Rescue at Waverly

by T J Mott

  Coop laughed dismissively. “I did some digging through my records on him and found out he has a very messy personal life. There are some things that he’d rather not have made public. My price for continued silence was to release your ships.”

  “Nicely done,” Thad commended with a nod. “Nothing like a little blackmail to get things moving.”

  “He’ll still probably kill you on sight if you ever return to Waverly. But a few credits thrown his way might smooth things over once he calms down.”

  Captain Abano raised an eyebrow. “You’d blackmail him and bribe him at the same time? Talk about sending mixed signals.”

  He shrugged. “Hey, if it works, it works. I use every method available.” His expression turned serious and he looked towards Thad. “Next subject. My men are debriefing Adelia, and we have some preliminary reports.”

  Thad’s eyes opened wide in anticipation. “What does she know?”

  Coop sighed slowly and shook his head. “Unfortunately, not much. She does not remember much about her abduction or enslavement, so it probably happened under sedation. We’re gathering as much about names, places, and starships that she can remember since then, and we’ll cross-reference it with all of our other data, but it doesn’t look very promising right now.” Thad’s face drooped. “But, and get this, guys,” he said while glancing over at Abano and Covier with a playful grin. “She claims to be from Earth.” Cooper paused to shrug. “And I don’t really have any reason to disbelieve her. A lot of her general knowledge about Earth lines up well with Marcell’s. That can’t be coincidence. Especially since so little of it lines up with our pop-culture Earth legends.”

  Abano’s expression remained neutral. Covier looked like he was constipated. Thaddeus broke the silence. “Well, I’m glad to hear that. Maybe you guys will start to take me more seriously now.”

  Cooper nodded and almost looked embarrassed. “Your story has some corroboration now. Earth still exists, and someone is enslaving its people and bringing them here. We just don’t know who, where, or why.” He stood up and rubbed his hands together conspiratorially. “Gentlemen, I think we’re all caught up for the moment, and I have a highly-experimental hyperdrive that still needs to be reverse-engineered, so I’ll catch you later.”

  The office’s door chime buzzed, and a moment later Adelia stepped in and nearly collided with Cooper. She glanced at the few other officers in the room and started to back out. “Oh…sorry, I’ll come back later.”

  “No, actually we were just leaving. The Admiral is all yours.” Cooper gave Thaddeus a mock salute and a wink, and left the office, followed by Abano and Covier.

  Thaddeus stood. Adelia slowly stepped towards his desk. She looked like she didn’t want to be there, although she tried to maintain a passive, neutral expression. Things between them were definitely strained, but he forced himself to smile.

  “I’ll just be a minute,” she said. Her voice was serious, her expression completely deadpan. She stopped behind the chair Cooper had been sitting in and placed her hands on top of the backrest. “How are you, Thad?”

  “Making it,” he answered. “Lots on my mind, but I’m making it.”

  “Good,” she said, her voice barely carrying across the desk.

  “And you?” he asked. He’d hardly seen her since the Caracal’s destruction.

  She sighed. “Listen. I know we had some feelings for each other, but…” She struggled for the words, and a series of emotions flashed across her face in quick succession. “But I really need some space. You’re not who…You…” She paused and chewed her lower lip. Her eyes watered and wavered, and she turned her gaze to the desk’s surface rather than look him in the eye. “I don’t know you. And after all I’ve heard about you, I’m afraid of you.”

  Her words instantly crushed his mood, far outweighing the good cheer he’d felt at the news about Captain Reynolds and his three Blue Fleet corvettes. “I…” he said, but could not come up with any words to follow it with. He’d known something like this was coming. She’d been actively avoiding him. But that didn't make the moment hurt any less.

  “Thank you for rescuing me,” she continued. Her voice trembled and she still wouldn’t look him in the eye. “And thank you for helping me find a new life.” Then she left the office.

  Thaddeus sat down in his seat, slowly lowered his forehead down to the desk, and groaned.

  ***

  The senior officers present on Headquarters all occupied one of the conference rooms near his office as they discussed the future.

  “I have plenty of things to study,” Commodore Reynolds was saying. “There is much we can learn from that mission. I want my men to trial that double jump trick and see if we can find a solution to its effects on artificial gravity generators. A trick that allows observers to think a departing fleet is much larger than it really is could be really useful.”

  “Definitely,” Commodore Wilcox added cheerfully with a broad, self-important grin stretched across his face. “Please keep me informed of your progress.”

  “Of course. I also want to work on a new doctrine of fast travel. Our journey to Waverly was, frankly, reckless and unsafe, but I think with some training and procedure we can come up with something more bearable and less stressful on the crew if we ever have to travel like that again.”

  Commodore Reynolds was sharp, Thaddeus had no doubt of that. They had come up with some unorthodox off-the-cuff tactics during their mission, and the new Commodore of Blue Fleet was stepping into his new rule nicely by taking those tactics, studying them, and refining them into safer protocols. And Blue Fleet was the perfect fleet to work on that, since it sat idle most of the time while guarding a rogue asteroid whose exact location was known by less than a hundred people.

  “But my first task is to expand Blue Fleet. It’s our smallest fleet, but after the events of Waverly and Cadria I’d like our home fleet to have more firepower.”

  Thaddeus nodded. “Sounds good. I just made a bunch more enemies.” He waved towards the room’s window. “And I’d feel much better with more ships out there.”

  “And as part of that, I’d like to purchase a squadron of gunships. Between ten and twenty.”

  Wilcox scoffed. “Is your promotion already getting to your head, Commodore?” he prodded with mock melodrama. “What could Blue Fleet possibly need that many gunships for?”

  “I found that we have a very skilled gunship pilot in our midst,” he answered.

  “Oh, okay then,” Wilcox interrupted. “Twenty gunships it is. Make it thirty and he can have one for each day of the month!”

  Reynolds flashed a look at his annoying comrade. “Lieutenant Poulsen was raised by the Hyberian Raiders and has many skills and a unique history. I believe having her train and lead a new gunship unit would be very good for her, and for us. One based around elite tactics, and a reputation based on the overblown Hyberian legends. A spiritual successor to the Hyberian Raiders, if you will.”

  Thaddeus nodded again. “That sounds good, too. Do it. Anything else?” Reynolds shook his head.

  Commodore Cooper spoke next. “Well, since you’ve imprisoned—I mean temporarily assigned me to lead this boring rock for a while, besides pushing your paperwork—I mean faithfully executing your duties, I want to investigate the X-11 further. We know it works, we know it works very well, but now I want to know why it works. See if we can get a good peek at the insides. It would be very useful if we can reverse-engineer it and retrofit a few of our ships. Meanwhile I’ll continue searching for Earth, and try to find out what the hell is going on over at Norma.”

  “That sounds good, too.”

  “As for me, I’m going to take Yellow Fleet up to the edges of the Norma Empire,” Wilcox said. “Maybe I can learn something, and maybe there are some good contracts to be had while I’m up there.”

  Thaddeus nodded. “Thanks, guys. I’ll be back. Just maintain the status quo for a while, try not to rock the boat. Try to let the galaxy forget
about us for a bit. That shouldn’t be too hard with everything going on at Norma.”

  Thaddeus turned to leave but Reynolds stopped him with a question. “Will you be leaving Headquarters soon?”

  Thaddeus nodded. “I have one more thing to do, and then I’ll be on my way.”

  ***

  Thaddeus stepped up the door and prepared to knock, but as he held his hand up, he hesitated and slowly drew a breath. Part of him—maybe even most of him—wanted to leave without saying goodbye. Seeing her again would just stir up fresh feelings, and he didn’t want to deal with that.

  He shook his head and finally knocked. It was nearly a minute before the door opened. “Sorry to bother you,” he said. “Just give me a minute and I’ll be on my way.”

  Adelia stood just inside, frowning. She nodded lightly after a moment and stepped aside to allow him in. She glanced down at his new prosthetic arm as he stepped in. It was not lifelike at all, very skeletal-looking, made of matte black metal. “They had better hands than that on Earth,” she remarked dryly. “Ones that look human.”

  He raised his new hand up and flexed the skeletal fingers in front of his face. “Yeah. It’s good enough for now, I suppose.” He dropped it back to his side. “Adelia, I’ve been thinking a lot lately. About what you said, about what we’ve been through. About the things I’ve done. And…you’re right.”

  “Saying that I’m right is not going to fix things between us,” she said coldly.

  He held his hands up in defense, shook his head, and sighed. She’s still mad. Can’t say I blame her, but I wish she wouldn’t be on edge like that. “No, that’s not why I’m here, not at all,” he said tiredly. “I’m actually here to say goodbye. I’m leaving Headquarters for a while.”

  He paused to gather his thoughts and licked his lips before continuing. “I’m not the man I used to be. And what really bugs me, is I didn’t really see it when it happened. I can’t point to a single moment and say ‘That’s it. That’s when I changed.’ It was so slow, smooth, over the years. I justified it all by saying the galaxy is a cruel place and Earth is not prepared to defend itself from what’s out here. I was just equipping myself to defend Earth once I found it.”

  He stopped again, looked down at his feet, and pinched the bridge of his nose with his organic hand. “But I was lying to myself. And I didn’t really realize how far I’d fallen until at the casino. On some subconscious level, I knew, but it wasn’t quite in my awareness. Now it is. And now there’s just a lot of things I don’t understand anymore. I feel off-balance, with everything. I need to get out, get away from here for a while. Figure some things out and do some soul-searching.”

  She stood perfectly still and watched him blankly.

  “My men will take good care of you, Adelia. Whatever you want or need, they’ll take care of it. And once Gray Fleet has finished debriefing you, you’re free to leave too, if you want. If you’re gone when I return…I’ll understand.”

  She didn’t respond at all, and the silence quickly became awkward. He forced a tight smile, and then he left.

  He walked a few meters down the hallway, took a corner, and stopped to think, although it didn’t do him any good. He was in pain. Disorganized pain—both physical and emotional—and it seemed to attack him from every angle. He didn’t know how to deflect it. He had to get away from it all.

  As he considered everything that had just happened, he wondered what he’d actually accomplished on his trip to Waverly. He’d lost his flagship and most of its crew was unaccounted for. He’d made more enemies, of Waverly and Cadria Minor, and of the bidders for his life who now were even angrier that he’d escaped his fate at their hands. He’d suffered his first mutiny attempt. He’d nearly died, multiple times. He’d lost a limb. And he’d done it all for a beautiful woman—who herself had nearly died and then nearly been sent to a fate worse than death at the hands of High Prince Saar—from his past life on Earth who now wanted nothing to do with him, leaving him heartbroken.

  And he was perhaps no closer to finding Earth. Though at least some of his officers believed his story now.

  He continued on, and slowly made his way across the sprawling Headquarters facility, lost in aimless thought and wishing things made more sense. He reached one of the asteroid’s hangars, boarded one of his organization’s long-range transports, plotted a course away, and then jumped into hyperspace, hoping his destination would help bring things into perspective for him.

  Rebellion at Ailon

  Here is an excerpt from Rebellion at Ailon, Book 2 of the Thaddeus Marcell Chronicles.

  Ailon is a low-population world in the Independent Regions, not far from the Empire’s southern border. Once a former colony of the nearby Avennia system, Ailon lost its war of independence several years ago after Admiral Thaddeus Marcell pirated a convoy of badly-needed weapons and matériel that was en-route to the rebels of Ailon. Now, it’s an oppressed and enslaved world, its population forced to work under deadly conditions for their Avennian overlords.

  Thaddeus, still reeling from the wounds he sustained at Cadria Minor during his disastrous mission to Waverly, travels undercover to Ailon to see the fruits of his own evils firsthand. There, he volunteers for an organization that ostensibly works to provide medical care to the enslaved population, only to discover a brand-new secret rebellion, one that’s poised to start another war to try to free their world. But this new rebellion is naive, ill-equipped, and poorly-trained, sure to lose any battle they begin. Thaddeus, struggling with his new-found sense of guilt, must face a difficult and dangerous choice: Does he get involved and try to set things right? And how can he keep his true identity a secret? Because if the new Ailon Rebels discover who he is, they just might choose to kill him…

  Prologue

  The transport clunked loudly, almost violently, as its hyperdrive disengaged and kicked the vessel out of hyperspace. It shuddered side-to-side several times as it re-stabilized in normal space, indicating that perhaps its artificial gravity system was in dire need of a tuneup, and then its motion smoothed out. The sounds of whirring gears and buzzing servos filled the cabin. Outside the windows, radiator panels began to extend away from the ship’s body. They glowed a pale red-orange light as they bled off the heat accumulated during the jump from a nearby star system.

  “This is your captain speaking. We’ve exited hyperspace above Ailon and will be re-entering soon. Please stay in your seats with your seatbelts fastened until we have landed at the starport.”

  The passengers were uncomfortable, but they complied and resisted the urge to move around the cabin. The vessel was a short-range transport, packed full of rows of cramped seats like a bus, with no concern for amenities or comfort. Without cabins or sleeping quarters or showers, or even privacy, such transports rarely traveled more than about ten hours.

  This one had taken fourteen to make its flight.

  A planet was now visible through the windows, slowly growing larger as the transport approached. It looked like a fairly typical terraformed rocky planet, although it was on the dry side. Less than a quarter of the near side was covered in water, leaving it with one sprawling, interconnected landmass that formed a single contiguous continent on at least that hemisphere. And though there were sporadic patches of green foliage, the land’s color trended towards a dusty, pale yellow-green-tan color, except for the polar regions which were locked up in snow and ice.

  The transport continued to approach, and now tall, snow-capped mountain ranges were visible. Some of the peaks almost seemed to stretch into space. A line of thunderstorms hugged one side of the range. Otherwise, there were not many clouds in the atmosphere, at least not today.

  The planet now nearly consumed the view. Once again, servos kicked into action. Outside, the radiator panels shifted, reorienting themselves to be parallel to the transport’s direction of travel. They clicked into place, closely spaced to each other in an arrangement that was highly inefficient in the vacuum of space, but well-su
ited to atmospheric conditions.

  The servos shut down and a new sound appeared before the cabin could fall into silence. It grew louder, turning into a blend between an intense roar and a medium-pitched whistling. The transport’s braking thrusters had engaged, slowing it down so it could enter the planet’s atmosphere without causing dangerous compressive heating or shearing off the radiators as the air thickened around them. But inside, nobody could feel the deceleration. The artificial gravity systems compensated for that, keeping the passengers at a constant, comfortable one-G force in the expected direction.

  Several seconds later, a new whistling sound appeared. This was the sound of the radiators cutting through the planet’s upper atmosphere, resonating as the panels vibrated like reeds in the wind. The radiators’ dull red glow soon faded away as the cold air quickly stripped away their heat.

  The transport continued to descend and slow down. Twenty minutes later, it hovered into place and touched down at a port in Orent, the planet’s largest city. A skybridge rolled into place and mated with the transport. The hundred-some passengers began to disembark, eager to finally stand up, stretch their legs, and move around.

  One man grabbed his small carry-on luggage from the overhead bins and followed the weary passengers out. Disembarking, as always, took twice as long as it should have. Then he entered the starport and waited in line at the customs checkpoint, handing over his ID card when asked. “Chad Messier,” the customs officer said while looking him over and comparing him to the ID’s picture. “And what is your business on Ailon?”

  “Relief work.”

  “Hmm.” The customs officer frowned. “Do you have a voucher from the Ailon Relief Foundation?” The man then handed over a sheet of paper containing his voucher, which the officer studied intently. Then he laser-scanned the ID and the letter. “Everything checks out, Mr. Messier. Welcome to Ailon.” He handed everything back to the man, who exited the checkpoint and continued into the starport.