Colonial Prime_Humanity

by Kevin L. Nielsen

  And it meant someone with access to engineering sections of the ship was behind it. No one else could have known how.

  He sighed, and started back the way he had come, crawling back along the access tube at about half the speed he’d come in with. He could fix it himself, sure, but it wasn’t something outside the purview of a standard engineer. It would be better if Nathan let one of the regular engineering staff handle it. Nathan paused, struck by a sudden thought. Why had Li, the chief engineer, called him down here in the first place? Usually, the man waited as long as he possibly could to call Nathan. The man certainly had a stubborn streak when it came to admitting he needed help.

  “Commander?” The voice came from his wristband, though it wasn’t the computer’s voice. Li must have gotten the communications network up and running again.

  “Yes, Chief?”

  “Everything alright in there?”

  Nathan frowned. Li sounded agitated for some reason. Surely Nathan hadn’t taken that long to assess the damage, had he? Or maybe…

  “Is everything alright out there, Chief?” Nathan asked. “Everything’s fine in here. Just standard maintenance wear and tear. I can fix it if you like.”

  “Is…is that so, sir?” came the reply. “Um, no, I’ll have one of the men come by later to repair it.”

  Nathan licked his lips, realization dawning in a moment of sudden clarity. Li had sabotaged the ship. Why? Why would he do that? Of all the people aboard the ship, aside from Amara, the chief engineer had been the closest thing Nathan had to a friend after his promotion to executive officer.

  “Why?” The question came out before Nathan realized he’d spoken aloud.

  No response came back through the wristband, instead, the access door behind Nathan opened. Nathan looked back, rolling onto his side, in time to see the barrel of a concussion rifle shoved into the narrow corridor.

  Nathan reacted instinctively, slamming one hand against the wall and willing the power conduits hidden behind the thick metal paneling to overload. The lights in the corridor flickered for half an instant, then a panel further down the corridor burst outward in a shower of sparks. In the same moment, whoever was at the end of the corridor must have fired because the metal panel rang and suddenly shot back toward Nathan a moment before a muted wave of oppressive sound hit him.

  Nathan rolled onto his stomach, head suddenly throbbing with confusion and pain. He blinked, ears ringing, unable to think through the pain and fog of his mind. He knew he’d been hit by a partial stunning blast and that should worry him, but he couldn’t recall why. Something struck him alongside the head and he felt warm liquid begin sliding down the side of his face.

  Blood. Had he been cut?

  He struggled forward, crawling out of a primal urge to flee rather than conscious decision. The lights flickered again and then went out, leaving him in near absolute darkness, except for the light streaming forward from behind him. An open doorway. That’s right, someone had shot at him. The electrical overload. He struggled forward. Blood dripped from his head onto his arms.

  Someone seized him by the ankle. Nathan kicked out with his other foot and he felt something crunch. His pursuer shouted out in obvious pain, but Nathan only barely heard the sound over the ringing in his ears. Panic fueled his flight, making him crawl faster. His lungs burned from the effort of shuffling forward. Blood thundered through his veins and poured from the wound on his head. His thoughts seemed sluggish, slow to form, and remaining for a far shorter time than what Nathan thought was the normal amount. One thought lingered, however, overclouding all others.

  What is happening? Run!

  He continued forward. Eventually, he came to a door and he fumbled with the levers trying to get it open. After what seemed an eternity, the door popped open and Nathan all but slid out into the room beyond, collapsing onto the floor. Light made him blink, but it was a dim light, barely more than the soft glow of the stars. A storage room of some sort.

  Amara.

  The name came to him through the cloud and fog that made up the recesses of his mind. Amara. She was in danger if he was. Whatever else was going on, it was clear someone wanted him dead. Between that and the sabotages, it could mean only one thing.

  Mutiny.

  Nathan pushed himself up onto unsteady feet and stumbled toward the door.

  Jaelyn groaned and strained against the cords which held his arms behind his back. They held tight, not moving so much as a hair’s width.

  “I wouldn’t do that, Jaelyn,” Dr. Martin said, looking over at him from a few steps away. Sheawn and a number of other men Jaelyn didn’t know stood around her. They all had concussion rifles in hand and spoke in muted tones that nonetheless carried. They were taking over the ship.

  Dr. Martin was in charge.

  “Go to hell,” Jaelyn spat. Anger surged through him, anger and a deep, abiding sense of betrayal and pain. Dr. Martin was his friend, wasn’t she? She’d been on his side, on his mother’s side, on the right side of this all along, hadn’t she?

  Sheawn chuckled. “Well, boy, I have to say, I’ve always admired your spirit. You would have made a good soldier. Pity you won’t make it that long.”

  “Hush, Sheawn,” Dr. Martin said, raising a hand. The man quieted instantly. Dr. Martin walked over to where Jaelyn huddled against a wall, hunkering down to look him in the eye. She reached out a hand, as if to put it on his shoulder, but Jaelyn flinched away.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  Dr. Martin gave him a pained look, but pulled her hand back. “Don’t be like that, Jaelyn. This is only temporary. We only need you as leverage in negotiations with your mother. As long as she agrees to turn the ship around and grant us control, everything will be fine, alright?”

  The absurdity of it forced Jaelyn to stop struggling. She couldn’t be serious, could she? “Turn the ship around? We’re a year out from Earth.”

  “That we are, but a year from now, the war back on Earth will need reinforcements, and a surprise attack from the most advanced ships ever made could all but end the war. Permanently this time.”

  Jaelyn’s mind spun. Dr. Martin was the last person he’d have suspected to be attached to any particular political faction. Why was she doing this? What possible reasons could she have? It just didn’t make any sense. Sheawn had been the one to act as if he couldn’t let go of the past. He’d been the troublemaker, hadn’t he? Dr. Martin had stopped him so many times. Had she really been playing them all the entire time?

  “Alex,” a woman Jaelyn didn’t know said, stepping up to her from behind, “two of the other ships report that they’ve been able to subdue the resistance on their vessels. We still have a few pockets of fighting aboard our ship, and we haven’t heard from engineering.”

  Dr. Martin’s expression twisted into a grimace, though she didn’t stand. “And the other ships?”

  “No word. They’re probably still fighting. We did manage to cut communications here so no one will pick up any transmission from them if their crew resists.”

  “Very well. What about Captain Corrin?”

  Jaelyn’s heart leapt into his throat.

  “We have her surrounded in the Command Bubble. Surprisingly, she didn’t resist all that much, though she’s refusing to provide the commands necessary to adjust the ship’s course.”

  Jaelyn swallowed hard. Of course his mother wasn’t giving up the codes.

  “Why?” Jaelyn blurted. “Why are you doing this?”

  The woman who’d delivered the report to Dr. Martin snorted, a look of contempt crossing her otherwise pretty features and making them appear somewhat hawkish in contrast. “To win the war, idiot,” she snapped.

  Dr. Martin raised a hand and the woman quieted, stepping back to converse with Sheawn and the others in muted tones.

  “Peace, Jaelyn. For peace, true and lasting.”

  “The war was over! We had peace back on Earth. We had peace here. Until you went and did all this!”

  D
r. Martin snorted. “Did all this? I didn’t really have to do much at all. A few comments here, a little there, let Sheawn appear as the scapegoat and instead let the missives from the Earth United Council do their work with the factions already here. People don’t let go of attachments that easily, Jaelyn. They don’t ever let go of them, not really.”

  Jaelyn struggled into a sitting position, using the wall to push himself up. His hands snagged on something and he almost cried out, but instead grimaced and ran his fingers back over it. A protruding corner? Something sharp…

  “We were headed to a new world,” Jaelyn said, struggling to keep calm mentally as a plan formed in the back of his mind. “A place without war. Why would you let everyone fight again when we could have been one strong, united people in our new home? Why do all this at all?”

  “I had a sister, once,” Dr. Martin said. “Sheawn’s wife. She died at the hands of one of the men sitting on the Council. She died, believing in a world without war, hoping that someone would eventually win and unite Earth under singular leadership. Strength through unity, not compromise. The Council was a system built on compromise and filled with murderers, child killers, and rapists of hope and humanity. They didn’t deserve to rule. Why, Jaelyn? For my sister, that’s why. For justice. For family. For blood.”

  “My mother will never give you what you want.”

  Dr. Martin tilted her head and narrowed her eyes at Jaelyn. The boy felt his veins run cold with apprehension.

  “Your mother is a woman of unparalleled strength, Jaelyn,” Dr. Martin said. “I can respect her for that, even if she represents everything that I despise. In one thing, though, we are the same, she and I. We will do anything to protect our family. Anything.”

  With that, Dr. Martin stood up, turning her back on Jaelyn and walking back toward the others. “Sheawn,” she said. “Go to the Command Bubble and inform Captain Amara that we have her son. If she doesn’t provide the access code to change the fleet’s course within the next twenty minutes, we’ll jettison him out an airlock.”

  Jaelyn’s blood turned to ice, a great chunk of it settling into the pit of his stomach. The frankness with which Dr. Martin said it struck him harder than anything. He recognized the tone. It was the same way she relayed facts about botany and horticulture, about things in which she was already an expert. A statement. A simple announcement of truth. Jaelyn had no doubt she meant every word.

  “As you wish, Alex.” Sheawn nodded and turned to go, flanked by half a dozen others.

  Jaelyn licked his lips and watched them leave, hands slowly working against the rough corner on which he’d snagged his skin. He had to escape, and he had to do it now. The fate of everyone on this ship potentially depended on it.

  Amara spat blood onto the walkway between work stations in the Command Bubble, not caring in the slightest that she missed the edge of the path and her bloody spittle dropped a dozen feet to splatter against the Bubble’s glass. The body of one of her junior officers already rested there, lying up against one of the metal support shafts that ventilated the room.

  “Now, Captain,” Amara’s attacker, a middle-aged man wearing the garb of a mess hall worker and clearly a member of Unitatis Sangrinus, said. “If you just give me the command codes, I can stop all this.”

  The man gestured with a bloody-knuckled hand at the chaos in the room. Armed men and women ushered Amara’s command staff to different work stations, bunching them together in manageable groups. Those that resisted the mutineers were beaten into submission. After the one initial death, what fighting remained was easily subdued.

  “Go to hell.” Amara spat the words, ignoring the throbbing pain in her cheek and the sharp stab of it from her split lip. She could live with pain. She’d done so before. Bound as she was, hands behind her back, she had to force him to keep hitting her in the face. She curled her knees up as much as she could, offering her stomach as much protection as possible. They’d taken her by surprise, not so badly that she couldn’t have still taken them, but she’d hesitated, unsure how to react with the child within her in such a new and delicate state. That hesitation had cost her.

  Jaelyn. Nathan. Where were they? Her anxiety for one matched her fear for the other. She found she loved them both equally, and, somehow, that realization both comforted and terrified her.

  “Hold!” a booming voice called out, as the mess hall worker lifted a fist to strike again. The man stopped with his fist raised, fresh blood staining his knuckles.

  Sheawn Olliard walked over to Amara, the normal swagger she’d grown accustomed to seeing in his step completely absent, replaced by a cool confidence that was, somehow, far more disconcerting.

  “You go to hell too, Admiral,” Amara said, straightening.

  “I’ll see you there, Captain,” he said. “We veterans of the war, we all did things worthy of landing us in the bitterest fires of damnation.”

  Amara retained her silence, but met the former admiral’s gaze without flinching. His eyes narrowed.

  “I could have spared you all this, you know. I told you you’d come to regret not choosing me as your executive officer. Instead you had to go and put your hero’s son in charge. Not a smart move, on your part.”

  “Not killing me when you had a chance wasn’t a smart move on your part,” Amara retorted.

  Sheawn smiled. “All in good time, Captain. All in good time. First, we need those codes to unlock the computer.”

  Amara spat in his face. Sheawn, for his credit, barely flinched. A second later, though, he simply raised his hand and backhanded her across the face. Only reflexes honed by decades of practice allowed Amara to roll away from the blow an instant before it struck. Still, it hit with enough power to knock her off her knees and onto her side, cheek throbbing just below her eye. Her vision blurred slightly, but she retained her silence, careful to force herself to roll onto her back and not onto her stomach.

  “For that,” Sheawn said, standing and shaking the hand he’d struck her with, “I’ll personally break every bone in your son’s hand, in front of you, until you give me those codes.”

  Amara’s blood ran cold.

  Jaelyn.

  She didn’t let her fear show on her face, instead rolling back onto her knees and matching his gaze again, chin up, back straight, expression cold as the steel floor beneath her. “And for that,” she said, “I promise that when you die, and you will, trust me, I’ll make it quick and painless.”

  Sheawn arched a wide eyebrow, square-jawed face twisting into a small, disbelieving smile. “You’re welcome to try, anytime.”

  Nathan struggled to still the ringing in his ears, heart pounding, adrenaline making his hands shake. His breath came in short wheezes, spittle mixed with blood flying from his lip on every other exhalation. He should have spent more time doing cardio at some point. If he lived through this, he’d have to rectify that. His mind worked slowly, as if he were trying to mentally slog through sand.

  Mutiny.

  Nathan blinked and tried to focus on that thought as he rushed down the long corridors of the engineering level. He knew being out in the open like this was dangerous. Part of him half wondered if Li would be appearing around the corner at any minute, some form of energy weapon ready to bring to bear against him.

  Jackson Li, my friend…

  How could he? Hadn’t they been friends? Nathan growled, spitting blood that had dripped down into his mouth from a cut just below his right eye. How could he tell friend from foe at all anymore? Was the mutiny widespread or just isolated to a small section of the passengers and crew? Could he risk trying to find that out?

  He touched his wristband, mentally willing the computer’s tracking software to cease functioning. He should have done it earlier, but his mind wasn’t working as quickly as it should have. He needed to think, needed to figure something out.

  “Ace.” Nathan was surprised at how raspy his voice sounded. He’d been in combat before, seen death, but somehow his body still didn’t
handle it well. “Where are Amara and Jaelyn?”

  “I do not have authority to provide that information. Location assistance has been locked down.”

  Amara was the only one who could lock down the whole system. Was she safe?

  “What’s the status of the ship? Are there known casualties?”

  “I do not have authority to provide that information. Status and casualty reports have been locked down.”

  The whole system then. Definitely Amara’s work. He needed a manual terminal. He could override the lockdown easily enough, but he needed something with a little more computing power. If he remembered right, there was a terminal in one of the storage rooms ahead of him. If he could –

  A door slid open behind him.

  “Freeze, Commander!” Li’s voice. He’d survived the explosion earlier.

  Nathan froze where he stood, slowly turning around. Chief Engineer Jackson Li stood a half dozen meters behind him, leaning against a wall. Blood stained his engineer’s uniform, dripping down from innumerable lacerations on his face. It looked like his nose was shattered beyond repair, the flesh a lumpy, twisted mess beneath the blood. The right side of his face was blistered and burned, parts blackened and flaking away from the skin around it. Despite that, the concussion rifle in his hands was steady and pointed directly at Nathan’s heart. Nathan didn’t need to see the little red indicator on the side of the weapon to know it was set to kill, not stun.

  “Jackson,” Nathan said, carefully. “What’s going on?”

  “Don’t play stupid with me. You know exactly what’s happening. We’re taking over the ship, Commander.” The last word was said with a sneer, Li’s mouth twisting into a grimace at the end.

  “Who’s we?”

  “Unitatis Sangrinus, of course. Who else would we be? As we speak, Admiral Olliard and Dr. Martin are taking over the ship, readying us to return to Earth.”