by Jay Allan
The chair swiveled back, and the eye opened in surprise. “Such vulgar thoughts, Captain. I’m surprised.” He held up a hand when he saw Titus’s mortified expression. “But thank you, Captain, for finally speaking your mind. I will require that of you in the coming weeks and months as we exterminate the rest of the Resistance.”
“So, our work is not finished? Our sources say over ninety-five percent of all registered Resistance fighters were on those nine ships.”
“Captain, we may have lost this battle, but the war is nearly won.”
“Lost, sir?”
“Yes. Lost.” For a moment the Admiral looked incredibly annoyed. “Mercer and the Phoenix got away. And the Heron, inexplicably. We captured only one. The Roc. The plan was for every ship to be either destroyed or the crew captured and put to death. We lost two times today, and if we don’t track down those ships … let’s just say there are too many loose ends hanging out of the cloth. We need to finish this task once and for all. The Emperor demands it.”
“Yes, sir,” said Titus. “What do you have in mind?”
“Nothing yet, Captain. That is why I am studying this music. It is one of Mercer’s favorite musical groups, after all.”
Titus noticed that Admiral Trajan used the Rebel captain’s name, and wondered why only that man had earned the honor so far.
“And you think studying it will give you insight into his character? His strategy?”
“I do. It already has.” He stood up and walked over to the Panreh pipe hanging in its customary position on the wall. Titus’s back went tense. The Admiral took it off its mount and wiped a smudge with his sleeve. “Really, Captain, you needn’t be so antsy.”
Titus swallowed. “Yes, sir.”
“Please get on the comm and get in touch with Imperial intelligence services on Earth. I need the ranking operative on board within two hours. Dismissed.”
As Titus nodded and turned away, he looked at the deck plate and saw the vague outline of the stain of blood. Trajan had only carelessly wiped it away. As Titus left through the sliding doors, he vowed to let that be the last needless pool of blood carelessly spread by the madman. He’d find a way to protect his men.
Somehow.
-o0o-
Ensign Ayala hurried down the corridor, weaving through the debris still scattered on the floor, avoiding eye contact with the crew members as they rushed past her, only occasionally nodding a vague greeting to someone that recognized her. It was easy to recognize her, she knew. She was used to it. Being from Belen meant being a constant celebrity. Almost like a mascot. And it rankled her.
But he didn’t treat her like a mascot. He was different.
“Hello, Willow, coming to the memorial tonight?” Ayala froze. She forced a smile onto her face and turned to face Commander Po. Would the woman see through her? See her secret?
“Hello, Commander. Blessings.” She took a step forward, but crossed her arms, which, after a moment, she decided looked too defensive and she lowered them to her side. “I will. I just need some rest. I’ve been on duty for so long…”
Po smiled, and reached out a hand to her shoulder. “Of course, Willow. Get some rest. You deserve it. Great job on the bridge today. I don’t know if we would have made it out without you there.”
Ayala couldn’t tell if the praise was genuine, or if the commander was just trying to be a good XO. Apparently Po didn’t know that XOs were supposed to be gruff, fearsome, no-nonsense. Not grandmotherly. The XO was never your friend.
“Thank you, sir.” She took a step away before finishing with her usual Belenite farewell. “Blessings be upon you, Commander.”
She arrived in her cramped quarters sweating, having broken into a run after she left Po in the corridor, and she hadn’t stopped until the door slid shut behind her. Why had she run? She swore at herself, wondering why anyone would want to be with such a wreck—her hair was both fizzy from static and wet with sweat. One of her earrings had ripped free during the battle, and dried, crusted blood covered her ear and part of her neck. What a sight, indeed.
“You finally made it. I’ve been wondering when you’d return.”
She turned to face him. And smiled. “I couldn’t wait to get back.”
“What’s the status? Are we out of danger? How’s the ship?”
Ayala approached the bed and sat next to him. “We’re fine. We made it out. The ship’s in a bad way, but we’ll muddle through somehow. Mercer seems capable enough.”
“Mercer? Who’s that?”
“The new Captain. Watson is dead, you know.”
“Well you Rebels had it coming. Fighting us like this? And all my work for nothing? You all ought to be ashamed.”
She turned to him, and pressed her chest into his. “Sorry, Senator. It’s just, it’s just you’re so sexy when you chastise…”
Senator Galba pulled off Ayala’s uniform top and squeezed her breasts. “And you’re … you’re simply irresistible.” He kissed her, and she tingled. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this way. Except she did remember. Five months ago, on Corsica. He’d noticed her, and winked at her, and for three nights they’d somehow had their tryst unseen by his aides and by her roommates. How had his aides not known about her? Maybe they did. She didn’t care.
But at the thought of the senator’s aides, she pulled away. “Are you sure you’re ok with this? You just lost your staff. And that man on the Fidelius? Was that your double?”
He nuzzled her ear. “One of them. I have two. Jaques was the best, though. I’ll miss him, poor bastard. Now come here, my Belenite goddess.”
She hadn’t heard that one before, but let him press down on her. Was she betraying her friends? Was this wrong? No. It couldn’t be. The man was the head of the Reconciliation committee, after all. He wanted good relations with the Resistance. And isn’t that what she was doing right now? Forging good relations?
Their time together flew past, and after an hour Ayala looked up at the old-fashioned clock hanging above her bed—a miniature grandfather clock that her mother had given her. An actual relic from Belen, before it was destroyed.
“I’ve got to be at this memorial in four hours. I need to sleep, Harrison.” She cocked her head towards him, resting on the pillow next to her. “Or is it Demetrius? Or Senator? I’m still never sure what to call you.”
He kissed her forehead. “Call me what you want.” He pulled the blanket over his bare chest and turned over. “So Willow, tell me. What’s our next destination? Anywhere you can arrange to drop me off? I need to get back to the Senate.”
“Really? They have no idea you’re here. And if they did, well, I have no idea what Mercer would do with you.”
“Take me hostage?”
Ayala rolled her eyes. “Please. That’s not what the Resistance does.”
His eyes narrowed. “I’ve heard stories, my dear, that would curdle your blood. But no matter. I need to get off this ship.”
She looked him in the eye. “And I’m telling you that it’s not going to happen for awhile. There’s no way to get you off right away without someone seeing you.”
His eyes narrowed, as if he were about to protest, or to yell—she still didn’t have a good handle of what kind of man he was—but he set his head down and put on a thin smile. “Very well. I’m sure you know best, my dear.”
She noticed his brow still furrowed, as if he were still lost in thought, planning or plotting his escape, but she let it be.
For now, though, she was in heaven, though the ship had nearly been blown to hell.
----o0o----
Thank you for reading!
The saga continues in:
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----o0o----
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BONUS!
“The Bernoulli Equation”
A Short Story
“Alessandro Timoteo Bernoulli: scientist, heartthrob, intergalactic man of mystery, brilliance incarnate, sex symbol of the Thousand Worlds, swooner of unsatisfied housewives, deriver of underivable equations, uncontested champion of—”
“Al, what the hell are you doing?”
The dark-haired man paused, an exaggerated sigh his only acknowledgement of the interruption from his companion. Straightening himself up again in front of the mirror, he tugged at his uniform, tidying out a stray wrinkle, and stared confidently at his own image.
“—uncontested champion of the gravitic field equations, humiliator of moderately endowed men, chess grandmaster, maker of—”
The man’s companion cleared his throat again and tossed a rolled-up dirty sock at him. Ensign Alessandro Bernoulli glanced down at his roommate with a scowl.
“Look, friend, I’m trying to work on my introduction, yes? How can I expect to woo Imperial Fleet women if I don’t flaunt my goods, so to speak?”
His roommate, Ensign Jefferson, a squat, balding fellow, laughed out loud and tossed the other sock. “Woo women? Al, you’re about to meet your new commanding officer, not go out to some bar!”
Bernoulli shifted his gaze back to the mirror, nodding. “She might be a woman.”
“He or she is your commanding officer! Captain Tonks! You can’t go introducing yourself to your captain like that.”
Bernoulli reached for his chin and stroked his smooth, bare face. “Well, obviously, you don’t know the first thing about making a memorable first impression.”
Ensign Jefferson reached for a data pad and punched a few commands. “Look, buddy, let’s settle this.” He examined the readout, and with a yell of triumph tossed the pad at his roommate. “Look! See? Tonks is a man. You’re practicing your pickup line not only for your commanding officer, but for a hairy dude.”
Bernoulli frowned and caught the pad. “Yes, yes, friend. But look,” he held the pad and tapped it repeatedly with his finger, “the executive officer, Commander Takato, she is a woman.” He glanced back at the pad and furrowed his brow. “I think. Bushy unibrow, square angular jaw, but otherwise very feminine.”
Jefferson rolled off the bed and reached for his boots, pulled them on and walked over to the sink. “Look, just don’t embarrass me our first day on the ship. It was a big thing to be assigned to the Indomitable, and you’re not messing this up for me, genius or no.” He turned the faucet on and splashed his face.
Bernoulli glanced back into the mirror. “Calm yourself, my excitable friend. You’re forgetting the whole purpose of this uniform.” He pulled at his, and picked at a few stray pieces of lint—the whole ship seemed full of it, being a brand new Capital starship of the Corsican Imperial Fleet.
Jefferson blew air out his mouth as the water streamed over his face. “And that is? Exploration? Security for the Thousand Worlds? Glory?”
Bernoulli snorted. “Pussy.” He reached down and, licking his thumb, rubbed a smudge off his boot. “Exploration, glory, and pussy. Do you realize how much we’ll get to score offworld with this uniform? The women—they throw themselves at our feet.” He stood back up and grinned. “You’ll see, friend.”
-o0o-
“What the hell did you expect, Ensign, that I’d throw myself at your feet? Do you think I care about the letters after your name?” Captain Tonks was larger than he appeared in the personnel file. Thin, bristly mustache, a bulbous head that sat on a neckless torso filling his black captain’s uniform, and the enormous round belly spilling over his protesting belt—the man exuded blustery Corsican confidence and girth.
“Well, no, sir, I merely thought that—”
Captain Tonks snorted. “Think? Did I ask you to think? Bernoulli, you’re on this ship because we need warm bodies to fill the seats in engineering, not because of your bullshit Ph.D. in quantum fucking math whatever. Our new engines are so advanced, all we’re going to need you to be doing is to look up from jerking off every few minutes to make sure that the computer is still plugged in, got it?”
“Uh … yes, sir.” Bernoulli wasn’t used to people not appreciating his intelligence, and for the first time in his life he didn’t know what to say. Glancing around the sterile bridge, he saw furtive smirks and glances from the bridge crew—all probably terrified of saying anything their captain might interpret as insolence or original thought. Like furtive sheep—all glancing nervously at the Captain, hanging on his every blustery word.
“Good. Now get your asses down to engineering and report to Commander Weatherly. We’re about to begin our patrol of the Davidon sector, and I want everything ready. Reports say that the November Clan is becoming increasingly bold out there, raiding Imperial supply depots and exacting their bullshit tax, and I want to teach the bastards a lesson they won’t soon forget.”
The door to the bridge slid open and in walked Commander Takato, or, Commander Unibrow, as Bernoulli called her in his head. And immediately he felt a warm fire down in his pants.
She was beautiful. Full, black eyebrows, yes, but her personnel file certainly didn’t do her any justice. Sweeping, confident curves, thin waist, eyes that dazzled like black obsidian stars. He grinned as the bulge in his pants grew, and he turned to face her.
“Good morning, Commander Takato. Ensign Alessandro Bernoulli at your service,” he reached out a hand. She smiled a tight grin, as if she dreaded meeting yet another upstart and over-eager young Ensign from Old Earth—doubtlessly a run-down backwater in her eyes.
“Ensign, good to meet you.” She immediately turned to the Captain, not giving Bernoulli a further glance. “Sir, weapons installations all report ready. Railgun turrets loaded, gigawatt laser banks charged. Imperial Command down on Peleo has given us the all-clear to depart. Just waiting on your orders.”
“Excellent, Commander. We’ll be making the grav shift within the hour, assuming,” he turned back to Bernoulli and Jefferson with a slight sneer, “our resident professor can find his way to engineering and help babysit our engines.”
Bernoulli, still mesmerized by Takato, blurt out, “Commander, have you ever heard of the Bernoulli equation?”
Both Commander Takato and Captain Tonks did a double take.
“Excuse me, Ensign?”
“The Bernoulli equation? You know it? It is quite well known.”
Commander Takato glanced at the bewildered Captain, who shrugged his shoulders. “Yes. Is there something relevant concerning our engines or—”
“Good! So you know that pressure in a fluid is always dependent on the velocity of the fluid. And, of course,” he waved his hand lazily, “on the depth of said fluid in a gravity field. But no, that is not the Bernoulli equation I was referring to.”
“Oh?” Takato looked vaguely annoyed, but still too uncaring to tell him to shut up and get his ass to engineering, which it looked the Captain might do again very soon.
“It’s mine. I made it up. My own Bernoulli equation. And it is very simple. Very simple math, yes. You, plus me, equals…” He broke off as Ensign Jefferson coughed loudly and jabbed him in the back with his elbow. Takato’s eyes went wide, and her jaw hung slightly open.
“Well, Captain, Commander, it’s our pleasure to be aboard. We’ll go down to engineering now, sir,” he said, saluting the Captain and pulling on Bernoulli’s arm. Captain Tonks was already talking to the tactical crew and Commander Takato just watched them go with what Bernoulli guessed, or rather hoped, was fascination.
In the hallway, Jefferson finally let go of Bernoulli’s arm and marched towards the elevator shaft at the end. “You’re unbelievable, you know that?”
“Of course! But just think of it—Commander Takato will always be thinking of me now.
Always. She’ll wonder what I was about to say before you interrupted me. I made an impression.”
Jefferson eyed him from the side. “Yeah, you sure did.”
-o0o-
In Engineering, things went more smoothly. Both Jefferson and Bernoulli were right in their element, gawking at the massive gravitic engines in the center of the vast room, the sleek fusion drive that formed one of the walls, and the busy hum of engineers performing their varied tasks, getting the new engines ready for their first shakedown cruise.
After receiving their assignments from Commander Weatherly, the chief engineer, they huddled over the phase array spanner in the corner. Bernoulli smirked as he pulled the compartment lid off and examined the contents. “Look at this, friend. Fifty trillion credits spent on this bloated, over-engineered hulk of a phallic symbol—over-compensation for some Corsican Admiral’s diminutive manhood, no doubt—and all they can give us is some hundred-year-old phase array spanner! What do they think we’re going to do with this?”
Jefferson rolled his eyes and got to work, shoving his arm deep into the compartment. “Realign the auxiliary gravitic phase array, like Commander Weatherly told us. Look, I know it ain’t CERN, but stop complaining and let’s get this over with.”
Bernoulli handed the other man an omni-meter, and busied himself with the interface. “Look, friend, we had our share of old equipment at CERN, do not take me wrong. But at least there we had a sense of history. There was equipment hundreds of years old, but it was old because it was useful. This? This is just cutting corners. It is as if the Empire dumped a whole shitload of money to make the outside of the ship look nice—enough to impress the senators and scare off any pirates—but its innards are worthless shit. Just like the Empire, if you ask me—”
“Shh!” Jefferson whipped his hand out of the spanner and held a finger to his lips. “What the hell are you doing? You sound like a … like a November Clan pirate or something. Knock it off before someone hears you, got it?”