by L S Roebuck
Eaton also offered advice for new leaders about ambitious lieutenants in her most famous book, The War Within. “The worst situation is when the leader has two equally successful and talented subordinates both jockeying to sit at the right hand. Both have claim on the glory seat, and if the leader cannot figure out how to give both the glory they deserve, she will end up with at least one disenchanted human resource, and if she is not careful, the talent of both will the castrated,” Eaton wrote.
Both Moreno and Thor, accomplished leaders in their own right, put great faith in Amberly’s abilities. Amberly really believed that their faith was misplaced, but also felt that her duty compelled her to accept this assignment. Or maybe it’s my guilt, she thought, as a devil’s advocate whispered blame into her brain. North is right. I am as responsible for so many deaths. Now I must make it up to my home waypoint. No matter what it costs me.
Amberly sat up in her bed. There were six other makeshift bunks that had been added to the small quarters, all filled with dozing members of her team. Unlike her fellows, Amberly was not able to sleep. She had been plagued with insomnia, and was hopeful when they arrived at Sonnet, she could rest better. But they were still ten 28-hour days out. She slipped out of bed, grabbed her kimono, and quietly stepped into the Valkyrie’s upper deck hall.
She heard Skylar and Wong discussing political theory on the bridge, and though Skylar was pleasant to be alone with, the super close quarters of the Liberty had given her more than enough Trigs time for now. And she was definitely not interested in a conversational threesome about politics with Wong and Skylar. She’d rather walk out the airlock. Which gave her an idea.
She slid down the hatch to the lower deck. Maria Dino was reading her info pad in the mess. She looked up and gave Amberly a knowing smile, and then went back to her book. Probably another noir novel, Amberly thought, musing of her friend’s love of crime capers.
Amberly walked a few yards into the approach to the airlock. Alone at last. She connected earphones to her infopad and requested Verne play music by Claude Debussy, her favorite composer. As “Claire De Lune” played, she sat and looked out the small airlock portal into the infinite void. Spencer Minorum was beginning to outshine the other stars due to its proximity, but that wasn’t saying much. This insignificant star system, and Waypoint Magellan, truly occupied a portion of the nothingness of space.
She slumped down the wall, sitting cross legged with her back leaning against a natural curvature in the airlock. As the strings played, a horrible, shocking memory came back to her.
A year ago, in an airlock foyer on the Firebird, a Valkyrie runabout not much different than this one, she discovered her mother, Kimberly Macready, was alive. And then her mother subsequently murdered a man – Joti, loathsome in his own right – by forcing him out into space.
She wondered if that was how her mom killed her dad. And then she tried to push the thought out of her troubled head. But she just thought that somewhere in space, floating for infinity was both her mother – also executed by airlock, and her father.
In spite of it all, I think they really did love each other – some weird love, but real nonetheless, she thought, but didn’t know if she really believed it or just hoped it was true. At any rate, there was no way for her to know.
Amberly imagined her dad’s floating body sometime finding her mother’s, reunited in the vacuum of space, reunited in love, until both their bodies floated into the gravity pull of some atmospheric planet, and then falling like a burning star, going out together in a blaze of glory.
She smiled as she finally gave into the temporary abyss of sleep.
CHAPTER TEN
U.S.S Magnus, en route to Waypoint Marquette, Nov. 28, 2604, 25 months after the Battle of Magellan
“Marquette isn’t where she’s supposed to be,” Cho told the secretive gathering of Magnus’ top officers in the captain’s conference room. Cho pointed to a blip on a scan report on the room’s magnetic resonance screen. “See, this here is an antimatter signature. On the next scan, we see it moved again. Marquette is on the move.”
“How do we know that’s not an antimatter signature from another deep space ship like ours?” North asked.
“Well, it could be,” Blight explained. “But the one that should be coming from Marquette’s waypoint anchoring is gone.”
“Logically,” the captain said, “If Marquette is not destroyed, it has been moved. But why?”
Nyota blurted. “They’re hiding from us. Which confirms they know we are coming with guns blazing.”
“They don’t know we can track antimatter signatures, because the technology was invented a few years before Magnus left Earth,” Cho reasoned. “They must think they are hidden.”
“I know we are close to Marquette, but these signatures are months old. Couldn’t Marquette be anywhere?” Rhodes asked.
“Moving a waypoint is not like moving a ship,” Bollard reminded Rhodes. “They have minimal thrusters for evading space debris and keeping Earth sync. The engines that pushed the waypoints from Earth to their anchorage were designed for one-way trips, and their materials were repurposed once arrived.”
“I’ve had Condi run a constant analysis on the signature,” operations chief Blight said. “Based on current trajectories, we can reasonably expect the Marquette — or whatever that is —to be around here if we plot to intercept.” Bight pointed to the upper corner of the projected map.
“They don’t know where we are, and they don’t know we know where they are,” Obadiah mused. “I like that tactical advantage.”
“It’s hard to spot us now, with their older tech, when we are traveling at half-light speed. But as soon as we get close enough and we start decelerating, they’ll have plenty of opportunities to spot us, especially if they are looking. We’re big enough.”
“Size matters?” North asked. Nyota looked at Blight and rolled her eyes.
“Absolutely,” Bollard said. “We have all sorts of electromagnetic wake that continues on ahead of us as soon as we slow down. This wake will light up their sensors.”
“But a smaller ship, like say, the Prime, would be harder to see coming?”
“Well, likely yes. It’s possible the Prime’s wake would hit a sensor, but not likely. And it’s relatively small, so it’s not obvious that the signal noise was created by a ship. It could be a radioactive meteor, or something.”
North smiled. “I have a thought. No, I have a plan.”
The mission prep had taken several weeks, and Sparks was ready to put North’s plan in action. She sat on a toolbox in the Magnus hanger bay. The air was chilly, and she pulled her knees to her chest, looked over at Ryder and fumed.
Ryder could tell she was getting to Sparks, and she silently smirked back. The she-spy leaned seductively against the outer hull of the Prime, Magnus’ most capable runabout. Ryder pulled out a vapor stick and slipped it between her lips. Sparks couldn’t tell from where she magically produced the puffer: Ryder’s skin-tight red dress did not provide many opportunities for concealment. She took a drag from the stick, then blew gray vapors from her mouth and nostrils in the general direction of Sparks.
Sparks didn’t like being held in check by Ryder. Ryder knew too many of Sparks’ secrets. She knew that Sparks intended to hook North in any way possible and use him to achieve some unknown end. She knew Sparks was much more dangerous than any of the Earth loyalists realized. And worst of all, Sparks thought, was that Ryder knew Sparks knew Ryder’s secret: Ryder was an active Chasm agent.
Sparks had the thought she should have ratted Ryder out the moment she and North rescued her from the Ironman. But she didn’t. And now, if she turned in the Chasm intelligence officer, everyone would ask why Sparks waited over a year? Sparks’ own switched loyalty would be questioned, and there were more than enough crew and Marines onboard Magnus who were still looking for an excuse to send Sparks on a long walk out a short airlock for her destructive role in the Battle of Magellan.
Another point of friction between the two was the man Arvin, who died a few months after being brought on board. Sparks had suspected that somehow Ryder kept Arvin in a coma, perhaps by contaminating his IV fluids. But Sparks had no evidence. She also wondered if somehow Ryder had secretly murdered the one person besides Sparks who could expose her.
Sparks didn’t know why she cared about the final fate of Arvin. If he had survived and exposed Ryder, there was a good chance that Ryder would take down Sparks with her. Maybe her desire for justice for Arvin was the bad influence North was having on her. If Sparks could prove Ryder did murder the comatose Arvin, Ryder would have to decide if she wanted to out herself as Chasm so she could expose Sparks’ deception just to spite Sparks.
At some point the friendly fiction that Sparks and Ryder maintained would have to end. If Ryder thought I was really with the loyalists, she would have killed me a long time ago, Sparks reasoned. Ryder considered that Sparks had the potential to be duplicitous, but why would she be? If Sparks incriminated Ryder, Ryder would just return the favor. Mutually assured destruction. Thus, they had remained allies of necessity for the time being.
But something had created a new tension between them: North.
The Marine commander stepped out of the main port of the Prime. North’s eye was immediately caught by Ryder, drawn to the feminine curves not-so-hidden by her tight clothes. He flashed a gigawatt smile at her, set down his equipment and pivoted to face Sparks.
“Hey, sorry I kept you waiting for so long,” North shrugged. “I wanted to triple check the operational details. It’s a bad habit, but—”
“Oh, no,” Ryder interrupted, “I’m glad you are so thorough. So many things can go wrong. Who knows what sort of armed resistance we will find when we board Marquette? Let’s make sure our runabout gets us there smoothly.”
North turned from Sparks back to Ryder. Sparks frowned.
“Are you sure you want to come with us, Ryder,” North asked, catching her dark eyes peering out from her dark bangs. “It’s almost certain some of us won’t come back. Maybe none of us.”
Ryder twirled her vapor stick aggressively and stepped toward North, putting her pale hand on his hard bicep. “I don’t have anywhere to go back to. They took my home, and now I want to make those bastards suffer. You didn’t lose Waypoint Magellan. I lost Cortes. I am going to kill every last Chasm scumbag.”
Ryder extinguished her vapor stick by pushing it into North’s chest right as she said the word kill. Behind North, Sparks rolled her eyes and forced herself to not release a sarcasm-laced laugh. Ryder was good, and Sparks reminded herself for the hundredth time not to underestimate the master spy.
“Well, when I first carried you off of the Ironman, I would never have imagined you to be the fighter that you are,” North mused, as he recalled Ryder’s nearly undefeated record in Magnus’ sparring ring.
“You still haven’t sparred with me, North,” Ryder said North’s name as if she was imagining something sweet passing through her lips. “Afraid I’ll beat you?”
“I don’t spar with girls,” North said. “Call me old fashioned.”
“And weird, too. But you have spared with Sparks. She looks female to me.”
North looked over at Sparks in her trademark rubberized black jumpsuit. Definitely female.
“That’s different,” North said. “Sparks is like... um… is like a sister.” Sparks didn’t hide her rolling eyes this time.
“Oh no, XO,” Ryder teased, “you and Sparks are not from the same stock.”
“Anyway, I beat Sparks, and Sparks has beat you, ergo, I would beat you,” North smiled. “Speaking of sparring, Sparks you still want to get a few rounds in? I need to work out otherwise I’ll never be able to sleep. Pre-mission nerves.”
Sparks smiled slyly at Ryder. She felt like sticking her tongue out at her overdressed frenemy, but she resisted the childish impulse. “Sure North. Meet you there in 15.”
Sparks took a quick jab at North’s torso. Her gloved fist found its ribbed target, but didn’t seem to have much impact. North came right back with a right hook, but Sparks nimbly dodged the powerful swing.
“Why don’t you spar with women, present company excepted?” Sparks asked as she attempted to flank the Marine. “After millennia of human history, the patriarchy won’t die.”
“I guess I respect women too much,” North said, countering Sparks with an unsuccessful leg sweep. Sparks leapt back to give herself some maneuvering room. “I don’t like to hurt women.”
“How can you not see how condescending that is?” Sparks said through her controlled breathing. She took a running leap toward the wall netting, and bounced onto North’s back, putting his head into a leg vice grip and bringing the large man to the ground, sitting on his back.
North, face down, grabbed her right leg with his arm. With one quick powerful tug, he pried Sparks off and stood, and moved in to pin her.
“Don’t fool yourself, North,” Sparks stuttered as she rolled into a defensive crouch, “You hurt women. Take Amberly, for example. You hurt her.”
North stopped in mid-step and put his arms down.
“I did hurt Amberly,” North said, and stepped back from Sparks, “but I didn’t like it.” North’s eyes burned with anger, and Sparks suddenly was scared, and quickly stood from her crouch.
“Women are easy to hurt,” North said with a flat, low tone. Sparks wasn’t sure if sweat or tears were running down his face. North stepped towards Sparks. “That’s why your Chasm friends will fail. Women and men are not the same. Men are physically stronger. Women are more nurturing. Men are individualists. Women are communal. Men and women are intrinsically different.”
Sparks started to get defensive. “You are such a misogynistic ass. Men are not better than women.”
“I didn’t say men are better. I said men are different. But forget your vaporous reaction to my misogyny. What about Kimberly Macready — misandrous husband murderer? And you followed her to hell and back,” North shot back. “Men are to be used and trashed. That’s what Amberly did to me. That’s what her evil mother did to how many men? How many men did that man-eater leave in her wake? Ply us with your damn wiles, throw your curves at us, and we’ll drool and do whatever the heck you say.”
Sparks didn’t expect to rip off such a putrid bandage. She reached out with her gloved hands and gently pushed down North’s. “Hey, big guy, no need to get so worked up. We were trying to unwind, remember? Save it for tomorrow’s fight.”
North looked to the side, and continued his diatribe in little more than a mumble. “Society has been trying to deprogram the natural differences of women and men for centuries, and it never works. We always revert to natural order. To God’s order.”
Sparks rolled her eyes as North invoked his deity. She pulled off her gloves and grabbed a water bottle. She took a swig, the stepped closer to North. They were standing a dozen centimeters away from each other now.
“Kimberly, Amberly, you,” North said, as he grabbed a towel and wiped his face. “You think you can rewrite the universe’s source code. If your dear Chairman wins, and she gets to rebuild a society that suits her warped vision, eventually nature will tear it down. Like a sand castle on the beach. The ocean always wins, every time.”
North slid down the wall and sat. He removed his gloves and used his powerful hands to hold his face. “The ocean. I’d like to see that again. I may never make it back to Magellan. But maybe I’ll get to hear Arara’s foamy waves crashing on the shores of Lewis Island again.”
“She’s not my dear Chairman. Not anymore. North, I am going to let you in on a secret,” Sparks said, as she pulled the rubber band off her strawberry blonde ponytail, letting her hair drop free. “I don’t care about Chasm. I don’t care about the cause. Chasm was always about the journey. I was fighting the old world. Now I’m fighting for the homeworld. Where is the biggest fire? Where is the brightest light? That’s where I want to be. When it’s my time to go, I am going to go out as the brightest flame.”
North turned and looked up at Sparks. Her words felt … honest to him. She sat beside him, and leaned her petite frame against his broad shoulder. “You know, I never thought I’d survive this long. Maybe when this, this war is over, we can take a break. Maybe I’d learn to like peace. I never made it to the Lewis Islands when I was growing up on Arara. Maybe you can take me there.”
“Maybe,” North said, pulling his head out of his hands.
“I’m not afraid of the coming battle,” Sparks said, as if to prove something. “I’m not afraid to go into the dark night. I guess I’ve never really thought about it, but what I fear is emptiness. I’m ready to go, I just don’t want to go alone.”
“Sparks, you know whatever happens tomorrow, I’ll be with you. I brought you to the Magnus on this crazy mission, and I’ll see us through. Or we’ll both die trying. Together.” North reached an arm around Sparks shoulder, and absentmindedly started playing with her soft hair. After they discovered the Ironman, Sparks had shaved the dyed-black hair from her head, and now she had shoulder length, natural strawberry blonde hair.
“Maybe if we win this thing, we’ll find some peace together,” Sparks said as she studied North’s knees.