by T J Mott
And his left leg, which had been nearly crushed by a falling maneuvering thruster core he’d been reinstalling aboard the Lunar Dawn, throbbed. Thaddeus sourly remembered that he was starting to get old. And his way of life only made the aging process worse.
He rubbed his thigh, remembering that accident on the Dawn, the cruise ship he had worked on as a young man when his life had been far simpler and less chaotic. When the worst of his worries involved straightforward maintenance and repair tasks, not searching for a lost star system and manipulating interstellar empires for his own benefit. Where he’d met Adelia, the beautiful, ever-smiling cruise ship attendant who now lay before him, sleeping restlessly as her system detoxified itself from the drugs used to pacify and control her during her time as a slave.
Earth had been so long ago. And yet she didn’t look a day older than when he’d last seen her, when they briefly exchanged goodbyes before he disembarked the Dawn to travel to Mars. But she looked sickly. Her ordinarily fair skin was now pale and mottled. Her dark, wavy hair was clumped under and around her head. And she looked too thin.
Yet he could still see her natural beauty, that same beauty that had captivated him over a decade ago. She had a round face, a long, thin nose, and high cheekbones which, before, when she’d been healthier, almost looked chiseled out of an exquisite block of marble. She had sharp hazel eyes that, if they were open, he thought would stop time if he dared to look into them for long enough.
She stirred slightly, changing positions on the bed, and he wondered again if she was asleep or just resting. Should he say something in case she was awake? Or let her be for now?
So many things to discuss. To catch up on.
He smiled, but his smile faded quickly when he remembered the seriousness of his true mission. As much as he’d been attracted to her back then, and still was now that he’d rediscovered her, those feelings were not the reason he’d risked so much—and lost so much—to rescue her. Who took you from Earth? How? And why? What do you know that can lead me back home?
She stirred again, and this time she opened her eyes. His heart fluttered in his chest, but he waited, giving her a few seconds to wake up. Then he said her name. She slowly looked around, and then her eyes settled on him. She pushed herself towards the back of the bed and sat up a little.
Her expression was stern. She watched him suspiciously, through narrowed eyes and with a deep frown on her face. She glanced at her wrists and feet, as if searching for restraints, and then tensed up as if readying herself to run.
“What?” she finally said, sounding annoyed.
His heart plummeted from his chest down into his abdomen. She didn’t recognize him. Deep inside, he knew that shouldn’t surprise him. It had been many years, and perhaps he was nothing more than a forgotten no-show date. He opened his mouth to speak, but it took a long moment for his words to find their way out. “Adelia. It’s me, Thaddeus. Thad Marcell. From the Lunar Dawn.”
She definitely reacted to the name. Her head cocked to one side and her brow furrowed as she concentrated on him. Then she shook her head. “You’re too old.”
Too old? How much effect did the drugs—those her captors used, and those Janssen used to fight back—have on her mind? She did seem fairly alert, but he knew alertness and clarity of thought were not necessarily correlated. His own alcohol habit had taught him that much.
She continued to study him. “You do kind of look like him. Are you his brother? What happened to him?” The suspicion in her expression faded slightly, and now she was obviously perplexed.
He shook his head. “No, it’s me. Too old? Adelia…it’s been eleven years.”
“Eleven years?” she said disbelievingly. She glanced around the room and blinked quickly a few times. “No. A year at most. Not eleven.”
“I…I don’t understand,” he said. “Were you in stasis?”
She chewed her lower lip. “Stasis? I don’t think so…” Her voice trailed off and she frowned again. “I’m confused.”
He nodded. “Me, too.” He thought back to the physics classes he’d attended a lifetime ago, and to the conventional knowledge of high-speed sublight travel, and something clicked. Time dilation? Was she on a ship at near lightspeed for some reason? For an entire decade?
He scooted his chair closer to her. “But it is me. I promise.” She looked at his face and studied him. “We worked together on the Lunar Dawn. You were a senior attendant, and I was a junior engineer. The last time I saw you, it was just before I disembarked at the Meridian Geosync Station. I was on my way to Mars for a class.”
“Mars,” she said. She sat fully upright. “They found your shuttle. It was empty, parked in a weird orbit between Earth and Mars, with the computer completely fried. You disappeared and we never heard from you.” Her expression showed genuine concern, and all the signs of suspicion were completely gone now. The tenseness in her petite frame from minutes ago had melted and he no longer feared she’d make a run. “Thaddeus, what happened?”
Thad closed his eyes, remembering, and examined those memories for the millionth time in his life. He shook his head. It was so vague, so fuzzy, and there was still no useful detail, nothing he could remember that might help him rediscover Earth. “I’m really not sure. I know someone boarded us. They must have gassed us because I don’t remember much. It’s all like a half-remembered dream. And the next thing I knew, I was locked in a cabin with a few dozen people I didn’t know. Our captors told us we were slaves.”
Her lower lip twitched at the word ‘slave’. “And that was eleven years ago?” He nodded. “And now…” Her voice trailed off and she squinted. “Where are we?”
“You’re on my flagship, the frigate Caracal,” he said.
She no longer looked confused, now she looked suspicious again, almost unbelieving. “Your flagship? This ship is yours?” Her eyes flitted away from him, looking around and finally settling somewhere behind him.
“Admiral.” He almost jumped at the sudden voice behind him. “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt…” Commander Janssen stepped around him, carrying a fresh intravenous bag, and switched out the one hanging by Adelia. “You look alert,” he said. “How do you feel?”
She watched the doctor exchange the bag. “Tired. Still…foggy. But my mind feels a bit clearer.”
“Good. That means our treatment is working, it’s getting the drugs flushed out of your system. Just let us know if you start experiencing any pain or nausea.” He stepped away, nodding politely at Thaddeus as he left, and Thad knew the doctor been checking up on him as much as on Adelia. The Chief Medical Officer didn’t replace IV bags for minor patients, especially with so many other—and more serious—casualties. He delegated that to his corpsman.
Adelia refocused her eyes on him, looking incredulous. “Did he just call you ‘Admiral’?”
He offered her a goofy smile. “Admiral Thaddeus Marcell, at your service.”
She laughed, still looking doubtful. But at least she was smiling now. And her smile, Thad thought warmly, was just as beautiful as he remembered. And then she looked up and down at his clothing, his baggy black cargo pants and featureless white shirt, rather casual even compared to the dark navy blue utilities common aboard Blue Fleet starships. It certainly couldn’t be mistaken for a uniform. “You don’t look like an officer. You don’t even look military.”
“No, we’re not military. This is a private group. We’re more of a mercenary force, among other things.” He paused. “My biggest mission is searching for Earth.”
Her expression sobered, and he felt a pang as he watched her smile dissipate. “Searching for Earth? Where are we? The places I’ve seen, the ships I’ve been aboard…I’ve never seen anything like it.”
He nodded. “Two answers. The direct answer is we’re near the Waverly system, which is where I intercepted the ship that was carrying you, and we’re on our way to my Headquarters. The other answer is longer and way more complicated.” He leaned forward in his sea
t. “Adelia, we thought we were alone in Sol, that Earth is all there was. That it was the cradle of humanity. But the truth is that, somehow, there’s a huge human civilization out here in the stars. There are trillions and trillions of people who live across three or four thousand light-years. But the biggest thing is this: They have no direct knowledge of Earth. They’ve heard of it, but everyone thinks it’s just a myth, a fable, a children’s bedtime story.”
Thaddeus heard his comm chime in his pocket, but he decided to ignore it. Adelia’s far more important than whatever the staff wants. She is the whole reason for the mission…I’m sure Reynolds can handle it. Reynolds was a very competent officer, one of the best in the Organization, and Thaddeus would have trusted the mission to him, not even joining, if it hadn’t been so close to his own heart. As he thought back, what had he actually done this mission? He’d sulked, stayed alone, and drank. He’d even joined the boarding party aboard the Cassandra, where he’d contributed exactly nothing except being an extra, high-ranking body. Reynolds, the officers, and the Marine platoon had taken care of everything. No, there was nothing going on in the ship that needed his attention. He was here for Adelia. She was his only connection to Earth…and he might be her only connection to her past. He very well could be the only face familiar to her, even if it was now aged beyond instant recognition.
The brief distraction reminded him of the whispers within his group, the gossip and attitudes that were displayed when they thought he wasn’t around, and he wondered how the Organization would change when he brought her back to Headquarters.
“Just so you know…there’s a lot of stigma against me. Since I openly claim to be from Earth, and I spend a lot of effort looking for it, some of my crew thinks I might be crazy.” Now he paused, wondering what he should say and how direct to be with her. And the former engineer in him—the man dedicated to precise tolerances, expectations, and procedures, favoring accuracy over feelings or politics—decided to be perfectly straightforward. Rumors were probably already flying around the frigate, and he wouldn’t be able to protect her completely. Not forever. “I don’t know how they’ll react to you. I don’t know whether they’ll think you’re crazy too, or if they’ll think it makes my story, and Earth, more believable.”
“If they think you’re crazy,” she asked carefully, “then why do they work for you?”
“Simple. I pay them a lot. Most people will overlook some craziness if the credit payout is high enough. Those who don’t, well, they don’t last long in my organization and move on pretty quickly.”
“Huh.” She leaned back and closed her eyes slightly, now peering at him through tired, half open-eyes. She was starting to look sleepy. “So tell me how you became an admiral,” she said with a smirk.
“Long story,” he started.
But then the overhead comm chimed. “Admiral Marcell to the Command Center.” It was Senior Captain Reynolds’ voice. “Admiral Marcell to the Commander Center, you’re needed immediately.”
He sighed loudly and shook his head in irritation. What the blazes could be so important? “I guess I’ll have to explain later,” he said as he stood. Which was a good thing, he decided. She looked very tired now. “Get some rest.”
He glanced at his comm on the way out of the ward. The message in its queue—the one he’d been trying to ignore in order to stay with Adelia—was from Reynolds. “Altercation in the Command Center,” it read. “Near fist fight between Bennett and Poulsen. I need you to help me debrief them.”
Chapter 13
“That will never work,” Bennett declared unnecessarily loudly. His voice carried an uncharacteristically high pitch which betrayed the anxiety and the fear that Lieutenant Poulsen had witnessed building up within him over the course of the mission. And, not for the first time since she’d come aboard the Caracal, she wondered why Senior Captain Reynolds kept him around. At best, he seemed to be one of those worthless workers who got shuffled into middle management where they could do the least amount of harm—but it was still hard to fathom that a warship’s Executive Officer—aboard a fleet’s flagship, no less!—could be such a case.
She slowly let out her breath, letting it hiss between her teeth, and stared blankly at the collection of displays in front of her while trying to gather her thoughts, once again looking for a way to rebuff or bypass her superior officer.
One of her displays showed a minimal version of the frigate’s standard piloting suite. The others showed a local starmap zoomed to about twenty light-years, detailed spec sheets on their hyperdrive, and some rough calculations that loosely correlated—with a number of fudge factors—the ship’s mass, shape, drive type, and jump parameters to the superluminal phi-band radiation which flashed at the start and end of every hyperspace jump.
“This will work,” she said. She fought to speak evenly and barely managed to keep her simmering anger out of her tone. “I’ve done it before.”
“Nonsense. If this was real it would be in every tactics manual in the galaxy already!” He stood over her and frowned disapprovingly, and she was suddenly aware that half the Command Center was trying to eavesdrop on them.
And her temper finally slipped. “And what the hell do you know about hyperspace theory!” she shouted. She stood from her chair and turned to face him. She was several centimeters taller than him, and she decided to take advantage of that, taking a step closer to him and looming from above. “Dammit sir, I’m the pilot here! I’ve looked at this a hundred different ways and this is the only chance I see for us to evade!” The Command Center grew quiet, all other conversations ceasing as everyone’s attention turned to the commotion at the pilot’s station.
Bennett scowled, and one of his eyelids twitched. “You’re out of line, Lieutenant! I will not be shouted at by a subordinate!”
“And I won’t let this ship get captured because its executive officer is a cowardly half-wit who can’t decide whether to sit or stand at the head without being micromanaged by his captain!”
She felt her arms shaking at her sides and realized how tightly her fists were clenched. Bennett’s face was red, and she knew hers was, too. He had unconsciously taken a step backwards. “Lieutenant Poulsen, confine yourself to quarters!” he sputtered. “You’re done piloting for this mission!”
She narrowed her eyes and managed to still herself. “I was with the Hyberian Raiders,” she said, her voice now low and menacing. “I know far more about starship piloting and hyperspace than you or whatever backwater navy you flunked out of before landing here. If you want to ignore me and let our enemies catch us, you can go FUCK YOURSELF!” She screamed the last two words. Half the Command Center jumped in surprise, and Bennett took another step back.
***
Thaddeus stared into the holographic starmap which hovered above the conference room table. It displayed several nearby star systems in full three-dimensional color, with a faint gray reference grid marking out cubic light-years.
A symbol representing the Caracal floated in the exact center of the space. It was a perfect volumetric rendering of the frigate, right down to its livery and markings, with a small arrow indicating the ship’s current heading. The tiny holographic ship even showed much of its recent battle damage, especially the gaping, charred holes on its port and missing bow section, a result of the ship’s computer architecture which allowed the navigational holomaps to base their icons on the complete state of the ship as known by all of its systems.
An orange star, along with an annotation declaring it to be Waverly, floated a couple light-years behind the frigate. The map also showed six unnamed brown dwarfs scattered at random within ten light-years of Waverly, labeled by a series of unremarkable numbers from an old Galactic Survey star catalog. The known galaxy was covered with the small, underweight, stillborn balls of hydrogen gas which had failed to ignite the nuclear processes the astronomers thought necessary before they’d classify them as proper stars.
They were utterly useless to nearly everyo
ne in the galaxy. More importantly, they were utterly useless to Thaddeus and his current predicament. Most of them were only a single jump away, but they had no starship traffic to get lost in, no stations to dock at for repair, no mercenaries or militias to hire for protection while the Caracal sorted out a more effective escape.
Brown dwarf systems were so common and so boring that very few ever were the target of more than just a cursory survey. These ones had no data at all in the catalog to indicate what, if any, planets or other natural objects they contained. Even if they jumped to one, they’d have no idea what was there unless they did a survey themselves.
Thaddeus had considered jumping to one of them, hoping to locate a rocky world that his ship could land and hide on for a few weeks to lose his pursuit. But as he weighed the risks, he realized just how unlikely that was to work. It might be possible at a hotter main-sequence star, but the average brown dwarf was rather cold, as were any natural satellites. The ambient heat signature of the Caracal would be easy to locate against the surface of a frozen, lifeless world. Furthermore, the neutrino emissions from a starship’s fusion reactor would be a dead giveaway to sensors without the natural emissions from a nearby star—a real one, undergoing nuclear fusion in its core—to help mask them.
Returning to Waverly and getting lost in the system traffic was not an option, though at first glance it had seemed to be the most promising solution. But he had no friends in Waverly. According to the local hypercomm broadcasts the system was on complete lockdown. One sudden phi-band flash from a starship entering the system without coordinating with the traffic controllers would stand out greatly against the select few authorized jumps. Their pursuers would catch up very quickly, and even if they somehow dodged their enemies, the likelihood of anyone in the system offering to repair, hide, or escort them out while the system was on high security alert was extremely low.
