The False Admiral

by Sean Danker

  Now that we were here, we weren’t feeling very safe.

  14

  ON the way to the bridge we saw more of the same general disorder that characterized the ship’s corridors and common areas. There were some stains that had to be blood, but not enough of it to account for even a fraction of the crew.

  There was more evidence of weapons fire, and more structural damage—though the parts of the ship that were seriously compromised were sealed off completely to preserve atmosphere.

  We saw more of the inexplicable burns and corrosion. Through a window into a sealed area, I could see damage that looked as if the colonists had literally torn the walls open.

  There were no bodies, but there were occasional indicators of how suddenly the trouble must have struck. Objects thrown aside, hatches left open, and even a frozen, half-eaten calorie bar lying on the deck.

  The shields over emergency alarms were smashed everywhere. This was the colony’s science vessel, and according to Deilani, the ship’s infirmary had seen some use.

  The trainees were distracted from the possible danger by the fact that they were strolling through an enemy ship as though they owned it. Even with the cease-fire in place, no one was going to just forget about the war. Even if the Empress’ peace talks went as well as they possibly could, there would still be bad blood for a very long time. For the talks, the stakes were high.

  There was more to worry about than just preventing the war from flaring up again here and now—there was also the danger that we’d just have another one in ten years when encroachment into Free Trade space became an issue again.

  It wouldn’t be enough to call off hostilities. Relations had to actually heal.

  And that wouldn’t be easy. I could see the trainees’ prejudices, and it went without saying that they were mirrored by their counterparts, young people entering the assorted branches of the Commonwealth armed forces.

  The Commonwealth was not happy, and neither was the Empire. The Empress had a big job ahead of her.

  What surprised the trainees most was how things weren’t that different from what they were used to. The colony ship wasn’t as pretty as an Evagardian vessel, but it wasn’t as much of a step down as they expected.

  Cash-strapped Ganrae had never been able to do much about imperial propaganda during the war. Now the trainees were seeing firsthand that maybe reports about the primitive Ganraen way of life might have been exaggerated.

  The bridge was on the uppermost deck. It was smaller than an Evagardian bridge, but it had all the same action stations, even if they were in different places. The chairs were empty, but the screens were glowing.

  “Ensign, get on the com. Open up a channel to the other ships.”

  “Where are they?”

  “They can’t be far.” I went to the viewport and switched it on. There was nothing but green mist. The valley was full of it. I hadn’t seen any mist inside the ship, though it had been essentially sitting open. Perhaps without the light of the green star, the mist was colorless, and less noticeable.

  “Admiral, I’m not familiar with these systems.”

  “None of us are, Ensign.”

  “I mean I’m not a bridge officer, sir.”

  “And I am?” I shot back. Deilani gave me an arch look. “Honorary title,” I reminded her. “Just figure it out, Ensign.” The withdrawal was starting to get the best of me. I caught myself irritably reaching up to brush back my hair again. I gave my hand a little shake and folded my arms.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “There’s no hurry now.”

  “Right.” He cleared his throat. “Uh—attention, Ganraen colonists? This is Evagardian imperial personnel aboard your science vessel. We’re not here in a hostile capacity. Uh, we’d like to talk to you. Please respond.” He took his hand off the screen and waited. There was nothing.

  “Did you send?”

  “I was sending. Everybody on this rock should’ve heard it. Provided our array’s up, and it’s all green, which it is.” He leaned over, keyed a second time, and repeated himself. No reply.

  “Find us a red line and put us through to somebody directly,” I said, feeling my heart sink.

  “I can go straight through to the executive ship. It’s an emergency code, though. They might not like that.”

  “It’ll be the least of their worries. If an empty ship isn’t an emergency, I don’t know what is,” I told him. “Do it.”

  Nils did something, and the screen resolved itself into the image of a bridge not too different from the one we were standing on. The Ganraen Royal crest was clear on the bulkhead behind the empty command chair.

  There was no one there.

  “Is that live?” Deilani asked.

  “It ought to be,” I said.

  “But even the Ganraens keep . . . Hey, we’ve got charts,” Nils said, tapping keys. He’d been about to say that even the Ganraens always kept someone on the command bridge. The practice was more or less universal. Obviously there was no one, a fairly damning indication that things were every bit as bad as they looked.

  “Put them up,” I said.

  He did so. We all moved closer to the large screen. “Then that’s the executive ship, about two kilometers north of us. Well, it’s not north—no, I don’t care. It’s north if I say it is. And there are the other two—what are they doing over there?” Nils pointed.

  “Shouldn’t they be closer together?” I asked.

  “Much closer together. Much, much closer,” Deilani said. “This makes no sense. This isn’t how you set up a colony. I don’t care where you’re from.”

  “What were these people doing?” Nils squinted at the screen, zooming in on the valley. “Look at this. There’s something at the edge of the valley, they were setting up around it. Look at the sampling tents.”

  “Forget that. Ensign, set that message to repeat at interval, then if our beacon hasn’t been activated, get it online.”

  “Yes, sir. That was the first thing I did. It’s active now.”

  “Good.” I blew out my breath. “We might get off this rock yet. Now, why would the ships be so far apart? That hardly seems efficient.”

  “Seismic activity,” Salmagard said, surprising all three of us. “They wanted stable ground.”

  “That’s the only explanation,” Deilani agreed. “They wouldn’t set up like this unless they had no other choice.”

  I nodded. “The ships are more or less self-contained, and they would have brought plenty of vehicles. So the distance would be an inconvenience, but not a deal breaker. Then where’d they go?”

  “Where is there to go?” Nils asked.

  “Nowhere,” I said, shrugging. “Yet they aren’t here.”

  “Sabotage,” Deilani said. “Or terrorism. Mutiny. Something from the inside.”

  “Like what?”

  “A chemical weapon. Something to instigate . . . unruly behavior. That could account for the damage and inconsistencies. There are a lot of bioweapons that can do it, and plenty of precedent.”

  “But there would be both bodies and survivors. There were twenty thousand colonists on this planet, probably four thousand on this ship, and we have one—one—dead engineer. And if he hadn’t strapped in before shooting himself, his body might’ve blown out when the ship depressurized.”

  “That could be something,” Nils pointed out. “A lot of evidence could’ve been lost that way. Sucked out of the ship. We weren’t looking for it out there.”

  I knew exactly how easily humans could be swept up and carried during a violent depressurization.

  “I think you’re right. But we’ve got what we’ve got, and that’s a planet that looks to me as though it’s found a way to make a lot of people disappear.”

  “Not us,” Nils said, swallowing.

  “Not yet. We’ve only been out
of our sleepers for a little while, so don’t get comfortable.”

  “Why not? We’ve got control of the ship,” he pointed out. “And the beacon’s on. All we have to do is wait. Admiral, we have to sleep.”

  “Not until we clear the ship,” I told him. It hurt, but there was too much wrong with all of this.

  “Of what?”

  “Of suspicion. We’re going to look around.”

  “That’ll take ages,” Nils complained.

  “You were about to die a few minutes ago, and now you’re going to complain about this? We need to make sure we’re not missing something. Security’s offline. That means we do it the old-fashioned way. I know we’ve done a lot of walking, but this is the Service. Come on.”

  “He’s right,” Deilani told Nils. “Can’t let our guard down until we know what happened.”

  “It’ll go faster if we split up.”

  “But we’re not splitting up. We need rest, I know. And we’ve been stuck together for a while, so a few minutes to ourselves wouldn’t hurt, but not until we know where we stand. Then we can borrow some living quarters and take it easy.”

  Together, the four colony ships were the size of a space station. Apart, they were still massive.

  There were closetlike living quarters for single colonists, cramped rooms for couples, and tiny apartments for families. Every deck contained a certain number of each, along with communal features, like recreation and VR rooms.

  It was harder to colonize a world like this, where people needed suits to go outside. It took time to build structures and expand the safe zone, and even longer to put up atmosphere domes and start true terraforming. This colony hadn’t been here nearly long enough. Everyone would still have been living exclusively in the ships.

  The science vessel boasted an enormous medical bay, and a huge battery of laboratories. The faster the colonists understood their new world, the faster it became home. The science vessel was the core of the colonial tetrad.

  Colonial authorities tended to be wealthy businesspeople and aristocrats; the colonists themselves more often came from humble birth. Sometimes you’d have a colony that was widely coveted, like on an attractive world that supported human life easily. In that situation you’d have qualified and overqualified people lining up to come along.

  But a lot of the time, choosing to become a colonist was a last resort.

  In most cultures, joining the military was often a career move reserved for people without better prospects. Only in Evagard did military service offer the level of prestige and reward that made it attractive to even the best imperials.

  Colonization was a similar situation—the colony would be founded by someone wealthy, but the colonists themselves were usually people from a much lower social stratum, recruited with modest incentives. It was often a one-way trip, or at the very least carried a long commitment, so the types of people who signed up for these things usually came from a scenario that wasn’t overflowing with options.

  Much of the galaxy viewed becoming a colonist as being only one step up from selling oneself into indentured servitude, which was legal in Free Trade space.

  I didn’t think it was so bad. Being a first-generation colonist offered a lot of upward mobility, if you had some patience. Someone had to do it, and for every colony in a terrible place like this, there was one someplace promising. No one really appreciated these people, but they were doing a good thing.

  And for many of them, even life aboard a ship like this was an improvement.

  One deck was much like another. Some areas were pristine, seemingly untouched. The deck itself was often marred, though we still weren’t sure what was doing it. Carbon plating wouldn’t corrode like metal, and it couldn’t be burned—but something had been eating at it all over the ship. If it was just in one place, that would be a chemical spill—but it was everywhere.

  There were also signs that I secretly believed pointed toward a full evacuation. A hasty one. I didn’t want to scare the trainees. If there had been an evacuation, what had caused it? It could hardly have been completely successful, but in that case, where were the people who hadn’t made it?

  We didn’t find any more bodies, but we weren’t trying to be thorough. I had my suspicions about what we’d find if we went through every cabin. What puzzled me the most were the dusty clothes lying everywhere. Boots, personal devices, even weapons. There was no pattern; it was all just scattered around.

  “One dead guy,” Nils said, shaking his head. “Why would he kill himself?”

  “I don’t care where they went anymore,” Deilani said. “I just want to know why they left.”

  “They were afraid. Maybe afraid the ship would fall like ours did,” I said.

  “Then why’d that guy vent the ship before he shot himself?” Nils countered.

  That was a good question. We moved on, but Salmagard stayed behind.

  “Private?” She was still standing in the last junction. I watched her gaze intently down the cross-passage. “What is it?”

  “I thought I heard something, sir.” She said it without looking at me. Deilani and I exchanged a glance. Nils didn’t look pleased.

  “Let’s have a look,” I said. We followed the passage all the way to the next junction, but there was nothing to see. Nils called out, but no one replied. We stood in the intersection, listening to the echoes of his voice fade away. There was more mysterious damage to the ship, more corroded panels, more mangled doorways. A couple of lights were out, which I didn’t care for.

  There was a plush toy on the deck, a chubby lobster. I nudged it with my toe, exposing a dark stain.

  “You still have your scanner?” I asked Salmagard, who nodded.

  I watched Deilani open a hatch and peer through. She looked back and shrugged. Nils didn’t look good. The circles under his eyes looked bad, but I probably didn’t look any better.

  “Go ahead and put it on,” I told the private. “Someone did this. And just because we haven’t seen them doesn’t mean they aren’t still here.”

  “Yes, Admiral.”

  We finished our sweep without finding any answers. More than once we heard noises from other parts of the ship, as though there was someone moving around. We searched, but didn’t find anything.

  I wasn’t going to broadcast my suspicions, but I didn’t think we were alone. I hoped my withdrawal wasn’t making me paranoid.

  In space, on colonies—anywhere far enough from what was considered civilization—you would find plentiful amounts of superstition, even among Evagardians. It was especially prevalent on long deep-space journeys. I’d never had any patience for it. Reality was dangerous enough without making up new threats to justify the strain of isolation.

  All the evidence suggested that we were alone, even if my instincts thought otherwise. We had to stay focused.

  As we made our way back to the upper decks, I gave the trainees their orders. “Nils, you’re our new com officer. Find a reader and keep it with you. If anything bites on our surface broadcast, I want to know about it. Same for the beacon. Otherwise”—I looked at my chrono—“I say find something to eat, get some rest—whatever you want to do. Let’s meet here at, uh . . . fifteen hundred. That’ll give you time for a nap before we look deeper. We good?”

  “Admiral, I want to go to the med lab and see what I can find. They were treating people there. I want to find out for what.”

  “Do what you want, but don’t push yourself. You dropped from oxygen deprivation an hour ago. You probably have brain damage.”

  “Then we have something in common.”

  “Just be careful. We all need rest.” Me especially.

  “I’m just going to have a look at the overseer’s notes. I expect them to be revealing.” Deilani was rubbing her gloved hands together.

  “I expect you’re right.”

 
Nils was looking at Deilani thoughtfully. He turned to me. “I want to look at the systems one more time, too.”

  “By all means. I wouldn’t dream of holding you back. Godspeed. Just—if you do run into anybody, don’t do anything that’s going to mess up the cease-fire.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Salmagard and I watched the two of them trot off. I wasn’t surprised; they were too spun up. Walking around this huge ship wasn’t enough to unwind them after our brush with death. They’d need more time before the exhaustion could set back in. And if they wanted to do the legwork, I wasn’t going to complain. I wanted to know what was going on as much as they did. If they could get answers while I rested, I could live with that.

  My feet hurt, I was hungry, and I was in withdrawal. I needed a lot of things, but I could start with sleep.

  I was also alone with Salmagard. This ship was not dead silent, as the freighter had been. Even with only emergency systems, there was plenty to hear. The hum of consoles, vents cycling, and the distant sounds of automated systems.

  It was big and empty, and we could both feel it.

  “How about a bite?” I asked Salmagard. Rest would have to wait.

  One corner of her mouth curved upward. “By all means, Admiral.”

  We made our way into the nearest galley corner, which boasted a single Ganraen combiner. We had some fun figuring out how to use it; Ganraens had completely different codes for their foods, but there was a nice interactive menu. Our little picnic on the shuttle had been the first time I’d eaten food from a combiner in quite a while.

  The product was surprisingly good. I was guessing they used a better grade of protein gel than Tremma had stocked on his freighter. They also had a beverage dispenser that offered some variety, along with a selection containing actual ethanol.

  “Is that wise?” Salmagard asked, eyeing my cup.

  “It’s been a long day. And I’m not exactly known for wisdom. I have to stay in character.”