by B. V. Larson
“I can see that. Just…”
Derek put his hands on his hips. “What? You think I can’t handle him?”
“I think you underestimate him. You’re not stupid, Derek, but admit it—neither of us is as clever as a Lazarus. He’s spent a lifetime lying and manipulating people. I get the feeling even when he’s telling the truth, he’s shading it for his own purposes.”
“I’ll keep that in mind too. I’ll take Loco. He’s cynical and good at reading people.”
Carla sighed and stepped forward to hug him once more, and then let go. “Good. I’ll pass the word.
Fifteen minutes later, Straker and Loco boarded the docked Lockstep. Captain Gibson escorted them toward the brig he’d made of a cargo module.
On the way there, a door opened suddenly in front of Straker, and Tachina stepped out, clad in a coverall that fit her like a second skin, displaying every curve and detail of her voluptuous body. Its zipper had been lowered to her navel, showing off deep cleavage uninterrupted by anything but toned skin.
“Hello, Derek,” she breathed, batting her long lashes.
Her perfume hit him like a sledgehammer as he was caught completely off guard. He stopped and froze, his throat closing.
Why they hell does she have this effect on me? He felt like thirteen again, back at Academy getting a teenage hard-on every time he was alone with Carla. “Uh…”
“Get back in your cabin, whore,” snarled Gibson. “I’m sorry, Commodore. She stowed away when we left Freiheit, and I didn’t want to turn her loose on Sachsen.”
“You mean you couldn’t stand to see me go, Wilmer,” she replied.
“Wilmer?” Loco chuckled from behind the other two. “Sorry, Captain—my mom named me funny, too.” He sidled around Straker in the passageway to step up to Tachina. “Come on, cougar-woman. Back to your lair.” He grabbed her waist with his right hand and her right hand in his left, as if to dance, and walked her in reverse through her cabin door.
“Great Cosmos,” breathed Straker. “I wish you had left her on Sachsen.”
“I should have warned you, sir. Sorry about that,” said Gibson.
Straker waved vaguely at him. “Never mind. Let’s go see the Lazarus.”
“I’ll catch up, boss,” called Loco from the doorway.
Straker, still mentally stunned, let Loco handle the situation. As he walked toward his conversation with the former Inquisitor, he set his mind in order, trying to drive out Tachina’s scent by reviewing notes on his handtab screen.
“Come in with me, Gibson,” he said at the door to the cell. “Also, can you record everything that’s said?”
“Of course, Commodore.” Gibson used the intercom to pass that order to his comtech, and then he opened the door with a keycode.
Inside, the Lazarus stood from his bunk and folded his hands in front of him. He looked fit and healthy. “Greetings, Commodore Straker. Or should I call you ‘Liberator’?”
“Don’t start your games with me again, clone, unless you want to be put in solitary.”
The Lazarus bowed his head. “My apologies. I was merely making conversation. You appear agitated, even though I hear you’ve won a great victory. How may I be of assistance?”
“Sit.” Straker gestured at the bunk, taking the single chair for himself. Gibson stood behind him, wary. But Straker wasn’t worried about a physical attack. Dealing with an Inquisitor was a struggle of minds.
The Lazarus sat, waiting calmly for Straker to speak.
“Tell me about Project Starkiller.”
The Inquisitor lifted his eyebrows. “Starkiller…I heard only a little. A super-ship, modular in order to be able to transit through sidespace and reassemble upon arrival.”
“I know all that. Tell me about the program, and why it never became operational.”
“As I recall, it was a pet project of a former Director of the Central Committee. He touted it as a silver bullet, a weapon that would change the course of the war. In fact, he staked his directorship on it, pardon the pun.”
“What happened?”
“He was ousted when the program’s delays and cost overruns turned the consensus against him. The Mutuality experienced a run of defeats at that time, and the Committee became convinced that, had Starkiller’s resources been put into building more capital ships, those defeats would not have happened.”
“Was that true?”
The Lazarus shrugged. “I suspect so, but I can’t be sure. I was not privy to grand strategy or the details of our orders of battle, but more superdreadnoughts—call it twenty or thirty, for the cost of the program—would have been significant.”
“What happened to the super-ship? The Indomitable?”
“There was talk of dismantling it, but the head scientist at Baikonur convinced the Committee that to do so would be to abandon all benefits from the investment. Instead, I believe they kept it as a test bed for weapons development, and the Committee has forgotten about it. They do not like to dwell on failure, especially failure of their own making.”
Straker grunted in acknowledgement. “One reason why leadership by committee is an oxymoron.”
“On the other hand, committees—oligarchies, really—do keep things stable, and make dictatorships less likely. That’s why both the Mutuality and the Hundred Worlds are ruled by them.”
“The Hundred Worlds isn’t ruled by an oligarchy. It’s ruled by a Prime Minister and by the elected Planetary Parliament.”
Lazarus smiled faintly. “Your parliamentarians have no term limits, and thus accrete so much power and wealth by their backroom dealings that they seldom lose their seats before retirement. If they do, they’re only dislodged by candidates that are similarly well connected and well funded. This means that nothing really changes. And they choose the Prime Minister. Is that not an oligarchy?”
“At least it’s a better system than yours!”
“For whom? Our oligarchy is composed of lifetime Party members with access to the coffers of the State. Your oligarchy is composed of those who sell themselves to the wealthy conglomerates who profit from war and exploitation. The structures may be different, but the effect is the same: the elites rule, and reap the rewards for rulership. As I’ve told you, the difference is simply in our honesty. We do not lie to the people by telling them their votes and their elections matter. We tell them the proper path for the ambitious is through public service within the Mutualist Party and the State—which are the same thing.”
“So honest misery is better than dishonest happiness.” Straker stood and began to pace. Doing so always helped to clear his head. He wasn’t sure what the flaw in the Lazarus’ argument was, but it had to be there.
Or maybe it really didn’t matter. Trying to figure his way through the Inquisitor’s bullshit was playing the Lazarus’s game instead of Straker’s. Better to sidestep it. “I know the Hundred Worlds is better than the Mutuality, but it isn’t my home anymore. I’m trying to create something better than either, so quit wasting your breath justifying your version of corruption.”
The Lazarus spread his hands. “I am at your service, Liberator.”
“Tell me more about Baikonur. We’ve seen one big base on a moon, with the usual defenses, and the Indomitable ship. Is there anything else we should know? Anything you need to tell us to avoid casualties on either side?”
The Lazarus wrapped his fingers around one knee. “Casualties from an attack? I know only what little I’ve heard from the guards here, who have proven less than talkative.”
“We’re seizing Indomitable.”
“Of course, of course. You hope to add it to your forces. But it’s an albatross, Commodore.”
“What’s an albatross?”
“It’s a beloved sea bird of Old Earth. If a sailor killed one, it was thought to be bad luck. In the tales, he would be forced to wear the dead bird around his neck as a mark of shame. Thus, an albatross is a metaphor for a possession that does you more harm than good, somethin
g you would be better rid of.”
“We’ll see. It wasn’t me that killed the albatross, and I might be able to bring it back to life.”
“Forgive me if I do not wish you good luck in attacking my people.”
“Yeah, whatever. See you next time.” Straker rose to leave.
“Adieu.”
“Odd you? You’re pretty odd yourself.”
The Lazarus didn’t roll his eyes, or even put a sarcastic tone into his voice, but Straker nevertheless thought the man was laughing at him. “It means ‘until later’ in the French language.”
Straker dredged up something from what he knew about France: Napoleon. “Long live the Emperor.” He slammed the door on his way out, the only expression of irritation he allowed himself. He knew he was no brainiac, but he also knew he was smarter than these snooty intellectualists gave him credit for.
Yet, they—as far back as his sister Mara and his classmate Nancy Sinden, through Zaxby, General DeChang, this Lazarus—constantly tried to cut him down with their clever references and their inside jokes. He knew he shouldn’t let them get to him, but he couldn’t help it. He wanted to smash that lurking smirk off the Lazarus’s face.
But I’m better than that, he told himself. I’m the Liberator. I have to set a good example. I wish I could be like Loco, doing whatever I want, mouthing off whenever I want, but Loco couldn’t hold his forces together. Only I can do that.
“He’s infuriating, isn’t he?” said Gibson. The pudgy older man laid a hand on Straker’s shoulder. “Are you sure he’s worth keeping, son?”
“Yes, I am. And I appreciate you playing jailor. You need anything?”
“Since you asked… Tachina is more trouble than the Inquisitor. She keeps trying to sneak in to see him. I’m also having difficulty keeping the infantry away from her, and vice versa.”
Straker was about to scoff at Gibson’s claim until he remembered her effect on him. There was something about the concubine that made her nearly irresistible—and bored soldiers wouldn’t even bother resisting. In the tradition of troops through all time, they’d try to find a way to hook up with her—and had probably already succeeded behind Gibson’s back.
“All right. I’ll have Loco take her off your hands. Nobody knows women like he does.”
“Thank you, sir.” Gibson’s words were heartfelt.
“Where is Loco anyway?”
Loco waved as he came around a corner. “Here, boss.”
“Get Tachina and her stuff. She’s coming with us.”
“Too late. She already came with me.” Loco smirked.
“What?”
“Never mind. I’ll get her. Go on ahead, I’ll catch up.”
“All right.” Straker shook Gibson’s hand, putting Tachina out of his mind as a pointless distraction. “Good to see you again, Captain.”
“Same here, sir. Lockstep will always be at your service.”
When Straker crossed back onto Wolverine, he felt better than he had in a while, and his thoughts raced with plans for his new battleship, Indomitable.
Chapter 18
Baikonur System: Battleship Indomitable
The takeover of Indomitable was an anticlimax. Wagner’s battlesuiters and Kraxor’s warrior males led the way, and after reporting no resistance, follow-up forces spread throughout the ship. They seized the enormous empty bridge without resistance from scattered engineers and scientists.
“No defending troops at all?” Straker said as he climbed down out of his mechsuit. He’d been prepared to support an attack, even though his Foehammer’s armor and systems were spotty. Loco did the same nearby.
“No, Commodore,” said Kraxor via Straker’s comlink. “Only a few unarmed naval personnel and civilians.”
“Assemble everybody on the bridge. I’m on my way.”
The first thing he noticed as he came aboard was the ship’s armor as he passed through it.
Superdreadnought armor was composed of three meters of overlapping conformal superconductive alloys layered with inert ceramics. When energized by reinforcing fields, it could stop small or glancing nuclear blasts, resist bigger ones, and it took multiple strikes by heavy beams or railgun shells to damage.
Indomitable’s protective layer was fully ten times as thick. Thirty-plus meters of high-tech materials, backed by titanic energy generators, would shrug off everything but fortress-level capital weapons or the largest contact nukes.
That is, assuming he could get the ship to function.
Straker’s walk to the bridge of the Indomitable seemed to take forever, though in reality only about ten minutes passed. That seemed an eternity on a warship. He marveled at its gargantuan dimensions, revealed when he strode through fortress-sized tunnels on the way.
When he entered the bridge, he saw a sea of stained coveralls and grungy lab coats that might have once been white. Older men and women squinted at him in obvious fear or glared with hostility. There were a few younger people, very young, perhaps just out of training.
Only one seemed unbowed: a slim, erect woman who must be pushing the century mark. Unlike many others, her lab coat remained clean and her personal grooming was impeccable.
“You are the one they call the Liberator?” she said as he approached.
“I am,” said Straker. “Commodore Derek Straker.”
“I demand to know what your intentions are. I will not have my people abused.”
“Have they been abused?”
“They’ve been roughly handled.”
“Well, we’re at war. Forgive me, you are…?”
“Doctor Marisa Nolan. I’m in charge here.”
Straker shook his head slowly. “No, Doctor. I’m in charge here. The battleship Indomitable is now property of the Galactic Liberation.”
“So you’re a pirate. A common thief.”
“I’m a conqueror, actually. Indomitable is a prize, and you’re all prisoners of war. Now you have to decide. Join us and help us put this fantastic ship to use liberating people—or return willingly to your oppression.”
Doctor Nolan eyes widened. “You’d let us go?”
“When we depart, you can stay on the base. The People’s Mutual Navy will eventually come for you and everyone else that remains. I won’t be leaving you any sidespace-capable ships, though.”
She licked her thin lips. “Why should we join you?”
Straker smiled, relieved that she wasn’t a fanatic—or even a true loyalist. “Because you’re sick of being treated like shit by a system that thinks of you as merely a cog in their machine. They’ve discarded you and your team here, Dr. Nolan. I’m guessing they’ve forgotten you. How long since you’ve been allowed to leave, or seen your families? What are your career prospects? This place looks like a combination nursery and old-folks home.”
“My career was over due to my age long before I volunteered for this project,” Nolan said tartly. “But my people deserve better. What can you do for them?”
“If they join us, they will have purpose—to liberate as many systems of humans and friendly aliens as I can and bring them under my banner.”
“What, so you can play dictator?”
“I’m not interested in ruling people, only liberating them. I’m the military commander, but each star system can govern itself. Politics is for politicians. No, scratch that. Politics is for statesmen—and women—in the Liberation. My one goal right now is to pull as many stars away from the Mutuality as I can, perhaps even to bring down the Committee.”
“Leaving us prostrate for the Hundred Worlds to conquer.”
Straker raised his brows. “That’s the first time you said ‘us’ and identified with the Mutuality. Would the Hundred Worlds really be so bad?”
Nolan’s eyes left Straker for the first time, roving over her people and the Breakers guarding them. “It might,” she finally said. “You leave us with two poor choices.”
“They’re all you’ve got. You have until we reach your base to decide. Bre
akers, find a place to keep our guests secure.”
“Uh… Liberator, sir?” A bearded man with senior engineer’s tabs on his coverall stepped forward. “I’m Chief Quade. I’ll join you. So will some of my grease monkeys, I think.” Others in similar outfits surged forward, giving a ragged cheer. “We ain’t got nothin’ to lose.”
Straker shook the man’s callused hand. “Welcome to the Galactic Liberation. Everyone joining us, stay here.” He turned to address the crowd. “The rest, those of you who want to be left for the Mutuality, or who aren’t sure yet, go with First Sergeant Heiser and his troops. You’ll be well treated.”
When the loyalists and undecided left, Straker turned to Quade. “All right. Let me introduce you to Zaxby, my chief brainiac. He should be arriving…”
“I am here,” said Zaxby, hurrying toward Straker and trying to look in four directions at once. “I am fascinated by the evident technological advancement of this ship. Who came up with the design of the—”
“Zaxby, meet Chief Quade. He’ll teach you, the prize crew and your brainiac technicians how to operate the Indomitable. Right, Chief?”
“Yes, sir. Much as we can, anyways.”
Straker held up a hand to hold Zaxby’s torrent of words at bay. “Chief, we can maneuver her at least, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Can we transit through sidespace?”
Quade pursed his lips. “This monster ain’t transited in over a year, but yeah, theoretically. Take a couple days to prep, though.”
“Zaxby, take charge. Preparing for sidespace is your top priority. After that, learn to operate systems, identify what works and what doesn’t… get her ready for combat.”
“Begging your pardon, sir,” said Quade. “This girl is pretty temperamental. She’s never been ready for combat. Her central multi-weapon will fire maybe three shots before it goes out of alignment due to inadequate cooling, which makes the structural stress worse. Her impellers never quite balance, so she usually ends up flying crabwise, which also means they have to be turned off before trying to line up on a target. Her secondaries—”
Zaxby broke in. “I agree. Commodore Straker, this ship cannot soon be made combat-ready. Not for weeks or months, if ever.”
