“Seriously? I thought we’d worked past the formal title. Did you forget everything in two months? It’s Brax, and we’re friends, right?” Brax patted him on the shoulder, and Ven nodded, happy to have run into the ship’s chief of security.
“I am sorry. I’ve been distracted,” Ven told him.
“What’s new? Reeve and I are about to have our weekly, if you’d care to join.” Brax pointed to the elevator.
“Why did you not request my presence?” Ven asked.
“We were giving you some time to acclimate to the new scenario,” Brax told him. “Come on. We’re already behind, and you know how my sister gets.”
They made the trip quickly and ended up in their private meeting room, where Reeve sat working over a tablet. She kept her gaze on her screen when they entered, but she greeted Brax warmly. “Come on in, Brax, and we can start.”
“Hello, Reeve,” Ven said, and she glanced up, smiling at him.
“He managed to pull you from your quarters? Good.” Reeve slid the tablet away, and the door opened behind Ven. He turned to see Commander Pol Teller standing there, his spine crooked and his eyes wide.
“Commander, what are you doing here?” Brax asked, and the old man smacked his lips together.
“If my crew are meeting in private, I thought it best to be included. I know how this usually shakes out,” Teller said, walking proudly into the space. The meeting hall was basically an office, turned into somewhere the three of them could meet in comfort. There were only three chairs around a circular table, and Teller took one of them, leaving Brax and Ven standing.
The commander’s aide followed along behind him, and Ven sensed fear from her. She was young, and her hand shook as she passed the elderly commander his water.
“Well… what are you waiting for? Start your meeting,” Teller barked.
Brax crossed his big arms over his broad chest and leaned against the white wall. “The commander doesn’t sit in on our meetings, sir.”
“He does now,” Teller told him. “I’ve been out of the game for some time, and I want to catch up. And I’ve never been around one of…” He pointed at Ven, his long finger gnarled and bent. “Them before.”
Reeve frowned at him, raising her voice. “This is Executive Lieutenant Ven Ittix, the only Ugna ever to be part of a Concord crew, and you should treat him with the respect he deserves.”
Ven appreciated the support. Missy, the old man’ s assistant, let out a tiny yelp, and Ven looked at her as she receded from Teller, as if expecting his head to explode. Instead, the man laughed. Softly at first, then louder with each passing heartbeat.
“You have some gumption, Daak. God, I missed this banter. This camaraderie,” Teller said, relaxing in his seat. “Do you know how good it feels to be in open space, doing something important?”
Ven felt his emotions escalating, pouring from his frail frame. The man was telling the truth. He was elated to no longer be relegated to his bed, going for short walks at home, being bored out of his mind. Ven had read up on the commander, and he hadn’t been expecting this kind of reaction from Teller.
“What normally goes on in these meetings? Do you sit around and gripe about the commander and captain, or do you do some real work?” Teller asked, still seeming to be joking around.
“We discuss our teams and always seek procedural improvements,” Brax said, and Teller grunted.
“You mean to say, you three think you can improve the processes that have been implemented for decades aboard these ships? I helped write the staffing guidebooks thirty years ago. Are you telling me they aren’t good enough for you?” Teller asked, the mirth vacant from his gravelly voice.
“That’s not…”
Teller broke into a grin and slapped his knee. “Well, you’re probably right, because I had no idea what I was doing when I was first chief of crew. I hated that job.” He glanced at Ven and gave an apologetic expression with his eyes. “It’s like herding schoolchildren, that role.”
Ven felt someone’s alarm press into his mind, and he sought the source. Then another, and more… He turned toward Brax. “Something’s wrong.”
“What do you mean?” Brax asked, his arms unraveling from their resting position over his chest.
“I do not…” The alarms sounded, red lights flashing, and Teller’s eyes grew wide.
“Missy, take me to the bridge,” he ordered, and his assistant started helping him to his feet.
Reeve was at the wall, pressing the console screen. A picture of Harry appeared. “What in the Vastness is going on?” Ven saw people running around Reeve’s boiler room.
“Daak, you better come quickly. The drive…” Harry swallowed, and Ven saw the worry etched on the man’s brow.
“Spill it, Harry!” Reeve instructed him.
“It’s the Nek drive modification. Something went haywire…”
Reeve paled, and Ven stepped behind her, listening intently. Brax was already off, leading the new commander toward the bridge. “What is it?” Reeve pressed.
“The drive… it flashed… sent us off-course.” Harry sounded nervous.
Ven finally asked the question over Reeve’s shoulder. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know,” Harry replied.
Eight
It had taken Kan Shu all of two hours to modify the Veerilion console to accept the device Tom had taken from the fighter. Yin Shu remained with them, her young AI projection acting as proud as a mother could be at her son’s work. Tom was impressed as well.
“Easy as that, hey, Kan?” Tom asked, and the young commander only shrugged without bragging.
“It was only a matter of tying the receptors together and rewelding the casing…”
Conner shushed him as his fingers sped over the backlit keyboard. “This is interesting.”
“What is it?” Rene asked, leaning over her executive lieutenant, trying to gain a better view of the screen.
“This has the ship’s log, and it looks like the first tracking was done at… Aruto,” Conner said.
“Aruto?” Kan asked, tapping his chin with a finger. “That’s where we’re headed. Why would the Callalay have created a series of fighters, then attacked one of our partners?”
“That’s a damned good question, Kan. And it just so happens that we’re traveling through only days after the assault. I believe in the Vastness, but not in coincidence,” Tom observed.
Yin Shu came to the defense of her people, as Tom expected. She was loyal to a fault: to her crew, to her Concord, but also to her race. “There’s no proof that the Callalay manufactured them, or that they were even made there. They might have been built elsewhere and activated for the first time near Aruto to give the impression that the Callalay were behind it.”
Rene nodded along. “That is a sound theory. It’s what someone like Lark Keen would do.”
“Lark Keen could have accomplished this,” Tom said quickly.
“It’s exactly what that bastard would do,” Conner said. “I spoke with him once, and it instantly struck me how deviant he was. He’s charming, charismatic, and while he’s smiling at you, someone’s sneaking up behind you with a PL-30.”
“But he’s been at Wavor Manor,” Kan said.
“And then you guys freed him,” Tom reminded them. “Do you assume he had no way of communicating with his people? He was broken out of his transport soon after, meaning he was indeed in touch with them. The Assembly might still be out there.” Tom had done a lot of digging and hadn’t found much proof of that, but they were good. He imagined some of Lark’s old team remained in hiding.
“This is bigger than Keen,” Yin Shu said.
“How?” Rene turned to face the AI. Omnik the Veerilion watched them with interest, staying quiet during their conversation. She stood near the far wall, as if trying to blend in with the desk.
“Vessels identical to our flagships and fighters? Tom, Rene, you’ve seen the numbers. The cost is extremely high to fund a project of
this magnitude, not to mention the manpower and supplies needed. The Assembly wouldn’t have stolen our retired fleet if they had those kinds of resources.”
“Then who?” Tom asked.
“That’s the key, isn’t it?” Conner asked, spinning around in his chair.
“On to Aruto as planned.” Rene tapped the console screen. “These fighters took off from nearby, but that doesn’t implicate Callalay involvement. Either way, Aruto holds some answers. Tom, why are we going there in the first place?”
Tom had a distinct feeling that Admiral Benitor had sent him on this mission because of these impostors. She’d somehow known what was coming, or had learned of other attacks, and Aruto held some importance to the puzzle. But why send Fayle with him? “Headquarters wants the Callalay to be more involved in the program. They’ve been pulling apart for years, in little ways, and she seems to think the Ugna and the Callalay have a special relationship; hence the reason Elder Fayle is along for the ride.”
“Interesting,” Rene said. “Can we leave?” She glanced at Omnik, who was near the exit.
Tom rose, plucking the device from Kan’s adapted console, and moved to the local woman. “We will track down who did this. I’m also going to request that aid be sent from Nolix to assist your rebuilding. It won’t make up for the damages and lost lives, but it’s a start.”
“Thank you, Admiral Baldwin,” Omnik said, stepping aside as Tom departed the room. A few minutes later, their two shuttles lifted from the landing pad, heading toward Shu. Tom was more anxious than ever to arrive at Aruto and find out what was really going on.
____________
“How do we not know our coordinates?” Reeve asked Harry, rushing into the boiler room. Harry turned to watch her enter, and he puffed out his cheeks as they filled with air.
“We’re working on it, but the Concord holds no record of this region,” he advised her.
Reeve’s heart pounded. A new galaxy, somewhere far from their known universe, perhaps. She’d been on board with using the Nek-fueled advancements the entire time, but now she regretted their decision to rush the modifications to the star drive. None of them had seen this coming. Each of their test runs had been successful, and never, not once in their analysis, had the Nek drive sent them to another location.
“Check the stars for familiar constellations?” Reeve asked, but Harry would have done that already.
“Nothing on record. We’re lost,” Harry said, plopping to the seat at the desk.
“Will someone turn that alarm off?” she asked, her head pounding in unison with the bleeping effect. A second later, the lights kept flashing, but the noise was off.
Reeve stared at the images from the front of their vessel, noting they were in the center of a solar system, directly between the star and the last of twelve planets. “We have to fix the drive and find out our location.”
“We’ve shut it down for the time being, containing the Bentom ball and Nek elements,” Harry told her.
“Good. Constantine,” Reeve said, seeing the AI appear to her right.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said calmly.
“I need you to do me a favor. I have a load of old Concord partner details: ships’ logs, trade routes, and exploration ventures,” she said.
“I’ve already scanned the system network,” Con informed her.
She shook her head. “These aren’t in the Concord network. I’ve kept disk drives and hard copies of other cultures’ space travel since I was a recent graduate. There’s a whole storage bin full of the stuff.” She waved him forward, making him follow her. “Kenneth!” she called to one of the system analysts.
He was a middle-aged man with a pot belly and a long beard. He cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable at the attention. “Yes, Chief?”
“I have a job for you.” Reeve talked as she strode from the engineering room, entered the hall, and unlocked a door three rooms over. “You and Constantine are going to sift through this stuff, see if there’s anything resembling details of this system. Any information that lines up with the constellations we’re recording from the cameras.” The door opened to reveal dozens of metallic crates, each labeled with a different Concord world’s name. There was one for every partner.
“This is…” Kenneth blanched.
“Amazing,” Constantine’s AI said. “Good work, Executive Lieutenant.”
The boxes were stacked and piled high, and Kenneth cleared a spot on a desk, powering up the sole console in the office. Reeve smiled at them. “Advise us when you find something.” She closed the door and returned to Harry’s side.
“Do you think they’ll have any luck?” Harry asked her.
“I wouldn’t have collected all that data if I didn’t think it might come in handy one day. Today’s that day,” she said.
Reeve returned to the scans of the drive, trying to determine what had gone wrong and how she could ensure it didn’t occur again.
____________
“While we’re here, perhaps a little investigation is in order,” Teller said.
He was more active than ever before, almost as if the detour had sparked some excitement in his life. He seemed younger, his eyes brighter, his snoring less frequent.
“What do you propose?” Treena asked the commander. His assistant wasn’t on the bridge for the first time today, and she was glad the girl was getting a much-needed break from the old codger.
“There’s a planet in this very system that’s really close to a Class Zero-Nine world. Its parameters were only off by a few degrees on two of our checklists, but the air is fully breathable, the temperature near the equator balmy and hospitable,” the commander informed her.
“And when did you find this out?” Treena hadn’t been given the results of the probes yet.
“I looked it up.” Teller pointed to the console embedded into the arm of his chair, folding it over his lap. “What do you say?”
Treena glanced to see Brax smiling at the edge of the bridge. She could see where his mind was. He wanted the adventure. “Lieutenant Commander Daak, what are your thoughts?”
“I agree with the commander on this one,” he said, and Treena saw a connection between the two crewmates. Was old man Teller actually clicking with the others? She found it difficult to believe, and it was something she’d never have anticipated in a thousand years. “Reeve says it’ll be a couple of days, maybe longer, before we have our location, let alone know if we can return. We may as well learn a little about this place while we’re waiting.”
Treena contemplated the situation and wondered what Tom would do. She dismissed the idea. She was the captain of Constantine, not Tom. He’d taken the promotion, and so had she. “Okay. Ven, set course for… what should we call it?”
“Planet X?” Brax asked with a laugh.
“Set course for Planet X,” Treena said.
Ven’s console lit up without the touch of any buttons, and the ship began moving toward the target, using the smaller thrusters. The star drive was out of commission for the time being. Treena hoped there was nothing on Planet X that would need running from.
“Course set. Arrival in three hours,” Ven told the crew.
“Commander, how many missions were you part of during your tenure?” Treena asked Teller, and he turned to face her, his eyes glossy and full of memories.
“Too many to count. Over two hundred, if I were to guess,” he said.
“Which type did you prefer?”
“My favorites were the explorations. I joined at the tail end of the War, when peace was on everyone’s minds. Exploration grew, but funding wasn’t available at first, not until the taxes increased among the partners.” His gaze drifted past her, landing on the viewscreen. “But you know how it is. The Concord says it wants to seek new worlds, meet other beings, and bring expansion into the fold, but with each system we enter for the first time comes a lot of risks. They had all but cut those ventures by the time I was thirty. My favorite was a mission to explor
e a world we named Bessel Fourteen.”
“Why did you name it that?” Treena asked, enjoying this strange new version of the commander.
“No clue. Think my captain’s wife was named Bess or something.” He frowned, as if trying to recall the details was causing him grief. “There it was, a world with very little greenery. The air was toxic to us, and I was one of the lucky ones sent to the surface in an EVA. You remember what those were like, right?” he asked, and Treena nodded.
They’d been forced to wear each of the last five iterations of EVAs at the Academy to understand the modifications each generation had to endure for the next. Treena distinctly recalled how heavy and bulky the energy packs were on that old model. They were designed to last ten times as long as the lighter versions, in case of emergencies, but the Concord had only kept them in production for two years before opting for the smaller style.
“They were terrible.” Treena laughed, but Teller didn’t.
“That’s right. At the time, I thought I was being rewarded for my hard work,” he said with a grimace.
“In reality, you were the low man on the pole, and no one else wanted to go,” Treena said.
“You got it. I was sent with a damned rolling robot, to take samples, and the engineering assistant, who was young and foolish enough to join me.”
“What happened?” Treena asked.
“The planet was teeming with life. We couldn’t see it at first. I spent hours trudging along the rocky surface, with the slow-rolling bot checking samples of the dirt, the rock, the tiny fragments of moss somehow growing in dark crevasses. Galz noticed them at first. She was the engineering woman, a nice Callalay.” Teller’s mouth twisted momentarily. “You should have seen her face when she spotted the first one. I’d never seen such a thrill from anyone in my life.”
“What was it? Did you find life forms?” The story genuinely had Treena interested and curious.
“They were made of gas. The captain had wanted to bottle one up and bring it home, but the science team advised against doing something so dangerous. They resembled clouds, hovering blobs of mist. I’ve seen a lot, but that was one of a kind.”
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