by B. V. Larson
Then, at the one hour mark, a funny thing happened.
“Chief…?” Dr. Chang called to me. “Blake… I don’t—take a look at this.”
I pulled up his sensor data and displayed it for everyone. We all stared and gaped.
“What the hell…?” Samson asked. “How many are there?”
“I’m getting a count…” Dr. Chang said. “We’re running entirely on passive sensors now, so it’s bound to be inaccurate, but I’m picking up over two hundred contacts.”
“It’s the Imperials,” Gwen said with a dreadful certainty. “It has to be. Maybe Captain Lael brought them back for us. Or maybe, the Imperials destroyed all the ships in the Rebel Fleet and waited to see if—”
I shushed her with a hand. “They aren’t firing. Can you get a reading on their hull configuration?”
“No,” she said. “There’s too much interference from Rigel for that. What do we do?”
“We play dead,” I said, “what else can we do?”
“It’s not going to be much of an act,” Samson said sourly.
We waited for several tense minutes. Then our tiny ship lurched sickeningly.
“Gravity beam,” Gwen said. “They’ve locked onto us. Why not just blow us out of the sky? Why torment us further?”
She began rubbing at the healing scabs on her arms. The carnivorous algae had done a number on my crew. Memories were causing them to itch.
“We don’t have our thumpers anymore,” Samson said, “but you’ve got Captain Lael’s wand.”
I pulled it out thoughtfully. I had no idea if this thing was going to work on a different Imperial ship’s security systems. It didn’t do anything aboard Hammerhead, so I hadn’t given it much thought.
Holding our disruptors, we waited for the hatch to be ripped open again when we were sucked up into a hulking ship’s interior. I thought about igniting the engines to burn whoever was outside, but there wasn’t enough fuel. I considered making the hull transparent again, but even that would take some energy. Every ounce of power in Hammerhead’s systems had been rerouted to shielding and similar efforts. Our active sensors were all dead.
The hatch sprang open. We all twitched, lifting our disruptors in a final hopeless act of defiance.
But when the scene outside was revealed, we blinked in confusion.
The environment was one we knew well. It was the hangar deck of a carrier—a Rebel carrier.
Then, a familiar figure strode into view. His tail flicked from side-to-side violently.
“Blake?” Ra-tikh demanded. “Come out of there! You better not have lost my fourth!”
We lowered our weapons and laughed. Everyone poured out onto the deck.
We were home again aboard Killer—although I was at a loss to explain how, or why…
=43=
We were debriefed almost as vigorously as we’d been interrogated by the Imperials. The Rebel officers in charge of such debriefings seemed to have a great deal of difficulty believing my story.
The fact that everyone in my crew had told the same tale separately, and the details our suit recorders revealed verified that tale as well, seemed to convince them. After a long process, they delivered me back to Shaw who asked me many of the same questions over again.
“Unbelievable…” Shaw said for the tenth time, “simply unbelievable. You say you did all that damage using the symbiotic units in your bloodstream and some simple network transmitters?”
“Yes, pretty much,” I said. “The Imperials seem to have very little in the way of hardened security systems. The sym found them easy to break. One passcode, for instance, allowed me access to every subsystem on their ship.”
He was pacing around his office, shaking his head and throwing his arms wide now and then. I’d gotten used to this odd, alarming gesture. For his people, I guess it was like clearing a throat or tapping a foot. He seemed to do it more often when he was excited or thinking hard.
“I can’t even imagine how many status points this might be worth,” he said. “But I’m also unsure how to prove it. To claim my just reward for—”
“Come on!” I said. “Forget about your status for one second, Lieutenant. We have to use this information to help the cause. We have to spread it to the top brass.”
He blinked at me like a man coming out of a dream.
“That’s not our responsibility. You were debriefed by professionals, and they’ll decide what to do with your testimony.”
Frustrated, I thought hard for a moment. “Lieutenant, what do the interrogators get points for? What would improve their status?”
“Eh? Well… successfully breaking a prisoner is the usual metric. They’re supposed to be working their arts on captured Imperials—but we don’t get many of those. When we do get one of their clueless males, they sputter and snarl until they give up what little they know. Then, they usually expire.”
“Great,” I said. I knew enough about Rebel culture now to understand how they thought. Everyone was out for himself. They usually only did their jobs in-so-far as it helped them personally. Oh, when their lives were on the line in combat they cooperated well enough, but it wasn’t anything like a well-oiled, disciplined effort.
“The interrogators will sit on this, won’t they?” I asked him. “They’ll downplay the details—hoping they can personally benefit from them at some point. Only then they will log a formal report and hope for a new Imperial captive to torture to death.”
“Now that would have been a boon,” Shaw said, only half listening to me. “You should have brought that captain here as a captive. We could have made serious points from that. We’d both gain a rank for sure.”
Hopping off his table, I came close and gripped his shoulders. He glared at me, unhappy with this intrusion into his personal space. Rebel troops were far less formal than their Imperial counterparts, but they still had some sense of decorum.
“Lieutenant,” I said earnestly. “I can get us both rank. I guarantee it.”
“How?”
“Let’s go talk to Captain Ursahn. She’s up on the command deck, right?”
He stared at me. “We can’t just go up and talk to the captain. She’ll rip our throats out.”
I’d seen the brutish woman in action, and he might be right, but I was desperate.
“Thousands of status points,” I said. “Just think of it. You’ll get rank for sure. Maybe wing commander, or even a trainee slot under the CAG.”
“How? Tell me how this is possible?”
Letting my hands drop to my side again, I gave him a smug smile. “Let me talk to the captain. Then the admiral—that primate guy. What was his name?”
He twitched, then he told me. “Fex.”
“Right. We need to see him, too. He’s still alive after the last battle, isn’t he?”
“He is indeed, but he lost a step due to failure. His ship was one of the first ones to jump out of that slaughter at Cygnus Minor. He’s a rear admiral now.”
“Of course…” I said thoughtfully. “Even better.”
“You’re scheming,” he said with a mixture of disgust and fascination. “I know that look—that monkey-mind of yours is turning things over. It’s a wonder you don’t have a tail and more fur.”
I let his insults slide, because I didn’t care what he thought. I only wanted his cooperation, and I thought I knew how to get it.
“Come on,” I said. “We need status points, and our admiral needs his rank back.”
Shaw followed me. I needed his passcode to get up to the command deck, to get access to the brass aboard Killer. As an ensign, I wasn’t a full-fledged officer, I was an officer in training.
In the Rebel Navy, junior crewmen weren’t fully trusted. We were, after all, recruits from the wilder planets.
But I wasn’t going to let any of that stop me. I was on a mission.
“Use your code,” I told Shaw, gesturing toward the intelligent panel that prevented non-authorized persons from operating the ce
ntral lift.
He eyed me for a moment. “You really think you know something that will make a difference?”
“How do you think I managed to escape an enemy heavy cruiser and get back here to tell about it?”
“You’re tricky,” he said, as if this explained everything. “I assume you tricked the enemy, and hacked your suit-recorders. What I’m not sure of is how much of your story is true.”
“It’s all true. Open that door so we can get rank.”
Reluctantly, he did as I asked. He had the resigned air of a man who didn’t believe in the hype, but who was willing to play along just in case there was a grain of truth to it.
The doors swished open—real doors this time, not some vanishing trick of light and soundproofing. We were about to step into the lift, but halted.
We were face to face with Killer’s captain. She was still big and impressive, but she wore a new expression, one of distrust.
“My sym relayed your report to me, human,” she said, looking at me. “You can’t expect me to believe it.”
“It’s the God’s-honest truth, Captain,” I said, staring into her eyes.
“You threaten me?” she asked.
I blinked. “Uh… no. Sorry. I forgot that predators considered direct eye-contact frightening.”
Stepping close to me, she let out a chilling growl. “Not frightening. Disrespectful.”
“Of course. Sorry again, sir.” I found a good spot on the edge of the door to stare at.
Ursahn flicked her eyes toward Shaw for the first time. “Dismissed,” she said.
“But sir—”
“You’ll get your points—if you deserve any, which I doubt.”
Awkwardly, Shaw retreated, and I stepped onto the lift with the captain.
“Presumptuous,” she said. “Believe me, I have no intention of becoming one of your cross-species conquests, Blake.”
After taking a moment to suppress a shudder, I forced a pleasant smile onto my face instead.
“What?” I asked. “Oh—no, no, Captain. That wasn’t my intention at all. I just figured you might want to discuss this in your office rather than here on the lower decks.”
She stepped onto the lift at my side and glared at me. I knew she viewed me as an interloper. It didn’t help at all that I was a primate. That was like being from the wrong side of town. These people suspected my kind of all sorts of deviltry.
The doors snicked shut, and we were whisked away upward. The sensation was alarming, and my knees almost buckled. She watched this and showed me her teeth.
“Amusing,” she said. “Physically weak, but mentally strong. I shall like breaking you when I discover the nature of your deception.”
“I’m not deceiving anyone, Captain… at least, not right now.”
We rode upward for a few seconds more before the lift stopped as suddenly as it had started. The damned thing stopped so fast I was worried I’d be thrown up into the ceiling. As it was, my feet left the floor by an inch.
But the lift had been well-engineered. The doors snicked open, and I saw the command deck for the first time.
The place was bustling with large predators, along with the occasional primate. The primates were arrogant and small, but they were usually in charge. It was interesting to see brains winning out over brawn in repeated cases.
“Your kind isn’t loved,” the captain said, eyeing me sidelong. “You’re tolerated. Do you understand the difference?”
“It’s all the same to me, Captain,” I said. “I just want to defeat the enemy.”
To me, that seemed like a safe statement, but it garnered an unexpected response.
“There!” she boomed suddenly, extending a long arm with an accusatory finger at the end of it. She pointed into my face as if she’d spotted a demon.
“There what?” I demanded.
“There it is! The ultimate arrogance. You speak of victory. No one else talks like that.”
I looked at her curiously. “Why not? Wouldn’t you like to win?”
She came close, puffing down hot breath from her twin nostrils. Each of those holes were big around enough to fit my thumb inside—but I certainly wouldn’t want to try it.
“Arrogance. Cocky self-assurance. That’s the path to total defeat. We’re not in this war to win, Blake. We’re in this war to cause twinges of pain to the Imperials. If we can inflict enough tiny stings, they will retreat to their star cluster for another thousand years. It’s the best we can hope for.”
“Why not go for the gusto, sir?” I asked her. “Why not strike deep, flying right into their tight knot of stars and dropping a few gravity bombs of our own?”
Ursahn laughed tiredly. “Would that we could… I’m relieved by your foolish statements. They prove to me that you’re not scheming—you’re an ignoramus. Here, follow me.”
Reluctantly, I followed her to her office. Along the way, I found the command deck was better appointed in every conceivable manner. Countless details were upgraded when compared to the Spartan environment I was familiar with below decks.
The passages were wider and more brightly lit. There was plush padding under my feet and covering the walls, while the lower decks were adorned with nothing other than hard metal. The padding wasn’t exactly a carpet, but it was certainly softer on the feet than pure titanium.
Several prying eyes and flicking ears followed us as we passed them by. We were obviously generating a lot of curiosity, but she remained stoic.
She walked me to her quarters, and a door sprang into being behind us. There was no desk in her office. There wasn’t even a chair. Instead, I saw a set of short thick stumps. She squatted on one of these and looked at me expectantly. I imitated her pose—putting my hands on my knees, but I didn’t find it comfortable. It was like perching on a metal fencepost.
“Prove to me you didn’t fabricate your report,” she ordered.
I laughed. “I can’t—but I don’t have to.”
“What? You try to manipulate me so baldly? I’m not a simple feline, Blake. I don’t want you to play with my tail.”
“Um… yeah…” I said. “I’m sure we’re both happy about that. But what I’m trying to say is that the facts are self-evident. You’ve got the ship’s data, you’ve got our suit-data—”
Her hand waved for my attention. “Enough. All of these things can be faked.”
“Maybe,” I admitted. “But I’d have to have a lab packed with techs, and a month to pull it off. I had neither.”
“Nevertheless, I can’t accept what you’re saying. I can’t accept that an Imperial ship was so easily hacked by amateurs.”
“Has anyone else been captured by these guys and reported back?” I asked.
“Captives are extremely rare. The Imperials prefer to kill those who dare to beg for mercy. That’s another reason that your story doesn’t make sense, and it makes me suspicious of all the rest.”
“Then what’s your explanation for our return? Do you think I just went through a rift with a cruiser, then sat out there in space and fabricated an elaborate scenario? If that’s how it happened, how did I get back to Rigel?”
She eyed me stubbornly.
“No,” she said at last. “I do believe you were captured, but that’s where your lies begin. I think you sat aboard the Imperial ship and fabricated the rest of this tale—or rather, that they did it for you. The Imperials falsified this ‘evidence’ to support your mad story.”
“So… I’m a traitor?”
“Yes,” she said. “That is the inescapable conclusion. Now can you understand my hostility?”
“Sure, but why don’t you just space my entire crew right now if you think that’s what happened?”
“Because we’re not completely certain. That’s the diabolical genius of this plot. It stinks like ape-scat—but we can’t be absolutely sure that it is.”
I spent a moment thinking hard. There had to be some way to convince this battle axe I wasn’t bullshitting her.
After a moment, I snapped my fingers in the air. Ursahn recoiled sharply, as if the unexpected sound heralded some kind of personal attack.
“Listen,” I said, “Why the hell would I—or the Imperials—come up with a convoluted story like this? Why not something simple?”
“Because they want to trick us into a foolish attack that can’t possibly succeed,” she said. “You want us to expose our fleet. To face the enemy in a large battle with a great trick to play—only, the trick will be on us.”
It was my turn to sigh and shake my head.
“What do you take me for?” I asked. “The worst traitor that ever lived? These Imperials might come and destroy Earth, you know.”
She leaned closer.
“They might indeed have that intention,” she said, “and that might be the very reason you’re cooperating with them. Did they threaten your home world, Blake? Did they promise not to harm your people in return for planting this mad story?”
I leaned toward her.
“Look,” I said, “aren’t you tired of being pushed around out here by the Imperials? Don’t you want a little slice of revenge?”
“Of course I do.”
“Well then, listen-up. I’m going to tell you how it works, and how we can prove it works without endangering more than one warship.”
I had her listening at last as I laid out my plans. Before I finished, she contacted Admiral Fex. He came to our ship via shuttle, and he listened to me as well.
Neither of the officers was thrilled with my plan. They were intrigued, but they weren’t yet total believers.
It was my job to change their minds.
=44=
With Admiral Fex backing us, we were quickly granted permission to fly Killer off on a private mission. I think it was his personal greed for glory points that made it all possible. He was still stinging from losing a rank. He wanted his points back, and he was willing to take risks to regain them.
The next day, Killer performed a stellar-jump from Rigel to a location that was about six hundred lightyears closer to Orion. Sadly, our front lines had been pressed back that far. Our forces had been driven deep into friendly territory by the loss at Cygnus Minor.
