Tree of Liberty

by Wayne Basta

  Isaxo sat up from where he had been laying on his bed but remained there. The tiny room had little floor space for standing, and Solyss and Asheerah took up most of it. They stood there in silence for a moment, with Solyss unsure how to begin.

  Breaking the silence first, Isaxo said, “I want to apologize for my action. I let my personal disagreement with Tess interfere with my judgment. I thought we could take out the frigate.”

  Solyss considered his friend’s words. Isaxo and Tess had never gotten along, that he knew. He now thought it stemmed from Tess’s belief that Isaxo wasn’t fit for duty, being emotionally distraught over his brother. His actions during the battle appeared to corroborate her theory.

  If the disagreement were more personal, as he had thought before, then the situation would be easier to deal with. Then Isaxo’s decision to ignore Tess would have been unprofessional, but not a sign of instability. He just wished he could know which version was true.

  Taking Solyss’s silence as cause to say more, Isaxo continued, “We were doing well, too. It was only a lucky shot that disabled Ion Four. Unlike the engagement that killed Masaque, where we were just sitting there, shooting away, as easy targets.”

  That comment filled Solyss with a fresh sense of guilt. It had been his order that had gotten the Ion pilot, Masaque, killed during the battle. The plan had worked, disabling the frigate’s weapon systems and effectively ending the battle, but it had been a costly decision.

  Pushing the guilt aside, Solyss said, “Regardless of your intentions, or the outcome, the fact remains that you disobeyed a direct order to return to the ship. I can’t just let that slide. Discipline on this ship would suffer if a senior officer got away with that without punishment.”

  Isaxo nodded. “I can understand that, but if you let Tess have her way and court martial me, I won’t be any use to the Union. And we need all the pilots we can get.”

  Frowning, Solyss silently agreed with Isaxo. They were fighting a war for their right to determine their own destiny. Isaxo had done the wrong thing, but for a good reason. And he was right—they did need good fighter pilots.

  “How about, instead of court martial, accepting summary judgment by the captain?” Asheerah suggested.

  “That would look like favoritism,” Solyss said.

  “Not if the punishment were harsh enough. Say, sixty days in the brig,” Asheerah said.

  “Sixty days!” Isaxo blurted. “That’s a long time to sit in the brig.”

  “No longer than our journey in hyperspace back to Kreogh,” Asheerah said, a coy smile on her face.

  A smile crept onto Solyss’s face as well. Sixty days of solitary confinement was a long punishment that would show the crew that disobeying orders carried consequences, but it would also keep Isaxo from missing any of the fighting.

  “Very well,” Solyss said, deciding. “Lieutenant Mahon, you’re hereby sentenced to sixty days solitary confinement in the brig for failing to obey a recall order. Lieutenant Aru, please escort him to the brig.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Asheerah said.

  She led Isaxo out of the room, taking hold of his arm once they were in the main corridor and could be seen by the rest of the crew.

  “Captain, we’re approaching the coordinates,” Lieutenant Tess said, breaking Solyss out of his daydream.

  The ship had left Okaral three days before on her journey back toward the Kreogh sector. As he had promised, Solyss had ordered a slight detour: to the location the Alliance station’s computer had suggested that the frigate Tornado had gone. The destination was more or less in the same direction they would need to travel home and wouldn’t cost them much time on their return journey.

  “Thank you, XO,” Solyss said. He didn’t expect to find anything except an empty system, but caution made him give two additional orders. “Sound general quarters. Raise shields as soon as we exit hyperspace.”

  The crew responded to his order in the quick, professional manner he had come to expect from them. In the drills conducted during the journey out to Trepon, they had already improved. Now, after seeing combat—many for the first time—their movements were fluid. They had a reason to be quick about getting the ship ready to fight.

  By the time the helm announced they had reached their destination, all stations aboard the ship had reported ready for battle. The familiar nausea coursed through Solyss as the ship reverted to normal space. Around him, the crew carried out their tasks without additional orders from him.

  After several minutes of intense scanning, Dar’su gave him the report he had been expecting. “No ships or stations on sensors, Captain. We appear to be inside an unremarkable nebula. In addition to the gas field, I’m detecting a faint ion trail that could indicate the use of a standard sub-light engine within the last few days.”

  “That would suggest that the Tornado did, indeed, come here,” Solyss said before turning to Tess. “Have the navigational computers identified any likely candidates for destinations they could be headed to?”

  Tess shook her head. “The computer has identified a half-dozen scouted systems that you could reach from here but couldn’t reach from Okaral without a course change. Only two are inhabited. The others were charted but had nothing of value in them. One world is a Camari world, and the other just has a small research station.”

  “Hmm,” Solyss said, thinking out loud. “It’s possible that research station is just a cover. Or those unremarkable systems are false entries in the database.”

  “Or they could have journeyed to any number of uncharted systems,” Tess added.

  “Right,” Solyss agreed. “Ops, can you extrapolate the destination of the ion trail?”

  Dar’su nodded. “Aye. It heads away from this location on a course of one three mark two four eight. The trail gets lost among the rest of the nebula’s gas beyond a quarter AU.”

  That seemed unusual, Solyss thought. When a ship stopped to make a course change, it was for only a few reasons. Either they didn’t want anyone to know their final destination, which was common among smugglers, criminals, and military vessels, or they had to go around something.

  Hyperspace existed in another realm than the standard space that they lived in, but it wasn’t completely isolated. While you could fly right through a planet in hyperspace, sometimes you wouldn’t come out the other side. The larger the object, the greater the odds were of the two realms interacting. Most hyperspace courses avoided passing through star systems for this reason.

  But when you made a course correction to avoid a star system, it merely involved flying to a point that would give you a straight shot at your final destination. Moving around in real space would be unnecessary.

  “Helm, follow that ion trail. I want to see where they went,” Solyss ordered.

  The ship began moving through the emptiness. Minutes dragged by, and the tension of the crew faded, replaced by boredom. Traveling through hyperspace was never very exciting, but at least you were moving toward home.

  After twenty minutes of flight, Dar’su reported, “Sir, I’m still not detecting any ships or structures, but I’m getting some unusual readings along our present course.”

  Solyss cocked an eyebrow. “Unusual how?”

  Dar’su turned in her seat and gave him an embarrassed look. “Unusual in that I have no idea what they mean. The computer identifies it as some kind of anomaly. I’m no astrophysicist and can’t interpret the data. I’ve run a system diagnosis and it comes back clean.”

  “Is it safe to proceed?” Solyss asked.

  “Unknown, sir. Some of the anomalous readings are energy spikes across the spectrum and gravitational fluctuations. Nothing jumps out as clearly dangerous, but, then, we don’t really understand what’s going on,” Dar’su replied, her tone not reassuring him in the slightest.

  For a moment, Solyss considered his options. They still had no idea what had happened to the Alliance frigate. With all the gas from the nebula and this unexplained anomaly, it was entirely
possible the ion trail didn’t actually belong to their missing frigate.

  In the end, despite his curiosity, Solyss had to admit that the frigate was irrelevant to his primary mission. He needed to get Josserand back to Kreogh Sector and gain control of the Black Market. Anything else would just be a personal indulgence.

  With a reluctant sigh, Solyss ordered, “Helm, resume our course back home.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Saracasi had never been bothered by tight spaces before. For more than a week, though, her world had consisted of a room just slightly bigger than her quarters on the Cutty Sark. And she had to share it with two other people.

  While the escape pod could technically hold five people, she, Arzesaeth, and Saisee, who had been the last ones off the Audacious, were the only ones aboard. This gave them slightly more space than the rest of the crew would have, but they had also been the ones closest to the ship when it exploded. Between the damage done to the pod and the radiation resulting from the explosion, they had been unable to maneuver or communicate with anyone.

  After the third day, she had given up on trying to make any repairs. Escape pods were designed to keep people alive, not operate like a fully functional starship. They lacked tools and spare parts, and accessing damaged systems without a space walk proved impossible. While they did have vacuum-rated environmental suits in the emergency supplies, there was no airlock. An EVA would mean venting a lot of the precious air supply into space. The situation had forced her to do nothing, which she wasn’t used to.

  When a shudder rang through the pod, Saracasi thought nothing of it at first. They had been colliding with pieces of debris from the battle periodically. Anything that didn’t kill them wasn’t worth worrying about. But when the vibrations continued after several moments, she woke up from her half-doze.

  Sharing a glance with Arzesaeth and Saisee, she allowed herself to feel a small tingle of hope. A tractor beam was the only thing she knew of that would cause this level of constant low-level vibration. That meant someone had found them.

  After several minutes, the vibration stopped. Its absence filled the pod with an eerie calm. It lasted long enough for her to start to think it had all been a dream. She was about to lay back down when she noticed something: sound.

  Noises could be heard outside the pod, and Saracasi smiled. Noise meant atmosphere. She tried the external environmental sensor on the pod but got no reading in response. Like most external systems aboard, the sensors weren’t working.

  Saracasi forced herself to wait calmly for several more agonizing minutes. Finally, the pod’s hatch opened from the outside, and a rush of light and fresh oxygen flooded in. Squeezing her way through the small opening, Saracasi stood fully erect for the first time in a week.

  She found herself on the shuttle deck of an Alliance corvette that she quickly recognized as belonging to Gallant. A Camari woman in medical garb stood beside two crewmembers. The woman came forward and began looking Saracasi over with her medical scanner.

  “Casi!” a shout came from behind the crew, and Saracasi saw Solyss Novastar making his way toward her.

  “I’m glad to see you!” he said with a big grin.

  “Not half as glad as I am to see you, Solyss,” Saracasi said with a smile. “I see Gallant made it back from Trepon safely. Any word on the rest of my crew?”

  “About 90% have been accounted for, now that we’ve found you three,” Solyss answered. “We arrived in system yesterday and immediately joined the search-and-rescue operation with the rest of the fleet.”

  “What of Irod?” Saracasi asked. Audacious had succeeded in destroying most of the Alliance fleet attacking the planet, but one frigate had remained and ground troops had already landed.

  “My information is limited,” Solyss confessed. “But when we got here, we found the fleet conducting SAR operations and there was no indication of fighting planet-side.”

  That was good, she thought. Zeric must have been able to deal with whatever forces the Alliance had managed to get planet-side. Davidus had been as good as his word and brought the fleet, which presumably had taken out the remaining frigate. Assuming, of course, they hadn’t managed to repair their hyperdrive beforehand and report what had happened.

  “What can you tell me about the situation?” Saracasi asked. “And how soon can you get me over to Defiant Glory or down to see General Dustlighter?”

  Before Solyss could answer, the Camari woman who had looked her over said, “Not until I’ve had a chance to give you a thorough scan and you’ve had time to rest.”

  “I’ve had nothing but time to rest,” Saracasi replied irritably.

  The Camari woman lowered her eyestalks and fixed her with an intense stare.

  Solyss intervened before either of them could say anything else. “Perhaps Dr. When is right, Commodore. You’ve been exposed to a lot of radiation over the last few days. And our shuttle is out with the search teams. She’s due to dock in two hours to refuel.”

  Saracasi frowned but nodded. “Very well. Run your tests.”

  With a satisfied nod, Dr. When led her, Arzesaeth, and Saisee from the hangar deck. Solyss walked with them down the narrow corridors. As they walked, he said, “This will also give you a chance to get to know our newest crewmember.”

  She gave him a curious look, but he just smiled. Instead of pressing him any more, Saracasi walked in silence the short distance to the Gallant’s small sickbay. Inside, she felt relieved to see a few members from the crew of Audacious resting comfortably. They looked injured but were alive.

  In the sickbay’s remaining bed, she caught sight of a familiar Liw’kel woman. In the woman’s arms, held close to her breast, was a small, light-blue baby. Ignoring Dr. When’s instructions, Saracasi went over to the pair. “Gamaly! Congratulations!” she said to her friend.

  Looking up from the suckling baby, Gamaly gave her a faint smile. “Thank you, Casi. It’s good to see you alive. I’d introduce you properly to Ga’mod, but he’s a little distracted at the moment.”

  “I didn’t realize you were already due,” Saracasi said, wanting to look at the baby but not sure what was acceptable with Liw’kel mothers when it came to breastfeeding. Braz women felt no shame breastfeeding in front of others, but she knew many Terrans did. Most other species fed their young in very different ways.

  “He came a little early. I had hoped to make it back before giving birth so that Gu’od could be there,” Gamaly said, a sad look on her face.

  “Well, he might have missed the birth, but he probably isn’t far behind. I’m surprised he isn’t aboard. Zeric is on Irod, and I expect Gu’od’s with him,” Saracasi said.

  Gamaly frowned. “I’ve not been able to get in touch with either of them. Solyss says things are pretty chaotic down there and with us involved in rescue efforts, he hasn’t been able to send me down in a shuttle. Not that Dr. When would let me leave sickbay.”

  “Well, don’t worry. Once I’m allowed out of here, I’ll get Gu’od on the first shuttle I can find,” Saracasi said with a smile.

  A non-subtle cough behind her made Saracasi turn around and see Dr. When waiting impatiently by a scanning device. “The sooner you let me get this over with, Commodore, the sooner you can get out of here.”

  Gamaly gave her a sympathetic smile, and Saracasi left her friend to tend to her baby. It was good that some happiness could still be found in all the ugliness of this war.

  Around him, people talked. Zeric ignored them. He never liked meetings under normal circumstances. This one should have been better than most, even though politicians were the ones currently talking, because it was ostensibly a military briefing and planning session. He really should have been paying close attention. A short time before, he had been grateful for the meeting to start.

  When Saracasi had arrived on the surface, she had immediately approached him with news that Gamaly had given birth to a healthy baby boy. Instead of inspiring elation, the reminder about the baby had almost s
ent him running from the room. He had been ducking Gamaly’s attempts to talk to him since the Gallant had arrived in orbit. Fortunately, until now, he had managed to keep them away from the surface.

  But all the missing crew were now accounted for, and Saracasi had asked about Gu’od. Hastily, Zeric had rushed her into the meeting, dodging the question. She still sat there, around the table from him, giving him curious glances. He wasn’t ready to have to tell Gamaly about Gu’od’s death, and he would have to as soon as Saracasi found out.

  He tried focusing on the Cardine delegate speaking. “While the Camari Republic regrets they cannot send any ships or personnel, they did sell us a supply of weapons on credit. And they’re raising the alert levels of their forces near the Alliance border. The appearance of Camari ships in the Monab system, which is jointly owned, will keep the Alliance on alert and tie up some of their fleet in defensive positions.”

  While the news was good, the Cardine delegate speaking reminded Zeric of the promise he had made to Marshall Teev. He’d promised to get his troops back to Cardine. Instead, over half of them had died—obliterated when their transports were destroyed. Rather than helping to win the war and then returning to Cardine to liberate their own homes, they had died in a useless and senseless way.

  The thought of their deaths brought Zeric’s mind back to Gu’od. Everything eventually did lately. His best friend, one of the only people in the universe who had ever truly cared about him, was dead. Dead because he’d gone to save Zeric’s daughter. A daughter he’d never wanted. A daughter he now couldn’t look at without thinking of Gu’od and blaming her for his death.

  Guiltily, Zeric chided himself. None of that should be blamed on the girl. She was just a child whose home had been attacked. Gu’od was dead not because of her, but because of him. He hadn’t gone to her rescue like he should have.