The guards approached, each holding a crude gun up, aiming at the helpless people of Greblok. The weapons may not have been pretty, but Brax didn’t doubt they would kill just the same.
“Everyone follow their orders,” Penter said before Brax could. Brax was really starting to like the bushy-eyebrowed man. If there was any chance of escape, he was going to need Penter’s help.
They were brought twenty at a time onto the platform and lifted away, with two armed guards accompanying each group of prisoners. Brax and Penter were left, even though they stood at the front of the line.
Numerous sets of people walked past them, settling on the platform: children with eyes full of tears, men with frowns and clenched fists. The entire process took about thirty minutes, and soon there was only one group left, and two guards remained.
Brax took them in. They were shorter, less imposing than some of the Statu, and one of their guns lowered as the guard motioned to a few people to step onto the platform. Brax considered attacking the guard, taking the weapon, and attempting to blast his way out of here, but he stopped short. He had no clue where they were or what was on the other side of the ship.
No, attacking them now would only end poorly, so he bided his time.
“Come on, friend. After you,” Penter told him.
Brax stood on the platform, seeing that Abbil had waited for them. Her jaw was clenched tight, the muscles below her cheeks pronounced as the platform raised. Only the dead bodies remained in the dank room where they’d been held captive, and Brax said a silent prayer to the Vastness as they passed through the open ceiling.
____________
The call had come at the beginning of Yur’s shift. The cargo hold had been off limits to everyone since their ship had been attacked by the Tuber outside of Greblok. Yur wasn’t supposed to hear what was on the ship, but he’d been nosy enough to learn it was stacked with cryo chambers from some mysterious alien race.
The entire bay was cordoned off from all maintenance and custodial crews, but there was an issue with the air ducts, and it was sweltering inside. When Olu hadn’t been able to fix it himself, he notified Yur he needed assistance.
“You’re good with this kind of thing, right, Shen?” Olu’s voice was heavy, garbled, like he had too many teeth.
“Sure. I can fix anything,” Yur said, meaning it.
The night before, his benefactor had sent a message saying he was to record everything in the bay. At the time, he hadn’t understood, and she’d refused to reply to his follow-up queries. When he’d heard about the job, it was clear.
He had the tiny clip-on recorder stuck to his chest beside his flashlight. Side by side, they looked like one unit, which meant they were fully inconspicuous.
“Good, because I can’t figure out for the life of me why in the Vastness this duct is blocked,” Olu said, stopping at the pair of guards outside the hangar.
“IDs,” the man said, eyeing Yur up suspiciously. They were both scanned in.
“Orders from Chief Engineer Reeve Daak, sir,” Olu said, his tone lighter and more amiable.
“Good, because it’s sweltering in there. Not a great place for the alien popsicles, if you ask me,” the guard said with a grin.
He let them through the wide double doors, and Yur instantly began to sweat. To say it was hot was an understatement. Yur made sure he was recording and limped along the cryo chambers, moving slowly and methodically in order to capture as much detail as possible. He saw the beings inside, and cringed at the dark eyes staring back, the insect-like mandibles appearing dangerous.
“Get away from those, Shen. The duct is over here.” Olu stepped onto a hover-lift, and Yur followed him on. From here, he got a good look at Constantine’s guests and hoped this was what his boss was after.
He’d been waiting for her to instruct him to detonate the tubes, but so far, she hadn’t seemed interested. He knew it would be soon. It had to be.
Yur turned his attention to the task at hand, not wanting to give Olu any reason to grow distrustful.
____________
“Sir, I don’t think he’s ready for this,” Nee said, pacing the main medical bay floor. The man had walked by so many times, Tom was starting to grow dizzy.
“Can you stop that, please?” Tom ordered.
The doctor halted instantly. “I mean it. He’s been through some serious trauma, and I’m worried he might be confused. I suggest we allow him to sleep, unaided by drugs this time, and when he comes to, we can question him.”
Tom appreciated Nee’s concern for his patient, but now wasn’t the time for tiptoeing around the issue. “Nee, we’re past the Border, waiting at the edge of a wormhole, and our passenger is claiming to be a Statu. I’d say we have every right to badger the man until we learn the truth. Don’t you agree, Commander?” Tom glanced at Treena Starling, who’d been eerily quiet this entire time.
“This doesn’t add up, Captain,” Treena said. She was at the edge of the room, staring at the distant wormhole through a viewer on the wall.
“No kidding. Which part are you referring to in particular?” Tom asked her.
“Constantine said the Statu were human,” she said. “The being on the other side of the patient room door is far from human, wouldn’t you say?”
“I have to agree with you there,” Nee said, a grim, sardonic smile on his face.
“Well, aren’t we lucky to have you as our ship’s doctor.” Tom couldn’t help but ooze with sarcasm.
“Could Constantine be wrong?” Treena asked.
Tom glanced around, suddenly expecting the AI to appear, but he didn’t. Was he always listening? It was a little off-putting. “He could be, but that would mean my grandfather had actually seen a human behind a suit. That could mean two things,” he said.
Treena nodded. “The Statu were using our own people to attack us.”
It clicked, and Tom couldn’t believe no one had ever seen it before. He stood up, knocking over his cup of coffee. The cup clattered to the ground, not breaking, but spilling everywhere. A CleanBot rolled from the wall, sucking the liquid up, and gathered the cup, dragging it away into a cubby before vanishing itself.
“No wonder they were so willing to throw everything at us with reckless abandon. They weren’t using their own kind. They were using humans!” Tom’s hand flew through his hair at the idea. If the Concord knew this, why had they kept it a secret all these years? “Constantine!”
The AI appeared, blinking to life before their eyes. “Yes, sir. How may I assist you?”
Tom crossed the room to stand directly in front of the AI. It was eerie how much he looked like his grandfather, but a much younger version than Tom remembered. This Constantine had none of the crows’ feet, the frown lines, or the gray beard he’d worn as he passed sixty years old, but Tom did feel a connection to the AI nonetheless.
“Constantine, you told us the captured Statu was identified as a human inside the suit. Why was this never revealed to the public, or at least to the Concord mainstream database?” Tom asked.
The AI didn’t change expressions; he only stared hard at Tom for a moment before replying. This AI was unlike any Tom had ever seen. It was so lifelike, the expressions so much less robotic than the AIs of any other ships he’d ever been stationed on.
“Captain, can you imagine if it became public knowledge? The Concord would tear itself apart. It was a human, not a Callalay, not a Tekol, not a Zilph’i. Humans might have been shunned from the Founders, and imagine the cause and effect that would have on the entire structure of our society if that occurred,” Constantine said.
It made sense, but Tom felt like there was something he was missing about the whole situation.
Treena was methodically pacing, her hands clasped together. “What if…” She stopped speaking.
“What if what?” Tom prodded.
“What if the Statu planted that person?”
Tom’s heart hammered in his chest at the implication. “Damn it. You
could be right! The Statu never made that mistake, not ever. And the one time you” – he pointed at the AI – “you went against protocol and boarded the ship, you happened to find a Statu unpunctured and turned to liquified goo.”
Constantine’s eyes grew in size as his programming appeared to process the news. “It is possible. What was their goal by doing this?”
Treena was still walking back and forth across the white medical bay floor. “They wanted to mess with us. You just said it, Constantine. They wanted news to spread about the humans working with or for the Statu. The War would have been theirs. It would have finally turned the tides in their favor.”
“Why wait so long to pull it off?” Nee asked. “We fought them for years.”
Tom scratched his chin with his index finger. “Because they were desperate. They came in thinking they could walk all over the Concord, and when things grew dire, they made a last-ditch effort at tricking us. Only it didn’t work.” He turned to the AI again, who was holding silent. “Constantine, who knew about this?”
“Only Commander Sennie Baar and Executive Lieutenant Adam Hudson…” His words trailed off.
Tom slapped the desk, his palm echoing loudly across the medical bay. “There it is. Hudson was there. He knows something about the Statu we don’t. Either he thinks they planted the human…”
“Or he was in on it,” Treena said softly, her eyes never making contact with Tom’s.
“That’s…” Nee began.
“Blasphemy. You may be tried a traitor for even suggesting it, Commander,” Constantine told them.
A month ago, Tom would never have believed the admiral capable of something so insidious, but the way he’d disregarded Tom and their entire mission the other day just wouldn’t sit right. Add in the Prime’s involvement, and the noticeably absent Callalay executive officer, and Tom was beginning to see the odds stacking against him and his crew.
“If you found the human inside alive, what did they say to you?” Treena asked Constantine. In all the excitement, he was angry he hadn’t even thought of asking that question.
“It wouldn’t speak to us,” the AI said.
“Why not?” Nee asked.
Constantine shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you. They took him away to be tested, but I’ve seen that catatonic look before. He was brain dead. I even snapped my fingers directly in front of his eyes but garnered no reaction. I suspected something in the suit perhaps controlled him, or maybe a neural implant. I couldn’t be sure, and I was never told anything more.”
Tom watched his grandfather’s youthful image and thought about what the computer program was saying. There was a lot more inside the AI than just the older Captain Baldwin’s strategical inputs. How much of the man was really in there? Did he remember seeing Tom for the first time? Did he recall the feeling he’d had when he learned his daughter had been killed?
“Nee, I want to speak with our passenger,” Tom said, not willing to wait any longer. He needed answers, because the longer he waited here, the further the Statu warship traveled away from his ship.
The doctor appeared ready to argue, but instead hung his head, his white hair unmoving. “Fine. Constantine can translate, can’t you?”
“That is correct. I have the program embedded in me,” Constantine told them.
Tom waited for the doctor to move for the patient’s room, and saw the commander eyeing the door with unease. “What is it, Starling?” he asked her.
“Nothing. I… it’s disturbing that the Concord has so many secrets. We thought the War was over, and we’ve had a short fifty years of freedom and relative peace. We all know how terrible those times were. Can we really endure this again?” she asked.
Tom thought about the Code, and one of his grandfather’s favorite quotes from it sprang to mind. Freedom is not to be taken for granted. Sometimes one must fight to have peace.
He wasn’t sure if it helped the woman, but she nodded and walked toward the far end of the bay, where the doctor was entering the patient’s room.
Tom was the last of their select group to arrive, and he tapped the door shut behind them. He didn’t want any prying ears on this conversation.
“He’s sleeping, but I can revive him when you’re ready,” Doctor Nee said.
“Do it,” Tom told the doctor, and as the Kwant moved toward the body, Tom heard the call from the bridge.
“Captain.” It was Ven’s distinct voice.
Tom clenched his jaw at the disturbance. “Go ahead.”
“The wormhole. It appears to be moving, sir.”
“Moving?” Tom glanced at Treena, who shrugged.
“Lieutenant Daak agrees with me that it might be beginning to destabilize,” Ven said.
“Destabilize? I wasn’t sure we agreed it was stable in the first place,” Tom told him. “What are you suggesting we do about this?”
There was a brief but noticeable pause to the Ugna’s next statement. “I think we should enter it, sir.”
“Enter it!” Nee shouted. “Is he insane? This is a wormhole, Captain, not something to be trifled with. We have no records on hand showing them to be functional, let alone…”
Treena held a finger up and tapped her chin in a very human gesture. “Captain, I thought of something.”
Tom waited for her to expand on this, and when she didn’t, he waved his hand in a get-on-with-it motion.
“The Statu. They came from nowhere all those years ago, and we never did find their homeworld. What if they used wormholes to arrive?” Treena asked.
Tom had heard a lot of conjecture on the subject over the years, but there had never been any proof of this as a possibility. But the Concord also hadn’t followed a Statu warship into a wormhole before either. If he didn’t take the risk, he was going to miss out on learning where the Statu went, and any hope of rescuing Brax Daak went out the window.
“May I suggest something a little unorthodox, Captain?” Treena asked.
“I’m open to any valid ideas at this point,” Tom said.
“We send Cleo through. I’ll lead the expedition. You stay here and learn what you can about this…” She stopped short, pointing at the unconscious alien in the medical bed.
Tom rubbed his temples, trying to process the potential outcomes. One thing he’d been trained in was critical thinking. During the Academy, and later in executive officer training, they were constantly given problems with dire scenarios, and they had to articulate their solution with course-of-action plans as well as alternatives and recommendations. He considered their current scenario and knew there were a few options.
Return to Nolix as instructed, which would mean he’d lose Brax, but not his ship. They’d also lose the chance at learning where the destructive vessel’s destination was. If they did as Starling suggested, they’d be far apart, and he was not only ignoring Concord orders from the top, he was risking more lives and property.
Or he could fly Constantine through, which would give them the best chance of rescuing Brax and defending against the Statu warship. They might even rescue the Bacals and return with the mined ore. If they accomplished that, Admiral Hudson might forgive his disobedience.
“Captain?” Starling asked, breaking him from his concentration.
“I…” Tom couldn’t risk the crew’s lives. “You head the team. Take Reeve with you,” he said, realizing this might be a terrible mistake. “Constantine?” he asked, the AI stepping forward and waiting for direction.
“Yes, Captain,” the AI said softly.
“You’ll send a version of yourself with Commander Starling on Cleo. Bring a Link. Can you communicate with your selves?” he asked.
“I can, but it has never been tested through a wormhole,” Constantine said.
“But from far distances?” Tom asked.
“Up to one hundred light years. Though the data isn’t instantaneous, and the information comes with no video or voice feeds. Only data streams. Information notes,” Constantine advised.
> “It’ll have to be good enough,” Tom said. “Doctor Nee, keep our guest sedated. I’ll return later.”
“Very well, Captain. Good luck,” Doctor Nee said.
Tom led the exit, Treena close behind him, and Constantine vanished from the medical bay. “You sure about this, Starling?”
She didn’t appear nervous, but that might have been the artificial body’s work. “If we can scout and learn where they are, it could prove invaluable,” she said, making sense.
They arrived on the bridge a short time later, and Reeve Daak stood as they entered. “Captain, we can’t let this slip by. We need to go after my brother.”
“I agree. That’s why I’m sending you with the commander in Cleo.” Tom crossed the bridge to stare at the wormhole through the viewer. To his eyes, at this distance, he saw no visible changes to its appearance.
Reeve’s eyes lit up. “When do we leave?”
Tom placed his hands on his hips. “Now.”
Fourteen
Vor passed Tarlen a napkin and reached for more wriggling food.
“They’re sending the commander and the chief engineer through the wormhole,” an officer with a white collar said.
Tarlen stood, knocking his chair over. He ran to the mess hall entrance, stopping in front of the young man. “What! When are they going?”
“They might be gone already,” the man replied, moving past Tarlen.
Without another word, Tarlen raced away, pumping his legs down the hall. He was unused to the encumbrance of boots, and he felt like they were slowing him, but he kept moving. He’d explored every inch of the ship and understood where the bridge was, even if he hadn’t been on it yet – except when they’d landed, and that had been such a blur, he couldn’t recall any details.
He made it there quickly and was stopped at the doors. “What do you want, kid?” a burly, unfamiliar alien asked. He was dark green, scales covering his face, his eyes blinking sideways as he waited for a reply. Tarlen’s gaze shifted to the gun at the guard’s hip.
Baldwin's Legacy: The Complete Series Page 14
