Starhold's Fate

by J. Alan Field

  Breathing easier, the Corporal snapped off a badly executed salute and promptly withdrew. The man in the chair lowered the pistol into his lap, but kept it trained on Carr.

  “Be seated Mr. Carr. I am Samson Dansby.”

  “Then you are the man I’ve come to see,” said Carr sliding into a leather chair identical to his host’s.

  “You mean I’m the man you’ve come to kill.” Carr thought he saw Dansby’s grip on the plasma pistol tighten.

  “I’m not an assassin,” asserted Carr. He had been over this with various people throughout his career. Yes, he had killed in the line of duty, but always in self-defense. He took offense at being labeled a killer, even under present circumstances.

  “But you have been sent here to shut down my operations by the Empress herself. Oh, wait—what was it the Corporal said? You have a deal for me?” Dansby said, flashing an insincere smile. “I have neither the time nor inclination to play games, Mr. Carr. There is nothing that you could offer which—” The door opening interrupted Dansby. “Ah, Hofmann. Bring him in.”

  Behind Carr, a huge man entered through the library door. The man Dansby called Hofmann was human, but had a Massang-esque physique, every bit of six and a half feet tall. He carried a large something draped over his right shoulder, and as he cleared the doorway, Carr could see it was another person. They seemed either unconscious or dead. Thankfully, whoever it was, their frame was far too big to be Sanchez.

  Moving to the middle of the room, Hofmann effortlessly dumped the person from his shoulder onto the floor. As the body rolled to a stop, Carr swallowed hard. It was Beckman.

  “A colleague of yours, I believe,” said Dansby. “He stupidly tried to beat you to the prize. Unfortunately for Mr. Beckman, when he arrived here at the Manor his first encounter was with Hofmann here instead of the Corporal.” The mouth of the oversized man twisted into a smirk as he leered down at the corpse.

  Carr also stared down at the body, but said nothing.

  Stupid Beckman. You should have taken the day off.

  “Staying on the topic of uninvited guests,” continued Dansby, “just where might we find your better half?”

  “Come again? I don’t understand.”

  “You understand me just fine. The redoubtable Mrs. Carr—where can we find her?”

  “Mrs. Carr? That’s a pretty archaic term.”

  “I’m an archaic man—a Luddite, if you will. I believe in the old ways, the better ways. Humanity has lost its way because we have abandoned the old values—church, family, hard work, duty. Your wife, sir—where is she?”

  “She’s in town. I didn’t want her along on this.”

  The uniformed man chuckled. “Nonsense. You would no sooner leave her behind than you would your right arm. Hofmann, find the woman. She is no doubt making mischief while her husband here distracts us. And, Hofmann—take Agent Beckman away.”

  Hofmann gathered up the body and lumbered away. Just before the oversized man passed through the doorway, Dansby called to him. “Lin should be along soon. When she turns up, send her to me.”

  Carr bit his tongue. He desperately wanted to take a turn rattling Dansby, to let him know that he was down one player and that his ambush scheme probably wasn’t working out the way he had planned. For the moment, however, silence was the best tactical choice.

  “You look ill, Mr. Carr,” Dansby gloated. “Sorry, but Ms. Lin is on my team. Just about now, your Marines are walking into a trap down on the South Road. Beckman is dead and I have you at gunpoint. All I need now to wrap this up is your wife.”

  Carr tried to look dumbfounded, channeling his genuine concern for Sanchez into an apprehensive expression.

  “Speechless?” asked his host.

  “Confused. Help me understand your reasons for selling out humanity. Which one are you—the avenging patriot of the Commonwealth or the outraged victim of Gerrhan political convenience? I don’t get it. Help me understand why someone would help the Massang?”

  Dansby thought for a moment, looking as if he had never actually considered the question. “My role is chaos maker. I’m helping the Massang do what needs to be done.”

  “To humanity? You mean extinction?”

  “I mean liberation. Liberation from government elites whose only function is to serve themselves. Empires, Republics, Starholds—they’re all just contrivances used as a license to cheat and steal. Thieves who hide behind laws and armies, Mr. Carr. The Massang will wipe them all from existence.”

  “And most of the regular people, too.”

  Dansby bristled at that suggestion. “The people will endure. Humans will persevere. The Massang will eventually be overthrown and a new human order can arise. We will return the old values, tried and true traditions which have served humanity for millennia—ideals we have irresponsibly turned our back on in the name of so-called progress.”

  “I wonder if the three million people of Kolo Khiva would have shared that sentiment,” offered Carr, treading onto a dangerous topic. “When you and your people hacked the Kolo Khiva hypergate for the Massang, did you know in advance they were going to destroy the planet?”

  Dansby’s reaction was milder than Carr expected. “The Pumpkinheads told us they were deploying an invasion force. They must have changed the plan at the last minute. What they did at Kolo Khiva was…” The man holding the gun paused, reflecting on what to say. Carr expected to hear regret, contrition.

  “What they did at Kolo Khiva was… brilliant,” declared Dansby. “The obliteration of an entire world located in the heart of enemy territory. It was a masterstroke of tactical and psychological warfare.”

  Carr had suspected it for a while, but now he knew. Dansby wasn’t a political revolutionary. Neither was he some grand criminal mastermind manipulating wheels within wheels. This guy was just batshit crazy. The Massang had found a dupe and were playing him for all he was worth.

  “And the others?” asked Carr, stalling until Sanchez could complete her tasks. “Your people. What do they get out of this?”

  “Most are not quite as idealistic as myself. They are, to put it simply, mercenaries. We have some insiders operating within the Ortelli conglomerate. If anyone knows the ins and outs of the Gate system, it is the traders—no pun intended. Through the unwitting cooperation of the Ortelli Group, we have developed a very nice smuggling business here on Pontus, on Sarissa, and even on your beloved Earth. Of course, our interest in the Gate network is ongoing on behalf of our orange-faced friends.” Dansby was interrupted again as the door opened. “Well, well—here she is at last.”

  Hofmann roughly shoved Sanchez into the room, moving her next to where Carr sat. It looked as though she had been smacked around a little, a trickle of blood having dried at the corner of her mouth. The key thing was that she wasn’t bound, her hands were hanging free at her sides. Brutes like this Hofmann character were perpetually overconfident, always assuming their sheer strength would prevail in any situation.

  “How are you?” asked Carr.

  Sanchez swiped a hand across the corner of her mouth, then glanced at it to see if she was still bleeding. “Never been better, my love.”

  “That’s good to hear,” replied Carr.

  “You are a remarkable agent, my dear,” said Dansby, “for a woman. Personally, I have never liked having females under my command.”

  In a remarkable act of self-restraint, Sanchez said nothing. She seemed preoccupied.

  Hofmann walked to his boss and handed him a small bag. “She was carrying this. And Colonel, I can’t contact McCloskey and the others. I think something might be wrong.”

  Dansby peered into the canvass utility bag, fishing out one of the items with his free hand—a breather mask.

  “Where did you find her?” he asked sharply.

  “Downstairs, in the hallway next to the big storage room.”

  “Which is also next to the compressor room,” growled Dansby. “They are trying to gas us—most probably some typ
e of sleeping gas. Go downstairs and shut down the air circulation. Here, take one of these.” Dansby shoved one of the two breather masks into his large companion’s hands.

  “Go! Now!” bellowed Dansby. As Hofmann began moving, the Colonel had another thought. “And take that woman with you. Make her show you what she did.”

  Hofmann smiled. The goon seemed delighted at the prospect of brutalizing a beautiful woman. As he crossed the room to seize Sanchez, she warned Carr under her breath.

  “Three, two, one…”

  And Dansby thinks he’s a chaos maker? Carr thought to himself between the first and second explosions. Behold Etta Sanchez!

  The breather masks were a ruse. There was no gas—sleeping or otherwise. Instead, there were a dozen small explosive devices planted by Sanchez around the house and grounds. Just as Hofmann clutched her by the arm, several of the bombs detonated. The devices were small, more flash and bang than boom, but the timing of the distraction was perfect.

  As Hofmann reacted to the blasts with a moment’s hesitation, Sanchez quickly gripped his arm and kicked her right leg out behind his left. One firm shove and she broke free, sending his huge frame tumbling. Hofmann toppled to the floor in front of Carr at the same time Dansby fired his pistol. Unfortunately for the goliath, Sanchez had pushed him to the wrong place at the wrong time, as Dansby’s plasma charge seared into the left side of his face.

  Carr planted his feet firmly on the floor and pushed off, flipping the chair and himself backward. A second shot from Dansby burnt into the bottom of the chair as Carr was completing his clumsy backflip, tumbling into an upright position.

  “Center table, under the marble top!” yelled Sanchez as she wheeled to find the nearest thing that could be used as a weapon. Dansby had made an error by standing up instead of just firing another shot straightaway. By the time he had reacquired her as a target for his third shot, a small bookend statuette of Napoleon was hurtling toward his head. The shot went wild as he dodged the bronze figure.

  Carr fled into the foyer. Running to the round marble table in the middle of the room, he flipped it over, putting it between himself and the library door. Ducking behind the table, he grabbed the small canvas bag which Sanchez had attached to the bottom on her stealthy tour of the Manor. Taking a small slug pistol and a flash grenade from the bag, he waited what seemed like an eternity for Sanchez to clear out of the library. In truth, it was only a few seconds.

  “Cover!” shouted Carr.

  Sanchez scrambled from the library and jumped behind a cushioned chair which sat against the far wall. Balling herself up, she covered her ears with her hands and pressed her face as deep into her body as she could manage.

  Dansby appeared about a meter short of the doorway, crouching low with gun in hand. Carr tossed the flash grenade past the man’s feet into the library, then assumed the same position as his wife.

  Even with eyes closed and ears covered, the flash and bang were intense. As he emerged from behind the cover of the table, Carr shook his head a few times to clear his senses. Dansby was on the floor, writhing in discomfort and rapidly switching his hands between covering his eyes and his ears. Stun grenades were meant to incapacitate, and even though Dansby was in obvious distress, there was probably no permanent damage. Carr wasn’t sure whether he was happy about that or not.

  He picked up the plasma pistol and handed it to Sanchez, who had crawled out from behind the puffy chair.

  “You OK?”

  She started to open her mouth, but suddenly lifted the pistol and fired toward the front doorway. The Corporal and his companion had arrived on the scene. Carr and Sanchez dove behind the overturned marble table, on the other side this time.

  About a dozen shots were exchanged when one of Carr bullets came very close to the Corporal’s head.

  “Screw this!” the man yelled to his comrade. “They already got him. Let’s get outta here!”

  The two vanished and Sanchez rose from behind the table to pursue them. She had only made it a few steps to the front door when the duo reappeared. Their hands were planted on top of their heads as they marched inside at the point of Sarissan Marine rifles.

  “Looks like the two of you have everything under control here,” said Lieutenant McDowell as he arrived in the foyer, his Raiders storming the Manor to secure the site.

  “How did it go on the South Road?” asked Sanchez, yawning and shaking her head as she tried to clear her ears of the flash grenade effects.

  “More of a fight than I thought it would be, but we handled them. I have five wounded, but nobody got it seriously. Where is Dansby?”

  “That’s him,” said Carr, gesturing toward the whimpering character on the floor.

  “The ultimate traitor,” said McDowell, shaking his head and giving the man a scathing look. “Unbelievable—betraying humanity to an alien race.”

  “He had already betrayed humanity, years ago at Caswell Station,” Carr said as he moved to his wife’s side.

  Sanchez placed a hand on her husband’s shoulder. “You ready to go home?”

  “I sure am,” he smiled. “Never been readier for anything in my life—just as soon as we collect our prize.”

  “Prize?”

  “The information Admiral Bettencourt has for us. We have one more traitor to bag.”

  20: Cor Caroli

  Sarissan battleship Typhoon

  Cor Caroli system

  “All ships continuing inbound,” reported Denlora Aoki. “We are green across the grid, sir.”

  The flag bridge of David Swoboda’s battleship hummed with focused activity as Pettigrew’s staff prepared for the upcoming clash. Multiple holo-displays dominated the heart of the command center, flanked by crewed consoles which ringed the room. Nyondo and Aoki were positioned to Chaz Pettigrew’s left with the Lytori liaison Daemon and a holographic image of Captain Swoboda to his right. In reality, Swoboda was sitting two decks above them on the main bridge of Typhoon.

  “Ms. Aoki, what is the latest projection on initial contact?” asked Pettigrew as he reached the bottom of another mug of coffee.

  “The honor will go to Battle Group Marius, sir. Destroyer Division Fourteen should reach their first objective in eighteen minutes. They will be clearing an enemy minefield for Cruiser Squadron Nine.”

  “Cruiser Nine will be two light-minutes behind them,” added Nyondo. “The Double-Ds will be well within the range of cruiser support.”

  The wait was almost over. Pettigrew had hoped to give his crews a good eight hours of rest before going into battle, but Massang activity forced the timetable to be moved forward. Instead, Coalition captains rotated watches and spacers grabbed what sleep they could on the six-hour journey to the inner planets—if anyone could actually manage sleep during the leadup to action.

  Halfway into the system Pettigrew addressed all the ships of the fleet. It was supposed to be a rousing speech about duty and honor. “Anyone who signs up to make their living in the Black is used to doing the difficult things,” he had told them.

  “We do this not for the dead of Kolo Khiva, but for the living of all sentient worlds.” That was only partially true. Mostly, his spacers would be fighting for themselves—for their own lives and for their very existence, but his people already knew that. ‘Kill or be killed’ wasn’t something veteran crews had to hear from their fleet commander to understand.

  One-hundred sixty-two Coalition starships sprinted toward their implacable enemy at Cor Caroli. Six human starholds were represented, and in a way, each one was fighting for their own cause. The Sarissan Empire fought to preserve its newfound dominance over humankind—nearly forty percent of humans now lived in Sarissan controlled space. The Essadonians were there to avenge Kolo Khiva, the Pontians to defend their trade routes and wealth. Warships from Galba and Cardea were also present to battle the Massang, as were the formidable Jangsuvians.

  The remainder of Pettigrew’s fleet were extraterrestrials. Only four years ago, humans believe
d they were alone in the universe. Today, they would go into battle with aliens both in front of them and at their side. Forces from four alien members of the Coalition stood at Cor Caroli beside their human cousins: the Lytori, Hixarans, the Roig, and beings called Meldurians. Some of these species had been at war with the Massang for decades, barely hanging on before they met humankind. Back then, mere survival seemed unlikely, but today it could all end in improbable victory.

  The advance on the enemy positions had been agonizingly slow, despite the fact that they were moving through space on full pulse drive, which meant traveling at over 60,000 kilometers per second. Massang phase inhibitors seeded throughout the inner portion of the star system prevented popping in and out via hyperspace. Where others saw inconvenience, Pettigrew saw an opportunity.

  “Captain Daemon, remind all of our commanders that the enemy phase inhibitors are not to be targeted. If our people can hack into their controls, we can trap Harradoss and his ships right here. I want this to end today, once and for all.” The Lytori captain started to issue the command when another thought came to Pettigrew.

  “And Daemon—also remind our commanders that under no circumstances are any of the Massang arkships to be targeted. If that happens, the captain and XO in question will answer directly to me.”

  Daemon wavered. “Sir, I don’t understand. Why would any of our ships target a civilian vessel?”

  Pettigrew said nothing, steepling his fingers and staring straight ahead at the various tactical displays. The others looked to each other, embarrassed that someone had to explain yet another human shortcoming to one of the Lytori.

  Swoboda gave it a try. “Daemon, the Massang have killed many of our people… many civilians. There is a lot of anger on the part of the human crews. Someone might try to exact revenge and claim later that it was an accident. There is a proverb that some of our people believe in—‘an eye for an eye.’”

  Daemon’s broad, flat face stared blankly at his human comrades.

  “Just send the message,” said Pettigrew pointblank, closing the subject.