111 Souls (Infinite Universe)

by Justin Bohardt

“Well, we know Santelli wouldn’t really have anything to do with the girl anyway,” he began. “He was just someone that Clemmons knew. He’s certainly not taking the girl in- it would be too much risk for him. Probably never came within a thousand miles of her.”

  “The guy certainly would nae captain his own ships anymore,” Fix agreed.

  “So what you’re saying is that it doesn’t matter if we can’t get to him, because all we need to do is find which of his ships took Williams off-world and squeeze one of the crewmen or the captain or something,” Lafayette said.

  “Exactly,” Jennings agreed. “Hell, my guess is that Santelli just told one of his captains to get her off Earth. We don’t know if he ordered her sold into slavery, or if they decided to do it on their own and make a little money on the side.”

  “Technically, we do nae know that she was sold into slavery,” Fix pointed out.

  “Either way, the person who is going to know where she is would be the captain of the ship that took her out,” Jennings said. “We find that captain, we’ll find Ms. Williams.”

  “How do we find that out?” Lafayette demanded.

  “Minerva, my dear,” Jennings called. “Have you been eavesdropping?”

  “It’s not my fault you’re having a conversation where I can distinctly hear every word you’re saying,” the female voice replied condescendingly.

  “Dat’s a lot of data to pour through, most of it unofficial,” Lafayette said. “How do we know she can do it?” he added in a whisper.

  “Please don’t speak about me like I’m not here Sergeant Lafayette,” Minerva chided. “It is a simple matter of coordinating data available from traffic co-ordination satellites, public flight plan data, known real estate holdings of one Vesper Santelli, and suspected illicit subsidiary holdings of his.”

  “How do you find those?” Lafayette asked.

  “My source is the New York Times,” she replied. “Data is compiling. Estimate forty-seven minutes until relevant probabilities are available.”

  “Fine by me,” Jennings said as he shoveled the rest of his dinner into his mouth, earning a reprehensive stare from his chef. Noticing the look, Jennings said to Lafayette, “Outsmarted by the computer again?”

  Grumbling something in French under his breath, Lafayette vanished toward his cabin and disappeared inside, probably to get some sleep. It was running almost four a.m. ship standard time, so that sounded like a terrific idea, but Jennings would need to wait until Minerva finished her calculations and then get them on course before he could even think about sleep.

  “You need me for anything else, Cap’n?” Fix asked as he stood up to carry his plate into the mess.

  “No, catch some rack,” he replied.

  “You going to pilot us out of here after Minerva gives us a destination?” he asked, probably thinking about the last time Jennings had used Magellan.

  Why didn’t anyone let that go? He wondered to himself. “Naw, Squawk should be up soon. I’ll let him take the bridge,” he replied.

  Fix nodded and headed off to his cabin as well. As fatigue grabbed hold of him mercilessly, Jennings recalled once again what a blessing it was to have a Pasquatil on his crew. The hyperactive maniacs slept only four hours per day- they were immobile and mostly comatose during those four hours, and it would take a nuclear blast of an alarm clock to wake them up. However, that sleep cycle and relentless energy made it nice to have a Pasquatil to take the night shift. Normally, Squawk manned the bridge from midnight to six a.m., but Jennings had told him to rest during that time as he was not expecting them back from their mission until late, and he wanted to be able to crash as soon as they got back.

  So much for that plan, he thought to himself wryly, cursing Jacq Clemmons for opening up so easily. If they had gotten back after six, he could have climbed into bed and let Squawk handle everything. A long sigh turned into a massive jaw-unhinging yawn as Jennings stood, stretched and went into the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea.

  2

  Why are they just sitting there? Beauregard wondered to herself from the cockpit of the small Trenton-class ship the Resistance had fashioned for her.

  What it lacked in size (it was hardly larger than a standard fighter- just the cockpit, a small living space with barely enough room for a Mason cot, a mini-reefer, and a thermal unit for cooking, and a small access hatch that led to the crawlspace in the rear of the ship and the engine), it made up in being the stealthiest ship the Terran military had ever produced. The outer hull was covered with a material that T-Fed R&D had discovered about halfway through the war. They called it Light Shroud technology. Essentially, it was a material with a negative refraction index. Beauregard did not know what that meant, but she was told that it was a material that essentially bent light around it. All known tracking systems were built on lasers and light beams, so the Trentons were very difficult to detect. Unfortunately, the material was hard to produce and highly unstable during the manufacturing process. T-Fed had only been able to build a few of these ships, but they were the only ones that had showed any combat effectiveness against the Gael onslaught during the war. Some said that if humanity had prolonged the war further and had had the opportunity to perfect the technology, T-Fed might have beaten back the Gael in the end.

  As it was, there were very few of these ships in existence and she doubted that the Resistance could afford more than a handful. It had taken seven security codes to get into the massive stellar cargo container that housed the ship. The fact that they trusted her with one only re-emphasized how important this kill was.

  Selena once again cursed her luck at being beaten to Clemmons as she stared at the Melody Tryst, drifting in a parking orbit around Earth. She was completely dependent on the bounty hunters on that ship to figure out where Williams had gotten off to. Based on the fact that they had not immediately taken off in pursuit meant that Clemmons did not know where she was, had only been able to give them a little information, or they simply had not broken him. She had considered breaking into the soundproof room after they had left and doing some interrogation work of her own, but the two men were a step ahead of her once more, calling the police anonymously and leading them to Clemmons.

  Waiting was not Selena’s strong suit and she began drumming her fingers on the control panel in front of her. It would be so easy to take a shot with the cannons on her little ship, slag the Melody Tryst’s engines, board it and kill the crew. She could not take that chance though. There was too much traffic in the shipping lanes around Earth, stealth ship or not. Sensors were bound to see the plasma blasts, and even if they did not, the ship could still get off a distress signal and there was no guarantee that they would not be equipped and ready to repel borders.

  “Patience, Selena. Patience,” she said through gritted teeth.

  To calm herself, she read the files on the suspected crew members of the Melody Tryst- three men and one Pasquatil. Pasquatils were worthless in a fight, but the others were a concern. The ship’s doctor was a convicted felon- had probably shivved a few in his day, but Angus Ferguson was not a concern. Matthew Jennings and Remy Lafayette were both veterans of the war with about a dozen medals of commendation apiece. Lafayette had been a simple sergeant. Jennings was the prototypical hero though- member of the elite Immortals (an inter-branch military special force that was equally adept and used on ground, air and space missions), Councilor Medal of Valor, Silver and Bronze Stars, even an old school Victoria Cross and four purple hearts. Not only was he a hero, but he was apparently impossible to kill. Jennings’ fighter was one of seven ships to limp away from the Battle of Monument. He had eighty-seven enemy kills in that one battle. At the battle of Urakt Creek, he led a platoon of twelve and a village of forty-eight Uula against a Gael force of near one thousand. They held the village for three days before the Gael retreated. Were it not for the Gael, Matthew Jennings would be running for Council in a few years and probably President of it within twenty. Killing him would be a true c
hallenge, but she honestly hoped it did not come to that. There was a very small part of her, buried under layers of professionalism, that admired Matthew Jennings.

  A flurry of movement from outside drew her eye, and she saw the Melody Tryst moving out of orbit and making for one of the designated FTL zones, areas where ships were allowed to jump to light speed without having to worry about crashing into local traffic. It must have been a slow day, because they were only fifth in line queued up behind the stellar buoys that marked the FTL zone. She brought her ship in behind them, marking them as closely as she dared. If someone else got in line too close to the Melody Tryst, they might crash into her accidentally.

  Her Magellan computer was plotting the course that Jennings’ ship was taking. A program of hers had wormed its way into the Melody Tryst’s Magellan, hiding as background data when Space Traffic Control had given the Melody Tryst permission to depart orbit. The program had then hacked its way from the main computer system to the Magellan interface. The navigational computer in her ship was now copying exactly what the Melody Tryst’s was doing.

  Following them would be a piece of cake, she thought to herself as the Melody Tryst jumped to lightspeed, followed a moment later by her.

  Chapter 11

  1

  “This is nae gonna be easy,” Fix observed as they gathered in the dining area for one of the meetings that was becoming all too common in Fix’s opinion.

  “It’s not supposed to be, cher,” Lafayette replied. “If it was easy, everyone would be hitting smugglers, n’est-ce pas?”

  “There isn’t another way around it,” Jennings said authoritatively.

  Fix and Lafayette were still glaring at each other, but that was fine as far as he was concerned. That animosity would come in handy in a matter of hours. Minerva had determined which ship of Santelli’s had a ninety-seven percent chance of being the one Williams had escaped on: the Brigandine. Unfortunately, the ship had already stopped at three systems and twelve settlements. Williams could have been sold (or gotten off if she was lucky) at any of them, or she could still be on the ship. There was no way to be certain and they did not have the time to search all the available areas. Even more unfortunately, the ship was a fairly new DC-MAC 1400 Corvette. The Brigandine outclassed the Melody Tryst in every tactical way possible: speed, shields, and weapon number and power. As far as Jennings saw it, their only option was to hit the Brigandine in between systems where security patrol response was likely to be low, and hope that an ambush gave them enough tactical advantage to cripple the ship and then board her. Once aboard, there was only the problem of the Brigandine’s crew compliment being eighteen to their boarding party of three.

  “Squawk, do you have the gravity generator online?” Jennings asked the Pasquatil engineer.

  “Captain, aye, aye, captain,” Squawk responded, saluting three times as he did so. “Weapons and more weapons are online. Stealth mode is acting stealthy and shields are ready to shield.”

  The Pasquatil did not have synonyms in their language. They found having more than one word for an item redundant, but they also refused to allow the same word to have multiple definitions. It made their attempts to learn English amusing for others, and it drew a small smile from Jennings.

  “Well, gents,” he said with grim resolve. “We’re as prepared for this as we’re going to be. Be on the bridge in one hour. The Brigandine is coming through this sector in two, and hell’s riding in with her.”

  2

  Jennings always liked to give his men an hour to themselves before going into battle. It had been that way when he was a lieutenant in charge of Lafayette’s platoon, and that had carried over to their operation on the Melody Tryst. More than any other commander that Lafayette had ever had, Captain Jennings understood the psychology of soldiering. Instinctively, he knew exactly how far he could push each man, how he could motivate them for the battle ahead, and how to extract the most from each soul who served under him. He didn’t waste his men needlessly, and he wasn’t afraid to send them to their deaths either if that was what the mission entailed. Lafayette hoped the latter wasn’t going to be the case with this mission, because he had a bad feeling about it.

  Of course, Lafayette had a bad feeling before every mission- Jennings said it was the pessimistic French blood in him. The truth was that he had never been cut out to be a soldier, but he was never any good at anything else. Well, that wasn’t quite true, he thought to himself as he opened the refrigeration unit’s door and pulled out a banana pudding he had made. He took a moment to inhale the sweet scent of the dessert before heading to his cabin to enjoy it. It was a true shame that they would only be able to spend one hour together, but it was bad luck to die hungry, and he sure as hell was not going off to die while leaving this little slice of heaven in the reefer.

  3

  The room was spartan, but that was the way Fix liked it. After living in a maximum security cell for fourteen years, regardless of your own personal opinion about your guilt, you got used to not having anything. Once in a while, an old man would shuffle by and bring you an old-fashioned book: a copy of the Bible or the Qur’an, or some other self-help book on the dangers of corruption and the unlimited potential for good within humanity. He had a phosphorescent light above his bed, the rack itself, a sink and a commode back in those days and little had changed.

  The bathroom was a small separate room off his bunk now, the lighting less harsh, and the bed more comfortable, but he still had the dog-eared copy of the King James Bible. He had it out now as he knelt before his bed. Fix was not one to think about the past, to dwell on what he perceived as injustice in his imprisonment. Yet, in these moments, before he was going to go into battle, he always thought on it. Those thoughts would coalesce into memories from prison itself, fighting off gang-rape in the showers, beating back a dozen men in one riot or another, avoiding being knifed while out on recreation. Fix had survived worse than the battle upcoming. He had endured more than the men they would face. He repeated that mantra over and over to himself as the impeding battle drew nearer.

  4

  It was difficult to describe what might have been going through the Pasquatil’s mind before any fight. Squawk’s race was a naturally docile group, whose evolution had not focused on combat, war and the need to prove one’s superiority the way that humans and other species had. Efficiency was the hallmark of the Pasquatil’s course from primordial ooze to spacefaring race, and so the little Squawk made himself happy and relaxed by running about the ship a mile per minute making sure that shields, weapons, the gravity generator and the boarding hatch were all in working order.

  5

  Jennings sat on the bridge and watched space through the view screen. This kind of star gazing was not any kind of appreciation for the aesthetics of space, but a visualization process he had started learning when he was a teenager playing war simulations on the home computer or even commanding his 9 year old troops when playing capture the flag on his birthday. Preparedness was not enough when you were going to put yours and your men’s lives on the line in battle. Sure, most things turned into a clusterfuck pretty quickly when you were in the shit, but that was where preparation came in handy. It was easy to improvise when you had already planned on a hundred courses of action based on every conceivable variable. Some would call it a waste of time, but as far as Jennings was concerned, they were the ones who got fragged by the Gael back in the war. He still had his skin intact, when eighty percent of the military could not say the same at the end of the war. No, he would stick with his preparation no matter what anyone said. And so, he watched the battle unfold a thousand times as he stared off into the stars.

  6

  “Are we ready?” Jennings asked, the countdown on the computer having reached ten.

  “Oh, yes, yes, yes. Gravity generator ready to generate,” Squawk buzzed before making a sound like electricity hissing.

  Ten seconds. He eased his hands around the fire controls. The problem w
ith setting up an ambush like this was that at the speed the Brigandine was traveling, it would only be in sensor range for about .2 seconds before it was already past them. That meant leaving the springing of their little gravity trap to Minerva, who was giving them the countdown. Five seconds. Jennings instinctively re-checked the charges on all his shields, cannons, interceptors and torpedo launchers. All was ready. One second.

  “Here!!!” screamed Squawk as the Brigandine lurched into view.

  The false gravity generator the Melody Tryst was employing caused the Brigandine’s onboard navigation computer to force stop the ship, yanking it out of light speed, as the computer registered the Melody Tryst as a planetary body. Planets were such horrible speed bumps to faster than light travel, Jennings thought with a smile as he depressed his finger on the twin triggers. There was a shudder through the hull as a salvo of torpedoes launched toward the Brigandine. He followed it with pin point plasma cannon fire designed to hit the Brigandine’s shields just before the torpedoes hit, softening them and allowing the concussion explosives to plow through to the hull.

  The plan worked to perfection, which was a nice change, Jennings thought to himself, as he watched the explosive impacts on the three dimensional holo-display. He had successfully hit the power plant, the main cannons and the communications array with the first salvo. Now, as the weapons system automatically reloaded, he could easily open a breach to space in the main living areas, killing or incapacitating all except those on the bridge. It would help even the odds when it came time to board them. He pulled the torpedo trigger again and nothing happened. Jennings swore and tried it again, but again the system would not fire. This time the computer system flashed a warning in red letters: RELOAD FAILURE- TORPEDOES OFFLINE.

  “Squawk!” Jennings yelled.

  The Pasquatil squeaked and raced from the bridge down toward engineering, chattering excitedly to himself the whole time.