Assimilated

by Nick Webb

  “No…. ” His voice was weak. He couldn’t live with what was coming. “I’ll go—”

  They didn’t even listen. They shoved him toward the seat where William was strapping himself in and Pike knelt on the floor and buried his face in his hands.

  The shuttle knocked everyone inside to the deck as it took off.

  “Everyone hold on.” The pilot’s voice was desperate. “They’re still focusing on the fields, we should be able to get out of here.”

  “What about the shuttle at the fields?” William twisted in his seat. His hands closed on his father’s shoulders. “Dad—Dad—they said the Telestines are focusing on the fields, did the shuttle get away?”

  He could hardly breathe for the ache in his throat. Pike picked his face up. “I’m sure they did.”

  But this time, the lie was not so successful. William’s face went blank with betrayal, thin body rigid.

  “You said there was a shuttle.” His voice was rising. He tore at the straps holding him in place. “You said there was a shuttle!” He was on his father the next moment, bony fists flying. “You said there was a shuttle! You said! You said!”

  Pain exploded across Pike’s eye and he fought by instinct alone. The shuttle was swerving and the two of them rolled, William all bony elbows and pure fury, and Pike hit the floor. The pain burst through him as his hands moved to block William’s strikes. But the pain wasn’t from any blow. It was in his gut, in his heart. Every shriek from his son pierced his soul.

  “You said!” William’s voice was hysterical, his fists raining down on Pike’s face. “You—”

  A soldier wrapped his arms around William and pulled him off. The shuttle was shaking—a patch of turbulence launched everyone several feet into the air.

  The side of William’s head rammed straight into a corner of a storage bin above them. He fell to the floor, knocked out cold. One of the soldiers knelt next to him, scanning him with some sort of medical device. “He’ll be fine. We’ll have to watch for concussion….”

  “Are you all right?” The woman’s face was scared. Her hand clasped his. “Your eye is—”

  Pike pushed her away and pulled himself up on the straps of the seat. He swayed as he made his way to the window. His fingers splayed there; the glass was cold on his forehead.

  One could hardly see the camp any longer. It melted into the slopes of the foothills. Even the Telestines hadn’t noticed it yet. You couldn’t miss the fields, though, not as the fire consumed them. The trail of smoke was drifting in the wind, and beyond.…

  Pike felt his breath catch. The fighters seemed to be dive-bombing at the camp, plummeting down and pulling up only at the last minute. He strained to see what they were doing.

  They were chasing people. His fingers clenched. The figures were tiny, and they were running desperately.

  And the Telestines were taunting them. They zoomed low overhead as the humans fled. They were toying with their prey before they killed.

  They were not just aliens. They were monsters.

  His mouth gaped in a silent sob and he rolled his head to look away. Look away, so at least he wouldn’t have to see the ruin of the camp. He could change nothing. He was powerless. All of this was unfolding because he had thought, briefly, that maybe he wasn’t powerless. That maybe his little camp could provide intelligence to the Rebellion, and maybe, just maybe, be the key to the victory of Earth’s imminent war of liberation. The great war to come.

  A temporary delusion.

  Through the blur of tears, he could faintly see a massive ship hovering over Denver, shining and beautiful in the afternoon sunlight. He wondered if the Telestines there knew of the attack on the camp. He wondered if any of them had volunteered.

  He looked back to his son’s prone body on the floor of the shuttle. The boy’s chest rose and fell, slowly. When he woke, Pike knew, he would be nursing a hatred that would take years to die—if it ever did. He was his father’s son, after all.

  One day, Pike promised him silently, you’ll understand.

  And I pray you can forgive me. Because I’ll never forgive myself.

  September 25th, 2082

  Jupiter, Ganymede’s L4 Lagrange point

  Command Center, New Beginnings Station

  “These numbers can’t be correct.” Laura Walker, admiral of the Exile Fleet, crosfsed her arms and frowned down at the printouts on the rickety table in front of her. A slight shudder shook the space station, which creaked and groaned in response.

  “I double checked them myself.” Commander Arianna King grimaced. “And this is a conservative estimate. If we expand it to those ships with minor problems—and those really should be checked over, too, ma’am—it comes to twenty-two.”

  “We’ll stick with the biggest problems for now.” Walker tried to keep her face impassive as she shuffled the papers, checking the ship names: Jocasta, Valiant, Andromache, Intrepid, Pele…. Some of them were frigates, mostly expendable—insofar as anything in the fleet was expendable—but there were gunships and carriers on the list as well. The fleet was now precisely in the position she’d wished to avoid: forced to choose between defending the Rebellion bases at Jupiter, and defending the task force headed for Earth.

  Fifteen ships out of commission. This was not a good day. If she had one wish—

  She stopped that train of thought with a quick shake of her head. If she was going to wish for things, she wouldn’t wish for a better fleet. She wouldn’t wish for more reliable supply chains and shipyards and weaponry.

  She’d wish for Earth back. She’d wish for the Telestines to have died when their sun exploded—or, at the very least, for them to have struck out in any direction but the one they chose.

  The direction of Earth.

  She couldn’t have any of those things. What she had was a fleet in desperate need of repair, and a shipyard that was only just starting to get up to speed on metal-rich Mercury. It had taken five years to build the secret mines and shipyards kept hidden from the Telestines only by Mercury’s intense glare of scattered sunlight—rumor had it that the Telestines knew about them anyway, and allowed their construction as a show of hubris.

  Five years spent gathering up the last dregs of humanity who still remembered aircraft carriers and NASA space shuttles and engineering, finding the best new minds, and bringing them to build new ships, better than anything the Telestines would give them. If their luck held, those shipyards would give them a fleet that had a fighting chance against the Telestines. Unlike their current, rickety Exile Fleet.

  “Admiral Walker?” said Commander Larsen from the sensor station across the command center. “I picked up that blip again. Just a momentary ping. But Jupiter’s magnetic field is messing with the readings. Could be anything, still.”

  Could be anything.

  “Don’t let it out of your sight, Commander. And keep me apprised.”

  Could be anything, she repeated in her mind. Or it could be a Telestine fleet, come to end the Rebellion before it even got started. With any luck, it was just a cargo freighter, and Jupiter’s insanely intense magnetic field was simply fooling their sensors, making it look like a massive Telestine fleet. With any luck….

  On the other hand, the balance of their luck over the past sixty years had been terrible. The hand they’d been dealt had given them the invasion of Earth. She wasn’t going to count on luck coming to their aid now. She sorted the papers quickly and tapped on one stack.

  “These four, we’ll handle here.” She considered the rest, and tapped at each in turn. “These, send to Io Station. These, Soros Station at Ganymede. The last two ... we can’t fix on any of our stations.” She sighed, and tapped the map. The planets circled in a sped-up simulation, stationary and orbital defensive systems lit up in red. Her lips moved as she did a rough calculation in her head. “Wait a week and plot a course for Venus. That should put Earth’s systems far enough out that it won’t trigger anything. Our contact on Venus can get the ships up and runnin
g, or so he claims.”

  “Can we handle four ships here?” King frowned. She pushed the thick braid of black hair back over her shoulder and thumbed through the papers.

  Not really. “Yes,” she murmured.

  “And I thought Soros Station’s engineering docks were out.”

  They were—several of the struts had broken, cutting the life support systems to the repair module. Whether it was space debris or sabotage remained to be seen, and Walker had sent one of her best representatives to make discreet enquiries. There were those—the current Secretary General of the United Nations being one—who believed humanity endangered itself with the Rebellion. They were so afraid of the Telestine weaponry that they would gladly submit to a slow death on the stations instead. Sabotage had taken down at least one Rebellion station, and it was the reason this one stayed hidden.

  To humanity, New Beginnings Station was abandoned, a relic of the exodus. To the Telestines, who had named it—Walker still felt a surge of rage every time she had to speak the words—New Beginnings Station was just another human cage.

  She had thought their operations on Soros Station were hidden, but she must have been wrong.

  “Everything will be operational soon,” was all she said.

  “Soon enough?”

  “Is there a better option?” Walker looked up, her face cold. She was losing her patience.

  Commander King swallowed. “No, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am.”

  I don’t want you to be sorry, I want you to focus on making this fleet operational. Walker turned her gaze back to the map. The mission needed to launch tomorrow, and she needed to make sure Rebellion assets weren’t vulnerable after it left.

  This mission was everything. Their best hope to get a leg up on the Telestines in the coming war.

  If she were wishing for things, she’d wish for their contact on Venus, an individual whose name she could not discover despite her best efforts, to get a reliable tap into the Telestine communications systems. They’d been working on it for three years and hadn’t managed it yet. When they did, the Rebellion might be able to learn just how much the Telestines knew of their activities. In dark moments, Walker feared that the Telestines knew everything, and that they tolerated the Rebellion because it was too weak for them to fear.

  With any luck, though, what their contact had just found would be useful enough on its own: it was called the Dawning. It was supposedly the key to every Telestine weapons array in the solar system, the answer to all of their prayers since the loss of Earth. A stunning development, really. It changed everything.

  They just had to get at it.

  “What do you think it is?” Commander King had caught her staring at the intelligence briefing.

  “Hmm? Oh.” Walker frowned. That the Dawning existed seemed clear enough; their source on Venus was absolutely sure. What it was, exactly, was another matter. “I assumed it was a chip of some sort. Plug and play. Something their engineers use when they want to do maintenance or whatever.”

  “That makes sense.” King lifted a shoulder. “I’d been wondering why anyone would make something like that. Seems like a risk.”

  “Every system has an access point.” Walker smiled grimly.

  The smile faded quickly, however. Even ours. In truth, their system had more than a few access points. The Exile Fleet had only a few rickety stations and a couple of scattered bases to work with. They couldn’t let civilian habitats be a target, and that meant they got the most remote and inhospitable of stations. Like their fleet, the Rebellion’s homes were much-repaired and chronically on the verge of breakdown.

  When she looked up, it was clear Commander King’s thoughts had followed a different path. The woman was smiling. When she saw Walker frowning at her, her smile grew.

  “We’re going to get Earth back. It’s actually going to happen. I can’t believe it. It’s ... like a dream,” King said. “I wish my parents could have lived to see this. They always hoped....” Her voice broke and she cleared her throat. “Sorry, ma’am.”

  Walker said nothing. Anything she said might raise false hopes. She clasped her hands behind her back as she looked over the resource lists one last time.

  “All right. Before you send the Jocasta for repairs, offload the fighters, and transfer supplies to the station; half of them will stay here, flying patrol. We’ll keep the Ysabel here, and the Valiant will take the rest of the Jocasta’s fighters for the mission to Earth, and go on to Venus from there.”

  “You’re sending a damaged ship on this mission?”

  “We aren’t going to get him down to the surface with gunships—we need fighters taking the hits. So it has to be a carrier, and the Valiant has the largest hold.” She looked over at King. “And if we lose a carrier, I want it to be one that’s already damaged.”

  King paled. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed nervously.

  Walker’s mouth tightened. No one liked to talk about the possibility of losing ships, and that squeamishness did nothing for them. Lives were lost in battle. Ships were destroyed. Bargains were struck. How could her officers not face that simple fact? Humanity had lost its home in the initial attack sixty years ago. The first resistance movements had been cut down like grass—a metaphor she only vaguely understood—and now humanity tore itself to pieces in the tiny floating cages they called space stations. More were going to be lost before this was over.

  Her people needed to prepare for that.

  “It will be worth it,” she reminded the commander, hating the necessity of the pep talk. It was difficult to inject any feeling into it anymore. “For a chance like this, any of us should be glad to lay down our lives.”

  King hesitated, but she knew better than to argue. She nodded wordlessly.

  Walker would accept that. She handed the stacks of ship repair materials to the commander and gave a decisive nod. “Let’s get this fleet fixed so we’re ready to act as soon as we have the Dawning.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” King snapped a salute.

  Both women looked around as the station shuddered. The hull gave a screech of protest followed by the agonized squeal of the extending docking clamps. The phone on the table buzzed.

  Walker picked up. “Yes?”

  “Ma’am, Bill Pike is here, and the Secretary General is on the line for you.”

  Walker let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. “Send Mr. Pike to the briefing room, and tell the Secretary General that I’ll call him back. At my convenience.”

  Which would be never, if she had her way. She despised that man. He was spineless and craven; he had the ear of far too many wealthy citizens. There were even a few within the Rebellion who listened to his speeches on nonviolence and non-antagonism. With luck, however—there she went, hoping for that elusive good luck again—she wouldn’t need him ever again. She might not have a strong fleet, but if they could just get their hands on the Dawning, they’d have a fighting chance—and if she got Bill Pike onto Earth, she knew he would not fail her.

  Of everyone she might call upon, Pike knew best what happened when you lost to the Telestines.

  Larsen glanced over again. “Ma’am, that ping just got a little bigger. It’s not just a single ship. Most likely two or three.”

  A tingle went up her spine. They’d yet to have a major battle with the Telestines, face to face, fleet to fleet. She’d been biding her time. Waiting for the best moment. But it looked like her luck might be running out.

  “All ships on orange alert.” She held Commander Larsen in her steely gaze. “Watch it, Mr. Larsen, like a hawk.”

  Jupiter, Ganymede’s L4 Lagrange point

  Freighter Agamemnon, New Beginnings Station

  “You’re sure you want to do this?” Pyotr Rychenkov raised an eyebrow. Short but unusually muscular, blond, with the pale, striking eyes of his Russian ancestry, he was an imposing man when he wanted to be.

  Right now, he looked skeptical instead.

  “I’m sure.” Bill Pike hoi
sted a bag over his shoulder, wincing slightly as the old scar on the side of his head and cheek ached. It always did when something changed. When he left behind people he cared about. “She wouldn’t have called me here if it wasn’t important.”

  Rychenkov snorted. “You’re giving her far too much credit. Revolutionaries think everything’s important.” His accent made its first appearance, which always seemed to happen when Rychenkov got angry, and he gave a shrug. “Go, go. If you want, go. But come back alive, da? I don’t have the time to train a new first mate.”

  Pike smiled and clasped his captain’s hand. “Keep my berth open?”

  “You think there are so many people who want to join the cargo guilds? Criminals, all of them.” Rychenkov waved a hand. “Go. We’ll be running the food shipment to Mercury like we planned.”

  The Agamemnon, or Aggy, as they affectionately called it, had been at a scheduled stop on Europa when Laura Walker contacted Pike. The ship’s engineer, Howie Howe, was still back on Europa getting the ice shipment ready for loading into the Aggy’s cargo bay, while the captain had offered to bring Pike to the Rebellion’s New Beginnings Station himself. Despite his contempt, Pike knew he was curious.

  “I’m sure they’d let you look around if you wanted.” A smile tugged at his lips.

  “I don’t want,” Rychenkov said, prickly to the last. “Go. I’ll see you soon.”

  Pike waved and ducked awkwardly out of the Aggy’s cockpit.

  “Come back, guapo?”

  He grinned, and turned to face the purple-haired woman working on the water recycler, sitting cross-legged on the floor.

  “Calling me guapo with your husband in the same room?” Guapo. Handsome. Hot. Whatever—he still couldn’t pick up half of the Spanish Gabi threw at him.

  From the air duct above them came another voice. “Guapo? You should hear what she calls me. Gordito. Little fatty.” James Carsen, Gabi’s husband, popped his grimy head down through the open vent. It was literally the first time Pike had seen the other man without his cowboy hat on. “Just remember, she only insults the ones she likes. Right honey?”