by Rick Partlow
“’bout a half hour till we can enter T-space,” he told Kara, powering his acceleration couch back and loosening his restraints. “You said Inferno, right? Never thought I’d be going back there…”
But a glance at Kara showed him she wasn’t listening. Her face was thoughtful, her eyes focused light years away.
“You’re not wrong,” she admitted, finally. “I’m not much for people, Deke. Never have been. It never really bothered me before, but since the whole business four years ago…”
“Nothing like almost getting killed to make you appreciate having friends you can trust,” Deke agreed.
“That’s why I brought you into this,” Kara confessed, finally letting some regret creep into her face and her voice. “There were other sources that came up in the database, but when I saw your name…” She let out a deep breath, as if a weight were slipping off her shoulders. “I thought it would be better to have someone I could count on to watch my back.”
“It’s okay.” He shrugged, feeling the resentment wearily slide away from him. “Maybe you’re right…it was probably time for a change. I’ve just been spinning my wheels the last couple years.” He snorted without much humor. “Not that this was the sort of change I had in mind.”
“You have a while to think about it,” she pointed out. “It’s a week’s flight to Inferno.”
Deke eyed Kara sidelong, noticing again for the first time since he’d run into her on the Patrol cutter just how good she looked. She wasn’t what he would have considered conventionally pretty, but there was something about her… She reminded him of a jungle cat, sleekly beautiful and deadly all in one terrifying combination. She wasn’t really his type, honestly. Deke tended to go for uncomplicated relationships that involved a mutually agreed upon exchange of currency.
Oh, he’d entertained the idea of making a play for her back when they first met, but he could tell then that she only had eyes for Cal. Now things were more complex and she was the law while he was outside of it, but what the hell?
Nothing to lose but my dignity, he thought.
“It is a long flight,” he said, giving her what he thought of as a significant glance. “Not a lot to do on a ship like this.”
Am I being too subtle? he worried.
Kara looked back at him blankly for a moment, then she began to laugh. Deke frowned. Her laugh was a throaty, sexy one, but he didn’t think that was how she meant it. She shook her head, still laughing, her green eyes squeezed shut.
“What?” he finally asked, beginning to feel insulted.
“I always thought of you as a smooth operator,” Kara replied when she could stop laughing long enough. “But that…” She burst into a guffaw once again and had to fight to control herself. “That was about as smooth as my first boyfriend in high school.”
“People out in the Pirate Worlds are more straightforward,” Deke grumbled, looking away from her mocking smile. “The women there seem to appreciate it.”
“The women there,” Kara shot back, “are either criminals or prostitutes. I don’t see someone as paranoid as you trusting a fellow criminal enough to leave yourself that vulnerable to them.” She didn’t finish the thought and she didn’t have to. “Let me guess…you built your reputation as a player during the war, when everyone was throwing themselves into bed with the closest human that appealed to them because ‘eat, drink and be merry, tomorrow we die,’ right?”
Deke didn’t answer, concentrating on using his headcomp’s biofeedback loop to stop the blood from rushing to his face. Aside from everything else, he didn’t need the embarrassment of Kara seeing him blush. Teeth clenched together to keep himself from cursing at her, he pulled up navigation and brought up the jump coordinates for Inferno. He focused on directing the ship’s computer to take them down the correct gravito-inertial Transition Lines between stars to reach the military base there and managed to calm himself down.
“Deke,” Kara said, and there was a difference in her tone that made him turn and look at her again. Her expression was apologetic, the mockery gone. “Deke, I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that.” She closed her eyes and let out a sigh. “Like I said, I’m not good with people.”
“It’s okay,” he muttered, trying not to show the resentment and bitterness he felt. And failing, he knew. Her hand closed on his, the grip tight even through his glove, and her gaze was resolute.
“No,” she insisted, “it’s not. I was out of line.”
“Don’t worry about it, Kara,” he told her, forcing an irreverent grin. “Believe it or not, that wasn’t close to being the worst I’ve crashed and burned with a woman.”
Deke jerked his head towards the controls. “We’re clear to enter T-space. Get ready.” With a touch of his neurolink to the ship’s computer, he cut the trickle of power from the reactor to the impellers, instead feeding the Teller-Fox warp units a high-energy burst from the ship’s capacitors. The warp field ripped a hole in reality in front of the Dutchman, a darkness against the stars in the front view on the main screens, and then that darkness swallowed them up.
There was a familiar feeling, a sensation not entirely physical, of having the world yanked out from beneath you, and then the screens went black. Not because the exterior cameras had ceased to work, but simply because Transition Space could not be experienced by the human mind. Deke could feel weight pressing him down against the seat as the ship’s artificial gravity activated: it could only work in T-space for reasons he’d never really grasped despite his Fleet Academy hyperdimensional physics classes.
Deke released his seat restraints and swiveled the acceleration couch away from the controls, coming to his feet. Kara rose from her seat as well, stripping off her jacket and hanging it on the back of the right hand couch.
“I’m going to get some sleep,” he said casually. “Been a stressful day.”
He tried to squeeze past her out of the Dutchman’s cramped cockpit, but Kara grabbed the front of his jacket with a strength augmented by the bionic servos in her joints. She was as tall as he was and he found himself looking directly into her stunningly green eyes and smelling the vaguely fruity scent of her breath. She kissed him so fiercely and suddenly that he didn’t have time to take a breath and his hands went to her face and the back of her neck.
When she finally pulled away, he couldn’t keep the curiosity off his face or his voice.
“Why?” he asked her.
“It’s a long flight,” she responded in a husky whisper, her voice playfully mocking. “Not a lot to do on a ship like this.”
“Smartass,” Deke accused, feeling her yanking his jacket down off his shoulders and letting it fall to the deck.
Still, when she grabbed his hand and began pulling him back to his cabin, he didn’t resist.
Not too subtle, after all, he thought as the door closed behind them.
Interlude:
Four Years Ago:
"General Murdock," Kara spoke up, unable to contain herself, "can you tell us what's really happening? Are the aliens the Corporates produced for the Cultists really living Predecessors? And what's the purpose of all this? Why go through all this posturing and deception? Why not just try to exploit the new technology they've discovered?"
"Mat told us about the election coming up," Deke said, "but what's the connection?"
"And what could we know," I put in, "that's important enough to go to this much trouble to try to kill us?"
Murdock regarded us silently for a long moment before he spoke.
"By way of an answer to most of your questions," he said, reaching up to a control on the table and punching in a code, "let me run back a newsfeed we picked up yesterday through the Centauri Instel Comsat."
The holomap of the Cluster faded, replaced by a shimmering nothingness that coalesced into the golden Mercury of the Trans-Commonwealth News Network, the largest provider of newsholos and ViRfeed in the Cluster. The symbol evaporated into an image straight out of Hell, a devastated landscape of c
rumbling buildings that protruded from the charred soil like bleached bones. The very air seemed to shimmer with heat, and I wondered what uninhabitable moonscape this was.
"This," came a voiceover in the well-modulated, authoritative tones of a computer construct, "was Grenada, a small but prosperous colony near the inner frontier of the Cluster...up until three weeks ago. Today, it is a radioactive nightmare, and it would seem that all of its three million inhabitants are dead."
"God," I heard Kara whisper hoarsely.
"Footage of Grenada's destruction was presented as part of a stunning press release delivered to the major news agencies today by the Jameson administration, following an emergency cession of the Commonwealth Senate."
The scene switched to a huge conference room deep within the Capital City complex on Earth, the overview clearly showing the eagle seal of the Commonwealth that covered most of the floor. The cameras panned inward to a large podium near the center of the room, focusing on a stocky, broad-bodied man whose shoulders strained the fabric of his grey suit. He had the jutting jaw, high cheekbones and wavy dark hair of a ViRdrama construct, but President Gregory Jameson was the real McCoy---I'd met him once.
The camera view showed the blurry shadows of figures standing next to him, just out of camera range, and as I focused on the blurs, I began to get a prickling down my spine. There was something Not Right about them, something just out of reach, like an itch I couldn't scratch.
"Fellow citizens of the Commonwealth," Jameson began, his voice was as deep and sonorous as I remembered, "in the past few weeks, we have received news that represents both the greatest opportunity and the greatest danger the human race has ever faced. Three weeks ago, a small but prosperous colony on the inner edge of the Commonwealth was totally destroyed by an unknown force, captured on video by an automatic telescope in orbit."
A holo appeared beside Jameson's right shoulder of a blue-green planet, which grew until it filled the picture, squeezing out the President's image. The image focused in on a small section of the planet's arc, magnifying until a ship was clearly visible against the blue-white of the atmosphere.
It was basically disc-shaped, and glowed a pale, crackling blue, showing no signs of a reaction drive.
"This ship," the President went on in a voiceover, "is barely a hundred meters across."
Suddenly a coruscating line of white fire shot out from the craft, connecting it with the surface for nearly thirty seconds. Where it touched, the surface turned from blue-green to lava-red and char-black, spreading across the planet as it revolved beneath.
"There were only four of these ships in orbit around Grenada," Jameson announced grimly, "yet they managed to reduce its surface to slag in less than an hour. They then left the system, travelling through realspace, at an acceleration of several million gravities, with an estimated velocity of some three hundred times the speed of light. They headed in a direct line for the next inhabited system, but this time they were stopped."
The image shifted to a high orbital view of another blue-green habitable, then focused in to the approaching enemy ships. The discs were coming toward the world in a tight wedge, ready to fan out and take up firing positions, when another craft came into the picture from around the curve of the planet. It was a glowing, green cigar-shape, and seemed to be several times larger than its counterparts, though moving with similar acceleration and maneuverability.
The discs, seeing the approaching ship, began to decelerate and change course, breaking into a long arc away from the cigar-shape and the planet. A pale green tendril of light extended from the larger ship's green halo and sought out the rearmost disc in the formation, enveloping it for a bare moment. The disc seemed to collapse in on itself, shrinking to only a fraction of its former size before exploding like a nova, the light from the blast filling the screen.
The picture returned to the President's face. "Just as we had found a horribly powerful new enemy we have also discovered a powerful new---or possibly old---friend. Our unexpected benefactors who saved the colony at Caroline from sharing the fate of Grenada went from there to the nearest Patrol base and asked to be taken to the center of our government. For the past two weeks, our researchers have been examining them and their spacecraft, and we have determined their story to be true.
"They call themselves the Resscharr. We have known them for the last hundred and fifty years as the Predecessors. And now I will let them share their story with you."
Chapter Four
Conner:
Tartarus was not one of Deke Conner’s favorite cities. Letting alone the fact that it was the headquarters for the Commonwealth Starfleet, with all the regimentation, lack of architectural imagination and ugliness that entailed; it was just too damned hot.
There was a reason they called the second world of the 82 Eridani system “Inferno” while the third was “Eden,” he reflected as he and Kara stepped down the ramp of the Dutchman into the brutal, humid heat of midday.
“Why didn’t the Bulldog answer your message himself?” he asked Kara, knowing he was repeating himself and not caring. “Why’d this guy Sykes tell us to report to him instead of the General?”
“I know about as much as you,” she reminded him, pausing as he sealed the lock to his ship. “I have to assume it’s a security measure of some kind.”
“I don’t like it,” Deke said, glancing around the wide lanes of the military spaceport.
Unlike the ports in the Pirate Worlds, this one was well organized and almost entirely automated. Kara had arranged clearance for his ship in advance or it would have been intercepted the minute it left T-space by sentry vessels that patrolled the space around Inferno out to over a million kilometers away. There were no human guards in sight as his eyes roamed the dull-grey hulls of a dozen shuttles, couriers and cutters resting in the open stalls of the port, but he knew that there were remote weapons turrets concealed at key points, operated by technicians in fortified bunkers.
The place made him nervous as hell.
“Wasn’t there supposed to be a car to meet us?”
“A hopper,” she corrected him, jerking her head toward the south. He followed her gesture and saw the ducted fan helicopter coming in low, beneath several levels of incoming and outgoing suborbital VTOL jets, shuttles and starships. She shot him a grin. “I’m a Major, no groundcars for me.”
“Golly Gee,” he cracked, “my girlfriend’s a VIP.”
He saw her expression harden slightly and he suddenly knew he’d fucked up.
“I’m not your ‘girlfriend,’ Deke,” she told him, her voice a bit harsher than he thought necessary. “It was a fun trip, but don’t start making assumptions.”
“It was a joke, for Christ’s sake,” he muttered, shaking his head.
“Sorry,” she said, seeming to relax slightly, “but this is where I work and yes, I am a VIP here. That’s why I can’t have the people who work for me getting the wrong idea.”
“I get it,” he assured her, still feeling a bit insulted. “You don’t shit where you eat.”
She seemed satisfied by that, though he certainly wasn’t…and he wasn’t sure why, really. He pushed it out of his mind as the hopper landed in front of them with a hum of electric motors, the fans kicking up a cloud of the fine sand that seemed to get on everything in Tartarus---hell, on most of the planet. Deke slitted his eyes against the sandstorm and ducked in under the raising gull wing door, falling into a utilitarian plastic seat.
“Buckle up please, sir,” the young driver asked pleasantly.
Deke regarded the junior enlisted man him with amusement, but obediently fastened his safety restraints as Kara climbed in beside him.
“Welcome back, Major McIntire,” the driver told her, hitting the control to close the hopper’s door and bringing the fans back up to speed. “I’m to take you directly to Colonel Sykes’ office.”
“Let’s go then, Technician Laussel,” she replied.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t li
ke me to run by your office first to grab a uniform, ma’am?” Laussel asked, glancing back.
“If Colonel Sykes doesn’t care, neither do I.”
“Well, aren’t you the rebel?” Deke commented out of the side of his mouth.
“Sykes is technically my superior officer,” she explained quietly, making sure Laussel couldn’t hear her from the front compartment, “but he’s not in my chain of command. He’s General Murdock’s replacement as head of Starfleet Intelligence, which makes him unimportant and redundant now that the General has turned the DSI into the Commonwealth’s go-to for actionable intell.”
“Then why are we seeing him at all?”
“Because apparently General Murdock is not insystem,” she said unexpectedly. “At least that’s what the DSI network just told me when I tried to find him.”
“Great,” Deke said, rolling his eyes. “I guess that means you don’t need me anymore, right? I can just drop you here and take off with a clean record again?”
“We’ll see,” she said noncommittally. “What? You that eager to run away again?”
Deke recognized the barb for what it was and didn’t respond, choosing instead to remain silent for the short flight out of the busy spaceport and over the rows of hangars, warehouses and repair facilities to the series of multistory building blocks that were Starfleet Headquarters.
There was no excuse for the architecture of the headquarters to be so unimaginative and ugly, he thought, not for the first time. It wasn’t as if it would have cost much more to program the buildfoam dispensers to lay down something with more character. But that was the military for you: no sense of style.
