The Human Chronicles Saga : Boxset #2 (The Human Chronicles Saga Boxsets)

by T. R. Harris

  “I’ll pass,” Henderson said, annoyed that McCarthy was acting as if he was the host, rather than the prisoner. “What do you want this time? It looks like you’ve made yourself right at home.”

  “C’mon, mate, sit down. We have a lot of time to kill. What’s the harm in passing it with a little conversation?”

  “Nothing … mate. It’s just that you don’t have anything I want to hear.”

  “Oh, but I think I do.”

  Henderson looked over at the drink sitting on the counter to his right and thought what the hell? It had been three days since they’d left Pyrum-3 and in all that time Henderson had not had a single sip of alcohol.

  He walked over the counter, scooped up the glass and then sat down in one of the chairs at the small table affixed to the left-side bulkhead. “So what do you think I would want to hear out of your traitorous mouth, you limey bastard.” There, that should let him know what I think of him.

  McCarthy smiled and took a long swig of his drink. “Now, now, Captain Henderson, let’s try to be cordial.”

  “Why should I? You have such a long record of screwing over your own people – including killing my friend Lee Schwartz – you don’t even deserve to be spit on. I wouldn’t want to insult my spit by wasting it on you.”

  “Fair enough, but I believe your impression of me may change once we’ve had our little talk.”

  Henderson raised his eyebrows and sent a wry smile back toward McCarthy. “That would take a fucking miracle.”

  McCarthy nodded. “Well, let’s see if this qualifies. You are aware that I know the location of the Kracori homeworld, a planet called Elision, don’t you?”

  “Of course; everyone does. And no matter how much you want to keep it a secret, the people back on Earth will be able to pull it out of you. In fact,” Henderson said, smiling more broadly, “I’d love to give them a hand. And I’d do it for free.”

  “You won’t have, Captain. I’m willing to give it to you right now, voluntarily.”

  Henderson tried to hide his shock. He knew McCarthy was probably playing a game with him, and if he really was going to give him the coordinates, it would more-than-likely be in exchange for his freedom.

  “Okay, go ahead. Give it to me.”

  “Come now, mate, we’re both a couple of smart guys. You know I want something in return.”

  “Yeah, your freedom; it didn’t take a genius to figure that one out. So, let’s see, I just let you go and say I did it in exchange for the coordinates. I think the powers back on Earth would say thanks a lot, but now, Mr. Henderson, you’re in a heap of trouble for letting McCarthy go. Like I said, they’re going to get the information out of you anyway, whether you want to give it up voluntarily or not. And then they’ll still have you. They’d be really pissed off if I let you go and spoiled all their fun with executing you a billion times over.”

  “You are a very intelligent person, Captain – I commend you. You have a quick mind and can analyze a situation at a moment’s notice. That’s what made you such a good officer. You know Cain was enlisted before he was given a field commission. He’s no more officer material than, well this glass I’m holding. You should have been the ranking officer of The Crusaders.” Still holding his glass, McCarthy made a half-quotation-mark gesture with his free hand around the term The Crusaders.

  “Cain’s paid his dues. He’s been through a lot. Besides, he caught you, didn’t he?”

  “He had help. Did you know he has the same powers as that Formilian woman, the one who can control electronic devices?”

  “Bullshit!”

  “It’s true. How else do you think he was able to capture me and defeat nearly all of my best commandos virtually single-handed? He has the power; they gave it to him as a reward for rescuing their princess, or whatever she is to them.”

  “Then good for him.”

  “Yes, but Captain, why hasn’t he offered this power to the rest of his team? Would that be something that would help all of you to be a more efficient fighting force? It’s because he wanted to keep it for himself, so he would be superior, even to you.”

  “So what?” Henderson knew what McCarthy was trying to do, to turn him against Cain. It was insulting to Henderson that McCarthy would try such an obvious ploy on him. “Also, you’re not sure he won’t give us the same powers later on. He was a little busy after all trying to stop your fucking commandos from killing us all.”

  “That’s true, but we’re getting a little off the subject.”

  “I didn’t start this.”

  “No you didn’t, but just let me draw you a scenario.” McCarthy emptied his glass and then took a deep breath. He looked Henderson straight in the eye and began: “Here’s my proposal: I give you the coordinates to Elision, then you doctor the ship’s log to indicate that the Phoenix was attacked by Kracori. They’ve already tried to kill me once over the past three months, and Cain knows this. He’ll believe they tracked me down again and attacked. You then take a shuttle off the ship and blow it up. I, in the meantime, will be in another shuttle heading in the opposite direction. You just say I was killed when the ship blew up.”

  “Sounds great, McCarthy, let’s do it! That’s the best fucking plan I’ve ever heard.” Henderson said, mockingly. “Just one thing: there are about a dozen holes in your plan.”

  “You mean the dozen other people aboard the ship?”

  “For starters.”

  “Well, Captain Henderson, let’s carry this out a little further. As the Kracori are attacking, I give you the coordinates, just so the bloody bastards will have to pay for killing me. You’re then the only person in the galaxy who knows the location of Elision, outside of the Kracori and the Klin, of course. You do realize that this information is the most valuable in the entire galaxy? Not only does Earth want to learn the location of the Kracori homeworld, but so do the Juireans. Either party would pay a frigging fortune for the information you will have.”

  Henderson hesitated slightly before responding. He hadn’t thought about getting money for the information – maybe he should have. And McCarthy was right: the location on the Kracori homeworld was one of the most-sought after bits of information in the galaxy. “I can see selling the information to the Juireans – after all, the Kracori did destroy Juir. But I couldn’t really sell the information to the people back on Earth. That would make me out to be a royal asshole, kinda like you.”

  “No, but you could certainly expect a reward, a finder’s fee if you will. Considering the value of this information, what do you think ten-percent or even twenty-percent as a reward would come to? Millions … billions? Not only that but think of the fame that will follow you. You would have options, Captain. Sell the information to the Juireans for Expansion credits and continue to live out here among the aliens – but on a planet of your own! Or return to Earth for a ticker-tape parade down Broadway, plus more money than you could ever spend in a dozen lifetimes.”

  “Why don’t you negotiate something like that for yourself, McCarthy? Save all the enhanced-interrogation experts all the trouble.”

  McCarthy nodded. “I could possibly do that. Maybe even negotiate to save my life. But then I’d have to go into hiding. You do realize that my name now carries with it a reputation even worse than Hitler’s? I’m an accomplice in the deaths of over a billion of my fellow Humans. For many, I’m considered even worse than the Klin, the Kracori and the Juireans combined. I betrayed my own people. No, Captain Henderson, I don’t think that is anyway to live. And let’s face the truth; your enhanced interrogators would probably get off on pulling this information out of me by the cruelest means possible. I’m sure there would be a very strong argument presented against granting me any kind of concession for my information. It just seems like such a waste letting this information go for free….”

  Henderson was feeling sweaty and hot. His heart was pounding and the chair he was sitting in suddenly seemed very uncomfortable. Was he actually considering doing what McCa
rthy wanted? What kind of person did that make him? The idea of taking the information in exchange for McCarthy’s freedom seemed straight-forward enough; he had something of value he was willing to trade for his life. And why shouldn’t Henderson then benefit for giving the information to the Earth? Even though the authorities wanted McCarthy so they could make him pay for his crimes, the information he carried was much more important than revenge for crimes committed over ten years ago.

  No, the only thing mucking up the whole plan was Jamal Dawson. He was the only other Human aboard the ship carrying McCarthy. The rest of the crew consisted of four aliens of some race he’d forgotten the name of who were piloting the ship, along with half-a-dozen of the gray Jakrean creatures, those bug-eyed things what were – or had been – the representation of all alien visitors to Earth in nearly every science fiction movie or abduction account in the past. Henderson had already proven it to himself – that like nearly all of his kind – alien life didn’t hold much worth. He’d already killed dozens since joining the Crusaders, even though he had been expecting to kill more when he’d mustered out to the galaxy five years before.

  While still attached to the Human forces in the Expansion, he had dreamed of exciting space battles and laser sword-fights, the kind of which his childhood fantasies had been based. He had found no such thing. It was only after he joined Cain’s group that he saw any real action at all. But even that was limited and constrained.

  In reality, his time out in the galaxy had been a complete letdown. Maybe it was time to return home? The only question was how would that homecoming be received? Would it be simply as another disillusioned soldier, returning home from a distant battlefield, alone and unappreciated? Or would it be as a conquering hero, bringing with him information containing one of the best-kept secrets in the galaxy?

  If only Dawson wasn’t aboard!

  “You’re thinking about Dawson, aren’t you?” McCarthy said, breaking into Henderson’s silent deliberations. “Isn’t it a small price to pay for such a great reward?”

  “Shut up – I’m thinking!” Henderson shot back, angry with himself that he would even be considering McCarthy’s proposal. And then a thought struck him. “How do I even know if the coordinates you’ll give me are real or not? Knowing you, they could just be a bunch of random numbers you’ve pulled out of your ass!”

  “Fair enough, and I’m prepared to give you a sample, something to prove my worth. At the end you’ll have part of the information, but not all of it. In time, the people on Earth might be able to narrow it down, but that would take time. And once you do have the coordinates, I will be out of bargaining chips. My value to you will be gone, and all the people of Earth would want me for at that point would be to pass judgment on a billion consecutive life-sentences, just to show that justice has been served. You could give it all to them on a silver platter – minus me, of course.”

  “What’s this sample?”

  “I will need access to the navigation charts.”

  Henderson again hesitated. Could he trust McCarthy? The answer was obvious. And yet McCarthy was bargaining for his life, and for the past ten years he had confined his illegal activities to the Expansion, leaving the Humans alone. Maybe he just wanted to remain out here, to be eventually forgotten among the stars.

  “So what if I go along with all this and then you reappear sometime. I said you were killed in the explosion, but now you suddenly show up alive. Won’t that look suspicious?”

  “Just tell them you thought I had died. Once the Kracori attacked and you had the information about Elision, you felt it was more important to get safely away with the information than to verify if I had died in the explosion. Besides, you can always say McCarthy’s a resourceful guy. He’s escaped from situations before, this was just one more. I think they’ll believe you.”

  Damn, he was making it difficult to say no. “I’ll activate the computer here; that will give us access to the nav charts. If what you show me convinces me that you will give me the full coordinates, then I’ll think about your offer. But why can’t I just bring Dawson in on this? I’m sure he’d like to share in the reward, too.”

  “But are you willing to share, Captain? And are you willing to take the risk that he won’t just freak out and go running to bloody Cain, or to anyone else. I didn’t know you two were such good friends?”

  We’re not, Henderson thought. We were thrown together and just kind of stayed that way once all the other Humans left. We never really even hang out….

  “Show me what you’ve got.”

  Mark Henderson moved to the small table with the inlaid computer keyboard and inset monitor in the bulkhead. He turned on the device and punched in his security code. Every stateroom aboard the ship had such a similar computer, but Henderson had placed a security lock on the one in McCarthy’s. He didn’t want him attempting to do … well anything, on the computer.

  Once the nav program was accessed, McCarthy came over and sat down at the desk. He quickly entered a set of coordinates and a region of space appeared. Henderson hadn’t seen the numbers being entered – he’d typed them too fast. And then McCarthy zoomed in on the region of space displayed. The image on the screen showed a blaze of stars, obviously within a stellar nebulae somewhere; there were just too many for this to be a normal region of space. And then he pointed.

  “Do you see anything odd about this section right here?”

  Henderson was not a very experienced space navigator; as a matter fact, he had absolutely no experience with it at all. He was a soldier, not a pilot and not a scientist. But he did see that the region of space McCarthy was pointing to seemed to be devoid of stars, which seemed very strange considering the neighborhood it was in.

  “It looks like an empty space, no stars at all.”

  “That’s what they want you to believe. The Klin have doctored the star charts that everyone uses to hide the location of Elision. It’s located there, within that void region.”

  “That’s it? That’s where they are?”

  “In that area. But it’s still rather large, containing over forty stars, but Elision’s in there.” McCarthy then pressed another button on the keyboard and a display appeared: Ecliptic plus 9, Sector 22.

  Henderson felt like such an idiot. He knew the coordinates meant something, but he didn’t know what. He had never piloted a spaceship himself, nor had he ever had to worry about plugging in destination coordinates.

  McCarthy saw the blank expression on Henderson’s face. “Those are the first two coordinates, out of four, that you need to plot a point in space.”

  “So what are the others?” Henderson asked, trying to mask his ignorance.

  “The other two are the distance from the galactic core and from Juir. These first two indicate the relative distance up or down from the galactic plane, and what sector it’s in. The Juireans cut the galaxy up into ninety-two segments, so this location is in sector twenty-two and nine degrees above the plane. Once you have the two distance figures, you’ll know exactly where the planet’s located.”

  “This isn’t enough,” Henderson said. “That’s still an awful lot of space where they could be.”

  “That’s why I’m going to reveal one more number. It’s the distance of the planet from the galactic core.” He pressed another button and the number sixty-two appeared.”

  “Sixty-two light years from the center!”

  “Sixty-two units,” McCarthy corrected. “But the conversion to light years is simple. It’s closer to eight-thousand light years.”

  “Oh.” Damn, he had a lot to learn … if he wanted to bother. Otherwise he could take McCarthy up on his offer and just return home and leave all this Buck Rogers shit behind him.

  “This will now give the people back on Earth an arc to follow. Somewhere along this line, in sector twenty-two, is the planet Elision. Just one more number and you’ll know exactly where.” McCarthy hesitated and turned to look at Henderson, who was now leaning over McCarthy
’s shoulder, looking at the screen. “You know what you have to do to get the last number….”

  Henderson stood up straight. “I still have to think about it,” he said soberly.

  “Don’t take too long. We’ll be at Juir in three days, and the closer we get, the harder it’s going to be to disguise the fact that Kracori did not attack the ship. We’re pretty far out now, without a lot of witnesses. I’d say you have about twelve hours before we’re too deep into Juirean space.”

  Mark Henderson, formerly Captain Mark Henderson, U.S. Army, nodded briefly and then pressed the key on the computer that would relock its operation. He then turned and walked from the room without saying another word. Outside in the corridor, he punched in the code that would lock the door to McCarthy’s stateroom and then fell against metal wall next to the door.

  Can I do this? As he had thought before, the exchange of information for freedom was a pretty straight-forward offer. Yet in order to cover his tracks, Dawson would have to die. And then a small grin appeared on Henderson’s face. Hell, what if it had been Dawson who answered McCarthy’s summons? I have no doubt what he would do….

  And with that thought, Mark Henderson made up his mind.

  30

  Twenty days after Nigel’s attack – and nine days after his death – Arieel Bol and Convor Ton’al Ona arrived on Pyrum-3. This was only a few days into Arieel’s twenty-eight-day Rites cycle, so there was no fear of her not making it back to Formil in time. They had come at Arieel’s bequest, ostensibly to offer Adam an award for the saving of her life.

  In reality, she wanted to see Adam again. Even though the Human was nothing like the males she normally associated with, there was still something about him that attracted her. She would work through this, knowing that Adam had chosen his female Human companion as a permanent mate. And it was apparent – even though not from the research she’d done concerning Human mating rituals – the pair intended not to stray from this arrangement.