War of the Spheres

by B. V. Larson

  Big Al shifted in a predatory fashion, hunching in his chair.

  “Did you say something about… a sale?”

  “Well, we’re explorers not traders, but we’re reasonable under the surface just like any civilized folk,” Jessup said. “Your species comprehends trade, don’t you?”

  Al hesitated, considering his answer. He nodded at last. “That is… possible. It has been done. But how would this trade you suggest—?”

  “How would it work out?” Jessup asked. “Glad you brought that up. Here’s the deal…”

  He proceeded to negotiate details in a manner that I considered impressive coming from a Fleet captain. He seemed like he’d make a fairly competent frontier pirate. If Col. Hughes had even heard any of this, I knew she’d call him a traitor out loud. She wouldn’t have been able to help herself.

  Likewise, Allie and Cmdr. Collins were casting him worried sidelong glances. Fortunately, Jessup’s tyrannical nature paid off for once. His crew didn’t dare speak up and blow it.

  Like them, I managed to keep my own mouth shut. My hackles were up, and I was already planning to mutiny if he proceeded to actually perform any of the actions he’d promised—but that was the thing.

  His deal was all promises on our part. We’d take the engine, we’d take a Vehk engineer with us back to Earth to conclude the deal, and we’d deliver their engine promptly a month from now. We’d teach the engineer how to install and maintain it, as well. Free of charge.

  In return, they’d let us take our engine back and keep the technical gizmos (Jessup’s word, not mine) that I’d purloined. After that, they could do as they wished as long as they agreed not to enter Earth’s Sphere and attack us.

  “So you see?” Jessup concluded. “We all win. Now that’s a fair bargain.”

  Big Al squirmed. “It would be preferable and simpler if you would withdraw from this region of space. We will take this unit, and we will install it ourselves. We have no need—”

  “Forget it, Al,” Jessup interrupted. “We humans are stupid. As dumb as oxen, the lot of us—but we’re not total fools. Take our generous deal, or we blow up the engine.”

  “In that case, we would be forced to destroy your ship moments later.”

  Jessup shrugged, disinterested. “Here we go again,” he sighed. “I’d rather go down fighting right here, right now, than starve to death lost in the out-system. We can’t get home, and we—”

  “…another engine is being produced,” Al persisted. “You said that. Surely, your fellows will come out here and aid you. All you have to do is wait for them.”

  “Al—listen: I like you. I like you a lot. I’m a fair judge of character, and I can tell you’re an alien that’s honest and trustworthy. Unfortunately, I can’t let you just take the drive and fly off. If I did that, you might be tempted to destroy us so you wouldn’t have to keep your half of the bargain.”

  “What you suggest is inconsistent. How can you call us trustworthy then state a scenario in which we’re treacherous?”

  “Because I might be wrong, friend!” Jessup said, throwing his hands wide. “There, I admitted it. I know in my heart you’re a good alien—but I can’t go by my instincts alone. I have responsibilities.”

  “…absurd…” Al complained.

  “I know how you feel. Really, I do. But real trust is earned by deeds, not words. Let’s make this deal and take that first small step toward a brighter tomorrow.”

  It was clear that Big Al was trying everything he could think of to talk Jessup into giving up the engine and backing off. If either of them would have listened, I could have told them they’d arrived at a stalemate already.

  Jessup might be a blowhard and an asshole—but he wasn’t a fool. As far as Al was concerned… well, the same probably applied to him, too.

  “So, what about it, Al?” Jessup pressed. “Let’s just take a chance and do it! What do you say?”

  Big Al muted his communications device next, and he seemed to confer with others off-camera. Perhaps they were his officers.

  Finally, he came back online.

  “We’ll accept, on one condition.”

  “Name it, Al my man!”

  The alien aimed a bony, crooked finger in my direction. “That one, the Gray-man will come with us. It is different than all the other humans we’ve encountered. We suspect, in fact, that it is not human at all.”

  Jessup blinked. It was his turn to be surprised.

  “Huh…” he said, turning to look at me. “What do you plan to do with him? Put him in prison?”

  “No. That would be unhelpful. Some of our enemies are very artful in their disguises. Dissection is the only way to be sure.”

  Jessup looked at me, frowning. Was he considering accepting the alien’s deal? For his sake, I hoped not.

  “No deal,” Jessup said after a moment’s hesitation. “Chief Gray is critical to my mission team. You can keep your secrets, and we’ll keep ours.”

  “Just so…” Al said. “Do I understand the alteration of the deal as described?”

  “Eh? What’s that? Are you backing out?”

  “Not entirely. But we can’t allow you to keep any of our technology if we aren’t allowed to keep a prisoner or the engine. Surely, even a spawnling fresh from its egg sac can see that.”

  “Oh…” Jessup said thoughtfully. “You want your equipment back? In trade for the engine?”

  “Yes… When you return with our engine, you can take one of our personal transpositional devices with you. Are we agreed?”

  Jessup had the balls to make a show of thinking it over—but he kept that brief.

  “Very well. You drive a hard bargain, Al, but I’m going to let you have this one!”

  Privately, he flashed me a grin.

  I nodded in return, but I was still nervous. I’d be relieved only when all this got us back inside our Sphere.

  The irony of the moment did strike through to me then. Here we were, at least as desperate to break back into our cage as we’d been to escape it in the first place. I imagined many species had felt the same way when they first encountered the savage world outside their protective enclosures.

  Finally, the deal was struck. We nosed Viper forward, opened up the main hold’s external hatch, and sucked the engine inside like it was a tasty morsel. As an act of good faith, I relinquished the equipment I’d yanked off of Big Al’s avatar on Viper’s bilge deck and we jettisoned that out of an air lock.

  Frantically, Col. Hughes’ engineering team began working to reconnect the engine.

  “Fillmore, Gevan,” Jessup said over the intercom. “Pull it together, guys. I know you two aren’t in love, but we need some magic right about now. We’re still under the Vehk guns.”

  The alien battleship, for its part, watched us as we dragged away the prize that floated in space between us and worked like furious ants to reattach it.

  Moving down below to the hold, I found Jessup was right. Fillmore and old man Gevan were bickering about power leads and pre-attachment piping strategies. No technical detail was so arcane that these two didn’t have opposing views over it.

  Getting into the thick of it, I soon tuned them out. I found the work went quickly. When you’re staring down the muzzles of enemy cannons, it’s amazing how much you can get done in a short amount of time.

  Just as we were securing the final straps and nozzles, I heard Gevan give a squawk of alarm.

  I whirled—but he wasn’t under attack. Not exactly.

  The engine was glowing. Working up a charge. It was going to ignite soon. We all knew what the sequence looked like.

  “Colonel Hughes!” I shouted. “We’re still in the hold! There’s bound to be a radiation surge!”

  She didn’t answer. Maybe she wasn’t in charge. Maybe Jessup had decided to sacrifice us with a quick jump—he could always calculate the butcher’s bill later.

  Hustling techs in jumpsuits and a few hapless spacers, I got them all out of the hold and piled
up in the ship’s passages.

  We didn’t have time to seal the bulkhead. We just closed it. We didn’t even cover the small, triangular porthole that gave us a good view of the engine as it glowed into life.

  Most hid their eyes. I did the same, with one hand over one eye—but I was still caught in the glare. A blinding flash that grew and grew in intensity, transforming into a silent blue-white sunburst.

  We entered the in-between. There was a jolt to it, an odd feeling I knew all too well by now.

  Something I saw after that—it had to be a mistake. It had to be a trick of my shocked retina—but I knew, even as I saw them and tried to make excuses—that this wasn’t an illusion. It wasn’t my imagination, either.

  The hold was filling with Vehk spawn-guards. They were stepping into existence, one after another, all around the engine. They’d gone in-between, and they’d come back out again inside the chamber with the engine the moment we’d engaged it.

  Chapter 47

  After a brief, sickening ride through space-time, the universe righted itself again. The ship became solid and the shock-faced people around me did the same.

  It took precious moments for me to communicate what I was seeing up the chain of command to Jessup. Fortunately, he already knew the score.

  A throng of armed spacers appeared. There had been a few before, watching us nervously as we worked like devils to connect the drive—but now, they descended on us with purpose.

  Cmdr. Collins led the charge. He threw open the hatch, and his security team dropped into the sub-deck and confronted the aliens who now surrounded the engine.

  “Hold it right there, Vehk-scum,” he said, aiming his pistol at an alien who was yanking on a power-coupling.

  As the spacers were armed, they expected no resistance, but the Vehk—one of the small, dark pets—didn’t even look up. He gestured toward Collins with a claw-like hand, and his larger, pale comrades surged forward.

  There was a half-second, maybe, of quiet surprise. But then the shooting started. I’m not sure who fired first, but a dozen shots rang out, almost at once—then perhaps twenty more.

  The Vehk were staggered, but they fought on like wounded demons. They tore at the men who kept coming into the hold, closing into hand-to-hand.

  There, the advantage quickly switched. The Vehk were masters of close-in fighting. They ripped spacers open, revealing teeth under torn-loose cheeks. They gouged and slashed, spilling intestines with their hard, claw-like hands.

  I joined in the melee. How could I do otherwise? The fight was to the finish, I could see that now.

  All our bargaining with Big Al had been false, and he’d met us at least equally with lies of his own. While Jessup had believed he was bamboozling credulous aliens, they in turn had been scheming to screw us the first moment they could.

  Their plot was simple enough. Since they could not risk allowing Viper to fire upon and destroy the engine, they’d decided to fall back—at least, to pretend they were retreating.

  All the while, they’d sent troops across the short jaunt between our two vessels to invade our ship and wait. The moment we’d begun to fire up the warp drive, they’d returned to our material plane in order to make sure they went with the jumping ship.

  What was their plan after that point? To take over our ship? Probably. Short of that, they could always steal the engine again and make off with it as they had before.

  This time, they’d sent a bigger team. There had to be twenty of them.

  Fortunately, there were an equal number of human spacers on hand, and we were armed. What’s more, I think the initial flash of light and radiation must have taken its toll, because they weren’t fighting quite as tenaciously as they had in the past.

  In the end, after a brutal struggle, all the Vehk were killed. They fought to the last, refusing to surrender. It was a grim thing, firing my weapon point-blank into the exposed belly of the last one—but we had to do it. They weren’t going to stop for anything less than a state of death, and it was all too possible they’d damage the drive rather than submit to capture.

  Afterward, staunching the blood flowing out of my torn left thigh, I moved to congratulate Cmdr. Collins—but was too late.

  He was sprawled out on the deck, eyes staring at nothing in surprise.

  “Shit…” I said. “Sorry I let you down, Collins.”

  “You didn’t let anyone down, Gray,” said a voice from the doorway.

  It was Jessup. I moved painfully among the dead, ignoring him. The final corpse I discovered surprised me most of all, however. Dr. Gevan lay out in the hallway.

  “A stray bullet?” I asked. “Or was it a heart attack?”

  “Does it matter?” Jessup asked.

  I didn’t answer, because he was right. It didn’t matter. The man had died, and that was that. At least he’d been graced by the glory of seeing his creation work, and even better, he’d briefly experienced the freedom of traveling beyond the Great Sphere.

  Noticing that Fillmore was standing nearby, looking distraught, I decided to move on. It looked like Fillmore cared more about his colleague than he’d ever let on. Too bad they’d done nothing but bicker while the old man was still around.

  “Did you get them all?” Jessup asked. “The aliens, Gray—are they gone?”

  I nodded, wiping blood away. “I think so. They were all in the hold with the engine.”

  “You know…” he said. “I’d expected some kind of trickery, but I’m still marveling at their directness. They aren’t trustworthy at all. Damn it! Do you know what that means, Chief?”

  I looked at him, curious as to what he’d say.

  “It means I have to stop drinking. I was worried this moment would come, you see... Have you noticed that I’ve been sober for over a week now?”

  Pretending that I had noticed, I nodded. In truth, I hadn’t had time to worry about the captain’s state of mind. I’d been too worried about survival and the safety of the drive.

  “That’s right,” he continued, “a whole week. And it’s going to have to stay that way. It’s making me moody.”

  “You don’t say?”

  He glanced at me reproachfully, but he didn’t complain. He sighed instead.

  “That’s right,” he repeated. “Everything’s changed because Earth is at war now. The pretense is over and done with. A man like me can’t drink during times of war. When I’m safe in a port and bored out of my skull, sure, I like a drink as much as the next man. Maybe more than the next man… but that’s all over with. For the duration of this conflict, I’m going to remain utterly clear-minded. I’m determined to perform at my peak.”

  “That’s good news, sir,” I said neutrally.

  As he spoke, Dr. Jillian Brandt had shown up. She was patching bloody holes in spacers right and left. When she finally got around to me, she was clucking her tongue and making hissing sounds while squinting her eyes. Apparently, I had a few serious injuries, which I hadn’t bothered to look at.

  Jessup eyed Brandt for a moment, but then he surprised me further by slipping an arm around my shoulder. “And you, Gray… You’re a prize, did you know that?”

  “Uh…”

  “That alien fucker wanted to dissect you, Gray. No one else. That makes me want you—just to spite him.”

  “I’m not sure where this is—”

  “Really? You’re not sure? I’m asking you to take a commission aboard my ship, Gray. I’m down one commander. Didn’t you notice?”

  We both looked at Cmdr. Collins. The spacers were lifting him up and carrying him out with the rest of the bodies to sick bay.

  “Poor old Collie,” Jessup said. “He was the best officer a man could have—in peacetime, that is. He could quartermaster this ship down to the hour for any voyage you care to name. He kept tabs on every crewman, every round of ammo in the hold… but that’s the work of a manager. We need warriors in the fleet now.”

  “What makes you think this will turn into a war, Captai
n?” Jillian suddenly asked Jessup. “Can’t we just live inside our Sphere and mind our own business if we want to? There’s no need to go out there and fight them.”

  Jessup chuckled grimly. “You don’t know humans the way I do, Dr. Brandt. We won’t take this lying down. We’ll gear up, and we’ll confront. We always do.”

  Dr. Brandt turned away. I knew her well enough—she didn’t want to think of people that way even if it was true.

  “Chief Gray, I could really use a war-dog such as yourself,” Jessup said. “Think about it.”

  The captain walked off then, and Jillian continued to fuss over me.

  She was talking, but I didn’t hear her. Not really. I was thinking hard, staring after Jessup.

  Could he be right? Was mankind entering a new era of interstellar conflict? It certainly seemed like the universe just outside our doorstep was chockfull of bloodthirsty, conniving aliens. That much I was certain of.

  As for my part in such a future conflict—that wasn’t up to me. It was up to the Watchers, really. My next mission might involve this situation and these people—or it might not.

  Minutes slid into hours, and as soon as I could escape Jillian, I found a bunk and crawled into it.

  Sometime later on, I awoke with a start.

  Someone was touching me, a dark shape in my tiny cabin.

  Fortunately, I didn’t react with violence. It was a close thing, but I managed to recognize her fragrance before my muscles could strike out in paranoia.

  It was Jillian.

  Allowing her fine form to crawl into bed with me, I felt her press her soft breasts against my side in the too-small bunk.

  All I did was sleep, however. I was too tired to do more than clumsily pat her on the back.

  Chapter 48

  Colonel Hughes came to check on me in the morning.

  The ship was quiet, but my cabin wasn’t. As there was nowhere for Dr. Brandt to hide, Hughes could hardly miss Jillian as she sat on my bunk and arranged her clothing.

  What I’d lacked in energy the night before, I’d made up for when I’d awakened to find her sleeping beside me. It was a nice release of tension after so many days of living on the edge—but it was more than that. We had a bond strengthening between us, and that felt good.