“I’ll never forget you, sister,” he said, placing it below his shirt.
“Come on, son. Time to go,” Penter shouted from the basement.
Tarlen followed him from the only life he’d ever understood, and didn’t look back as they turned the corner down the street.
Six
“This puts us into a little bit of a dilemma, Captain,” Treena Starling said.
Tom leaned away from the meeting room table, spinning slowly in his chair to look out the window. Their ship was idle, halted as they awaited his decision.
“I agree, Commander. We have an obligation to assist the inhabitants of this newly discovered vessel. We need to learn where they hail from, and why we’ve never seen their kind before. But we’re under extremely strict orders to move to Greblok and decipher what’s transpired there.” Tom steepled his fingers as he spoke.
“May I suggest an alternative, Captain?” Ven asked. He towered over everyone from his seat beside Brax. He motioned to the table with a finger, and a water jug lifted. He pointed another finger, and the much smaller glass rose beside it. “We can attach their vessel to ours using an energy tether, and they’ll essentially come along for the ride as we travel to our destination in hyperlight.” The glass clinked against the jug, and they both moved across the table through the air.
He settled them down at the far end, not a drop of water spilled. Tom tried to not appear impressed.
“This is against regulations, Ven,” Reeve Daak told the Ugna. “Taking the vessel may impede our primary objective. It’s there in the Code. Subsection four, point one.”
Tom was familiar with the Code, though perhaps not as well as Reeve, who’d seemed to memorize every minor detail of her life. “We use and abide by the Code, but there are times when other measures may be necessary.”
“Sir, with all due respect, I’m not sure our first mission should be compromised in any way,” his commander said.
Tom soaked it all in. They could bring the alien ship with them, but this was unprecedented. “We could leave it. Re-examine it on our return.”
Doctor Nee interjected. “Sir, I’d like to have a look at one of them.”
“Say that again?” Tom asked, not sure what the doctor really meant by that.
“I’d like to take one of them from the cryogenic pod. Find out what we can. Who they are, where they’re from,” Nee said, his expression serious.
“Hold it right there, Doctor. We’re two days away from Greblok. We don’t have time to be cracking open alien pods and hoping the being on the other end is even alive and can tell us a story. We do this by the book,” Tom said, crossing his arms as if ending the conversation.
“Lieutenant Daak,” Ven said, and Tom saw both Daaks perk up. Brax had been silent so far this meeting, and Tom appreciated the Tekol security officer not adding unnecessary opinions. Ven continued, looking at Reeve. “There is nothing against regulations, if I recall. We’re merely offering aid to a stranded vessel.”
“Semantics. The Concord states that you can, in an emergency, offer aid to a vessel if it belongs to a Concord ship,” Reeve stated.
Tom watched the interaction between the two officers. The Zilph’i albino stood his ground, sitting straight and not breaking eye contact with the chief engineer. “We have no idea who these people are. They might well be members of the Concord. Perhaps they’re in an unmarked ship. Perhaps they’re members who were kidnapped aboard an enemy vessel, awaiting someone to rescue them.”
Tom considered this, completely aware they had to stop waiting around. Greblok was calling, and he needed to maintain peace here. Constantine was his chance to stop hiding in the shadows, and to have his own command. He was the captain of a Concord cruise ship, and the most high-tech one ever created. This wasn’t a time for him to grow indecisive.
“Ven, Reeve, everyone, thank you for the counsel. We bring them with us. I don’t know who these cryogenically frozen people are, but I intend to find out. Now, how about we travel to Greblok, welcome them into the Concord, and bring our travelers to Nolix for scrutiny?” Tom told the assembled.
“Yes, sir,” they all echoed, waiting for him to stand before they followed suit. He was starting to like the esteem they were giving him. He wanted everyone to get along, but there was rank for a reason. This ship needed a leader, not a follower.
“Reeve,” he said, catching the woman’s attention as she started away from the meeting room. “I’d like you to head the team. Bring that ship under our wing, so to speak. Ensure it arrives at Greblok with us, will you?”
Reeve grinned. “Yes, sir. Consider it done.”
“Good. You have an hour.” Tom left her standing there and headed to his office off the bridge. It was more prestigious than his former captain’s office. Cecilia had been an older ship, although one of the Fleet’s finest, in his opinion. Captain Yin Shu was Callalay, and anal to the point of obsessive compulsive when it came to order. Some of her habits had rubbed off on him, but Tom didn’t mind.
He hadn’t been given an opportunity to ask the admiral about the selection of his crew. Most notable was the absence of a Callalay in the executive crew. They were an ancient race, the first of the Founders to find space travel. It was the Callalay that had discovered Nolix, the home of the Tekol. Tom had often wondered why the Concord ran from Nolix rather than the original Founder’s world, but no one had a straight answer. It had simply always been that way. Why question it?
Tom moved to the viewer on his wall, tapping at the console to zoom in on the alien vessel. Already, ships were moving toward it, ready to drag it toward Constantine.
“Constantine,” Tom said, and the AI avatar of his grandfather appeared.
“Hello, Captain,” Constantine said.
“What can you tell me about Greblok?” Tom asked. He’d read the briefing, but it was short, to the point, with little attention to the people, and a focus on their economy.
“Greblok is a Class Zero-Nine world. It is thirty-seven percent land, with two major oceans and three minor. The weather varies, as on most worlds, but nearly the entire population resides on a single continent. The land is desert-like: rolling dunes and sand everywhere. The capital is a city named after Malin, who’s said to be a prophet from their early years. He led wandering groups of nomads together from all corners of the world and started the first city. Close proximity to fresh water and near the ocean for food.” Constantine paused, and Tom smiled at the youthful face of his grandfather.
“That’s more like it. Keep going,” Tom said, taking a seat behind his desk.
“There are nearly half a million people in Malin, many living in original structures. The city is over three thousand years old. Population has been controlled by a few factors over the centuries. They’ve had no fewer than four major epidemics, plagues, killing a quarter of their people in the most recent outbreak. This was two centuries ago.
“The people do procreate, but there’s also a genetic defect in twenty percent of the males, and they are unable to reproduce,” Constantine said.
Those were all good reasons why the population had never exploded on Greblok. Tom had seen the pictures and was surprised they had space travel at all. “It sounds a little archaic.”
“It’s rudimentary by our standards,” Constantine said.
“And they received space travel by trade?” Tom asked. That had been in the report, but spelled out in half a sentence.
“The Lothe visited them over a century ago. They mentored the Bacals,” the AI told him.
“To what end?” Tom asked. There were rules in place about breaching contact with lifeforms not yet in space. Before the Concord was able to enforce such terms, rogue space travelers would head to unsuspecting planets and enslave them. It was unregulated, and a dangerous time before the Founders grew to power.
“The Lothe crash-landed in the ocean, or so the story goes,” Constantine said.
“And they had no other option. Is that what they told the
Concord?” Tom stifled a laugh. There was always a way around the rules. People had been bending and breaking them since the start of the Code.
“Correct.”
“What of their mines? The admiral makes it sound like this conductive ore will be revolutionary. Do the Bacals even fathom what they have on their hands?” Tom asked.
“I wouldn’t know that, Captain. I suspect they do not. Either way, Greblok entering the Concord is a huge honor, and they would trade anything to join us. Would you not?” Constantine asked.
Tom considered this. If he was living on a planet with limited space travel, and in an ancient city, would he want more for his people? Likely. But there was something romantic about the notion of staying on a planet: working a job, having a family… if you weren’t one of the unlucky twenty percent of males.
“I’d want safety for my people, and the Concord would offer that. They’ll also have no more disease as they have, and that in itself is a huge win. I supposed I’d trade the conductive ore. This Regent must not realize how much they could sell it for. Couldn’t they buy protection and health care then?” Tom asked the AI.
“I suppose they could, though it would be unsanctioned, and could potentially pit them against the Concord,” Constantine said.
Tom loved the Concord. He was part of an intricate network of worlds, with rules and consistency, but there were times he wondered what it was like to be on the outside looking in. That was why it didn’t add up, Greblok going dark.
If they were so hellbent on trading their ore away, why stop communication right before the ceremony? A deep part of Tom’s mind already had the answer, but he didn’t want to let it out. Something dire had transpired on Greblok, and they were about to fly into a warzone.
It could be something else. Perhaps an asteroid had hit them? Maybe a radiation flare had disrupted their communication. There could be countless events that might have caused the outage, but Tom hated speculation, so he pressed it from his thoughts. He had one priority, and that entailed attaching the strange alien ship full of cryogenically frozen beings to his vessel, then continuing their trip to Greblok.
“Will there be anything else, Captain?” Constantine asked softly.
“No. That’ll be all.”
The AI vanished, leaving Tom alone in his office with his thoughts.
____________
“This was a good idea, Reeve,” Treena told the woman to her left. Reeve raised her glass, filled with a thick dark brown liquid, some of it sloshing over the sides and splatting on the dinner table.
“To Constantine,” Reeve said, and the others raised glasses along with her. Some, like Treena’s, were filled with water. The captain, she noted, was one of them.
Brax was the other. He was an enigma, so different than his twin sister. His bald head made him appear more imposing. Most Tekol had long, thick hair, but his scalp was as smooth as an egg. Brax tapped glasses with Treena and gave her a forced smile.
“Yes, good call, Reeve,” Tom said.
The dinner was great, according to everyone else. Treena had made an excuse to be late, so she’d missed the dining part of the meal. She told them she’d eaten as she’d worked, but she couldn’t go on like this forever. She’d have to come clean with the crew.
She’d actually been in her room, sitting at the bedside of her real human body, machines moving it around, the cold metal prods stuck into her brain from behind her head. Treena had spent the first year unable to look at herself, then the next few months feeling so guilty, she didn’t leave her own side. Now she wanted to find a balance. It was her lying there on that bed, and she couldn’t forget that. No matter what happened, the lifelike vessel that was carrying her thoughts was not Treena Starling.
The feeling was unexplainable to others, not that she’d tried. Her mother had attempted to convince her that this was normal, but even the pushy well-meaning woman didn’t have a leg to stand on. Being inside a robotic body, controlling it with her mind, was never going to be normal.
“Treena? Are you all right?” Brax asked her, and she nodded.
“Sorry, lost in thought,” she told him.
“Worried about tomorrow?” the big man asked her.
“Not worried so much as excited,” she said. “I haven’t been on a mission in a long time. I’m trying to get used to it again.”
“You’re doing a great job. You were on point during our expedition,” Brax told her. He sipped his water.
Tom was talking with the doctor, who was animatedly speaking of the aliens they’d discovered. “I think their exoskeletons are softer than they look. Almost like they have some give to them. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“But you haven’t opened one of the pods, correct?” Tom asked.
“I haven’t, but I very much want to. What stories they could tell! We have so much to learn,” Doctor Nee said. His cheeks were red, his reptilian eyes bright in the dining room.
Constantine offered an amazing dining experience for the crew. You could eat at the mess hall daily, where a staff of twelve prepared meals around the clock. Once a week, each crew member could book a dining experience at a facility beside the mess hall. It was meant to hold meetings when visiting with dignitaries or potential allies. Tom appeared comfortable in the setting, and Treena suspected the man had grown up eating at a lot of fine establishments such as this. With the last name Baldwin, he sure wouldn’t have wanted for anything.
Ven was noticeably silent, and Treena hadn’t seen him using his mind to control anything during the course of the evening. “It has been a pleasant dinner, but I fear I need to return to my quarters.” Ven stood, and everyone bid him goodnight.
Tom pressed his empty plate away. “I’d better get some sleep as well. Tomorrow, we arrive at Greblok. Thank you for setting this up, Reeve.”
“Goodnight, Captain,” Treena said, and they all watched as the man walked away, stopping briefly at the kitchen to thank the chef.
Doctor Nee and Brax each moved a seat closer, and then there were four of them.
“Since you’re the military mind here, brother, what do you expect tomorrow?” Reeve asked him. She was slurring slightly, but no one else seemed to care.
Brax crossed his arms, sighing out a stale breath. “It’s hard to determine. I worry someone with a vendetta might have done something.”
“Who would have a vendetta?” Nee asked. His white hair fell from its perfect styling, and he swiped the longer hair away from his eyes.
“Could be a few races. There are many that petition the Concord each year for entrance. Then, out of the blue, the Concord invites a backwater world like Greblok? They would be upset,” Brax told them.
Treena hadn’t quite interpreted it along those lines. “I assumed someone found out how valuable the ore they were mining underwater was, and they came to take it before the Concord could.”
“That’s another likely possibility. We’ll learn more tomorrow,” Brax told them. “Reeve, I think it’s time we all go to bed.”
Treena sensed a tricky relationship between the twins. Reeve was the super-intelligent one who was more prone to cutting loose, probably because she’d been able to coast to her position. Brax was her opposite, who’d arrived to his role by sheer force of will.
“Fine.” Reeve didn’t put up a fight, and the four of them left the dining room, Treena’s glass untouched.
Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough. She longed to discover what they were facing on Greblok.
____________
“Zoom, please, Zare,” Tom said as they left hyperlight.
Greblok appeared on the screen. The skies were mostly cloudless on the visible section, and Tom noted how muted the land appeared. It was a true desert over on this continent.
“Their capital is halfway around the world, Captain, so we cannot check on it quite yet,” Zare told them.
Tom glanced to Brax’s position along the left edge of the bridge, and he nodded at the man, a silent keep-
an-eye-out motion that the Tekol man appeared to comprehend. A couple of crew members worked at their stations behind and to the right, and Tom found he didn’t know their names yet.
“Any starships in the vicinity?” he asked.
Ven replied from his common helm position. “None, sir.”
“Good. Bring us in on impulse, and keep an eye out.” Tom sat back in his seat and saw Treena gripping the arm of her chair. This had to be hard on her. He’d been in some sticky altercations, unsure if he or the crew were going to survive the day. He couldn’t imagine what it had been like to nearly die along with the other two hundred crew members.
He was sure the survivor guilt alone would have done him in after a traumatic event like that. Without thinking about the protocol, he reached over and squeezed her hand in a supportive gesture. She turned to him but didn’t say a word. He let go, feeling self-conscious, and cleared his throat. “Are any communications being reciprocated?” he asked.
“No, sir. Our messages are going unheeded,” Junior Officer Zare told him.
“Where are you?” he asked quietly as he stood, stretching his back from the hours in the captain’s chair. His seat was comfortable, but sitting that long always gave him aches.
Greblok arrived quickly as they moved for it. They passed a heavily-cratered moon, and the planet really came to life before their eyes. Tom had seen the images, but nothing did a world from space justice like seeing it with your own two eyes.
“Set course for orbit over Malin,” Tom ordered, and in a quiet half hour, they arrived.
“Send this message, please.” Tom spoke as clearly and concisely as he could. “Greetings from the Constantine. I’m Captain Thomas Baldwin, and we come on behalf of the Concord to welcome you into our ranks. This message is for the Regent. Please respond straight away. We’ve been unable to communicate with you for six days now.”
Baldwin's Legacy: The Complete Series Page 7
