Alpha Fleet (Rebel Fleet Series Book 3)

by B. V. Larson

Commander Hagen slid up to my station and gave me a slow, definite shake of his head. The message was clear—he didn’t want me to try it.

  “Helm,” I said, “reduce speed—gradually. Drop back, reducing our velocity by ten percent.”

  Dalton gave me a strange look, but he did it. We began to fall away from the swarm. It soon moved ahead, looking like a giant school of silvery round bubbles.

  “How far are we going to let them—?” Dalton began, but he never finished his question.

  “Enemy vessels, phasing-in at our stern!” Chang called out.

  Red contacts began to appear behind us. Every second, the swarm moved ahead and away, while the phase-ships drew closer. There were five of them—then seven.

  “All power to our stern shields,” I said calmly.

  “We can’t survive a strike from that many of them, Captain,” Hagen said, “the shields will go down in the first barrage.”

  “I know…” I said quietly. “Keep falling back, Dalton. Let’s see what they do.”

  =43=

  I have to give Lael some credit, she didn’t fire on us right away. She contacted me first.

  “What kind of a vicious ape-trick is this, Blake?” she demanded.

  “There’s no trick, Lael. Not this time.”

  “You’re hoping we can’t catch up. You’re hoping your spheres will get to the planet unimpeded. But you should know we have enough acceleration to catch up with them. We can destroy you and still run down your swarm.”

  “I’m sure you can,” I said. “That’s not what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to prove to you that—”

  Something out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. I broke off and turned to look.

  There, to my shock, I saw Dalton walking onto the deck. Normally, that wouldn’t be unusual, but this time was different. Dalton was already at the helm, flying the ship.

  “Godwin…” I said, knowing immediately that one of these two had to be an imposter. “Hagen, arrest that man!”

  “Sir,” said the Dalton who’d just arrived. He pointed an accusing finger at the man at the helm. “That thing took my place. He brained me and left me for dead!”

  As evidence, he lifted a bloody hand from the back of his scalp. A flap of skin and hair hung loosely there, and blood ran red down the back of his uniform.

  The Dalton at the helm turned at last and did a double-take when he saw himself.

  “Bloody hell…” he said. “What kind of bullshit is this, now?”

  My eyes went from one Dalton to the next and back again. The bleeding version walked slowly forward, eyes locked on his double. He looked as stunned and freaked out as the man at the helm did. From their voices, behaviors—I couldn’t tell them apart.

  “Blake!” Lael shouted. “I’ve had enough!”

  “Lael, here’s your Nomad. He’s right here. Godwin is playing games on my bridge right now. I’ll arrest him and hand him over—”

  “I knew it!” she shouted, looking at the two Daltons. “Your species is diseased. Riddled with the enemy! You’re probably not even the Leo Blake I once knew.”

  “Now, hold on!” I shouted, but she didn’t listen.

  “All ships, advance and engage,” I heard her say.

  In the meantime, events aboard my bridge had taken a further turn as the two Daltons lunged at one another. Both moved like wicked fighters. Dalton had always been a mean man in a duel, and today was no exception.

  Disrupters came up, but each gripped the other’s wrist. They struggled and butted heads —cracking their skulls into one another. Blood and curses flew.

  “Commander Hagen, take the helm!” I ordered. “Samson, take them both out.”

  Samson advanced and shot both of them repeatedly with his disrupter. Burns and swollen flesh left an acrid smell in the air. Raging and gouging at one another, the two went down on the deck and Samson had to subdue them with blows.

  In the meantime, Commander Hagen sat at the helm controls. He tried to alter our course—but nothing happened.

  “Captain… we’re accelerating. We’re moving back into the swarm. I can’t—I can’t seem to unlock the controls.”

  Rushing to my chair, I tapped at my own console and tried to regain control over the helm—it wasn’t responding.

  “Samson,” I said, “that second Dalton, the one with the bloody scalp, I think he was telling the truth.”

  “He’s already unconscious—or maybe dead,” he said. “What do we do now, Captain?”

  “Sir,” Chang said, “the spheres are slowing now, falling back to our position. We’re still speeding up and closing with them—and the phase-ships are beginning to rake our stern.”

  I looked down at the two Daltons, both of whom were now slumped in an ugly embrace on the deck.

  “He suckered them in,” I said. “Godwin must have wanted the Imperials to attack us again…”

  As I watched, one of the Daltons began to melt away. He collapsed in on himself, turning into sticky fluid that ran and dripped like hot wax.

  How long had Godwin been aboard our ship, moving among us? I had no idea.

  The first salvo from the phase-ships hit us in the fantail a moment later. Our aft shields flared and buckled. The impact rippled through the ship.

  “Captain,” Mia said. “What are your orders? Do I return fire?”

  “Yes,” I said, “fire everything we’ve got. Try to get them to hang back to play it safe. Chang, get Lael on the screen again.”

  “She’s not answering, sir.”

  “Damned, stubborn, arrogant…” I chanted a litany of unflattering terms as the Imperials continued to close on us.

  Mia let loose with a dozen beams and missiles. It was an impressive barrage, but it had gone off too early. Most of the ordnance was never going to reach the targets at this range, but it might make them duck.

  “The enemy are spreading out, staggering their formation, but they’re still coming.”

  “Did we hit anything?”

  “No sir. Nothing.”

  We watched after that, bracing for the worst. We couldn’t even turn around to face them with our best weaponry and armor.

  Another barrage from the Imperials lashed our rear, and one of our engines flicked out. We weren’t going to live through the next.

  “Abrams,” I said, speaking through my sym. “Open a rift. I’m praying you can do it fast.”

  “I anticipated this precise request,” he said primly. “I even took the liberty of withholding an emergency pool in the main capacitor.”

  “You what—?” I began, but I broke off. Sure, he was a prick and he rarely followed orders—but today, he may just have saved us.

  “Open the rift. Now.”

  Less than thirty seconds later, a swirling cloud appeared ahead.

  “Hagen… have we got any kind of helm control?”

  “No, we don’t, and we’re going to hit that rift too early. It’s not fully formed yet, sir.”

  I gestured toward the spheres. They were all around us now, as we were passing through them. Faster and faster, they dropped away to our stern.

  “Are we accelerating…?” I asked.

  “Yes but… so are they—in the opposite direction. They’ve locked onto the Imperial phase-ships. Lael got too close.”

  We all watched a fantastic disaster unfold. The gravity drones homed in, and they began to pop off. An expanding cloud of plasma consumed three of the phase-ships—four.

  “Are we going to make it?” Mia asked as we plummeted toward a sickly-looking rift. It was yellow, and there weren’t even any stars in the middle of it to give us hope.

  “Of course we are,” I said, giving her a confident smile.

  “Thanks for lying, Leo,” she said as we all watched our doom close in from behind and zoom up to meet us from the front at the same time.

  =44=

  To the best of my knowledge, no one from Earth had ever tried to navigate a premature rift. It generally took a few m
inutes for a wormhole to form. Why? One astrophysicist’s guess was as good as another’s, but the theory I’d heard was that the two points in space had to find one another, like two strands of spider’s silk fired by two different spiders striking one another in mid-air. FTL travel was tricky business, and it was a miracle every time it happened.

  While phase-ships darted around behind us, forgetting about shooting at our stern and just trying to survive the wave of deadly gravity-drones, we hit the rift at a dangerous pace.

  We entered the rift, and I felt a ripple of illness go through me and my ship together. It was like having your stomach do a slippery little flip in your guts.

  The feeling was more intense than it usually was, but I was glad I was feeling anything at all. We hadn’t just slammed into some kind of celestial brick wall. We were in hyperspace, and on our way… to somewhere.

  “Abrams? Dr. Abrams? Where are we going?”

  Even as I said those words aloud, I knew it was a mistake to do so. My crew, who was already semi-panicked and holding onto their harnesses for dear life, certainly didn’t want to hear that I had no idea where we were headed.

  Abrams didn’t respond anyway. That kind of pissed me off. He’d gotten his way and yet he couldn’t even bother to answer a simple question from his commander.

  “Son of a bitch,” I muttered and exited the bridge. I headed down through the ships tubes to his lair and tossed aside a nerd who tried to get in my way.

  “I don’t care if he’s busy,” I told him. “I’m talking to him right now.”

  I knew where he was. He’d moved back into his inner chamber. He was probably dry-humping that circlet by now, having turned off his com system so he wouldn’t be interrupted.

  “Abrams!” I boomed as I pushed open the door.

  There was no answer. The room was dark, except for the glove-box, which was lit up inside.

  Striding to the box, I frowned as I saw it was hanging open. There was nothing inside. Just instruments, and limp rubber gloves.

  Looking around, I saw Abrams. He was stretched out on the deck. He had the circlet on his head.

  “Oh my God…” I said. “You did it. You really did it…”

  Touching his neck, I found no pulse. I needed him alive, so I called security and medical, ordering them to send an emergency team to the labs.

  Before they arrived, however, I saw something unexpected. The body—it was getting smaller. Shrinking. How could…?

  Almost without a thought, I reached out and grabbed the circlet. I ripped it off the dead man’s head. A moment later, the melting process accelerated and Abrams was no more.

  Standing up, I was pretty freaked out. I had no idea how this had happened. Abrams had been working up a calculation and creating a rift. He’d been right here—and now he wasn’t.

  Either Abrams hadn’t been Abrams, he’d been a Nomad, or there was another…

  “Captain Blake?” demanded a familiar voice from behind me. “What are you doing here? Why can’t you leave my equipment alone?”

  Turning slowly, I saw Abrams standing there looking pissed. His sycophantic science team was behind him, their mouths gaping like baby birds. They didn’t know what the hell was going on, either.

  “He tried to get it back…” I said, piecing things together.

  “Who?”

  “Godwin. He was right here, looking like you.”

  “That’s such total nonsense I’m not even going to entertain you by pointing out the countless flaws in your lie.”

  “No…” said one of the sycophants.

  I recognized her. She was the girl who’d given me a steer before when I’d come down here to find Abrams. Her name was Theresa, and I realized I’d been seeing her around a lot lately.

  “What do you mean no?” Abrams demanded in a sudden fury. “You’re dismissed. If we ever get back to Earth, I’ll see your pay is docked for the precise amount it took to give you this joy-ride into space.”

  “Hold on,” I said, looking at the girl. “You saw him come in here, didn’t you?” I asked. “You thought he’d still be here.”

  “I won’t have you abusing my staff this way with your fables, Blake.”

  “She’s not your staff anymore, you just fired her. Now, let’s have a look at the cameras in the main lab. You record everything don’t you?”

  “Naturally, but this is a pointless exercise. I was in the engine room, checking on the rift creation. You must recall that I said I’d withheld a certain portion of the ship’s energy capacitance for just such an emergency.”

  “We can talk about that protocol violation later,” I said. “Let’s have a look at the video.”

  We scrolled back in time on a tablet, and the video played out as I expected. About five minutes before I came down from the deck, Abrams barged into the lab, passed the girl who’d witnessed the whole thing, and entered the inner chamber.

  “A few minutes after that I came down here and found you, dead on the floor. You were wearing this circlet.”

  Abrams frowned fiercely at me, the circlet, and the girl who’d gotten involved.

  “I’m at a loss…” he said. “He’s obviously trying to retrieve the circlet—but why? It seems inert. I’ve thrown every test I could at it. Radiation, heat, particles, wavelengths, code-breaking signals…”

  I nodded, looking at the circlet in fascination.

  “I’m starting to get some ideas,” I told Abrams. “Godwin has been behaving rather oddly on this journey. He’s sort of like a poltergeist. He comes and goes, but rather than being calm and collected, he’s not playing the part of a diplomat. He’s been actively trying to trick us and avoid us.”

  Abrams bit one of his nails and stared at the empty glove box in thought.

  “Hmm…” he said. “I’ve been thinking about what he told you about their mode of travel. The Nomads aren’t teleporting—not exactly. They make and remake bodies to inhabit.”

  “That’s right. They can make them look like anyone they want, too.”

  Abrams walked past me, flapping his hand in my face like my words were irritating him.

  He knelt beside the puddle of chemicals on the floor.

  “Even the clothing disintegrates…” he said. “Very strange… I have a theory.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  He stood suddenly, but he didn’t speak. Instead, he drew out a thin, wand-like disrupter and aimed it at the lab girl. The point glimmered, and it was clearly charged.

  “What’s this?” Theresa asked, gaping in surprise.

  “Are you Godwin?” Abrams asked her. “I know Blake is Blake. I know who I am… but you are a virtual stranger. You have somehow inserted yourself into this situation. That’s exactly what Godwin would do—in order to get close to the circlet again.”

  The girl made choking sound. “Don’t shoot me! You’re crazy. Captain, stop this crazy old coot. No one likes him. No one can stand him. He drives us all mad.”

  I was pretty sure she was speaking the God’s-honest truth there, but that didn’t let her off the hook entirely. She still might be Godwin in disguise.

  “We can settle this,” I told them. “Let me pull up the ship’s roster.”

  I used the ship’s roster system to check on her location, and it showed she was right here with us.

  “That proves nothing,” Abrams argued. “Godwin is more sophisticated than that. Perhaps he murdered the real Theresa and disposed of her body.”

  “That sounds so crazy,” she said, crossing her arms and looking pissed off. “I’m glad you’re firing me. Captain, can I go now?”

  “No,” I said, squinting at her with suspicion.

  “Oh—you can’t think—really? I don’t believe this.”

  “We have to be sure,” I said. “If Godwin is aboard ship, he can look like anyone. He switched from being Dalton to being this old coot here in the matter of a few minutes.”

  “What’s more,” Abrams said, “I’m now convinced that Go
dwin is stuck onboard our ship. He’s made many appearances in various guises. He hasn’t moved his agenda forward much—why not just leave? Maybe he can’t.”

  I didn’t quite agree with Abrams, but I didn’t argue with him. I couldn’t help but think of the fiasco we’d left behind in the Imperial system. He’d done quite a number on their phase-ships. For all I knew, he’d taken out one of their worlds with our help as well.

  “Is there some way you can prove you’re the real Theresa?” I asked.

  She thought about it for a second, then she smiled. She reached for the tablet in my hands. I gave it to her warily, and she scrolled back through the video files.

  “There,” she said, replaying the scene where Abrams rushed past her into the room with the circlet. “How could I be Godwin, watching him walk by—when that guy was Godwin?”

  I nodded. “That does seem conclusive,” I said. “Godwin was imitating Abrams. He died right in front of you, and I’d just talked to you a moment before… Yes, I’m willing to take your word for it.”

  So saying, I snatched the weapon from Abrams hands and gave it to Theresa.

  Both of them looked startled.

  “Keep that weapon trained on his chest,” I told her.

  “What’s this nonsense?” Abrams demanded, sputtering at me.

  “You said yourself that he’s probably right here, trying to get to that circlet. You must have made a new body—however you do that—and come back in here to see if you could get the circlet and try again.”

  “Preposterous!”

  “Come on, Godwin,” I said. “Let’s stop fooling around. Talk to me a bit. I might even let you go.”

  A strange look came over Abrams’ face when I made that offer. In that single instant, I knew I’d guessed right. This wasn’t Abrams at all—it was Godwin again.

  =45=

  Dr. Abrams had a hunted look on his face. It wasn’t anger, or self-assuredness. This was significant because those were pretty much the only expressions the real Abrams ever wore.

  “What do you want to talk about?” he asked me.

  Slowly, I smiled. “I wasn’t sure, but I guessed right at last.”