Rogue Messiah: Fleetfoot Interstellar Series, Book 2

by P. Joseph Cherubino

  “Multiple diagnostics reveal my processes are optimal, above optimal, in fact,” Jubilee replied.

  “This is getting nowhere, Captain,” said the Feline crew member who now served as the First Officer of a crew of fifteen. It was nowhere near enough to run a ship of this size, and that was the fact Jubilee cited to run the ship herself.

  Aahloh began to think of the ship as ‘her’ because she behaved like a human. He remembered some humans referring to ships by gender-specific pronouns. The Captain decided on another approach. “Very well, Jubilee. Report status on unknown ships.”

  “Trade union craft. Six mining vessels, eight freighters. The mining vessels show signs of high energy potential. Possible weapons detected.”

  “Why not talk to them?”

  “Unadvisable,” Jubilee replied.

  “Why?” the Captain asked.

  “Risk to operational security,” Jubilee replied. “Enemy uses Trade Union ships.”

  “Calculate risk. Report,” the Captain ordered.

  The only surviving Human crew member shouted, “Compute stack just spiked! She’s working on something.”

  “What does that mean?” the Captain asked.

  The Human engineer considered the question, said, “Not sure. That got through to her. She’s thinking about it. Devoting a lot of computing resources to the problem.”

  “I estimate there is a fifty percent chance the ships surrounding us have hostile intent,” Jubilee replied.

  “Confirm all factors. Re-evaluate risk,” the Captain ordered.

  “Forty-five percent,” Jubilee replied after a brief interval.

  “Faulty. Your data is not sufficient. Let me contact those ships to give you more information,” the Captain said.

  “Smart!” the Human engineer blurted.

  “We have comm,” reported the Simian crew member operating the communications array.

  The Captain wasted no time, “To the surrounding ships. Be advised: our AI is malfunctioning. We are a Trade Union vessel of Tonaw origin. We were attacked by Reptilians and our systems are compromised.”

  The reply was instant. “Message received. We cannot confirm your identity.”

  “The Reptilians destroyed our transponders!” the Captain replied. “Please! We are in distress. Only fifteen crew remain from a compliment of four-hundred!”

  “We need to confirm your identity first.” came the reply. “You don’t need transponders to give us your codes!”

  “They are charging weapons,” Jubilee announced.

  “Reactor energy spike,” the simian helm crew announced. She held the helm station even though Jubilee assumed complete control. The Captain wanted her there if and when Jubilee came to her senses. “The AI has set a course.”

  “Jubilee, please,” the Captain said. “I am begging you to trust me. A forty-five percent chance is not enough to take us out of here. I know you want to protect us, but please, let us take this chance. What if they are not the enemy?”

  “New data incoming,” Jubilee replied.

  “Captain,” the navigation officer said. “I am showing multiple gravity distortions at one AU consistent with ships exiting blinkpoint.”

  “Oh, no,” the human crew member said.

  “Hostiles inbound,” Jubilee reported. “Hull patterns and energy signatures match Reptilian attack craft. Standing by for protocol confirmation.”

  “Jubilee!” came a voice over comms. “We have received your identification code and receipt of your sensor data. We confirm inbound ships are Reptilian. We will escort you to safety.”

  “I did not transmit that,” the human declared.

  “That was me,” Jubilee replied. “I thought it best. I have determined the ships present are not hostile.”

  “We can work on trust later, Jubilee,” the Captain said. “Get us out of here now!”

  “I suggest another course of action,” Jubilee replied. “We must stop the enemy.”

  ***

  Margaret stood with her hands clamped across her mouth. Her heart raced. She watched the wall display through welling eyes. Dhohal ordered all communications between the Jubilee and the confronting ships piped into the conference room. Just after Jubilee detected the new arrivals, the protecting ships relayed the data back to the Forest Child transport.

  “This is it,” Margaret said. “Those are Reptilian ships.”

  “It looks that way, by the markers,” Colonel Meyers replied. She noted the confidence indicators below the symbols for the approaching enemy craft. “They are still too far out to tell their exact number. It looks significant, though.”

  Dhohal stood to his full height. He was tall, even by Forest Child standards. He raised his hands above his head and spoke in a firm, calm voice.

  “We knew this was likely. We are fortunate that help is on the way. We should also give thanks to the brave volunteers who command those civilian vessels. They will do the best they can to hold back the attacking force.”

  Dhohal stopped short of saying more. They all knew a few mining ships and a handful of freighters could do nothing more than supply easy targets. The Trade Union ships would only buy some time by their destruction. At best, they might purchase a few weeks before the invasion force surrounded Medina 3.

  All preset in the room gave their full attention to the wall display. They watched as the makeshift fleet moved out, with the Jubilee following. Then, the ships formed a line and turned. The data markers showed their velocity increase to relativistic speeds. The entire group headed toward the invaders.

  “What are they doing!” someone in the crowd exclaimed.

  “It’s suicide!” another panicked voice replied.

  The crowd thinned out as people left to pray. Those remaining closed in on the wall display. The ships accelerated to three-quarter C and spread out. The distance closed fast until the Union ships were a few hundred-thousand kilometers from the enemy.

  A lone voice filled the room. “Trade Union ships, this is Medina 3 orbital. We have lost your comm signals. Please respond.” The hail went unanswered.

  They watched the line of ships fan out and formed a convex shape that curved around the attackers.

  “What are they doing?” Abhay asked.

  “It looks like they’re trying to flank the hostiles,”

  “They’re breaking off,” Margaret observed.

  The Union ships at the ends of the concave pattern turned abruptly to the outside, while eight ships in the center seemed to stop moving. Vector indicators showed that those ships in the center moved up along the Z-axis about the approaching craft.

  “What the hell…” Margaret said. “They are moving straight up.”

  “The Reptilians are scattering!” someone shouted.

  “Look at those particle readings! They are off the charts!” someone else observed.

  Margaret shrieked, jumped up and down and laughed hysterically. “They vented their reactors right in the Lizard’s snouts!”

  “What does that mean?” a bewildered Persian bureaucrat asked, turning toward Margaret.

  Margaret shook her head, trying to clear out the euphoria and explain what happened in non-technical terms. “At near-light speed, subatomic particles are like meteorites. By venting the gasses from their reactors and dumping their particle fields, they threw up a stone wall in front of the Reptiles. Adding that particle density to the already dense termination shock region doubled the mass factor of that region, maybe more than doubled. ”

  “It means they fought back,” the incredulous bureaucrat said, “With next to nothing.”

  “That’s right,” Margaret replied. “They bought us a lot of time. The Reptiles are going to have to navigate around that cloud, or slow down so much it will take many more weeks to get here.”

  A voice came over the comms again. “Medina 3 orbital, this is Qamar Kader of the mining ship Hassan. We went comm-silent for a bit. Sorry, but there was no time to explain. We had to act quickly. I am trans
mitting a report now.”

  “We see the results,” orbital responded. “We are pleased, to say the least. Please report your condition.”

  “Minor damage to several ships from directed energy fire,” Qamar replied. Several people gasped. “No casualties. We will return to patrol.”

  The small conference room exploded into shouts and shrieks of joy. The celebration spread across the ship.

  14

  “What will the time dilation be from here?” Mumlo asked. The bridge of Fleetfoot I was crowded with the captains who either volunteered or were strong-armed into serving as Armada leaders with ships full of unsavory characters from the underworld of New Detroit. It was a motley crew consisting of four humans, six Forest Children, four Simians and two Felines. Each captain commanded a flight group of ten or twelve ships. Orders to the Armada as a whole passed through the leaders to the rest of the ships.

  That was the structure they agreed to, in any case. Drexler figured that it was anyone’s best guess what would happen when they confronted fully-armed, trained and hardened Reptilian war vessels. Drexler had doubts himself. The closer he came to waging a war in space, the less sane he felt.

  Drexler stood beside Fourseven, who was the de facto Admiral of the Armada. She was the only creature with anything remotely resembling space combat experience. What Drexler proposed had never been done. In six hundred years of Trade Union History, ships never fired on each other.

  “If we leave within the next forty-eight standard hours, we should be at Medina 3 in fifteen standard days. That means five days of travel in the blink.” Drexler replied. He studied the crowd.

  “What do we do once we get there?” Asked the Forest Child captain called Ool. She leaned her large frame forward for an answer with her black, grapefruit-sized eyes glistening.

  “Whatever we do,” interjected a Feline captain called Chaag, “we will need to do it fast. The last reports say the Lizards will show up within two to three days of our arrival, maybe sooner.”

  “We will need to set up a perimeter around the Medina system, then divide the Armada and do the same around Kerala 2,” Fourseven replied.

  “We set up that perimeter, then what? They will know exactly where we are. All they will do is change course and focus on us.”

  “They have already changed course,” Drexler said. “But not for Medina. They are diverting a large portion of their force toward the main Commerce worlds.”

  “Why would they do that?” Chaag asked.

  “Because that is where I told them we would be,” Drexler responded. The room held a stunned silence. Drexler let it stand for dramatic effect. Just before he thought the room would explode, he followed up his statement with another. “I sent a false message to the Response Taskforce. We transmitted a message over a channel which we know the Reptilians have compromised. It appears they have taken the bait. We have reports from several of the Three Pillars and Federated Americas city ships in deep space that confirm this. The tip of their spear is now pointed at the central worlds.”

  “How does this help us?” one of the Felines shouted. “Those worlds are some of the most densely populated in the Union. That means millions of lives from every species will be at risk.”

  “Yes,” Fourseven responded, “they will be at risk. The Reptilians are likely to attack once they realize there is no fleet there.”

  “So you are using those worlds as bait.” Ool remarked. She spoke direct tradespeak with a human accent. Drexler was nearly driven to distraction trying to place the dialect. He understood the rising pitch of her voice to mean she was horrified at the thought.

  “Yes. It is a calculated risk” Drexler replied. “We need to secure the BJP worlds and the Caliphates because these worlds have the weapons, materiel and industrial capacity we need for the war effort.”

  “This makes no sense,” a Simian captain declared, perching his slender, apelike form on the edge of a control console. His long-fingered hand rubbed the peaked crown of his skull as if trying to stir the thoughts there.

  “I disagree. This war itself is senseless. Our plan just makes a little bit more sense in contrast,” Drexler countered.

  “You mean your plan. Who told you to do this?” Chaag demanded. “You did not consult any of us on this. You are telling us how it will be!”

  “Necessity told me to do this. I had little time to make a decision, and I made it. The results are in. We have our Armada. We are ready to go.” Drexler left out the part that he hoped nobody would realize in the face of his surprise. At least he hoped nobody would call him on it. Namely, that his move gave the Armada very few choices. They had to commit and face an uncertain outcome, or do nothing and be sure to fail. “There is an old human saying; ‘necessity is the mother of invention.’” Drexler said.

  To his surprise, Mumlo waded into the rough surf of the meeting. “This is our only hope to get a foothold,” Mumlo declared, clearly in support of his Captain. “The Central Worlds are improvising planetary defenses that should hold until the Three Pillars city ships reach them in two months.”

  “This is true,” said a human captain from New Beijing. “My world has re-committed itself to the Union, as have many of the human worlds.”

  “Because you humans never lost your warlike natures,” Replied the Simian perched on the console.

  Some of the humans hung their heads. Others gritted their teeth and restrained themselves.

  “You may be right,” Drexler replied, “but human restraint in the face of insulting comments should tell you that we have learned much. We don’t want to fight a war any more than the species in this room. Six centuries of peace may not have stripped us entirely of our violent nature, but it sure has taught us to prefer peace over war. Our new instinct is to make the fighting as short as possible.”

  “And what, exactly, does that mean?” Ool demanded.

  “It means that I aim to do everything possible to make the Reptilians understand that their entire plan is not rational, that it will fail.”

  “We all agree war is not rational, but that is hardly the point!” Ool bellowed, abandoning the calm and restraint for which the Forest Children were known. “The Lizards are winning! They control all of the trade lanes. They did this in under three months! Outlying colonies are already beginning to starve! Several have surrendered to the Reptilians! When their main battle fleet arrives, they will be able to invade our homeworlds and enslave our people!”

  “It sounds like you agree with the Reptilians, that you have bought their narrative,” Drexler replied, stepping forward to stand on a flight chair. “I say that is nonsense. The Reptilian leadership is suffering from delusion. They cannot win. They cannot win, but they do not know that yet.

  The Reptilian Leadership has gone mad! Voices in their heads tell them that they can come around, murder a bunch of aliens, roar loudly, and all sentient beings will tremble before them. They are living in an ancient fever dream!

  The Reptilian Ruling Clans believe in their superiority above all else. Why shouldn’t they? They never leave the Lizard Homeworld. The Reptiles that they owe for their survival are Professional Astronauts, just like us. Those are the ones the rulers forced to act on their prevailing delusion.

  And what are Astronauts, but not realists? No person that travels faster than light believes in anything but science in the end. Sure, some of us regard our technology and reason itself as divine, but that just cements my point.

  The bottom line is that it will be impossible for the Reptilians to govern the worlds that they take. They may be able to capture those worlds, but they can never hold them. We will prove this to them!

  Their delusion tells them otherwise. When the soldiers under their command realize lunatics lead them, things will change. Our job is to force the common Reptile to that realization as soon as we can. That means fierce resistance right now, with everything we have! That is why I chose this single, decisive course open to us by reason itself!

  They
do not understand that the galaxy has changed. The Silicoid Wars taught us that our base instincts are not enough. To survive, we must use reason to rebuild the balance that the Silicoids stole from us eight hundred years ago. That conflict uncovered a higher instinct that calls to rationality, and not lust for blood. Yes, we must fight, but we fight to restore that ancient balance!”

  Drexler stood above the crowd on trembling knees. His hawkish face pinched at the brow and curled down at the lips, giving him the overall impression of a bird of prey. The bridge was silent save for the sounds of various aliens breathing. Some drew air in long drafts, others puffed out chests and held it in. All present seemed to inhale Drexler’s words. In a few seconds, Drexler would know if those words might sustain them all, or smother him.

  Fourseven turned her head toward Drex with barely perceptible slowness. Drex turned his eyes toward her with the same pace, keeping his head perfectly still. The tiniest smirk lifted the left corner of his mouth. The room exploded as if Drexler’s smirk was a spark.

  “Drive them out!” A simian captain shrieked. “Restore the balance!”

  “Push them back, and they will see!” howled Chaag, holding her hands above her head, claws extended and fingers stretched far apart.

  Ool rose to her full height. Her lips nearly touched the bridge ceiling when she raised her hands up, palms forward to frame her face. She let out a bellow that sounded exactly like a bass horn. The captains swore oaths and exchanged physical gestures particular to their species transmitting their commitment to one another. Drexler stood on his chair struggling to hold his face in the look of determination that hid a deep well of terror forming an icy ball in his belly.

  “Looks like you really did it,” Reggie said through Drexler’s comm implants.”You managed to make a born pacifist howl with rage.”

  Drexler blinked rapidly and swiveled his head back and forth across the jubilant crowd. “It sure does look that way,” Drexler subvocalized.

  “Don’t worry,” Reggie said. “Don’t break your face. You look perfectly regal up there on your chair. Did you really believe everything you just said?”