Sybutu gave a bitter laugh. “United? You abandoned us, back in Bresca-Brevae.”
Vetch slammed the heavy palm of his hand down on the table.
Everyone stopped talking.
“I have never abandoned anyone. We would have escorted you out of Bresca-Brevae, but you preferred to sit tight in the burning city, your head in your hands sobbing your Legion heart out.”
“You’re a ridiculous oaf, Arunsen.”
“Think about it, that’s all I’m saying. Major Yazzie named us Chimera Company after fantastic creatures of ancient Earth. A lion with a goat’s head is as strange as a squad with both Legion and Militia personnel. A Militia and Smugglers Guild combination works just as well to my mind, and that’s what Fitz is offering. Chimera Company is still active, Sybutu. With or without you. I would prefer with, but we’ll press ahead regardless.”
The legionary had nothing to say for himself.
After a quick talk with Lily, the two senior troopers split up to discuss with their squad how they should proceed when they eventually arrived at Regina-Ventu.
Vetch started with the person he thought would be hardest to persuade but might make the greatest difference.
Green Fish.
CAPTAIN J’KLIN
The Steadfast emerged into normal space with a transition so inoffensive that Captain J’Klin immediately began looking for hidden threats because this was too easy.
No blinding flash of light. No pop in his mind, nor the sense of being pulled inside out. The Steadfast simply appeared from nowhere into the vast gulf between the stars.
“Tactical, report.”
“Detection bubble at 0.8 mega klicks. One vessel detected at 0.5 megs. Estimate 200-ton displacement. Matches visual and EM signature in the drone’s recording. Target is holding steady. No sign that they’ve seen us.”
Much too easy. The jump engines on the Steadfast were so deeply classified, he liked to joke in the senior officer’s wardroom that the biggest threat to the enormous warship was its heavy secrecy protocols. They were so deep he feared they could collapse into a black hole and smear them all over its event horizon.
His officers would laugh politely, but uneasily, for they knew their captain was only half joking.
“Astrogation, emergence point assessment?”
“100 percent match. We have arrived at the precise coordinates we were given. And the target ship, Captain, its heading will take it to the Regina-Ventu system.”
“Helm, take us in on an intercept course. Keep our evasion options open in case of surprises. Astrogation…” Captain J’Klin’s hesitation was momentary. His next order would appear foolish to some, but his role was to keep the Steadfast and its three thousand crew safe, not to justify himself to his subordinates. “Astrogation, get a temporal fix.”
“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Khan replied with obvious eagerness.
J’Klin laughed. “I admire your excitement, Khan. However, I expect the arrow of time has flown as predictably on this trip as it has all our lives. But I’ve read the old stories too, and we shall prove that the Steadfast’s engines have moved us in space but not in time.”
The captain revolved his command station to orient on the first chaplain’s position. The ship’s senior spiritual commander was with the other priests, praying for mission success on Deck 43. In her place sat a human female – roughly speaking – in a hooded robe cut from a primitive textile. She looked better suited for walking through the muddy streams and flying insects of a frontier world than here in the deepest of interstellar space.
The likes of her had no rightful place on his ship.
Beyond question, the Steadfast was a more powerful warship than any that officially existed in Federation space. The Slayfast, his crew had nicknamed her, a moniker that suited this ship well, though she had yet to prove her offensive capability in anger. All this power was at his command, and yet he feared this one person in her primitive robes.
“Well?” he said.
“I know that vessel.”
J’Klin raised an eyebrow in surprise, then lowered it. Coincidences only appeared to be random chance to the ignorant, and this woman knew many secrets the captain could only guess at.
But he did know how to be captain. First priority: keep the ship safe. “This vessel, is it a danger to my command?”
“Yes.” It was difficult to be sure within the shadows of her hood, but J’Klin thought the woman smiled. “But not in a tactical sense. The dangers are real, but subtler, and interleaved with great opportunity. Seize that vessel immediately, Captain. Secure it. Board it. I want to see what’s inside.”
“Your request is noted.” J’Klin played on deep experience to appear calm in front of his crew. “Astrogation, progress on our temporal fix?”
“My team is devising and running tests as we speak,” answered Lieutenant Khan. “Initial conclusions show no temporal shift. We arrived immediately after we left.”
“Tactical, threat assessment.”
“Target ship’s coasting on minimal power. Engines are non-standard but they are stone cold. Looks like the ship’s been locked down for the long sleep to Regina-Ventu, and has been that way for at least a day, possibly much longer. Offensive capability appears minimal. As I said, the engines are non-standard–”
“As are the Steadfast’s,” interrupted the woman. “But that ship could outrun you if its crew began reacting to your presence. Stop wasting time.”
J’Klin sucked in his desire to ream out this irritation who dared to contradict him on his own ship. He issued orders instead. “Foot on the gas, Helm. Commander Fennerwatham, I want that vessel clamped to the deck of Hangar Delta and behind the blast shields.”
“A wise choice, Captain,” said the woman. She got up and made her way out of the command deck.
J’Klin watched her go, weighing up the possibility of ordering security to throw her in the brig until she learned manners.
He rejected it as too risky.
His first officer paused and glanced at him on her way out to Hanger Delta. Fennerwatham was a capable officer and would be guessing what her captain was thinking.
J’Klin shook his head. Standing up to that woman would have to remain a fancy inside his head.
Then he rejected that too. Secrets were being revealed across the Federation that should have remained buried far out of reach. There was talk of mind reading and much worse. Speech crime had made the citizens of the Federation guard their thoughts carefully for centuries. Was thought crime now about to become a reality?
J’Klin shuddered. It wasn’t his passenger he was frightened of, but who she was connected to.
He was merely the captain of the most powerful warship in the Federation, but he knew his place and his duty to his crew: to do whatever that woman asked, and then set his priests to pray they never crossed paths again.
TAVISTOCK FITZWILLIAM
“Hey, Cisco!” Fitz nodded toward the entrance of the bar where a group of Marines had walked in. “Trouble.”
Francisco Malix said nothing. His answer was to stare at the expectant civilian faces sitting to either side of them on the semi-circular seat.
Fitz followed his friend’s lead, committing the faces to memory, storing them away along with the tingling anticipation of a debauched night – one those Marines were probably about to ruin.
It must have worked, too, because Fitz had always remembered them. The Firm, as Legion Naval Intelligence liked to call itself, sent its operatives on regular Navy postings from time to time, a reminder that the Firm existed to serve the Navy and the Federation. Not the other way around.
The combination of their ensign’s uniforms with Cisco’s silver-tongued charm usually found an enthusiastic audience in bars around the footprint of Samosthan Naval Base, and they rarely spent nights alone when they were on liberty.
Unknown to his best friend, Fitz was beginning to try out Cisco’s charm on his own, developing a persona to add to his arsenal f
or use at work and at pleasure.
The sound of scraping chairs and raised voices reached across from the entrance.
Damn, but this night had promised to be something special.
The four civilians hadn’t registered the impending trouble. There was a human boy and girl – lovers who had brought along a girlfriend who was all nervous laughter and seemed oblivious to the way she was constantly licking her lips and flicking her hair. But it was the delicate Gliesan girl that Fitz was desperate to team up with.
Alien girls! He’d always had a thing for them. Perhaps it was because when he finally lifted his shades, an alien wouldn’t judge his freakish eyes the way humans often did. She’d even told him she was eager to see what he was hiding behind his shades, because she found human eyes exquisitely beautiful.
Which meant she had been in for a rare sight.
Mostly, though, he hadn’t cared why he liked alien girls. They made his young blood run hot and that was plenty enough reason why.
Fitz sighed and stood up. Any doubts that their evening had been ruined died away. The six Marines had walked into a Navy bar looking for trouble and they’d already found it. Five enlisted personnel in the black fatigues of the Legion Navy had squared up to them.
“Sit down, Zahyn,” Cisco insisted.
Zahyn Zi’Alfu…
His old name felt so uncomfortable that Fitz discovered in that hazy dream logic that he was both in the moment at that Samosthan bar, and simultaneously inhabiting a distant future as Tavistock Fitzwilliam.
“They can wait,” said Cisco, back in his past. “Our friends won’t, and we’re about to clinch the deal.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” said the Gliesan with that beautiful crystalline voice of her species. She flooded her lips with blood, flashing them at Fitz with purple need. He sat down. “It’s we who are about to close a deal with you,” she teased.
The Gliesan girl shook the glass that she had drained of brandy a short while ago and replaced with six ident chips. One for each of them.
“Go on, Zianara.” She pushed the glass across to the girl with wet lips. “You pick first.”
“Hey!”
The shout had come from the doorway, followed swiftly by the first punch. The smack of flesh on flesh was accompanied by stools and tables crashing to the floor.
“Cisco!” Fitz snapped. “Gotta go.”
“I know,” he replied between clenched teeth. He took a last look at the prospect of a night of pleasure vanishing into the ether, and braced for the prospect instead of a severe dressing down by the CO in the morning.
“Stick around,” he said to their would-be friends. “This won’t take long.”
Cisco vaulted over the table and marched up to the brawl, Fitz by his side.
He was wrong, of course, and they both knew it. There was only one place they would be sleeping tonight: in the brig.
“Stop that immediately!”
Francisco Malix had such a strong voice of command that the punches stopped flying.
Cisco seized the opportunity to walk right up to the Marines’ ringleader, a big bruiser who had a rating by the scruff of the neck.
He dropped his opponent and scowled at Cisco instead.
“Apologize,” Cisco told him. “You will buy everyone a round, compensate the owners for any damage to the premises, and then you will leave after swearing on your honor and the honor of the Legion that you will never return.”
The Marine laughed. “Who’s gonna make us? You?”
Unfortunately, the answer was yes. Fitz and Cisco had better things to do, but this was a Navy bar and there was a principle at stake here.
Despite his threats, there was a cautious edge to the Marine’s words. There was a line in the sand they were all about to cross. Even across service lines, striking an officer carried repercussions, and for officers to brawl with enlisted ranks was a fast track to losing the ‘O’ in your pay grade.
Cisco broadcast absolute confidence in what he was doing. The Marines weren’t backing down, but they started glancing at each other. They no longer felt in control of events.
“Let’s take this outside,” Cisco told the Marine who towered over him. “Just you and me, and we’ll decide who has the right to use this bar.”
“All right,” said the Marine uncertainly.
He was too proud and stubborn to back down in front of his friends, but some of the other Marines looked longingly for the exit.
Fitz judged the moment was right and took a step towards the invaders. “That’s not being fair, Cisco. Let’s even the odds. You and me, outside against four of you Marine apes. For the right to use this bar. Any of you knuckleheads brave enough to take us on?”
The Marines looked at each other in confusion.
Fitz raised his shades and let his opponents see the purple of his eyes.
“Azhanti!”
“He’s one of them.”
“Steady, lads. Mutants can play dirty tricks with your mind.”
Fitz laughed at that last comment, because it was true, but only because this particular mutant had trained with the Firm. One of the first things the Firm taught you was that the best way to win a fair fight was to make it unfair.
That was the Firm’s philosophy in a nutshell. Load yourself up with every advantage in advance, so when it came to the moment of crisis, the odds were so loaded in your favor that you nearly always won.
Cisco and Fitz began hurrying the Marines outside. There was a fight ahead, for sure, but deep down the Marines believed they had already lost. All the two friends had to do was prove them right.
The moment froze.
Cisco was through the door and caught mid-step, marching toward the modest strip outside of grass and ornamental bushes. Fitz could see the jubilant faces of the ratings following their junior officers through the door, but of Cisco he could only see the back of his head with barely a hint of his face’s strong profile.
Fitz was frozen too. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t look his friend in the face and tell him why he’d had no choice but to bring Khallini to Rho-Torkis. That he’d take it all back and dream up another way to escape Nyluga-Ree’s debts if he could.
An aura of darkness emanated from Cisco that had nothing to do with the color of his skin and everything to do with the foulness of betrayal.
“Cisco! Can you hear me?”
Nothing.
“I had no way of knowing. I’m not even sure now that I was… When we smuggled in Khallini… Oh, man! I don’t know who to blame for your death.”
With each verbal twist on the hook of his betrayal, the darkness around Cisco solidified. Became glassy. Fitz could barely make out his friend’s head now. All he could see was his own guilt reflected back at him.
Icy tendrils of fear slithered up his spine.
Think, Fitz! Remember where you are!
That was better. He resisted the overwhelming fear, holding it at bay because he wasn’t that kid in an ensign’s uniform, he was Captain Tavistock Fitzwilliam now. He was aboard the Phantom, inside a cryogenic pod doing the deep sleep between the stars, because he’d piloted his ship down a jump tunnel after an alien ship.
Sleep.
His blood had been replaced by fluids that he’d never troubled himself to understand in detail but looked like they belonged inside a droid. His lungs were stuffed with oxy-gel. Deep cold had frozen his body.
Suspended his life.
You don’t dream in cryo.
But he’d heard tales that said otherwise. The sort told by salty old spacers at disreputable bars about people driven insane, because they were so consumed with guilt or lust or shame when they went under that the emotion consumed them.
Was that happening to him?
Journey duration was over 150 years. That was a lot of time to spend alone with his guilt.
I’m sorry, Cisco. I never meant this to happen!
Over a century to go of this. Nearer two, and with no remission. When th
ey thawed out, Izza would discover him howling and laughing, his face running with blood from where he had clawed out his eyes.
I am Tavistock Fitzwilliam. I don’t cave easily!
That’s true enough, replied a caustic voice in his mind.
Think, Fitz! Think!
Brain activity didn’t cease completely in cryo. Brain waves ran at around one microhertz. Just ticking over. Perhaps that meant dream time would run slower too. If brain activity was – what, ten million times slower? – then the sleep to Regina-Ventu would be the equivalent of less than ten minutes. Nothing more than a troubled snooze after a heavy lunch.
The clawed-out eyes, though. He’d seen that for real. He’d just never understood what had caused it until now.
Hey, Cisco, he addressed the back of his friend’s head. I’m Tavistock Fitzwilliam now. Captain Fitz. And if I’m caught in a perpetual dream loop, then how better than to spend it with my old friend and that Gliesan girl? Azhanti! I’d forgotten how hot she was.
Aliens always been your thing?
There was that nagging voice again. Female. Human. Annoying.
Why not? he told it. Variety is spicy.
Interesting. I had assumed your liaison with Zan Fey was the manifestation of a deep psychological malaise. Perhaps a need to find someplace to belong after your own society rejected you.
Fitz laughed at the voice, but he felt a tingle of fear as the scene in the bar began to fade like smoke in a lazy breeze. You’re crap at this, he told the voice. Izza’s the most beautiful being in the galaxy. She’s not just super smart and smoking hot, but she’s the only person who really understands me. I get her too. No one else does. That’s why we make such good partners.
I’m pleased to hear it. She’s a key member of the team you are to lead.
Look, I’m new at this going mad business. But if you’re the master of ceremonies for my loop of insanity, would you mind rewinding back to the part before the Marines barged in? I liked the way the girl with the wings was looking at me.
Chimera Company Season 2 - Deep Cover Page 3
