Orion Fleet (Rebel Fleet Series Book 2)

by B. V. Larson

  Robin wasn’t entirely grateful for my intervention.

  “I was doing fine until you showed up,” she complained.

  “Oh really? Are you sure Roog would have allowed you to get away from him?”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” she said.

  “That wasn’t what I saw in your eyes when he carried you out of the bar.”

  She heaved a sigh. “Well… You blew my cover, anyway. That group will never trust us again.”

  “Kher rarely trust one another,” I said. “And all these primates—they’re as bad as the predators say they are.”

  “You included?” she asked as we arrived at the docking portals. “Are you just doing this for ulterior motives?”

  I shrugged. “Gwen told me you might be in trouble, that’s all.”

  “Hmm…” she said. “I guess I should thank you then. It’s the thought that counts.”

  “What were you thinking, trying to pump a pack of apes in a bar for information on your own?”

  “I’ve done worse,” she said.

  “Maybe, but this isn’t Earth. You don’t have nice human cops to back you up. If you play here, you pay.”

  “Okay Captain, warning received.”

  “Just don’t assume these Kher are like us,” I said, pressing her. “They’re barbarians in the true sense of the word.”

  “I said okay. Let’s forget about it. Tell me what you’re going to do about tomorrow’s trap.”

  “You mean with Fex feeding us to the Imperials?” I asked. “I don’t know yet.”

  I headed toward the bridge, and she followed me.

  “Are you going to that sham meeting he set up tomorrow morning?” she asked.

  “What choice do I have?”

  “Can I come along?”

  Frowning, I turned to face her. “Why would that make any sense? Do you think you can charm Fex out of his plan?”

  “No, but I might be able to get him to reveal more information.”

  Robin was one overconfident girl. She’d always been pretty fearless on Earth too, as long as no one was pointing a gun at her.

  After I checked on the command situation, which was all-clear, I walked back down toward the mess hall. Robin was waiting for me.

  “Haven’t you had enough?” I asked her.

  “Of drink yes, but I need some dinner.”

  We ate together, because the place was almost empty. The shift-change rush had come and gone an hour ago.

  “Walk me back to my room?” she asked.

  I hesitated, but only for a second. After all, she was an attractive girl, and somehow after rescuing her I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

  We headed toward her quarters, which were on the lower deck near the labs with the other civilians. She had a private room—a rare thing even on this ship. There was a second bunk, but it was unoccupied at the moment.

  “My hair smells like a monkey,” she said, and she stepped into a slide-away shower unit. There were group showers for most of the crew, but civvies got their own private units. Really, they occupied a circular section of the deck in between the two bunks.

  I kept quiet, despite my surprise. She got naked in there, and the lighting revealed just about everything a man might want to see through a translucent curtain.

  “I’d invite you in, but this is pretty tight,” she said.

  “Too bad,” I said, “I could use a clean-up myself.”

  The curtain cracked open. She looked at me with a playful smile. “Well, if I let the curtain hang open, the drains in the deck will catch it all anyway.”

  That was it. I was a goner. She was naked, dripping wet, and smiling down at me as I sat on her bunk. I couldn’t say no, it just wasn’t in me.

  We showered, standing in a tight embrace the entire time. Water went everywhere, and she laughed about that. Soap, water, skin—it was delightful.

  After we were clean and there wasn’t even a hint of Roog’s stink on either one of us, we made love on her tight bunk. It wasn’t totally easy to do, but we managed it. Where there was a will, there was a way, my Grandma always used to say.

  It had been a while for me, and we took our time. She seemed to be truly enjoying it. She didn’t ask me any probing questions, not once. That made me feel better. With this girl, you never knew what she really wanted.

  Robin took my face in her hands when we were resting, and she looked at me seriously.

  “You did save me,” she admitted. “I was an idiot to go in there without backup. Thanks.”

  Her words and her soft touches made me feel even better.

  * * *

  The next morning I was awakened early.

  I was back in my own bunk, and the ship’s klaxons went off without warning.

  “All hands, report to your emergency stations,” Miller’s voice rang out. It rolled around the ship like the word of God.

  “We have an active threat,” Miller continued. “All hands, report immediately to your emergency stations.”

  Then, the ship lurched. The anti-grav switched on a second later, and I was floating.

  “Dammit,” I complained, flipping around in a spiral pattern and I struggled to pull my uniform on. Fortunately, the cloth was intelligent enough to adjust to my struggling. My pants bloomed out in a spot where my foot was caught in a fold, and then gently squeezed back into its usual form when I had it on properly.

  Flaps squirming to find each other, I raced hand-over-hand down the central passage toward the flight deck. Luckily, it wasn’t a long trip, as my cabin was placed quite close on purpose.

  “Miller!” I shouted as I drifted onto the deck. “What’s going on?”

  He glanced at me, then turned back to the screens. “We’ve got unknown contacts in the system, Captain.”

  “How many, what configuration?” I demanded.

  “Unknown. One rip appeared, and nothing came through—nothing we could detect. That’s why I sounded the alarm.”

  I glanced over the docking tube display. We were indeed pulling up stakes and running.

  “Did Admiral Fex sound the alarm?”

  “No,” Miller said.

  “Are all our personnel off the station?” I asked.

  “I haven’t done a roster check. They were ordered to sleep on the ship. If they failed to follow orders, they’ve been left behind.”

  I nodded. “You did the right thing. Dalton, swing us around and head away from the station. Miller, I’m relieving you and taking command. Man the phasing system.”

  He glanced at me, then retreated to the station I’d ordered him to attend.

  Dalton looked flummoxed. “Last I saw, Samson was still back that on that rock, chasing some kind of fuzzy tail.”

  “That’s his problem,” I said. “We have a crew’s compliment large enough to man this ship. The ship has to come first.”

  “What do you think is coming out of that rip, sir?” Dalton asked.

  I looked at him. “Another phase-ship. An Imperial vessel, scouting this location. That’s why we didn’t see anything.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “To look for us.”

  That quieted him down. When we’d pulled away from the station, fielding many concerned calls from traffic control and our own abandoned crewmen, Miller drifted close to my command chair.

  “Blake,” he said. “Do you know what’s going on?”

  “I’ve gotten word that Fex is setting us up. He plans to send us on a wild goose chase into enemy space so the Imperials can capture us—or worse.”

  Miller frowned at me thoughtfully. “But we haven’t even had our morning briefing with him yet.”

  “Never trust a primate, Miller. If Fex discovered that we heard about his plans, well, maybe he stepped them up.”

  Miller shook his head. “What a way to fight a war. If you can’t even trust your own side—how can you expect to win?”

  “Oh, I trust them—but I verify every promise. I check up on every oddity, a
nd I take action when something doesn’t smell right.”

  “In other words, you don’t trust them at all. You only pretend to trust them.”

  I didn’t bother answering. Miller was learning how to deal with the Rebel Kher, whether he wanted to or not.

  =27=

  Nothing ever did come through that breach into local space—at least, nothing we could detect.

  In response, we disengaged from the station and slipped away, vanishing into phasing space.

  “Phase system is on, and she’s running smoothly,” Miller said, shaking his head slowly. “You know, I hate Dr. Abrams, but I have to admit the guy is a genius.”

  Privately, I had to agree. He was a class-A dick, but the fact he could design this ship and get so many of the components to operate was a marvel. His greatest accomplishment had to be the phasing system, as he hadn’t had a working model to copy for that element.

  Admiral Fex contacted us soon after we’d left the station. He raved and demanded that we return to his meeting. He even threatened to demote me if I didn’t comply.

  I steadfastly ignored every transmission. While phasing, we couldn’t break radio silence without giving away our position. I wasn’t about to do that now.

  If Captain Ursahn had called for me, I might have answered. I respected her more than Fex. But she didn’t call. Her ship was as silent as Hammerhead.

  Deep down, I thought Admiral Fex was angry because he’d never gotten moved up to the Secretary’s position. That had been his long term goal: to get out of the military and into politics. But instead, he’d been assigned here, to a lonely outpost, waiting for an enemy no one had thought would come back for a thousand years.

  But the Imperials had returned. They’d come to ravage our frontier, and we had no idea how to deal with it.

  After an hour, I decided the situation was stable enough to leave the bridge for a moment. I took that time to go below decks and visit Dr. Abrams.

  He was working on his passive sensor array—or rather on the software we were using to interpolate the data we managed to absorb.

  “Ah, Captain,” he said, “you must have heard of my requirements. What’s your answer?”

  I blinked at him, blindsided. “Uh… I thought I’d come down and see the situation firsthand.”

  “Excellent. I do hope your theoretical physics hasn’t all been forgotten.”

  I assured him it had been, even though I could define the basics—barely. Like many scientists, he forgot how little the average man knew about such topics and blazed into a windy explanation. At length, I interrupted.

  “So… you’re saying that you’re getting data through the phasing fields, but it’s warped? That your biggest problem now is converting confused readings into a solid picture?”

  “Imprecise. Incomplete. In fact, if I may, you deserve a “C-” with that interpretation.”

  “Just like your software, hey, Doc?”

  His nostrils flared in irritation. “No need to get personal. My software is incomplete due to a lack of—”

  “Doc, I’m just kidding,” I said. “I’m sure you’ll fix it in time. I have great faith in your technical abilities. Now, why don’t you show me what you do know?”

  “That’s a broad request. We’ve gathered several terabytes of localized temperature variations alone. What data would you like to see?”

  “Give me a close-up on that unexplained rip. What slipped through it?”

  “We don’t know what it was,” he said, swiping through a dozen charts on his tables and walls. “But we do know what state it was in when it appeared. The object was moving at approximately thirty-two thousand miles a second, and it was in a fully-phased transitional state.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “While entering our local space, a phased object is made visible briefly by the inverse nature of its subfield.”

  “Uh… what?”

  He made a disgusted snort. “As I thought! You aren’t following at all! Why do I bother?”

  “So our ship isn’t destroyed by an invisible attacker, that’s why,” I said angrily. “I’m tired of coddling you, Doc. Give me what you have. Make a visual. Do you have a projected course for this ship or not?”

  “We don’t know it’s a ship,” he said petulantly.

  “No, but we can assume it is, as that’s the only thing it could be if it came in phased, right?”

  He shrugged. “I’ll admit there’s a strong correlation, nothing more.”

  “Okay then, where is it going?”

  He grumbled while he worked his boards and instruments. He complained about not having a skilled staff, and how he’d been saddled with mentally challenged officers like myself. At last, however, he managed to generate an image I understood.

  “The object entered local space here, about six AU from the station. We spotted it due to the fact it wasn’t fluxing, like the background of the breach it was traveling through.”

  At last, I began to understand what he was talking about. The ship was invisible, but he’d detected it by the fact it didn’t look exactly like the fluxing space around it.

  “I think I get it,” I said. “It’s like an invisible man in a swimming pool, or in a fog bank. Even if he is transparent, we could see where he wasn’t.”

  Abrams looked at me with wide eyes. “I’m astonished,” he said. “That’s not only accurate, it’s a relatable sequence of analogies. Well done, Blake.”

  Despite myself, I felt prideful. He so rarely doled out any kind of praise that you felt in your heart you’d earned it when you got some.

  “In any case,” he continued, “here’s the projected course you asked for. Now, keep in mind, this is imprecise. The timing was brief, and there are any number of factors that could make this inaccurate.”

  I looked it over. The arc of the invisible ship’s path led it directly toward Fex’s station.

  “But look, Doc,” I said. “It has to be right. It’s heading right for us.”

  “Speculation,” he said. “It could have changed course the moment it was away from the flux that revealed it. Or—”

  “Come on, Doc,” I said. “Use that big brain of yours. It’s headed toward us. It’s here to attack Hammerhead.”

  “The actual physical size of my brain is irrelevant,” he began. “It’s a myth, a supposition from the past, that intelligence and—”

  I waved him to silence, studying the data. Abrams had nailed it, despite his unwillingness to admit it.

  There was only one clear conclusion to make: Fex had contacted the Imperials and told them when to show up. They were coming here to nail me—or at least my ship.

  “What kind of game is this primate playing now?” I asked rhetorically.

  “Tell me,” Abrams asked, “is Fex an ambitious fellow?”

  “Extremely.”

  “Well then, perhaps his designs go beyond merely doing his job.”

  I looked at Abrams. “You mean he might be selling out entirely, not just to kill me? I hadn’t suspected he was a complete traitor…”

  “Following your earlier logical leaps—your wild hypotheses and grasping at figurative straws —have you noticed that these forward forts have been bypassed by the enemy?”

  “Of course. That’s what’s making this defensive effort so difficult.”

  “Exactly so…” he said. “Further, if I may be so bold as to make guesses…?”

  “Please do.”

  “Well, has it occurred to you that the enemy should have stumbled upon one of these forts by now, if only by sheer coincidence? They were placed in cunning spots, places where the enemy was calculated to strike first.”

  “Yeah… that’s right,” I had to admit. I was frowning now, looking over the star charts with fresh eyes. It was a strange situation. “They must know where the forts are. They must be avoiding them on purpose, with detailed intel to help them do so.”

  “Agreed…” Abrams said. “That leads us to ask who might
benefit from them being bypassed? And who might know where they all are?”

  “Fex,” I said in a flat voice. I felt it was a certainty now, in my heart. “He’s fully collaborating with the enemy. He’s called them in.”

  “Either Fex, or someone who works with Fex,” Abrams said. “But that’s all unproven. Smoke and mirrors. Pure conjecture.”

  “No,” I said, “it’s more than that. It’s a logical hypothesis that explains what the hell is going on right now. Excuse me Doc, I’ve got some work to do. And thanks.”

  He nodded primly and went back to his instruments. I left in a hurry, more worried than ever that I’d stumbled onto something big and dangerous.

  =28=

  On the bridge, I had to depose Miller again. Every time I left my post, even for a moment, he jumped into my chair.

  Strictly speaking that was acceptable behavior. Someone had to be in command on the bridge at all times. Still, due to our history, it always felt like we were competing somehow. I hoped in time we’d both get more comfortable with our respective roles.

  “We’ve got trouble,” I told him.

  Using my sym, I contacted Abrams and requested that he send up the course projections he’d cooked up. He resisted briefly, talking about suppositions and acceptable statistical margins for error.

  Ignoring him, I threw the charts up on the walls of the bridge. Everyone studied them, immediately enthralled.

  “Place our current position on this projection,” I told Dr. Chang, who’d taken over as astronavigator at my request.

  A faint green line appeared, arcing slightly toward the central star, with the battle station as the base point of origin. We’d moved perhaps fifty thousand miles from the station—about three inches on this scale.

  “I’m projecting the unknown contact’s position using her last known speed and heading,” Dr. Chang said, updating the display.

  Everyone gasped.

  “It’s right on top of us!” Gwen gasped.

  “Unlikely,” Dr. Chang said, making adjustments. “We have to assume they wouldn’t want to plunge directly toward the station. They’d want to decelerate and take their shot in close, at controllable speeds.”