“So…do we have to get the Condor to a flight deck? That could be tricky.”
“No need,” Ochrim answered. “You should transition to subspace once you generate a spherical wormhole. I would recommend lifting the Condor off the hangar bay deck first, to avoid taking a chunk of it with you.”
“So I won’t slam into the side of the wormhole and get torn apart?”
“No, you’ll transport the moment you generate it. As for remaining at warp velocities as you enter subspace, don’t worry, I’ve connected the warp drive to the Condor’s sensors and programmed it to generate another bubble the moment you leave this one. From there, the drive will cycle down.”
“Why don’t I feel confident about my safety right now, Ochrim?”
“Because you have no reason to be.”
“Right,” Husher said with a nod. “I’d forgotten, for a moment.”
On the third day of their work—the fourth day of the Vesta’s warp transition—Ochrim finally finished installing the modified warp drive inside the fighter. With that, Husher told the Condor to open its cockpit, and he climbed into it.
The moment he was inside, he flashed back to sitting here on one of the Providence’s many flight decks, waiting for the go-ahead to launch. Husher missed those days…bantering with Fesky and the other pilots, coordinating ill-advised maneuvers, subjecting their bodies to far more Gs than they should have. His ascent through the ranks and getting his own command had taken him away from all of it. That was the funny thing about success—you spent your life obsessing over it, and the moment you got it, you started missing where you came from.
As the cockpit closed around him, Ochrim’s voice came through his ear piece: “If it’s all the same to you, I’m going to leave the hangar bay. Unless you require a countdown, or something like that?”
“That’s fine, Ochrim,” Husher said, not able to muster a chuckle through the anxiety that gripped his heart and quickened his breath. “Either this works or it doesn’t. There’s not much more to it than that.”
“Good luck, Captain.”
Husher opened his mouth to correct him, but then he realized the mistake had probably been intentional. It isn’t a mistake, anyway. I still have my rank, unless it’s been stripped from me for some reason, without my knowledge. No one had notified him of much of anything, during the past three days. He wasn’t certain they even knew where to find him.
“Thank you, Ochrim.”
He waited for the Ixan to leave the hangar bay and close the hatch. They both knew that being in another part of the ship likely wouldn’t make a difference if something catastrophic happened. That said, Husher probably would have left, too, if he didn’t need to be here.
Once he was alone, he activated the wormhole generator. Abruptly, the Condor disappeared around him, replaced by an infinity of himself; countless versions of Husher stretching out in every direction, every one of them staring back at him in shock.
Chapter 44
Copper Taste
The Condor’s cockpit reappeared, though Husher had no idea why it had vanished in the first place. He’d nearly fainted from shock as he’d gazed into the cosmic mirror, but it had only lasted a second, and now he found himself in a featureless, black void—at least, according to the fighter’s visual sensors.
Also according to the sensors, in conjunction with the universal positioning system Ochrim had fitted the Condor with, he was moving at incredibly fast speeds. That made sense, given he was still flying under warp drive.
Without warning, the drive cycled down, and the Condor exited the warp bubble. Transitioning to realspace—or in this case, subspace—meant an immediate and sharp drop in velocity, but that still left him with a lot of forward momentum to contend with.
When Husher attempted to decelerate, the force of the gravity that crashed against his body like a tsunami made him cry out, and he stopped, panting as he continued to hurtle in the wrong direction.
He’d always made an effort to keep himself in shape, especially as he got older, to combat the effects of aging. Even so, he was in nowhere near the shape he’d been during the peak of his Condor flying career. His body simply couldn’t handle G forces the way it once had.
Gingerly, he tried applying the brakes again, only a little this time. He could handle the G forces in small doses, and the exercises from his pilot days started coming back to him as he worked his abs and limbs to facilitate blood flow and ensure he stayed conscious.
I need to do this faster. If Ochrim was right about subspace’s relationship to realspace, then traveling at warp velocities would take him three times farther than they normally would.
Gritting his teeth, he laid on more pressure.
Soon, his body was coated in sweat, and his muscles were so sore it felt like he’d left the gym after the hardest workout of his life, turned around, and did the exact same exercises all over again.
It seemed like hours later when he finally slowed to a stop. He wanted to take a long nap, but it wasn’t the time for that. Letting himself rest now would amount to a betrayal of his battle group captains.
I need to start the warp transition toward Concord. Then I can rest.
That meant enduring the exact same G pressures—from the opposite direction. It meant turning around and doing it all over again.
With a sigh, he started laying on speed, until he reached a point past which only Ocharium boost could make him accelerate any faster. He activated it, and his body paid the price.
An eternity later, the Condor’s accelerometer communicated to the warp drive that his velocity was sufficient to transition to warp. He did so, instructing it to inform him when he was approaching Concord, according to Ochrim’s theoretical reckoning.
He felt sluggish, almost feverish from the exertion he’d just subjected himself to. The entire cockpit was slick with his sweat, and the copper taste of blood clung to the back of his throat from the effort merely getting oxygen into his lungs had required, toward the end.
He was too tired even to feel anxious about whether Ochrim was right about subspace—about whether he’d end up at his destination or in the middle of nowhere. And yet, enduring the transition to warp did instill him with an incredible sense of accomplishment and pride as he tumbled into a deep sleep.
A little over thirty-two hours later, the computer notified him that it was time to start decelerating, unless he wanted to blow past Concord.
Before he began, he activated the wormhole generator. He was ready for the countless copies of himself, this time, and all the Hushers looked back at him with set jaws and eyes underscored by black lines.
Maddeningly, even though he’d returned to his native dimension, he still had no idea where he was inside it. The Condor’s outdated sensors hadn’t been designed to make sense of the universe from inside a warp bubble, and visual sensors told him nothing. They only showed a mess of blue-shifted stars whipping by, with some red-shifted stars to either side of him and an empty void behind, since he was outpacing the light traveling from that direction.
At last, Ochrim’s universal positioning system told Husher it was time to exit warp, and he did. Immediately, he expanded the Condor’s tactical overview so that it showed him a light year in every direction.
Once the sensors had finished populating the display, and he saw what he was looking for, he raised two stiff arms and yelled in triumph.
He was just outside the Concord System, screaming toward its great asteroid belt.
His celebration didn’t last for long. As light began to reach him from the battle group’s last known location, it showed not the warships he’d been praying to find, but a wide field of debris that was slowly spreading along the system’s ecliptic plane.
“No,” he rasped, double- and triple-checking the tactical display to make sure of what he was seeing.
It was time to start decelerating again, and so he did, laying on as much as he could handle. Thankfully, it wasn’t necessary to come
to a complete stop this time, so it was less intense than his initial deceleration in subspace.
There was no sign of Teth’s ship—either it had withdrawn deeper into the system or left to launch another attack. So Husher pressed on toward the asteroid belt, desperate for answers.
It soon became clear what a bad idea that was, as a Gok destroyer emerged from behind one of the asteroids and fired a volley of four missiles.
Immediately, Husher engaged the Condor’s gyroscopes to point his thrusters toward the missiles. He gunned the engine, and the immense G forces flattened him against the seat. His cheeks peeled back from his teeth, twisting his face into a forced snarl.
Determined not to pass out, he flexed the muscles throughout his entire body. A few minutes later, he managed to overcome the momentum carrying him toward the missiles, but as he accelerated in the opposite direction he realized that there was no chance of outstripping them. Worse, they were now too close to try to detonate using kinetic impactors or missiles of his own.
He did the only thing he could think of. He activated the spherical wormhole generator, and after a brief rendezvous with an infinity of reflections, found himself back in subspace.
As he breathed a heavy sigh of relief, something occurred to him. If he’d had the energy to spare—which his Condor didn’t, but which a fully charged Python would—he could have done incredible damage to the Gok warship using a single fighter, flitting out of subspace long enough to fire missiles and impactors and then flitting back in to avoid return fire.
Then, he imagined an entire squadron of Pythons, outfitted with spherical wormhole generators, weaving in and out of a battlespace and terrorizing a disoriented enemy.
Just as he’d always hoped, the military applications of Ochrim’s discoveries were incalculable. But the realization was tempered by the loss of four captains and their loyal crews.
I need to get back to the Vesta.
Husher again began the long, arduous acceleration required to attain warp velocity. With any luck, he would catch the supercarrier just as it was transitioning out of warp.
Chapter 45
Supposed to Feel Like That
“Fesky.”
It took several minutes for his old friend to reply to Husher’s brief transmission, even though they were close enough for real-time communication. But at last, her voice came through, lowered as though she was trying to prevent others from overhearing.
“Husher. I just gave Kaboh the command seat and ran out of the CIC to speak with you. Where are you? Search parties started scouring the Vesta for you three days ago!”
“I’m in a Condor, underneath an overhang of Himera’s smallest moon, so that the sensors don’t pick me up.”
A long pause followed that. At last, Fesky said, “There’s been talk of having you committed to a locked chamber because of mental instability. I’ve been arguing that you’re not unstable, but you’re not helping me make my case, here.”
“Listen to me, Fesky. I’m not unstable, and I really am in a Condor on Himera’s second moon. I’m asking you to trust me, because what I’m about to say is going to sound even crazier.”
“What is it?” Fesky said, sounding as though she was bracing herself.
“I just returned from the Concord System, using new technology that I was the first to test, mainly because I supplied the materials to develop it. I can’t talk too much about that at the moment. What’s most relevant right now is that our battle group’s been destroyed, and I have the sensor recordings to prove it.”
He got another long silence in response, and he sensed Fesky was grappling with what he’d told her. Finally, she said, “All right, Husher. I’m trusting you. What do you need me to do?”
“Go back into the CIC and order them to open one of the airlocks into Flight Deck Sigma. Tell them that one of our outdated fighters is outside the ship and needs to be allowed entry. Say you can’t offer any more details than that. Give the command back to Kaboh and leave the CIC again. As soon as you do, contact Major Gamble and ask him to meet you on that flight deck with some of his marines. Just two should do it.”
“Can you at least tell me what the plan is?”
“I have good reason to believe that Mayor Dylan Chancey is working with the Ixa, and has been doing everything in his power to debilitate us. We’re going to search his residence.”
“That’s not quite good enough, Husher. I need to know what your reasons are for believing that.”
“During the negotiations, Teth mentioned something that only Chancey could have known. Other than Ensign Fry, that is, and I trust her a lot more than I trust him. Also, the fact that the battle group we left in Concord is destroyed, and that Chancey played a big part in leaving them there—that’s pretty damning too, wouldn’t you say?”
An audible clack came over the connection and Fesky snapped her beak together. “This feels like it could be either the best decision of my career or a complete disaster,” she said. “Is there anything you can tell me that makes me feel better about the chances of the first one?”
“No,” Husher said. “But I can say that I think it’s supposed to feel like that. And Fesky, this whole situation is already a disaster. You know that, and you also know that if there’s even a small chance we can turn it around, we have to take it.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s how you’ve always brought me around to these crazy ideas—by telling me things I already know.”
Chapter 46
Every Crease
As the commanding officer of the Vesta, Husher had always had the ability to access private shipboard communications, provided there was cause to believe the security of the ship depended on knowing their content.
For him, extreme consideration and forethought were necessary before examining anyone’s messages. Given his removal from command, however, that was no longer his call to make.
It was Fesky’s call. And after making it, she reviewed Chancey’s communications and found records of multiple encrypted exchanges with an unknown party off-ship.
Working together to search Chancey’s residence, it didn’t take long for Gamble, Fesky, Husher, and the two marine privates to find a drive secreted inside a mattress containing several decryption keys. The third one they applied to the suspicious transmissions unlocked them.
The messages Chancey had sent contained exactly what Husher had expected: intelligence on him and other prominent Fleet officers aboard the Vesta, information originating from the Interstellar Union, and frank discussions of Chancey’s efforts to destabilize the Vesta by increasing polarization between the people of Cybele and her crew.
When he and Fesky were finished reviewing the messages, Husher turned to Major Gamble. “Find Chancey, arrest him, and throw him in the brig.”
“Yes, sir,” the major said before heading straight for City Hall with his marines in tow.
When they were gone, Husher exchanged glances with Fesky. “You’re not going to be too put out when I retake command of this ship, are you?”
“Only if you don’t screw it up this time,” she said, holding his gaze.
Husher considered his friend’s words for a bit. Then, he nodded. “That’s fair enough. I’ll try my best not to.”
As they strode across the illusory desert, toward the hatch that led into the crew compartment, something caught Husher’s eye from off to the right.
He stopped dead in his tracks as he stared at the man standing perfectly still, wearing the old United Human Fleet uniform.
“You see that?” Husher said.
“What?” Fesky asked, but the moment she spoke, the man disappeared.
“Never mind. Oculenses playing tricks on me.” They continued into the crew section, but Husher couldn’t get the image of Captain Keyes out of his head. Right before the man had disappeared, he’d nodded at Husher.
As he marched into the CIC, with Fesky right behind him,
Kaboh practically gasped: “Husher!” The alien was wearing the closest thing to a surprised look that Husher had ever seen from a Kaithian.
“Ensign Fry, I just sent a vid to your console,” Husher said. “If you would kindly play it on the main display and grant everyone access, I’d appreciate it.” He wasn’t used to having to ask for things in his CIC.
“You don’t have the authority to give orders here anymore,” Kaboh hissed.
“I didn’t order the ensign, I asked. But I’m about to retake the ability to give orders, the moment she plays the vid for you.”
Fry did play the vid, and everyone in the CIC watched Husher’s trajectory through the Concord System, past the wreckage of the Vesta’s battle group, and right up to the asteroid belt, where a Gok destroyer emerged to attack.
“How did you come by this footage?” Kaboh asked.
“I took it.”
“Impossible.”
“Quite possible, in fact, Lieutenant Commander. You may be Kaithian, and your species may have created mine, but even so, there are a lot of things you don’t know. I expect that this technology—which I used to both reach the Concord System and return here in time to meet the Vesta—is about to become vital to the war effort. But that’s not the matter at hand. What’s immediately relevant is that I was correct about Teth’s hostile intentions in the Concord System, and also that Mayor Chancey was just arrested for conspiring with the enemy. Evidently, my actions have not been those of a captain unfit for command, and therefore I’ll be retaking the command seat. Get up.”
“Nevertheless,” Kaboh said. “Doctor Bancroft is the chief medical officer aboard this ship, and she did declare you unfit.”
Husher stepped closer. “And you, Kaboh, are a bureaucratic weasel bent on twisting regulations to serve your own misguided prejudices. Get out of that chair, or I’ll call Major Gamble to throw you out.”
Ixan Legacy Box Set Page 19