Alpha Fleet (Rebel Fleet Series Book 3)
Page 33
I glanced around at the suits, none of whom I’d ever met before today—and then I got it. “You’re all Nomads, aren’t you?” I asked.
Godwin smirked. “What nonsense is this?”
“Duplicates… Are you for real, General?” I asked, turning to Vega.
He wore a troubled frown. He was running his eyes over the group.
“Let’s get on with it,” Godwin said.
The sergeant who’d spoken to me in the hallway drew his pistol. He wore a grim, fatalistic expression.
Commander Hagen stepped forward. He touched the guard’s hand. “Hold on,” he said. “Blake is one of our officers, and it’s our custom that the execution come from an officer.”
The guard looked bewildered, giving Hagen a “since when” look. He glanced at General Vega for permission, and Vega nodded. The sergeant shrugged and handed over his sidearm.
“Get on with it!” Godwin urged.
Hagen stepped forward, put the gun to my temple, and looked me in the eyes.
“Sorry about all this, Blake.”
“A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do,” I told him.
I didn’t close my eyes—I wanted to, but I refused. Not until I heard the gun boom.
For just a second, I thought maybe I was dead, or maybe he’d missed—but then I saw the gaping hole in Godwin’s chest.
Commander Hagen turned and faced him squarely. “No deal, alien,” he said.
Making a shocked, gasping sound, the Nomad pitched forward.
The effect on the other suits, the people I’d assume all along were government stooges, was electric. They rushed forward, eyes staring, hands out-stretched like claws.
Hagen and Vega were startled, but they didn’t hesitate. Vega drew his sidearm while Hagen used his to good effect. His gun boomed again and again. It was a standard old-fashioned .45, and it held seven rounds. He plugged one of the Nomads with each shot.
They came on anyway, tearing at him with their fingernails, biting his wrists. It soon became apparent that only Command Hagen, General Vega and the guard who had escorted me were human.
The sergeant threw one to the ground, but while he was stomping that Nomad flat two others rode his back. The lawyer who’d supposedly been sent to rep me beat at Hagen with his briefcase, screeching like a madman the whole time.
More guards came then, realizing an execution shouldn’t turn into a brawl. They tried to restrain the lawyers, bureaucrats, decorated brass and the like—but that didn’t work. They weren’t calming down.
All I could do was kick at them. It was frustrating. A struggling knot of people all around me, and I couldn’t even land a solid blow on my own.
At last, it was over. There were just too many humans in the facility. The ten or so odd Nomads couldn’t compete. I learned later they hadn’t been armed, as that was part of the bargain. It was their undoing in the end.
Several bloody minutes passed, and they were all melting away on the floor, headed back to wherever they’d come from.
Vega came to my side. His left eye was a bloody mess. Some of his fingers didn’t seem to work properly—and I realized they’d been bitten half-off at the knuckle.
Still, he managed to unlock my restraints. I got up and snatched a gun off the floor.
That made the guards jump a little, but Vega shook his head, panting.
“He’s ours. All charges dropped. Blake—I’m truly sorry I let it go so far.”
I was relieved to be alive, but I couldn’t help thinking about one member of the party who wouldn’t be going home.
Squatting down, I looked into Lael’s dead eyes. We’d had our moments, over the years. She was a true witch and a mass murderer on a global scale—but the last thing she’d ever done was to wish me well.
I didn’t know what to think about that. Could it mean the Kher could pull together as a single people someday?
Or was I entertaining a fantasy? Lael would have told me there could only be one peace: the peace of the dead.
“Rest in peace,” I told her, and I straightened up painfully.
=64=
Let me say first off that I can take a practical joke the same or better than the next man. I don’t mind getting scared on Halloween or surprised at a birthday party—but this was an extreme case.
“Sir…” I said to Vega after our injuries had been treated, “you’re telling me you knew what these things were? And you played along?”
Vega shook his head and sighed. “I was beginning to suspect. They can manipulate memories to some extent, remember. But we’ve got precautions against that sort of thing now.”
“But… if you knew they were a pack of Nomads, why’d you go along with nearly executing me? Why didn’t you pull the plug sooner?”
He shrugged. “Okay, I’m going to level with you: they promised us some amazing tech. That’s the story, plain and simple. And they weren’t just going to give us a ship to fly around, either. They were going to explain it. The principles, the concepts… but I began to smell a rat. I didn’t think they intended to deliver at all. They were insisting on executions up front without giving us squat.”
“Uh… a real transfer of knowledge… okay, that’s pretty cool,” I admitted, “but I have to ask: would you have shot me to get your hands on that stuff—if you thought they would actually deliver?”
He shrugged noncommittally. “It didn’t happen, did it?”
“You bastard.”
“Blake, this is war. We’re a pipsqueak planet in a universe chock-full of aggressive powers. We’re playing for keeps, here.”
“Why’d you kill Lael then?” I asked.
“To prove to them we were for real, of course… Wait a second—you weren’t in love with that planet-burning princess, were you?”
“Hell no.”
He shook his head. “You sure can pick them, Blake.”
“Forget about that,” I said, “let’s get back to what the hell we’re going to do now. The Nomads were upset before—but I think they have to be positively pissed at this point.”
“Agreed.”
“So, now we’ve got two enemies. Two galactic rivals that control fleets and planets we don’t even have a name for. One is an ancient wicked empire, and the other one is made up of soulless, evil, artificial life forms…”
“You’re making it sound pretty grim,” he admitted. “But what was I going to do? Let them kill our best captain for nothing? That’s not how Earth works, and it’s best all these aliens learn that right now.”
“Yeah…” I said, “they’ve got to know that they have to pay up if they want to murder Leo Blake.”
“That’s right.”
There wasn’t much of a formal briefing after that. They quietly cleaned up the puddles of liquid on the concrete floors and sent it to Abrams to be analyzed. The rest of the base personnel were told to forget what they’d seen—or what they thought they’d seen, because they damn well better not remember anything.
Going back up to my ship, I was given a surprise party. I jumped a little when my crew leapt out of the shadows screaming “Surprise!” but I managed not to have a heart attack.
Forcing a grin, I assured everyone I was okay. Mia was especially accommodating, and I learned a new thing about her: she liked status. When her man was losing it, she was truly unpleasant to be around. But when her man became captain again, well, she melted.
When the party was winding down, Hagen came to find me with a bottle in his hand. He had staples in his cheek, a split eyebrow and a sloppy grin on his face.
“I told everyone we had one of your famous trainings,” he said, laughing. “They bought it completely.”
“Of course they did, Commander. Because that’s what happened.”
“Damned straight, Captain.”
He leaned close, and an alcoholic fog wafted over me.
“Captain… I feel bad about letting the sergeant shoot Lael.”
I nodded. “You’re thinking you
should have intervened then, huh?”
“It haunts me… She was a prisoner, and we killed her in cold blood. No trial—not really.”
“Well,” I said, “don’t worry about it too much. If you’d ever been a prisoner on one of their ships the way I have—you’d want them all dead.”
He looked at me. “It’s like that?”
“Absolutely. They’re monsters. They all deserve to die, really.”
“Okay,” he said, and he stood up, swaying slightly. He handed me his bottle.
“I won’t be needing this anymore. Goodnight, sir.”
He left me then, and I smiled until he was gone. Taking charge of his bottle, I took a hard swallow and stared at the walls.
I was thinking of Lael, too. It was hard not to do. She’d been a real person to me, not just a target to shoot at a million kilometers away.
Knowing that I’d lied to Hagen didn’t bother me at all. I considered it, in fact, to have been my good deed for the day. But somehow, as I sat and pondered, I felt like I’d taken on the burden he’d left behind.
Had I played it right? Had I played it fair?
The last thing she’d said to me was she was the better devil, because you could predict her behavior. After having dealt with the Nomads and the Imperials directly, I believed she was right.
But now, all that was a moot point. They all hated us—the most powerful two factions in this Galaxy.
Hell, someday they might decide they hated us so badly they’d team up just to come here and stomp out whatever life was left on our little blue planet.
I lifted Hagen’s bottle again, and I drank until I stopped thinking and fell asleep.
The End
From the Author: Thanks Reader! I hope you enjoyed ALPHA FLEET. If you liked the book and want to read more about this universe, please put up some stars and a review to support the book. Don’t worry if you’re a fan of another series, more of those books are coming soon!
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