Free Space

by Scott Bartlett

  That brought a rare smile to Thatcher’s lips. “Rumors do get twisted in the retelling. The New Jersey suffered extensive damage. She’s barely spaceworthy, actually. But we’re on our way out of Lacuna, despite that.”

  That left the question of how they would ever leave the region, with pirates swarming all over it. Clearly, they’d been lucky, and avoided the pirates so far. Otherwise they probably wouldn’t be here.

  “What happened, Commander? I trust you know better than to conceal anything out of modesty.”

  His shoulders fell. “After you fell out of contact, fifty-one Xanthic warships appeared out of nowhere. It should be impossible, but…well, you should watch the recording. I’ll arrange that. I doubt you’ll quite believe it happened without seeing it for yourself. I wouldn’t.”

  “Fifty-one ships. Too many. You should have been doomed.”

  He offered a shrug. “It was pretty touch and go.”

  “You should have retreated. But you didn’t. You stayed. Because we were on Recept.”

  His eyes were steady on hers. “This company would be nothing without you, Ms. Rose. Everyone knows it. And I wasn’t going to leave hundreds of marines to die. So I decided to stall for as long as I could instead.”

  “How did you survive?”

  “It seems they weren’t here to attack us. They appeared surprised by our presence—they were collecting craft from the planet’s surface, and once they finished that…well, that’s the most incredible part. They somehow opened a wormhole, Ms. Rose. And they left through it.” He shook his head. “Clearly, we were right about this being a staging ground for some sort of attack. I destroyed fourteen of their ships, but their force was too large. I failed to stop them.”

  He was right, of course. The mission was a complete failure. The Xanthic attack force was loose—who knew where it might turn up? For all they knew, it was attacking Oasis as they spoke. That would be particularly bad luck, but then, she appeared to be having a run of that.

  Still. “You did the best with what you had, Commander. As always.”

  He offered a tight smile. “Thank you.” His smile softened, grew warmer. “The wormhole…the fact they had control over it…I find that very promising. If we can learn to harness that technology ourselves, maybe we could get back to Earth.”

  Something about the eager glow in his eyes sent a pang through her, for some reason.

  “Avery told me about the island you found, with the equipment. After the Xanthic left, I sent a team down to collect it, and load it onto shuttles for transport to the Jersey. What they could get to the surface, anyway—the larger terminals we had to leave down there. Hopefully it’s enough. Hopefully we can learn the technology for harnessing the wormholes from them. I have a team of engineers examining the terminals as we speak, led by Lieutenant Marat.”

  “Why not Commander Ainsley?”

  His features tightened. “He died during the engagement.”

  Their eyes met for a prolonged second, neither sure what to say next. Then, Thatcher’s gaze fell to the deck. “Guerrero had a breakdown during the battle. She’s in a room just down the passageway.” He tilted his head in the direction he meant. “It happened when the Xanthic appeared. She had a full-blown panic attack. Cruz doesn’t know when she’ll fit for duty.”

  Rose let out a long sigh. “Your crew love you. All of them. They’ll follow you to the ends of the Cluster, and do anything you say. Which is why they’ll never tell you where you’re going wrong. For that, you need me.”

  The captain looked at her expectantly.

  “You push them too hard, Tad. I saw it before this mission ever started, and since we left Dupliss, I’ve seen it more than ever before. You force them to excellence through your intense scrutiny. You’ve micromanaged them almost to their breaking points. You need to learn to trust them more. To delegate. Let some parts of managing the crew fall onto your XO’s shoulders. That’s how it’s supposed to be.”

  His face remained unreadable, his shoulders tense. How is he taking this? She couldn’t begin to guess.

  Then, his comm beeped from his hip, and he removed it from its holster. “Thatcher.”

  He listened for a few seconds, then said, “Slow down, Lieutenant.”

  Marat. The engineer in charge of cracking the Xanthic terminals. “Let me hear.”

  Thatcher looked at her, lips a thin line. Marat’s voice buzzed in the background, but she didn’t think he was listening at all. Finally, he lowered the comm and pressed a button on its side.

  “—and we think we can—”

  “Hold on, Lieutenant. Back up and repeat what you just said.”

  “Uh…okay, sir. We’re a long way from understanding the languages on this thing. The coding languages used, or the, you know, the Xanthic language. But we did stumble on some images which look a lot like they’re meant to be components for a nanofabber. And we think, given enough time, we can reverse engineer it.”

  Rose felt her eyes go wide. Our own nanofabs. The same tech the UNC had been denying them for months. This could change everything.

  “There’s something else, sir.”

  Thatcher’s eyes were fixed on the comm lying in his hand. “To do with the terminals?”

  “No, sir. With the Xanthic ships. Devine’s been using his rack time to study the engagement recording, and—”

  “Why does an ensign have access to sensitive sensor data, Lieutenant?”

  “Oh.” Marat’s voice fell, growing bashful. “Well, he’s been whining constantly about not getting to work on the Xanthic terminals, since I need him elsewhere. I gave him the data mostly to shut him up.”

  Thatcher looked like he was about to reprimand his new chief engineer. Then his eyes flitted toward Rose, and he seemed to restrain himself. “Why did he want the data?”

  “Well, he heard from a second-watch CIC officer that thirty-seven ships escaped through the wormhole, and ever since then, he’s been fixated on that number. To tell you the truth, I forgot about the whole thing for a few days, but he came to me a few hours ago and told me what he found.”

  “Which is?”

  “Sir, Devine thinks those ships are the exact ones that attacked Earth Local Space fifty years ago. It seems crazy, I know. It took a long time to sink in for me. But now I think he might actually be on to something. The fleet that attacked Earth Local Space also numbered thirty-seven. I pulled up the archival footage from the ship’s computer—what little the UNC let the public have—and the ships we fought look just like them. Each one has a match from the force that hit us fifty years ago. Same sizes, same shapes. No perceptible difference in technology levels, or weaponry, or…well, anything. To top it off, one of those ships had a melted stern, like it had been hit with a hearty dose of laserfire. Just like the one we blasted before it escaped through the wormhole.”

  Marat stopped talking, and a long pause followed as Thatcher and Rose stared at each other with wide eyes.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant,” Thatcher said at last. “I’ll be in your office within the hour to discuss this further.” He ended the call.

  Rose was the first to break the silence. “We barely won that fight against the Xanthic, Commander. Fifty years ago, humanity’s fleet was smaller, our ships far less powerful than they are today. We hadn’t even developed laser weapons at that time. If we had faced fifty-one of them instead of thirty-seven…”

  Thatcher’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “I have no idea what’s happening.”

  “Neither do I,” she said. “But I do know that fifty-one fully operational Xanthic warships would have destroyed us, back then.” She swallowed. “It’s possible you may have just saved the human race.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Aboard the New Jersey

  Omnist System, Tempore Region

  Earth Year 2290

  “Those terminals have been quite a drain on our capacitors.” Candle slid his letter-sized comm across the table, displaying a report from t
heir new chief engineer. “Up to fifteen percent, depending on the tests they’re running at any given time. Seems risky to fly through hostile space with that sort of deficiency. What if we have need of our primary laser?”

  Thatcher glanced at the report, then slid it back toward his XO. “Then we’ll have enough energy to fire it three, maybe four times. It’s also risky to fly without one of our missile tubes. And risky to transition through jump gates with the condition our starboard hull is in.” The repair drones had done little more than patch over the damage. To truly restore the Jersey to fighting form, they needed a Helio base. “Ms. Rose has decided it’s worth the risk, Commander. And I agree. She wants to arrive back at Oasis in a position to begin work on reverse engineering nanofab tech as soon as possible. That means spending the voyage back extracting as much as we can from the Xanthic computer.”

  Thatcher didn’t bother pointing out that, compared to their journey to the Ucalegon System, the trip out had found Lacuna Region virtually empty. The same went for Olent, and now Tempore. But no one aboard truly believed they’d seen their last pirate ambush, and that included him.

  They had encountered pirate forces on their way out, some of them a fair bit bigger than Thatcher’s force. But every one of them had left the Jersey and her accompanying ships alone.

  He didn’t blame them. I’d leave me alone too. Even so, it never paid to be brash.

  Candle had picked up his letter-sized comm to study it, but now he put it down again. “Maybe the pirates who witnessed our battle with the Xanthic reported back to the others.”

  “Hmm?” Thatcher knew what he was talking about, but that wasn’t what had given him pause: Candle’s change of topic dovetailed so neatly with his thoughts that he considered whether his XO might be a mind reader. The thought brought a wry grin to his lips.

  “The ships that looked like they were going to attack us, in Ucalegon.” Candle blinked, possibly put off by Thatcher’s grin. “The ones that turned around when they saw the Xanthic fleet. Maybe they pointed out to the other pirates that we clearly aren’t here to fight them. Could be they decided to stay out of our way, considering we’ve taken it upon ourselves to defend the Cluster from aliens.”

  “I don’t think pirates normally think so big-picture.”

  “Then I don’t understand why they’ve apparently granted us safe passage home.”

  “Neither do I.” But he had his worries about it, which he kept to himself, though they were affecting his sleep. If Degenerate Empire had finally made their move to lock down the northeast, then they’d have little need to chase Frontier ships through system after system. They could simply intercept them at a regional jump gate when they finally attempted to leave.

  Rose had voiced those same fears, but he hadn’t reacted. It wasn’t for a captain to walk his ship whining about worst-case scenarios. He had to present a brave face to his crew, so that they would adopt it for their own.

  He allowed himself displays of emotion only when it was appropriate, and proportionate. Yes, his voice had trembled as he’d spoken at the memorial service for the crews of the ships they’d lost in Kava—as well as for the fallen marines and crew killed in the battle on and above Recept. And yes, nightmares had plagued about it him ever since. Those were his own private struggles. To his subordinates, he would appear as unshakable as Olympus Mons.

  Rose was well on the path to recovery, and she got out of med bay more and more—worked more and more, too, pushing herself to her limits and beyond. It did no good to encourage her to rest. She was driven, passionate. Ambitious. He’d seen that the day he’d met her.

  That she would bear heavy scarring for the rest of her life didn’t seem to bother her. Avery had told him how she’d risked her life to save his. Something she hadn’t brought up once, either during that first conversation in med bay or any time after.

  An admirable woman. Who I’m lucky to work for.

  Of course, there was tension between Thatcher and Rose, now. With her still recovering, he’d waited as long as he could to have the conversation he’d needed to have with her. Even so, she hadn’t taken it warmly when he’d informed her that if she ever again placed herself in the sort of danger she had on Recept, he would resign.

  “You don’t need to try to be everything,” he’d told her. “No one expects that, and no one is served by it. Frontier needs you. Without you, the company would almost certainly fall apart. And in my opinion, the Dawn Cluster needs Frontier. So I would be grossly negligent if I enabled you to continue risking the company’s future.”

  “I see,” Rose said, her voice icy. “I will take your comments under advisement, Commander.”

  That she’d used his rank, and not his name, told him everything he needed to know about what she truly thought of his remarks.

  He shook himself, dispelling the memory. “What do you make of Devine’s theory?”

  Candle raised his eyebrows. “That those ships were on their way to travel back through time, to attack Earth Local Space? It’s completely baffling. But I haven’t heard anyone offer a better explanation.”

  Thatcher nodded. For his part, he wasn’t prepared to accept it without more evidence. Despite all the indications to the theory’s veracity, it was extraordinary, and so it required extraordinary proof.

  Though he had to admit, he liked the idea that he’d fought the very same enemy his grandfather had, fifty years ago. Even considering the possibility filled him with a sense of wonder, and strangely, pride. It made him feel even more kinship with Edward Thatcher, something his heart had apparently yearned for without him ever realizing it.

  Decades and light years lay between him and his memories of conversations with his grandfather. So, too, did the grave. Other than Lin, he doubted he would ever miss anyone as much as he missed him.

  Rose was already planning to use Thatcher’s “saving humanity” as a talking point in her next broadcast to the Dawn Cluster. She never rests. Even as she recovers from a wound that should have killed her.

  His comm buzzed from the desktop, and he picked it up. “Thatcher.”

  Brown, the second-watch Ops officer, spoke. “Sir, we’ve entered Rachis System. You wanted me to notify you.”

  “Indeed. I’ll be right there.” He rose from his seat, surprised at the pops and cracks his back produced. Even my body’s getting tired of this journey. “Come along, XO. Time to see what awaits us at the jump gate into Dupliss.”

  His tactical display had already populated with the units clustered around the Tempore-Dupliss regional jump gate. Just as he’d expected, dozens and dozens of ships waited there, most of them confirmed pirate ships. He felt safe making an educated guess about the rest.

  Thatcher spent the next several hours considering his options. He felt confident he could do serious damage to the ninety-four vessels guarding the gate…but not that his force would survive. For the moment, he refrained from ordering a formation of any kind, choosing instead to remain unpredictable. And as non-threatening as possible.

  Brown stirred from his monitoring of the system, glancing over his shoulder at Thatcher. “Sir, we have a transmission from one of the ships near the regional jump gate.”

  Thatcher returned to studying his own tactical display. They were barely halfway across the system. “Play it on the holotank.”

  The man whose head and shoulders appeared inside the holotank didn’t resemble the piratical stereotype most people subscribed to. Neither did the fact that he had the proper setup for 3D rendering in the first place.

  Of course, a spacer knew better. Thatcher had met pirates current and former who came from all walks of life—from all across the spectrums of lineage, wealth, and personal hygiene. Some of them looked like the cold, greasy apes so many films and sims portrayed them as. Most didn’t.

  This one wore a beige woolen sweater with a collar that extended up a bronzed neck. Neatly trimmed facial hair circled his mouth, with thin lines extending along his jaw up to his ears,
above which no follicle of any kind could be seen. Thick, gold hoops dangled from each earlobe.

  “Captain Thatcher.” The man’s voice was baritone, resonant, and it carried neither ridicule nor threat. His smile was as warm as his voice.

  I don’t like this at all.

  “I am Tobias Vega,” the pirate continued, “leader of Degenerate Empire. Note that I do not say Lord Emperor—we are far too lowly to have one of those.” His little jest done with, Vega extended a hand toward the camera. “Allow me to be the first to welcome you home.”

  Vega paused to let that sink in, and in his peripheral vision Thatcher noticed his helm officer shifting uncomfortably. Brown exchanged glances with Simms, the second-watch Nav officer.

  “I suspect I have news you are not yet privy to,” Vega said. “I give it freely, as the first gesture of a partnership I hope will span decades. You see, you and I are allies, now. Herwin Dirk has extended the hand of friendship to Degenerate Empire, and we have graciously accepted. Together with Daybreak Combine, we now form what is being called a mega alliance. One that spans the entire north. As such, please feel free to pass back into Dupliss unmolested, and indeed, into whatever northern region you wish. We control it all, now. It’s been a good month. I look forward to conversing further.”

  With that, the transmission ended.

  The full force of Thatcher’s fatigue crashed down on him as his brain struggled to contend with what Vega had just told him. He’d been keeping tiredness at bay until now, but apparently this was the final load needed to cause his weary brain to shut down entirely.

  “Sir?” Brown said. “Do you have a response?”

  Thatcher stared dumbly at the empty holotank. “Tell him we accept his offer of safe passage.” He sniffed sharply, resisting the urge to rub his eyes. “That will be all.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  New Houston, Oasis Colony

  Freedom System, Dupliss Region

  Earth Year 2290