The drone had also arrived with an unencrypted partition containing civilian files from the Damask System’s interplanetary net. It would include messages from loved ones as well as the latest media and software updates, so Husher had to assume morale in Cybele had been lifted at least a little.
He laid the crucifix on the table, its bottom pointing toward Husher’s left. Why had Keyes chosen to leave it to him in his will, and only that? Husher had heard of people sending vindictive messages using their wills, leaving their “beneficiaries” weird or useless items. But he knew that was far from Keyes’s style. Husher had been close with the man, or as close as a young upstart and his commanding officer could get. Over the course of the Second Galactic War, they’d won each other’s respect.
No, if Keyes had left him the crucifix, it was because he considered it valuable.
Even so… Husher couldn’t make heads or tails of it. He opened the drawer, dropped the wooden cross in, and stood up with the intention of visiting Cybele and checking on Ochrim’s progress.
At that moment, his Oculenses notified him of a voice-only call from Major Gamble, and Husher willed them to put the call through.
“Captain, my marines just caught some type of activist who managed to make her way inside the crew quarters.”
This never ends, does it? “Did you get the name?”
“She declined to give her name, but we did find her in the database easily enough. Name’s Maeve Aldaine, a Sociology undergrad at Cybele U.”
Ah, an old friend. “Is Ms. Aldaine aware she’s now officially a federal offender?”
“I may have mentioned something along those lines.”
“Good. Give her our best cell in the brig, and make sure she knows it’s the coziest one we could find for her. I’m on my way into Cybele now, but I’ll have a chat with her when I get back.”
“Will do, sir.”
“Husher out.”
It was difficult not to smile to himself as he made his way through the Vesta’s crew corridors and toward the hatch that let out into the simulated desert. Trespassing on a military vessel—or in the Vesta’s case, the crew section of a military vessel—was a federal offense, good for either ten years in prison or a hefty fine. In fact, it was one of the few things about the military that civilians hadn’t been given unfettered access to.
Who knows how long that’ll last, though. The way things are going, I could easily be giving guided tours by the end of next week.
He continued on toward Cybele, trying to banish the mental image of Vin Husher the Smiley Supercarrier Captain waving a gaggle of tourists through corridor after corridor, charming them with endearing anecdotes about the ship and her crew.
When he reached Ochrim’s house, a knock didn’t bring the Ixan to the door, nor did the bell. Husher sent a transmission request.
“Ochrim,” he said once the alien accepted. “You’re in the lab?”
“I am.”
“I’m coming down. Send your door the command to let me in.”
The front door clicked, and the call ended. Husher stepped inside, making sure to secure the entrance behind him. That done, he proceeded to the rear of the house, pried up the floor tile, and activated the panel, which slid aside for him. He began climbing down the ladder.
“Nice day out,” he remarked as his foot met the lab’s floor.
Ochrim glanced up from where he was standing over a table, using a screwdriver to fiddle around with something. The Ixan peered at him over small, round spectacles that perched on the end of his faded muzzle. “A joke.”
“You should try one sometime,” Husher said. “Damn, I forgot to bring down beer. Do you have a mini-fridge down here or anything?”
“I’m afraid not, Captain.”
“Just my luck. Have you heard about the visit your brother paid us?”
“My…brother?” Ochrim’s hand paused mid-screw.
“Teth.”
Ochrim blinked. “I follow shipboard news on the narrownet, and I’ve read rumors about what happened, as well as complaints that our military isn’t telling us more. I also felt the tremors from whatever it was we were struck with. But I was unaware our attacker was someone claiming to be my brother.”
“Not just claiming, Ochrim. I ran into him myself, down on Tyros. He’s bigger, now.”
That brought a silence from the scientist, as well as a baffled expression that Husher found pretty gratifying. It was a rare thing to behold.
“Teth seemed to have a couple pieces of fairly specific intel about us,” he went on. “And that was just what he let on. You wouldn’t happen to be the source of that intel, would you?”
“Of course not.”
Husher gave a dry chuckle. “You say that like it should be obvious, but a glance at your history tells us it’s anything but.” He marched toward the Ixan, and to the scientist’s credit, he didn’t flinch. When Husher neared, he yanked the metal stool from behind where the Ixan stood, dragged it back a meter or so, and took a seat. “Let’s see how good I am at reading you,” Husher said, grinning. “You’re even more reserved than usual today, and that tells me two things. One, you have something new. And two, the reason you haven’t notified me about having something new is that you’re reluctant to share it with me. You’ll claim that the reason for that is your reluctance to violate the Union’s strictures on developing weapons for military use.”
“I am—”
Holding up a hand to forestall him, Husher said, “Stow it. That’s what you’ll claim, but you do know what it’s actually going to seem like to me, don’t you? Your reluctance to share any and all advancements with me will seem very suspicious, in light of your brother’s reappearance. Now, assuming for a moment that you’re sincere in your misgivings, I want you to know that I plan to submit any usable findings to the admiralty first. If they don’t like that I even went about supporting this research, then I’ll take full responsibility. I won’t even mention your name. But Ochrim, our society is stagnating as a military power, and I have to do something about that. Now, with all that said, why don’t you tell me what you’ve found?”
A brief pause from Ochrim, punctuated by a sigh. “I believe I’ve discovered how inter-dimensional travel might be possible. If I—”
“Just tell me what you need. I’ll get the explanation of how it works from you in the event that you actually manage to make it work. Sorry, I don’t think I have the fortitude today to make it through a lecture like the last one you gave me.”
“Very well. I need the latest design and drafting software from DeskChain. Not what is commercially available, but the edition they offer to corporations and governments able to pay, which has the more robust simulation capabilities I require.”
“Not a simple request. But all right, Ochrim. I’ll see what strings I can pull.” Husher turned to walk toward the ladder leading up to Ochrim’s residence, then stopped, glancing back at the Ixan. “The rumors you heard about our engagement…did they include how the enemy warship seemed to just vanish?”
Ochrim inclined his head. “A couple of them did.”
“Do you think it’s possible that Teth has learned how to flip back and forth between universes?”
The Ixan nodded. “Very.”
Chapter 23
Head Fascist
“I see a bright young lady with potential oozing out her ears,” Husher said as he drew level with Aldaine’s cell. “What’s she doing in a military vessel’s brig?”
Aldaine stood, fists balled at her sides as she turned a cold glare on him. “Fighting fascist human supremacists.”
Husher raised his eyebrows. “Wow. That’s quite a charge. What was your plan, exactly, for fighting these fascists?”
“I’m talking about you. You’re the head fascist.”
“I gathered as much. What was your plan?”
Aldaine fell silent for a moment, but she must have decided there wasn’t much point in withholding, because she said, “I planned t
o access the ship’s emergency broadcasting system so I could speak to everyone on board the Vesta, including the crew.”
“Misusing an emergency broadcasting system—yet another federal offense. Do you even know where the equipment is located?”
“I would have found it.”
“I tend to doubt that, considering you were apprehended within three minutes of making your way in here. How did you manage to get in, by the way?”
The young activist fell silent, and Husher sighed. He hadn’t expected her to give up that information on simple request, or even to indicate whether she’d been helped by a member of the crew. He’d already decided what measure he would take to prevent this from happening again, though: from now on, each crewmember would be given a unique passcode, which they’d have to manually enter whenever they wanted to visit or leave Cybele. Everyone would be responsible for keeping his or her code secure, and also for deactivating it and requesting a new one if they thought it had been compromised. The next time a code was used by an activist seeking to make a point, Husher planned to hold the owner of that code responsible.
“Can I ask what exactly it was that you meant to protest?” he said.
“A lot of things, but mainly your refusal to allow nonhuman crew to participate in Nonattendance Day.”
If Husher had ever assumed his capacity for awe would dwindle with age, he was wrong. “If I’d encouraged them to participate in Nonattendance Day, the Vesta would have been undercrewed during the Wintercress engagement. You do realize we’re now officially on wartime footing, don’t you, Ms. Aldaine?”
“That’s exactly the time to hold closest to our principles, isn’t it? If Captain Leonard Keyes is to be taken seriously, that is. He made public statements to that effect all the time, and so did you, when you were younger.”
“I still do,” Husher said, feeling a flush creeping up his neck and trying to will it back down. “The principle I’m adhering to currently is that in order to keep everyone on this ship as safe as I can—and, by extension, everyone in the galaxy—I need all hands on deck.”
“If this were your only misstep, I could almost believe you. But we already know you’re prejudiced against nonhuman species, Captain. We tested you for it, and your actions as well as your recorded testimony at city council meetings make it obvious, too.”
Giving his head a brisk shake to clear it, Husher said, “Ms. Aldaine, I count several nonhuman beings among my most respected colleagues and friends.”
“Ha,” Aldaine said. “That’s exactly the argument supremacists always use. ‘I have plenty of Winger friends,’ they say, every time they’re about to do something that marginalizes Wingers even more.”
“That may be true, of supremacists,” Husher said. “But it doesn’t mean it’s never a valid thing for anyone else to bring up, especially when it happens to be correct. My XO and best friend is a Winger, I have a Gok corporal who has my eternal gratitude for saving my life, and I have a Kaithian Nav officer who…well, I won’t get into my feelings about him right now. The point is—”
“I don’t know how you can do it,” Aldaine said. “I don’t know how you can stand there and pretend you’re the perfect exemplar of interspecies relations, when I know you’re the opposite. I already know that, Captain, and nothing you say can convince me otherwise.”
Nodding, Husher said, “Exactly. That’s exactly what the matter is with people like you, Ms. Aldaine. Nothing can convince you otherwise. You’re not interested in letting other perspectives or even facts convince you. It would be pointless for me to bring up how research has shown that spending time around other species—as I have—is actually the antidote to biased attitudes, not this misguided Awareness Training you keep pushing.”
Husher pressed on, before Aldaine could start shouting him down: “You just accused me of thinking I’m perfect on interspecies relations, but I don’t. I’m well aware I’m far from perfect. We all make mistakes about how to treat each other, and sometimes the mistakes aren’t mistakes, but malicious acts by prejudiced, hateful people. But the honest mistakes, at least, are part of the process. They’re part of life. And you refuse to acknowledge that. You hold other people to a standard of perfection that you aren’t capable of sustaining yourself, and I can guarantee you, someday that’ll come back around to bite you in the ass.”
“Was that a threat?” Aldaine demanded, and with that, Husher grew tired of wasting his breath.
“Escort Ms. Aldaine to Cybele and release her,” he told the guards as he exited the brig.
“I’m going to make your life a living hell, Husher!” she yelled just before he drew out of earshot.
Chapter 24
Asleep to Awake
The evenly trimmed grass was damp, and it soaked through his creased pants as he knelt there. He’d paid someone to keep the lawn tidy while he was away on deployment, but right now it was far from tidy—beset by flaming timber, it would take months to restore.
Husher would not be the one to restore the lawn. Even at that moment, as he watched the inferno consume his family’s home, he knew that. He would leave this place and never return.
The heat bathed him, but he didn’t care. Instead, he longed to charge into the conflagration, to rake through the white-hot cinders of his house, to topple beams and smash through burnt walls. He wanted his daughter, and if he couldn’t have her, then he wanted to join her.
His uncontrolled sobbing rose in pitch, and soon it reached unnatural heights—notes his voice should not have been capable of. It also gained the regularity of a machine, shrieking again and again in measured soprano.
He woke to a Priority-level call coming through his com, which vibrated madly atop the table next to his bed. Snatching it, he groaned when he saw the name. Penelope Snyder.
Answering it, he growled, “Cybele better be burning down, Ms. Snyder.”
A brief pause, followed by, “Excuse me, Captain?”
He strove to regain control of himself, ignoring his racing heart. “Unless this is an emergency, you’re abusing your ability to make Priority calls to my com, and that’s unacceptable.”
“This is a priority, Captain Husher, or at least it should be.”
“What is it?”
“According to the records my Awareness Trainers have supplied me with, some of your human crew are skipping the prescribed training. You do recall that if you’re to remain captain, every human in your crew must complete this program, don’t you?”
We’re in a war, Penelope. That’s what he wanted to say, but despite the emotional state his nightmare had left him in, he managed to restrain himself. He knew it was entirely pointless to raise that fact.
His voice came out as flat, but he forced himself to say it: “I’ll make it known that all human crewmembers must complete Awareness Training or face disciplinary action.”
“I’m relieved to hear that. My schedule tells me that you aren’t on watch right now. Unless there’s been a change?”
“No change.” Unless you count my change from asleep to awake.
“Then I trust you’ll make your promised announcement straight away. I truly believe that time is of the essence, with matters like these.”
“Yes,” he said, in a tone just as flat as before. “As a military captain in the middle of a war, I can certainly appreciate time-sensitive matters.”
“Splendid, Captain. Cheers.” Snyder terminated the call.
He pushed himself to issue the required notice on the Board, which was accessible using the crew-only narrownet. With that, he crawled back into his bunk and tried to put the rest of his off-duty time to good use.
He must have succeeded in falling asleep, because forty-five minutes later, he awoke without the ability to account for the intervening time.
There were still two hours left till his next watch began in the CIC, and his com blinked with a message from one Corporal Toby Yung. Yung was requesting an audience with the captain at his earliest convenience.
<
br /> Sighing, Husher messaged Yung to meet him in his office. He started getting dressed.
Chapter 25
A Respect for Competence
Yung was already waiting outside Husher’s office when he arrived. The marine came to attention once he spotted his captain’s approach.
“Corporal,” Husher said with a nod as he palmed the hatch open. “After you. Take a seat.”
Husher made his way around the desk to his chair. Even before he was settled, the marine said, “Permission to speak freely, sir.”
Under current protocol, it was essentially a requirement for superior officers to grant such permission, as often as it was requested. Husher would likely have been inclined to grant in anyway, under most circumstances, but it rankled to be strongarmed into doing it. “Granted,” he said nevertheless.
“Awareness Training doesn’t work. That’s been proven, time and time again, for every form it’s taken over the last several centuries. Are you aware of that?”
Drawing a deep breath, Husher said. “I have to speak with some care on this subject, Corporal Yung. If anything I say ends up in opportunistic hands, it could easily compromise—”
“Sir, are you a politician or the captain of a military vessel?”
Husher felt his lips tighten. “While I did give you permission to speak freely, that doesn’t unburden you of the requirement to treat your commanding officer with respect.”
“I apologize, Captain.”
“I understand your reluctance to undergo the Training. I understand if you think it’s pointless, and I’d even understand if you had a personal or political reason for opposing it. But the fact is, under the current environment, I have to play ball with the bureaucrats in order to be left alone long enough to properly run my ship. Right now, that means requiring you and every other human in my crew to undergo that training. It is, in fact, an order, Corporal, and you’re paid to follow orders.”
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