Excelsior

by Jasper T. Scott

  The farmer nodded once. “We must be quick,” he said. He and the other two with him turned in unison and ran, splashing through the field.

  “Let’s go,” the Captain called out in an urgent whisper before running after the rice farmers.

  Catalina followed, trying desperately not to trip in the water-logged rice field. Here they were placing their lives in the enemy’s hands, hoping for mercy.

  She tried not to worry about that. Maybe those farmers really didn’t see Alliance civilians as the enemy. It made a certain amount of sense to her. She didn’t feel any animosity toward them, but she couldn’t help remembering all of those news reports about Confederate people being ant-minded, cold, intensely logical, and self-sacrificing to the extreme.

  They were perfect communists, hard-wired from birth to always put the greater good ahead of individual needs.

  So the question was, did sheltering Alliance colonists somehow serve the greater good, and did their their definition of the greater good extend beyond their own kind?

  They ran through the clearing and crashed into another stretch of untamed jungle. Catalina felt her arms burning pitilessly from carrying Dorian’s weight for so long, but she gritted her teeth and forced herself to focus on something else. Eying the dark shadows between the trees, she imagined enemy soldiers lurking there, the bright red dots of their laser sights landing on the colonists one by one.

  But that didn’t happen. Instead they came to another clearing, this one much smaller than the one with the paddy field. A well-worn footpath led straight to a short, squat concrete building with a rusted metal door.

  Is that a bunker? She wondered. What are rice farmers be doing with a fallout shelter out here in the middle of nowhere?

  Maybe it wasn’t a shelter.

  Maybe it was a Confederate military installation.

  Catalina felt her heart rate spike with dread. She imagined that rusty door bursting open and hundreds of enemy soldiers boiling out with their weapons at the ready.

  It’s a trap!

  Chapter 46

  “I’m transferring the nav to my station,” Alexander said, glancing at the ragged gash in the deck where Davorian had been sitting a moment ago. Alexander mentally activated the nav functions, and a flurry of control panels crowded the heads-up display inside his helmet, giving him access to the ship’s thrusters, maneuvering jets, and a three-dimensional grid for course plotting.

  He focused on the grid to enlarge it, and a miniature representation of the Lincoln cruised along a jagged yellow vector that zagged back and forth randomly. A second line, this one green, showed the ship’s average heading. A sensor overlay highlighted incoming hypervelocity rounds as over-sized golden streaks, moving so fast compared to the Lincoln that they were almost impossible to evade. The only advantage they had was that those rounds took more than ten seconds to reach the Lincoln, and the payloads weren’t nearly large enough to destroy their ship unless a solid stream of them hit.

  “Captain, the admiral is ordering us to withdraw,” Hayes said. “We’re getting too far ahead of the fleet.”

  Alexander zoomed out the nav map and saw that the Lincoln was leading the Alliance formation against the enemy. No wonder they were taking fire. “Coming about,” he said, setting a waypoint behind the rest of the fleet and calculating a new random evasive pattern to reach it—minimum acceleration three G’s, maximum seven. “Brace for—”

  He didn’t even get a chance to finish that warning before the engines and maneuvering jets fired simultaneously at seven g’s. Alexander felt that force slam him into the sides of his couch, grinding the cartilage in his ear against his skull with the sheer, searing weight of his now seventy-pound head. A few seconds later, the acceleration eased, and Alexander gulped down a desperate lungful of air.

  “Incoming transmission from the enemy fleet!” Hayes announced. “They’re surrendering!”

  Shock coursed through him. Alexander was about to reply, but another burst of acceleration cut him off. He sent a mental command to pause the evasive flight pattern, hoping the enemy’s surrender wasn’t a trick.

  Hayes spoke again before Alexander could ask for details. “The Liberty is requesting to link their comms with ours and join the negotiations.”

  Alexander nodded and glanced at the main holo display. The repair drones had patched the hole, but the holo display was still damaged. “Patch them through to Carter’s station.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Alexander watched as a visual materialized in front of Carter’s couch. The screen was divided down the middle—on the right Admiral Wilson of the Alliance, on the left, Admiral Zhang.

  Zhang looked even worse than when they’d last seen him. Dried blood crusted his lips and chin where it had run down from his nose. His eyes were bloodshot and glassy, his expression pained, his skin waxy and pale despite the purpling mass of broken blood vessels in his cheeks.

  “We will agree to negate thrust and allow Alliance shuttles to board us as soon as we leave the wormhole,” Zhang rasped. “We will leave at a steady one gravity of acceleration, and you need not fear that we will betray you. Myself and my entire crew are going below decks, to receive emergency treatment for our injuries.”

  Admiral Wilson’s gaze became intense and suspicious. “How am I supposed to believe that?”

  “You can believe whatever you like.”

  “If we turn around and give you our backs, we’ll be reducing our available offensive capabilities, and if we let you leave the wormhole first, you’ll have a chance to get to Earth ahead of us. Not to mention you’ll pass in and out of effective laser range, and if we don’t fire on you, we’ll be giving you the chance for a deadly first strike.”

  “You have us outnumbered. If we open fire, you will retaliate and obliterate us.”

  “You sacrificed your own colonists for a chance to destroy our fleet, how am I supposed to believe that this is any different?”

  “Yes, we did not think you could be so heartless. We were wrong.”

  “Likewise. Their blood is on your hands, Zhang.”

  Carter cleared his throat. “Admirals, if I may interrupt, the only way to broker a surrender here is for both sides to trust each other.”

  Admiral Wilson’s gaze remained narrowed and sharp. “Yes… Zhang, you said earlier that you don’t have long to live. I assume you’re not the only one.”

  “Without medical attention I will die soon, as will many of my crew.”

  “That means you don’t have much to lose—not that you ants ever think about self preservation. Why surrender?”

  “Because it is over. We have lost. Reports from Earth tell us this same thing. There is no point to continue the fighting. We are now thirty seconds to ELR. You must make a decision soon. If you accept our surrender, you may add our fleet to your own. A small risk for a great reward.”

  “Ten warships,” Wilson clarified.

  “Yes,” Zhang replied, “and us as your prisoners.”

  A chime sounded quietly inside Alexander’s helmet, drawing his attention away from the negotiations to a text message on his HUD. The message was from Lieutenant Cardinal, and it was marked urgent.

  Heads up, Captain. I’ve just been ordered to fire on the enemy fleet with all guns, half a second before ELR.

  “I accept the terms of your surrender,” Wilson said.

  Alexander blinked, horrified at the lie.

  “Good. With your permission, I must now see to my injuries.”

  “Permission granted, Zhang. Goodbye.”

  Zhang’s visual disappeared, but Admiral Wilson kept the comms open. “The war is finally over,” Carter said.

  Admiral Wilson regarded him with a small smile. “Not yet, Ambassador.”

  Alexander gaped at the admiral. “You’re planning to fire on a surrendered enemy. That’s against military law, Admiral. They’re noncombatants now.”

  Wilson cocked his head. “Military law? Out here I am the law, and I�
�m calling the shots Captain.”

  Alexander looked away, back out to his crew. “Cardinal! Belay those orders. You will not fire on the enemy.”

  “Captain, if you disobey that order, you and your entire crew will be tried for treason.”

  Alexander set his jaw. “Maybe. Maybe not—Hayes mute that channel.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  Carter turned to him, eyes wide and looking shocked.

  “Hayes, send an update to the rest of our fleet. Let them know that we’re disobeying orders, and why. Suggest they do the same.”

  “Too late…” Carter whispered, pointing to a tactical map he’d brought up from his station. Bright red laser beams lanced out and drew pinpricks of fire from the enemy formation.

  Alexander shook his head, stunned that no one else had disobeyed Wilson’s order. “Hayes, unmute the comms. I want to hear what Wilson has to say for himself.”

  “Aye-aye…”

  “Admiral—”

  “Let me stop you before you make things any worse for yourself, Captain.”

  “You lied!” Alexander snapped.

  “Of course, I lied. I’m sure they lied, too. We were just better at it.”

  Alexander shook his head. “They didn’t need to die.”

  “Are you a hunter, Captain?”

  “No.”

  “Then perhaps you wouldn’t understand. If you’re going to shoot a bear, you better shoot to kill, and if you wound one, you better hope you get a second shot. The only thing worse than turning your back on an enemy is turning your back on a wounded enemy.”

  “They were already defeated. We could have gained ten warships!”

  “We also could have lost ten.”

  “You never planned to accept their surrender, so why even bother involving us in the negotiations?”

  “Because bringing Carter into things made it look like we were willing to negotiate. Meanwhile, we were busy aiming our guns. There is a reason I’m an admiral and you’re a captain, Captain. War is no place for ethics, and you are an ethical man. Unfortunately, our enemies have no regard for what’s noble or right, only what is expedient and logical. From the start we have been forced to behave in exactly the same way as them and do things which seem terrible to us in order to achieve our ends.

  “They bred themselves for war, so it came naturally for them, but we had to learn our killer instincts. It was nature versus nurture and nurture won. There’s a lesson in that.”

  Alexander ground his teeth, but said nothing. This entire engagement left a bad taste in his mouth.

  “I’m going to do you a favor, Captain. You’ve served your country well, so rather than focus on the one thing you did wrong, I’m going to focus on all the things you did right and pretend that you didn’t just disobey a direct order.”

  Alexander nodded, unable to muster a verbal reply. He was still too angry, and he was afraid anything he said at this point would sound insubordinate.

  “No apologies necessary. Hopefully you’ve learned enough from this engagement to make the hard decisions without me having to hold your hand in future. Now we need to turn the fleet around and set course for Earth in case they need our help mopping up. Stand by to receive new nav inputs.”

  “Yes, sir.” Alexander saluted stiffly as the holo projection faded. He let out a long sigh and turned his attention to more immediate concerns.

  “McAdams, what’s our status?”

  “Lots of minor hull damage still being repaired, but all sections are re-pressurized. Some noncritical systems remain offline, but otherwise we’re all green.”

  “How about the MHD?” he asked, staring at the large, blank screen dead ahead that should have been showing a star-dappled view from the Lincoln’s bow cameras

  “That’s one of the noncritical systems, sir.”

  “Great. Stone, do we have any fighters in the 61st still alive out there?”

  “Just one pilot, sir. Should I recall him now?”

  “Please. Who is it?”

  “Ryder.”

  Alexander was tempted to smile at that, but then he noticed the ragged gash where Davorian should have been seated. They might have won the war, but victory was bittersweet. They’d all lost a lot. He raised his voice to address the crew. “Good job everyone. The war’s over. Time for us to go home.”

  A few of the crew nodded silently, and others made unenthusiastic comments. Alexander couldn’t blame them. They’d been gone so long, what did they even have to go back to? Most of them had lost friends and family in the war, and even those who hadn’t, like Alexander, had lost them to the slow march of time and hearts moving on.

  Alexander’s gaze fell on the back of McAdams’ helmet, and he wondered what her plans were now that they didn’t technically have to remain in the navy. Maybe it was time he found out. He turned to his XO, planning to reduce readiness from a red to yellow alert and leave Carter at the conn so he could take a break and attend to personal matters, but something about the way his XO was staring fixedly into the blank screen of the MHD made him frown.

  “Something on your mind, Carter?”

  The man turned to look at him with wide, lifeless blue eyes. He looked haunted. “What have we done?” he asked.

  Alexander’s frown deepened. Maybe Carter had taken that last act of betrayal harder than Alexander had thought.

  “You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t feel bad, but we took a stand, Commander, so whatever blame there is, it falls squarely on Admiral Wilson’s shoulders.”

  “No, you don’t understand. There’s still millions of Confederate soldiers back on Earth, and if they all decide to become rebels and terrorists, we could be in for a lot of trouble.”

  “Maybe they’ll surrender,” Alexander suggested.

  “Not after they learn what Admiral Wilson did.”

  “How would they learn about that?”

  “They already have. Admiral Zhang was busy communicating his surrender to the Confederate Chancellor when we destroyed the enemy fleet. President Baker just contacted me from Earth, asking what the hell we were thinking. Previously surrendered Confederate troops back on Earth have begun turning hostile again.”

  Alexander blinked. “I thought the president was with the fleet.”

  Carter shook his head. “That was just a rumor we spread to make the Confederates believe we were committed to reaching Wonderland.”

  “Well… shit. This isn’t good.”

  Carter nodded. “It’s going to be a long road to repair the damage Wilson did by pretending to accept Zhang’s surrender. He should have left me to negotiate. That’s my job, but he barely gave me a chance to speak. Wilson’s going to be in for a rude shock when he gets back to Earth. He thinks he’s going back to a hero’s welcome, but he’ll be lucky if the president doesn’t court-martial him on the spot.”

  Alexander grimaced. One bad call was all it took to go from hero to villain. He definitely needed to get out of the navy.

  Chapter 47

  Two Weeks Later - March 6th, 2793

  Alexander watched their final approach to Earth and Freedom Station on the main holo display. Orbit was already secure thanks to the Alliance’s fleet of colony-class destroyers. The planet still looked green, white, and blue, which he thought was a good sign. No doubt they’d see a different story as they flew over the mainland on their way to visit loved ones or pay their respects to the radioactive ruins where they used to live.

  “Docking sequence initiated,” Alexander announced as he set the autopilot. He kept an eye on their approach vector in case he needed to make manual adjustments. Of all the ships in the fleet, the Lincoln had spent the most time away, so they were given first rights to shore leave. And despite the ongoing occupation of Confederate territories, officers whose terms of service were up were actually being allowed to leave the navy.

  That meant that this shore leave could be permanent if they wanted it to.

  Alexander wanted nothing more than to ge
t the hell out. He and McAdams had plans to go settle down in a sleepy little town that would never become a target for terrorists. There they planned to bury their heads in the sand and pretend like this hard-won peace wasn’t just the start of another type of war.

  Alexander sighed, watching as the Lincoln’s rear airlock made a successful connection to Freedom Station’s forward airlock, and gravity resumed it’s normal course.

  “That’s it, everyone!” he announced. “We’re home.”