by Nick Webb
After a pause, the Admiral said simply, “Yes.”
Zuleiman was speechless. They’d been unable to take that world for generations. Not for lack of trying. Even though the government and the people were ostensibly pacifists, the planet’s defenses were stubborn to say the least. “I’m listening, Admiral. Tell me what you propose.”
The voice snapped. “I propose nothing. You are master of your fleet and know its capabilities as you do those of your enemy. What I offer are tools. I will give to you the means with which you may take Oberon, and in return—” Trajan paused. Zuleiman wondered if he were thinking—considering his position—or simply waiting for dramatic effect. “In return, you will deliver to me the Phoenix. Intact. With her crew as accounted for as you can.”
“Why? Why the crew?”
“They are criminals,” Trajan said simply. “And criminals must be made an example of to discourage further criminality. The people must be taught to obey. And when one can’t encourage obedience with carrots, one must use sticks.”
Zuleiman considered this. It was a rather asymmetric trade, he thought. Deliver one ship to Trajan, and the Admiral would give Zuleiman an entire world. There had to be a catch.
“Trust me, Commodore,” Trajan continued, as if reading his mind. It unnerved him. “There is no deception here. That is a very valuable ship. Well worth the price of a world. I can assure you that it is all I want. One ship, and I’ll leave, with promises to honor our long held detente between our governments. We have no desire to meddle in the affairs of the Void.”
Zuleiman cleared his throat. “Very well, Admiral. You’ve got a deal. Now tell me, what can you give me that will enable the pacification of Oberon?”
Trajan explained, slowly, and in great detail, the tool he could offer the Vikorhov Federation, and within a few minutes Zuleiman was utterly convinced he’d be standing victorious on the surface of Oberon within the week. A shuttle departed the fighter deck on the Caligula, bound for the Volga, and when the cargo transfer was complete, the Caligula left. Urgent business—so claimed the Admiral. The confident Imperial Commander had unfinished business away in the central sectors, and couldn’t stay to observe the capture of the Phoenix or Oberon.
But he’d be back in a week. Plenty of time to capture a world, and a ship.
A ship he fully intended to keep for his own. To the glory of the Vikorhov Federation.
***
Jake blew air through his teeth in exasperation, scrolling through the list of administrative actions he needed to take on his data pad.
Paperwork.
Unbelievable. They were fighting for their lives, flying from one disaster to another, and still the paperwork piled up.
Bringing up the crew rotations and duty rosters he examined Po’s handiwork. How she had managed to find time in the past few days to come up with duty rosters and coordinate with all the department chiefs was beyond him. She was a superwoman.
Tapping approve on all the summaries he moved on to the ship status reports, which required his acknowledgment before certain basic ship functions could continue. It was an Imperial Fleet procedure, one way to maintain tighter control over every operation on the ships was to require each captain to physically sign off on each report before they could access things like water for showers and energy to supply power to the entertainment deck.
And seeing how the 51st brigade was currently sequestered on the entertainment deck, he thought it wise to ensure they didn’t suddenly lose their power. Bored marines and lack of basic amenities was not a winning combination.
He scrolled through to the next chunk of reports, kicking his boots up on his ready room desk, wondering if he’d get to go down to the surface of Oberon with the rest of the crew when he came up to the file he didn’t want to see. The one he was dreading.
Casualty report.
He glanced at the report’s owner. Doc Nichols.
He already knew the number of dead. The number six haunted his fitful dreams, floating there like an electronic billboard sign over a dirty backwater tavern, except it floated over the blue faces of the dead.
Time for the report later. He skipped it, thumbing down to the next set of reports—ammunition supply—when the door to the ready room slid open.
Doc Nichols strode in. “Oh, sorry, I bet you expected me to knock.” His face did not look apologetic, and in fact he didn’t even slow down as he passed the threshold and sat in the chair opposite Jake. The grizzled old man leaned to the side and retrieved a lighter from his back pocket, and, fumbling and swearing as he searched his chest pocket for something, produced a half-smoked cigar and proceeded to light it, puffing out smokey clouds of tobacco.
“Doctor,” Jake greeted him with a nod, before waving his hand at the smoke. He coughed.
“You’re not going to go quoting bullshit regulations at me like your buddy, are ya?” Nichols took a long drag on the cigar and puffed it out over the ready room table. “Cause I’ve had it up to just about here with him,” he added, holding a hand up level with the top of his head. “I swear, the more time he spends in sickbay, the more I’m tempted to just give him a lethal dose of his painkiller.”
Jake smirked. He knew Ben very well, and how much of a pain he could be with rules. Jake had developed a system over the last few years for dealing with it. Any time Ben brought up a rule that his friend wasn’t following, Jake would bunch up his face as if in deep consideration, nod slowly that he’d acknowledged whatever Ben had said, and then proceed with breaking whatever rule he had mentioned. It always exasperated Ben, but Jake supposed that just made Ben secretly enjoy his company all the more.
“So you’ve become good friends with our chief of security. I’m glad.”
Nichols coughed, smoke streaming from his nose. “Friends is a stretch. The kid is growing on me, but as far as I’m concerned,” he lowered his chin and looked directly at Jake, “I made the right choice.”
He puffed a few more times on the cigar in the silence that followed. All Jake could think to say was, “Thanks.”
“Thanks my ass. Don’t assume that I think you’re doing a kick-ass job at this, because you’re not. Did you read my report?” said, Nichols, jabbing his thumb towards the data pad laying on the desk.
“Yes,” Jake lied. “Still trying to wrap my head around the numbers, but yes.”
“Numbers,” Nichols sneered, “fuck. Is that all they are to you? Numbers?”
“No. They’re not.” Jake balled his fist up underneath the table in frustration. Why the hell was the Doctor here anyway? “Listen, Doc, I’ve got to get down to Oberon and meet with Captain Brand and some dignitaries. I think we can get resupplied here, and Gods know we need it. Do you have a requisition report ready for us? We can probably resupply medical while we’re at it.”
“Too busy.” Nichols puffed out a few more draughts, this time forming the clouds into billowing rings. “Too busy cleaning up after you. In fact, it’s Jemez I came here to discuss with you.”
“Oh?”
“About his experience down on that shit-hole, Destiny.” He twisted the cigar in his fingers, looking at it. “He talk to you at all about it?”
“No. Nothing too specific. I mean, it looks pretty obvious what happened, right? The bastard tortured him. And good for Ben for getting loose and nailing the monster in the heart with that knife of his.”
“As far as we know,” said Nichols. “That’s what Jemez says, anyway—that he killed his captor, and for the moment I don’t have a solid reason to doubt him,” he added, apparently noticing the look on Jake’s face, who had squinted when Nichols suggested that Ben might be lying.
“What are you getting at, Doc?”
A pause. More smoke. More coughing. “I don’t know. But I’ve found a few odd … irregularities in Ben’s body.” Doc Nichols stood up and reached for the data pad. “Here, let me show you. Can this bring up shit on the screen over there?”
Jake nodded. “Yeah,” he inclined
his head towards the pad, as if speaking to it. “Rodrigo, display Doc Nichols’s data on the main screen here, of you wouldn’t mi—”
“Shut up. I don’t need no AI to help me use a fucking data pad.” Nichols tapped a few buttons on the pad and, after several moments of swearing and jabbing at various submenus he said, “There. And all by my little lonesome, without a robot helping me. Seriously, Mercer, sometimes I think you rely on them too much.”
Jake raised an eyebrow. As far as he knew he’d never so much as breathed a word against the Taboo: the long-held suspicion of AI among all the people of the Thousand Worlds, passed down since the days of the Robot Wars in the twenty-first century. What was the harm of a talking data pad?
“Relax, Doc. It’s just a piece of plastic.”
“You named it Rodrigo?”
At that moment the door opened again, and in walked Po. “He names all his toys. You should ask him what he named Ben’s motorcycle that he crashed last month.”
Jake held his hands up in frustration, “You know, this is the Captain’s ready room. Have either of you ever heard of knocking?”
The Doctor turned back to the screen, and touching a few areas of the pad brought up some data on the screen for the others to see. “Good that you’re here, Commander,” he said, nodding to Po before pointing up to the screen. “You should probably see this too.”
He set the pad down, approached the screen, and stood in front of it, facing Jake. “I took this scan of our friend when he first came into my care at the Battle of the Nine, three weeks ago. See anything interesting?”
Jake peered at the display. Just a bunch of standard medical data: heart rate, oxygen saturation levels, brain activity, protein levels, hormonal balance, and a whole lot of other stuff he couldn’t identify. “His middle name is Grover?”
“Funny. The correct answer is: no. There is nothing interesting here. Everything looks absolutely standard for an overly-fit twenty-six year old male in the prime of his health.” He touched the data pad again, and the scan changed. “And this,” he paused, and spoke more slowly, as if delivering grave news. “This is the scan I took after his ordeal on Destiny. Look closely.”
Po and Jake both looked closely at the data. Jake shook his head. Finally, giving up, Po did likewise. “Sorry, Doc,” said Jake, “we’re just a couple of space jocks. Help us out here.”
Nichols pointed up at several lines of data. “Endorphin levels greatly elevated. Higher electrolytes. Faster heart rate. And look at all these protein and hormone levels. Some high, some low, but almost all of them different. And that’s not all,” he pointed down at the bottom of the list. “Look at the heavy metal count. Normally, a human body should only have trace amounts of heavy metals in the body. Even small amounts of certain metals can poison us. But look: platinum, off the chart. And this one is inexplicable: iridium. Off the chart. Now you tell me how the hell iridium gets into a body.”
Jake nodded. It was troubling, but he didn’t quite understand how yet. “Ok, but what does it mean, Doc? Obviously something happened to him down there that he’s not telling us.”
“Clearly.” The Doctor reached for the data pad and thumbed to the next screen. Replacing the list of data appeared an image of what looked to be some sort of body tissue. “This is white matter. The inner part of the brain that controls cognition and transporting signals between areas of gray matter. Look at these blood vessels.” He motioned to the screen, and the view changed to a closeup.
“What the hell is that?” said Jake, pointing at the silvery gray particles mixed in with the red blood cells.
Po stood up and steeped closer. “Is it metal? Is this the source of the high metal content in his body?”
Doc Nicholas nodded. “It’s in his blood, yes. But that’s not all. These aren’t just particles of metal. Have a closer look.” He motioned at the screen again, and the view zoomed in on one of the gray specks, which blew up to a round metal ball with metallic manipulators, electrical leads, and other projections that Jake could only guess at the function.
“Dear God,” murmured Po.
Jake’s mouth hung open. “Is … is that what I think it is, Doc?”
The Doctor picked up the cigar where he’d left it on the table and took a drag before replying. “A micron sized robot? Then yes, that is what you think it is.”
“And what are they doing?”
“Hell if I know.” Nichols sat back down and kicked his boots up on the table.
Jake balled up his fist again, this time bouncing it nervously on the table. Whatever that madman did to him—to his friend—he couldn’t allow it to hurt Ben. He owed him that much.
“Well, let’s get rid of them. Can’t you just neutralize them? Send an electromagnetic pulse through his body and fry their electronics?”
Doc Nichols absentmindedly waved a hand at the screen, directing the pad to move on to the next image. In place of the sinister-looking micro-robot, a dendritic-looking spindly thing appeared. “This is one of Jemez’s axons. They’re basically what wire our neurons together, sending electrical signals from one brain cell to the next.” He took a puff on the cigar. “See anything familiar?”
Jake stood up and peered closely. Sure enough, halfway down the length of the axon, it was abruptly cut, and inserted between the two dangling ends was one of the micro-robots.
Jake leaned against the wall, closing his eyes. Even to his untrained eyes he could see the consequences of just disabling all the micro-robots at once. Every connection in his brain would self-destruct. “Holy shit.”
Po turned to Nichols. “Do they pose a risk to Ben? Is he in danger?”
“What do you think, Commander? I’d guess that whoever put them there wasn’t trying to relieve a headache. And that’s not all,” he added, waving his hand again to advance to the next image.
“More?” Po asked, sounding disheartened.
Nichols, grim-faced, nodded. “Our guests? The boy and the old crew member from the Fury? Same thing.” Another image appeared on the screen, similar to Ben’s brain scan, only in this the metallic invasion was far more pronounced. “This is Rhys’s brain. The micro-robots have inserted themselves in place of every axon, and have begun to rewire the connections themselves. Even if the bots were magically removed, this man’s brain is permanently changed. In effect, this man is no longer the Lieutenant Rhys from the Fury.”
Jake frowned. “Who is it?”
“Someone else. But to understand the effect these things have on neural function I’ll need more time to study. Time that I don’t have what with sickbay stretched to the limit with the new patients you’ve sent me.” Nichols scowled.
“And Jeremiah?”
“The same, only … different. The bot invasion is less pronounced than in Rhys, but affecting different areas of the brain. Beyond that I can’t tell you much.”
Jake drummed his fingers against his forearm. A far more important question ran through his mind: are the rest of us in danger? Is the ship in danger? But he didn’t express it. “Thank you, Doctor. Please continue your surveillance of Commander Jemez’s condition.” He straightened himself up and made as if to leave.
“Does he know?” Po asked. Jake stopped, and looked at Doc Nichols. “Does Ben know?”
“No. I thought I’d come to you two first. But I can’t hide this from him. Not ethically.” He faced Jake, who wanted to grimace—he knew what the Doctor was trying to tell him. If he ordered Nichols to keep this information from Ben, it would just be one more thing they’d be lying to him about, if one could consider withholding information a lie. They were already complicit in the deception that made Jake the captain. What was one more?
Jake nodded. “He should know. In fact, he might already know. Has he opened up to you about his time on Destiny?” He turned to Po. “Either of you?”
Doc Nichols shook his head. Po said, “No.”
“Fine. I’ll sit him down and try to get him to talk about it. They have bars in Dez
reel City, don’t they?” He grinned. It had only been a little over a month since he and Ben roughed up that uncouth Empire loyalist back in the bar on Liberty Station, but it felt like years. It would be good to get his friend down there, take him to some seedy joint, get him wasted, and let him blow off steam.
Gods knew Ben deserved it.
A voice came over the comm. “Captain, this is Ensign Falstaff on the bridge. Ops says we’ve docked and they’ve extended the umbilical. We’re latched on, sir, and can go over any time.”
“Thank you, Ensign.” Jake moved towards the door.
“That’s not all, sir. I’ve just received a message from the central government. The Prime Minister would like to meet with you. They said a delegation will lead us to a ground car and take us to the main government headquarters when you’re ready to disembark.”
Jake glanced back at Po with raised eyebrows. She stood to follow him out. “Look at you, Shotgun. Moving on up in the world.” They chuckled as they passed out the door.
“God help us,” muttered Nichols. He took one last drag on the cigar before following behind.
***
The security detail sent to fetch Jake and his senior staff led them to a ground car at the street level of the space dock skyscraper, and within minutes they pulled up to what looked like an official government building. Columned and terraced, with elaborate gardens on either side and statues and walkways in front. It looked like a smaller version of Earth’s government headquarters back in Virginia, only newer and not quite as elaborate. Even so, Jake could tell the grounds were at least a hundred years old, given the enormous girth of some of the trees in the gardens.
They were led inside, through several sets of double doors, and into a large, comfortable carpeted reception area with sofas and side tables, where en entourage of politicians and aides were waiting.
“Mr. Prime Minister, sir, very nice to meet you.” Jake extended a hand to the bespectacled middle aged man stepping out of the group to meet him. He’d hardly ever seen glasses back on Earth, and they didn’t look to be that common on Oberon, but the Prime Minister’s short stubby nose supported a gold framed pair of thick lenses.
