by Nick Webb
And yet the Phoenix represented a dangerous variable. One out of their control. And he had to neutralize it. Too much was riding on The Plan to let one insignificant ship derail it.
But one ship could change the course of history. One man. One people. Galba knew that. He knew his history. Hell, hadn’t Corsica been founded almost by accident? Because of a mutiny aboard a Joint European Colony ship nearly 400 years ago? Just one man, and his friends, had commandeered the vast colony ship, redirected it towards the newly terraformed American world of Commerce, and duly conquered it.
And renamed it Corsica.
The Americans didn’t find out for three years, and when they did, they were already too tied up in another petty war with the Russian Confederation of Planets to do anything about it. By the time both sides lay in ruins, the Corsican Empire was already in its infancy, ready to spread its glorious influence out into the settled worlds.
Galba rubbed his crotch again, trying to focus his mind on the white-haired tattooed woman of his dreams, her lithe body, her round, petite breasts, her red lips almost lost in the tattooed forest creeping up on her face.
The door opened, and she walked in, breaking out into a grin as she saw his hand in his pants.
“Been thinking about me, Harrison?” She crawled onto the bed and sat on his thighs. Gods, he loved it when she did that.
“It’s been eight hours. Eight hours, my love.” He tried to frown, to sound angry. But his crotch screamed at him to soften his tone and lure her in.
She leaned forward, unbuttoning her uniform. “I know. I’m sorry. We just had another battle, you know. With the Sphinx.”
He ran a hand up her chest, between her heaving breasts, and stroked her forested neck. “I know. At least, I heard the klaxons and the pounding on the hull. Did we win?”
She laughed. “We? Yes, we did. Do you consider yourself part of the Resistance now?”
She took off her pants, and he wiggled out of his, and flipped around to lay on top of her. She was like an acrobat, displaying far more agility and strength than your average twenty-something young woman. He wondered at her history—he knew there was more to her than met the eye. She was a Belenite, sure, and from a rather prominent family. But his sources had discovered she might have contacts deep within the Belenite fringe group known as The Red, the group that wanted nothing to do with the pacifistic ways of the main culture.
But for now, he didn’t care. He just cared about getting deep inside of her. And he did. And it was bliss.
Nearly half an hour later, nestled into the crook of his arm, she murmured, “how long do you think we can keep you hidden?”
Time to make his escape. “Actually, I was wondering if you could get me a uniform. I want to get out into the ship. I can’t just live in your quarters for the rest of my life, my love.”
She turned up to look at him, a skeptical look on her face. “And what do you think you’re going to do? Even the lowliest midshipman will recognize you.”
“We’ll have to fix that, my love. Surely you know how we might alter my appearance?”
She rubbed his chest. “What are you thinking?”
Would she go for it? Belenites were pacifists. But it would be so incredibly sexy. “Well, I was thinking if you could … mark me. My face. Just a bit. Enough to throw off scrutiny. In fact, I imagine half the ship is injured in some way or another. I’d fit in nicely.”
She rose up to a sitting position. “Are you really suggesting what I think you are?”
She wouldn’t do it. He kicked himself for broaching the subject. “Well, if you’re not comfortable, I understand….”
He trailed off, then added, “But it might be fun….” He winked, and added a sly grin—something he knew she had trouble resisting. It would be more than fun. He might even just get another erection.
Rolled eyes. She laid her head back down. “I’m Belenite, Harrison. It’s not what we do.” She kissed his chest. “Even for fun. Especially for fun. Violence is the watchword of the Empire, not of my people. I’m forbidden from drawing blood with my hands.”
He sighed. “Very well. At least get me a uniform? I’ve been in these clothes for days now—I smell like a Trantorian miner.”
Her fingers ran over his stomach and up his chest. What he wouldn’t give to whisk the girl away to his seaside estate on Corsica. Watch her cook him scrambled eggs in his kitchen while naked. Lay on the brilliant white sand with the waves washing over their bodies, the troubles of the galaxy forgotten.
“Of course, Harrison.”
He rested his hand on hers. “Violence in not our watchword, love.”
“Oh?” she murmured.
“Peace. Stability. Those are our watchwords. Are there those in the Empire who tolerate violence? Yes. But no society is free of that guilt. Even your own, as you should know.”
Had he gone too far? If he had, she’d lift her head up and glare at him with those fiery black eyes.
She didn’t. She didn’t even tense. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Oh well. Plenty of time to get at the truth later. For now, it was time to stop the Phoenix, and clear the way for The Plan.
***
Ten minutes later, Ensign Willow Ayala stood outside the doors to her quarters, wondering which way to go. She hadn’t eaten in over a day, though that was usually not a problem for a Belenite, with their storied culture of multi-day fasts. Sleep was an enticing option, though with the Senator sprawled out on her bunk, clipping his toenails, that seemed unlikely. Maybe he was right. It might do them both good to get him out of her quarters. At least long enough for her to sleep.
But did he know? She hadn’t told anyone on the ship about her membership in The Red. Sure, the Senator probably had access to Imperial intel reports, but even they shouldn’t know anything about their order.
The order that would bring the Empire to its knees. At whatever cost.
She wavered on her feet and her hand shot out to stabilize her against the wall.
Damn. She really needed sleep.
Time to find the man a uniform and get him the hell out of her quarters.
CHAPTER TWO
GAVIN ASHDOWN’S MORNING WAS NOT going very well. As an assistant to the lead galley cook, he already occupied an unenviable place on the Phoenix’s totem pole, but to be the food server for the hectic stream of crew members rushing in and out of the cafeteria after an emergency like the one they’d had a few days ago was perhaps the worst job imaginable.
A constant stream of harried officers and enlisted men yelling at him to hurry with the trays or to bring more forks or to refill the coffee barrel passed though the cafeteria line. Hell, that wasn’t even his job. Unfortunately, the kid whose job it was lay in sickbay with his head in stitches. The nurse assured the remaining galley crew he’d get better, but in the meantime they were short-staffed and facing an unruly crowd of hungry crew members.
Gavin would be lying if he said he didn’t somewhat enjoy the hectic pace. After all, that was why he joined the fleet. For adventure. To see new places and travel the galaxy. To explore strange new dishes and seek out new ingredients and condiments. To boldly cook what no galley lackey had cooked before. Yeah, that was his life.
He rushed back into the galley storage larder and dashed back out with a bag of creamer, and tossed it towards the impatiently waiting Ensign. “Hey!” the Ensign yelled. “Aren’t you even going to open it before you toss it in my face?”
“But that would have made a mess, sir.” he retorted as he ran back into the galley, the Ensign’s threats following him through the door. The cook was a sight to behold as he ran from one pot to the other, stirring the oatmeal and scraping the bottom of a pan to keep the eggs from sticking and checking on the progress of the hundreds of biscuits still in the oven.
“We need more eggs out there. The officers are getting a little surly,” Gavin said to the cook, who grunted as he stirred the still soupy, yellow mixture.
>
“That’s going to have to wait, kid. I don’t perform miracles. Eggs cook when they cook.” A cigarette hung out of the corner of the cook’s mouth, which Gavin was sure ran afoul of several fleet regulations, regardless of which fleet they were currently in. Not to mention the health and sanitation codes of Earth and the Empire both.
“Can we just crank up the heat, sir?”
The cook scratched his crotch with one ungloved hand. “Just take the oatmeal out. That oughta tide ‘em over.”
Gavin sighed. He knew if he walked out there with just a pot of oatmeal, the crowd of hungry officers and enlisted men would run him out of the room.
“Hurry, kid, they can’t wait all day,” said the cook, an older, chunky man with a bristly mustache.
Resigned to his fate, Gavin hefted the giant pot out the door and clunked it down on the serving table.
Eventually the breakfast crowd seemed to melt away into the lunch crowd, and before he knew it he was hard at work in the galley mixing up powdered mashed potatoes, boiling a vat of frozen green beans, and reconstituting what a container claimed was pork chops but which looked like limp, oily biscuits.
“Oh, dammit. The biscuits.” He dashed to the oven and yanked the door down, only to be blasted with a wave of smoke in his face. 500 burned biscuits. He swore again to himself as he scraped them all into the trash and entered a command into the food printer to lay out another fifty perfect, even rows of dough balls onto the massive baking trays, and within a few minutes he had the whole lot baking again.
The cook barreled through the door, fresh off what Gavin calculated was his tenth break for the day. “What the hell is that smell? Did you burn my biscuits?”
“Technically sir, the oven burned them,” said Gavin, trying to keep his tone engaging and playful. He’d only worked with the man for a week, and in that time Gavin had pinned the cook down as someone who was both quick to anger, but also quick to laugh. The trick was to get him to laugh before he swore at you.
“Dammit, Ashdown, I leave you for twenty minutes, and the kitchen is falling apart! Get a new batch in there now—we’ve only got a few minutes before the hungry asshats start streaming through the doors again.”
“Already done, sir,” he replied, subordinately. He knew his humor grace period had already passed, and there would be nothing but yelling for the rest of the night.
“And where the hell is Xing?” Jet Xing, the other galley assistant, was also on her tenth break for the day. She tended to make herself scarce whenever the workload was the heaviest and the cook was not around to supervise.
“In the bathroom, probably. Or her bunk.” He knew it was not terribly classy of him to get Jet in trouble, but the girl deserved it. She was lazier than anyone he knew.
The cook rolled his eyes. “Come on then, lets get this all out to the tables. We’ve got five minutes before serving time.”
Dinner dragged on for what seemed like forever to Gavin, but in reality only lasted just over an hour. It was full of more dashing back and forth to the galley, enduring the haranguing of officers and the impatient hounding of the enlisted men. The reality was that Gavin was the youngest crew member on the ship, and the people passing through his cafeteria didn’t seem too amused that some teenage kid was holding up their dinner.
As the night nearly wrapped up, he was hefting another pot of mashed potatoes to the cafeteria table when he caught sight of some more officers. One in particular caught his eye. It was Commander Jemez. Gavin watched him as the man walked in, until his own foot caught on a table leg and he stumbled, sending the pot tumbling to the ground and white fluff flew everywhere. He glanced back up at Jemez and grimaced, and the Commander smiled wryly at him.
“Hey, let me help you with that,” a friendly voice said next to him. Before he could stop her, the new XO, Commander Po, had stooped down to pick up the pot and reached for a stack of napkins on the table.
“Oh, sorry ma’am. You don’t have to—”
She smiled warmly at him before she stooped down onto her knees and began wiping up the fluff. “Nonsense. You look like you’ve been on your feet all day. Sit down for a minute.”
He didn’t know what to say, so he kept his mouth shut and kneeled down next to her, scooping up the pile of mashed potatoes back into the pot. “Thank you, Commander. Very kind.”
“Don’t mention it.” She winked.
What XO winked at their crew? Gavin was pretty sure he liked Commander Megan Po.
“Can I help you, Po?” A deep, sure voice asked above their heads. Gavin looked and saw officer’s knee-boots, then looked higher and watched as Commander Jemez stooped down to join them. He’d never seen him up this close before. The man’s physique took his breath away. Gavin made a mental note to start using the Phoenix’s gym. He’d played some sports as a teen, but had always envied his peers for their ability to bulk up with what to him seemed like scant exercise.
“Oh, Commander! No, you don’t have to. We’ve got it, really.” Gavin was beginning to feel his face burn. Not just the XO, but now two Commanders were stooped down helping him clean up his mess.
“It’s nothing, yeoman. We’re happy to help. You been on board long?”
The question took Gavin aback, since they’d all only been on board for less than a week, and he stuttered a bit before Jemez burst into an easy, pleasant laugh, pleased at his joke. “Kidding, Yeoman! Only kidding. Hey, what’s your name?”
“Petty officer Ashdown, sir. Gavin Ashdown.”
“Aren’t you a little young to be serving in the fleet?”
Commander Po scowled at him. “Oh, leave him alone, Ben. Sorry, Gavin, our security chief here is just having a rough day and likes to take it out on the crew.”
Ben slouched back on his lower legs and raised his hands, defensively. “Hey, I’m just making conversation. Trying to set the kid at ease.” He turned to face Gavin. “Am I making you nervous down here, Ashdown?”
“No, sir. I’m glad for the help. And for the record, I am nineteen. Joined the fleet on my birthday two months ago.”
“Nineteen, huh? I could have sworn you were seventeen.”
“Ben,” Megan said with an impatient glare. She turned to face Gavin and the warm smile returned. “Sorry, Gavin, Ben here thinks that he’s thirty-five, when in actuality he’s hardly older than you are. Twenty-four. In my opinion, far too young to be gallivanting about some dangerous frontier world with his best drinking buddy.”
Ben snorted. “I’d hardly call the Captain my drinking buddy, Po.”
“Well then what would you call him?”
A sheepish look came over Jemez’s face. “My … wingman?”
Gavin felt like he’d stepped in the middle of a conversation he shouldn’t be hearing. And yet he didn’t feel like he could just walk away and leave them to clean up the rest of the mess. He focused on scraping up the rest of the potatoes as fast as possible.
“Thank you both for your help. I can take it from here. Really.” He smiled awkwardly at Ben, and then at Commander Po.
“You sure?” said Po.
“Cause, you know, it’s not like the XO is busy or anything,” said Ben. The remark drew icy daggers from Commander Po’s eyes, and Gavin couldn’t help but chuckle. She turned her fearsome gaze to him.
“And what do you think you’re laughing at?”
Gavin gulped. “Nothing, ma’am.”
“Good,” she said. Picking up the soiled napkins she stood up and walked away.
Ben reached over and touched Gavin’s shoulder. “Good to meet you, Gavin. Hope to see you around,” he said, and stood up.
“Me too, sir.”
“Well, I know where you work now, so I’m sure we will.” And with a smile and another squeeze on Gavin’s shoulder, Ben returned to the line to get a bite to eat.
After tossing the dirty potatoes, he found another pot already made for him to take out—apparently Jet Xing, the other galley hand, had looked out to see Gavin’s mishap
and prepared another batch, and within another twenty minutes the two of them slumped into one of the benches of the mostly empty cafeteria.
“Saved your ass again,” said Jet, shoveling a spoonful of food into her mouth. Her short cropped, nearly black hair spilled over onto her forehead in an unruly tangle.
“Huh?”
“Your spill there almost caused two dozen officers to go without potatoes. And you can’t eat fake floppy pork chops without powdered potatoes.” Jet’s thick southern drawl sounded even more foreign to Gavin through the mouthful of food. “I call them floppychops.” She grinned. “And,” Jet continued, pointing her spoon at Gavin, “I think that Commander has the hots for you!”
“Who? Jemez?”
“No, dumbass. The hot mom chick. Po. She got all flustered when you kneeled down next to her.”
“You’re dreaming.” Gavin started on his own plate, slowly, with manners for the both of them. He often considered that Jet’s parents were feral squirrels that had passed their table habits down to their daughter. “Didn’t your parents ever teach you manners?” It occurred to him that she’d never mentioned her family to him in the weeks that they’d served aboard the Phoenix together.
She shook her head. “Dead.”
Gavin felt his face flush red.
“It’s a funny story, actually. Wanna hear it?” she said through a mouthful of food.
“I … uh … sure.” What does one say to an offer like that? He shook his head and tried to smile. Then frown. He wasn’t sure if he should smile or frown.
Jet snorted through a bite. “Nah, I’ll tell you later. Hey, you coming over to my bunk tonight again? You might think you’re the shit at that videogame, but I’ve been practicing.”
Gavin breathed a sigh of relief, and smirked. He’d played videogames since he was a little kid, and doubted the girl would ever match his talent, especially at Galactic Conquest, the starship game where the players conquer each other’s planets and fleets with fighters and capital ships. Gavin was a veritable flying ace. At least virtually. “When have you been practicing?”
