‘You should have stayed away,’ Taron replied.
‘That would be cowardice.’
‘That would be smart,’ Taron retorted. ‘Ethera’s gone, captain.’
‘And we’re taking it back.’
Taron stared at the captain for a moment and then glanced at Yo’Ki. The silent killer watched Idris for a moment and then shook her head slowly and looked away.
‘And we want allies,’ Idris added.
A long silence descended upon the cabin.
‘Us,’ Taron said flatly.
‘You,’ Idris nodded. ‘You have skills, a fast ship, knowledge and…’
‘I’d sooner sign up to the Legion,’ Taron snapped. ‘It was the Colonial government who created the Word, the Legion and this whole damned mess. It was people like my father, like you, who allowed it to get out of hand and kill millions, billions of people.’ Taron stood up and pointed a finger at Idris’s chest. ‘You stand there and tell me and Yo’Ki here about how we’ve killed people? Well newsflash for you, numbskull; we only ever fired in self-defence, we shot straight and the people we killed were all kinds of evil. You, on the other hand, wear the uniform of an organisation that has killed entire worlds because your little toys got out of control and now you want our help to sort it out?’
Idris stood resolute before the pirate’s tirade.
‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘because you’re human beings and we’re becoming an endangered species real fast.’
‘No thanks to the Colonial government,’ Taron shot back. ‘I’m speechless, really. You’ll be telling us next that you’re off to the Veng’en homeworld to ask their help in cleaning your mess up.’
Idris ground his jaw a little. ‘We were on our way there when we stopped for supplies here.’
Taron stared openly at the captain and for once it seemed as though the cocky pirate was at a loss for words. He shook his head and turned away as Idris went on.
‘We have only two choices: keep running for all eternity and let the Word grow more powerful as time goes by, dooming our children and their children and who knows how many more generations to fight the war that we didn’t have the guts to fight for ourselves – or take the fight home to Ethera with what we have and destroy the Word for once and for all.’
‘Destroy the Word,’ Taron echoed as he slumped back into his seat and waved the captain’s words aside as though they were of no more substance than air. ‘Seems to me the Word has done the rest of us all a favour by destroying the Colonial Fleet.’
‘You don’t mean that.’
‘Don’t I?’
‘You’re the son of a Colonial hero. There must be at least some patriotic blood running in your veins.’
‘Clean out.’
A panel by the captain’s door beeped softly. ‘Yes?’
‘Technical has completed their analysis of the pirate shroud, as they’re calling it,’ came Lael’s response from the bridge. ‘It turns out that the shroud emits a low-frequency energy field that conflicts with both biological brain-wave patterns and some forms of electrical circuitry, causing interference in alpha and delta-wave signals and…’
‘The short version, Lael.’
‘It knocks people out, captain.’
‘Thank you.’
Idris turned away from the panel and then opened the door to the cabin. From outside walked Andaim, General Bra’hiv and Evelyn. Taron Forge raised an eyebrow as the door slid shut behind them.
‘Another greeting?’ he enquired as he looked at Evelyn. ‘You’ve quite a temper and not a bad right-hook. I could use somebody like you to…’
‘We’re not here to discuss Evelyn,’ Idris snapped.
‘First name terms?’ Taron noted immediately. ‘Not bad for a girl who hasn’t spent much time in space. How’d you get into the cockpit of a Raython?’
Evelyn strolled toward Taron and leaned toward him, a soft smile on her lips. ‘Nobody dared get me back out again. How’s the jaw?’
Taron’s grin broadened as beside him Yo’Ki glowered silently at Evelyn.
‘You sure you’re in the right place?’ Taron mocked her further. ‘Seems like you’re far too free a spirit to be chained to a Colonial frigate.’
‘Better than a common thief dwarfed by his father’s shadow,’ Evelyn shot back.
‘Enough small talk,’ Andaim interjected, watching the interplay between Evelyn and Taron with what looked like concern. ‘Right now, we want to know everything about every pirate you’ve come into contact with in the past few months.’
‘Sure you do,’ Taron replied. ‘Your captain’s already asked, though, and I politely declined.’
‘We’re politely insisting,’ Andaim snapped. ‘Unless you want your ship dumped out the back and left to plummet in a fiery descent toward Chiron.’
Taron did not move but his expression turned cold.
‘Go ahead,’ he replied. ‘And I will spend my dying breath killing as many of your crew as I possibly can, as will Yo’Ki.’
In response the co-pilot produced as if by magic a silvery, curved blade that flashed in the light as she idly spun it over in her hand.
‘This will get us nowhere,’ Evelyn said as she stood back from Taron. ‘If you’re both all done with the bravado? We need information about any pirates, smugglers or other like-minded captains you may know of operating in this system – their numbers, armaments and intentions.’
‘There are no pirates in this sector,’ Taron replied. ‘They’re as scattered and disorganised as everybody else. What did you think would happen to us? That we’d all gather together after the apocalypse and play happy campers on Chiron?’
‘Like attracts like,’ Andaim said, ‘and scum always gathers together at the bottom of the bowl.’
Taron chuckled in delight. ‘I’m not about to divulge what little I do know about pirates to some jumped-up little boy who only got his CAG badge because there was nobody else left aboard to take it on. If you want credits for hunting pirates son, you’ll have to find them someways else.’
‘We’re not interested in hunting pirates,’ Idris replied for the CAG. ‘We’re looking to recruit them.’
***
XII
‘We’re looking to what?’
Both Andaim and Evelyn stared at the captain in surprise. General Bra’hiv grabbed Idris’s arm.
‘You want to employ pirates?! They’re nothing but common criminals. I wouldn’t trust them as far as I could throw them.’
‘You’ve seen how it’s worked out for your Marines,’ the captain pointed out. ‘Bravo Company has fought with considerable valour on numerous occasions. I don’t doubt that pirates would likely be as ferocious on our behalf, with the right motivation.’
‘The right motivation,’ Taron drawled. ‘I reckon that what motivates pirates and what you think motivates them are two different things.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Let’s assume you’re successful in recruiting them to your cause,’ Taron suggested airily. ‘And let’s assume that you defeat the Word and take back Ethera with a fleet of scum by your side. What then? You think that they’ll all settle down and have little pirate children and grow old together?’
Idris folded his arms.
‘The end game for our allies is a bridge we can cross when we get there,’ he said. ‘Right now all I’m interested in is building a fleet and equipping it to fight.’
‘Fight whom?’ Taron asked. ‘You’re not going to get a pirate fleet to attack the Word. They know damned well that the entire infected Colonial Fleet is ranged against them and won’t go within a dozen light years of Ethera, Caneeron or any of the core systems.’
‘You could ask them,’ Evelyn suggested.
Taron looked at her. ‘Sure, they’ll jump into line the moment I click my fingers.’
‘They might,’ Idris said. ‘It doesn’t matter whose colours we’re flying under, the fact is that the Word hates humanity and will hunt it down and destroy i
t wherever it is to be found. You and your kind are no safer than us or any other species in the cosmos right now.’
‘You’re all so damned noble aren’t you?’ Taron uttered as he got to his feet once more. ‘All for the cause of humanity despite being the proximal cause of its near-extinction. That’s where you differ from what you call “my kind”, captain. We walked away from humanity long ago because it sucked, and if we’re all about to become extinct then our natural response is to get drunk and have a good time until the end of days, you understand what I’m saying? You ever seen how much wonderful junk is floating around out there waiting to be found and sold for what meagre enjoyment the survivors of your apocalypse can get before they expire?’ Taron shook his head. ‘You go fight your war, but we’re done here.’
Yo’Ki got to her feet and followed Taron to the door.
‘Have a nice life, captain,’ Taron waved airily over his shoulder without looking as the door to the quarters opened.
Two massive, hulking Marines stood in the way, their weapons aimed at Taron.
‘I’m afraid leaving is not an option, captain,’ Idris said.
‘Keeping us here won’t make a difference,’ Taron replied. ‘You’re wasting your time.’
‘The energy shroud you were using to incapacitate crews and capture plunder,’ Idris asked. ‘Where did you get it from?’
‘I won it.’
‘Where does it comer from?’
‘Nobody knows,’ Taron replied as he rolled his eyes.
‘Nobody knows?’ Evelyn asked.
‘Well somebody does, obviously, because they must have found it in the first place,’ Taron admitted. ‘But the thing could be a thousand years old or built last year, I have absolutely no idea.’
Idris turned to Andaim and the general.
‘Just how far could brigands like Forge here have gone beyond the Icari Line?’
‘Mass-drives have been available for commercial use for over a century,’ Andaim said. ‘Including return journeys, it’s plausible that some human craft might have travelled hundreds of light years out into the cosmos.’
The Icari Line, proposed and enforced by the Icari, a race whose existence was supported by the atmospheres of giant stars and who themselves existed as little more than rays of light, was an invisible and yet rigidly enforced barrier to human expansion that had been observed for decades. The rules had been simple: there were things out in the cosmos that humanity was not yet prepared to face. Stay within the boundaries of the Icari Line and wait for permission to expand further. Nobody questioned the wisdom of the Icari, beings who had existed for countless millennia and who had chaperoned equally countless civilisations through the minefield of first contact with other spacefaring species and beyond.
‘You’re so naiive,’ Taron smirked at Andaim. ‘You don’t even consider who has come wandering into and out of Etherean systems when our ancestors were still throwing wooden spears at each other. Humanity is a young species, compared to many.’
‘He’s right,’ Bra’hiv agreed. ‘There could be countless things like that shroud littering the galaxy that we don’t even know about yet.’
‘That’s what I’m counting on,’ Idris Sansin replied.
‘What are you thinking?’ Andaim asked.
‘I’m thinking,’ Idris said, ‘that perhaps a change of plan might be in order.’
Idris had spent a lifetime serving the Colonial Forces, and during those long decades he and his fellow officers had seen countless things that they could not explain. Spacecraft whose performance defied even human experience that vanished as soon as they appeared. Terrifying but beautiful species whose existence seemed to be on a plane different to that of the human experience, much like the Icari. Fearsome black holes, blazing supernovae, super-dense neutron stars spinning six hundred times per second and bizzare life forms that lived upon the precarious edges of all three natural phenomena, places where humans would be vaporised in an instant were it not for the protection afforded by their spacecraft.
Occasionally, artifacts or even entire craft were found drifting in the deep void, light years from the nearest systems and pitted with the impacts of tens of thousands of years’ of micrometeorites – the relics of advanced species long extinct. Carefully concealed by the Colonial government for fear of alarming the general public, the study of these relics had often advanced human knowledge and technology by decades in a single bound.
But brigands like Taron Forge were under no obligation to hand over such items.
‘The Word’s knowledge is all built upon human knowledge,’ Idris mused. ‘Its experiences are bounded by our own, right up to the holocaust. It is now learning on its own but until its field of exploration exceeds our own…’
‘… it knows only what we know,’ Andaim finished the captain’s sentence.
Evelyn caught on a moment later.
‘If we could find a weapon against which the Word has no defence, we could strike back, hard.’
Idris nodded as he peered at Taron.
‘Have you seen anything else like that shroud before?’ he asked.
For once, the pirate captain seemed interested in the conversation.
‘You hear things from time to time,’ he admitted. ‘Rumours, pilots being confronted by things they can’t explain or escaping with their lives from some bizarre threat. Some of it is just bar-room bragging, but not all. That said, if you believed some pilots you’d think they all had a stash of planet-destroying weapons tucked away somewhere.’
Captain Idris Sansin nodded as he regarded the pirate. ‘You got a stash down there on Chiron?’
‘There’s no stash,’ Taron replied. ‘We don’t carry enough stores to need one.’
Idris smiled.
‘You’re a smart guy, Taron,’ he observed, ‘smart enough not to carry all your weapons in one holster. Your ship’s holds are not that large, so you’d likely be trading in valuable minerals rather than parts and materials. I wonder what’ll happen if I send a troop of Marines aboard her and let them see what they can find?’
Taron’s casual air vanished in an instant. ‘Over my dead body.’
‘I can arrange that.’
Taron’s hand flashed to his plasma pistol and the watching Marine’s plasma magazines hummed into life again as they took aim at Taron and Yo’Ki.
‘How do you want to play this?’ Idris asked. ‘A shooting match here, followed by your deaths and our searching of your ship anyway? Or some cooperation from you, and we let you go on your merry way?’
‘Why the hell should I trust you?’ Taron snapped.
‘You can’t,’ Idris admitted, ‘but then again, I don’t have any real reason to detain you here either. Yet.’
Idris let the word hang in the air for a long moment. Taron glared at the captain and his hand remained on his pistol, but his shoulders sagged.
‘Chiron IV,’ he replied, ‘northern hemisphere. You’ll probably pick up a faint energy signal. I have weapons there.’
‘Weapons?’
‘I don’t know how they work,’ Taron replied. ‘But it’s my guess they’ll go off with a hell of a bang. You’ll need a shuttle and a tech-crew to move them. You find the weapons, then you let us off this damned ship.’
‘Agreed,’ Idris nodded and glanced at Evelyn. ‘Lead a shuttle down there as escort. If you find anything, report back immediately.’
‘Yes sir,’ Evelyn replied and spun on her heel to march out of the room.
‘Andaim,’ Idris said, ‘back her up with the alert flight, just in case.’
The CAG nodded and hurried off in pursuit of Evelyn.
‘Guard,’ the captain snapped. ‘Escort Captain Forge and his co-pilot back to their ship, but do not allow them to take off without my permission.’
Taron joined his co-pilot and cast Idris a last glance. ‘You’re playing a very dangerous game, captain,’ he observed.
The pirate walked out of the room, and General Bra’hiv c
onfronted Idris.
‘We can’t trust him,’ Bra’hiv said. ‘He’ll do anything he can to get control of the situation.’
‘In time of war,’ Idris replied, ‘you can’t be too choosy about your allies.’
‘You can be a bit more bloody selective than this,’ Bra’hiv hissed. ‘Veng’en warriors first and now him? You any idea how this looks to the crew and the civilians, captain?’
Idris glared at the general.
‘If you have any better ideas of how to move forward, general, I’d love to hear them.’
‘I’m not saying that we don’t need to take chances but…’
‘Yes you are,’ Idris snapped back. ‘Right now we need to get every human being we come across on our side, one way or the other. We don’t have many friends out there, general. I’m not about to throw away any opportunity to make new ones.’
‘Pirates don’t give a damn about us,’ Bra’hiv insisted. ‘You heard what Forge said.’
‘Then we won’t give a damn about them. But I’m not going to miss the chance to try and make allies, is that clear?’
Bra’hiv ground his teeth in his jaw. ‘Aye, cap’ain.’
‘Prepare a Marine landing party to join the techs in the shuttle crew,’ Idris ordered. ‘I want weapons and boots on the ground in case anything goes wrong.’
Bra’hiv saluted crisply and whirled away, leaving the captain to wrestle over the dilemma of whether his course of action really was the best one.
***
XIII
‘Easy now.’
Dr Meyanna Sansin lifted a saline line and injected a painkiller into the feed. Slowly, the writhing, incoherent man strapped to the bed began to relax, his breathing becoming more regular. His skin was mottled with dark purple lines and slick with sweat despite his skin being cold to the touch.
Meyanna sealed the line once more and tapped the time and date onto a display screen beside the bed. She could see that the patient’s seizures were becoming more regular and more acute, and the required dosage of medicine higher to combat them. Much more, and she feared she would end up killing the patient herself.
Atlantia Series 3: Aggressor Page 9
