Sons of the Starfarers: Omnibus I-III
Page 15
“Wait—do I know you?”
“That depends,” she said. “Deltana—that makes you a star wanderer, I take it?”
She was a smart looking girl, with small lips and a narrow face. Her hair was dark and barely came down to her shoulders. She wore a brown flight suit that seemed a bit tight around her chest but otherwise fit her well.
“I’m up here,” she said, pointing to her eyes. Aaron blushed even deeper.
“Sorry. Star wanderer? Um, yes, I’m a star wanderer. What’s your name?”
“Mara Soladze.” She extended her hand—a foreign gesture, coming from another Deltan. “My father was a star wanderer, too. He brought my family here to the New Pleiades before the famine on Megiddo Station got bad. I’ve already heard all about it, by the way. There aren’t many Deltans out in this part of the Outworlds, but we do our best to stick together.”
“That’s good,” said Aaron. “How long have you been living out here?”
She shrugged. “Five, six standard years. I was still pretty young.” She narrowed her eyes and lifted a hand to her chin. “Though I have to say, you look a bit familiar. Aaron, was it?”
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“Did you have a sister named Mariya? Because I remember her.”
Aaron lit up almost immediately. “Yes, that’s my sister! She’s just a little bit older than me. Were you friends or something?”
“Yep. We were in the same class growing up. How is she doing?”
It was amazing how much more welcoming the lounge felt now that he actually knew someone. The curious glances from the other cadets didn’t bother him half so much anymore, and he didn’t feel awkward or out of place at all—not with Mara to talk to.
“She’s doing great!” he blurted. “That is, I think she is—I don’t actually know. I haven’t seen her in a while.”
Mara cocked her head. “What do you mean? Where is she?”
“She’s, ah, she’s back at Alpha Oriana. With the rest of the family.”
Her eyes widened. “The Oriana Cluster? Oh, stars—haven’t the Gaians already taken over there? That’s horrible.”
“Yeah,” said Aaron, his heart sinking. “I guess it is.”
“Is that why you’re here? To fight back against the empire?”
For some reason, Aaron thought about the henna girl. He was the one who had found her back at the derelict station, and he was the reason that they’d taken her to the New Pleiades. The fact that she’d fallen into Imperial hands meant that he had to fight to get her back. He didn’t know what had become of his family back at Alpha Oriana, but as a star wanderer, he knew that he would never see them again anyway. If anyone had dragged him into this war, it was the henna girl.
“I-I guess,” he stammered. “It’s a bit more complicated than that, but yeah.”
Mara frowned and folded her arms. “Don’t you have an older brother?”
“Yes.”
“But you said you’re a star wanderer.”
“That’s right.”
“Only the oldest son leaves on his father’s ship as a star wanderer. At least, that’s how the tradition goes. What does that make you?”
Aaron’s cheeks reddened. Several of the other cadets were looking in their direction. The fact that he and Mara were speaking in Deltan made them that much more of a spectacle. He shifted on his feet and swallowed.
“We changed up the traditions a bit and left together. It’s … a long story.”
“And now you both want to join a war? Why?”
“Well … why do you want to?” he asked. It seemed like the best way to throw her off from all her questions.
“My father was killed at Bacca. It’s only through God’s starry grace that my mother and I escaped.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
She turned away, her face darkening. “The Imperials are animals, and they have no place in these stars. As long as I can carry a gun, I’ll do all I can to kill them.”
The forcefulness of her answer all but bowled him over. He saw the hatred in her eyes and knew that she was deadly serious.
He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. “This war is serious business, isn’t it?”
“It’s certainly no casual adventure, if that’s what you’re asking.”
A buzzing on Aaron’s wrist made him glance down at his console. It was a message from an unknown source on the station. He touched a few buttons on the keypad to run it through the autotranslator.
Recruiting Deltana, please report
“What’s that?” Mara asked, peering at the console. She lifted his hand and keyed it back to the original message. “Ah, looks like they want you to report to receive your new assignment. But what’s with the bad translation?”
Aaron took back his hand. “It’s the autotranslator my brother and I put together.”
“Yikes.”
“It works fine,” he said, bristling a little. “It’s gotten me through so far.”
“Really?” she said, raising a skeptical eyebrow. “You don’t speak the language around here, do you?”
“I know enough to get by.”
“Sure you do. Here, let me show you to deck three. You’ll probably get lost if you go on your own. I’ll come with you to the meeting, too, just in case that autotranslator can’t hack it.”
Aaron started to object, but a sharp look from Mara told him that he’d be fighting a losing battle. His cheeks burned red, but he took a deep breath and resigned himself to it. Besides, he had no idea where section twelve of deck three was supposed to be anyway.
“You ready?”
“Yeah,” he said, putting his wrist console back on standby. “Let’s go.”
* * * * *
Mara led him upspin about a hundred meters, then down a narrow stairwell to the same command deck where Argo had introduced them to Admiral Tully. Aaron half expected to run into the recruiter, but apparently he was busy. With all the bustling activity around the deck, it was a good thing that Mara was there to show him the way.
Once I’ve learned enough Gaian to get along, I won’t need anyone to hold my hand, he thought to himself. That time could not come soon enough.
They stepped into a large, circular room, with a raised platform along the walls and two rows of chairs arranged to face the center. A holographic projector hung from the ceiling directly above three podiums, each of which had a terminal interface. Only one of them was occupied, though. A tall, heavyset man with dark black skin and a bald head scanned the display screen at the foremost podium. His wide mouth was framed by a whispy white goatee.
“Commander,” Mara said, saluting him as she entered. Aaron’s ear jewel translated for him.
“Corporal Soladze,” the commander answered. “What are you doing here?”
“Seeing new recruit,” she answered. At least, that was how the autotranslator rendered it.
The commander nodded and gestured with his hand to the chairs in front of him, where a dozen new recruits were already seated. At least, Aaron gathered that they were recruits—they weren’t dressed in anything that looked remotely military. One of them was old and wrinkled with a long silvery beard, but most of the others were young men just like him. He wouldn’t be surprised if most of them were star wanderers.
“That’s Commander Ajax,” Mara explained under her breath as they sat down. “He’s the commanding officer of our battle group. They must have put you with us.”
Commander Ajax spoke rather sharply to her, which Aaron’s wrist console didn’t pick up. Mara rose to her feet and addressed him.
“I sorry, commander,” the ear-jewel translated for him. “A recruit not speak and needing someone for translate.”
That seemed to satisfy the commander. She returned to her seat and pointed to Aaron’s ear.
“Better take that thing out. It looks like I’ll be translating for you.”
Who put you in charge of that? Aaron wan
ted to snap at her. Something told him that the commander wouldn’t put up with that, though, so he rolled his eyes and slipped the jewel out of his ear.
“Fine. What is this meeting about?”
“It’s an orientation for new recruits. The commander will explain the duties and expectations placed on you as a soldier in the Flotilla, then call you up individually to give you your assignments.”
“Fair enough,” said Aaron. “When are we going to start?”
As if on cue, Commander Ajax cleared his throat. Immediately, the room grew silent. He straightened his back and stood with his hands clasped smartly behind his back. Before speaking, he took a moment to look every recruit squarely in the eye. Aaron felt chills run down his spine as the man’s gaze fell on him. When he finally spoke, his deep, low voice resonated with implicit authority.
“He just welcomed you all to New Hope Station,” Mara whispered in Aaron’s ear. “Right now, he’s giving a brief description and history of the Flotilla. Our personnel hail from all over the New Pleiades and several of the neighboring systems. We have about a hundred and fifty starships, with an average crew capacity of thirty-seven, but only six of our ships can carry a full regiment of marines. Our ships are not built for battle—our firepower is light, and most of our weapons systems are old or obsolete. The few ships with newer systems are freighters that were never designed to carry them.”
Commander Ajax paused to let the news sink in. When Mara finished translating, the room was so silent that Aaron thought he could hear micrometeorites tinkering against the outside of the station’s hull. Just as the silence started to become uncomfortable, the commander resumed.
“What we do have,” Mara translated, “is speed. We have a device that the Imperials don’t, a device that will allow us to hit them hard and move around them before …” She frowned. “Have you heard about this?”
“Yeah,” said Aaron. “Argo mentioned it. Something called a ‘jump beacon.’”
“That’s … that’s a game changer,” she said. “That could really give us a fighting chance. If the Gaians have to spread out their forces to—”
“What else is he saying?”
She took a deep breath and paused to listen. “Right. The commander is talking about how we need to capture as many Imperial starships intact as we can, so that we can repurpose them for the next campaign. If we’re going to succeed, we have to use the Gaians’ own weapons against them.”
“Capture them? How?”
“By boarding them, of course. Why do you think I signed up as a marine?”
Aaron frowned. The thought of boarding an Imperial battleship reminded him of his dream, where he was back in the cargo hold of the Starfire trying to find the henna girl before the Imperials caught up with him. Chills ran down his back just thinking about it, the dream still felt so real.
“Now he’s talking about why we signed up to fight. Everyone has their own reasons, some of them noble, some not so much.”
My reasons are noble, Aaron thought, remembering the henna girl. I’ve got to save her.
“But whatever our reasons,” Mara continued, “we need to stand united. We are just a confederation of loosely aligned worlds—more like an oversized volunteer defense force than a navy. If we don’t follow our commanding officers, we’re little more than a mob. But if we do, and serve to the best of our abilities, we have a real chance at winning this war.”
Once again, the room fell silent. Aaron glanced at the other recruits and saw that they were on the edges of their seats. While Mara’s translation was certainly clear, it was evident that the commander’s actual speech had been much more charismatic.
Commander Ajax nodded to the recruits and spoke again. “Any questions?” Mara translated.
The old, silver-haired recruit stood up and spoke. Before Mara could translate, the others started chuckling.
“What did he say?”
“He asked what the record was for killing the most Imperials and whether there’s any sort of betting pool. Now the commander is saying that it’s important we capture as many ships intact as possible, but that if we want to count captures as well as kills, we’re welcome to do so.”
Another recruit stood up, this one around Aaron’s age. “He’s asking how much time we have to train before we see combat.”
Ajax’s answer was only two words. Even without Mara, the meaning was clear enough.
“Not very much.”
That silenced the room once again. A third recruit stood up, one of the few girls in the room.
“She’s asking when we leave,” Mara translated. “And Commander Ajax is saying that we head to Bacca in two weeks. With the new jump beacon device, we should make our assault there in less than forty-eight hours. After that, we’ll have to move just as fast to secure the remaining frontier worlds before the Gaians can call in reinforcements.”
Two weeks. That wasn’t very long. Aaron’s heart skipped a beat, and an insuppressible grin began to spread across his face. After so much talk and so much waiting, he was finally going to see some action.
“The commander says that if we have any other specific questions about the campaign, we can ask them later,” Mara said. “Any general questions should be asked now.”
The room fell silent. Ajax nodded and glanced down at the terminal display on his podium before resuming.
“Now he’s calling the recruits by name,” Mara explained. Three young men on the front row stood up. “He’s giving them their assignments—astrogation and countermeasures on board the Aegis, Commander Ajax’s flagship. Now he’s calling up the next few people.”
As silent as the briefing room had been before, it soon erupted into a dozen different conversations, softly at first, but soon growing loud enough that Aaron could barely hear the commander. It was clear from the wild grins and hearty congratulations that the new recruits were enthusiastic about their assignments. As Ajax continued calling out names, though, a few recruits bit their lips or otherwise tried to hide their disappointment. Even without understanding what was being said, Aaron could read their faces well enough to tell.
Where are they going to send me? His stomach sank, and his heart began to race as the commander continued calling out names. The first few recruits began to trickle out of the room, talking excitedly as they did.
At length, Aaron heard the commander say his name.
“That’s you.”
He rose on unsteady legs, resisting the urge to lean on Mara for support. She stood up next to him, her back straight and her hands at parade rest behind her back. He did the same.
Commander Ajax eyed him up and down for a moment before glancing down at his screen. He then walked over to talk with them directly.
Oh, crap.
Mara addressed him first. He nodded to her, then looked Aaron squarely in the eye. “Aaron Deltana?”
“I am,” said Aaron. He gave his best attempt at a salute, which the commander returned.
“You are Orianan?”
He nodded.
Ajax spoke again, this time using words that he didn’t understand. He smiled and nodded again, hoping to cover, but it was clear that the commander could see right through him.
Without translating, Mara replied. Commander Ajax turned to her and folded his arms. As she spoke, her voice started rising in pitch and intensity. Aaron bounced back and forth from his toes to his heels and tried unsuccessfully to follow her.
What is she saying?
Now the commander spoke, and the conversation became even more vigorous. The other recruits started to take notice, and a small circle began to gather around them. Aaron wasn’t sure whether to stay where he was or to back out. He considered putting the jewel back in his ear, but a quick glance at his wrist console showed that there was just too much talking in the room for it to accurately follow one conversation. Besides, the
d he started to wonder if he’d made a mistake in not just going with his brother.
“The commander wants to know if you can pilot a cargo hauler,” Mara said abruptly.
Aaron blinked. “A cargo hauler?”
“Yes. Do you know how pilot a sublight ship through a debris field?”
“Of course,” he said, recovering quickly. “I did all the navigation work on board the Medea. I can fly through just about anything.”
Mara turned back to the commander and resumed her heated conversation with him.
“Hey,” Aaron said, putting a hand on her arm. “What are you talking about?”
She brushed him off and continued talking. Commander Ajax put a hand on his chin and nodded, as if mulling over what she’d said.
What the hell are they talking about?
At length, Ajax nodded. He walked back to the podium and hit a series of keys. Mara saluted, and he replied with a curt nod. Before Aaron could ask what any of it meant, she took him by the arm and escorted him toward the door.
“What’s going on? What the hell just happened?”
“Congratulations, Cadet. You just got assigned as the drop-ship pilot for our platoon.”
Aaron frowned. “Drop-ship pilot?”
“Yep. The commander was going to bury you as an adjutant on some secondary ship, but I convinced him you’d do better with us. You’re going to have to pick up the language pretty quick, though. There aren’t many people in the Flotilla who speak Deltan.”
They walked out the door and back into the bustling corridor. If it weren’t for Mara, Aaron would have immediately been swept away by the crowd. That was the only thing keeping him from making a scene.
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this? What made you think this is what I want?”
“Because it’s your only shot at being the pilot of anything in this campaign. You might be the best hotshot in the Flotilla, but if you can’t communicate with anyone, you might as well be flying a chunk of space rock. On the drop-ship, though, I’ll be able to help translate—at least until you can manage well enough on your own.”