by Isaac Hooke
The court debated for the next thirty minutes. At which point Nefarian teleported Jonathan back from the virtual waiting room and announced his full acquittal.
five
The virtual world vanished and he was back in his cell. Just like that, the barred door opened. A processing robot waited outside, its face mostly featureless save for two eye sensors, its humanoid body all servomotors and polycarbonate.
“Follow me, Captain Dallas,” the robot said. It led the way, the hum of its electromagnetic motors preceding the clank of its heavy feet.
In the processing area, the robot gave Jonathan the fatigues he came in with and waited for him to change. When that was done, the robot handed him a small box containing the rest of his personal belongings.
“The security restraints have been lifted from your aReal,” the robot said. “Your previous access has been restored.”
The robot escorted him from the brig. Jonathan took the elevator to the main concourse of the station and stared at the automated kiosks and fast food outlets.
Free.
He almost couldn’t believe it.
The digital overlay of his aReal flashed with arrows and icons as the different storefronts vied for his attention at the popular port of call. He promptly disabled aReal interactions and the digital overlays vanished. The station seemed somehow dull and ordinary without them, yet it was far less cluttered. Exactly the way he preferred it.
In the lower right of his vision his inbox flashed. A new video message had arrived. He pulled it up.
The weathered features of Admiral Bhadger Raen appeared on his display; his wrinkles seemed deeper, and his grizzled hair possessed of more gray, than the last time Jonathan had spoken to the senior officer.
“Congratulations on your release, Jonathan,” Raen said. “I was gunning for the court to acquit you. But I have to admit, I was afraid Knox’s more powerful friends would prevail. I’m glad Captain Nefarian saw the truth: we don’t need a scapegoat. The only one responsible for the terrible casualties of Task Group 72.5 is Admiral Knox himself. It’s too bad you didn’t succeed in relieving him of command when you had the chance. We might still have that planet killer, not to mention all the ships that were lost.
“But what’s done is done I suppose. Anyway, you’re hereby granted seventy-two hours leave. Three standays from now, report to Vice Admiral Levieson for assignment. His ship, the Leviathan, is due to arrive tomorrow. War brews, Jonathan. The United Systems isn’t pleased by the incursion of these Raakarr into our space. The commander-in-chief and his advisers have cut a deal with the Zarafe faction. To be honest, I think we got the short end of it. I wish I was going with you, but I’m stuck on this damn shore billet. I’m going to need you to be my eyes and ears out there. Obey Levieson, and do your duty out there. Make sure the Zarafe don’t betray us. And make sure Levieson doesn’t either, for that matter. But most of all, try to get through the coming months alive. I have a feeling this war isn’t going to be the cakewalk our senior command and the Zarafe make it out to be.”
Not so free, then.
Jonathan found himself taking a drink in an officers bar, unsurprisingly empty at that time of day. He preferred it that way.
Unlike at an enlisted bar, the skin musicians weren’t set out on display for the clientele. Instead, Jonathan had to access the roster via his aReal. He cycled through the list until he found something close to what he was after. At this place, the pleasurers were made to order. After he selected his base model, he tweaked the on-screen sliders to adjust her look until he had precisely what he was looking for.
He finished his drink, got up from his bar stool, and proceeded toward the rear of the bar. A sultry Artificial let him into a back hallway, lit in pink neon, and guided him to one of the rooms. Jonathan went inside.
“Hello Jonathan,” the woman waiting on the bed said. “I’ve missed you.”
She looked almost exactly like Bridgette twenty years ago. Her body was in better shape, her eyes a little wider and more innocent, her hair a brighter shade, but otherwise it was her.
The next three days passed in a blur of male-female bonding: ravenous sex, deep conversation, fine dining, shared virtual experiences. At the end of it he wished the pleasurer farewell, along with most of his monthly salary. The Artificial shed tears when he departed so that he almost believed it was Bridgette, and that she loved him. Almost.
As soon as I’m gone the tears will stop and the Artificial will prepare itself for the next client.
Jonathan only wished that he could move on so easily.
six
Jonathan resided in the flag office of the Decatur-class supercarrier USS Leviathian, flagship of Battle Group 35.2. He perched across from Vice Admiral Levieson, who was seated behind a desk on the far side of the long, narrow compartment. There were other desks in the room, but those were currently empty. No items of any kind, personal or otherwise, were visible atop those desks—any accouterments would be virtual, seen by the owners via aReal only. If the sharing flags of such accouterments were enabled, he didn’t have the necessary access to see them.
Levieson appeared younger than his sixty-eight years. He had made ample use of rejuvenation treatments: his hair was jet black, and his skin, while leathery, was almost wrinkle-free. The low body fat percentage of his face sharpened his nose and cheeks, and slightly hollowed his eyes, giving him a haunted look. He did not wear aReal glasses, meaning he either used the contact lens or Implant variants. His body was lean, almost frail, beneath those prim fatigues.
Shining with intelligence, and suppressed malevolence, those beady eyes focused on him. “Congratulations on your acquittal.”
“Thank you, vice admiral,” Jonathan said. “But we’ll see if it sticks when the reviewing authorities have their go.”
“It’ll stick,” Levieson said. “The navy wants to bury this incident under the rug and move forward as quickly as possible.”
“And you?”
Those eyes glinted with humor. “I’m of like mind. I trust your leave was... pleasant?” He said that last word in a knowing way. No doubt Levieson had checked Jonathan’s location history and knew precisely what the captain had been up to.
“Very much so,” Jonathan said.
“Good. We all need to destress from time to time, in our own unique manner.” The vice admiral folded his hands in his lap, then he raised a noise canceler about himself and the captain. Jonathan knew because of the icon that appeared in the upper left of his vision, courtesy of his aReal. It depicted a loudspeaker in profile, surrounded by a circle drawn with dashes.
A second notice appeared, flashing in the lower central part of his vision.
Classified conversation commencing.
He received a classified data download request, and accepted. Fresh files appeared in the encrypted database linked to his aReal.
Levieson continued. “To business: the United Systems hasn’t taken kindly to the incursion attempt perpetrated by the Raakarr into our space. As such, the Leviathan and her battle group are headed to Prius 3, where Battle Group 35.1 is four months from completing a Gate to Vega 951. Two more fleets will be joining us: Battle Group 34.1 and Task Group 72.4. When the Gate is finished, the combined fleet, sixty warships strong, will pass through the wormhole into Vega 951, while twenty members of 34.1 and 72.4 stay behind to guard the system from any penetration attacks while we’re in Raakarr space.
“In Vega 951 we expect to find the survivors of Task Group 72.5 waiting for us. They should have come back from the Elder galaxy by now, and are either constructing a return Gate to Prius 3, or hiding out from any enemy reinforcements in the system. We will proceed to another system two jumps from 951, and destroy a key Elk colony world in retaliation for their attacks.”
“Do we expect resistance in 951?” Jonathan said.
“If not in 951, then definitely in the adjacent systems,” Levieson replied. “Even so, we have Battle Group 35.1 on high alert, ready to engage s
hould any enemy forces emerge before Gate completion. It’s a damn shame the Zarafe faction refuses to share the technology for Slipstream traversal with us. Would shave a year and a half off of our journey.”
Jonathan sat up, stunned. “Wait, what? Who the hell negotiated the peace treaty with the Zarafe? Sharing the traversal tech should have been a key tenet of the agreement.”
“Oh I agree absolutely,” Levieson said. “The initial agreement ironed out between the Zarafe and the United Systems included the sharing of that tech, but when the commander-in-chief’s advisers arrived to negotiate the final deal, the Zarafe managed to get that part stricken from the agreement. I guess, even if we had it, the tech wouldn’t have made much difference to our current mission anyway. According to the Zarafe, the technology would require a complete overhaul of our ships: we’d have to redesign and rebuild them from the ground up. Because of the sheer costs involved, we wouldn’t have more than two or three ready a year from now. But still, it’s too bad: it would have been nice to have a few of those Slipstream-capable ships under construction in the background, ready for service a year from now to augment our ranks. I’m guessing the Zarafe held back because we reneged on one of their key demands during the negotiations.”
“And what demand would that be?” Jonathan asked.
“The part about teaching them how to construct planet killers.”
Jonathan brightened. “We’re not giving the Zarafe planet killers?”
“That’s right,” the vice admiral said. “We’re bringing a planet killer to the Elk colony ourselves. Though I suppose in essence, it’s almost the same as giving it to them, since they’ve chosen the planet we’ll attack. But the bomb is under our control, in the end, to deploy or not deploy as we deem fit.”
“Wait... you say we’re bringing a planet killer? I thought the United Systems didn’t have any more of them? Unless we borrowed one from the Sino-Koreans...”
“We didn’t have to borrow anything from the Sino-Koreans,” the vice admiral said. “This mission is taking place without any Sino-Korean support whatsoever. And the rumors that our government lost its only planet killer during the Vega 951 mission are mostly true. Because we’ve only just completed our second. It’s harbored by the destroyer Dammerung, part of our battle group.”
“I see,” Jonathan said. “So tell me about this colony world we plan to destroy.” He was unable to hide the growing suspicion from his voice.
“According to the Zarafe, it’s the second most populous colony world of the Elk faction.”
“And we’re going to blast the place to hell as payback for their attack against our space,” Jonathan stated coldly.
Levieson shrugged. “We’re giving them a little taste of what’s going to happen to their homeworld if they keep up this aggressive posturing, yes.”
“You said the colony system is two jumps from Vega 951?”
“That’s right. We take the uncharted 2-Vega Slipstream in 951, spend six months building a Gate to the target system, and then jump through and destroy the colony on the other side. During those six months, we’ll probably have to fend off continual attacks against the Gate while its under construction.”
“Do we plan on building a return Gate to Vega 951 at the same time?” Jonathan said.
“It depends on the battle space,” Levieson said. “And on two questions: how quickly can we secure the system, and how much enemy resistance will we find ourselves up against after doing so? If the resistance proves minor, and we can afford to leave behind a battle unit to protect the return Gate, we’ll do so.”
“Haven’t the defectors shared details of what to expect in the various systems? Planetary defenses, enemy fleet deployments, etc?”
“They have,” Levieson said. “But you know as well as I that battle spaces change in realtime.”
“Anything else I should be aware of regarding this colony world?” Jonathan pulled up the classified data Levieson had shared with him regarding the planet as he spoke. It turned out to be an Earth-sized moon of an ice giant.
“The Zarafe say it’s a key world involved in the production of their starship fuel. By destroying that world, we’ll be dealing a severe blow to their space navy. Almost as bad as the blow we almost dealt to the Sino Koreans in Tau Ceti via the planet killer. The Zarafe leader, Valor, didn’t want to share what the Raakarr use for starship fuel, but we suspect it’s geronium, like our own. Once we blast away the crust from that planet, we plan to harvest as much as we can from the resultant debris.”
Jonathan studied the moon’s stats on his display.
“That seems a bit harsh,” Jonathan said. “According to the data you shared with me, no doubt obtained from the Zarafe faction, the Elk have over five million inhabitants on the colony.”
“So what?” Levieson sounded defensive, angry. “They attacked us first. We’re going to teach them an important lesson: you can’t attack human colonies like that. They’re lucky we’re not staging an assault against their homeworld, as we’ve done in the past to other alien aggressors. I’m sure you’ve read about the Second Alien War? We nuked the homeworld of the invading Mahasattva to hell. Look at how compliant they became afterward.”
“Yeah. If our homeworld was nuked, we’d be compliant as well.”
“My point exactly,” the vice admiral said. “We’re going to take away their fuel source, and if that doesn’t work and they persist in their aggressive actions, the Zarafe are going to regret the day they ever invaded the United Systems.”
“The mighty, vain, United Systems...” Jonathan said.
“Do you have a problem with the mission, Captain?” Levieson asked.
“Not at all,” Jonathan replied. “But you know, some would say we invaded them first. And that Vega 951 was actually their territory.”
“And those people would be wrong,” Levieson said. “There is a difference between unknowingly trespassing, and purposely invading.”
“But it depends on the interpretation,” Jonathan insisted. “Look at it from the alien perspective. We stumbled upon one of their nesting grounds. A place that is probably sacred to them. A place, at least in their culture, perhaps worthy of the deadly force they responded with.”
“Our Zarafe allies have told us all about these nesting grounds of theirs,” Levieson said frostily. “Apparently, Raakarr journey to the wreckages of Elder vessels to sire their offspring. Like salmon migrating from the ocean to spawn in the upper reaches of the natal river where they were born.”
“So you’re saying the Raakarr die after mating, then?” Jonathan asked. “Like the salmon?”
“No. Perhaps salmon was a bad example. The Raakarr live after they spawn. But anyway, they travel to specific sites in their territory in order to reproduce, including a particular city on their homeworld that harbors a chain of Elder wreckages. As for the crash site on Achilles I in Vega 951, those particular grounds are on the outskirts of Raakarr space, and rarely used. Apparently, the alien ships we encountered belonged to a couple of fringe nutjobs who wanted to rear their youth far from the influence of mainstream Raakarr society. Which would explain why Achilles I wasn’t properly guarded. If that was one of their official nesting grounds, trust me when I tell you that you would have encountered far more ships.”
“These fringe nutjobs, as you call them, were certainly able to call in a good bit of reinforcements,” Jonathan said.
“Apparently the Raakarr government, or rather the Elk faction that runs them, doesn’t take lightly to any trespassing by foreign powers into their territory. And that’s the key word, here. Trespass. That’s all we did. Not invade.”
“But again, I have to argue that it depends on the cultural interpretation,” Jonathan said. “And of course, all of this assumes that the Zarafe faction are telling the truth about Achilles I.”
“I trust them, at least in that regard.”
“And what about our translator? You trust him, too?”
“We have to,”
Levieson said. “For the moment. But rest assured, we won’t have to rely on him forever. Bill Wethersfield, the Artificial liaison assigned to the Talon, is documenting the alien language. The Artificial has been recording the EM frequencies emitted by the Raakarr brains, and with Barrick’s help he’s been mapping the waveforms to different human words. It’s a slow, tedious process, but Wethersfield is making progress. The Artificial estimates that enough of the language will be recorded in three years to negate the need for the telepath.”
“Three years. This war might be long over by then.”
Levieson sat back and smiled. “I never took you for an optimist, Captain Dallas.”
“That wasn’t me being optimistic,” Jonathan said. “But what about the Elk faction? Won’t their language be different from that of the Zarafe aboard the Talon, at least subtly?”
“Oh it is,” Levieson agreed. “But Wethersfield is having Barrick teach him those variations, too.”
Jonathan folded his arms. “Or so Barrick says.”
“At some point, we have to trust those who work beneath us,” Levieson said.
“That’s hard for me, considering what he’s done,” Jonathan said.
Levieson nodded. “I’ve watched all the logs you brought back. Attempting to take control of your ship. Kidnapping the wife of your first officer in a bid to escape his resultant confinement. I can’t entirely blame you for not trusting him. But he has redeemed himself since then, at least somewhat, you have to admit.”
“I suppose so,” Jonathan said. “And you’re absolutely right, he’s all we have at the moment. That doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
“I have to tell you.” The vice admiral leaned forward conspiratorially. “Because of Barrick we’ve shored up the navy’s telepath policy.”