by Zieja, Joe
“Surr! Surr!”
The bridge door had opened, admitting a very tired-looking Corporal Tunger, finally free of all his disguises and dressed in a proper Meridan uniform. He stumbled across the consoles and climbed up to the command dais, but before Rogers could say a word he started rambling.
“That Zergan guy is definitely one of them. I followed him the whole time and he talked to sandwiches a bunch and wanted to kill you from the moment he saw you and tried to sabotage the negotiations even before he knew Keffoule wanted to marry you.” Tunger sucked in a short, high-pitched breath. “He also tried to come into your room and stab you to death in your sleep,” he said, then paused. “I didn’t think that was very fancy. Trying to poison your drinks was clever, I guess, but he was using such a simple poison that the antidote was easy to drop in. It made your drinks all fizzy, but, hey, it didn’t kill you, right?”
The bridge had quieted, all the personnel looking at Tunger the way one would look at . . . well, a zookeeper who had somehow realized—quite competently, actually—his dream of being a spy.
“And that’s why I can’t be a spy,” Tunger said, his face red, breathing like he’d just run a mile.
Rogers stopped, frowning. “Wait. You saved my life three times and managed to hang out on a Thelicosan ship without being discovered. Why can’t you be a spy?”
Tunger shook his head. “I can’t keep a secret,” he said. “I’ve told that story to everyone I’ve seen for the last two hours. It’s so exciting!”
Rogers blinked, then shook his head. “Alright,” he said. “Well, thanks for saving my life. I owe you one.”
“Three,” someone said.
“Three.” Rogers accepted the correction. “I wanted to know if you had heard anything else about this Jupiter thing. If we’re going to send a report to headquarters, it would be nice to know where these people are or what they’re trying to do. Quinn said there were other things in motion. Do you have any idea what they are?”
“No, sir,” Tunger said, regaining some of his composure. “At first I wanted to, you know, infiltrate their ranks, get promoted to deputy, and sabotage the ship, and all that. But I found out that was hard. And there was that guy trying to kill you all the time. So I got kind of busy.”
Rogers nodded gravely. “I see. Well, I’ll have to ask—”
“Sir! Sir!”
Rogers turned to see one of the bridge technicians who was sitting at a station he didn’t recognize jumping up and down, shouting at him. Rogers squinted—some of the consoles had little signs on them to designate what the station was—and found that it was the internal security monitor. He didn’t get a good feeling when the internal security monitor was shouting at him and looking panicked.
“What?” Rogers said. “And can we all agree to stop saying ‘sir’ twice in a row when you’re panicking?”
“There have been several reports of commotion going on on the lower decks of the ship,” the technician said. “People are . . .” He paused for a moment, then leaned over his terminal and spoke slowly, as if he didn’t understand the significance of the words he was saying. “They’re being kicked in the face?”
Rogers felt all the blood drain from his face and try to make an escape through his bladder.
“No,” he said. “That’s not possible. That’s crazy. There’s no way she’s here.”
The bridge door opened, and a Meridan troop came stumbling in, blood running down the side of his cheek.
“She’s . . . she’s . . .” he said as he collapsed.
“Crazy,” Rogers finished for him.
“I,” Keffoule said, standing in the doorway looking as though she hadn’t expended any effort at all in brutalizing everyone between the hangar and the bridge, “am absolutely not crazy in any way.” She locked eyes with Rogers. “But you will marry me now.”
* * *
Quinn’s pulse was beyond monitoring. Her hair bun had almost come completely unraveled, her hair flying around her face as she sprinted through the halls of the Limiter. Gunfire was all around her. Almost all propriety had gone by the wayside. It was sheer, horrifying chaos.
And it was amazing.
Once she’d been discovered filling out the forms to try to get the jamming net lifted, everything had become a blur. Vilia had actually hit a guard. Well, it had been sort of an open-palmed flailing maneuver that had haphazardly landed on the man’s shoulder. It hadn’t done anything, but she thought it surprised him enough to give her time to get away. She had left her computer terminal unlocked, and she had taken a book from the ship library without checking it out. What had she become?
“There she is!” came a cry from behind her. She dove over a laundry cart and scrambled to her feet, scattering stacks of misfiled papers behind her as she sprinted away again. The small contingent of security troops following her cried out in terror/agony as they slipped, becoming a pile of bodies on the floor.
“If you had filled them out properly I wouldn’t have had them to throw!” she cried as she turned the corner.
“Attention,” Zergan’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “Attention. The Meridan commander has slain our Grand Marshal and taken the body back with him as a trophy. All previous orders of cease-fire have been rescinded. All personnel are to move immediately to battle stations in preparation for a full assault on the Meridan fleet.”
Vilia cursed. He’d been playing that message nonstop for the last half hour, likely finally having gotten to the bridge and reviewed the security feeds. It was also the reason why he’d authorized everyone with a gun on the ship to shoot her on sight, hastily explaining that she was a traitor who had allowed this to happen. It really hadn’t helped that the first group of security had caught her trying to break into Keffoule’s terminal to try to kill the jamming net.
“Fire!” someone shouted as Vilia rounded the corner and came face-to-face with a security detail.
“Kepler’s rotating balls,” she hissed, not really knowing where that had come from, or what it meant, and turned on her heel. Politics was not supposed to be this hard! Now she had to leapfrog to as many terminals as she could and dismantle the jamming network piece by piece. The IT department was going to be so confused with all the formal requests she was going to submit to them, but perhaps that would help.
She really hoped Rogers had a handle on things back on the Flagship, or she was allowing her hair bun to unravel for nothing.
* * *
Keffoule seemed to have departed slightly from her previous promises of nonviolence, and had knocked over nearly everyone on the bridge in order to firmly wrap one of her hands around Rogers’ neck. It hadn’t made her very happy to have to chase him several times around the perimeter of the bridge, either.
“You’re really not making a case for sanity,” Rogers said, air squeaking out of his throat. “How did you even get on the ship?”
“I followed you,” Keffoule said. “It is a perfectly natural response to chase the object of your affection. This is true even in Merida, is it not?”
“Well,” Rogers said, “yeah, I guess, but ‘chase’ is usually figurative . . .”
“Therefore what I have done is extremely romantic, is it not?”
“I suppose in some respects—”
“Therefore you are obligated to return my romantic intention, are you not?”
Rogers paused. “No. Definitely not.”
Keffoule frowned, loosening her grip on Rogers’ throat. “I see. Maybe I don’t understand men as much as I thought I did.”
Rogers took advantage of the newfound joint freedom to shake his head. “No, I don’t believe you do.” Gently, he reached up and pulled her hand away, looking her in the eye as he spoke softly.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” he said. “It looks like your pal Zergan is pushing the whole Thelicosan fleet into battle positions. He probably thinks I kidnapped you.”
“I will tell him to stop.”
“How?”
Rogers said. “You jammed everything in the sector and our space semaphore guy is still napping from the last time we overworked him. Unless you’ve got homing pigeons that can survive in a vacuum, this ship will go down—and you with it—before you can get a message to him.”
Keffoule retreated a bit, folding her arms. She looked uncomfortable, if still very stoic in that I’m-going-to-get-what-I-want kind of stance.
“And it doesn’t matter anyway,” Rogers said. “Zergan is working against you. Remember that person who was trying to kill me? Yeah. It was him. He’s trying to push our systems into war. Oh, and by the way: he’s also from Jupiter.”
“How do you know all this?” Keffoule asked. She clearly looked like she didn’t believe a word he was saying.
“Quinn,” Rogers began, and then immediately regretted it.
“Quinn,” Keffoule said, her whole body tensing. “That bumbling fool is worse than a bureaucratic lapdog. She’s been trying to undermine me since the moment she set foot on my ship.”
“You’ve got her wrong,” Rogers said. “It’s actually quite the opposite. If you’d only listen—”
“I don’t have to listen to you,” Keffoule said, sneering.
“Sir!”
Rogers looked past Keffoule, who also turned around, to see the communications tech standing up and putting one hand over an ear.
“The jamming net’s pattern is changing,” she said. “More of the short-range channels are opening up, but we still can’t get word back to headquarters. You can communicate directly with the Limiter if you’d like.”
Keffoule grinned triumphantly. “See? He’s opened the channels, probably to deliver an ultimatum. If you patch me through, I can tell him to stand down.”
“Open a channel and hail the Limiter,” Rogers said, and the communications tech went to work. A dial tone silenced the bridge, and all eyes turned to the main screen.
“Just put it on!” came a voice from the other side of the channel. Zergan. “And put the electronic warfare squadron on alert.”
“Who is this?” Zergan demanded. The picture on the screen wasn’t very well formed; it was still being interrupted and somewhat scrambled, but the voice was clear.
“Edris,” said Keffoule, who had worked her way through the bridge with Rogers until she stood next to him on the command dais. “It’s me.”
Silence.
“Route this to my private terminal immediately,” Zergan said.
The sound shifted, they heard a click, and then Zergan’s voice was much softer and closer to the microphone.
“Alandra?” he said.
“Yes,” Keffoule answered. Rogers couldn’t help but notice the affection in both their tones as they used each other’s first names. “I am alive.”
Silence, again. Something about this made Rogers very uncomfortable. A Jupiterian!
“That is very unfortunate,” Zergan said. “Very unfortunate indeed.”
Keffoule stood for a moment, stunned, as she gaped at the static-filled viewscreen. Even though Rogers knew that Zergan was some kind of traitor, he still felt a little secondary shock. This was more than being a simple turncoat. Rogers could tell by the look on Keffoule’s face that this was like being stabbed in the back by your best friend. Who was running off with your wife. After giving you a wedgie.
“What are you saying?” Keffoule whispered.
Zergan paused a moment and barked some orders, all of which were unintelligible.
“I wanted to recruit you,” Zergan said. “In fact, I was going to. But I never had the chance; you were too busy losing your mind over that idiot Meridan.”
“Hey,” Rogers said.
“Hey,” Tunger said.
“Not you,” Rogers said. “Me.”
“I followed you all over the galaxy,” Zergan continued. “I turned down the biggest promotion of my career so I could take care of you after they stuck you on the edge of the system. And what do I get for it? A kick in the face and a backseat to your dreams of restoring your glory.” He sighed, which seemed very uncharacteristic of the hardened military man. “And now it’s too late. We have bigger plans, bigger than you and me. And now that they’re in motion . . . I’m sorry. I can’t fix this for you, this time. No one cared about the collateral damage when Jupiter fell, and we won’t care now as Jupiter rises again.”
“You really are a Jupiterian,” Keffoule said. “Quinn was right.”
“If I find that woman . . .” Zergan growled, then regained his composure. “It doesn’t matter. This will be all over soon. My family and I have waited for this for centuries, and I won’t let you, or her, stand in the way. Goodbye, Alandra.”
The line went dead, leaving a stunned Keffoule standing on the command dais and staring at the blank viewscreen. Her mouth moved a few times without making any noise, and her right foot appeared to be twitching. If she kicked the viewscreen, Rogers was going to have her sedated and put in the brig.
Before he could dive over the railing to save himself from what was most certainly about to be a psychological breakdown involving lots of face-kicking, Deet made a noise.
“Rogers,” Deet said. “Since some of the network has opened up, I have combined files from Quinn’s transmission with some research to deduce three pieces of information for you that you may find relevant. First, Zergan’s primary employer before the military was the Snaggardir corporation.”
“Him and thousands of other starving high school graduates working in convenience stores,” Rogers said. “So what?”
“Second,” Deet said, “Zergan mentioned his family. He has blood ties to the founders of the Snaggardir corporation.”
“So he got a job from an uncle. Great. Keep telling me more about Zergan’s résumé while I try to figure out how to wage a space battle.”
“Third,” Deet continued, “have you ever studied Greek and Roman mythology?”
“No,” Rogers said. “Why?”
“Because I was able to trace the origins of Zeus Holdings, Inc. They’re a subsidiary company of Snaggardir’s. And Zeus had another name in the Roman pantheon. Jupiter.”
A pregnant silence enveloped the bridge as the gravity of all that sank in. Rogers, not liking pregnant silences very much, decided to combine profanity and stating the obvious instead.
“Snaggardir’s,” he whispered. “Oh shit. They are . . . the whole goddamn company . . . they’re Jupiter!”
A Pack of Cigarettes, A Lottery Ticket, and the Whole Galaxy, Please
“Put the whole ship on alert,” Rogers snapped. “This isn’t a negotiation anymore. Do we have comms with the other ships in the fleet yet?”
“Yes, sir,” the communications tech said. “We’ve started to receive all the status reports they’ve been sending since we were taken offline. All ships are in good condition except the Gadfly, the Storm, and the Raventooth, all of which are experiencing various systems failures.
“Raventooth?” Rogers said. “That’s an absurd name for a ship. Ravens don’t have teeth.”
He made the joke to hide his rising horror. He really had no idea what his inventory was. In fact, he’d never heard any of those ship names; he had no idea what they were, what they could do, or what capability had been lost because they weren’t ready to fight. Worse, he didn’t know how to find out without alerting everyone on the ship that he had no idea what he was doing.
“Sir,” Commander Rholos said, “they’re just cargo ships. I recommend moving them to a position where they can dash toward the Un-Space point if we’re able to open up a hole.”
Rogers blinked at her a few times, then nodded. That sounded like a good idea. Better than anything he’d come up with, anyway.
Your crew, he thought. They’re not all morons like you.
“Commander Zaz,” Rogers said, sitting down in his chair and grabbing the armrests tightly. “Put together a recommended battle plan to augment Rholos’ idea. We can’t beat them head-on, but I want you to focus on drawing their s
hips away from the Un-Space point so that we can make a staggered retreat.”
“Yes, sir,” Commander Zaz said, saluting sharply and beginning to talk very animatedly into his headset.
“Captain Rogers,” Keffoule said. She looked very pale.
“Later,” Rogers barked. “Commander Rholos, it’s your show. Work with Zaz on a strategy to minimize casualties.”
Rholos nodded and walked over to where Zaz was standing, pointing at his laminated sheet. The two of them looked like they had worked together for a long time, but Rogers could tell immediately that both were nervous and rusty. Hell, everyone was rusty; open warfare hadn’t been fought in two hundred years.
Rogers leaned over to Deet and whispered as softly as he could. “Do we have, like . . . a ship inventory or something like that?”
“You don’t know what you have in your fleet, do you?” Deet said, making no attempt to keep his voice quiet.
Rogers felt his face turn red. “It’s not that,” he said. “Of course I know how many ships I have in my fleet. It’s my fleet. I just want to, you know, confirm.”
“Right,” Deet said. “I’ll transfer a fleet roster to your datapad along with Sun Tzu’s book.”
“Wait,” Rogers said. “Sun Tzu? The ancient Chinese military strategist? How is that going to help me now?”
“Not the original Sun Tzu,” Deet said. “Sun Tzu Jr.”
“I don’t know how his son is any more modern.”
“It’s actually his great-great-to-the-tenth-power-grandson. His book is called The Art of War II: Now in Space.”
“Oh, right,” Roger said. He’d heard of it before—everyone in the military had heard of that book. “Commander Belgrave,” he said. “Promise me you actually know how to fly this ship.”
“I could have Flash do it if you don’t trust me,” Belgrave said.
“I retract my statement. The rest of you—if you’re not actively doing something, take a few minutes and try to focus. Get some food. Have a drink. Whatever you need to do, I want you back in your seats in twenty minutes ready to fight.”
