by Rick Partlow
He could see their shuttle hugging the surface of the pirated and converted freighter like a remora on a blue whale, but the men themselves were not visible.
“The boarding party has burned through the airlock,” the Sheridan‘s communications officer announced. “They’re broadcasting a video feed now.”
“Put it on screen, Lieutenant,” Admiral Patel ordered. He was strapped into his command couch, but McKay was making do holding onto a handle affixed to the bulkhead beside him. It wasn’t convenient, but somehow he felt more at home there than in a seat of his own.
The image on the screen switched abruptly from the exterior shot to a darkened, claustrophobic corridor in the ship’s interior. From the helmet-mounted camera, they could see the other Marines and Fleet technicians in the boarding party, all of them dressed in massively-armored vacuum suits and the Marines armed with backpack-fed lasers only practical in zero gravity.
“There’s still no sign of any survivors?” McKay asked.
“No, sir,” the Tactical officer told him, checking her sensor displays. “We have some spots that still have auxiliary power and probably life support, but no attempts to maneuver or communicate.”
“It’s been days,” Patel pointed out. “If anyone survived the battle, they’d have got out in landers or escape pods by now.”
“You’re probably right, sir,” McKay admitted with a shrug. “But a live prisoner to interrogate would be nice.”
“You spooks,” Patel lamented, shaking his head. “You always want egg in your beer.”
Jason had to chuckle at that. A few days ago, he’d felt lucky to be alive and not stranded on Peboan for the foreseeable future. It had been a close thing. The Protectorate ship that had split off to try to strike them from orbit had been close enough that he’d been able to see the explosion from the ground when Captain Minishimi’s Shipbusters caught up with it. At the time, he’d been morally certain that the blast was the Decatur being destroyed, and he’d experienced a terrifying flashback to the Protectorate attack on Aphrodite until the transmission from the patrol shuttles told them what had actually happened.
The view on the helmet cam shifted as the party made a turn into a broader corridor that abruptly ended with a mass of charred, twisted metal and a view of the stars.
“The main bridge is toast,” the voice of the leader of the investigation team came through the transmission. McKay had met him before the shuttle had launched… he was a competent young Lt. Commander named Landers. “We’re moving toward the auxiliary control room to see what we can find there.”
“You know, Admiral,” McKay said, eyes still on the feed on the viewscreen, “we’ve been pretty busy the last few days, what with cleaning up the mess on Peboan and trying to get the Decatur repaired, so I haven’t had the chance to ask you… how the hell did you wind up here weeks ahead of schedule right when we needed you?”
“You should be grateful I didn’t waste any more time on that wild goose chase,” Patel snorted. “We hit the first system and found a habitable that had some pretty accessible mineral deposits, but no evidence of any Protectorate activity and my XO and I got to thinking: why would Antonov risk discovery for some resources on Peboan when there are a lot of other places he could get them?” The Admiral shook his head. “It didn’t make any sense. So we decided that the only thing that did make sense was if there was something unique or at least rare about Peboan or the star system there, so I ordered a max-g burn back to the system. I brought us down to sublight in the cometary halo and started working our way inward, doing a slow sweep. We didn’t contact you because I had a sense that whatever made this system important could mean the Protectorates were still around somewhere and I didn’t want to advertise our presence.”
“Well, you’re smarter than me, Admiral,” McKay admitted ruefully. “It took me till about five minutes before the attack to figure out why this place was important to Antonov.”
“Oh?” Patel glanced over, curious. “You know what he wants with the planet?”
“I think so, sir. It’s a guess, but it feels right. Podbyrin told me that the network of wormhole jumpgates they’re using has several systems that contain multiple gates-sort of transportation hubs. My guess is that this is one of those hubs. Antonov needs this system to get his ships where they’re going, so he won’t give it up without a fight.”
“Not bad,” Patel judged. “Whether you’re right about that or not, we’ll need to keep an eye on this place long term.”
“The auxiliary control room is intact,” Landers finally reported. On the screen, they could see the door to the control room, marked in Cyrillic lettering, and through the window set in that door to an old-fashioned looking bank of readouts and controls, still lit by emergency battery power. “We are going to attempt to burn through… shit!”
Landers’ exclamation was at a face that suddenly appeared in the window, dark-haired and wild-eyed, with a bushy beard and cracked, chapped lips. He was saying something, but they couldn’t hear him with him behind the thick transplas and them in a vacuum.
“We have a survivor, Sheridan,” Landers reported, unnecessarily.
“Set up a temporary airlock and get him out of there, Commander,” Patel ordered quickly. “Get him into a rescue bubble and get him over here ASAP. But be cautious opening that door… it might be booby-trapped.”
“Roger that, sir,” Landers confirmed, then turned to give the orders to set up the temporary airlock.
Patel grinned at McKay. “Well, there you go, Colonel… you wanted a live prisoner. Now you’re going to have one.”
“Aye, sir,” McKay nodded, trying to contain his excitement. “Sir, Podbyrin’s back on the Decatur. I need him here when I interrogate this guy. He might know him.”
“By all means, Colonel, we’ll send a shuttle for him.” Patel raised an eyebrow with amusement. “You and Podbyrin and an interrogation in my brig… it’ll be just like old times. Hopefully this time we won’t have to drug him.”
“Do you know him?”
D’mitry Podbyrin stared at the viewscreen hooked to a camera in the security detention cell, at the image of the Protectorate crewman secured to a padded couch via straps at his wrists, chest and calves. The man looked much healthier now than the first time McKay had seen him. He’d been severely dehydrated and hadn’t had anything to eat in days, not to mention the beginnings of anoxia and hypothermia as the life support started to fail in the auxiliary control room.
After a few days in sick bay, the Russian officer was alert and much less grateful than he’d been shortly after being rescued.
“I…,” Podbyrin began, and then closed his mouth, shaking his head. “I’m not sure. I think I have seen him before, but I do not know him, or remember his name.” He shrugged. “You must understand, there were hundreds of men and women, enlisted and officers, even at the beginning. And there were some births over the years, of course.”
The old man’s eyes glazed over slightly, the way they did when he thought back through the long decades he’d been alive; McKay had seen it before when he’d debriefed the Colonel after the war. “We didn’t have that many women… it was perhaps three to one. And the planet we found… the background radiation there was high. Some of the women were made infertile, and the ones who did get pregnant sometimes miscarried. By the time we could make settlements on other worlds, there were few women who could still carry a child to term and few men who were still capable of fathering one. Still, some were… are, I suppose… born every year. So there are probably a few thousand adults at least, even after the war, and some were always other places while I was on Novoye Rodina. I might have seen this man at one time or another, but I do not remember him.”
“Damn,” McKay said mildly. “Oh well, it was just a thought.” He fell silent for a moment, considering the situation. “Okay, it’s probably better that you aren’t in the room then. You may not know him, but he probably knows about you, if Antonov blames you for hi
s defeat. You monitor the interview from in here… you can talk to me through my ear bud, give me advice. Is that all right with you?”
“It is better that I not be in there,” Podbyrin agreed, still staring at the Russian officer on the screen. McKay could see a deep sadness in the man’s eyes, hear a weariness in his voice. It had been there ever since Podbyrin had been forced to kill the Russian officer on Peboan. He couldn’t say for sure, but drawing on the past few years of learning to read people, McKay guessed it was the very final realization by the old man that he really could never go home again.
McKay left him in the main Security office and stepped out into the corridor. The Security section in the new cruisers like the Sheridan was in the rotational drum, giving them faux gravity even when they weren’t under acceleration. McKay wasn’t sure why it had been put there, but at the moment he appreciated it.
The guard outside the holding room opened the door for him and McKay entered, trying to look casual, business-like and unconcerned. The prisoner glanced at him furtively, then looked straight ahead, trying not to meet his eyes. The man was sweating and uncomfortable… the room was being kept warm and humid and not by accident.
”Kak tebya zovut?” McKay asked him in Russian. What’s your name? He’d learned the language quite fluently over the last few years, just in case they ever came across the Protectorate again.
The Russian opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, visibly debating with himself whether he should answer. After a moment, he shrugged. “Konstantin.”
“Hello, Konstantin,” McKay smiled as he went on in Russian, sitting down across from the man. “I’m Jason. Are you being treated well?”
“Yes,” the man said with a shrug… or as much of a shrug as he could give with a strap across his chest and his wrists shackled to the arms of his chair. “They have given me food and water. And new clothes,” he added, glancing at the dark blue utility coveralls he was wearing.
“Good,” McKay nodded. “I am going to be honest with you, Konstantin. I’m in here with you because we want to know why your ships and your troops attacked us. After the war, after your General Antonov tried to take Earth and lost, we let you alone, didn’t we?”
“You couldn’t find us!” Konstantin snorted. “The General returned and told us how he’d been betrayed by that miserable bastard Podbyrin, but that he had managed to escape his treachery and leave you all with your thumbs up your ass!”
“I’m afraid General Antonov lied to you, Konstantin,” McKay said gently. “He wasn’t betrayed. We captured Colonel Podbyrin’s ship by chance as it came through the wormhole in the asteroid belt and we interrogated him using truth drugs. He had no choice at all. And General Antonov was able to get away because he ran while his officers were being slaughtered and his ships destroyed. Do you know how I know this, Konstantin?” At the man’s shaking head, McKay went on. “Because I was on his flagship during that battle. I was with my squad and two platoons of Republic Marines. We battled your officers on the bridge of that ship, Lieutenant Dubronov and Matviyenko and the others…” Konstantin’s eyes went wide at the names… he knew the men. “And the only reason that your General was able to get away was that we were kept busy killing them and disabling the ship. He even had his cloned toy woman fight us to save himself… she lured in a Sergeant and then killed him and herself with a grenade.”
At the mention of the cloned woman Antonov had kept as a companion, Konstantin’s mouth dropped open. This guy must suck at poker, McKay thought.
“So, Konstantin, I know your General. I know how he will use others to do his dirty work while he stays safe and leads from the rear. And here we are. You and I, front line soldiers-you on an attack ship, me on the planet fighting your biomechanical clone troops. And your General is nowhere to be found. You are going to tell me everything you know about the wormholes and how they’re used, Konstantin; and you are going to tell me everything you know about Antonov’s plans and why this system is important to him.” The Russian began to protest but McKay held up a hand. “You will either tell me because you come to understand that General Antonov is a cowardly, evil man who will lead your people to their deaths as he led his whole nation and nearly the whole world to their deaths… or you will tell me because we will pump you full of psychoactive drugs and you’ll have no choice.”
“Why do you bother to tell me this?” Konstantin wanted to know. “Why not just give me the drugs?”
McKay sighed with sad resignation. “Because, Konstantin… I wanted to give you the choice. The drugs won’t injure you… hell, you won’t even remember that you talked. But afterward, you’ll feel like something has been taken from you, something you can’t get back. You seem like a decent man. I’d rather give you the chance to talk to me willingly first.”
“Even if I believed you,” Konstantin said quietly, with little conviction and a great deal of hopelessness, “I could not talk. You will lose and the General would have me taken apart a piece at a time and put into the replication vats.”
“Why should we lose?” McKay asked. “He had much more of an advantage last time, and he still lost. He nearly lost everything. If we knew how to make your jumpgates work, we would have already captured him. Now that we are ready for him, how can he win?”
Konstantin looked him in the eye and McKay could see a very real fear in the man’s gaze. “You think General Antonov is mad, and you are more right than you could ever know, Jason. But he is also a genius… you are a smart man, I can tell, but he is smarter. Whatever you have thought of to defeat him, you can believe me, he has thought of it first.”
“That may be, Konstantin.” McKay allowed, feeling his gut twist up but trying his best not to show it. “But the fact is, your fate is tied to ours now. If we lose, you’ll likely die.”
“That didn’t work on me and it won’t work on him,” Podbyrin’s voice sounded in his ear. “Death in some maybe battle isn’t as frightening as being torn to pieces by the bogey man.”
“But I don’t think you’re a man who’s scared of death,” McKay went on as if he’d always intended to. “After all, you’ve lived with the threat of death for how long now? Over a century? Every single day, wondering if you’ll be the next one Antonov sacrifices to feed his madness? Did you travel all the way from Earth to Novoye Rodina with the General?”
“Yes,” the Russian answered quietly, eyes looking past McKay to a home he’d lost decades ago. “I was a drive technician on the first asteroid mining expedition.”
McKay felt a prickle of disbelief travel up his scalp.
Holy shit.
”Bozhemoi,” Podbyrin breathed. “McKay, if he was on the mining ship, he might have been there when they first triggered the wormhole! I thought those men had all been killed!”
“So,” McKay went on, “it must have been especially hard for you… I’m sure you were afraid for years or even decades that General Antonov would have you killed just because you might know something about the jumpgates.”
“I… I was put in confinement for weeks, interrogated by his internal security. They told me I would be executed for treason. I finally convinced them that I knew nothing, that I was a simple technician with no training in theoretical physics. After that, I volunteered for every job that would take me away from the General. I spent years crewing a cargo run from our first mining colony. When the opportunity came to be part of the security garrison here, I took it. I have been out here for over ten years. I would go on leave once a month, but not to Novoye Rodina. I would go to one of the mining colonies and stay onplanet long enough to stay healthy… you need the gravity, you know? And then back out here. For ten years.”
“This man is unhinged, even by my standards,” Podbyrin transmitted, “which I have come to understand over the last few years are a bit lax.”
You’re not helping, Jason thought hard at him, wishing he had a way to tell him.
“Konstantin, you don’t have to live like that anymore. If you
help us beat Antonov, you can live wherever you want… you can have a house on any of our worlds and you’ll never have to work again if you don’t want to. Or if you decide you want to travel, we can get you a position on a ship.”
“You cannot beat him,” Konstantin insisted morosely.
“All right, let’s say we don’t,” McKay said with a shrug. “We can have restruct surgery done on you, totally change the way you look, even your height, the pitch of your voice. You can learn a new language, be given a new identity in our databases. Even if he wins, you’re still better off than you were before, because even if Antonov rules us all, he won’t know who you are or where to find you.”
“You can do this?” For the first time, there was an inkling of hope in the man’s eyes.
“In a week,” McKay told him. “And four days of that is recovery from the surgery. You get restruct surgery and we put you as an anonymous farmer or shop-owner or mine technician on a colony world and the worst that happens, if we lose, is that you wind up working for a new boss who doesn’t know you from Adam. And if we win, you get a guaranteed income for the rest of your life… and you get to be a hero. Famous, if that’s what you want.” He shrugged. “Or still anonymous if you prefer. But this time, it’s your choice.”
“And if I still say no?” Konstantin asked, face thoughtful.
“Then we use the drugs and you tell us anyway, but it takes much longer and you get to spend the whole time in restraints. And afterwards, you’ll spend the foreseeable future in a detention facility. If we win this war, maybe you’ll get put on some backwater colony freezing your ass off.”