Interim: On the run from the Galactic FTL Police

by P. K. Lentz

  If and when this unpleasantness ended, he’d have to think about a new vessel and a fresh identity. Couldn’t hurt to be cautious.

  After a few moments spent making himself presentable Gareth walked lazily out of his Captain’s quarters and into the common room across the hall. To his disappointment, the room was not unoccupied. Sitting at a table, staring quietly at a bulkhead, was Zerouali. Gareth hesitated, even briefly considered backing out, but too late--she noticed him and looked up. Gareth continued reluctantly into the room. He plucked two bottles of chilled water from the stores and took a seat across the table from Zerouali. Just as well. If there was an awkward patch to be endured as a result of his clumsy advance earlier, he may as well get it over with. Zerouali’s company beat Fyat’s, at any rate.

  “Listening to something?” Gareth asked casually, handing her one of the waters. She accepted it politely.

  “News from Merada.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “Chaos.” There was resignation in her voice. “Fleet raids, orbital bombardment. Riots in fifty cities. Local authorities are ignoring the government’s orders and siding with the rebels.” She shrugged and fell silent.

  “It isn’t your fault.”

  Zerouali looked mildly perturbed. “I know that,” she said. “The Interim creates this mess, then stays to make it worse. It’s an old story.”

  Gareth just nodded and drank. He harbored no desire to engage the woman in conversation on any such heavy subject. Life itself was heavy enough right now. Unfortunately he couldn’t come up with a change of topic, and so instead just sipped at his water while entertaining a casual desire for something stronger. The abortive conversation lapsed into awkward silence.

  Gareth knew from a lifetime of living shipboard with little privacy that interpersonal issues, however small, were best dealt with promptly. Besides, the more he evaded the topic the more foolish he’d likely look when it finally did come up.

  Of course, if he just waited a few hours Zerouali would be launched into a stellar orbit. But no. He didn’t need this hanging over his head for nine years.

  “About what happened earlier,” Gareth began.

  When Zerouali gave him her stock impenetrable gaze, Gareth froze, forgetting whatever he’d been about to say. The lingering effects of the Saerix on his brain, he told himself.

  After several awkward seconds Zerouali let him off the hook.

  “To explain an event is to admit its significance,” she said scientifically. “This one has none. You weren’t yourself.”

  The words relieved Gareth. “Glad to hear you say that,” he said. “I wouldn’t want you to think--” He faltered. Think what? There was really no way to finish that sentence without sounding like an egotist or an ass.

  Zerouali cut in to offer some straight-faced suggestions of her own. “That you’re attracted to me? That you’re desperate for approval? That you’re a shameless womanizer?”

  “No,” was all Gareth’s muddled mind could offer.

  “No indeed, Captain,” she agreed calmly. “I don’t think any of those things. You weren’t in possession of your senses. Luckily one of us was.”

  Gareth continued to struggle for a response. Forced to admit failure, he resigned himself to forgetting the issue and the incident. “Good,” he said. “So it never happened.”

  “I didn’t say that. I said it wasn’t significant.”

  If not for the pleasant dullness at the edges of his brain, Gareth might have been annoyed. As it was he only felt tired and in no mood for wordplay. He rose from the table.

  “You should eat something before hibe-fast,” he said. “Help yourself.”

  “I’m fine, thank you. Although I do hope to hear that offer again in about nine years.”

  Gareth gave a mirthless smile. “Count on it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m sure there’s something I should be doing on what was until recently my ship.”

  He hadn’t even left the room when his comm chirped and an unwelcome voice filled his ear.

  “Captain,” Fyat began. “A second Interim vessel has entered Meradi space. It’s Fleet’s flagship, Hunter in the Dark.”

  Gareth cursed. “That can’t be good, can it?”

  “No. And undoubtedly worse is the fact that they are requesting direct communication with you.”

  “Me? Directly? Realtime?”

  “Yes. They are standing by.”

  Gareth experienced a moment of intense, paralyzing panic. The Saerix-fog obligingly receded from his awareness as he scrambled to rationalize this latest development and come up with some reason why it might not be as ominous as it seemed.

  “Maybe they just want to schedule inspection?” he said hopefully. “Or ask some routine questions.” But he knew he was grasping at straws. Anything so mundane would take place via request-and-response, with no direct communication required.

  “I rather doubt it, Captain,” Fyat confirmed. “Whatever they want, there’s no avoiding it. You know what you need to tell them. Perhaps you can pull yourself together on your way to the bridge.”

  But Gareth barely heard Fyat over the storm of panicked thoughts raging inside his own head. His ears burned hot and he all but forgot to breathe. He looked down to find his hands shaking.

  “Something wrong?” Zerouali asked, still at the table behind him.

  Gareth turned, staring vacantly at her while he struggled to regain composure. Panic was useless, he told himself. There was nothing to do now but face whatever was to come.

  “The Interim wants to talk to me,” he told Zerouali, hardly hearing his own voice.

  “You’ve practiced for it,” she said reassuringly. “You’ll do fine.”

  Fyat’s voice erupted again in Gareth’s ear. “Perhaps you should disengage your comm before holding such conversations, Captain!”

  Gareth stifled an instinctive, angry reply. “Right,” he said instead. Then he announced to Fyat, “I’ll answer from here in three minutes.” Switching off his comm, he added quietly to no one in particular, “That way I’ll have nice hard floor to pass out on.”

  “Don’t panic,” Zerouali offered. “Speak as if you’ve nothing to fear.”

  “Easy for you to say. You get to hide in the corner. Speaking of which, get out of sight.”

  As Zerouali retired to the far corner, Gareth positioned himself at the room’s comm panel. He stood there silently for most of three minutes, breathing deeply and steadying his nerves. Finally he keyed acceptance to the pending request from ISS Hunter in the Dark. His finger hovered over the final key for some time. Try as he might, he could not conceive what would happen next. A dozen vague scenarios raced through his head, none of them appealing. But his fate was likely already decided; whatever he said now would probably have scant effect on the outcome.

  The thought helped to calm his nerves, even if it offered little in the way of comfort. With supreme effort of will, he completed the acceptance.

  He waited what seemed an eternity for the display to flash acknowledgment. Finally it lit with a visual.

  Onscreen there appeared a tall, grey-uniformed uniformed Fleet officer in a plain white room. Sweeping his fear aside Gareth managed with moderate success to adopt a casual and unworried demeanor.

  “What can I do for you, officer?” he said with a smile.

  The man returned a thin-lipped smile of his own, one that set Gareth’s stomach churning. “Captain William Gareth,” he said stiffly. “Or perhaps I should call you Mayweather Kearn.”

  Fuck! Gareth wasn’t sure whether his inward cringe was visible on camera or not, but he proceeded nonetheless with the requisite denial. What other choice was there?

  “Sorry, I don’t follow.” He smiled through near-overwhelming panic. “And I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Vice-commander Daniel Sallat of ISS Whisper of Death. There’s no sense denying it, Mister Kearn. We know who you are. We also know that you are currently harboring a known fugitive, one Jilan Z
erouali. In the interest of expedience I would like to propose that we set aside for the moment your own history with the Interim and resolve the present impasse with a simple exchange.”

  Suddenly a weight deferred for centuries came crashing down upon Gareth. The full meaning of Sallat’s words took a full minute to sink in. Even when they had, Gareth could only manage one faint word in reply.

  “Exchange?” he echoed.

  “An exchange, Captain. Zerouali for... Well, see for yourself.”

  The view onscreen panned to Sallat’s right. Gareth guessed what he was about to see well before the monitor proved him correct. He croaked her name: “Ren.”

  Serenity Martijn sat on a bench in the featureless room. She was dressed in bright red coveralls, clutching bound wrists to her chest. Lower, the curve of her abdomen revealed a pregnancy hardly more advanced than it had been when Gareth had last seen her centuries ago. She gazed out dully from the vid, eyes cloudy with checked tears.

  “Hi, Kearn,” she said. Her gaze darted nervously off-screen, toward Sallat or another of her captors. When she looked back there was more strength than sorrow in her eyes. “Do what you have to, Kearn,” she blurted in rapid Galactic. “I’ll understand.”

  The view jerked abruptly back to Sallat. “An exchange, Captain Kearn,” Sallat said soberly. “Two for one. We get Zerouali. You get Ms. Martijn and your unborn daughter, both of whom I assure you are in excellent health. An hour from now we could all be on our separate ways.”

  Sallat paused to await a reply that was not forthcoming. Gareth’s head swam. Lately he’d managed to cope reasonably well with some disastrous developments, but this...this erased all else.

  “I see you need some time to consider,” Sallat said after Gareth’s minute-long blank stare. “Very well. But please be advised that this is our one and only offer. I’ll expect to hear from you shortly. Good day, Captain.”

  The screen blanked. Gareth turned his back to the wall and slumped quietly to the floor. There he remained with no intention of rising.

  ***

  “What happened?” Fyat asked Zerouali upon his arrival in the hab module common room.

  “He just dropped there and hasn’t said a word since.”

  On the floor, Lady’s captain sat staring downward with his grey eyes wide and glazed. He’d been ignoring Fyat’s persistent comms from the bridge.

  “Gareth!” Fyat ordered. “Get up!”

  No response. Kneeling, Fyat drew his weapon and placed its tip squarely between the captain’s eyes. Still no response.

  “Gareth,” he said evenly. “Or Kearn, rather. If you’re going to give up then I may as well kill you now. You’re of no use to anyone like this.”

  “He’ll come out of it,” Zerouali said calmly from her seat at the table. “He’s just taken quite a shock, apparently.”

  Fyat rose and holstered his weapon. He spoke to Zerouali only as a proxy, on the chance that the unresponsive captain might hear. “I’ve analyzed the transmission from Hunter,” he said. “A second layer in the signal contained a coded message for me. That means that Fleet knows of my presence here, or at least believes it has an asset aboard this ship capable of monitoring your communications. How they came to believe this I don’t know, but their instructions are simple. Upon failure of negotiations, I’m to liquidate the crew of this vessel and extract you and Kearn.”

  Zerouali appeared unmoved. “Good thing you’re on our side then,” she said.

  Fyat cast Gareth one last irritated glance as he left the room. “He has ten minutes.”

  ***

  Two hours into his duty cycle, Simon Ascher was beginning to think he’d prefer a stroll out the nearest airlock to spending another moment on his feet. He was currently in the midst of a bleary-eyed search of the cargo manifest, hunting down some parts requested by Engineering section. Most of his energy, however, was devoted merely to keeping his head from hitting the console.

  In his current diminished mental state he began to question whether his bizarre encounter of the previous night had actually occurred. If it hadn’t, then the sole cause of his current misery was his own dementia, brought on perhaps by his malfunctioning neurilace. There were recorded cases of just that sort of madness. Maybe it was time to face reality and pay a visit to the medsuites before the damage became irreversible.

  When he found that his display had frozen, Ascher realized his mind had been wandering. He tried and failed several times to bring up the list he needed. He tried to reset the display. No luck. Instead he found himself once more staring into the face of his own delusion.

  >>HELLO SIMON.

  “No, no, no,” he pleaded silently. He really wanted to cry. “No, don’t do this to me.”

  >>I’M SORRY SIMON. WOULD SPEAK IN PERSON IF COULD. GREAT RISK EVEN THIS WAY.

  “Go away--” he began, but then thought better of speaking aloud to his console in plain view of witnesses. As he’d done last night, he keyed in his replies.

  >>I DON’T KNOW WHO YOU ARE, BUT LEAVE ME ALONE!!!

  >>WISH I COULD SIMON, BUT I NEED YOU. YOUR SHIP HAS BEEN SUBVERTED. CREW INFECTED. I WANT TO HELP THEM BUT NEED YOU TO RESCUE MY FRIEND FIRST.

  >>TREASON. GO AWAY.

  >>IT SERVES A HIGHER PURPOSE. SHE HAS DONE NOTHING SIMON. I KNOW YOU FEEL COMPASSION FOR HER. PLEASE.

  >>I HAVE NOTHING MORE TO SAY TO YOU.

  >>UNDERSTAND YOUR RELUCTANCE BUT AN INNOCENT WOMAN AND MANY MORE WILL PAY PRICE FOR YOUR INACTION. HEROES KNOW WHEN TO BREAK ORDERS, SIMON.

  >>I AM NO HERO. DON’T WANT TO BE.

  >>I’LL HELP YOU.

  >>NO!!!!

  >>VERY WELL. THEN I HAVE FAILED. GOODBYE SIMON.

  The words faded, leaving the console to resume its proper function. Ascher stared blankly at the screen for another ten minutes before he could bring himself to return halfheartedly to his task. Even then he could think of little else but the strange conversation he’d just had with... Himself? A phantom?

  For the first time now, Ascher felt lucky that his duties didn’t require a great deal of concentration. He really wasn’t much more than a glorified clerk, a button pusher, and that’s probably how he would die.

  No--he would never be any kind of hero.

  ***

  Gareth was vaguely aware of Fyat’s departure. He’d heard the assassin’s talk about a hidden layer in the Interim’s comm signal, his orders to murder Lady’s crew. It gave him some small measure of satisfaction to ignore the arrogant prick.

  Once the assassin had gone, Zerouali crossed the room and settled on the floor beside him. “So you’re Kearn, huh?” she said conversationally. “The Kearn of Lucifer’s Halo. A legend. If I had known that maybe I would have let you kiss me.” She paused, as if to emphasize that this last was a joke. “Of course, everything I’ve ever read says you died in a hibe malfunction before I was born. I always thought that was anticlimactic. I’m glad it isn’t true.”

  Though she paused again, it was clear enough she expected no reply.

  “I don’t know who that woman is,” she resumed. “One of your old crew from Halo, I suppose. Mother of your child. Obviously someone they think you care about. Judging by your reaction, they might be right.”

  Another casual pause, longer this time. Then: “You have to accept. Take their offer and move on. Save yourself. I told you already, I’m finished running. Wherever I end up, it will give me comfort to know that you continue to defy them.

  “If there’s time, though, maybe before I leave you can tell me more about Lucifer’s Halo and L155. I’ve been there, you know. I was a researcher on the Artifact for thirty years.”

  Though he heard her every word, Gareth offered no acknowledgment. He needed privacy now. Time to think. Still, he could give her some of what she wanted. No sense hiding anything now that the biggest secret of all, his identity, was blown.

  “Hold two, bay thirty-four, box nineteen,” he said tonelessly. “Specimen container labeled Diomedea exulans.
It’s really a blood sample from a human girl. Her DNA is the encryption key to some files in Lady’s datastores. They’re the Halo logs. If you need help, ask Ilias.”

  At that Mayweather Kearn, until recently William Gareth, picked himself up from the floor and left the room without looking back.

  ***

  Reissa InfoFLUX - Your total news source for Reissa and beyond.

  Celebrating 450 years!

  I.0286.05.25 10:21

  Commonwealth:BREAKING NEWS

  UNKNOWN VIRUS SPREADING RAPIDLY

  Little is yet known about the neurilace virus dubbed Embassy (for its initial discovery at the Verond Consulate in Reissul) except that it seems to be spreading at an alarming pace. More than seventeen million infections are confirmed, with new instances being discovered at a rate estimated as high as four per minute. The virus propagates via a wide array of neurilace software, from simple diagnostic utilities to specialized industrial routines and even entertainment suites.

  Programmers have yet to determine exactly what, if any, effect the virus has on infected individuals. The current alarm is caused not by Embassy’s destructive potential, which is yet unclear, but rather solely by its unprecedented rate of expansion. The virus has thus far stymied attempts to halt its progress. More than six hundred variants have already been catalogued.

  Users are advised to avoid loading any new neurilace software from any source, known or unknown, until such time as Embassy has been properly assessed and contained.

  [END]

  ***

  A SWARM IS COMING.

  NORSE & GREEK MYTH MEETS EPIC FANTASY MEETS LOVERCRAFTIAN MONSTERS.

  FREE! INSTANT DOWNLOAD!

  PART TWO: COUNTING STARS

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  600 SHIP-YEARS EARLIER

  228.3 YEARS BEFORE THE INTERIM (I.-228.3)

  LOG: LUCIFER’S HALO

  Star of Beshaan interception +4h

  Moriet will be reviving the girl we rescued from Beshaan soon. It seems cruel to wake her up only to tell her she’s the sole survivor of her derelict colony ship, then slam her back into hibernation for another century. Call it curiosity or maybe just a selfish need for gratitude, but on the off chance that we do end up dead before seeing civilization again, I’d like to meet the girl first.