The keypad that normally opened the door was dead. She pried off the panel on the side of the door to reveal the manual release. "Let's hope there's pressure in here."
It took all of her strength, but pulling down on the manual release finally forced the door open. The briefing room was indeed still pressurized, but everything inside the room hovered peacefully in the air. The table and chairs sat serenely, safely bolted to the deck, but the infoslates, cups, saucers, and other assorted items drifted around with no gravity to hold them down.
She and Richards carefully threaded their way through the room amidst all of the floating items. The lifepod access was concealed behind a panel in the room - a chute that would deposit them safely into a self-powered escape device. It only took a moment to remove the panel from the wall to reveal the dark chute that headed downward.
Trace contemplated the shadowed escape route. Normally, gravity would carry them down the tube to the pod, but with the artigrav no longer operational, they were going to have to propel themselves down slowly. The access led to the Captain's personal lifepod, with enough space for five bridge officers. This was the only access, and she was fairly confident that no one else has been this way, but they needed to be careful just the same.
"Be careful, Zack," Trace said. "Take it easy going down.”
He nodded. She grasped the sides of the tube and pushed herself down.
**
VIII
Trace woke to the sound of the comm chiming. Zack Richards was breathing softly a few feet to her left. The running lights inside the Captain's lifepod were dim, but the hum of electricity had lulled her to sleep within a few minutes after launching.
She depressed the button to accept the audio comm signal. A voice began speaking as though it were there in the pod with them. "This is Captain Jerem Bands, V.S.S. Arcturus. We have locked on to your distress signal and will begin pod retrieval in five minutes. Please acknowledge."
For a moment, her heart soared to hear the voice of another ship captain, but she sobered immediately upon remembering that the Arcturus was one of the ships assigned to her father's fleet. A chill shiver ran down her spine.
She clicked the "send" button next. "V.S.S. Arcturus, this is Commander Trace Atherton aboard the Captain's lifepod, V.S.S. Renaissance. Your transmission is received and acknowledged. Standing by for retrieval. Atherton out."
A grim smile stole over her face as she imagined the comm officer's reaction to her transmission. Unless her father had been killed during the action, he had almost certainly installed himself as First Administrator of the Vega Syndicate by now. She glanced at the chronometer. Almost thirteen hours had passed since the fleet had jumped into the system, and if the Arcturus was on S&R duty, her father's fleet had won. The voice and ident of the new First Administrator's youngest daughter coming from a lifepod was certain to instill a certain amount of urgency in any captain.
She stole a glance at the sleeping Lieutenant Richards as she settled back into her seat. The fate of her crew and the crews of her squadmates' ships weighed heavily on her mind. Had any of them survived the onslaught that had killed the Renaissance?
She hoped someone aboard the Arcturus would be able to tell her.
Trace didn’t dare turn the viewscreens to look back at her ship. She simply couldn’t bring herself to do it.
If she had, she would have seen a forlorn wreck, split almost exactly at the mid-deck, its pieces slowly drifting apart.
**
IX
Three days later, Trace stood in the Council Chamber on Vega Prime. There had been over one hundred survivors from the four ships in her squad who had been recovered. One hundred survivors, out of a total crew of nearly two thousand. Unfortunately, her friend Etienne Russell had not been one of them. She felt his loss keenly, even as she stood before a tribunal of Vega Syndicate interests who had deliberated for five hours to decide her fate.
The courtroom was devoid of spectators. The crowds would be present for the sentencing of the other officers, noncoms and ratings that had survived the massacre, but the senior officers were to be sentenced behind closed doors.
Her eyes looked to her father, who had, as she suspected, installed himself as First Administrator of the Syndicate following the total destruction of Gregane's compound. She searched his face for some kind of reaction, but she found nothing there except a blank, stony gaze.
She'd expected him to be furious, to be nearly ready to explode like a fusion warhead with his rage, but instead, there was only cold silence. It was eerie, as though she were seeing another man with her father's face, and a shiver ran down her spine.
"Commander Trace Atherton," began the Council Spokesman, a wizened old man with a plump middle and grey hair that looked as though it were about to take wing. “You are hereby charged with violations of the Articles of War, section 74(a), section 45(d) and section 24(a).”
She blinked, confused. She’d been expecting charges of treason, murdering civilians and even eating babies if it had served her father’s political purpose. What are they driving at?
Trace had studied the Articles of War closely. She’d even made them work for her, in the past, rather than against her as they always seemed to. It seemed to her that her enemies would have cooked up something worse to use against her. Unfortunately, her whirling brain refused to tell her what the relevant sections read.
“For violation of section 24(a), failure to identify your command in a battle situation, the sentence is 5 years desk-duty. For violation of section 45(d), firing upon friendly ships with no warning, the sentence is expulsion from the Navy.”
She winced. It was bad, but she’d never expected to live through the battle anyway. She certainly had never expected to save her career.
“For violation of section 74(a), lawfully leading subordinates directly into a situation with no hope of survival when other options are available, the sentence is 15 years imprisonment on Vega Tertius.”
The breath stole out of her. Vega Tertius. The most desolate prison in the cluster – a whole planet, dedicated only to imprisoning those who worked against the Syndicate. Stone cells, carved from the rock beneath the howling desert winds. Solitary confinement... they didn’t want her dead, they wanted her to suffer.
She gritted her teeth. Would she plead, beg for mercy? Could she beg her father for forgiveness and hope to be spared?
He still refused to look at her. She would get no help there.
“Do you care to speak in your defense?” the Spokesman asked.
She stood, eyes staring straight ahead, focused on nothing. She made a decision in her own mind. She would speak not one word to these traitors. In that moment, Trace Atherton took upon herself a tradition many centuries old, maintained usually by those in holy orders and those seeking inner clarity, very much of the kind she wished to attain for herself in that moment.
She made a vow of silence.
“With nothing further from the prisoner, the sentences are hereby upheld. This Council is adjourned.” The Spokesman pounded his ceremonial staff on the floor three times.
The guards dragged her to her feet, towards the door. Her mind whirled in its confusion, and she cast one more desperate look towards her father. He met her eyes now, but still there was none of the hot fury that she was so used to. Instead, there was a blank, icy coldness that she had never seen in his blue eyes before.
She stared back defiantly, daring him to say something. His eyes narrowed dangerously for a moment, and then he averted them once more.
Trace Atherton allowed herself to be led from the tribunal chamber.
**
X
It was dark, and cold. Outside the prison, the chill wind howled across the desolate tundra of Vega Tertius. The thin, gray prison-issued jumpsuit she wore barely kept the cold at bay. Her feet were bare on the cold stone floor. Feelings warred within her; anger, sorrow, betrayal...
Vengeance. It burned like a tiny candle flame.
/> She made a ragged mark down the stone wall with a pale rock she'd found in one corner, tucked beneath a pile of other, darker-colored rocks. It made a thin white line.
Day one.
###
About the author:
Christopher Kellen: systems analyst by day, writer by night (and sometimes afternoon and weekend as well). He knows no bounds of genre, nor cares for the convention that one should really split up their different genre writings under different names (or versions thereof). His science fiction is influenced by many greats, including (but not limited to) David Weber, Dan Abnett, Lois McMaster Bujold, and many others from both Baen and the Black Library. He intends to write a full-length science-fiction novel in the future.
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