111 Souls (Infinite Universe)

by Justin Bohardt

  “Fix?” Jennings demanded. He received a non-committal shrug in reply. Taking that as a sign that the doctor was on board, he turned to Squawk and asked, “Do you have an issue with my orders?”

  “Sir, no, sir,” Squawk said and then saluted.

  “Well, it’s up to you now,” Jennings said to Michelle. “Do you hand over the gun and trust me, or do we all die?”

  “I don’t trust you,” Michelle fired back, but her conviction was not as strong as before.

  “You don’t have to,” he replied. “There are only two possibilities. You choose to think I am lying in which case we all will die together. Or you choose to believe me, and then it’s a fifty-fifty shot as to whether or not I keep my word.”

  She looked to consider that for a moment while Lafayette said, “Mademoiselle, if Captain Jennings gives you his word, you may rest assured that he intends to keep it.”

  After another long look of indecision, she at last lowered the weapon and handed it over to Fix. He pulled the power charge out of it and then lay it down as he turned back to his station. Michelle crossed her arms awkwardly and refused to make eye contact with any of them. She was still wearing the mini-skirt, low-cut top, and knee high boots from the brothel in Storm Haven. Her make-up had streaked across her face though from her earlier tears.

  “Lafayette, please keep me apprised as we approach the asteroid in question,” Jennings said as he stood up. “I’m going to help Ms. Williams get more comfortable and maybe get her a bite to eat. In point of fact, why don’t you make us one of your fine culinary creations, Marquis? Since we may be about to die anyway, we certainly could use a decent final meal.”

  Lafayette nodded. “Once the auto-pilot is secure-synched, I’ll get started,” he said.

  Jennings gave a slight bow in deference to the chef and gestured Michelle out of the cockpit.

  “You’re not taking me back to that closet you call a cabin, are you?” she asked as they headed back to the living area.

  “No, not that it would do any good considering the locks don’t work,” Jennings pointed out. “I thought you might like to change out of those clothes. It’s been a few hours, and I am guessing that they weren’t really your choice to begin with.”

  “What? You don’t think I normally dress like a middle-class prostitute?” she demanded.

  “Well, sometimes it’s hard to differentiate between the ways a college student and a hooker dress, but you strike me as a T-shirt type,” he replied good-naturedly.

  “What makes you say that?” she asked as they arrived at the captain’s cabin and he opened the door.

  “I’m guessing with your family’s money and connections you went to some sort of extremely prestigious boarding school back in Old Europe,” he explained as he rummaged through some drawers. “The kind where you had to have a specific school uniform that you wore every day, plaid skirts, white dress shirts, et cetera.”

  “So what if I did?” she asked.

  “I just know that if I had been forced to wear the same damn overly formal and stuffy clothes for twelve years, I would wear a T-shirt when I got to college,” he said.

  She laughed. It was a pretty, bright sound. “You’re not nearly as stupid as you look,” she said.

  “No, I probably am,” he pointed out. “I just wore a uniform every day too. Now, I can’t stand the fucking thing. A ha!” he cried out victoriously.

  He tossed her a green T-shirt that had GROPOS stamped in large black letters, a pair of black sweat pants, and a white pair of space socks. “It’s been a while since we had any women on the crew, well, never in point of fact, so we don’t have any…um,” Jennings mimed wrapping his hands around his thighs and buttocks.

  “Panties?” she suggested.

  “Exactly,” he agreed, pointing a finger at her for emphasis.

  “I’ll make do,” she said as she stripped off the top. She was not wearing a bra.

  “Whoa,” Jennings said as he spun back around. By a strange instinct, he raised his hands in the air as if he were about to be arrested.

  “Something you’ve never seen before?” she asked as she continued changing.

  “No,” he replied. “It’s just…”

  “Gay?” she asked.

  He almost turned around to argue, caught himself and said, “No, ma’am, I’m just exceedingly polite. It doesn’t seem right to be ogling a young woman that you’re not in a relationship with. A much younger woman,” he added.

  “I turned twenty yesterday,” she pointed out.

  “I turned twenty too many yesterdays ago,” Jennings said.

  “You look fine to me,” she said. “What are you? Thirty?”

  “Twenty-eight,” he replied defensively.

  She laughed. “I’m done; you can turn around,” she said.

  Michelle Williams looked like a beautiful college student once again, too frazzled to care what she was wearing and still managing to look unbelievably cute. The hormonal side of Jennings was kicking the chivalrous side for not getting a better look at her a few moments before.

  “If you want to get washed up, the bathroom is right there,” he said, nodding in the direction of the small alcove that barely qualified as a bathroom. She headed in that direction. “Shower won’t be working with the mains down, but you should be able to wash your face.”

  “Wow, I look hideous,” she muttered from the bathroom as she turned on the faucet. There was a long pause until the water was shut off at last. “Why the sudden change?” she asked at last.

  “What’s that?” Jennings replied.

  She stepped back out, the long streaks of mascara and eyeliner gone, and said, “You could have waited for me to make a mistake or pretended to cooperate with me. I didn’t even know how to use that gun for God’s sake. Either you’re an exceptional liar and have me convinced that you are actually going to let me go, or you’ve done a remarkable about face.”

  Jennings sighed. “I was never a big fan of working for the Gael in the first place, and I suppose I rationalized it a little bit because we needed the money badly,” he began as he crashed into an easy chair, a fine layer of dust billowing up from it as he did. “It was even easier when your file said you were a member of anti-Gael, pro-Resistance groups at school; your parents were collaborators; you were a confirmed terrorist. I told myself that it was all right to do this for the Gael, because I hate the way the Resistance goes about its business. I loathe self-righteousness being used to excuse terrorism. Until we talked for the first time, it had never occurred to me how badly the Gael were using me. It wouldn’t surprise me if they doctored your file and tailored it specifically to play upon my own emotional reactions, the manipulative bastards. You called me a Gael lackey, and you were right.”

  “I’m sorry I said that,” she replied. “I was just trying to lash out.”

  “But you’re right,” he said. “Well, you were right, but no more. Assuming we survive the next few hours, I’ll tell the Gael something, anything. We’ll send them a new message letting them know you escaped in our shuttle and we’re back in pursuit. Eventually, we’ll lose your trail.”

  “Do you think that will work?” she asked.

  He shrugged as he pulled himself back up to his feet. “It’s better than the alternative,” Jennings said. “Because I am not giving you to those Gael bastards.”

  Faster than he would have expected, she rushed forward and wrapped her arms around his back. Within another few moments, there was the unmistakable sound of sobbing and Jennings could feel her body tremoring against his. Gently, he placed his own arms around her and squeezed her softly. As he felt her tears begin to soak his T-shirt, he placed a hand on her head and stroked her hair gently.

  “You’re all right now,” he whispered.

  “It was horrible,” she stammered. “It was so horrible.”

  “Do you want to tell me about it?” he whispered.

  For the next hour, she stayed in his arms and told her the epic of
her ordeal. Once in a while, Jennings would offer some small word of comfort, but for the most part he just let Michelle talk of what she would, how she would, and gave her what little comfort he could.

  Chapter 19

  1

  On board the TGFS Intrepid, General Ounimbango was seeing a Gael unnerved for the first time. Ever since Pahhal had ordered the Intrepid to Barnard’s VI, there had been a growing level of excitement with the Overseer. It had persisted as mysterious shuttles came up from the planet below and the Overseer had ordered the hangars cleared of humans as the cargo was offloaded by a few Gael and transported to a secure storage area on board the Intrepid. Now that they had been sitting in orbit of Barnard’s VI for five hours however and the Gael cargo shuttles were long gone, that sense of excitement had vanished and had been replaced with what seemed to be worry.

  Surely enough, the Gael appeared to be quite serene. He was not pacing or fretting or repeatedly asking questions about what time it was like a nervous human might, but there was just something off about him. His lips were pursed a little tighter than normal and his eyes tracked the room like a hunter looking for his quarry. On top of that, he never left the bridge. In Ounimbango’s experience, the Gael never liked to be seen, did not like humans to get the impression that they really ran the Terran government, and yet there he was seated next to Ounimbango on the bridge for all to see.

  “They are late,” Pahhal said quietly. “By four hours.”

  A dozen reasons why Jennings could be late suddenly jumped into Ounimbango’s mind, but were quickly quelled again. There was no reason, or more specifically no profit, in making excuses for Captain Jennings. Furthermore, if Jennings had run into trouble, it might give Petrova a chance to get the girl back.

  “It must be something innocuous, Overseer,” Ounimbango intoned. “Surely, Captain Jennings would never betray your confidence.”

  “His psychographic profile suggests he places his honor above all else,” Pahhal mused.

  “Psychographic profiles can be wrong and humans can be irrational,” Ounimbango pointed out. “Not to mention, it’s been a long time since the war. Like most of his particular type of scum, he exists to make money. Perhaps he received a better offer for your girl.”

  Pahhal’s slitted eyes narrowed further. “Let me know when he arrives,” the Overseer said with a scowl. “I’ve a call to make.”

  2

  The Overseer left the bridge and headed for his quarters, a suite large enough for a fleet admiral. He walked into the massive four room domicile and wondered to himself why the humans would waste this amount of space when space was at such a premium on a starship. A few button presses on the panel next to the door and the room was locked to all human personnel. Even if there were a hull breach in his quarters, the humans would be able to do nothing about it, but that was how he preferred it. He could take no chance that a stray human would come wandering about his private office. The cattle might begin to suspect that they were not the evolved creatures that they presumed they were. Like many things, they were a means to an end.

  Stepping through the living room briskly, he felt himself pass through a force field that was designed to exclude anyone without a Gael DNA signature from entering his office. The office looked nothing like standard Terran fare. There was no desk or chairs or any kind of presumed work space, but there were a few strange metallic disks installed on the walls. When he stood in the center of the room, they began to pulse with a purplish-black energy. That energy suddenly shot out of the disks into the center of the room, penetrating the entire area except for a small sphere that perfectly encased Pahhal. The energy formed into a solid purple sphere around him, and he felt his feet leave the ground as the confines of artificial gravity vanished within the Construct. He folded his feet underneath him and sat serenely as program filaments stretched out like white lightning and entered his eyes, nose, mouth and ears. There was a sharp crack and an explosion of consciousness as Pahhal became linked to the Construct.

  The Construct was an artificial collective consciousness- a repository for all Gael knowledge and memories, and an amazingly efficient communications system that allowed the Gael to co-ordinate anything with utmost celerity. When plugged in, Gael brains could communicate, interact and learn at the speed of thought, a thousand times faster than regular communication. Scientists could perfect new discoveries by working collaboratively- their minds linked, historians had full access to the memories of millions of Gael who had passed this world and onto the next, and military commanders could plan, adjust and defeat their enemies with the greatest of ease.

  Pahhal focused his thoughts on the communication grid of the Construct and then began accessing the military section of the grid. His mind reached out, seeking to connect deeper and deeper into the Construct. Bearing in mind the sensitive and classified nature of what he was trying to access, his mind was challenged for algorithmic passwords and impossible equations to verify that he was who his mind claimed he was. After what felt like an hour’s worth of communication (which passed as about fifteen seconds in the real world), his mind joined with the one Pahhal was looking for.

  “Greetings, Fleet Master Varenhas,” his mind spoke.

  “Overseer Pahhal, my old friend,” the reply came in fast as a tachyon from several hundred light years away. “I trust Operation Aurora proceeds on schedule.”

  “That is the purpose for my joining with you,” he replied. “We have a complication.”

  “Oh?” the concern in Varenhas’s mind was palatable. He was as desperate for Operation Aurora to be drawn to a swift conclusion as Pahhal was, as all Gael were. “What is the problem?” he asked.

  “The last soul has been captured by a human, who I had hired for this purpose,” Pahhal explained. “I have reason to believe he has betrayed me. We are so close to success.” He paused for a moment. “I fear for what might happen. We must take decisive action or I fear the soul may be lost.”

  “You want us to expose our involvement?” Varenhas interjected. “You know the humans must never know the reason behind the war. If they were to discover what we were looking for, they might kill the souls we need.”

  “There is only one left,” Pahhal hissed. “After this one, the humans no longer matter. They can think whatever they want about their backwater berth of the galaxy. We need that soul and we need to go home.”

  Varenhas’s voice became indecipherable as a loud torrent of simultaneous thoughts escaped his mind. After a few moments, it quieted and his mind settled on, “What do you need of me?”

  “A super-cruiser, armed to the teeth,” he answered.

  “Accessing,” Varenhas replied. “Thirteen hours to Terran Autonomous Space. It will begin a systematic hunt of all the systems at your direction.”

  “I will keep you informed of whatever information I find,” Pahhal replied. “The Terran who runs this ship keeps a retinue of louts outside of the normal chain of command that pay him a cut when they fetch one of our targets for us. I suspect that one of them will turn up something before the cruiser arrives.”

  “Understood. The dream of home go before you, Overseer Pahhal,” Varenhas said.

  “And you, my old friend,” Pahhal replied before his mind disconnected from the communication system.

  Knowing that he needed to go back to the bridge, Pahhal lingered for a moment in the Construct. His mind called up a historical record, the most widely experienced archive in the Construct. It focused on a single prophecy and the long road home.

  3

  On board the bridge of the Grey Vistula, Anastasia Petrova sat in silence, her teeth gritted in annoyance. The bridge on the transport was small, barely room for her chair in the center with all the stations crowded around. There were six others on the bridge crew, including Vosler, who was looking over the shoulder of the young, overly muscled man at the science and tracking station. This was the part that Petrova hated, the searching. It had never been her forte- it required a patience
that she had never possessed. That was why a man like Vosler was so handy- one of the many reasons, she thought to herself. He was patient, methodical and thorough; everything that she was not.

  “I think we’ve got it,” Vosler announced at last.

  “Finally,” Petrova whispered under her breath. “It only took seven hours. Vhere are they headed?”

  “Based on our calculations, Beta Durani,” he reported.

  “Vhy vould they be heading there?” she muttered. “There’s nothing there but some old defunct mining colonies.”

  “Good place for a rendezvous,” Vosler suggested.

  “If that’s vhere they are meeting the Gael buyer, ve’ll be too late,” she muttered as she slammed her fist into her hand and yelled, “Damn!”

  “I think we still have a card to play,” Vosler said. “If you think Ounimbango will be stupid enough to fall for it.”

  “Always,” she growled. “Vhat card do ve have?”

  “It would seem presumptuous to assume that the rendezvous that Jennings set up just happens to be in the nearest system,” he explained. “It would seem more likely that he is limping to the nearest place he could put down and make repairs after the Dime Gambit blew out his systems. There are plenty of old mining facilities that have since been abandoned, but could probably provide a safe haven temporarily for Captain Jennings.”

  “So, ve talk to Ounimbango and see if he knows that Jennings is in Beta Durani,” Petrova mused, catching on to Vosler’s notion.

  “If he doesn’t, we can still beat them there or even sell that information to the Gael,” he finished.

  “Get Ounimbango via subspace,” she ordered her communications officer as she sat back in the command chair.

  4

  “Understood, yes, well, the generosity of the Terran government is extraordinary,” General Ounimbango said as Overseer Pahhal approached his desk.

  The general had retreated to his office to field a personal call when Pahhal had arrived at the bridge and the Overseer had felt obligated to see him, before he resumed his position of nervously sitting on the bridge, waiting for news of Jennings and the lost soul. Ounimbango looked angry, or rather looked like he was trying to keep his anger in check. He was sweating and gritting his teeth as he exchanged what were supposed to be pleasantries with someone on the other end of a communication signal. Apparently, the other person signed off, and the general slammed the vid screen down with unnecessary force as Pahhal sat himself in a chair opposite the general.