Alpha Fleet (Rebel Fleet Series Book 3)

by B. V. Larson

  At this rate, I’d never see Earth again. Engaging my sym, I connected to the ship’s network and hunted down Abrams. He was in his lab, still playing with the circlet. For some reason, this threw me into a rage.

  “Abrams!” I roared, commandeering the PA system near his balding head and cranking the volume to the maximum. The speaker crackled and distorted, but I didn’t care. “Get up to the bridge on the double. We’ve got a disaster on our hands—one of your making.”

  I didn’t bother waiting for a reply or a complaint from the good doctor. I returned my perception to the bridge, then reached out to the holoprojector. Connecting my full sensory input to it, I drank in all the data the ship was feeding us and had a good look around.

  One tricky power of the sym I was better at performing than most humans, was the ability to build a virtual environment using a vast body of information. Rather than having the AI depict the star system graphically, then process that with my eyes and brain, I used the sym to change my point of view.

  In an instant, it was as if I stood alone in space where Devilfish coasted. Off to my left and up high the single large sun sat burning. It was white, and hot, tossing off more rads than old Sol did back home. The planets were there too, circling in a plane that appeared to be at an angle to our position. There were ten planets—no… I perceived more now—there were sixteen…

  “Captain?” someone said, impinging on my new reality.

  “Leave me alone unless this is an emergency,” I ordered.

  In reality, I stood on the deck of Devilfish’s bridge, eyes shut and mind wandering. But to anyone else, it probably looked like I was having some kind of an episode.

  The disrupting presence left me alone, and I was glad for it. Space was much more peaceful, roomy and clean without them.

  One at a time, starting with the innermost planet and working my way outward, I drove my perception toward each sphere. I examined the first six in quick succession, finding little that was of interest. They were all rocky, hot and small. None of them could support life nor had a single ship in orbit. The intense radiation from the star would have fried anyone daring to get so close.

  The seventh planet had an atmosphere, at least. But, like our own Venus back home, it was a vile world of caustic dense clouds and intolerable heat.

  Next up was a planet that was almost livable, but it was too big. A chunk of rock so large it pulled with four gravities, it had a grim atmosphere like thick soup comprised mostly of carbon dioxide—no, it was hopeless.

  The ninth planet, after the first eight, came as a shock. It was lovely. Blue-brown, green at the poles and belted around the equator with a wide stripe of desert hotter than the Sahara. I could tell she was like a hotter, slightly larger Earth. There were no ice caps, but there were oceans. Presuming there was more than just jungle-like vegetation, all life had to exist huddled at the two poles.

  It was there, in orbit over this strange world, that I saw ships. There was more than that—stations. The planet was definitely inhabited.

  “Sir!”

  I snapped my eyes open. For a dizzying second, I existed inside the ship and out among the stars simultaneously. I sucked in a breath and held it until the illusion passed.

  “Sir?”

  It was Lt. Rousseau. She had a hand on my forearm. Her brown eyes looked up at me, full of concern.

  “What is it, Lieutenant?” I asked.

  “Sir, we’ve detected electromagnetic disturbances.”

  I nodded slowly. The images that I’d seen in my head—they still lingered. “Right,” I said. “The ninth planet. It’s inhabited. They have a fleet—ships and orbital stations.”

  Looking down at her again, I saw a mixture of wonderment and worry in her face.

  Giving her a flickering smile, I shook my head. “Don’t worry. I’m good at casting my perception into space. Better than our AI, if I’m correct.”

  “That’s unlikely,” the AI complained. “I haven’t gotten to the ninth planet yet. I’ve been thoroughly examining each of them in turn. A full analysis takes—”

  “Too long,” I said, finishing the computer’s thought for itself. “I used a heuristic algorithm. If the planet I examined looked unlikely to support life, I immediately moved to the next.”

  “That’s not an optimal approach.”

  I smiled. “What planet are you processing now, Devilfish?”

  “The fourth,” it said stubbornly.

  “Abort that process. Proceed immediately to the ninth. Perform a full diagnostic on that world. That’s an order.”

  The ship stopped talking. I got the impression it was peeved with me. That was surprising to me, as Dr. Abrams hadn’t helped construct it.

  I’d no sooner thought of Abrams than he appeared on the deck as if summoned.

  “What is the emergency, Blake?” he demanded.

  Turning to him, I walked close and threw an arm around his shoulder.

  The gesture was unwelcome. He eyed my limb as if I’d wrapped a snake around his neck. He made a half-hearted attempt to remove it, but I pulled him close like a drunk might his best friend.

  Stepping toward the central holoprojector, I gestured with my free hand.

  “You see this? Sixteen planets? A single, white-hot F-class sun? Where are we, pray tell, Doctor?”

  His eyes darted over the scene. The look of indignant outrage on his face faded, replaced by perplexity and wonderment.

  “Where’s Alpha Centauri? No… this isn’t possible!”

  He whirled then, wriggling free of my arm and approaching the pilot. He made a strangled sound of anger.

  “What did you do?” he demanded.

  “Nothing!” Lt. Rousseau said in a hurt tone. “I flew through the rift your software created!”

  Abrams whirled toward the navigator next.

  “I gave you specific coordinates. Advanced formulations. The vectors were perfect, every detail was calculated a hundred times over!”

  “And I didn’t touch your software,” she said. “Look at my station. See the checksum here on your file? You didn’t even give me the password, so I just loaded the file blindly. I won’t do that again!”

  Abrams angrily addressed her console. He tapped at it like bird pecking up seeds. After a full minute, he straightened and looked baffled.

  “I’m at a loss…” he said. “There’s been an error—a gross error—but I can’t find it. Someone has tampered with my work, Captain Blake.”

  My lips twisted into an annoyed grimace.

  “Dr. Abrams,” I said gently. “Isn’t it possible—remotely possible—that you royally screwed up?”

  The very thought seemed to shock him. He shook his head.

  “No,” he said emphatically. “There was no mistake. I’d stake my reputation on it.”

  This last statement gave me pause. Dr. Abrams usually knew when he made a mistake. He often tried to cover up these incidents, using bluster and obfuscation to lower their importance—but for him to stake his reputation on an error? That was a departure.

  “All right,” I said, “I believe you. Obviously, you have a new project. Forget the circlet. Forget everything else. Find out where we are and how the hell we can get home.”

  Abrams narrowed his already narrow eyes.

  “I’ll do exactly that,” he said. “The culprit will pay. I won’t stand for this sort of thing. I won’t stand for it!”

  Then, he stormed off the bridge. Every eye followed him. None of us knew what to think.

  After he’d left, Commander Hagen came close and leaned against my station. “You know, if we didn’t need him so badly, I’d toss him out an airlock.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first to think of that,” I assured him, “and I’m pretty sure you won’t be the last.”

  A relatively slow period followed our exciting brush with death. After escaping a hail of gravity mines, most of the crewmen aboard ship were in an upbeat mood. Sure, we were lost in an unknown system, but w
e were still breathing.

  Only the lab coats and bridge people seemed upset. They worked hard while the others relaxed.

  I shared their worries. I knew we weren’t safe—far from it. Worse, we’d left Earth behind. Who knew what was going on back home while we lingered out here, lost among the stars?

  “How long will that rift we made last?” I asked my pilot.

  She glanced at me. “I’ve been monitoring that—we should have another thirty minutes at least.”

  Thirty minutes. Not long to make a fateful decision. Should we head back through again? There was no way of knowing if all the gravity mines had fallen, or if they’d stopped when we’d slipped away. Possibly, they were just floating around where we’d vanished, programmed to wait for our return to unleash their payloads. Should we chance destruction, or some other cruel trick, by placing ourselves back into that cage?

  Our other options were no more inviting. We could linger here in an unknown system inhabited by technologically advanced beings who may or may not be friendly. We could try another blind jump into the stars—but that possibility didn’t seem too inviting, either.

  Unfortunately, the choice was mine to make. Sometimes, the burden of command weighed heavy on my shoulders.

  =38=

  Things went from bad to worse as time crawled by. The inhabited ninth planet detected us somehow, despite the fact we were hours away at the speed of light. We didn’t have a chance to understand that, until they were upon us.

  “Captain!” the sensors op called out. “We’ve got another rift—only a hundred thousand kilometers off.”

  “How—?” I began, but more bad news flooded in to cut me off.

  “Six rifts now, sir—twenty. At least twenty.”

  Lights began to spin. The AI had put up an emergency alert. A fleet was arriving. That could be good—but it was probably bad.

  “Any ship configurations yet?” I asked.

  “Nothing. None of them have poked their noses out into sight.”

  We waited, and I was so tense my shoulders felt wrapped in wire. My eyes darted from the collection of new rifts to our own, and back again a dozen times.

  “Helm,” I said at last, “come about. Head back into our rift.”

  Lt. Rousseau worked her controls, and the ship slid around in an arc. She looked over her shoulder at me. “We don’t know if it’s safe to go back, sir.”

  “True, but I’m willing to bet we’re being hunted by Imperial phase-ships right now. Look at the newest data coming in from the ninth planet.”

  Every eye swiveled to review it. The AI was drawing a grim picture. It had taken time, due to the distance, but the Imperials were clearly the owners of the world in question. The resolution of the optics, analysis of the electromagnetic radio traffic and a dozen other clues had all led inexorably to the same conclusion. We were in an Imperial system.

  Worse, some of the ships in orbit were phase-ships. Such vessels were masters of stealth. Until recently, we’d thought only our ships could slip out of a rift point without leaving a wake or any other recognizable trace, but now it seemed the Imperials could do the same.

  “Phase-ships,” Lt. Rousseau said in a quiet, fearful tone. “That’s why we can’t see them. They’re stalking us, but how did they know we were here? We’ve only just arrived.”

  “FTL travel is possible, why not FTL communications?” I asked her. “Besides, the evidence is overwhelming. The odds an enemy fleet would show up here by chance are astronomical.”

  “You’re right, Captain,” Commander Hagen said. “They have to be Imperial phase-ships. Should we employ countermeasures?”

  I glanced at all the predictors and arcing red lines between the rifts and our ship. “We should have ample time to slip away,” I said, “but I don’t trust the predictions. Nothing Abrams’ computers have predicted has come true today. Employ countermeasures.”

  The ship shuddered as dozens of drones were unloaded in our wake. They immediately began broadcasting various jamming signals, and the scene depicted on our holoprojector wavered and froze.

  “Our jammers are messing up our sensors?” I asked.

  “Yes. They’ve upgraded them—but they have unpleasant side effects now.”

  I didn’t mind. If they saved our bacon, losing track of the enemy was a problem I was willing to deal with. They were already here, stalking us. What difference did it make if we blinded ourselves? At least the enemy couldn’t see us either.

  We were picking up speed, and I dared to allow a tiny smile flicker over my face. We’d soon get out of here and head home.

  As if they could read my mind, the enemy crews finally took action.

  “Incoming channel request, sir,” my comms officer said.

  I turned and made eye-contact. “Patch it through.”

  The face that loomed on my screen was a surprise to me. I’d expected an Imperial to call, mind you. What I hadn’t expected was to recognize her.

  “Lael?” I asked. “Captain Lael?”

  “Leo Blake…” she said in response. Her face registered disgust. “I might have known you were working for the Nomads. Who else would have the right mixture of bravery and bestial ignorance to bring our enemies to our doorstep?”

  “Enemies?”

  “The Nomads, Blake,” she said, speaking as one might to a small child. “You can’t tell me that you didn’t know they were coming through the rift behind you.”

  Confused, I looked at my sensor op, and she shrugged. I stood up and strode to the holoprojector.

  “Ship,” I said, “drop the long-range sensory data. Show me our immediate vicinity.”

  The image wavered and went dark. There was our own ship, depicted with a green wire-frame in the center of the map. Ahead of us was the dying rift. There didn’t seem to be anything else—

  “Ship!” I said, alarmed at a sudden idea. “Deploy Abrams’ gravimeters. Scan local space.”

  Suddenly, a swarm of red contacts appeared. They were small, the size of beach balls. They weren’t moving, just drifting out of the rift in a steady stream.

  I felt a sick, cold lurch in my stomach. These were the same gravity-drones we’d thought we’d left behind. They’d followed us.

  Worse, I realized now. We’d opened the way for them. We’d brought them out here to an Imperial star system. We’d deposited them on Lael’s doorstep.

  How could such an act, intentional or not, do anything other than reignite the smoldering war between the Imperials and the Rebel Kher?

  Turning back to Lael, who was a floating head and torso above the scene, I let my mouth drop open, and I shook my head.

  “I’m sorry. We didn’t know. They chased us, trapped us, and dropped bombs upon us until we ran.”

  “And you ran straight here? Directly into the arms of your most dedicated enemies? An unbelievable tale even coming from you, a consummate liar.”

  “I—I don’t know how this could have happened. We were navigating toward Alpha Centauri—not whatever star system this is. We scattered, and we—”

  “No, Blake,” she said. “Try to expand your limp mind. You did not scatter. You did not target a local star. You came here directly and without deviation.”

  “It would seem you’re right,” I admitted. “We’ve managed to commit a grave error. We’ll shoot all these drones. Perhaps if we set one off, we can destroy the rest in the plasma cloud. They’re tightly bunched now.”

  “Self-destruction?” she said, and she cocked her lovely head, which resembled a flower on the long stalk of her neck. She studied me for a moment. “Ah—of course. You fear our righteous revenge. You fear our wisdom, which dictates that animals that have been proven dangerous must be put down.”

  “Not at all,” I lied. “As a friendly peaceful power, Earth wishes to right what has gone wrong. We can’t stomach the thought of a single civilian death due to our mistake.”

  Lael chuckled. “You are amusing. We have an animal, a small thing we call
a tonch, which can be taught to dance on its hind legs for hours when the sting of a nerve-whip is correctly applied. You remind me of a tonch now.”

  Her insults and threats had no effect on me today. I was too horrified at what I’d done. Somehow, we’d been duped into bringing this armada of gravity-drones to an Imperial system.

  We were dupes, it was true. The patsies of the Nomads. I vowed to bring up the topic with Godwin, should I be so blessed as to live long enough to meet that snake again.

  “The enemy phase-ships are getting closer, sir,” the sensory ops officer told me quietly. “We still can’t target them, but the signal is getting stronger. If you can keep her talking…”

  I nodded to the officer and turned numbly back toward Lael. I knew she must not be within range yet, or she’d be firing.

  “There was one Nomad among us,” I admitted. “It took us months to figure out that’s what he was. He’s been appearing and disappearing for a long time. We thought—we thought he was some kind of envoy.”

  Lael laughed aloud. Imperials, in my experience, rarely did that.

  “You’re too stupid to be allowed to breathe,” she said. “I’m recommending eradication for your species after this.”

  The screen went blank. We all stared at it for a moment, as if caught up in a spell.

  “Well, that could have gone better,” Commander Hagen said, sighing.

  For a moment, I looked at him, my mind whirling with plans. Most of them were pointless and dangerous. At last, I selected one of the worst.

  My eyes and my face hardened. I turned to Lt. Rousseau, who’d almost managed to wade through the gravity drones to the rift again.

  “Helm,” I said gently, laying a hand on her shoulder. “Come about to a new heading. Target the enemy ships—wherever that signal came from.”

  She did as I ordered, then looked up at me with fear in her eyes.

  Opening a general call channel, I summoned new crewmen to the bridge. I needed my best at my side now—this might well be our last stand.

  “Chang, Samson, Dalton, Mia—and Dr. Abrams. Everyone report to the bridge on the double.”