by Terry Mixon
“At this point, we only know that it’s some kind of passenger liner. It’s cold and dark, so nobody’s been on it for a while. Maybe we’ll be able to salvage its computer and figure out how they got here, though.”
“That would be good. It would be even better to know how they discovered the weak flip point in the first place. I suppose we need a better name than weak flip points. If the theory is correct, that’s an inaccurate term. Maybe I should call them multiflip points.”
The marine smiled. “It doesn’t really matter what you call it, so long as it works. Another angle they’re looking at is the planet. One of the continents and several islands sit on the equator. From what they tell me, it’s a cold place. Even living on the equator would be hard going if it gets colder.”
“If the ship really did come through during the Fall, none of the people down there is going to be able to tell us anything first hand. Civilians with nanites have long lifespans, but that potential gets much shorter under primitive conditions. You’ll lose people to accidents and violence. It’s probably a safe bet that none of the original survivors lasted more than a hundred years.”
Talbot shrugged. “People tell stories. We’ll find out something about how they got here, though it might be garbled. If, of course, there’s anyone here in the first place.”
“How did playing a spy work out for Captain Vitter?” Carl asked.
He grimaced. “Not so well. Apparently, somebody figured out who she was right away. The guy spent two hours tormenting her with innuendo. If we’re going to get the specifications and manufacturing techniques for the artificial intelligence systems and Raider implants, you’ll have to come up with another plan.”
The younger man sighed. “I was afraid of that. Given enough time, we’ll eventually work out the specifics of creating each individual part. Just having the equipment itself will make that a lot easier.”
Talbot clapped his friend on the shoulder. “You’ll figure it out. I’ll leave you to your work and go find some other trouble to get into.”
He’d barely made it into the corridor before he received a message from Commodore Anderson.
“Yes, ma’am?”
She smiled at him through the implant feed. “We have good news, for once. The probes have picked up signs of primitive settlements on the equatorial continent. Somebody’s down there. I want you to gather up a scouting team and check it out.”
He grinned. “I’ll get rolling.”
Raul felt as though he were stumbling along when the marines put him back into the mess compartment. The events of the last few hours had shaken him to the core.
“Commander Castille,” Commodore Murdock said sternly. “Where have you been?”
He shook his head in a futile attempt to clear it. “I’ve been getting an education on precisely how screwed we are, Commodore.”
The woman frowned. “Get your ass over here and explain that to me.”
The confused jumble of feelings in his gut narrowed to irritation. Murdock was the worst choice for a senior officer in a situation like this. Not only was she completely clueless, she was going to make any action the rest of them took that much harder.
His annoyance grew when he saw that she still didn’t have another chair at her table. That was just the kind of petty nonsense the woman had a reputation for.
Well, perhaps he should do something about that.
He came to attention. “My apologies, Commodore. The information I just obtained is shocking. Our situation is graver than we’d believed. I need to brief all the senior officers so that we can coordinate an organized response to this new threat.”
Her frown deepened. “I’ll make the decision about who needs to know what, as well as what our response will be, Commander.” She emphasized his title, no doubt to remind him that she was a flag officer and he was not.
“Are you familiar with the security protocols for the research station?” he asked politely.
“It’s a little early to start a court of inquiry into how you should’ve stopped this attack before it ever started, Commander. Let’s focus on turning the tables first.”
He smiled blandly. “While I no doubt hold most of the blame in this, you’re right this isn’t the time. My point is that the security of the Empire is at stake. I’m declaring a state of emergency and assuming command of this facility and its personnel so I can effectively deal with it.”
Commodore Murdock surged to her feet. “I will not tolerate you attempting to usurp my command, Castille. You’re under arrest.” She raised her voice. “Commander Irons, come here.”
The other officer hurried over from his table. “Yes, Commodore?”
She pointed at Raul. “Commander Castille is under arrest. See that he is secured in whatever manner you see fit.”
Raul smiled at Irons. “That won’t be necessary, Commander. Under the research facility’s emergency security protocols, I’ve just assumed command of this facility and all its personnel. I assume you’re familiar with them?”
The other officer nodded. “Of course. What are your orders, sir?”
“What the hell are you doing?” Murdock demanded. “You will do as I instructed, or you’ll find yourself under arrest as well, Commander Irons.”
The man looked contrite. “I’m sorry, Commodore. The security protocols give Commander Castille the authority to assume command.”
He turned to Raul. “We don’t have access to more private accommodations for a prisoner, sir. Particularly one of flag rank. What you have in mind?”
“This is mutiny,” Murdock snarled. “I’ll have you both shot for this.”
“I suppose we’ll need to keep her at this table for now,” Raul said, ignoring her. “It’s not as though she’s been mingling with anyone else up to this point. Find a pair of officers that will obey your instructions and make sure that she stays here and behaves herself.”
“That shouldn’t be too difficult,” the other officer said with a glance at the fuming Commodore.
A few minutes later, two scowling officers flanked the Commodore. Raul supposed they would keep her in line, but if they didn’t, he could deal with her more harshly.
He joined Commander Irons and Jeanette Martin at their table. He then filled them in on the things he’d seen when Annette Vitter took him on her little tour of the carrier Audacious. He wrapped up with the revelation that they weren’t in the Dresden system any longer.
Jeanette held up a hand. “Hold on. You’re telling me that they stole the orbital? As in, they’ve absconded with us?”
Her choice of words made him smile. “I’m afraid that’s exactly what I’m saying. As the imposter was bringing me back, we were just entering orbit around a planet.
“I saw this world with my own eyes. It’s in the habitable zone, but it wasn’t Dresden. I haven’t got the faintest idea where we are, but our assumption that Fleet was coming to rescue us is incorrect.”
Irons rubbed his forehead. “That changes everything. This is a disaster, and this is all my fault.”
“That’s an epic declaration, Commander. Considering the number of ships and those fighters they brought with them, I’m somewhat at a loss as to how you bear any responsibility. Perhaps you’d care to explain it to me.”
The other officer slumped dejectedly. “I brought her into the restricted area. I thought she was Renner, and I bypassed every bit of security we had in place to keep hostile personnel out.”
Raul laughed. Not a little chuckle, but a fuller laugh. “Frankly, Edward, I don’t think it made the slightest bit of difference whether you brought her to that meeting or not. They were still on the station, and they had overwhelming force.
“No. If you’d realized you were dealing with an imposter—which has to be the ballsiest move I’ve ever seen—then the most you’d have been able to do was force them to advance their timetable. That would’ve changed nothing.”
He considered telling them the woman’s ludicrous claims abou
t being minions of the despot that escaped the revolution, but decided that would only muddy the waters. The ploy had to be a bizarre disinformation campaign anyway.
After a moment, he sighed and leaned back in his chair. “What’s obvious to me is that this operation was meticulously planned and took advantage of weaknesses in our security that we didn’t even know were there.
“Frankly, I’m convinced this had to be some kind of inside job. Someone smoothed the way for these intruders. There’s just no other way to explain how they got so many people on board the orbital without being discovered.”
“What do we do now?” Jeanette asked. “We can’t get to the computers to purge them, but they’re not going to break into them by brute force, either. They’re going to have to dissect every bit of equipment in the research area to gain any kind of advantage.
“Do we have any idea which world is financing this operation? Or is it some type of mutiny inside Fleet itself?”
Raul shrugged. “I’m not sure. We need to stymie them in a way that won’t provoke them into torturing us. They have us completely at their mercy.”
Whatever the enemy’s plans were, he felt certain they’d be coming along to execute them before very much longer. Once they had more information, he and his compatriots could formulate a plan to resist them.
While Raul would never have willingly chosen for these events to occur, he felt invigorated. This was going to be the most fun he’d had in years.
9
Kelsey exited the pinnace into the cruise liner’s landing bay. The magnetic boots of her armor clicked on the deck as she walked. Angela had portable lights scattered about, so the compartment was not in total gloom.
She could’ve used the miniature grav drive her armor boasted, but for such a short distance, it didn’t seem worthwhile.
It had taken her executive officer less than an hour to determine that the derelict was completely lifeless and harmless. In fact, it probably hadn’t been fit for occupation in centuries.
The evidence was all around her as she made her way toward engineering. The deck plans in her implants guided her past stripped compartments. Even the hatches and grav plates were gone.
The ship would never be useful as an interstellar vessel ever again. It probably wouldn’t ever support life on its own. They’d even taken a number of hull plates, exposing the interior to open space.
She found Angela and several engineers standing in the gloomy cavern that had been engineering. At least it was gloomy until the rear end lit up with bluish light. The aft quadrant was gone, and Kelsey could see the planet they were orbiting.
Someone had ripped all of the consoles out. The only notable object in the room was the flip drive. For some reason, they’d left it behind.
“What have we got?” Kelsey asked as she stepped up beside her executive officer.
The marine’s expression was wry inside her helmet. “We’ve got a whole lot of nothing. In fact, we have so much nothing that it means something. Someone stripped this derelict of anything useful, and when I say anything, I really mean everything.”
Kelsey gestured toward the flip drive. “That doesn’t look like nothing.”
“I’ll let Jake explain that.”
The engineering technician took that as his cue. “That might look like a flip drive, Colonel, but it isn’t really. At least, not anymore. It’s completely fried. As far as I can tell, there’s not a single salvageable part left. Seriously, it actually caught fire.”
“Any idea what might’ve caused that?” Kelsey asked.
“Whatever it was, it happened a long time ago. Based on the age of the scorch marks, probably sometime around the Fall.”
Kelsey nodded. “It’s always possible this happened when they used the weak flip point. Our military drives are more robust than civilian models. What about the rest of the ship? Is there anything useful left?”
“Someone spent a lot of man-hours stripping this ship down to the decks, and then taking most of the decks too. The computers are gone, and every bit of electronics is missing. They even took the wiring. Basically, this liner is ready for the scrapyard. There’s nothing we can recover from it that will tell us anything.”
Kelsey sighed. “Well, that’s disappointing. Somehow, this ship used the weak flip point, arrived here in orbit, and then the crew and passengers vanished, taking with them anything that might tell us something useful.”
“Maybe that’s intentional,” Angela said. “If I wanted to be certain that no one could figure out where I’d gone, I’d either strip the ship down or destroy it. Frankly, I think these folks probably needed every bit of technology they could get their hands on, so dumping it into the sun didn’t make as much sense.”
“Talbot is almost ready to check out the inhabited area we spotted below,” Kelsey said. “Basically, all we can see from orbit is the fact that they have some cultivated fields. The area is heavily forested, so any dwellings are probably underneath the trees.”
“If I had to guess,” Angela said, “they’re not intentionally trying to hide from anyone. Otherwise, they’d have destroyed the ship. They’d also be a bit more cautious about hiding any cultivated areas.”
Kelsey agreed with that assessment. Whoever was down there—if anyone was down there—wasn’t concerned about someone spotting them. Not really.
The fact that they didn’t have any high-tech dwellings might very well mean that the descendants of the survivors were living a very primitive lifestyle. Probably nothing like the Pale Ones, but definitely something more agrarian.
“I’m going to have Jake ship the flip drive over to Carl,” Angela said. “If anyone can figure something out with this piece of junk, he can.”
“Did the ship even have a name?” Kelsey asked. “Maybe it’s in our databases.”
“Radiant Dawn. We only know that because it’s written on the hull. Our databases have listings of Fleet vessels, but not civilian ones. We’ve got nothing on this ship.”
Kelsey grunted. “Pity. Maybe Talbot will be able to find out something. We’ll just have to keep working with what we have up here.”
“Speaking of working with what we have, how are things going with your mother?”
Kelsey gave the tall woman a sour look. “I went down and talked with her. Things did not go well. Did you know that her picture is in the Imperial dictionary next to the word ‘entitled’? That woman thinks that the universe revolves around her. It’s maddening.”
“This should not be a shock to you. You’ve known her your entire life. Surely, she behaved the same way when you were growing up.”
Kelsey sighed. “Of course she did. It’s not that I expect her to be different, but I’ve changed. I don’t have the tolerance to deal with her bull. I have so many other priorities that I just want to leave her down there in that little cabin until we get back home, however long it takes.”
Angela laughed. “That’s a nice pipe dream, but you’re going to have to deal with her sooner rather than later. That is one situation that won’t be improved by putting it off.”
“I don’t know what to say. I’ve been through things that she will never understand. Her petty prejudices make my teeth hurt. I just want to shake her.”
“Maybe you should, if you think it will serve your end goal. Since she’s here and you have to deal with her, what is the optimum outcome of your interaction with her?”
Kelsey thought about that. “I want her to respect me for who I am. I want her to respect Jared as my brother. And I want her to recognize how bad her behavior is.”
Angela shook her head. “One of the things they taught me when I became an officer was that some things are outside your control. If your mother is ever going to realize that what she did is wrong, it’s going to have to be on her own time.
“Kelsey, she’s been behaving this way longer than you’ve been alive. One thing everyone needs to understand about relationships is that you can’t change the other person if they d
on’t want to change.”
“So I should dial back my expectations and just let her get away with it?”
“I wouldn’t say you’re letting her get away with anything. You’re accepting that it isn’t your problem to fix. Give her the cold shoulder all you like, just don’t expect it to make her change who she is unless she wants to.
“As for Admiral Mertz, that’s also tied up in her past with your father. Nothing you do is going to change how she feels. Maybe one day she’ll be forced to sit down with Jared and learn what kind of person he really is. If so, that’s Jared’s fight. You need to focus on what’s critical for you.”
Kelsey smiled a little. “So it’s all about me, then?”
“Yes, it is. The only thing you can work out with your mother is your relationship. If she doesn’t respect you, grind her face into it. Make her decide to change.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Kelsey said slowly. “I just don’t want to talk to her right now.”
“Putting something painful off only makes it more difficult. When you find yourself having to do something difficult, grit your teeth and do it. Every time she disrespects you, yank her up short. If she wants to discuss your life, make it clear that you have the final say in all the decisions about your personal life. If she doesn’t like that, tough.”
“I kind of started that already.”
Angela clapped Kelsey on the shoulder. “Then go finish it.”
Veronica walked around Audacious for almost two hours. To her shock, Levy allowed her to dictate their direction of travel and didn’t even deter her from going into sensitive areas.
For example, when she wanted to go to engineering, he allowed it. He had to know she was looking their engines over and seeing how they powered the ship, but he didn’t seem concerned.
She had to admit the big ship intimidated her. As a junior officer, she’d served aboard a heavy cruiser. At the time, she couldn’t have imagined a more powerful warship.
