Rescue at Waverly

by T J Mott

  “So you have a secret base now. Well, don’t get ahead of yourself. So you were a slave, and they kept you pacified by giving you a wrench.” Is she teasing me?

  “Something like that,” he said flatly. “Anyway, they taught me to pilot. I learned how to fly a transport of theirs, and it even had a hyperdrive. So I learned how to navigate hyperspace. Quite strange since we had nothing like that at Earth.

  “And one day, my owner wanted to meet with a rival gang or something. I didn’t know who, they just told me to fly. I rarely knew what was going on. So we went to the Pavo system. Lightly-populated, no real government, a couple dinky trade and refueling stations. And we were jumped. I never found out by whom, but I think it was a police fleet from one of the big empires. They destroyed the other gang’s fleet. But they left us alone. I guess our little transport wasn’t considered a threat. Makes sense, since it was unarmed and carried all of five people.”

  “So what happened then?”

  “We flew to one of the local trade stations. The pirates—my owners—were rattled and I slipped away pretty easily once we were aboard.

  “It was just a dusty, poor little space station in a barely-populated system that serviced a few ships per day, at most. I hid for a few days, afraid the pirates I’d escaped from would find me. But I soon realized no one was even looking for me. I didn’t have anywhere to go, and then I just walked up to a merchant ship and begged for a job. I said I’d do anything just to get me out of there.”

  “And they took you?”

  He nodded. “Surprisingly, yes. At first I did menial labor. Scrubbing decks, cargo loading, and so on. They learned I had some mechanical experience, and it all started over. Except this time I wasn’t a slave, I was a paid employee. I really learned a lot over the next year or so and they decided to make me an officer. They transferred me to another ship and put me in the Engineering Department.”

  “Back where you started, just like on the Dawn.”

  “Yep. And things changed. The ship was a good-sized frigate called the Paradox, which usually escorted the merchant fleet. Over time, officers came and went, and before too long I was actually one of the Old Guard and somehow ended up in charge of Engineering. I learned we weren’t just a company of merchants, but they had a little mercenary operation on the side. And this ship was one of many, and before too long the Paradox was transferred to the mercenary force. We’d hunt pirates for profit, or sometimes we’d be the pirates, or fight in the numerous little wars that pop up between all the little one or two-system empires. Lots of bounty hunting. We had turnover, and casualties…and within another couple years I was actually the captain.”

  “I watched you work on the Dawn,” Adelia noted. “Everyone spoke highly of you. I always expected you to rise through the ranks.”

  He grinned at the compliment. It felt odd. Captain Reynolds would often call him clever, though in his own quiet, reserved way, but nearly everyone else talked about him negatively behind his back. “I still don’t know how it happened. I figured I’d end up being the Chief Engineer somewhere, but not in overall command of…well, anything. I had no command experience, but I guess I had a fresh outlook on everything.

  “Over the next couple years, I got more and more involved in this group, and the next thing you know, I was a Senior Captain regularly leading task forces of three or four starships at a time. By that point I rarely did basic merchant work and was almost completely on the mercenary side of the organization.

  “And then the leader of the organization died, of a heart attack of all things. Commodore Kruse. And there was no one in the org chart between him and the Captains, so one of the other Captains took over. It didn’t go well. He made bad business decisions, we lost a few ships, and everyone lost confidence in him. The rest of the Captains forced him out, and they nominated me as the new leader.” He laughed as he remembered that era. It had been a total deer-in-the-headlights moment for him. “I had managed to stay out of all the political infighting, and I guess I was the only one who hadn’t royally pissed off everyone.

  “So I became the new Commodore. I got things whipped back into shape pretty quickly, and then did some massive reorganization once everyone settled into the new routine. I promoted myself to Admiral, promoted some Senior Captains to Commodore, created new fleets…I split off the merc stuff from the smuggling from the legal shipping and set up a bunch of outside corporations to manage it all. Very few people know the links. Actually, most of the organization is legal shipping now. There were some mergers, and acquisitions, and so forth…I think I actually own something like twelve percent of the galactic shipping industry.

  “So I got the shipping side running smoothly, and then I’ve focused on the merc branch ever since. And the shipping side of things has made me enough money that I can hire some of the best soldiers, pilots, and mercenaries in the galaxy. Now, the main purpose of my force is now the search for Earth.”

  “I never would have imagined this,” Adelia said. “You were so…shy. I knew you loved working on starships, but I could tell you weren’t that good with people. You’ve changed. A lot.” Deep inside, he hated change, so he almost took offense but then realized she meant it as a compliment. She meant he’d matured.

  “Yeah. A lot has happened. We still do some combat mercenary work, but I’ve actually turned more towards intelligence these past few years. Espionage, infiltration, keeping an eye on the big empires…that kind of stuff, as well as courier work. And all that mostly as a front to gather information and see if I can churn up anything about Earth. And it’s also much safer, we don’t get shot at quite as often.”

  “Are we on the Paradox? How many ships do you have?”

  He frowned, realizing his organization was now too large and diverse for him to easily recall statistics like that. “I actually don’t know how many ships I have. I have six different fleets, but they’re managed by my Commodores and I don’t pay too much attention to the details these days as long as they get things done. I do still have the Paradox, but it’s assigned to Red Fleet, my largest fleet which is currently on a long-term contract helping the Betellian Republic out in a nasty three-sided war almost two-thousand light-years away.

  “We’re on the Caracal. It’s a much smaller ship, but also one of my fastest, and serves as the flagship of Blue Fleet. Blue Fleet mostly guards our Headquarters but I also use it for my own personal missions.”

  “Like finding me.”

  Thad nodded. “Exactly.”

  ***

  The Lunar Dawn had been a luxurious cruise liner with lots to see. It had had grand lobbies, fancy restaurants, theaters and vast entertainment complexes, ballrooms, casinos, and more. The Caracal, by comparison, was extremely cramped and spartan, with very little beyond what was absolutely required for it to be a functional warship. Instead of large, ornate, roomy passages and lobbies, it had tight, noisy, bare metal corridors surrounded in exposed piping and conduits. The bulkheads which sectioned the ship into separate airtight compartments had dangerous hatchways which could easily give a person a concussion if they forgot to duck while stepping through. And even the frigate’s comparatively spacious Command Center would have been nothing more than a comfortably-sized bathroom in one of the Dawn’s most expensive VIP suites.

  They meandered almost aimlessly through the ship. In theory he was giving Adelia a tour, but she really wasn’t that interested in the ship’s features or operation and just wanted to stretch her legs and make small talk. He had to fight the urge to make technical explanations on the reactor and hyperdrive as they passed through the engineering sections. He used to thrive on that information. But she was a people person, not an engineer, and tech specs didn’t interest her in the slightest.

  He kept her away from the badly-damaged port sections. She had already been through a lot and he wasn’t ready to break her newfound peace with knowledge of the challenges they still faced on their return home.

  “Everything seems so empty,�
�� she noted. “Like there’s hardly anyone on board.”

  “It was designed for a crew of about six hundred,” Thaddeus explained. “But we run very light on crew. Some systems were stripped out, lots of the crew do multiple jobs, and instead of three watches we run only two. The night shift is really thin, so we try to avoid any action during the night watch and they just wake up the day watch if something happens. All that said, I think the Caracal runs about two hundred or two-fifty crew most of the time. Sometimes with a platoon of Marines aboard, like right now.”

  They continued towards the aft end of the ship. Its layout was not terribly intuitive. They had to pass through many operational areas just to get from place to place. Proper corridors were rare, since the ship’s design emphasized combat and systems performance over niceties like corridors and an orderly floor plan.

  He stepped over a hastily-laid optical databus bundle which stretched across the deck, a temporary repair to bring systems back online until proper repairs could be made back at Headquarters. He entered an unused bunkroom, on his way to the aft lounge which had been his own little hiding place for much of the trip to Waverly.

  The foremost section of the ship was gone, completely blown away by the oversized railguns of Waverly Depot’s Uhlan defense squadron. The loss of the main navigation bridge meant that the aft lounge now had the best view of outer space. And he knew she’d appreciate that. Everyone he’d ever met who’d sought a career in space could lose themselves in a nice view of the stars. It touched some deep part within their hearts, the parts that loved adventure and exploration and going out into the relative unknown, leaving behind the boring comfort of mundane civilization and seeing the vast wonders of the universe.

  As he reached the aft end of the bunkroom, he realized he only heard his own footsteps. He stopped and turned around.

  Adelia was still outside the bunkroom. She was facing the wall and leaning against a large conduit hanging horizontally at about chest height, with her shoulders slumped and her head hung low. He frowned and started back. “Adelia?” As he approached, he saw that her shoulders trembled and she was quietly weeping. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m—I’m tired,” she said between sobs, sounding entirely unconvincing.

  Thad stepped behind her and put a hand on her shoulder, giving it a light squeeze. She was more than tired. But the silence dragged on, as if she was afraid to talk about it. She continued to lean against the conduit and weep, and he kept his hand on her shoulder. Finally, after a few long, awkward minutes, she spoke again. “I was in a bunkroom just like that once,” she uttered in a weak half-whisper. “An officer threw me in and told the men I was their entertainment for the weekend.” She suddenly shuddered and her crying escalated.

  Thad felt his whole body grow cold. He stood very still, feeling a fierce anger build within him, and gave her shoulder another squeeze. Her weeping intensified, and then she was openly and loudly sobbing. She suddenly turned around and pulled herself into him. Surprised, he wrapped his arms around her as she cried into his shoulder. “Thad…I just wanted to die…”

  They stood like that for a few minutes. Thaddeus didn’t know what do to or what to say. He continued to hold her. She cried for a few more minutes, then her weeping slowly subsided. “Thad,” she whispered. “Thanks for saving me.” He thought he should feel some kind of warm emotional response to her gratitude, but deep inside all he felt was overwhelming rage and an intense desire for vengeance. If he could find out what starship that had happened on, he would order Commodore Cooper to track it down and have it destroyed. Mercilessly and violently.

  Chapter 15

  His entire body had become even more sore from his raid on the Cassandra, and his head pounded from his recent poor choices in hydration.

  He wasn’t sure where he was, either. He could barely move to look around, and could barely even see, as if there was something wrong with his senses. The sound of some screaming emanated from somewhere to his left, and Thaddeus slowly turned his head as best as he could. Over there, he saw Adelia in a bunkroom. Her bloodcurdling shrieks pierced his eardrums like an ice pick while the men who surrounded her held her down and began tearing at her clothes. She struggled and squirmed, but she didn’t have the strength to escape.

  Thaddeus tried to run towards her, to intervene and stop the attack, but he felt like he was encased in molasses. His legs refused to move, he couldn’t balance and seemingly had no strength. Then he tried to shout, to demand that they stop and leave her alone, but his shout came out as a low, muffled, wordless moan. He reached to his side and found nothing, and wordlessly cursed himself for rarely carrying a sidearm.

  Suddenly, a new set of shouts joined the confusion, emanating from somewhere behind him and quickly overpowering Adelia’s terrified screams. He turned, though it was difficult and exhausting to do so, and then he saw three small warships of different models landed on the ground. He recognized them as the Blue Fleet corvettes Owl, Shrike, and Panther. In front of them was a squad of armed, faceless soldiers, standing in the open with laser carbines at the ready. Beside them were three Blue Fleet captains on their knees, bound and gagged and unable to move. They silently—and accusingly—stared at Thad across the shapeless void between them.

  Other men were dragging the crew out of the corvettes, forcing them to their knees in front of the firing squad who then dispatched them with cold, uncaring efficiency as the nearby corvette captains were forced to watch. Thad watched in horror. His body was now completely frozen in place, his muscles disobeying every attempt he made to do something—anything!—to stop the executions. The pile of dead crewmen grew five at a time until the entire crews of all three warships lay in one massive, smoking heap.

  Then he noticed something between himself and the warships, some kind of motion. It looked like a rolling, boiling sea. He squinted, trying to focus on whatever it was, and over the next several seconds he came to the realization that it was a sea of bodies. No, not bodies. They were alive. Hundreds of them. The image became clearer, resolving into a cargo hold full of slaves. They were beaten, battered, broken, completely defeated and given up on life. But now they writhed in sheer terror, and he soon realized they were suffocating. They flailed and spasmed, gasping desperately for air but finding none, making the motions of screaming but producing no sound. One by one they dropped, falling into a pile of twitching bodies. And after a couple minutes, none of them moved anymore.

  I did that to them. This is all my fault. I purged the Cassandra’s atmosphere so we could reach the Marine transports and escape without cycling through the airlock, and I killed them all.

  He looked away, trying to shake away the sudden, overwhelming sense of guilt that now gnawed on his insides like a massive, hungry parasite trying to devour its host. And other murky, grayscale images floated in the darkness around him. Corpsman depositing bodies into a starship morgue, while murmuring something about a pointless search for Earth. A fireball erupting from a government building on some no-name planet, billowing into the skies while nearby pedestrians ran away in confusion and terror, and a smiling man—He looks like me—accepting a credit transfer and a datachip with information about a secret convoy rumored to be carrying artifacts from Earth. A city on fire, destroyed by falling wreckage after one of his fleets above engaged and destroyed another fleet in low orbit. The city surrounded him now, and as he walked the streets he saw the charred remains of the citizens trapped inside their homes as deadly pieces of starship debris fell from the skies like meteorites, each one turning buildings and parks and streets and people into smoking craters.

  But he realized someone was holding his hand. He looked to his side, and there was Adelia, walking through the carnage beside him. She looked up at him and smiled, seemingly oblivious to the ongoing destruction that surrounded them—destruction caused by Thad’s own forces, as one of his fleets fulfilled a contract to wipe out a neighboring system’s fleet, earning a large sum of credits he could use to fu
nd his continuing search for Earth.

  Then, he saw a spaceport set in grassy plains and hills, and his heart started racing. He recognized it. It was Wyoming—Earth! He picked up his pace and tried to leave the burning city behind, but then he heard a voice. He turned back to the city and saw a young boy approaching. The boy was dirty and disheveled, and his clothing was covered in soot and blood. “Why?” he was asking.

  “Why what?” Thad asked back, feeling greatly annoyed that this kid was slowing him down. Earth was right there! Right behind him now!

  “You burned down my home. To help you find your home.”

  He started to respond, preparing to go into the intricate politics that had led to the situation, gathering his thoughts to explain how the boy’s government was harassing their neighbors and one of their neighbors had paid him to put an end to it, but could a boy that young—six, maybe seven?—understand that?

  “It’s not fair!” the boy announced.

  “Life is never fair,” Thad replied, suddenly aware of the breeze blowing into his face, bringing to him the strong scents of hot smoke and molten asphalt and burning flesh that rose from the wreckage. Then he realized he had a tumbler in his hand. He drank its contents, and with each swallow it seemed like the burning city around him somehow dimmed and blurred, becoming less distinct, less real…less important.

  He turned again, so he was now facing that image from his youth. The place he’d stood and watched so many years ago as a kid, yearning to go inside and learn the wonders of space travel. The Wyoming starport was still there before him, and for a moment he thought he was a kid again as he watched a starship descend from orbit and land. But suddenly he recognized it as the cruise ship Lunar Dawn, and it confused him because it was not designed for atmospheric flight. He knew its specs well. Its thrusters were not powerful enough to overcome the Earth’s gravity if operated in air, so how could it possibly be landing here? But he shook the thought away and started walking towards it, longing to return to his old life and realizing it was finally only a few footsteps away.