by Jason Letts
When gravity pulled their boots to the floor and they exited into the bay’s interior, where fighters were housed in rows along giant racks, Rion got a sense of the panic running through his peers. Despite a lot of time on ships, it appeared not one of them had seen much fighting. Of course none of them had the benefit of knowing what would happen either.
But now that he was inside, he was going to have to improvise the rest of the way.
Their helmets off, they stood together as Vestige crews ran this way and that in preparation to launch fighters and fend off another attack. It was a good sign. If everyone acted more casually it would’ve meant that Lena and Bailor had been reduced to pulp. After two passes their instructions were to run for it anyway. Sending fighters after them was already a lost cause.
“What should we do?” the cleaning crew supervisor shouted to a running technician.
“Stay out of the way!”
That was the last thing Rion had in mind, and he muttered something about feeling sick as an excuse to scuttle away along one of the walls under the pretense of searching for a bathroom. What he really wanted was to find some way to get himself noticed by the commanding officers. He had a good idea what might get their interest, so he raced up to the most senior looking officer on deck in hopes of being carried up the chain.
“I’ve seen that ship before,” he said in a mix of panic and anger that immediately widened the officer’s eyes.
“What?”
“I’ve seen it. I need to talk to the commander. Now!”
The senior deck officer glanced around in a moment of hesitation before nodding and grabbing Rion by the arm. They bumped into a pilot fiddling with his helmet before making it to a lift and getting on board. Every once in a while the officer would mutter something into the com piece on his shoulder, but it was so low that even in the still lift distinguishing the speech was impossible.
“Tell me what you know,” the officer said, aggressively turning toward him. For a second Rion wondered if he knew he was actually a member of the Assailing Face’s crew, but he put that fear out of his mind. He had to say something but not give away so much that he’d get left behind.
“It came in for service when I was working at a shop outside of Jupiter,” Rion said.
The officer nodded and muttered more, passing along the information. When the lift doors opened, the strong-armed escort continued all the way to what Rion was sure was the flagship’s command center. He suppressed a smile as they approached glistening white double doors, which could’ve even held the chancellor.
While there were a lot of faces in the room he didn’t recognize, all of those present had on typical Alliance uniforms. The chancellor surely wasn’t here. Still, it wasn’t a total loss. He blinked when he recognized Commander Hobart, whose white hair made him easy to spot.
He still wore a sizable belt that easily was large enough to use as a weapon or sled in a pinch.
“This is him,” Hobart said, getting a shaky nod from the docking bay officer.
“I’ve got a lot to…”
“Leave us,” Hobart said, dismissing him.
Rion quickly scanned the room, trying to spot anything that might tell him what was happening with the Assailing Face. There were instruments all over. Dozens of pairs of eyes were on him. It hadn’t really hit him until this moment what playing double agent might mean. Only the thin bone of his skull separated the things in his head that would get him killed from slipping out.
“Go on then,” said Hobart. Rion swallowed.
“I wouldn’t have known it if it wasn’t so obvious from the engine display in the shape of a face,” he said, shaking his head. “But I’ve seen that ship before. It stopped in to change out fuel cells when I was working on Europa.”
Hobart squinted. He had a calm air about him, as well as a sense of decisiveness, speaking in short bursts. It was strange but the man was so calm he didn’t appear to breathe.
“Your name?”
“Treigar Janey,” he said, recalling the name of the man with the hawk neck tattoo whose position he took. If anybody followed up on that too quickly he might not make it out of the conversation alive.
“When was this?”
“Three and a half years ago. I didn’t realize it was the Assailing Face at the time. It seemed like some kind of joke imitation, but I’m sure from seeing it out there it’s the same ship.”
Hobart briefly turned his attention to some of his subordinates, who acted as if they’d just been handed a series of orders even though not a word crossed between them.
“Anything about where the ship originates from, its home base, who the crew are?”
Rion sighed, working up a sense of plaintive ignorance.
“I wish I knew. I’d only seen it that one time, so I don’t know if it was from around there. The pilot was a tall and skinny man wearing all black, even over his head,” Rion said, hoping to throw them a curve ball if they knew Reznik was dead. “Do you mind if I ask a question? Were you able to destroy it? I mean, it attacked the Vestige on a solo mission, no offense.”
Hobart’s roll of the eyes gave away the answer. His friends were safe.
“We’ve learned a good deal about them since their recent reappearance. For example, even the casual observer could tell that they have access to Alliance records, as evidenced by this timely attack. We’re scrambling our signals to make sure those leaks get plugged. But beyond that, the embarrassment of suffering an attack on this vessel won’t need to be endured much longer. We will extinguish them once and for all and shred the ship into nails.”
Rion could tell that Hobart’s attention was already drifting to some of the monitors and underlings in the area. He needed something good to make a lasting impression, or this entire trip would be a waste.
“Destroy the ship? That doesn’t seem like the most prudent course of action from the Alliance’s standpoint. In every shop I’ve worked in, there was an underlying rule to never let a good tool go to waste. Surely a notorious ship with a mysterious pilot and ambiguous goals could be repurposed and put to good use.”
Hobart, usually quick to fire back his answer, paused for quite a while. He seemed to look at Rion anew, while for himself, Rion suppressed an urge to reach out and strangle the commander while whispering “it’s for the best.” This man was complicit in his abandonment, and there had to be a punishment for that, as well as a reason.
“Perhaps, but capturing a ship intact isn’t always possible. We’ll find out soon enough. The Vestige placed a tracking beacon on them during their second pass and is moving immediately in pursuit.”
Commander Hobart’s chilling words flushed much of Rion’s plan out the window. He’d imagined getting on board the Vestige and from there spreading more disinformation about the Marshall Force’s growing strength both internally to high-ranked officers like Hobart and externally by accessing com stations, which would carry a great deal of credibility.
Now a sick feeling filled his chest and forced a drastic change in strategy. He was along for the ride as the most powerful ship in the Alliance fleet hunted down and cornered his friends and the Assailing Face. If he didn’t do something, he would lose them.
Accomplishing that became a lot more difficult because he very quickly had a lot of tasks to occupy his time. Far from getting to lounge around the ship, his crew was immediately set to repairing the damage to the port side that the brief altercation had caused. There seemed to be no end of vents, conduits, and cables that needed to be repaired and replaced. About a third of the ship was actually in the dark.
In rare free moments, Rion attempted to take matters into his own hands. Armed with a good excuse about a severed data line, he scouted for the entrance to the top-most decks and found the special lift that traveled up the narrow stem. The guard posted at the lift doors had an unusual mask on that covered everything but his eyes and mouth. It extended right out of the usual Alliance uniform, something everyone could’ve had but n
o one else he’d ever seen did.
“I’m here to handle the repairs on the upper floors,” he said, giving his tool belt a quick check to emphasize the point.
“There is no admittance to this lift,” came a stern reply.
Rion attempted to argue and equivocate, talking about orders and the functioning of the ship as a whole, but the guard wouldn’t have any of it. Seeing the chancellor’s quarters wasn’t going to happen. He needed to develop another plan in a hurry. An entire day had passed and he had no clue how long it would take the Vestige to catch the Assailing Face, which had planned on hanging around back at Titan.
Would his friends realize they were being tracked before it was too late? It made it hard to sleep on off hours knowing that keeping an eye on the ship’s core systems and exterior was generally his responsibility.
At some point in the small hours of night, Rion hit upon an idea that he thought could get him another trip to the command deck, at least. If he could cause a serious disruption without being noticed and then fix it, there was a chance it’d get him some favorable attention. But the hallways were monitored, making any overt sabotage obvious.
But the opportunity came when he was working behind the paneling on a heating duct that also contained a power line running straight from the reactor. Most of the power had been restored in the ship, but a brief surge at his current location would cause an outage at the next power station down the line. Gritting his teeth, he tapped into the line with a scanning device, stripped off the device’s casing, and fried the battery cell. In seconds the hallway was pitch black.
The sounds of officers shouting and running in confusion followed. A message came through on the com that something had happened and they needed to figure it out instantly. Rion let them stew over the issue and work through a handful of incorrect fixes before taking the crew and some impatient officers to the correct power station and leading them in the proper direction. Before long the power was restored and Rion looked like the savior.
One problem. No one cared and five minutes later the entire situation seemed to have been forgotten.
Time continued to pass and Rion became more reluctant about pulling any more stunts that could be exposed as fraudulent. Watching broadcasts and looking out of the window seemed to be his only real method of getting information about the chase, since most officers wouldn’t talk to him about it and his communication channel was limited to the maintenance workers.
As he walked toward a mess hall alone, he started to think he’d be trapped on the ship long after his friends had been blown away.
“Rion,” called a voice down an adjacent hallway. Rion stopped himself from turning his neck a moment too late. He shut his eyes in a moment of disbelief over his stupidity and opened them to see Commander Hobart standing in a dark doorway.
The man’s expression was neutral but penetrating. He turned into the dark room and Rion felt he had no choice but to follow. Inside, he found it to be part of the ship’s medical wing with sinks and padded surfaces for patients. Hobart crossed his arms over his chest. Rion didn’t know what to say. He’d been caught, but he didn’t know by how much.
“You look so much like him,” Hobart said at last. Rion’s heart rate accelerated. It felt like he was sprinting even though he was standing in place.
“You mean my father.”
Hobart bit his lip and looked askance at the floor. At least he didn’t appear angry and wasn’t immediately about to kill him for flying a traitorous vessel.
“He wouldn’t be happy that you’re here,” Hobart said.
So many thoughts were running through Rion’s mind that he didn’t know which would end up popping out of his mouth.
“Speaking of where people are, where is he?” Rion asked, a hint of indignation creeping into his voice. Hobart took a deep breath and looked him in the eye.
“He passed about six years ago, him and your mother both.”
“They passed?” Rion asked.
“What about you? What are you doing here under a fake name?” Hobart said, dodging but still making Rion feel uncomfortable. He was under no illusions about who had the power here. But there had to be more to the story about his parents’ deaths, and from Hobart’s slight twitch of the lip it didn’t seem all that pleasant.
“Look, it’s not easy being nobody in the Alliance. I’ve been trying to work my way up, get attention, land a position that actually commands an ounce of respect. Maybe I could make a difference and make things better,” he said. At this point, he was sure that for everything each of them said the truth was ninety degrees away.
“Hearing that would make your father roll over in his grave. All he wanted was for you to build your own life outside of the Alliance. He knew that if you followed in his footsteps you would be forced to do things, believe things that came at a great personal cost,” Hobart said, sounding almost regretful.
“Like passing?” Rion shot back. “I’m not sure if you’ve seen how things are out there, but there’s less and less breathing room if you’re not in the Alliance.”
While speaking, he reached into his pocket and grasped the disc he’d found on him when he was abandoned. It would’ve been easy to pull it out and show it to Hobart, but it just didn’t feel right. Hobart appeared to be inwardly wrestling with something, and Rion didn’t want to distract him.
“I don’t know how much you remember of what you’ve learned about them, but your father was a close advisor to the chancellor and your family was involved in the very founding of the Alliance during the expansion. Chancellor Yetrue has some eccentricities and a great deal of paranoia about retaining power. Your father changed your name, kept his wife hidden as much as possible, and passed you off as the son of a housekeeper in an attempt to spare you. Eventually the chancellor’s wrath turned on your father,” Hobart said.
Rion was stunned, which was a surprise because he felt so hardened with anger that he thought nothing could get through.
“If by your own account the chancellor is ruthlessly killing his own people, why are you in his service? Are those methods you approve of?” Rion asked.
Hobart breathed deeply through his nose.
“I do not. It’s complicated for all of us commanders, but there are things we can do and things we can’t. Crossing the chancellor is one thing we can’t do, but even he can only give so many orders and outside of that we have some autonomy.”
“Sounds like a sweet deal,” Rion said, getting a sharp look from Hobart reminding him to watch his mouth.
“Look, there’s a lot of water under the bridge, but you’re here now and we can find a better place for you, since that’s what you want. You can go by whatever name you choose except the one you were born with. Once people are blacked out even whispering their names can result in deadly retaliation. I know you must feel a lot of anger and disgust, but you have to put all that behind you too. If you’re with us, you can go far,” Hobart said.
Rion took a moment to ponder the offer. For a moment it sounded tempting, exactly what he wanted and a good way to make sure Lena and Bailor remained safe.
“See, that’s exactly the kind of thing that needs to change, special deals to get ahead because of who you know. I’m a good engineer with a vast knowledge of ship mechanics. I should be able to climb up without having to pay someone off or be related to someone that gets me a favor,” Rion said. If there was a gentler way to broach the subject of corruption, he couldn’t imagine it.
“Suit yourself then, but I’ll keep an eye out for you either way. I owe your father that much.”
Hobart started for the door, but Rion called out to him before he left the dark room for the hallway.
“Commander, one more question. Have you ever seen the chancellor?”
“No, I never have and I don’t ever expect to. He never shows his face.”
In that instant, Rion promised himself that one way or another he would find his way up. He understood more about the terrible positio
n his father was in. Abandonment wasn’t excusable, but neither was murdering his parents. This was a score that had to be settled.
In the days that followed, the crew completed most of the repair work that could be done internally. The exterior was still a mess, but that couldn’t be handled until the ship took a prolonged rest at a repair station. That didn’t seem likely to happen soon as the cruiser continued on at full speed. As best Rion could tell, they’d made it all the way to Saturn.
If Lena and Bailor had found the tracker, they might drop it here and continue on. If they didn’t, they’d barely have time to stretch their legs after coming to a halt before the Vestige and its fighters would be all over them.
Rion’s hands felt cold as a buzz came through on his channel directing him to the command deck. He hadn’t heard or seen Hobart since their meeting in the dark room of the medical ward, and he’d started to believe that the conversation would fade into history. But if Rion was being called up, Hobart had to have something to do with it.
When he arrived, he was greeted with another round of eerie stares from technicians and senior staff operating the ship’s consoles and instruments.
Hobart flashed an easy smile and called out to Rion, patting him on the back like they were old friends.
“You may recall that our new crewmember from the Gravilinx station gave an excellent suggestion the last time he was here. Why not capture the ship and subsume the mission of the Assailing Face? We’re about to see if such a thing can indeed be done. Bring our target up on the monitor, please,” he said.
A moment later they had a fuzzy image of a spec in space. It became crisper to reveal an oddly shaped ship approaching an area within range of a small space station around a moon. Hobart’s good humor belied the horror that they were about to confront his friends.
“Let’s go ahead and launch all available fighters and place them around the perimeter. I don’t want a single life lost, so if they can’t be taken easily we’ll have no choice but to shoot them down. We have a good idea of the range of the scanners for a ship that size. Let me know when we’re all in position,” Hobart said.
