Rebellion at Ailon

by T J Mott

  He heard footsteps in the grass behind him. “Supper is ready in the mess.” It was Giles.

  “I’m not really hungry,” Thaddeus replied.

  The footsteps stopped. “Are you okay?”

  Thad tried to think for a moment. Giles’ voice had broken him out of the surreal, sleepy fog that had filled his exhausted mind, and now it felt like it was spinning again. His memories flashed between those of a slave boy getting gunned down during an escape attempt, and of a pirate raid on a convoy years ago. “I—I don’t know.”

  “You did good today. You learn fast and you didn’t complain. We could use more like you.” His voice was deep and gravely—and old.

  “It’s one thing to read about all this. But to see it in person…”

  “It must be shocking, to a newcomer. But eventually, you get used to it. We all try our best here. Sometimes I feel like it just doesn’t matter, but I know that some of my people live better lives because I’m here.”

  Thad’s eyes widened slightly. “Your people? You’re from Ailon?”

  “Most of us are. Many of us were off-world when the war started, and we came back to help when the Foundation was created.” He chuckled lightly. “I actually hadn’t lived here in a very long time. I was partner in a family practice over in the Chilon system, and came back a year after the war ended when the brand-new Ailon Relief Foundation put out a call for doctors.”

  Shivering despite the jacket he wore, Thad watched as the sun finished crawling into hiding beneath the horizon, quickly plunging the sky into a dark purple.

  “You don’t have much to say, do you?”

  Thad nodded once, just slightly, and nervously rubbed at his prosthetic forearm. “A lot happened today. I guess I’m…processing.” As a mercenary and occasional pirate, he was no stranger to death or brutality, having been shot at more times than he would ever remember, and killing his own share of others, too. But this time was different. He’d watched from the sidelines, unarmed…even afraid. It was a different perspective for him. In combat, I’m usually in control of the situation, with starships, Marines, and an assortment of weapons and sensors at my fingertips. And a warmed-up hyperdrive in case things start going badly. But this time…

  “With a group that size, I’m surprised there was only one of them. Usually it’s three or four. Those shackles are surprisingly easy to slip out of.” Thad gulped in response. “If you need anyone to talk to, we’re all here. Get some sleep tonight. We’ll need your strength to pack up tomorrow.” He started to step away, and then stopped. “And Chad, don’t let yourself feel guilty. There’s nothing you could have done to stop it.”

  As Giles walked away, Thad’s numbness was pushed away by a fresh sense of guilt. And that is where you’re wrong, Doctor. That might never have happened had I not raided a rebel convoy bound for Ailon during the war…

  Chapter 4

  About 3.5 Years Ago

  Thaddeus stood next to the large two-meter-by-two-meter holoprojection table in the Command Center of his flagship, the Swift-class fast frigate Caracal, and smiled a bit as he gazed upon its holographic representation of his task force.

  Captain Reynolds stood nearby with his chin in one hand as if deeply contemplating something. As always, he was dressed in the generic dark blue utility trousers and jacket which passed as a uniform for Blue Fleet crew. The rank insignia pinned to his shoulders gleamed under the Command Center’s lights, as did his well-polished shoes, and his last name was embroidered in white above his left breast pocket. He looked distinctly military, compared to Thaddeus who wore simple black cargo pants and a featureless long-sleeved dark-gray shirt. He bore no rank insignia, name badge, or anything else which would indicate that he was actually at the top of the organization chart, and his old, well-worn combat boots were so scuffed up that he looked more like a cargo loader than a self-styled Admiral with five fleets under his command.

  “I’m just glad to get outside and go on another mission,” Thad said. “By the way, thanks for the force recommendations.” He waved a hand at the line of holographic starships that hovered above the table. “Lately, I feel like I don’t even know Blue Fleet or its commanders that well anymore.”

  On paper, Thaddeus was still the direct commanding officer of Blue Fleet, one of the fleets in his mercenary group. But recently, the duties of running his Organization took too much of his time, keeping him away from his own fleet. Fortunately, Captain Reynolds had really stepped up and kept the fleet functioning while Thad was occupied with getting his new base operational.

  Nearly a year ago, Thaddeus had towed an asteroid out into deep space in the Independent Regions. It had been a tremendously-difficult operation, requiring a number of large, expensive starships with synchronized hyperdrives and a fuel budget that could bankrupt an entire star system, but it had been successful, depositing the asteroid in the middle of a void between uninhabited star systems. He intended to use it as the permanent secret Headquarters for his mercenary organization. Its development had come a long ways, but the high level of operational secrecy and the focus of his vision meant he still needed to personally oversee its development. But it was getting close. Soon, he felt he could appoint an administrator to take over the asteroid, freeing himself up for other, more hands-on work.

  Namely, his search for his homeworld, the lost, “mythical” world called Earth, which the galaxy at large believed no longer existed except as legends and fantasies believed by children—or delusional treasure hunters.

  Years ago, he’d been a young junior engineer from Wyoming, fresh out of training and working aboard a luxury cruise liner called the Lunar Dawn which took wealthy passengers on cruises around the Moon. Earth was still early in colonizing its star system and had believed itself to be the only civilization in the galaxy. But then everything changed. While en route to Mars for a training seminar, his shuttle had been attacked and boarded, its passengers gassed into unconsciousness. And when he woke up some time later, he was a slave in an intergalactic human civilization that Earth was not aware of, in a strange, faster-than-light culture that believed that Earth didn’t exist, and if it did, it had been lost or destroyed many millennia ago.

  As a slave, he’d been put to work, scrubbing decks, loading and unloading cargo, and occasionally piloting shuttles for his owner, a captain in a small-time pirate gang. But he’d escaped during one of the pirates’ excursions, and soon signed up with a merchant ship that was loosely affiliated with a mercenary company. And through the years he’d worked hard, learning more and more about life outside of Earth and climbing up that merc company’s ladder as he proved himself to be a capable technician and pilot, and, eventually, as an officer with a good sense of tactics.

  And now, many years later, he was the owner of that mercenary company. Self-styled as the group’s Admiral, he controlled five fleets, four of which were commanded by his subordinate Commodores. Those four fleets worked throughout the Independent Regions and sometimes beyond, taking on mercenary work with many of the little star empires who were willing to pay handsomely for someone else to do their dirty work, all while investigating various rumors about Earth. And the fifth fleet, called Blue Fleet, was under Thad’s direct command. Lately, it guarded the hyper-secret new Headquarters asteroid, leaving only when he needed to go on a personal mission.

  Such as this one. He shoved all of his worries and plans to the back of his mind. No Headquarters, no Commodores, no worries about constructing a secret base, no Earth. He was back in his element as the commander of a small task force on a mission, just like the simpler days before his ascension to the top of the Organization.

  Captain Reynolds ran his fingers through his thick, gray hair, and clasped his hands in front of himself and smiled, appearing subtly amused. “I’m actually surprised you’d join us for a mission like this. It looks rather straightforward, unlike anything you’d normally supervise personally.”

  “Well, my bar for amusement is pretty low these days. My w
ork on Headquarters is all about logistics. Requisition forms, arrangements for discreet purchases and transfers of supplies, getting construction workers in and out without compromising our location, and so on. It’s getting to be a bit much.”

  “You need to learn to delegate, Admiral, and spread out the work before you burn yourself out.”

  Thaddeus nodded. “Burned out. Yeah, that’s why I’m here now. I need to get away for a bit. Go on vacation, so to speak.”

  Reynolds raised an eyebrow. “It’s even worse than I thought if you think a piracy mission is a vacation. Most around here would rather visit the Empire to eat good food and do some sight-seeing.”

  “That sounds boring,” Thaddeus remarked with a shrug. “I’ve had enough boring lately. I need some excitement.” He again stared at the holographic representation of his task force and its five small frigates which stretched in a line fifty kilometers long. “Besides, I can’t pass up the opportunity to take hold of some brand-new new surface-to-space weapons. They’ll be handy for defending Headquarters.”

  Reynolds frowned. “I’m not sure that’s necessary. Your new Headquarters doesn’t have a populated star system within thirty light-years of it. And less than twenty people even know its coordinates. Arming it seems excessively paranoid, at least to me.”

  Thaddeus merely shrugged, and silently considered his true purpose behind hoarding weapons and technology. One day, I can hand off those weapons to Earth so they can defend themselves from the rest of the galaxy. So when they’re discovered, and someone—anyone—tries to incorporate them into their own empire, they’ll be blown away by the response. Literally.

  Then he smiled devilishly. “But I also need to teach the neighbors not to brag so much. If you broadcast that you’re buying a stockpile of weapons, I just might show up and take it all for myself. I’m in charge in this part of the galaxy. ”

  “I don’t think the Ailon rebels expected anyone to actually track the convoy,” Reynolds said. “From what I can see in their flight plans, they’ve done everything correctly. I’m surprised you figured it all out.”

  “Well, that’s because we have Commodore Cooper on our side,” Thad replied, referring to the man who led up his organization’s intelligence-gathering division, an oddball collection of starships, spies, and analysts organized under the banner of Gray Fleet. Cooper was very good at his job, and now Gray Fleet had agents and informants in all kinds of strange places. It was hard for anyone to do anything in the Independent Regions without him noticing.

  “What of Ailon?” Reynolds asked, his expression that of mild concern. “They must be really desperate to transport weapons aboard a ragtag convoy like this.”

  Thaddeus shrugged again. “What of them? How many dozens of stupid little wars are going on out here in the Independent Regions? I’m not going to pick sides. Unless, of course, someone wants to pay me to join in.”

  Thad looked around in the starship’s office-like Command Center, noting the collection of officers ready at their workstations, considering just how much power he’d gained over the past few years. His was undoubtedly the most powerful force in the Independent Regions. Despite that, he largely escaped notice. He was not concerned with gathering up territory like all of the neighboring self-styled Dukes and Princes who each controlled maybe a few star systems and hungered for much more. No, he controlled a hidden empire, a shadow empire, a relatively powerful one with a surprisingly broad reach. It kept such a low profile that outsiders, and even many of those on the inside, did not—could not—suspect its true extent.

  He was not a petty tyrant, and his goals were different. Most rulers wanted power, and money, and notoriety. Not Thaddeus Marcell. He just wanted to locate Earth and go home. He planned to present his homeworld with a massive gift of technology and knowledge and starships that would help them to rapidly adapt to the dangerous galaxy they knew nothing about.

  And soon, if this mission was successful, he’d be adding to the cache of weapons that Earth would one day receive, a cache that even now was being recalled from a variety of hidden locations in the Independent Regions and consolidated within the vast underground warehouses buried beneath the rocky surface of his new Headquarters asteroid.

  He turned to face Reynolds. “So, Captain. Is the task force ready?”

  Reynolds nodded. “All ships report that hyperdrives are fully charged and configured for the first jump.”

  “Very well.” Thaddeus looked at the touchscreen surface of the holoprojector table in front of him, and tapped a button that activated a comm channel to the other four frigates. “Attention all ships, this is Admiral Marcell. We’re ready to proceed. Jump at will, and I’ll see you all at the next rally point.” He smiled again when he felt a massive clunk resound through the Caracal’s frame as its hyperdrive engaged and instantly hurled the frigate to speeds well above that of light.

  Chapter 5

  Thaddeus sat in the Foundation clinic’s mess, trying to force himself to eat despite a complete lack of appetite. He had the building all to himself for the moment, having intentionally avoided the evening meal until everyone else had finished and moved on.

  If he’d been in this kind of mood back home, he’d have squirreled himself away somewhere relatively unreachable with a bottle. If he was on a mission, his Blue Fleet starships were typically undercrewed compared to the manufacturers’ recommendations, with plenty of out-of-the-way hiding places that crewmen rarely passed through. And his asteroid-based Headquarters had an entire maze of underground chambers which very few people even knew existed, filled with stolen weapons and technology that he one day intended to gift to Earth.

  But here, as a volunteer on Avennia-occupied Ailon, there was no place for him to get away from things. The best he could do was adopt a schedule that allowed him to avoid most people during his free time.

  He was feeling exhausted, and his artificial hand was hurting again—badly, this time. All the events from the past week seemed to blur together, and in his memory he wasn’t sure where one day stopped and the next began. They’d packed up the clinic and redeployed in the hills north of the city of Zhale, located a couple hundred kilometers east of Orent. Zhale was surrounded by slave-operated refineries and factories, where the raw ores from Ailon’s mines were smelted into metals and alloys, cast into ingots, and then shipped out via the smaller city’s spaceport to Avennia or its other territories. Ailon was clearly a resource-rich world, yet with very poor infrastructure. It was blatantly obvious that very few of its resources were ever used to improve Ailon itself.

  After setting up camp, they’d done a series of general clinics. Ailon’s Avennian-controlled government tried to get each slave in for a regular check-up once every month or two, which at first thought seemed excessive to Thaddeus. But after working several days of clinic duty, and after seeing the condition of hundreds of slaves during that time, he understood the need. Throughout the past week, the Avennian Army had bused in slaves from the nearby refineries for routine checkups and vaccinations. Many of the slaves in this area were somewhat malnourished and required vitamin or supplement infusions, which the clinic had provided them.

  And some of them, particularly those who worked the more dangerous jobs within the nearby factories or refineries, were injured. Sometimes severely so. And rather than arrange for immediate medical attention, the Avennian overlords simply made the slaves wait until their next check-up. Not all of them survived that long, as evidenced by the corpses the slave handlers occasionally brought in for the ARF to dispose of.

  The more that Thaddeus learned about the situation on Ailon, the more the relationship between the Ailon Relief Foundation and the Avennian government disturbed him. The ARF did so much work for the Ailon slaves with virtually no help from Avennia. In a way, it seemed to him that the ARF itself was also enslaved, just voluntarily so. Without them, most of the slaves on the planet would have no food, clothing, or medical care. About the only thing the Avennians provided was hous
ing—much of which was actually staffed by the ARF, under strict Army oversight—and, of course, an endless supply of hard labor.

  To Thad’s dismay, more slaves died while trying to escape, too. During their first day of clinic, two slaves ran and were gunned down by the Avennian soldiers who patrolled at the camp’s perimeter. The day after, it was three. The day after that, only one, another young teenage boy. And yesterday, it was a group of eight who had coordinated to run at the same time, hoping that at least someone would get away in the confusion. But it was just as futile as the previous attempts, and all of them ended up in the clinic’s morgue trailer. After so many days in a row of that, he just felt cold and numb. Though on the bright side, the oppressing guilt he’d felt about Ailon’s condition was now smothered behind a heavy layer of mental and emotional fatigue. He was too tired to feel angry or guilty.

  Thaddeus had also learned more about the clinic’s crew. Chet Savoy, the clinic’s second-in-command, was an experienced surgeon who’d been offworld for a conference when the war had started. His family had remained behind on Ailon, and were now missing, presumed dead or enslaved. The young Jason, who was maybe seventeen or eighteen years old, was an orphan who had evaded enslavement during the war. After its founding, the ARF had found him and taken him in. Giles was a doctor, an Ailon native who had actually lived elsewhere, and then returned after the war despite being away for decades.

  And Ria Parri, the camp’s administrator, had been a nurse preparing to go to a medical school on Avennia to become a doctor when the war started. She had a six-year-old son named Rin, Thad had learned, who lived with her in her quarters and occasionally helped out around the camp. He hadn’t figured out much of their history yet, except that her husband had been killed during the war. Her role as clinic administrator and liaison to the ARF headquarters—and a single mother, too—meant she was an extremely busy woman even during the rare moments of downtime, and she hardly talked to anyone apart from issuing orders and collecting reports. But she was very hands-on during the busy moments, and she clearly knew what she was doing.