by Rick Partlow
His perspective abruptly changed again, this time to somewhere above the largest human village on the second moon. He looked downward and, curious, willed himself to descend. It didn't feel as if he were flying; rather, it was as if the world was rising around him. He came to a halt at eye level, standing next to Donald Yu. The Earth-man was squinting into the sun, trying to catch a glimpse of the three Skrela spacecraft racing in from the far horizon. Yu's wife stepped beside him, asking him something in a language Trint didn't understand and Yu responded in a tone that might have been reassuring.
The Skrela were less than ten kilometers away when the weapon struck them. Trint worried that the explosion's shockwave would injure the humans, but he could see the edge of the wave come to an abrupt halt only a hundred meters or so from the village, stopping as if it had hit a wall. Some sort of force field, Trint reasoned, and he shuddered for a moment at the raw power the Predecessors had commanded.
How had they lost? How had they been forced to retreat?
Where is the human starship? he inquired.
Their vessel is four minutes and thirty two seconds from the Transition Point to your Cluster.
Display.
The avatar displayed by the Predecessor computer could have been an optical image taken from less than a kilometer away, aside from the fact that it was lit up as if by spotlights; a real image would have shown the ship as nearly invisible this far from the system's primary. The ship was running on full impellers and the display showed him a readout listing their velocity as approaching a tenth of lightspeed.
Two minutes, ten seconds until the vessel is at the Transition Point. There is a squadron of Skrela ships approaching their position at one quarter lightspeed. At their current acceleration, they will reach the Transition Point thirty five minutes after the human starship.
Will I be able to shut down the Line after the human vessel transitions without affecting their passage? The way time behaved in Transition Space was a mystery to even most physicists, and every attempt to contemplate it gave Trint a headache.
Unknowable, the computer responded. Not unknown, but unknowable. Interesting...and maddening.
Can we intercept the Skrela before they reach the Transition Point?
No. There are no defensive installations or ships close enough to intercept.
Damn. Trint wished there were something to hit in the control center besides haptic holograms. He stood stock still, engaging in the sort of moral inner debate that hadn't been necessary very often in his life. If he closed the Transition Line off before the Skrela could enter, there was a chance that he could be killing his friends. If he didn't, he could be unleashing extinction on the whole Cluster.
In the end, he asked himself a very simple question: what would Caleb Mitchell do?
Murdock's cutter vanished in a flare of energy as it slipped through a wormhole into Transition Space and Trint made his decision.
Close the Transition Line, he told the computer.
The machine didn't respond, but the display inside his head depicted the impending collapse of the singularities arrayed around the Transition Point, identical to the procedure which had opened the line out of the system.
It's done, Trint thought, sagging slightly...mentally if not physically. And so am I.
He debated whether to remain there in the control center or walk outside and die under the open sky.
N'lyn-Trint-yar, the computer spoke again, startling him. I have noticed that your biological functions are sub-optimal. Do you require medical attention?
Why? Trint asked, trying not to sound bitter. Can you re-grow a set of Tahni biological support organs before my brain ceases to function?
Yes, the AI said. Trint waited for clarification and then realized he hadn't asked for any.
What do I need to do?
Lie back.
Trint looked around and saw that a gurney was just suddenly there, a few centimeters behind his legs. It seemed to be constructed from a soft foam and he couldn't immediately discern what supported it...if anything material did, indeed, support it. He began to lower himself onto it, but hesitated. Did he truly want to go on living here, alone? Would it not be better to just let things end now?
The thought sent a shock through him. He had been constructed with programming that would not allow him to self-destruct; it was one of his most basic proscriptions. Unless ordered to sacrifice himself to complete a mission, he could not allow his own destruction. The very question he'd just asked himself showed that, somehow, in the last few years, he had circumvented that programming. How was that possible?
Clearly, this merited further investigation; he'd have to continue living. He lowered himself to the table, then lay back. It seemed to form around him, contouring itself to his body and then somehow enveloping him. He began to experience a haze over his vision, and just before his consciousness sank into the soft darkness, he had time for one last thought.
Best to keep my options open. I can always die later.
Epilogue
Mitchell:
"What the hell are we doing here?" I wondered, squinting into the light of the system's primary.
The star had a name with a number but I didn't bother to dig it up in my headcomp. The planet was called Highland; from where I stood, I could see why. It was bigger than Canaan, bigger than Earth by nearly half again, but it had less in the way of heavy minerals in its makeup so gravity was just slightly over standard. Its name came from the fact that two of its major continents consisted mostly of sandstone plateaus cut with incredibly deep canyons, kilometers across. It wasn't a particularly hospitable place, and it had little to offer except for water and a breathable atmosphere.
Which is why, I suppose, it had come to be the home to the largest mercenary---sorry, security contractor---company in the Commonwealth: the aptly-named Savage/Slaughter LLC, started by former Marine officer Vontez Slaughter and former Omega Group commando and old acquaintance of mine, Keller Savage. I hadn't seen Kel since the end of the war, and I certainly couldn't see him from here. We'd landed on an isolated plateau hundreds of kilometers from the nearest habitation, the only life visible some sort of fungus that clung tenaciously to the rocks, sucking what moisture it could from their surface.
The ship pinged and groaned as it cooled, its landing gear dug a few centimeters into the soft rock. Pete was sitting on the edge of the boarding ramp, drinking a bulb of water while Rachel wandered around the kilometer-wide table of rock, happy to be back on solid ground after so long in the ship.
I turned back to General Murdock, who stood near the edge of the mesa, staring down at the narrow river five hundred meters below. "You never did explain why we didn't just go straight to Inferno," I reminded him.
To be fair, I'd done my best to avoid talking to him or anyone else the last two weeks we'd been crammed into the cutter, stewing in our own juices in Transition Space. I'd spent most of the trip in the tiny cabin with Rachel, venturing out rarely and at a sleep schedule the opposite of Murdock's. Rachel had told me I was irrationally blaming Murdock for my own decision to leave Trint behind, and maybe she was right...but I still didn't feel like talking to him.
"Do you trust many people, Caleb?" Murdock asked me by way of response, still looking down at the raging water.
"Fewer every day," I replied, doing my best to avoid looking at Kara.
That was something else I knew was irrational, blaming her for Cutter's betrayal. But he was her friend, not mine, and I had never trusted him. Plus, I was pretty much happy to find anyone to blame for this besides myself...because I was laying plenty of blame on myself already.
"I used to say that I trusted no one completely," he told me. "I've known too many people to change over the years, to turn from someone I was so completely sure was a friend and ally to something I didn't even recognize anymore." He faced around to look at us, each of us, before focusing again on me. I saw something in his eyes that I didn't think I'd ever seen before, not
even in the darkest days of the war: fear. "We're here because I trust you, and I need to be able to trust someone."
"Why?" Deke asked, staring at him dubiously, arms crossed. "Chang is gone and won't be back. Gregorian's dead, the Corporate Council is gone. Aren't you running out of enemies?"
"The collapse of the Corporate Council has left a power vacuum," Kara told him, sounding reluctant to support Murdock. "That's why Gregorian was able to gather as many forces as he did, and why Rob..." She hesitated, sounding as if she didn't want to say the name. "...why Chang was able to manipulate Gregorian and us as thoroughly as he did." She glanced narrow-eyed at Murdock. "What's going on, sir?"
"Major McIntire debriefed me thoroughly during our flight," the General explained to all of us. "During the download of her headcomp's recording, I noticed that her and Captain Conner were picked up from the spaceport at Tartarus by Technician Denarius Laussel."
"Yeah," Deke said with a shrug. "Good kid. He saved our bacon when the Predecessors attacked."
"Denarius Laussel was one of my operatives," Murdock went on and I could see Kara's eyes widen. "He's actually a Captain, undercover as an enlisted man to keep an ear to the ground for security leaks." Murdock closed his eyes and let out a long breath. "Two months ago, I sent him to Eden, ostensibly on leave, to look into reports that one of the licensed Recreation Centers in Kennedy City was being used to siphon classified data from some of the military personnel that frequented the establishment."
His eyes opened again and fixed on Kara McIntire. "He never returned from Eden. His body was found in a wilderness area; I had the local law enforcement keep it quiet."
"Holy shit," Deke murmured, as he and I realized the implications of that statement simultaneously.
"Chang grabbed him," Kara breathed in disbelief, "and..."
"Copied him," I finished for her. My eyes flickered towards Pete and Rachel; they were too far away to hear the conversation and it was just as well. They thought all this was over. "And if Chang copied him..."
"...he could have copied others," Murdock confirmed my worst fears. He clasped his hands behind his back and paced fitfully along the edge of the cliff. "I know that you're eager to get back to your home, Caleb. And I know that Deke wants to be rid of me and of this whole business." He glanced back at Kara. "I think even Major McIntire is tiring of the life she chose.
"But I need your help. Chang is brilliant and obviously quite insane, and I think perhaps the process of being duplicated has an unbalancing effect on the human mind. It's one of the reasons I've worked to keep that technology contained. If he's replaced anyone of significance in the Commonwealth military command structure, the consequences could be quite apocalyptic."
"That's why we're here," I deduced finally. "Keller Savage."
"Precisely, Caleb," Murdock said with a thin smile. "As resourceful as Robert Chang is, he still could not cobble together a Glory Boy in his laboratory. There are six people I can trust beyond a shadow of a doubt in this whole Commonwealth."
I heard Deke laughing softly and I looked over at him, a little surprised.
"Whaddya say, Caleb old buddy?" he asked me, grinning sideways. "Wanna' get the band back together?"
I looked over to where Rachel stood, silhouetted against the brilliance of the system's primary. She wasn't going to like this, but I didn't see how I could say no.
"All right," I told Murdock, not quite believing my own words. "Count me in."
Birthright
Book Three:
Enemy of My Enemy
By
Rick Partlow
Copyright 2016 by Rick Partlow
Dedicated to my good friend and the luckiest man I've ever met, Tim Fletcher for all his help and encouragement over the years.
Special thanks to Brian E. Strauss for help with cover graphics.
Prologue:
Jock Navarre wiped a hand across his eyes and glanced again at the holographic display. "Freighter CCV-13889 Juneau, you are cleared to dock," he droned, seeing the green halo surrounding the fat, ugly, ungainly ship's profile as it hung in space a hundred kilometers from the station. Behind it, the blue, brown and green arc of Tahn-Skyyiah hung suspended in the firmament, so much more welcoming than the antiseptic white of the Commonwealth Garrison station.
Until you actually go down there and see it, Navarre amended to himself. I'd rather sit up here in orbit for a year than have to live down there with those tight-ass, grumpy bastards.
"Hey bud." Navarre heard a voice through the shroud of holographic images that surrounded him and he shifted his control chair backwards out of the projection circle to see a tall, slender man with pinched, dark features striding casually through the hatch of the Docking Control Center. His blue Commonwealth Spacefleet uniform was as neat as the 'fresher in his quarters could make it, but was worn with an air of sloppiness that hung over the man like a cloud. "Shift almost over?"
"You know it is, Sal," Navarre sighed, leaning back in his chair. "Our schedules haven't changed in over a month, have they?"
"Since you pissed off Commander Kage, you mean?" Salman Kapoor said with a malevolent chuckle.
"Hey, I was following protocols," Navarre insisted plaintively. "It's not my fault some Tahni territorial governor got his shorts in a wad because his transport didn't have proper clearance."
"Preaching to the choir, bud." Sal raised his hands in a placating gesture. "I think half those assholes still won't accept they lost the war."
"It's only been fifteen years," Navarre grumbled, sliding his chair back into place at the center of the control display. "You'd think it'd have sunk in by now."
"Technician Kapoor," a female voice carried over from across the control room, "do you have any actual work to do or are you here to distract Technician Navarre from his?"
"Sorry, Lieutenant Price," Kapoor said, coming to attention as the officer stepped over from the other side of the control room. Her uniform was everything his wasn't: tailored perfectly, every fastener carefully aligned right down to the straps on her boots. Her hair was cut shorter than his and her dark eyes looked as if they were capable of burning a hole through Salman Kapoor. "I thought Jock was almost off duty and..."
"Technician Navarre has four minutes and thirty two seconds left before his shift ends," Price informed him. "You can either wait in the corridor or you can stand quietly and stop being a distraction." She cocked an eyebrow at him. "The third alternative is that I call your shift supervisor and report you."
"Yes, ma'am," Sal said, stepping back and standing against the bulkhead. "I'll be quiet, ma'am."
Price nodded sharply and started to turn back to the other side of the work area when she paused, eyes focused on something in Navarre's display.
"What are they doing?" she asked, and Navarre turned to see that she was staring at the avatar of a Tahni cargo hauler approaching in a docking orbit.
"That's the scheduled laser-launch capsule from the planetside distribution center," he told Lt. Price, fighting not to shrug. She didn't like enlisted men being casual with officers. "Their lading is..." he snuck a look at the readout before continuing, "...bulk foodstuffs for the base processors. It should be docking in a couple minutes."
"I can see that, Technician Navarre," Price snapped impatiently. "What I want to know is, why is that capsule on a heading for the passenger lock instead of the cargo lock?"
Navarre blinked, then pulled up a schematic of the station next to the line that showed the trajectory of the cargo capsule. The Commonwealth Orbital Garrison which had kept a watchful eye on the Tahni homeworld these last fifteen years was a huge, armored, spinning barrel with non-rotating docking facilities at each end. The north polar docking ring was for non-military cargo---food, raw materials for the fabricators and such---while the south polar ring was for passengers and sensitive military cargo.
It was also where the stations weapons were emplaced...
"Oh, shit," Navarre muttered, hands flying through
the haptic holograms as he hunted down the manual override for the capsule's automatic guidance controls. "I'm taking manual control," he told Price, surprised his voice was so calm given the roiling in his stomach.
Navarre brought up the maneuvering thrusters and ordered them to shunt the capsule to a slightly lower trajectory, towards the south polar docking facilities. The order went through and was confirmed by the cargo capsule's on-board control systems. And then nothing happened.
"The capsule is not responding to manual controls, ma'am," he reported, feeling a surge of panic. "Orders?"
"Issue an alert to the North Polar docks and adjust its orbit with the Gauss cannon," she rattled off as if she'd had the answer memorized and had practiced it before her shift.
"Aye, ma'am," he confirmed, then opened a line to the secure docking ring even as he brought up the targeting systems for the Gauss cannon. She could have ordered him to hit the capsule with the lasers, but if the beam weapon didn't completely vaporize the craft then whatever fragments remained would still impact the docking ring. The solid rounds from the coilguns were the size of small groundcars and would push the capsule into a different trajectory that would hopefully take it clear of the station. "Attention docking security," he droned as he brought the coilguns to bear, "we have a rogue cargo capsule headed your way. Attempting to redirect with the Gauss cannons. Please prepare for debris collision."
Before they could respond, before he could give the order to fire, before Price could say another word, the capsule's thrusters did finally fire...but not the maneuvering thrusters. The main drive, the one that should have had its fuel supply exhausted by the trajectory transfer after the launch laser had taken it into orbit, ignited with an intense flare of hydrogen and oxygen. The capsule covered the few kilometers to the North Polar docking ring in a second.