by Nick Webb
Contents
Title Page
Frontmatter
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
INTO THE VOID
Episode 3
of
THE PAX HUMANA SAGA
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Other books in the Pax Humana Saga:
The Terran Gambit
Chains of Destiny
For Jenny, L., and C.
CHAPTER ONE
THREE DAYS.
IT HAD BEEN three days since the NPQR Caligula had disappeared in orbit around the planet Destiny. And for three days Jake Mercer sat veritably tied to the captain’s chair, held prisoner by constant vigilance. He scanned his sensor display every few minutes, searching for the tell-tale gravitic spike that would indicate the inevitable return of Admiral Trajan, this time backed by half the Imperial fleet.
Or perhaps all of it. And he wouldn’t be taking prisoners this time.
Three days of Alessandro Bernoulli tinkering with the engines, trying to get the neodymium infused into the crystal matrix. The man’s first attempt had failed, resulting in a wasted, precious day, and so they spent another day on the edges of their seats wondering if and when Admiral Trajan would return and finish themselves off.
Three days of searching the Phoenix’s computers for any hint that might help them find Admiral Pritchard in the Titanis sector. The mysterious message from an anonymous source was short, saying only that the Imperials had caught him in that sector, and Jake knew next to nothing about it, beyond what the standard star maps said—that it was one of the core sectors of the November Clan, and that it had a handful of populated worlds.
But the computer record stopped there. No mention of Imperial bases, or Imperial Intel outposts, standard Imperial Fleet patrols. Nothing. All the files regarding any Imperial activity in the area were sealed, and Jake didn’t have the proper security clearance to open them. That clearance died with Captain Watson, and Jake doubted even he had the ability to open those files. In fact, now that he thought about it, half the files on the central computer were probably off limits to him, the captain of the ship. How ironic.
“Po, did you finish the investigation? Any word yet on the source of all those unexplained explosions?” He turned to face his XO, a middle-aged dark-haired woman who, to Jake’s eyes, was looking more haggard by the day. Thick rings sagged under her eyes and the frown lines near her mouth radiated out like a nervous web. Was the stress getting to her?
She brushed a stray lock aside. “Not yet, Captain. Most crews are busy with repairs—I had a hell of a time finding someone with both the expertise and the time to conduct the investigation.”
“Who’d you settle on?” Jake turned away from her to study his console again, scanning for Trajan’s imminent return.
“Lieutenant Valkyrie. From engineering. She seems competent. Tireless, really. In fact, I’m expecting her to come up here this morning with some preliminary details. From what she said it looked like the blast while we were under the iceberg was probably not hull-stress related.”
Jake raised an eyebrow, but didn’t take his eyes off his board. In his head, he knew that half the tactical octagon was monitoring the sensors with far more vigilance, but after the experience on Destiny nothing could be chanced. Nothing could be taken at face value.
The risks were too high.
Suarez’s contorted face back in that storage room on Destiny punctuated the sentiment in his mind’s eye. The man had ripped out that optical line running into his head, and instantly the miniature explosive attached to the end of it inside his skull had detonated. The man’s eyes had crossed, ghoulishly, one a little more than the other, and blood dribbled from his nose and ears.
Jake would never forget the sight. Never. In his two weeks of command, he’d already made decisions resulting in dozens of deaths. But this was the worst. This one was up close and personal. Because of Jake’s own recklessness, that man had died—and gruesomely. He should have stayed on the ship. He should have just sent some ensign down to conduct the negotiations for the neodymium, and monitored the whole affair from orbit.
Good people would be alive if he had.
Dammit, he had to stop second-guessing himself. This was command. His decisions had to stand, and he couldn’t doubt his judgement. Not now. Not with so much at stake. This was war.
“Not hull-stress related? I find that odd, considering that at the time we had an entire ocean pressing down on us. What else could it be?”
Po shook her head. “That’s what the investigation is for, Jake.”
The tone in her voice suggested annoyance—she sounded a tad more on edge than usual, and Jake considered telling her to take a break.
She would refuse, of course. When there was work to be done, Po was there, personal feelings or issues be damned. The stress would kill her some day, Jake surmised.
“Very well. Bernoulli said we’ve got another day here anyway. We’ll sure need it to make repairs. Looks like Trajan hit us pretty hard—“
He knew by the shadow passing over his face that it was the wrong thing to say. She’s done her best—he knew she had—in fact, it was a miracle the ship was even still there. If it weren’t for her, he’d still be down there in that god-forsaken uranium mine, toiling under the mind-numbing pain of the Domitian Collar—thank god Doc Nichols had managed to remove them safely.
“Well maybe next time you’ll be around to do a better job, Captain,” she said curtly, before turning to the tactical octagon and questioning one of the staff about some sensor recalibration.
“Look, Po, someone had to go down there to get the damn neodymium. What, was I just supposed to let some ensign handle the negotiations?”
She turned back to him. “Yes. You’re the Captain. Your place is here on the bridge.”
Great. She was challenging him in front of the whole bridge crew. “I made the right choice. Who knows what kind of a situation we’d be in if I’d stayed here? We can’t be second guessing ourselves, Po, too much depends on it. I made the right choice, and now we’re moving on.”
He spoke with finality, suggesting that the discussion was over. Who was she to be questioning his decisions like that in front of the crew?
“Very well, Captain,” she said, with a hint of ice. She turned back to Ensign Ayala at tactical and continued their conversation.
Ayala—another bridge crew member acting strangely lately. She seemed to swing between an odd, nervous tension and a strange, euphoric happiness, sometimes on the same day. Were all Belenites this way? Or was the stress getting to her, too?
He swore that the next planet-side stop they made needed to have a bar. Everyone needed to loosen up.
“Captain Mercer, we need to talk,” said a voice at the back of the bridge.
Now what? Jake glanced up from his console at the newcomer to the bridge, still a little ashen and scarred from his horrifying experience on Destiny—at least, Jake assumed it was horrifying, judging from the deep, jagged patterns of vicious cuts made all across his chest, back, and legs. Several lines of stitches over his cheeks and neck looked promising—like they might one day heal over with some coaxing by Doc Nichols, but the rest of his wounds seemed dreadfully permanent.
But Ben never told him exactly what happened. Not yet, anyway. ‘Just an incident with some crazy bastard’, h
e’d said, and didn’t elaborate further. And the poor crew member from the Fury that Ben had rescued and brought back to the Phoenix was no help either. Rhys had stayed huddled up in a corner of his new quarters for three days now, refusing all medical help, and only poking his nose out when someone brought by a plate of food.
“What is it, Ben?” Jake hoped that at least his best friend would spare him a lecture in front of the bridge crew, whatever was on his mind.
“Jake, what the hell are we still doing here? We should have left days ago.”
Dammit. Here comes the lecture.
“Commander, I thought it was clear that we need to refit our engines before we go anywhere.”
“Why aren’t we at least using our thrusters to get us to Destiny’s moon, or one of the outer planets? Surely there’s a better place to hide until we get the engines up and going—“
Jake stood up to face his friend. The tone he’d taken was far more suspicious, more dangerous than Po’s. Jake had chalked up Po’s response to fatigue and stress. But Ben had been convalescing in sickbay for three days. He’d had time to think.
And that made Jake nervous. How much thinking had he been doing? What had he been thinking about? Perhaps wondering what the hell Captain Watson was thinking when he appointed Jake captain? He shook his head. Surely Ben couldn’t know. There was no way.
Unless Doc Nichols had told him during his three day stay in sickbay. The Doc had glared icy daggers at Jake when he told him about Suarez. One more down, the look told him. One more innocent crew member lost to a stupid decision by an impostor. A pretender playing at being captain.
No. This was Nichols’s idea. The doctor would never tell. And he wouldn’t implicate himself in that kind of treason.
“Because, Ben, this is still the safest place for us, considering all our options. Besides, I’ve been talking with Volaski over the past few days, and I’m not so sure he’s as evil a butcher as we thought he—“
Ben took a step towards him, now standing right in the middle of the bridge. “So, you’re making deals with slavers, now?”
All eyes on the bridge were on Ben Jemez and Jake Mercer, facing each other just steps apart, fire in Ben’s eyes and what Jake hoped was steely calm determination in his own. He had to defuse the situation, and fast.
“Come on—I need to pay a visit to engineering.”
He held out a hand to lead his friend away, and, grudgingly, Ben rolled his eyes and walked out the door so fast that the doors barely had time to slide away at his approach.
“Po, you’ve got the bridge,” said Jake, with a glance in her direction. She raised her eyebrows and nodded in Ben’s direction, as if to say, ‘you need some backup?’, but Jake shook his head ‘no’, and followed his friend out the door.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” said Jake, as he caught up with Jemez halfway down the stairs leading to the deck below.
“What’s wrong with me?” Ben shot him a fierce look. “Look at us, Jake. We’re hobbling around on one leg, half our crew is dead, and we’re fraternizing with people like Volaski! We should never have gone down to that shithole of a planet. You should have listened to—“
Jake interrupted, “Yeah, but I didn’t. I made the call, and given the same information I would have done it again. It was the right move, Ben. We needed that neodymium, and it all worked out in the end.”
Ben stopped abruptly halfway down the stairs, nodding at a pair of yeomen in damage control jumpsuits sprinting past to tackle the next emergency. He waited until they were out of hearing range. “You know that’s bullshit. It didn’t all work out in the end. Look at me, you bastard. And go look at the six crew members that died during Trajan’s most recent assault. And go tell that to Suarez’s widow back in Arizona. They just got married two months ago, you know.”
Ben halted, seemingly unsure if he’d gone too far. He hadn’t—Jake felt exactly the same—but he wasn’t about to let his friend think it. The captain needed to be above it all. He needed to be an island. He needed to be able to make his decisions, and everyone else needed to respect him and follow him, or he wasn’t a leader.
Jake turned on his friend, trying to keep just the right balance of anger and cool authority in his voice. “You’re not god, Ben, whether Jesus or Jupiter or Allah. You have no idea how things would have played out had I stayed up here—if we hadn’t gone down there. Po did her job. The ship is still here and everyone is still alive because of her. If I had been here, would I have made the same choices as her?” He softened his voice a hair, “Who knows? Maybe we’d all be dead if I hadn’t made the decisions I made.”
He bridged the remaining space between them with one last step and put his arm on Ben’s shoulder. He could feel the man tense under his touch, but when he looked into his friend’s face, the tension relaxed. “Ben, you’re my best friend. I need you right here by my side, otherwise, I’ve got nothing. I know I’m not perfect, but I’m doing the best damn job that I can. Are you with me?” He squeezed the man’s shoulder.
Ben’s scowl softened, replaced by a reluctant, forced smile. Jake was used to the scenario, which had replayed itself many times over the last three years. They were each other’s opposite. Jake, the reckless bar-hopping womanizer who lived with his balls hanging out, and Ben, the straight-laced, rule-toting, hair-combing wingman. Jake dragged the man to all those bars, desperate for a friend after Crash Jackson had been reassigned, but he suspected that for all of Ben’s show of resistance, the other man secretly loved being there, even if it meant that he had to get Jake out of sticky situations.
Jake gave Ben the excuse to do things he’d never otherwise do himself—hop around to every nightclub in Destin, drop five other guys in a bar fight, be a hero for his friend. And on the other hand, Ben gave Jake the perfect safety-net to actually get into the bar fights—the other man was kinda like superman, what with all the martial arts training he’d had over the years—Jake was sure he’d never lost a fight.
And yet here he was, lying to his best friend. Living a lie.
“Fine.” Ben forced his thin-lipped smile. “Fine.”
Jake squeezed one last time, which elicited a wince from Ben, and Jake quickly pulled his hand away. “Oh, sorry. Forgot about those cuts.” He eyed his friend, who looked away, his face inscrutable. “What happened down there, Ben?”
Ben hadn’t told him yet. After he’d returned to the ship, bloody and bruised and filthy, he went straight to sickbay, refusing all assistance, and never said anything more than, ‘I got in a fight.’
“I told you already,” Ben said, starting to turn away.
“Ben, come on. What happened?”
“Got in a fight. The lunatic brought a knife and I brought my fists. It went about how you’d expect.”
Jake forced a chuckle. “What, with the other guy dead?”
Ben avoided Jake’s eye. “Something like that.”
He turned back down the stairs and continued on towards engineering, and Jake followed, his eyes wandering from fallen beam to flickering light, each corridor bearing the signs of the two recent, nearly devastating battles. “So what’s the plan anyway? You know, once Bernoulli gets the engines up and going. Find a nice place to settle down for awhile? Lay low?”
Jake shook his head. “No. Well actually, after a fashion, yes.” He proceeded to tell Ben all about Tovra—about the Oberon sector, how it was inaccessible to large capital ships. How there was a secret way to navigate there using the gravitic beacon.
“But why?” said Ben. “Why the Oberon sector?”
“Because, just like you said, we can lie low there. The Empire can’t get at us. At least, not for awhile.”
“But we have no idea what’s waiting for us there.”
Jake nodded slowly. “True. But we have no idea what’s waiting for us in any sector, really. Trajan could spring a trap on us just about anywhere, just like he did here at Destiny. But he can’t do that in the Oberon system.”
Th
ey strode down the final corridor towards engineering, and Jake turned his head to follow the backside of a woman in a tightly-fitting mechanic jumpsuit, stained with grease and grime. His eyes followed her legs and ass before he realized Ben had continued speaking.
“—real reason?”
“Hmm? Excuse me?”
Ben rolled his eyes. “Oh don’t play coy with me, Jake. What’s the real reason you want to go there? I’m not buying this whole lay low shit. That’s not like you.”
Jake chuckled—his friend knew him too well. “Hey, for once you’ve got a great idea. It’ll be nice to just go somewhere where we can take a breath and get our clothes back on. Plus, it’ll give us time to plan the rescue of Admiral Pritchard. They’ve got him, Ben. That anonymous tip we received three days ago—they’ve got him. We’ve got to find him. At least, we’ve got to try. Just think—think what it’ll do for the morale of the Resistance if we bring him—”
They stopped just outside engineering, and Ben interrupted Jake with a withering look. “Really? Pritchard? You’re still after that old coot?”
Jake held his hands up defensively, trying to keep the conversation goodnatured. “Yeah. Imagine the look on Trajan’s face when we show up next time with Pritchard leading us. He’ll have an aneurism. He’s the one Resistance leader he’s actually a little scared of. Someone who can match him in strategy and wits.”
With a sigh, Ben turned back to the door to engineering. “Well, let’s just get these engines fixed, and we can shift to wherever the hell you want. Let’s just get away from this hell—“
A massive explosion cut off his sentence, and the shock wave from engineering blasted both of them backward down the hall.
***
Megan Po watched as the two men left the bridge—old friends, and yet with an uncomfortable tension between them that felt raw. Unsettled.
