My solemn silence was interrupted by the prisoner.
“I see that you are thinking long and hard about my proposal. And I don’t blame you really. It’s a lot to take in. I’m not asking much of you, or your crew. All I want you to do is hear me out. Hear what I have to say. Listen to the facts and digests them. And after all is said and done, whatever decision you make will be one made confidently.”
“I’ve listened to your sales pitch, and I must admit I am intrigued to know more. But that’s where me and you differ, prisoner. So far, all you have told me is the fairytale aspect of your rebel fleet. You’ve told me what you stand for, and what you hope to accomplish. But unfortunately, I need more than that. I need logistics. I need facts. I need numbers. And until you give me what I want, I cannot guarantee that your fate is one of safety. Don’t forget that you are still a prisoner of ours. We dispatched of your three amigos earlier, and we won’t hesitate in dispatching of you either,” I said, sitting in my captain’s chair, keeping an eye on the warp drive status screen.
The prisoner was standing in the middle the room now, next to Dale, who was leaning against one of the control desks. Teresa was sitting next to me, and Philip was standing near the double doors that exited the bridge. Everybody was quiet as the prisoner remained standing, a look of defeat on his face.
It was obvious from his facial expressions that he was struggling with the idea of telling me the whole truth. Not that I considered him a liar, but I did consider him a threat. And I’m pretty sure that he considered us dangerous. We had, after all, dispatched of his three friends earlier. And I could tell that the very fact that I had mentioned it to him, had reminded him of the predicament that he was in.
He sighed loudly, and slowly walked toward me. Dale kept an eager eye on him, making sure that he stayed in line. As he made his way toward me, I knew that he was about to give up the goods. His poker face had dropped. And so had his shoulders. They were no longer stern, and he walked like a newborn calf.
A calf that was unsteady on its legs. The only thing missing from this picture was a nurturing mother by its side. He knew he was alone. Alone in this cold, dark world that he found himself in. The Alpha Ship One was my world. I was King. My crew were his tormentors. And he knew very well how much danger he was in. So it was certainly time to give up what he knew.
“Fine, if you really want to know everything, then I guess everything you shall know. But there’s something I want you to know. The only reason I haven’t been as forthcoming as I would have liked, is because I know my place on board this ship. I am your prisoner. I am in a lot of danger – grave danger. And the big problem is; you want something from me. You want information. Information that I have. It’s my way out of this. I know it, and you know it. It would have been stupid of me to not hold back on what I know. They needed to be an understanding between the both of us before I could risk giving up the only thing that’s keeping me alive. Don’t you agree?” The prisoner said, now standing next to my captain’s seat, staring down at me as I looked up at him.
I could tell that he was frightened. But for the first time since he’d opened his mouth, even though it was still covered in blood, I could now tell that he was being sincere. My original idea of beating the living crap out of him to get answers had failed. But my secondary plan of talking him down from the proverbial ledge had worked. I was seconds away from entering the inner circle of the Annex Rebel Fleet. And within that inner circle, there were secrets and facts that I needed to know. Facts that could either help or hinder the Alpha Ship One. I had most likely already made my mind up on whether I was joining the Annex Rebel Fleet or not. And I’m pretty sure the only reason the prisoner had mentioned the possibility of me and my crew joining was to save his own skin.
But I had my own reasons. And maybe it was time that I made them clear.
“Look, prisoner – I don’t know your name, nor do I want to know your name. Me and my crew have been beaten, dragged, and thrown all of our lives. We are misfits. We hold no loyalty to nobody. And the fact that you assume that we want to protect Pilgrim Tech is an insult to every member that has ever stepped foot onboard the Alpha Ship One. If you knew who I am, and who my crew are, you would be appalled at the idea that we were even chummy with the government of Earth, let alone working for it.
“So don’t waste your breath trying to convince us of your cause. It’s a cause that I have held in my heart for many years. It’s a cause that the Alpha Ship One stands for on its own merit. We don’t need the Annex Rebel Fleet to make us realize the error of our ways. We were clever enough to realize those errors long before your stupid little group formed and wrecked everything. Make no mistake, pal, you have wrecked everything! What makes you think that fighting against the government of Earth is going to save the people on our planet?
“What makes you think that spilling blood is the answer here? What makes you think that I haven’t had these fantasies of taking over the world and making it a better place? You think that you are the first person to ever want to rise up against the establishment? Well I’m sorry to break it to you, prisoner, but you aren’t the first and you won’t be the last. But here’s the kicker; if you play your cards right, you may actually have a chance at making your fantasies become a reality. But before you even contemplate spilling any more blood, I need you to promise me that you are serious about your cause,” I said, noticing how surprised the prisoner was as he stood next to me, still staring down at me, still bloodied in the mouth.
“I promise. This is real. We’ve been planning this for years. We have a planet. They don’t know about it. But on that planet, we’ve been amassing weapons – ships – personnel and ammunitions. We can do this. We have the numbers and we have the will. But we need someone on the inside. We’ve always needed someone on the inside. And that person is you. It’s your crew. It’s your ship. It has always been your ship. You just didn’t know it,” the prisoner said.
I blinked a few times, turning toward Teresa and Philip. They had smiles on their faces. It wasn’t what I expected. I expected them to be angry. Angry that somebody had been targeting us to be their pawn in their unstructured rebellion.
But it was true what the prisoner had said. It made sense. So far, from what I had heard from him, the so-called Annex Rebel Fleet knew their stuff. But as I said before, I needed to know more.
“So tell me, tell me everything. You say you have a planet, where is it. What are the coordinates? I’ll punch them in right now and before you know it, we’ll be back on your home turf. Then we can speak with your leader, and formulate a plan. If you’re serious about this, then show me how serious you are. Trust us. You have every reason to. We aren’t the ones targeting you. You’re the ones that were targeting us.”
“Of course we are targeting you. We knew that after the way that Pilgrim Tech treated you that you would be easy to manipulate to our will. We also knew that Pilgrim Tech wouldn’t expect any blowback from you or your crew members after they paid you a million credits each. We were planning on using that money that each of you got to help fund our mission. But then something strange happened. We got somebody else. Somebody else on the inside. And then we came to a crossroads. A dilemma if you will. Now that we had somebody else, did we really need you? But our leader Commander Korr insisted that you were still a priority on this mission. That you were still the key, even though our original plan only consisted of one person on the inside. But now there are five in total, including the four of you. And things could get messy. So you can understand my trepidation in revealing the entirety of our mission statement.”
I stood up, extending my hand, and gestured at the prisoner. At first, he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know if this was a trap. If I was suckering him in. But after a few seconds of fearful silence, he shook my hand - all the while, I stared directly into his eyes.
I was trying to gain his trust. I was trying to make him see that I wasn’t one of them – a member of Pilgrim Te
ch. And as I stared into his eyes, shaking his hand, I could see his front slowly eroding, like ice melting and turning into water.
The proverbial ice had been broken. We were now on an even playing field. We knew to what extent our loyalties lay and where they lay. He now knew my feelings toward the masters of Pilgrim Tech. But that didn’t mean that I agreed with everything that he said. But obviously, I would be keeping that little gem to myself.
“So what do you say, now will you give me this coordinates?” I said, letting go of the prisoner’s hand, but still staring directly into his eyes, trying to gain his trust.
The prisoner made a slight face, and I could tell that he was still not a hundred percent convinced – which was ironic, because I was in the same boat.
“Before I can give you the coordinates to our planet, you will need to speak to my Commander. I’ve been instructed to video call him once we came to some sort of agreement. So that is what we will do. I will give you the server address, and you will hail him. He will answer, and then you can ask him all the questions you want. After that, he will ask you all the questions that he wants. And hopefully, when the conference call is over, the two of you will be in agreement. And only then will you get the coordinates to our planet. He will be the one that gives them to you. I actually don’t know them. I’m just a soldier. And if things don’t go to plan, and you don’t end up agreeing on the mission or its objective, then I guess I’m a dead soldier. Because there is no way I am getting home if that indeed is the case,” the prisoner said.
I nodded, and smiled.
“Okay then, sorted. Give me the server address, and let’s get this thing rolling.”
The prisoner nodded his head, and reached into his pocket. We’d already searched him for weapons when we apprehended him earlier. So I knew that he wasn’t armed, and I also knew that we were not in danger.
But he did pull out a piece of paper. It was scrunched up, and when I’d saw it earlier, I hadn’t paid much attention to it. But now that it was in his hands, it all started to make sense. His story was starting to bind together quite nicely. If the server address truly did divert to a video call with his leader, then my trust in him would increase tenfold. But that didn’t mean that he was my friend, nor did it mean that I was part of the Annex Rebel Fleet.
All it meant was that I was curious.
Curious to see how deep this rabbit hole goes.
***
Operational leader Sam was sweating profusely. He had spent the last ten minutes staring at himself in the bathroom mirror. The shared co-worker toilets were clean and sterile. But he couldn’t help but feel dirty inside. He felt filthy. Filthy to be part of something so putrid that he could smell it from within the confines of the room he was in. A room that was tiled with white tiles, tiles that allowed the reflection of his face to beam back at him.
Along with the reflection in the mirror, operational leader Sam knew that he didn’t look his best.
He looked a wreck. His hair was messy, and his shirt had sweat patches under his arms. He decided that it would be best to drench his face in cold water. Maybe that would cool down the fire that was raging within his head. He splashed handful after handful of water on his face, each time staring at his reflection as droplets dripped off his jawline and pattered into the porcelain sink. Each patter of water sounded like an earthquake in his head. His ears were muffled yet he could hear everything so clearly.
The chatter in the office on the other side of the door. The watercooler being used. The gulp inside the large bottle that hydrated everybody within the office block. The sound of people rustling papers. Shoes pressing into the carpet as people walked. The ticking of the clock on the wall. The buzz of the computer terminals. The beeping of the servers. The static in his head. And after drenching his face once again in the cool liquid running from the bathroom tap, he dried his face and convinced himself that he felt better.
Not wanting to waste any more time, he left the bathroom and entered back into the chaotic fray of the office. Even though Sam was the leader and the boss of this junket of Pilgrim Tech, word had gotten around that he had been summoned to the top. And after coming back downstairs and rejoining his team, he got the sense that they thought he was on his way out. Maybe he’d end up losing their respect, and if that happened, the very idea of completing his task would be even more difficult.
He was trying not to think about the consequences of failure right now. Pilgrim Tech had made their demands clear, and at the same time they had also made the repercussions clear to him. The Agent that he had spoken to had reassured him that failure was not an option. And it definitely wasn’t on the cards anymore, not that it had ever been on the cards anyway. Sam took his job very seriously. But he had to take it even more seriously now that there was so much on the line.
So he couldn’t wallow in his own self-pity any longer. And now that he felt fresh-faced, he was ready to tackle the task at hand. Like a lightning bolt from the sky above, he quickly made his way down the office toward the front. At the front, lay his desk. His desk faced the others. He’d opted not to have his own office, just to seem more approachable to his colleagues. Right at that moment, he felt a certain regret for that decision. Especially the way he was feeling. He wanted nothing more but to lock himself in a room, and hide away. But he couldn’t do that. So instead of sitting at his desk, staring at his computer, he decided to make his way toward Maddie’s booth.
Once he reached the booth, which was adjoined to the other booths in the office, he noticed how hard Maddie was working. She didn’t even notice him standing next to her, observing her work. A few of her neighbors did though. They gave Sam a collection of uncertain looks. Looks that Sam couldn’t differentiate between. He didn’t know whether they were looks of pity, or looks of nervousness. Like he was a pariah of some sorts. Like being next to him was contagious, and anybody that associated with him would be summoned to the top as well.
But Sam ignored those looks, and leaned in closer to get a better look at Maddie’s screen. She was still so engrossed in her work that she didn’t even feel his breath on the back of her neck. She was staring at a satellite image of the Milky Way Galaxy, zoomed in at 25%. On that map, she was tracking certain ships. From the color legend below the schematic, operational leader Sam could see that some of those ships belonged to Earth, while others belonged to other alien nations.
Traffic in the Milky Way Galaxy was a little sparse today, probably on account of the attempted invasion of Earth. News had gotten around already, and the other nations within the Galactic Empire were nervous. The stock exchange mirrored that nervousness, the credit system taking a hit by a few thousand points. But operational leader Sam didn’t give a crap about that sort of thing. The only thing that he gave a crap about was trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
“Track any of those Annex Rebel Fleet ships yet?” Sam said, startling Maddie as she turned around suddenly.
“Didn’t see you there, sir. That’s exactly what I’ve been doing, but unfortunately these guys are good. The only ships I’ve been picking up on this map are the ships that are currently looking for them. Nothing else really. Apart from a few Sunday drive ships, going about their business, whatever business that may be,” Maddie said.
She then turned back around toward her screen and started scrolling again.
There was a moment or two of silence as Sam was engrossed in the images that stared back at him. He was trying to work out a pattern - a possible pattern of stealth that the Annex Rebel Fleet were using to cover their tracks. They were hiding very well indeed. Pilgrim Tech had sent a few Snake Pit Fighters to track them down, but unfortunately, they’d returned unsuccessful. It was as if the rebels had vanished into thin air. Plus, even though they were using Earth sanctioned ships, they’d been smart enough to disable Pilgrim Tech issued trackers. These trackers were installed on every single ship that left Earth. It was meant to allow government officials to keep an eye on their
population, surveying certain patterns that may help them understand the way people traveled and where they travel to.
Those trackers also came in handy as a way to advertise to certain demographics. If local earthlings traveled to alien planets using their personal space vehicle, Pilgrim Tech could sell demographical information to competing planets. But this wasn’t no holiday board, and they weren’t dealing with commercial spaceships here. They were dealing with stealth fighters that knew how to game the system, and how to use it to their advantage.
If they continued to remain off the radar, then there could be a serious threat to Earth’s security in the coming hours. It meant that they could come and go as they pleased, without even setting off any automatic alarms. The manpower that would be needed to protect planet Earth from every possible angle would nearly bankrupt the Treasury, and cause a mass meltdown for the economy. Maybe these rebels were smarter than they looked. Maybe this was all part of their plan - a plan that if executed properly could very well work.
Operational leader Sam was starting to gain a little respect for these fighters. They had fought off everything, and so far, Pilgrim Tech were far behind the curve. They were playing catch up, but operational leader Sam knew that once they did catch up, the race was over.
“Zoom out a minute,” Sam said, leaning in even closer, he was now able to smell Maddie’s perfume.
She did as he said, and zoomed out to zero. What played back on the screen was a live panoramic view of the Galaxy. On the screen, hundreds of thousands of tiny blue dots moved at various speeds. If Maddie clicked on one of those dots, more information regarding that blue blip would pop up on the screen. The dots were ships. Red dots signified otherworldly ships, ships that weren’t in control of Earth and blue dots signified ships that were owned by Pilgrim Tech and planet Earth. As one might expect, most of the blue ships were concentrated around planet Earth on the map. Unlike a ripple effect, the further away from Earth they scanned, the fewer ships there were. But one ship had caught operational leader Sam’s interest. It was the furthest ship out, nowhere near any neighboring ships. And for that reason, Sam was curious to know more.
Destroyer of Worlds (Alpha Ship One Book 2) Page 10
