Star Wolf (Shattered Galaxy)

by David G. Johnson

  Where was his life supposed to go from here? Before he tackled that question, he needed to unravel the mystery of his unknown benefactor. Who could have known Dawnstar forces had taken them? Who had the wherewithal to hire mercenaries the caliber of Star Wolf’s crew to mount a rescue? John had questions in abundance. Answers were in short supply.

  As he entered the bridge, the first shift crewmen were at their stations. Twitch was at the helm, with some form of glowing remote interface plugged into the data jack on the back of her neck. A green light pulsing in uneven flashes from the end of the wireless interface showed she was jacked into one of the ship’s systems.

  Mel was on comms, and Voide was at the security station. Dub was seated at the engineering station, though this was the first time that John had ever seen the malmorph chief engineer man the bridge station. Young officers John didn’t recognize sat at the astrogation and sensor stations, while Molon occupied his central position in the captain’s chair.

  “Glad you could join us, John,” Molon greeted. “Sorry I don’t have a seat to offer you, but I figured you might want to be on the bridge when we hit system.”

  “I appreciate it, captain,” John said with a nod as he took a position standing near the captain’s chair.

  “If there is anyone in Tede you want to contact, Mel can help you connect as soon as we clear voidspace.”

  “Actually,” John said, rubbing his chin, “with a few calls maybe I can help discover the identity of your mystery employer.”

  “That’d be nice,” Voide interjected. “Getting paid sooner rather than later is always good.”

  On the viewscreen, the swirling colors John had been told were indicative of travel through voidspace began to shimmer and align as though a kaleidoscopic sea were suddenly being poured down a distant, rectangular drain. John felt his stomach lurch, and he thought he might be ill at any moment.

  “Stomach doing flips, Doc?” Molon inquired reading John’s discomfort on his face.

  John nodded, taking a tight grip onto the back of the captain’s chair to steady himself.

  “You’ll get used to it. Going into voidspace is like a whisper. Coming out is more like a drunken, nausea-filled shout. Ensign Reese, get Doc a sick-bag.”

  The young ensign manning the astrogation station reached below the station panels and pulled out a yellow bag with a self-sealing top. He sprinted over to John and handed him the bag.

  “Thank you, ensign,” John said with a weak smile.

  “No problem, Doc. Don’t worry, almost everyone pops their first time coming out of voidspace. Nothing to be embarrassed about.”

  John nodded but did not answer, deciding that keeping his mouth tightly closed and his mind focused on controlling his stomach required his full attention. He had slept through the emergence back at Hatacks, so this was his first time coming out of voidspace while awake.

  Most of John’s space travel previously had been on small ships traveling between the inhabited colonies around the Tede system. He had never traveled between distant star systems while conscious before. There was something to be said for the cryo-suspension used during passages when booked in low berths. That’s how he had traveled as a medical student to the core system of Sarren where he had attended medical school and done his residency.

  Furthermore, despite his wealth and position, Salzmann Pharmaceuticals didn’t splurge on expensive high berth passages, not even for executives, so his interstellar business trips since inheriting his family company had always been in frozen sleep booked in a low berth.

  He did, however, have extensive experience drinking far too much for a single evening and facing the reality of a full schedule the next day. Holding his insides inside wasn’t a completely new challenge. Who knew his younger days of drunken debauchery would serve at least one positive purpose? Still, he was glad to have the sick bag close at hand just in case.

  As John watched the swirling colors of voidspace on the view screen, he marveled at this wonder mankind had discovered over three centuries ago. Another dimension, where space could be folded and distance as man knew it was irrelevant. The invention of the first voidspace drive, the VS1, had allowed man to slip through voidspace and fold two distant points together, emerging at the other end as smoothly as a trip around the solar system.

  The first voidspace jump had only traversed two light years, but it had done it in less than a day. Technology and experience had made incredibly complex folding calculations possible; yielding routes that connected massive distances and allowed hundreds of light years to be traversed in mere weeks or months instead of millennia.

  As John watched the chaotic swirl of colors begin to form a more and more orderly pattern, arranging themselves into more organized lines. Finally, the tiny black rectangle filled with stars grew closer and larger by the second. With a final lurch that almost, but not quite, freed his lunch from its captivity, they transitioned into normal space.

  Suddenly John felt perfectly well again. The nausea dissipated almost instantly as the colorful display on the front viewscreens transitioned into a more familiar diorama of the stars and constellations of the Tede system.

  Tede was a binary star system consisting of an orange dwarf star called Tede Alpha and its far companion, an orange sub-dwarf named Tede Beta. The system had a few satellite worlds, and one habitable planet around the main star that took the system name from the stars. Tede was a small world, with a gravity roughly half that of the human homeworld of Earth.

  “Good job, Doc,” the young ensign Reese said. “You got some stamina to hold it together your first transition.”

  John nodded, not sure that merely refraining from puking was an accomplishment to be particularly proud of.

  “Recognize your home, John?” asked Captain Hawkins as the Tede mainworld loomed closer on the viewscreens.

  “Tede may be a hermit-world, captain,” John said, trying to rein in his growing annoyance at being treated like some ground-hugger. “But we have five inhabited bodies within our system. I have been to all of them save the restricted military research and development station on Tede Alpha’s outermost planet, Tenis. This is not my first time in space.”

  “Sorry, Doc,” Molon said with a grin. “We don’t exactly bump into hermit-worlders every day. I guess we’ve some preconceptions of our own to break.”

  “Coming into comm range of Tede mainworld now, Molon,” Mel commented. “I have released the queued message as requested.”

  “Thanks, Mel. So, Doc, who do you want to call while we wait?”

  John made his way to stand beside the blue-skinned comms officer at her station. The smell of her as he drew near whisked his breath away. Mel gave off the scent of a meadow filled with wildflowers, yet he realized this was not completely an olfactory sensation. It was almost like he could feel her presence pushing this sensation into his soul.

  “John?” Mel asked.

  This near total stranger addressed him familiarly rather than formally. Somehow it felt right. It was as if he and Mel had been friends for years, even though they had only met days ago.

  “Are you alright, John?” Mel inquired.

  John suddenly realized he had just been standing silently beside the communications officer. He looked away to hide the flush he felt rising in his face. John was unsure if he had been standing there soaking in Mel’s presence for ten seconds or ten minutes.

  “I’m sorry,” he covered, “I was just thinking.”

  John punched in the communication codes for Ben Perry’s office in Elucia City. Mel patched the call through. A bookish female appeared on the viewscreen.

  “High Governor Perry’s office, how may I assist you?”

  “Hi Maggie, it’s me,” John said, stepping to the center of the bridge to stand beside Captain Hawkins. “Is Ben in? I need to speak with him.”

  “Oh, Dr. Salzmann, my goodness,” Maggie replied, her eyes turning glassy. “We heard you had disappeared. Yes, just a moment, I will ge
t High Governor Perry for you right away.”

  The familiar logo of Tede’s central government replaced Maggie’s face on the viewscreen as she held the call, to be replaced less than a minute later by the balding, bespectacled face of Ben Perry, the top bureaucrat in Tede’s central government.

  “John, thank the Lion of Judah, you’re alive! There were crazy reports that you had disappeared.”

  “A bit worse for wear, Ben, but definitely alive. Do I have you to thank for that?”

  Ben Perry’s brow furrowed.

  “Beg pardon?”

  John nodded, smiling at his friend to try and convey he hadn’t completely lost his mind.

  “It appears someone placed an anonymous contract on the System Express network for mercenaries to affect our rescue. I thought you might have been behind that.”

  Ben Perry flushed a bit as he shook his head.

  “John, you know I would have. I would do anything in the world for you, but we had no idea what had happened to you. When I heard you were missing, I put the Elucia City security forces on full alert, and we scoured the city. Reports came in that some had seen assault ships landing directly on the surface and outside the starport without clearance or authority.”

  “Couldn’t SysSec identify the ships?”

  “No. SysSec never even detected their approach.”

  “How is that possible, Ben? We have monitoring stations near all the voidspace entry points into the system.”

  “Well,” the High Governor said, rubbing his hands together. “The security stations reported some anomalous readings, but we had no clear visuals or even reliable eyewitness reports about whom the ships belonged to. SysSec suspects they were running signal scramblers. When we couldn’t locate you, I sent a System Express shuttle to Haven reporting the incident and requesting guidance and assistance, but word hasn’t returned yet from the capital. I wish I could take credit, John, but it wasn’t me.”

  “Well if it wasn’t you, and you are still waiting on word back from Haven, then chances are it isn’t the Theocracy either.”

  “Not likely,” Ben laughed. “Patriarch Halberan is a good man doing the best he can in an impossible situation. Nevertheless, everyone knows he hasn’t got the ships, even with help from the Angelicum and Fei forces, to secure all of the border worlds. Tede just isn’t a priority system. We’re neither strategically nor materially important. We’ve known for a long time that we’re on our own out here. Whoever hired your mercenaries, Lion bless them, it certainly wasn’t anyone from the Theocracy.”

  “I see,” John said, rubbing his chin. “Well, Ben, I need to make a few more calls —”

  “Actually, High Governor Perry,” Molon interrupted, “if I might ask an indulgence?”

  John had no idea what Molon was up to, but his socialite experience took over as he gracefully recovered from the unexpected interruption.

  “Oh, Ben, please excuse my oversight. This fine gentleman is Captain Molon Hawkins, the person responsible for my rescue.”

  It was clear from the unsettled look on High Governor Perry’s face that he was no more comfortable with non-human sophonts than John had been when he first arrived on Star Wolf. Fortunately, politicians thrived on navigating uncomfortable situations.

  “Um, certainly…captain. It is nice to meet you. We are grateful for your efforts. What can I do for you?”

  “I would like to request clearance for my ship to maintain a high orbit over Elucia City while we wait for contact from the patron who issued the contract to rescue Dr. Salzmann. Additionally, Star Wolf isn’t rigged for terrestrial landing, but I may need to dispatch an STS to your starport in order to meet with the patron and return John to Tede. If you would clear us for that, I would be very grateful.”

  Ben Perry began fidgeting with his fingers and shuffling some papers on his desk.

  “Um, yes, about that…”

  “Ben, come on,” John urged, guessing the reason for High Governor Perry’s hesitation. “These are the good guys. What is the problem?”

  “John, you know aliens are not allowed outside the starport. I can grant clearance for orbit, and I can clear an STS for landing, but understand that any aliens who land at the starport will not be permitted to leave the secure zone.”

  John flashed Molon a sympathetic look, cringing inwardly at the commonly used term, alien, that was considered impolite by non-human sophonts. Still, on Tede, a humans-only hermit-world with extremely limited non-human interaction, that was the commonly-used term.

  “I’m sorry, captain,” John said, turning to Molon. “Even Ben can’t change the law.”

  “No worries,” Molon replied with a gracious smile. “We’re not here to cause trouble, just to pick up a paycheck, resupply and leave. We will play by the rules.”

  “Thank you for your understanding, captain,” High Governor Perry said, mopping at his brow with a handkerchief.

  “Ok, then Ben. Just have them send the clearance codes to this comm ID. I will be in touch when I can and fill you in on everything that happened.”

  “Not a problem, John. You will probably need to wait until tomorrow morning, reference my time, to get all the appropriate clearances logged.”

  “That will be fine, Ben,” John said. He snapped his fingers, catching Ben’s attention before they dropped the connection.

  “Oh, Ben, I almost forgot. You might want to send an alert out to the Retar SysSec base. There is a possibility that Provisional Imperium or Dawnstar forces may try to launch an assault on the old monastery caves.”

  A smile crossed the face of the administrator.

  “Really? That would prove interesting.”

  “Yeah, but Retar should be ready in case something goes awry and some survive the assault.”

  “I appreciate the heads up on that, John. I will pass the word. It really is good to see you alive. You and Elena please do drop by as soon as you get settled.”

  John’s smile faded. He struggled to steady himself as his breath caught once again in his chest.

  “Ben… Elena didn’t make it.”

  A long silence followed John’s statement. Ben Perry’s head fell forward into his palms for a brief moment before he looked up again.

  “I’m so sorry, John. We will pray for you.”

  John could hear the sincerity in Ben’s voice. Not everyone had openly embraced his and Elena’s marriage. Ben, however, had always been a true friend and had never been anything but supportive.

  “Thanks, Ben,” John replied, blinking back the water welling up in his eyes. “She is in the Lion’s hands now.”

  Ben gave a final nod before the viewscreen went blank, and a respectful silence encapsulated the bridge. After a few moments, Molon spoke up.

  “About that monastery, don’t you want to put a call through to those monks?” There was a stern, almost accusatory tone in Molon’s voice. “I mean, you put Tubal’s forces onto them. You might want to warn them.”

  “Don’t worry, captain,” John replied with a broad grin. “I would never betray followers of the Lion of Judah. The Brothers of the Lion abandoned those caves six months ago after some rumors hit that they might be hunted even onto Tede. They left the caves thoroughly booby-trapped, however, so anyone pursuing them there would believe they met strong resistance from the Brothers. Wherever their new base is, it isn’t here.”

  Molon flashed a wolfish grin.

  “So you lied to the inquisitor?”

  “I equivocated,” John replied.

  “That was a heck of a gamble. What did you expect to happen when the Dawnstar forces discovered the deception?”

  John’s grin faded. He rubbed the back of his neck and shook his head slightly as he responded.

  “At that point all I could think about was stopping Elena’s pain. I hoped this gambit would, at least temporarily. The Brothers of the Lion rigging the caves would bear out my story that they at least had been there. It was the best thing I could think of at that moment to
buy us some time while I thought of a way to get us out of there.”

  “That was incredibly brave and thoughtful,” Mel said, sending another strange wash of positive feelings running through John’s body.

  “And incredibly risky,” Voide added. “If they investigated the caves and found out they had been abandoned for months, you would have brought a world of pain down on both of you.”

  John felt the anger welling up inside at the accusation, pushing past the waves of calm emanating from Mel. Voide seemed to have the uncanny ability to push his buttons like no one else. He wanted to let the provocations go, but he just couldn’t seem to rein in his tongue where Voide was concerned.

  “Maybe you have the ability to coldly calculate all the angles while you and the person you care most about in the world are being tortured, but we humans are frailer than that I suppose.”

  “Enough,” growled Molon, glaring at Voide. “It was a smart and gutsy play, John. I might have done the same thing.”

  John’s shoulders sagged as he clenched his fists.

  “Not smart enough. The son of a pig killed her anyway.”

  “You can’t blame yourself for that. He would’ve killed Elena no matter what you did. That’s on him, not you.”

  “Thank you, captain,” John said, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath before continuing. “You may be right, but that doesn’t make it any easier.”

  “I do have a question though,” Molon added.

  John shifted uneasily on his feet wondering what was coming next. He liked the captain, but this topic of conversation, in the open environment of the bridge, was straining John’s self-control. He tossed a silent prayer heavenward that a subject change was imminent.

  “What is it, captain,” he asked, choking back the trepidation at the question.

  “The governor mentioned Haven. I thoroughly reviewed this part of the Orenc sector before we arrived but that is not a system I am familiar with.”