The broadcast had been gruesome but effective. On all channels, the severed head of the Ch’Tauk Emperor hoisted atop a pole on Vadne. Images of the Emperor’s mother, now a shamed and dishonored prisoner of the felinoid species, had fanned the flames and helped grow their ranks. They were, in fact, on their way to recruit more allies to their cause, and it appeared they needed them. The third fleet, after reporting closures on their first two missions, had disappeared. Relayed buoy images showed their assigned vortices were closed, but the fleet was not responding to any attempt at contact. Admiral Browning’s fleet had showed similar successes, but had taken heavy damage.
Even after all the victories, there was still a nagging doubt Dalton needed to assuage. Near the end of their last mission, as ships burned on both sides and the bridge winked out of existence, a message light began to blink on the bridge. Timed so it would activate without an incoming signal, the message had been pre-recorded and left on their central computer network. Dalton had ignored the signal at the time, thinking it could wait until they were out of danger. Now, as the ship shuddered its way to the next location and the possibility of repairs, he called up the message, an empty pit of dread in his stomach as he read the identity code stamped into the message. There had been no contact with the man, and he had kept his absence quiet from the fleet, but there was no mistaking the hand of Admiral Ronald Chang in the message.
“Communications, can you activate message two-one-one-seven?”
“I think so, sir, but I can only bring it up on the big screen. Your chair projectors are shot.”
“Go ahead,” Dalton replied, not caring anymore about clearances. “Let’s all see it. I think you have earned that.”
The screen crackled and blanked out. Darkness descended on the upper bridge level before the holograph reappeared. On it, Admiral Ronald Chang stood in a plain navy duty uniform. He almost seemed casual, with his hands crossed over his chest and his eyes cast downwards. When he looked up, he appeared sad but determined.
“Is this thing recording?”
It was a strange fact that the man who engineered the entire war always had difficulty with recording devices. His eyes scanned the bridge in an illusion of knowledge. He stepped forward and reached past the screen. There was a change of focus and then it came back. Chang stepped back again and looked back at the bridge.
“Captain Dalton,” Chang said, “let me start by giving my apologies and transmitting my request to promote you to proper admiral. As far as the ship’s log is concerned, you are now Admiral Dalton. I should have done this a long time ago, but I am an old man and can get petty. You remind me too much of your father at times.”
At the mention of his father, Dalton looked away. The man had been a brilliant tactician, but deeply species-centric. He had outlawed most aliens from the bridge of his own ship and sent Chang to command the aging Resolute before hiding beyond the reach of the Ch’Tauk. His deterioration due to radiation poisoning had been one of the major events precipitating the war for Terra. Chang had reclaimed the captaincy of Baal and promoted Lee Pearce to captain of the battleship. Dalton, who had been protecting his own ship, had been forced to bear the burden of his father’s faults for years.
“I know I left you without much information, but I needed to go on a mission of my own. I don’t know if I’ll be able to contact you afterwards, so I need to give you new orders. You need to go to Earth, Franklin.”
The new destination was a surprise. Earth and its sun had been the first battle they had fought and won. They had been forced to regroup, leaving the planet in the hands of the Ch’Tauk but they still controlled the skies, didn’t they? If the admiral had a new mission for them, he needed to listen carefully. The home world always took precedence.
“This message is being given to all the ships remaining in the fleet, so you shouldn’t have to worry about contacting them. I’ve been hiding things from all of you for so long I don’t even remember what the truth is most of the time. There has been a second mission to Earth while we prepared. Connor Jakes has been on board Trinity for the last few months. If everything is going according to plan, he needs your help.”
At the mention of the pirate captain, Dalton felt his eyes roll. The man had no discipline and a lack of military bearing, but the admiral had always trusted him for special missions. There was a rumor that, before the war, Jakes had been an operative with Confederate Security, but Dalton didn’t see it. He was far too unpredictable for any fleet he was serving in. If Jakes was involved, plenty of people would need Dalton’s help before it was over.
“If all is going well, you have closed the Gizzeen bridges by now. If not, Jakes is on his own. It is vitally important you get those bridges closed before you go to Earth. The Gizzeen must not make any more headway here. We can take care of the Ch’Tauk after. I have sent one of my most trusted captains to Vadne to take care of some of this problem, but he may not have gotten through. The Vadne are an ally, even if they don’t seem like it right now. Your first mission is to close the bridges. After that, Earth. That’s my order, and if it’s my last, then I expect it to be followed.”
“Helm,” Dalton said over the sound of the recording. “How long to Earth if we change course now?”
“Twenty minutes,” replied the officer in charge of navigation. “There’s a current pulling us that way anyway.”
“A current?” Dalton asked. “What do you mean a current?”
“There are some things I need to tell you about your father, Franklin. He was a man with flaws, but—”
“Mute that thing,” Dalton ordered his comms officer. “What do you mean a current?”
“If I didn’t know we had closed it, I would think there was a bridge open at Sol. We’re being pulled that way. I can just turn into the current and let it drag us along.”
“Adjust course and get me engineering,” Dalton said. “We’re not drifting anywhere and we need to be ready for battle. All hands, this is the captain speaking. Battle stations. I repeat: battle stations.”
The face of Admiral Chang continued to move on the screen. Dalton had become so lost in the order of battle he had nearly forgotten about the man. Chang was talking again, silently telling a story or issuing orders. Dalton didn’t care anymore. Earth was to be their new destination and nothing else mattered.
“Turn that damn thing off,” Dalton ordered. “We’ve got work to do.”
“Aye, sir—I mean, yes, Admiral Dalton,” replied the comm officer. “I’ll never get used to that.”
Me neither, Dalton thought. But I’d sure like to try.
*
Admiral Browning was dead. Her body lay broken across the command chair. She was one of hundreds of victims of the Gizzeen cascade weapon’s devastating effect on the ship’s gravity system. Mars had taken a direct hit on her flank as Browning turned the ship to defend one of the new allies. Thrown from her seat into the ceiling, she was smashed back down when the ship was struck by Ch’Tauk energy blasts. The combined attack was too much for the assault ship’s systems and her commander. Quick thinking by the pilot and one of the engineering ensigns had gotten the vessel out of the line of fire, but the loss of the admiral was a crushing blow.
As the last golden light from the vortex faded and the star reasserted itself in the system, sweeping away the blue sediment of the cataract, Mars limped away on reaction thrusters. Her escorts weren’t in much better shape, but the fleet survived. Lieutenant Weston watched systems reactivating across the ship as his own panel slowly cycled back to life. Of the experienced bridge crew left on board, he was the senior officer now and he felt the unexpected weight of command on his shoulders. Commander Junger, the ship’s chief engineer, had declined to take command, leaving the twenty-two year old pilot in charge of a damaged hulk in the middle of a battle. Their only saving grace was the Gizzeen and their Ch’Tauk cousins had vanished soon after the bridge was closed. Their destination was unknown, but it didn’t matter. The fleet was in no condi
tion to fight anymore.
“Sir…” The voice of their comm officer, a Tonal woman whose name he had never learned, cut through the whinny of air being recirculated through a damaged system, and crewmen dragging bodies from the bridge. “I’ve got a message here for … I guess you.”
“Is it Fleet Captain Dalton?” Weston asked, hopeful for some relief from the burden of command. “What’s his status?”
“It’s not from the fleet, sir,” replied the woman. “It’s from us. It reads as Admiral Chang on a pre-recorded interactive hologram.”
“The admiral?” Weston replied, looking at his former commander lying dead in the chair. “What does he want?”
“I don’t know, sir,” the Tonal grunted. “It’s addressed to Admiral Browning or the commander of Mars. That’d be you at the moment.”
“Put it on the screen.”
“Can’t. Screen isn’t accepting my input. I gotta run it through the chair.”
Weston looked at the command chair and the broken body lying across it. He stood from his pilot station, pushing the helm duties to the secondary pilot station and his counterpart, and moved to the chair at the center of the bridge. Browning’s eyes were open and staring at the ceiling. She held no expression on her pale face, but Weston thought he saw regret. As carefully as he could, he pushed his arms under her body and lifted. As strong as the woman had always seemed, she was remarkably light. A med tech, just now arriving from below, hurried over and took the lieutenant’s burden from him and laid the body down.
For a moment, Weston didn’t know what to do. It was a chair, but it represented the command of hundreds of survivors and the fate of a fleet. Other people on board were more qualified than he to sit in this seat, but the authority was his. He looked to the comms station.
“Patch it through.”
The small projector crackled to life and the image of the Asian man appeared, standing partially inside Weston. The man reached from the lieutenant’s chest and adjusted something off-camera.
“Is this thing on?”
Without thinking, Weston sat in the command chair and looked at the small man in front of him. All thoughts of command or responsibility were lost in the image of Admiral Chang going out of focus and back. It was a surreal moment when Chang stepped back into frame and looked Weston in the eyes.
“Admiral Browning?” asked Chang.
“Ummm … no.”
The image stared at him silently. Panic began to settle on the young man, as the admiral appeared to be waiting for him. The image crossed his arms and stared back, blinking twice before anyone spoke.
“It’s an interactive,” the comms officer called. “Tell it your name.”
“Oh … I’m Lieutenant Paul Weston. I guess I’m in command of Mars,” said the young man. “Admiral Browning is dead.”
The finality of the statement settled on him. He had watched her body break during the battle, had even held her lifeless shell, but only now began to accept she was dead. The admiral in front of him seemed to lose focus again for a moment, but quickly snapped back.
“Lieutenant Weston,” said the hologram. “Admiral Browning was a good officer and she will be missed. If you are sitting in her chair, then I know you are the best I could hope for. Effective immediately, this construct is entering a change of command. Congratulations, Captain.”
Weston blinked back at the image. He didn’t feel any different, but he had just become the youngest captain in the fleet as far as he knew. He had expected to feel older or surer of himself, but he was still the same. The only thing he could see had changed was that he was not at his station.
“Now, I don’t have time to congratulate you further. I have a mission for you and your fleet. It is of vital importance. You need to go to Earth … right now.”
34
Earth
Emma had seen war. A product of the civil war between her people and a neighboring city-state, she had seen her own family killed in an unthinkable battle for territory. During the invasion, she had been by the side of warriors who’d sacrificed themselves for the cause of saving Earth from the Ch’Tauk. People had been turned into slaves, and cattle for the enemy, and she had been there to rescue them. Never in all that time, however, had she been so terrified of her own death as she was at this moment. Her life was precious not for selfish reasons, but because she knew the infant who clutched at her breast was relying on her for survival. It made her own life both less and more important at the same time.
Thunderous explosions from outside lit up the night, illuminating her through the slit of drapery hanging in the open window. Hot air rushed in and blew back the fabric, revealing the destroyed ruin of an apartment once owned by some wealthy family in Beijing City. The sprawling megalopolis, once home to millions of people, had been one of the first targets of the enemy when they took the planet eight years ago, and now it seemed to be the last stronghold of humanity not fallen to the returned evil. She didn’t want to die so far from the home she had made with her husband, or the lands where she was born. She didn’t want to die at all.
Another jolt loosened plaster from the ceiling and elicited a small whine from the child. Emma pulled the blanket over the baby and held it tighter. Since birth, the baby had been a source of joy on an otherwise devastated planet. When Jack Cole, the closest thing to a military commander she had met, had found her just days after the night sky went blue and the Gizzeen began to land, she had already found her way to a shelter in the desert. Her condition was not yet apparent at that time, but as the months passed and she felt the new life growing, her own fears for the child grew as well. Henry had left and she had no idea if he was alive or dead out there. She had lost so many, and she tried to take it in stride, but every day, looking into the infant’s eyes, she missed the man more and more. Chocolate skin and gray-blue eyes blinked back up at her, but so many of the child’s features were Henry.
Her chest hurt thinking about him. They had been together for almost two years before he left, but she could barely remember a time without him. He was a hard man, but one who showed her true compassion in a world gone mad. She could remember his callused hands on her body the first night they had shared a bed, and the rough brush of his lips when he said goodbye. Her determination to survive grew stronger with the faith he would return, but even that faith became more like a wish with each day.
Still, she did her part and held out hope as the resistance moved from place to place and gathered more fighters. The Gizzeen had left but the Ch’Tauk had stayed, and still they fought on. The sky had gone black again a few weeks ago and brought hope that everything would be restored, but nothing since had changed. She manned the high-powered laser on the roof of the building and fired messages to whoever was up there. Once, she had even sent a personal greeting just to see if it would be returned. When only an acknowledgement followed, her hopes crashed.
There was an intense odor from the hall and she felt the cold grip of fear in her heart, knowing what it meant. The Ch’Tauk were vicious fighters with hard shells, but they stank. Emma searched for some form of cover and found an overturned couch with the cushion only partially burned off. She pushed the child under the faint protection and covered it with the blanket. In her other hand she carried her plasma bolt rifle. She had modified the device to throw a wide angle of burning plasma. She didn’t have to be accurate, only fast, which made it ideal for firing while carrying a baby.
Something had happened. Instead of a reply from their orbital friends, she had seen an explosion in space. Whatever had been destroyed must have been enormous to be seen from space. She only had a handheld telescope to focus on the destruction, but she thought she could see additional flashes afterwards, as if other ships were being destroyed as well. After that, the Ch’Tauk forces on the ground began to swarm. She had fled into the high-rise, seeking shelter from the fury outside and protection for her child. Now it seemed that protection had been fleeting and illusory, as the sound of armored
feet clicking on the floor outside came closer. There was more than one of the creatures out there.
In the hall, she heard a door being blasted from its hinge and shots fired. A muffled scream told her someone else who had sought shelter had lost their chance. The Ch’Tauk were clearing the building by force. It was a panic move she had seen before during the war. When things got bad, they began shooting prisoners. She tightened her grip on the gun and moved away from the couch towards a table on its side. It wouldn’t last long under a Ch’Tauk assault, but it might give her time to think of an escape. Her heart pounded as more doors were destroyed and more screams were silenced. She was at the end of the hall and would be the last to be discovered, but she was ready.
An explosion outside covered the sound of her door being kicked inwards. She fired, not waiting to see the assailant outside. Cracked black armor was blasted away into the hall, the enemy thrown back. Green fluid sprayed across the door and the alien behind. In the second it took for the first enemy to die, the second stepped forward into the doorway. Another blast from the plasma bolt rifle sent him to join his comrade in hell.
Emma moved, abandoning the table, and ran back to the couch. She caught a brief glance down the hall and saw two more armored warriors approaching. She scooped up the child and ran to a nearby closet, holding the rifle in the hopes she could still fire at the door. The baby began to cry now, at first soft but with rising passion. She tried to shush the child even as she held the weapon to the door.
The Ch’Tauk learned from mistakes. Instead of bottling up in the doorway, these two blasted a hole in the wall, kicking up plaster dust and debris. In the chaos, Emma couldn’t see the pair as they entered the room. She fired into the dust, hoping to hit something. A bolt from a Ch’Tauk weapon lanced through her shoulder and she dropped the baby into a pile of discarded clothes, screaming as burning flesh gave way and bone melted. On her knees before she realized it, she tried to raise the gun. The pain was ferocious, but she managed to fire a shot. A clicking howl told her she had hit something, but the dust obscured the sight of it. She dropped the gun, too tired to hold it upright, and tried to hunch down over the child.
Resolute Glory (The War for Terra Book 8) Page 27
