The Ghost Fleet

by Trevor Wyatt

  “Very few people live outside of Union space. Are you thinking that someone wants to derail the Accords, and the government is trying to keep anything that might lead to that under wraps? Trying to prevent leaks, in other words?”

  “Plenty of people stand to lose if there’s a lasting peace in this section of the galaxy.” He leans closer to me, glancing around. I feel a sudden shiver: is he becoming paranoid?

  “More than one race is going along with our plans to establish the Council because they expect to receive benefits. There’s no idealism there, nothing altruistic. They don’t care about the common good; they’re greedy and they want a place at the table.”

  I think about it. I’m sure he’s right. Some races are looking for trade concessions. Some want transfers of technology, for whatever reason.

  “Even the Terrans have something to lose,” he says. “We want to expand our territory. There are marginal planets we can transform through terraforming; we’re way ahead of most other races in this sector in that technology. Suppose some other race has its eye on a planet we want to terraform? They might be perfectly happy with it the way it is...and resentful of us for cutting them off from a turnkey situation.”

  “Turnkey?”

  “Sure...they might not have to do anything to that planet. The air pressure or the atmospheric constituents might be just right for them...whereas we’d be messing with its ecosphere for years before it’s human-ready.”

  “Okay, I can see how that could piss someone off,” I say. “Particularly if they are facing population or resource pressure at home.”

  “That’s my point,” he says, draining his martini. He taps the SUMMON button for the waitress.

  “This isn’t something you’re going to be able to figure out on your own,” I tell him, laying a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve got enough to do, and messing around in Armada Intelligence would only get you noticed.”

  “Yeah, no shit.” He sighs. “So, I don’t know what to do.”

  I stare down to my own drink, which is only half gone. “I might know someone,” I say at last.

  He looks at me in surprise, but before he can say anything, the waitress returns with a fresh martini for him. I shake my head when she asks me if I want a refill.

  “Who?” he asks me when she departs.

  “I’d rather not say just yet. It’s sensitive. But maybe I can put you two in touch.”

  “So this...person can get the information I’m looking for?”

  “Maybe...if you’ll tell me what it is, I can ask. This is someone I knew from our time together at the Academy.”

  I see Jeryl’s mind working. He knows that I have kept up with a number of classmates, but he can’t know which one and I’m not ready to tell him. But I’m positive my friend still carries many of the security access codes from his time in Armada Intelligence and has a lot of favors he can pull it.”

  “Is this someone from Armada Intelligence?” Jeryl asks.

  “Not technically,” I say. He’s retired, but he is still wired in to the day-to-day operations. He knows the back doors that were built in to give him access.”

  “How does he know they kept those backdoors open?” Jeryl asks.

  I smile. “Because he most likely built them himself,” I say. “When he wasn’t supposed to.”

  Jeryl leans back and looks at me with a wry smile. I can see his mind fall into ease.

  “So, when can you talk to him?” he asks.

  “I’ll call him tomorrow,” I say with a sexy wink. “But first…another dance?”

  Ashley

  It’s the next morning and I wake up and realize that we’re onboard The Seeker.

  It all comes back to me.

  Jeryl may have seemed happier after I told him I had a contact with Armada Intelligence. But he wanted more. And…let’s just say that his devotion to it was single minded.

  I lay back and think. How when he realized I wanted to dance, all the hesitation and bearing it for being a good husband went away. Instead, he put his hands around me and dragged me close to his body. I could feel him squeeze my ass through my thin dress. He began to grind on me. I responded back. I remember he got me so horny, bought me another martini—and then my hands went to his trousers.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I whispered in his ear as I felt his dick.

  “Let’s go,” he said back to me, his eyes boring into mine.

  We stumbled out, and I called for a cab.

  “No,” I remember him telling me. “Let’s go back to the ship.”

  I looked at him amazed.

  “I want you to take me to the contact you have,” he said. “I want you to arrange a meeting in person. Give them enough time.”

  He began to pull me close to him as we stood on the landing looking at New Washington bustle in the last hours of the evening. I felt his hands on me.

  “That’s all I want,” he said to me. “And then the evening is ours.”

  An hour later, we entered my quarters where I keyed in some orders to CNC to take us to the place—to Io.

  And then once the ship was underway, Jeryl fucked me.

  He had his way with me and made me scream in pleasure. He took me like he did all the years ago in New Sydney when a chance encounter led us to spend a weekend of blissful indulgence together.

  I sit up now and realize that Jeryl is not in bed. He’s not in the living room area either.

  I open my comms unit and look to see his location.

  I don’t know if I told him where we were going. But we’re still on track for Io.

  Io is something of a showcase as far as terraforming goes. After life was discovered in the Ionian system back in the 21st century, it became a center of scientific attention. Practically every exobiologist in the system tore themselves away from studying whatever they were studying and migrated en masse to Io, where they could watch little jellyfish-things squirm through the lightless oceans locked away beneath the planet’s icy surface.

  At first, Io was of course declared off-limits to colonization for fear of contamination, and only a few mostly robotic expeditions were subsequently allowed to touch down there to investigate the life-forms.

  That didn’t stop a robust tourist industry from springing up. “See the only spot in the galaxy known to host living creatures!” People were lined up for seats from the very first time the tours were announced.

  All of that changed when the Pan Solaris Corporation received the licensing and developmental rights to Io. It went from preservation of life into full terraforming mode.

  The atmosphere began to be scrubbed. An ozone layer was created. Life began to be shot into the ground. Microbes began to be inserted into the soil. The jellyfish-like little beings suffered mass extinction, obviously.

  Sure, a few were saved. Preserved in laboratories and refuges across the Union. What’s left today is 25 million people spread out over a terraformed world consisting of two continents and several cities and towns.

  Jeryl and I have both been to Io before and we’re travelling at a FTL factor of 5.

  This is my ship, and I’ve had to pull a few scheduling strings to get it able to go wherever I need to for the short time during the final phase of the Galactic Council negotiations, but that doesn’t mean I can ignore my responsibilities and play house with Jeryl, much as I might like to.

  Plus we have the delegates to consider.

  As captain of this ship I can’t avoid aliens; protocol dictates that I must treat them as ambassadors. So I have to spend a bit of time ensuring that the entire contingent is well appointed for and no one has raised a fuss as to why The Seeker has left orbit of New Washington.

  After I take care of my responsibilities, I head to the observation lounge to find Jeryl. We’re nearing Io now, and the view is spectacular.

  Jeryl doesn’t look at me as I enter the crew lounge as he’s absorbed by the Ionian system, which from here appears breathtaking. I go over to the resequencer and draw
off a cup of Ionian coffee. There’s nothing special about this thing other than the fact that it’s made to taste like beans grown hydroponically on Io—with a distinct minty tang, which makes it fabulously expensive. Lost in thought, Jeryl doesn’t notice me until I sit on his table.

  “Oh, Ash! Didn’t see you come in,” he murmurs.

  “I know,” I say, and pat his arm. I can’t help but blush as I inadvertently think of the ways he took me last night. “Just wanted to tell you that we ought to arrive at Io in an hour or so.”

  “Thanks...”

  “What’s on your mind? You look serious.”

  “Just wondering what we’re going to find when we get there and talk to your friend, that’s all.”

  I have no answer to that question, of course. Instead I say, “Hon, is this all worth the effort? In the past three years you’ve spent all your time shuttling back and forth between planets and in meetings with aliens as well as humans. We’ve hardly ever had a week off. And I don’t remember a vacation.”

  He grimaces. “Yeah, I know, and I’m sorry about that, babe. But dealing with all those conflicting schedules...” He shrugs. “I have to see them when they can make time for me.”

  “This whole thing could unravel at any time,” I say, more to myself that to him. This is not something I have not previously admitted to him. “If there are factions working against it, including from our side, well, hell.” I don’t have to continue.

  “I know,” he says again. “Don’t think there haven’t been moments when I was thinking I’d be better off doing recovery work to help our people rebuild after the war.” Frowning, he adds, “How’s the coffee?”

  I shrug. “Not bad.”

  “That’s an improvement, then.” He gets up to fetch some for himself. “You know what my trouble is?” he says when he comes back to the table. “I’m a damn idealist. I can’t help thinking that something good can come from the war and all the misery it brought. Not just to us; but to the Sonali, those supercilious pricks, and everyone else.”

  I manage a small smile. “Even supercilious pricks deserve to live in peace, huh?”

  “Something like that.” He sips at the coffee. “Oy!”

  “Yeah, it’s tangy in Io.”

  “Listen, Ash, I want to help everybody rebuild. If we can do that, it’ll put us all on a firm footing. I mean, you know, in case something else comes along.”

  “Huh? Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Something. I can’t help thinking about the stuff my old professor used to say, about the Drake Equation and all.”

  “Oh, about how come there aren’t more advanced civilizations and all? But there are. The Sonali, all the others...they have star travel. We just didn’t know they were there because they don’t use radio.”

  “That’s partly it...but when you think about it, isn’t it a little weird that we’re all on more or less the same level?”

  “Don’t get you.”

  “Every race we’ve contacted is within one or two hundred years of us in terms of technology. You’d think some would be way beyond...or way behind.”

  “I don’t know, I never thought about it.”

  “Yeah, well, I have. And so have others. And something nags me about the Union keeping information on lockdown. Something is going on.”

  I scoff. “Like what, exactly?”

  “I don’t know, I tell you. But I’m convinced that we all need to stick together—us, the Sonali, the others. We’ve got to find common ground.”

  “You’re worrying me a little bit,” I say. And I remember my thoughts back at The Ledge, when I had a brief feeling that he was becoming paranoid. Is it a concern he’s voicing another expression of that? Or is he right, and we need to be more aware of larger forces at work around us?

  “Sorry, I don’t mean to,” he says. “But you wanted to know what’s on my mind. I don’t want to keep any secrets from you, babe.”

  I nod slowly. “I appreciate that. And I know that a lot of things can go wrong. That whole thing with the Tyreesians, killed by a screwy thruster...”

  “It’s more than that,” he says, “but that could be a part of it. All I know is, I think it’s better to have ten allies than to have ten adversaries. That’s what I’m working towards; allies. Just in case. Maybe I’ll learn something from talking to this friend of yours. I sure hope so.”

  I stay silent.

  “After all the war we’ve seen, how do we know that it didn’t just scratch the surface, Ash?” he asks. “You know, before we got on the scene, up until three years ago, some of these races barely had any sort of diplomatic contact with each other. You want to know why they all rush into Union space? The concept is just so fucking foreign. To live among others. To understand them. It’s like they haven’t conceived of something like that.”

  “And you think the Galactic Council will help?” I ask.

  He shakes his head in thought and looks at me as he speaks, “Wouldn’t you rather we had a place like that where we could point blank ask the Sonali if they had destroyed The Mariner before we went ahead and convinced ourselves they did?” I nod slowly, because Jeryl is right. “If we had a Galactic Council back then, we could have stopped the fucking war before it even started. And that would make us stronger than if we went our separate ways. I truly believe that.”

  “Me too. I—” That’s when my communications unit goes off. I look at the readout, and my heart sinks. It’s my security chief. “Gotta take this,” I say, and he motions for me to do it.

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re needed in the rec center, Captain. There’s been an incident with one of the delegates.”

  “An incident?”

  “Be right there,” I say. Jeryl and I look at each other. Moments later we’re hurrying out of the observation lounge—without taking our coffee.

  Can’t play house with my Admiral-husband. Even for a moment.

  Jeryl

  We make our way in a jog to the recreation center. It is a massive bowl-like hall taking large portions of the three central decks in the TUS The Seeker.

  We arrive at the double doors that lead into the recreation center and stop there to take in the environment. There’s a small crowd gathered at the center. There are yells and cheers and I see someone cursing and spitting fire against another.

  I notice that there are mostly humans there, but that doesn’t mean there’s no delegate in that crowd that’s being battered and bruised.

  I glance over at Ashley and see her scanning the crowd. With a bit of amusement, I begin to wonder how she intends to solve this problem. As a Vice Admiral, I feel the urge to jump in and give orders, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to undermine Ashley’s command, especially before her crew.

  This first thing Ashley does is speak into her comm link. “Patch me through to the security chief,” she says.

  After a while, I hear a reply. “Captain.”

  “There’s a commotion in the recreation center. I can see there are few security officers here. I want you to mobilize more and send them here immediately.”

  “Right away, ma’am,” comes the reply.

  “You have less than a minute,” she says and cuts the link. Then she looks at me. “Let’s go stop this.”

  We cover the distance to the teeming crowd, whose voices drown out ours. We can’t shout above their voices, so we have to press through. We go mostly unnoticed as they’re mainly attentive to what’s happening at the center of the circle. Some recognize Ashley and I and they clear a path for us, some move away from the mini protest to avoid any repercussion.

  Once we get to the center, we see the cause of the hullabaloo. I see a young, violent ensign being held back by a muscled security officer. The ensign’s eyes are red with rage and his uniform is torn from his struggle to break free from the security personnel’s strong grip. The object of the ensign’s wrath appears to be Traz Gomar, the Sonali Ambassador to the Peace Accords.

  I see th
at the Ambassador is hurt, though nothing that a few minutes in the sick bay couldn’t treat—and certainly nothing that would make the Ambassador do anything to drastically affect the accords. Nevertheless, as I see this, my anger is sparked immediately to the ensign.

  I get the urge to make a proclamation that will effectively strip the ensign of his rank in the Armada and send him back to the Academy for further training or flat out expel him. I may have no control of what happens outside the Armada; I may have no control of civilian actions. But I’ll be damned if I don’t control what Armada officers do.

  I’m on the verge of speaking, when Ashley subtly touches my arm. I look into her eyes and I can almost hear her voice in my head telling me to not let my frustration cloud my decision.

  Now that everyone has seen me and the Captain, there is a profound silence. I look around and see that the crowd has progressively thinned, though a few brave souls stayed. I assume these are the ones that have specks of anti-alien sentimentalism tainting their souls. At that moment, about fifteen highly armed security personnel poured into the recreation center. Within seconds, they had every exit cornered and had a loose circle surrounding the scene. Some guards came to assist on subduing the ensign, while two security personnel came to stand beside the ambassador, who doesn’t visibly seem displeased with this situation. I notice the chief security officer standing within eyesight of the captain, who nods at the security chief, acknowledging her presence.

  Ashley turns to the ensign and says, “What’s the confrontation about?” she’s got an edge in her voice.

  The ensign, who’s still visibly angry, speaks in a very low and hate-infused tone. “That thing standing there is the cause of the confrontation, ma’am. He’s responsible for the deaths of my parents. He’s responsible for the death of my five sisters and two brothers. He’s responsible for the deaths of my entire neighbors and colony. They came with their massive ships and destroyed Rivers Colony. They glassed the entire planet from space, never even doing the inhabitants the courtesy of facing their destructors.”