Battle Cruiser

by B. V. Larson

  All my life, I’d believed the common wisdom of my fellows. I’d been certain that the colonies were cut off from us, and we from them. We weren’t even sure whether or not they still existed. Every teacher in every school, from kindergarten to graduate school, had professed this knowledge to me as indisputable fact. Anyone who disagreed was labeled “ignorant.”

  But it wasn’t so. We weren’t alone. And our isolation was due to our own disinterest. There were surviving colonies, many of them. As I continued tapping at links, looking at new worlds, I realized that there were actually more colonies than I’d ever been told of. This fact led me back to Zye with fresh questions.

  “Zye,” I said, “how many colonies are there in space?”

  “Human colonies? About a hundred that we know of.”

  My eyes narrowed. “Do I take it from that statement that some of these colonies are not human?”

  “That’s right. There are worlds where humans share the planet with native life-forms. Creatures that weren’t transplanted from Earth long ago. In addition, along the distant frontier where new colonies are still being founded, alien intelligences have been encountered from time to time.”

  My blood chilled in my veins. “Aliens,” I said. “Real aliens, not microbes and odd scrubby plants?”

  “That’s right. But we Betas don’t know much about them. We only have contact with a few local human colonies, all of which are hostile to us. We’ve never met with a real alien that I know of.”

  “But…if you know the pathways,” I asked, “why don’t you trade? There used to be a thriving trade system.”

  “There is some trade,” she said, “but it’s nothing like the old days. Remember that before the Cataclysm, all the pathways between the stars were first discovered between Earth and the colony systems, one at a time. Earth was the hub, the center of commerce. You had to travel to Earth before you could get anywhere else. The colonies didn’t have direct, independent trade routes. Because of this weakness, a dark age began when we were cut off.”

  “It was similar on Earth but possibly worse. We weren’t just cut off from you, our homeworld was wounded as well. Most of our technology was wiped out during the span of a single hour due to the massive solar flare. In the years that followed, we endured starvation, wars… The fact that the old pathways between our star system and the colonies had been erased wasn’t our worst trouble.”

  “I see,” Zye said thoughtfully. “What you describe is close to what was generally assumed. We didn’t know if you still lived or not. Therefore, we had to fend for ourselves. We had trouble just feeding our population at first, and when equipment from Earth broke down we often lacked the skills to repair it. We had to build new industries from scratch, replacing infrastructure that had previously existed only on Earth. Most of our population died out within the first decade. Correspondingly, the Betas decided to rebuild our race with survival in mind. We cloned a new generation of Betas, designed to survive hardship.”

  “You said before you were made up of females—why only females?”

  “The original plan involved superior female lifespans and the ability to reproduce. We wanted to be able to quickly expand our population naturally without cloning.”

  “Reproduce without cloning?” I asked. “By meeting up with others…an outside group with males?”

  “We have a few males,” she said matter-of-factly. “They’re in storage in case we need them. But you’re the first male I’ve ever seen with my own eyes.”

  The more I learned of the Betas, the more disturbing I found them to be. Also, I was becoming curious as to the behavior of Zye herself. Perhaps the psychology of the situation between myself and this amazing woman was more complex than I’d imagined at first. If I was the only male she’d ever encountered, and I was also the first human face she’d seen when we’d rescued her from her cell—these facts could explain a lot. When taken together, the emotional impact of making my acquaintance might explain her apparent devotion to me.

  “Thank you for being so open,” I said, “we’ll talk more later.”

  “I’m yours to command.”

  She walked away and continued helping Rumbold’s men shunt massive cables around.

  I looked after her. She’d said these last words as if they were part of a ritual. Perhaps that’s how one Beta addressed another who was their leader. I found that to be an interesting concept, then I relegated the idea to the back of my mind.

  Once the power-couplings were functional again, we had decisions to make.

  “What part of the ship do we want to make operational first?” I asked.

  “Weapons systems, sir,” Rumbold told me. “What choice do we have?”

  I frowned at him. “Are you suggesting we should blow Altair out of the sky? Wouldn’t that be confirming Singh’s lies about us?”

  Rumbold shrugged. “I guess you could activate Defiant’s drive. That way, we could at least fly her. Not an easy choice, I admit.”

  “Communications,” I announced. “That makes the most sense to me. If we activate the drive, we might be able to fly, but we’d be flying blind. No sensors. Possibly, no helm control either. The drive is too interdependent, likewise the weapons systems.”

  “Communications then?” Zye asked.

  “Do it.”

  Zye directed the repair crew, all of whom were sweating in their suits, to help her connect the final coupling. The collars touched, then the meshed splines locked into place. With a confident hand, she reached out and threw the massive breaker.

  The lines hummed under our feet. Everyone shifted uncomfortably, aware of the unknown voltages that now coursed close to our bodies. It was one thing to work on a ship you understood, it was quite another to toy with systems on a vessel that was for all intents and purposes alien, and many times the size of our largest ships. If not for Zye’s help, I doubt we could have done it at all.

  Lights flickered, dimmed, then came back up to full power. The ship adjusted to our altered pathways, funneling juice to unknown destinations. After a few tense seconds, during which we all glanced at one another with wide eyes, we began to smile.

  All of us, that was, except for Zye herself. Her confidence in her own technical skills was absolute. She stepped away from the rest of the group, and went to work on another damaged region.

  After we were sure we weren’t all going to blow up or be burnt to ash by our jury-rigged repairs, we followed her.

  “There’s a problem,” she said, examining various readouts. “The generators are already at their peak output. That shouldn’t be—but it is. I can only surmise that we’ve lost several generators, and that we must head down to the power deck to get more of them operational before activating more systems.”

  “All right, but do we have communications?” I asked Zye.

  “Of course.”

  “How do I use them?”

  “Operate any station. Access the data core as I’ve shown you. Link into battle command and transmit whatever you want.”

  “Battle command?” I asked. “Are you talking about a Beta communications network?”

  “Naturally. This is a Beta military ship.”

  “But I wanted to talk to Altair. Can the system communicate with other ships using some kind of proximity broadcast?”

  Zye shrugged. “Perhaps. I’m not a communications officer.”

  “All right then. Repair crews, carry on. Follow Zye to the generator deck and see what can be done. Rumbold, you’re in charge.”

  “Aye, aye,” he said, sighing. “Any chance of a break, sir? For food and such-like?”

  I glanced at him and the others. Sometimes, I forgot they were actually quite old. Longevity treatments halted ageing, but they weren’t exactly fountains of youth. Older crewmen still became tired and hungry sooner than did the young.

  “Right, take a break—no more than an hour.”

  “I rested long enough in my cell,” Zye said. “I’m not yet fatigued. Permis
sion to keep working, Captain?”

  I glanced at her. Was that an expression of disgust? Or was she just anxious to keep working for the betterment of all? It was hard to tell. Her facial cues weren’t quite like ours, and she maintained a poker face most of the time anyway.

  “Permission granted. The rest of you catch up to her when you can.”

  There were relieved sighs and grunts all around as my crew dispersed. I went up to find Yamada in life support, which we’d made our temporary headquarters.

  “We’ve got external communications,” I told her. “Let’s see if we can raise Altair.”

  She lifted a thoughtful finger and shook her head. “Perhaps we should think carefully, sir,” she said.

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “If we talk to Singh, we’re likely to be ignored or banned. He doesn’t know we can communicate, and I think we should play the advantage carefully.”

  “Okay…are you saying we should report back to Earth?”

  She nodded.

  “But who…” I said thoughtfully. “By now, he’s alerted the Guard to his actions. He must have some kind of excuse, some kind of accusation we’re unaware of. Even if we talk to an Admiral, he may or may not listen.”

  “Right. But there are other options. Who else can you contact who might help us?”

  Instantly, I realized what she was hinting around about. “You want me to contact my father—to circumvent the chain of command.”

  “Exactly, I don’t think we have any other choice.”

  The thought wasn’t a pleasant one for me. I’d spent the last decade proving to myself and my father that I was independent. I was my own man now, not just another whining, seventy-percent clone living in a parental shadow.

  But now, here I was, contemplating calling daddy for help.

  “I don’t want to do this,” I said. “The very thought of it stings my pride. But I think you’re right, it’s the wisest course of action.”

  “William,” she said in a lowered voice, “if it’s any consolation, your crew has come to respect you for your own qualities. It’s only now that I realize the burden you’ve been operating under. You don’t want to rely on your father for anything, do you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  The question was overly personal, and I thought about waving it off—but I didn’t. I felt the events of the previous days gave her the right to ask it. My crew had entrusted me with their lives, and they’d performed admirably. Opening up a little wasn’t always recommended for officers in the Guard, but regulations said it was up to the individual.

  “My father doesn’t want me to be in the Guard at all,” I said. “He abhors Star Guard. He thinks of it as a fossil, a relic without a purpose, a burden on the taxpayers.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “That makes sense, considering his politics, but we really didn’t believe it. We thought you were one more patrician’s son getting a commission he had never earned by trading with his father’s name.”

  “What do you think now?”

  “That I’m in the presence of a true patriot, an officer who believes in what he’s doing. You’ve sacrificed more than any of us, as most of us didn’t have an easy life as an option.”

  “I’m not sure about that, but I thank you for the kind words.”

  Smiling, she turned her attention to the screens. She toyed with them using Zye’s passcode until she found an external broadcast option and set the frequency for Earth’s public communications net.

  “We can spoof the system with simple packets,” she said. “The Betas are using a protocol that we’ve abandoned, but it’s still supported for legacy devices.”

  “But will it allow me to speak to my father?” I asked.

  “The system will contact him if you type in your ID and password. It will appear to him as an odd connection from an unknown source. The real question is: would he answer such a call?”

  After a moment’s thought, I shook my head. “No. But I know someone who might.”

  Instead of typing in my father’s ID, I chose instead to type in an ID I’d never utilized before…that of Chloe, of House Astra.

  -22-

  I’d reasoned that Chloe might be curious, rather than dismissive, of an unknown caller. She might even expect me to contact her clandestinely. Banking on her natural curiosity, I hoped she wouldn’t check with her mother’s security people, who’d almost certainly advise her to ignore the call.

  Unfortunately, due to the distance to Earth, I couldn’t make a normal real-time call. I had to record a message and transmit it all at once. The message would be more like transmitting an email than a phone call, something I was certain Rumbold could relate to.

  Thinking over what I was going to say, I became uncomfortable with Yamada’s scrutiny. She was already recording and looking at me expectantly.

  Yamada wasn’t the most indiscrete member of my crew, but I didn’t want her to be tempted with private information the others would relish gossiping about. I thought about editing my message down to a purely business-like statement of fact, but Astra and I had experienced a personal moment at her father’s home. How could I fail to mention that encounter in this transmission and still expect her to help me?

  “Uh, could you excuse me for a moment, Ensign? I wish to make this recording privately.”

  She raised her eyebrows as if she were thinking about asking me a question, but then she nodded. “All right, I’ll go. When you’re finished, tap this save symbol that looks like an anvil, then the green send arrow at the bottom. The transmission will take over an hour to reach Earth, then we can hope for a reply an hour after that.”

  When she was gone, I began recording.

  “Lady Astra,” I said, sounding formal at first. Then I cleared my throat, let my spine curve a little into a more natural posture and smiled. “Chloe, I miss you. I’m sorry about the long absence without contact. I’ve been sent on a deep space mission investigating an anomaly that was thought to be a comet—but the object turned out to be a ship of colossal size.”

  I queued up and attached a series of still images and video. The various decks and shots of Zye herself were in the files. I made sure the most surprising features were included, as I wanted the montage to prove I wasn’t lying about our discovery.

  “The ship was built by colonists from Beta Cygnus—you may remember them from our history texts. The large woman in the photographs is named Zye, and she’s a Beta. This must all come as a shock, but I assure you it’s true. I’m betting you know enough of our history to realize how monumental this discovery is. Unfortunately, not everyone is happy about the find.”

  Here, I added an audio recording of Singh declaring he would destroy my ship and crew. I attached this and transmitted it as well.

  “As you can see, Captain Singh is attempting to hide the truth about this ship—this battle cruiser. And now comes the hard part.”

  I directed the camera at me again. Looking down for a moment, I tried but failed to come up with a nice way to ask for her help. I sighed instead.

  “I’m going to ask you to help me. I’m going to ask you to champion the truth over the name of House Astra. Distribute these files. Forward my message to the press and to as many outlets as you can. I know this will be a hard thing to do, as our parents are part of political parties that would rather not admit this discovery is real. But it is real, and Singh is trying to cover it up by killing me. He’s probably blaming me for some accident—maybe outright treachery.”

  Looking into the video pickup, I forced myself to smile again. “I enjoyed our short time together, and I hope to see you again. Regardless of your decision, farewell.”

  Closing the transmission, I tapped the save button, then, after a few seconds of indecision, I sent it.

  The moment I’d finished, I began thinking of who else I could send the message to. My parents came to mind, of course. How could I keep them in the dark? They might never o
pen the message, but I thought I had to at least try.

  Setting up the vid pick-up again and composing myself, I began a new message directed at both my parents. One of them might be curious enough to check it, and not assume it was some kind of unsolicited garbage from the grid.

  Before I could finish a dozen words, however, the vessel around me shook with an impact.

  The ship’s lights dimmed, wavered, then went out. A moment later I was bathed in emergency red.

  “Yamada!” I shouted. “Yamada, do you read me?”

  Static spat from my implants. I thought I heard a buzzing, as if there were voices, but then nothing.

  Getting up quickly, I drew my gun and headed for the doorway. As I did so, I glanced at the ship’s diagram in the midst of the life support chamber. Part of the ship was flashing. It was the power-couplings again.

  “Damn it,” I said, opening the hatch and trotting through the passages.

  When I got to the deck, I saw smoke hanging in blue-white twists. I couldn’t smell the smoke because I had my helmet sealed, but I knew the aftermath of an electrical fire when I saw one.

  “Yamada? Rumbold? Is anyone on the power-coupling deck?”

  There was no answer. As I moved through the region, I almost tripped over a body. I rolled the suited fellow over—it was Alberto, one of mine. There was a blackened hole in his chest. He’d been shot with a power bolt.

  I eased him back onto his face and crouched, eyes searching the scene. There was no one around. I began moving again, toward the generators, when a brilliant light flared.

  A bolt had struck near my head. A pipe full of wires had been blasted open. Burning metal threw sparks in my face. The report from the strike must have been deafeningly loud, as I could clearly hear the roar of it even through my helmet.

  Twisting and firing a bolt back at my attacker, I got lucky. I don’t have any other explanation for it. I caught my attacker full in the gut, and he doubled over. Sprawling and convulsing on the deck, I didn’t approach him to render aid. Instead, I warily circled the room full of heavy equipment, looking for any partners he might have had.