to the desperation in Gulag’s voice and leapt to several consoles, punching at the touch-pads but without effect. ‘We can’t change course!’ he told them.

  ‘What do you mean you can’t change course?’ Colmarrie demanded. ‘Gulag is right, we don’t want to go into that place without knowing what we’re letting ourselves in for.’

  Brabazon stopped tapping at the console and looked at them with worried eyes. ‘We can’t change course, because the controls have been locked! We no longer have control over the ship’s systems! We’re being drawn toward those hulks!’

  Gulag leapt to the helmsman’s position and frantically entered commands himself, but to no avail. Brabazon was right—for whatever reason, the computer had once more locked them out of the flight controls. They were helpless.

  An alarm suddenly intoned, ‘Warning! Warning! Main computer is being compromised by unknown intrusion in system banks. Warning! Warning!’

  Colmarrie and Gulag looked at each other in apprehension and a wave of a new emotion swept through the clone. A wave of cold fear!

  CHAPTER TWO

  Hall of Representatives, Caranak

  ‘This is outrageous! What you’re suggesting is treachery! The Imperial government will not stand for it! Better that we all die than capitulate to our enemies!’ the bloated general bellowed from his seat in the Hall of Representatives.

  ‘Then, so be it general!’ the tall academic-looking Dyason snapped back from the speaker’s podium. ‘If the whole of the military council want to kill themselves, be it not for me to stop them!. In fact, I’m sure there will be no shortage of volunteers to help them along the way! The rest of us, however, wish to survive long enough to see our children grow up, and the only way we’re going to be able to do that, is to accept the offer of assistance from the Terran! Or is that too simple a concept for your minute brain to accept?’

  A cheer rose from the hundreds of ordinary citizens who’d forced their way into the Hall of Representatives. The city of Caranak was now firmly in the hands of the Democratic Front, with gangs of self-appointed militia roaming the streets, lynching anyone they believed to have sympathies for the Imperial regime. The local garrison commanders had ordered their troops to remain in their barracks until the situation became clearer. They’d throw their weight behind whoever was going to be the clear winner in the political maelstrom.

  The obese general blanched, but said nothing. For all his bluster, he knew the ruling military council were perilously close to being overthrown. Several military district commanders had already thrown their weight behind the rapidly growing Democratic Front. In other areas of the planet, civil war had broken out, with casualties already running into the hundreds of thousands. The bizarre, unbelievable, incident with Nimue and the impostor posing as the Emperor, had been the spark that lit the fires of dissent. Vast areas of the planet that retained strong nationalist feelings were dissolving into anarchy. It made him mad! All those years of toil to unify the world, and bring discipline to the people, had been undone in one short night of madness!

  ‘You and your revolutionary friends are forgetting one important point,’ Chelekov, the admiral of what was left of the space fleet, stood up and announced. ‘There is not one, but two alien battle-cruisers in orbit around Dyason. You may be able to do a deal with the Terrans, but what about the other ship? Why are they here? Are they in allegiance with the Terrans? How do you know that they aren’t just waiting for you to invite them onto Dyason? Once here how, are you going to get rid of them?’

  The auditorium dissolved into chatter as everyone began to argue over what Chelekov was saying. The leaders of the Democratic Front and the civilian politicians who had sided with them were desperate to overthrow the military junta, but nobody wanted to see one dictatorship replaced by another. Fear and distrust was an inherent part of the Dyason psyche. The Terrans might be offering to solve all their ecological problems, but what did they want in return? Wouldn’t they be seeking revenge for the rape and invasion of their own world? And Chelekov was right, what about the other battle-cruiser? Who were they and what did the
y want?

  Ten days had passed since the great space battle saw the destruction of the military junta’s last folly. Since then, whilst negotiations had begun with the Terrans, nothing had been heard from the other starship. The aliens had ignored all attempts to communicate with them. Their vessel remained in orbit above the planet—vast, potent and menacing. To the mistrusting, fearful people of Dyason it seemed that the aliens were watching and waiting, biding their time before they made their intent known.

  ‘While we’re all standing here bickering, our world faces either destruction or enslavement,’ Chelekov told them all. ‘I’m not so foolish as to believe that we can save our environment without assistance, but we must have something we can bargain with. At the moment, the Imperial forces are all that stand between you, and Terran domination. Destroy us and you’ll be doing their work for them.’

  ‘Enslaved by the Terrans, or enslaved by the Imperial junta, what difference does it make?’ a red-faced politician called out from the front row of the senators’ benches. ‘If we accept the offer of help from the ship Excalibur, at least we’ll all be alive. We can argue about the merits of how we live later! Your argument is ridiculous!’

  ‘Pah! You’re all nothing but a group of feeble-minded women!’ a war-wounded veteran of the Earth invasion force stood yelling back at the senator, ‘You know nothing of these Terran’s. They only respond to might and the gun! It’s the only way to get their respect! I was on their damned planet, and I can tell you, that they are in league with this other vessel. The bastards are just waiting for you morons to invite them down. Why bother to invade when idiots like you, will just give our world to them? Prove me wrong!’

  There was a commotion from the back of the auditorium and three figures forced their way through the crowd. ‘I’ll prove you wrong!’ the lead figure bellowed in a strong authoritative voice. ‘Let us through and I’ll prove you all wrong!’

  Hillmead, the gutsy street cop, marched toward the podium, past the surprised stares of the citizens, senators and military junta. There was a buzz of whispering from the senators and a low chant rose from their throats, ‘Hillmead! Hillmead!’ Without even realising it, the ex-cop had become a hero of the people of Caranak. He’d been the one who had stood up to the might of the Imperial dictatorship. He’d been the one who had brought the Emperor back to his people, no matter how briefly. He’d been the catalyst that had started the rebellion that was still taking place.