Remnants: Broken Galaxy Book Five

by Phil Huddleston

 

  “Wait for me there. On my way.”

  Luke slammed out of bed and into his clothes, thinking all the while.

  He’ll have her someplace we can’t find her easily. So not in the colony - he’ll know that anywhere in the colony, we might stumble across her in a search.

  She’ll be outside the colony area.

  But where? North, south, east, west? Where would he hide her?

  Luke finished dressing and ran to the Headquarters tent. Rick was there waiting for him, agitated and pacing, cursing under his breath. Luke entered and went directly to his desk, motioning Rick to the chair in front of him.

  “First of all, calm down, Rick. We can’t help her if we’re too excited to think straight.”

  Rick nodded and went to the chair. He sat, fidgeting, playing with his portable radio.

  “Tell me what you know so far.”

  “Well, she didn’t come home last night. She said she had something to do. She said she’d be home no later than 2 AM. When she didn’t come home, I started looking for her.”

  “Where have you looked so far?”

  “The office here, the hospital, the mess hall, the entire area around here. Then I flew a drone over Central Park with infrared. Nothing. Then I went to Turgenev’s headquarters across the Park and broke in, searched that place. Then I flew the drone out over the east side forest as far as I could take it. But I found nothing.

  “Good. So we’re both thinking the same thing, at least.”

  “Yeah. Turgenev. It has to be,” Rick agreed. “She must have caught on to something and went to investigate it.”

  “And got caught,” Luke added. “He has her, for sure. I can feel it in my bones.”

  Rick nodded. “So what do we do?”

  “We find her,” affirmed Luke. “I’m certain she won’t be in the camp anywhere. He’s too smart for that. There’s 12,000 people in this camp now. Too much chance of someone stumbling across her. She’ll be out in the wild someplace.”

  “Oh, God, Luke…you think? He’d put her out in the forest?”

  “Yeah, but not alone. She’ll have guards with her. My bet is he’s already set up a remote camp somewhere out in that damn blue forest. Getting ready for his coup. It’s the only explanation that fits all the facts.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I am. I think he’s preparing to take over the colony. Zoe must have found out something about it, so he took her. That’s where she’ll be, Rick. Somewhere out in the forest, a good distance from the camp.”

  “How will we find her? There’s hundreds of square miles of alien forest out there.”

  “We’ll find her,” Luke said grimly. “OK. First things first. I want you to go get Mark, Gillian, and Tatiana out of bed and get them over here as quickly as possible. Keep it quiet and try not to get anyone else involved. Tell them it’s an emergency, but don’t give them any details yet - someone might overhear. Tell them to hurry. Don’t make a big fuss and don’t get a lot of people involved. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Then go.”

  Rick got up and darted out of the office. Luke sat for a second, gathering his thoughts. Then he made a rare call on his internal comm - the internal comm that had been built into his brain when he commanded the EDF destroyer Dragon. A comm that could only communicate with EDF ships or with other EDF officers.

  Or with Goblins.

 

 

 

  Stree Prime - Stree Listening Station #14

  Stree System

  It had taken most of the night to use the bodybuilder to convert the bodies of the three Stree officers to androids. Rachel had intellectually understood how the process worked and had accepted it. But once in the reality of it, she shuddered, became nauseous, and ran to the toilet.

  That her android Stree body could throw up had come as quite a surprise to her. There’s such a thing as too much realism, she thought, wiping her mouth as she returned to the storage area where Hajo, Luda, Ollie, and Liwa were converting the bodies.

  The bodybuilder had two modes. One mode created an entirely new android body from scratch, using new raw materials poured into hoppers mounted on the side, and the measurements scanned from an old body. That was how her original android body had been constructed; Tika had scanned her consciousness and used raw materials to build an entirely new body for her, based on the scan of her old one.

  But that wouldn’t work here on Stree Prime; they had insufficient raw materials to create three new bodies from scratch, and no time to go find such materials. So they had no choice but to use the other mode of the bodybuilder.

  That second mode converted the dead bodies of the Stree directly into raw materials. Luda then added only what was needed to make up the difference - in this case, mostly metals and silicon they had brought with them on the shuttle. It was an efficient way to create new android bodies; but to Rachel, it was hard to think about the process that was occurring inside the bodybuilder. Thankfully, the device had an opaque cover, so she didn’t have to see the process in detail.

  But just thinking about it had been enough to send her puking to the toilet, once again surprised by the accuracy of the android bodies made by the Goblins.

  And the timing had been close. They had worked all night, preparing the android bodies, switching themselves over to the new ones of Elvenen and his aide and adjutant, storing their original blank ones back in the travel coffins, researching the information obtained from the three dead Stree, and preparing for the journey to Stree Naval Headquarters. It was now morning; the military shuttle was coming at 6 AM to transfer Rita, Tika, and Rachel - in the Stree bodies of Elvenen, his adjutant and his aide - to Komihu, the capital city.

  Rita, Tika and Rachel rushed to help the others reload the bodybuilder and other cargo back on their shuttle. As dawn broke, they just managed to get Hajo launched with their shuttle toward the safe house near Komihu, and trot across the field to the passenger terminal with their luggage.

  They arrived at the terminal just as the military shuttle came in to land. And the shuttle pilot was impatient; he had a lot of stops to make and didn’t want to waste any time. He sat on the tarmac, engines idling, and dropped the rear ramp, waving at them to get aboard.

  Trotting around to the rear of the shuttle, Rita walked up the ramp to find it packed with cargo and with Stree, officers and enlisted. Evidently a lot of them were enroute to the capital city today. A long row of cargo pallets occupied the center of the shuttle, with rows of flip-out jump seats down both sides.

  There were only two seats available; she prepared to take one, but the loadmaster, wearing a headset, waved her forward. Over the sound of the idling engines, the Stree sergeant pointed to the cockpit. “There’s a jump seat available in the cockpit, Sub-Captain. I suggest you take that one.”

  Rita nodded, turned to look at Tika and Rachel, and pointed to the two empty seats along the cabin wall. The loadmaster took her bag and shoved it into an overhead compartment. Then he led her to the front and into the cockpit. Stepping in, she found the jumpseat behind the pilots and took it. For the moment, busy with takeoff checklists, the pilots ignored her. She strapped in and waited.

  This is the first test. If I can’t fool these two, then we have no chance at all.

  The shuttle engines spooled up. It lifted, translated to the left to clear the terminal building, and began to accelerate into the bright blue sky. When they had reached cruising altitude, the pilot put the shuttle on autopilot, leaned back, said something on the radio, and scratched himself. Then he turned to look at the Sub-Captain sitting behind him in the jump seat.

  “Good morning, Sub-Captain Elvenen. Welcome aboard. We’ll have you in Komihu in about an hour. Can I get you something to drink?”

  “No, thanks, Lieutenant,�
�� Rita replied, quickly reading the rank of the officer’s collar pips. “I’m fine.”

  The pilot nodded and turned back to his duties. Rita, gazing out the window, saw a beautiful mountain range on her left, stretching from horizon to horizon. The peaks reached high, a few of them more than 15,000 feet. Once again, she was struck with the beauty of the Stree home world - and the contrast of that beauty with the horror of the Stree genocide that had killed her own planet, and was attempting to kill every Goblin in the universe.

  Strange, she thought. You’d think a species surrounded by so much beauty wouldn’t think of killing others. But that’s not true. Even in our own world, it wasn’t true. The Huns, the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge, the Rwandan genocide…the list goes on and on. All of them living in a beautiful world, but bent on killing those who were different.

  “…promotion, Sub-Captain,” she heard from the pilot.

  Rita realized she had missed something over the noise of the engines. The pilot was looking at her expectantly.

  “I’m sorry, what was that?” she asked.

  “Congratulations on your upcoming promotion, sir. I understand you’ll be in the Signals Section?”

  Rita started to reply; but some instinct of her military experience gave her pause. She didn’t know if Stree security measures were as stringent as those of the EDF she had served; but it they were, this was a question she should not answer.

  “I’m sorry, Lieutenant. I can’t comment on my assignment. But thank you anyway.”

  The pilot gave her a nod of approval and turned back to his flying. A bead of sweat formed on Rita’s brow and ran slowly down her forehead. Unobtrusively, she wiped it away.

  So far so good.

  Moon Tosong - Listening Station #144

  Stree System

  Sitting beside Captain Stewart in the control room of the Stree station they had commandeered, Jim leaned back, contemplating their next steps.

  Beside him, Captain Stewart gazed absent-mindedly at the large, oversize holotank in the center of the room. “What’s the latest from Rita on the ground?”

  “She reported the bodies have been converted and they’ve made their transfers. They’ve cleaned up and should be on the shuttle to Komihu by now.”

  “And Hajo?”

  “His team found a small farm on the outskirts of Komihu to use as a safe house. He left with the shuttle at dawn to go there and hide it in the barn. He’ll unload the equipment into a rented van and stand by for Rita’s next move.”

  “Cross your fingers,” said Stewart. “How about news from Phoenix?”

  “Contact!” yelled the Tactical Officer. “Five shuttles, coming hard. Classify as combat shuttles, thirty to forty personnel apiece, coming fast over the horizon! ETA two minutes!”

  Stewart looked at Jim, shock written over his face. Both of them realized there was no possibility of getting to the Armidale and away from the moon in time.

  “They found us. Somehow, they found us.”

  “Oh, crap,” Jim said. “We are so screwed…”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Phoenix System

  800 Lights from Stalingrad

  Mark entered the Headquarters tent unhappy. It was early for him, and he had objected to getting out of bed and coming to the office at dawn. But Rick had insisted, which put Mark in a foul mood. As he entered the office, he glared at Luke.

  “What the fuck is so important that you have to get me out of bed at this ungodly hour?”

  “Zoe’s missing. We think Turgenev has her.”

  Tatiana and Gillian had entered the tent behind Mark. Now the three of them stood stock-still, shock on their faces.

  “What?” came their universal response.

  Rick Moore came into the tent behind them as Luke began explaining. As Luke and Rick described the events of the morning, the other three slowly sank into their chairs, their faces showing their dismay.

  When Luke and Rick had recapped the situation, Tatiana was the first to speak.

  “If Turgenev really has Zoe, he’ll hold her hostage. He’ll expect us to find out, and he’ll know we’ll have no choice but to take action against him. So he’ll use her as leverage.”

  “Yep,” agreed Luke. “But first things first. I think we have three main priorities.

  “One - we have to get Gillian, Imogen, Misha, Marta and Tatiana to a safe place. Turgenev will make them his primary targets to leverage the rest of us to do his will. We’ve got to get them out of here.

  “Two - we have to locate Zoe. Until we know where she is, there’s not much we can do to help her.

  “And three - we have to assume this incident will push Turgenev and his gang to move faster. So we need to prepare for a coup attempt as early as today. It’s quite possible they’re already in motion. We need to assume the worst.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Gillian said. “We’re fighting for our very survival here. Who would be crazy enough to endanger the entire colony just to take over power?”

  Luke grimaced. “Believe me, Gillian, they’ll do it. These are people who are totally ruthless. Completely, 100% self-centered. They won’t hesitate to kill. That’s the first thing you need to understand. This is no joke. This is life and death. Especially for us, because we’re members of the Council. They’ll strike at us first.”

  “So what do we do?” Gillian asked, her voice shaking.

  “The first thing we do is hide you, Imogen, Misha, Marta and Tatiana. We can’t allow them to take any more hostages. Transport Five is coming into the system right now - it’ll be in stable orbit in twenty minutes. Rick’s going to take you to get Imogen, Misha and Marta and get you on a shuttle. Beto has agreed to fly you up to the transport. When you get there, halt all shuttle flights down to the surface until we’ve got this situation under control.”

  Gillian looked at Mark, who nodded at her.

  “Luke’s right, Jilly. We have to get you out of here - before anything worse happens. You need to go.”

  Gillian nodded, tears beginning to stream down her cheeks.

  “But what about you? Mark, I can’t leave you!”

  Mark rose and went to his wife, put his arms around her, and kissed her cheek.

  “I’m the Governor, Jilly. I can’t leave now. And this is a job for those of us who’ve been trained by the military. I’ll be fine. You just go along with Rick now. He’ll take you and the kids to the shuttle.”

  Rick rose and went to the exit, waiting. Tatiana rose, but stood stock-still, staring at Luke.

  “I’d like to stay, Pop,” she said. “I’m military too. Misha can take care of Marta.”

  Luke shook his head.

  “Tatiana, you’re our backup plan. If we fail, you’ll have to take things forward. Please. Go with Rick and let him take you to the shuttle.”

  Tatiana stared at her father for a few seconds, then gave a curt nod. Gillian, still crying, kissed Mark one last time. Then Gillian and Tatiana followed Rick as he led them out of the tent.

  Stree Prime

  Komihu - Capital City

  The Stree military shuttle let down slowly to the tarmac at the Komihu Naval Base, translated slightly into a parking spot, and shut down. The door in the rear of the cockpit opened, and the loadmaster stood there, standing aside for Rita to leave the cockpit. She unbuckled from the jump seat, stood up, and stepped out of the cockpit to stand in the rear compartment as the back ramp starting whining down.

  Rita - in the Stree body of Sub-Captain Elvenen - had already determined she was the senior officer on board. But what she didn’t know was Stree naval protocol.

  Does the senior officer get off first? Or last as in the EDF?

  She scanned the consciousness of Elvenen in her extended memory, but for some reason that item of information was not there. She didn’t know why - it was missing in his scan.

  Something’s wrong. Everything should be there. Did we get a bad scan?

  She realized that if the senior officer got off
last - as she hoped - then the junior officers on the shuttle would jump up and grab their bags quickly, to get off and make way for their seniors.

  She decided to wait and see what the other people on the shuttle did. If she were wrong - if the senior officer was supposed to get off first - then she expected that nobody would move quickly, and some would turn to look at her. In that case, she would grab her bags, and start for the exit.

  As the engines started winding down, the Stree on the shuttle jumped up and started reaching for their luggage. With a sigh of relief, Rita realized she had guessed correctly. She glanced over at Tika, in the male body of her adjutant, who smiled back at her. The three of them waited until the other passengers had departed the craft. Then Rachel and Tika preceded Rita down the ramp and out of the shuttle.

  Walking into the terminal, Rita saw a sergeant holding a sign with her name on it. Within a few minutes, they were in a staff car, heading for the center of Komihu.

  Rita tried not to look around goggle-eyed; she supposed that all three of the Stree officers they were impersonating had been to the capital before. But it was hard not to look; the city was huge, and made up of great edifices of white marble, red brick, granite, and every other building stone possible. It was clear the Stree built for permanency; there was almost no wooden construction visible on the drive from the shuttleport. The streets were wide, clean, and well-maintained.

  Rita knew the Stree made extensive use of slave labor. She wondered if that was why the streets were so clean.

  And how can they claim to be religious while using slave labor to build their cities?

  But…the Romans also claimed to be religious. As did the Christian nations who conquered Africa and the Americas, killing and enslaving millions.

  Perhaps I’ve got it backwards - maybe religion enables evil. Once you’ve convinced yourself that your religion has the right to consume all others, you can justify anything.

  “We’re here, Sub-Captain,” said their driver. He pulled over into a small parking area in front of a large building. “I’ll deliver your bags to the BOQ and have them put in your rooms, sirs.”