The Ghost Fleet

by Trevor Wyatt

  Now he’s on the verge of tears and is severely weak. His next words are filled with emotions that begins to melt my initial anger at him. “No one survived. Even though people fled before the bombardment started, only five thousand out of one hundred and twenty seven thousand people were able to get away. We were a defenseless and peaceful colony. We had not attacked a Sonali colony and had no capability to do so. It didn’t matter to them. They unleashed hell on the planet, killing everything—living and non-living.” He says, then breaks down and begins to sob.

  Ashley glances at the ambassador, who looks at her, head held high, not a jot of remorse in visible in his eyes or stance. I feel Ashley’s temperature rise as her anger is stroked. Tension rises even more in the recreation center. I observe the security personnel. None of them betray any emotion as they all remain flaccid. Good, I think. I can rely on their objectivity in case I have to take command.

  Ashley leans into me and gently whispers to my ears. “The ensign’s parents lived on Rivers Colony when it was attacked. These were one of the very first colonies that suffered at the start of the war.”

  I listen intently more to the emotion in her voice than to her words. This is not the first time I’m hearing grief and pain from a relative of the lost. The truth is, the Sonali lost people too. We bombarded their planets and destroyed their ships as well. The Sonali lost as much as we did, yet they’re here willing to make peace. They weren’t attacking humans and blaming them for the war. After all, the war had been predicated on an event that never even took place—the event of the Sonali destroying The Mariner.

  These guys never wanted to consider the whole truth, as usual. They were more interested in pointing fingers to the blue skinned “villains” and meting out justice as they liked. It’s wrong and immoral. It’s hugely unfair and highly prejudiced.

  “We all need to put the past behind us, because that’s all it is. The past,” I say to my wife. Her reaction turns into mild shock and contemplative silence.

  “If that was me, your wife, on that Rivers Colony, would you be able to put it behind you?” she asks, and I am taken aback by the hurt I hear in her voice. “If it was you wife and family that were murdered in such a gruesome way, would you be able to do what you’re telling this ensign now? Would you be able to move? What if you have to work with the very same commander that’s responsible for the death of your wife in the past war? What if they killed your children and these people are asked to be invited to your house? Would you be okay with that?”

  I am still stunned by Ashley’s soft reprimand, because I thought we both understood the necessity of the Peace Accords and the need to forget the past. Nevertheless, her rhetoric has struck a chord in me—which I would rather not have struck because of its potential to derail the Peace Accords.

  Ashley motions for the chief of security to come. She marches into the middle of the gathering and stands at attention.

  “Place the ensign under arrest and restrain him to his quarters,” she orders. “He has disobeyed ship rules and will be punished accordingly.”

  “Also, escort the ambassador to his quarters and place someone outside his door. I also want you to place an armed guard with every alien aboard this ship. No alien moves around without at least one escort. I don’t want an incident like this happening again.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the security chief says.

  “Is this really necessary?” the Sonali ambassador hisses, his first oral communication since we arrived. Then he turns to me and says, “You assured us that this ship is safe.” It is more of an accusation than a statement of fact. I get an urge to turn to Ashley to explain it herself, since it was really her assertion. But I look the Sonali in the eyes and remain passive.

  “Yes,” Ashley says, when she realizes I’m not going to say anything.

  The ambassador looks like he’s about to protest.

  “Look, ambassador,” I say. “You can fuse about this all you want. If you’re really interested in your safety and the safety of your delegation and our peace accords, you’ll let us handle this thing the way we see fit.”

  After a tense moment, the ambassador surrenders and allows the security people to lead him away.

  Ashley’s comm chirps. “Go ahead,” she says, tapping it.

  “Captain, Vice Admiral,” the navigations officer says. “We have arrived at planet Io and are currently orbiting.”

  “Roger that, Lieutenant,” Ashley says. “Vice Admiral and I are headed for the shuttle bay. Have operations prepare a shuttle ready for immediate departure.”

  “Aye, captain,” replies the lieutenant.

  Ashley turns to me after cutting the connection and says, “Are you ready for the truth?”

  I step aside. “After you.”

  She leads me out of the recreation center to the direction of the shuttle bay.

  Jeryl

  A shaky-looking ensign is waiting for us by the shuttle entrance in Shuttle Bay 5 when we arrive.

  After resolving the recreation lounge issue, we’re now heading for Io.

  The ensign snaps off a salute, which Ashley returns.

  “I’m your pilot for the trip down to the planet’s surface,” the ensign says.

  I begin to wonder if she can actually fly the shuttle. Her hands are clammy. I can see the sweat trickle down her neck to taint her flight suit. She doesn’t look like she can handle the ionic composition of the atmosphere.

  Ashley notices this too.

  “You’re new here, aren’t you?” Ashley asks.

  The ensign bows her head and nods. She’s now playing with her hands.

  “We don’t have time for this,” I whisper to Ashley. “These missions shouldn’t be handled by newbies. I need to have a word with whoever put her on this mission.”

  Ashley gives me a wry smile.

  “That won’t be necessary,” she says. Then to the ensign. “Look, why don’t you sit this one out.”

  The ensign looks up at us immediately with relief in her eyes.

  “Are you serious?” she blurts. Realizing her breach in protocol, she mutters, “Sorry.”

  Ashley pats her on the back. “Sit this one out.”

  Ashley and I enter the shuttle. I secure the hatch, while she starts her pre-flight check. She then checks in with the CNC to confirm that they have clearance to enter the atmosphere.

  “You’re cleared for departure,” I hear in the comms as I join Ashley in the cockpit.

  I take my seat and strap in. The cockpit is dark and cool. Though there is a massive flood light showering the shuttle bay, the main view screen of the shuttle dims this, maintaining the serene atmosphere in the shuttle.

  “Roger that, Seeker,” Ashley replies, powering up the main drive.

  The shuttle vibrated to life, lifting up into the air a few seconds later. Right ahead of us, the shuttle door lifts open. There is a miniature hurricane and whatever atmosphere is in the shuttle bay is sucked into the void of space.

  Ashley glances at me. “Are you ready?”

  I shrug.

  She looks at the view screen and shoves the yoke forwards. The shuttle leaps into motion like a responsive feline predator. This kicks me back as the enormous Gs mounts on my body before the inertial dampeners stabilize the craft. Ashley doesn’t ease up on her acceleration until we are several hundreds of kilometers away from The Seeker and banks, bringing the shuttle back towards The Seeker.

  The Seeker looms before us, a glittering and sparkly wonder. Beautiful as I remember her, seeing her in space, hanging on invisible threads still amazes me. She thrums invisibly, her sublight engines sustaining her slow rotation around the planet.

  I notice Ashley turning to look at me as we begin to pass underneath her.

  “Do you ever miss her?” Ashley asks in the silence of the shuttle.

  I think about that question for a moment. Do I really miss commanding The Seeker? I guess I haven’t really thought much about it ever since I was promoted. I’ve b
een so consumed with trying to fix the damn galaxy that it just didn’t cross my mind what I was missing.

  I chuckle. It’s not as if Ashley is having much fun commanding The Seeker right now, either. But, do I miss commanding it? Exploring the stars?

  “Not really,” I reply. “It’s not something I’ve thought of so much in the past three years, giving how busy I’ve gotten.”

  Then I remember how much I miss my wife.

  “I miss you,” I say.

  After a brief pause, Ashley says, “I know this is unfair to bring up, but sometimes I feel like you’re ignoring me.”

  Her words bring pain to my heart. I wince and try not to meet her gaze. I don’t blame her. If I were here, I would think I was ignoring me, too. It’s just this damn job. It takes everything from you. Everything.

  “I’m sorry,” she says later.

  “There’s no need to apologize,” I tell her. “It’s my fault.”

  “No, it’s not your fault,” she says, shaking her head vigorously. “It’s the war and the Sonali and the Tyreesians and the whole fucking galaxy. It’s like they don’t want us together.”

  I smile as I remember the little time we have spent together since we got married.

  “And when we are together,” she says, pausing in her thoughts. “It’s because of the galaxy.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “Think about how soon you wanted to come here?” she tells me. “How you wanted to get to The Seeker so fast that you pulled every trick in the book.”

  The madness.

  “Listen,” I say. “I’m sorry about the other night. But you have to admit, we had some crazy times together, even though it lasted just a few days,” I say.

  I see her take a few deep breaths.

  I see her smile in my peripheral vision.

  “I wonder what it’ll be like to live in a farm,” she says. “Wake up in the morning, make breakfast. Lie in bed all day. Make dinner. Read the newspaper. Sleep. Then repeat.”

  She glances my way. This time I crane my neck to meet her gaze.

  “I call it boring,” I say.

  “I call it peaceful,” she replies.

  I turn away.

  “We didn’t sign up for a war,” Ashley goes on. “We certainly didn’t sign up to try and piece the galaxy together. Heck, when I signed up to go from enlisted to the Academy, it was to pay for school. I didn’t believe there were aliens. I didn’t even take Professor Guss’s class because I thought it was a load of crap.”

  “I took his class, and it was a load of crap,” I reply with a private smile to myself.

  There is a little pause.

  “Can we ever live a normal life again?” Ashley asks.

  My reply is simple, genuine, and straight from the heart.

  “What is normal?”

  Silence.

  Then the comm comes to life.

  “Unidentified shuttle from the TUS The Seeker. This is Io’s Space Defense Center. Please come in.”

  “SDC, this is Captain Ashley Gavin of The Seeker, piloting the Shuttle Freedom,” she replies. “We require priority landing.”

  “We don’t see any scheduled stop for your craft to Io city,” comes the petrified male voice. “Are we supposed to be prepping for an attack?”

  “Negative, SDC,” Ashley replies. “This is routine stop-by. Please advise on priority landing.”

  “Stand by, Captain,” he replies.

  “Hold on,” Ashley mutters to me. “We’re beginning to enter the atmosphere.”

  I didn’t get much time after that to hold on. It felt like we had hit an invisible wall. Our ferocious speed is arrested sharply the moment we made contact with the atmosphere. The ship jerks side to side, Ashley deftly controlling the craft.

  I am knocked to the side. I manage to look through the view screen and I see that we have entered the ionosphere, which is a sphere of dense ionic activities. This is where the planet gets its name from.

  “Shield at seventy percent and holding,” Ashley says through her teeth.

  Several lights go off on her panel and I can hear an incessant beeping sound. There’s a loud explosion to our aft that knocks us off course.

  “Shields at fifty percent and holding.” Ashley says.

  There we cut through the lower layer of the ionosphere and are free. Ashley heaves a loud sigh of relief and I join in as she begins to laugh.

  “Captain Ashley, maintain current course for ten minutes and deviate west. You’ve been cleared to land on Pad 91. This is at the edge of Io City. Welcome to Io.”

  “Thanks, SDC,” Ashley replies. “Captain Ashley out.”

  We’re currently crossing a forested terrain. Ten minutes and we deviate west. We come upon a network of landing pads and locate pad 91, which is truly at the edge of the city.

  Spread out like a cone is Io city, a very dense collection of buildings and skyscrapers. It’s a surreal sight with its tech buildings and brick and mortar stores. There are wide highways and one-lane roads jammed with people.

  Ashley circles a portion of the city for us to get a feel of it before setting the shuttle down on the pad.

  We unstrap ourselves and exit the shuttle into the perpetually dim world. A few technicians are anchoring our shuttle to the ground. Ahead, a fat, mad man walks towards us. Behind him is a small building with a control tower.

  “My contact here is Admiral Sanchez,” Ashley whispers into my ears. “He has agreed to meet us at a local bar not too far from here. We’ll need to hitch a ride.”

  I nod.

  “My name is Lieutenant Ronny,” says the man. “Can I see some IDs please?”

  We pull out our Armada Command credentials, plastic pieces of IDs with an encoded chip embedded within. The man scans my ID with a handheld device, then moves to scan Ashley’s.

  “How long are you staying?” he asks.

  “Not long,” Ashley replies.

  “Welcome to Io,” the man says and begins to walk back in the direction of the building.

  “Hey, how do we get to the city?” Ashley calls out.

  The man points to our right, where there is a small gate in the high walls that surround the landing pad. The man doesn’t look back at us, but speaks nonetheless.

  “There’s an air car parked outside,” he says. “You berth gives you access to the car for 24 hours after which you begin to pay.”

  Then he disappears into the building.

  I fold my arms. “Do you really think he’s a lieutenant?”

  “I doubt it,” she says to me quietly. “The SDC is probably on the take from a corporation who are subcontracting for cheaper labor.”

  We find the air car and access it with our IDs. This time Ashley lets me drive and we head out into the city. Apparently the denser aspects of the city have a no fly zone policy, so we have to park in a parking lot and walk the rest of the way.

  “Did you know this planet started out as an agricultural planet?” I ask Ashley as we slowly make our way through the maze-like one-lane roads that are jammed with other people trying to make their way through as well.

  “Really?” Ashley replies.

  “Yes. In fact, the reason why corporations came to this planet several decades ago was because of the richness of its soil, which terraforming transformed and enhanced into an agricultural and economic marvel.”

  “Didn’t the ionic cloud deter them?” Ashley asks.

  “Not any more than the soil deterred the early miners on Earth,” I say. “I mean those guys mined everything. They mined gold. They mined diamonds. They mined coal. They even mined oil.”

  “But you see, colonies are set up in three different ways,” I continue. “Either a bunch of people discover a planet with great potential and they get financing for an exploration or a corporation finds a planet they intend to harness and run for profit.”

  “There are also Terran Union campaigns,” Ashley says.

  “Yes,” I reply. “Much like New Was
hington. These colonies are necessarily for an extension of our government.”

  I notice we’ve left the heavily trafficked area of the city and are now crossing the slums. I begin to wish I brought a weapon.

  “When the Terran Union forms these colonies, it asserts its governance and influence in a number of ways,” I continue. “By providing basic amenities like defense and slipstream communication. They also allow a representative from the colony to be present on the Terran Council.”

  We stop by a bar in a two-story building that looks abandoned. The wet street ends in a high wall. I can see a couple of shady characters picking through the trash. All around the watery ground I see pieces of broken glass and hard drugs. I wonder what a former Admiral would be doing in such a scummy place.

  “Well, husband, you would make a great professor someday,” Ashley tells me, winking. The trademark mischievousness is back. “Maybe if Guss retires one day.”

  I chuckle as we enter seedy bar where we are greeted with loud music and a pungent smell. I recognize at least three banned psychotropic agents in the air. The bar is small and has a low ceiling. Dim lights flash disco style as couples dance on the dance floor. At the edges there are tables occupied by people either smoking, drinking or gambling.

  I spot a couple of aliens, from Sonali to Tyreesian to the Children of Zorm. I guess the anti-alien sentiment hasn’t gotten here.

  Ashley pauses by the door and scans the room. She points to a man at the other end of the bar wearing a dark clothing. She takes my hand and we push through the dancing bodies to the other end of the bar.

  The Admiral spots us before we come into range. He stands to hug Ashley. They speak for a while. I couldn’t hear them because of the loud music, but I see them smile at each other and I conclude that they’re probably reminiscing over the past.

  Ashley then grabs me and pulls me closer.

  “This is my husband and direct superior,” she says, beaming with pride. “Vice Admiral Jeryl Montgomery.”

  The man sizes me up for a moment. He has a diminutive figure, yet a commanding set of eyes. His beads have spikes of white, making him look charming and mysterious. He stretches forth a firm hand, which I take.