Resolute Omnibus (The War for Terra)
Page 13
“Acknowledged, Baal,” replied the captain. “Do you have coordinates for the exit jump?”
“We’re sending them now, Ronald,” said the admiral, using the captain’s first name. “Now get those ships and get out of here. Hathaway out.”
“Receiving coordinates for the rendezvous, sir,” said Farthing. “I’m transferring them to the helm station, Mister Goldstein.”
“Round up the ladies, Richmond,” ordered the captain. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
His bridge staff began to work. Chang looked at the stations to see each person moving quietly, but with serious purpose. Although he missed the activity and power of Baal, he had to admit to himself that having this ship with this crew was the most he could ever have asked for as a captain.
“The girls report ready for the jump,” announced Farthing. “Ship departments report ready as well.”
“Alright,” Chang said to the helm. “Take us into M-space, Goldstein.”
The screen shifted from the chaos of battle as the massive fusion reaction twisted the electromagnetic membrane of space. A swirling blue vortex grew across his view to hide everything else. He glanced at the screen mounted on the armrest of his chair to see a similar vortex open near Baal and the other warships. Just before they entered the blue-black nothing of M-Space, though, Chang noticed that the other ships were heading in a different direction.
16
Now
In the twenty-four hours since the Terran Princess had discovered the Baal carrier group, Lee had been harassed, assaulted, shot at, and threatened. As he returned to his quarters on board the cruise ship, he decided that he had earned a good night’s rest. As he left the lift on his deck, he noticed the carpet he had worn down to the deck was now strewn with paper and ground-in food.
As he reached his own door and reached out to activate his door lock, the next door opened and a bandaged soldier from Baal stepped out, laughing obnoxiously at someone still in the room. He stepped backwards out into the hallway and tripped, toppling backwards onto the floor. Another man stumbled out into the corridor and grabbed the first man’s arm. The man screamed as his friend tugged on his injured arm.
“Sorry, mate,” said the man to Lee, still tugging on his friend, oblivious to the howls of pain echoing down the hall. “Celebrating the first good meal we’ve had in weeks.”
The injured man managed to gain his feet and promptly punched his friend’s shoulder with his good hand. Both men stumbled back into the stateroom and the door shut behind them. Lee shook his head at the empty hall and wondered who had decided that he needed to share this deck.
He opened his door and entered the cool confines of his room. It was a standard stateroom, calm colors and a few tacky sculptures placed on artfully arranged tables. There was a small bathroom to his right equipped with a shower unit and toilet. In the center of the room was the large bed that looked to Lee like the best thing he had seen in years.
He sat on the bed and peeled off his boots, glad to have fresh air between his toes for the first time in over a day. He removed his uniform and laid it over the back of a nearby chair. Finally, he stripped out of the tight vacuum suit that had become a second skin to him for so long. The room was equipped with a chemical cleaner and Lee placed both his uniform and vacuum suit into the slot and activated the device. He grabbed a loose pair of pants and went into the bathroom to take a long hot shower.
As he exited the room trailing steam and wiping his short black hair with a fresh towel, he felt another presence in the room. For a moment, he hoped the drunken soldiers from Baal hadn’t hacked the lock to his room, but then he spied the woman standing in front of the small desk by his bed. Her curly dark hair cascaded down her back over the deep blue dress she wore.
“May I help you?” Lee asked.
Melaina Petros turned suddenly, startled to see him in just the loose gray pants and a towel. Her hand went to her mouth in an expression that Lee found at once old-fashioned and attractive. She took a moment to compose herself before stepping back from the table and addressing him.
“I’m sorry, Commander,” she said, her voice calm. “I didn’t mean to intrude but your door was unlocked and—”
“And you just thought it would be okay to walk into a strange man’s room,” Lee said bluntly.
Melaina lowered her eyes to the floor and shook her head. She began to step away towards the door and away from Lee.
“I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I just needed to talk to somebody and you have always been so nice to me.”
Lee caught up to her and placed a hand on her arm. She was almost as tall as he was, and when she turned he looked at her face for what he realized was almost the first time. She had large, deep brown eyes with long black lashes. Her smooth, unlined skin practically glowed with health now that she had fully recovered from her ordeal.
“It’s alright, Miss Petros,” he said, indicating the chair by the bed. “You just caught me off guard. Please, have a seat.”
She sat down hesitantly as he returned to the bathroom to hang up the towel and comb his tousled wet hair. She sat patiently until he returned and took a position on the far end of his bed.
“Commander,” she started, “I have asked for you to call me Melaina, you know, unless you prefer me to call you Commander for the rest of our lives.”
“Lee is fine, Melaina,” he said, a small smile creping across his lips. “Now what can I do for you?”
Melaina stood again and walked to the door, passing close to Lee as she went. She seemed nervous to him and that had him concerned. She had seemed confident on board Baal when they were discussing plans with Admiral Hathaway. Now, however, she looked as if she were carrying a weight on her shoulders.
“It’s Admiral Hathaway, Lee,” she said, turning to face him. “I’m worried about this plan to go out and get that battleship. Something doesn’t seem right about the whole thing.”
“What do you mean?” Lee asked, his head turning to follow her motion across the room.
“I guess the first thing,” she replied, becoming more agitated as she stopped pacing, “is that the Terran Princess is not a warship, Lee. We barely have any shields and the asteroid lasers are a joke. Some of my colleagues might be able to beef some of those systems up, but we can only do so much.”
“The admiral is lending us some of his fighters for defense,” said Lee. “I think the elves have wanted to work on a few more of the things anyway. We should be safe enough. If we get into any trouble, we can jump back out.”
“And what if the Ch’Tauk has jump blockers in place? What if we run into one of those damn dreadnoughts of theirs?”
“Then we’ll throw rocks, Melaina,” Lee said, standing and reaching for her. She stepped away from him and walked around to the chair again.
“And another thing, Lee,” she said. “Hathaway wants to drain power from the Princess to power up Baal. That means we could be jumping into trouble without full shields.”
“He only wants to get his life support back up to speed,” Lee replied, sitting back down on the bed. “The captain is going to keep an eye on the transfer. If he pulls too much, we’ll recharge when we get to the next star.”
Melaina stared at him in astonishment. He knew she was supposed to be a brilliant engineer, but he thought she might be a bit too cautious. She knew that Princess could recharge her batteries, whereas Baal was almost out of power and had no ability to jump to a star to recharge. She stood again and continued her pacing.
“Lee,” she said, “the fact is … I don’t trust Hathaway.”
Lee looked at the woman’s back as she passed him. He had to admit to himself that the admiral’s behavior had been erratic, but the man had been under such strain. He wasn’t sure he could have remained stable after the constant fighting and loss that Hathaway had suffered. As a military man, he had to give the admiral the benefit of the doubt.
“I know he’s a bit paranoid, Melaina.…”
Lee, Chang is one of the most dependable commanders in the fleet. Hathaway has painted him to be some sort of traitor to the Confederacy. I just don’t buy it.”
“Melaina, I understand your concern,” Lee said. “The men in that fleet have lived through hell the last three years. People can change. We don’t know what may have happened to Captain Chang.”
“I can say the same for Hathaway,” she replied, advancing to meet Lee eye to eye. “Why can’t you believe that he’s the one we need to watch?”
“I agree,” he said, standing to meet her gaze. “I think the guy left his marbles back on Earth, but he is an admiral and I am a commander. I have a chain of command.”
“Oh, you goddamned military bastards,” she spat, anger coloring her cheeks. “You and your chain of command got us into this mess. It was your chain of command that started this whole war in the first place!”
“What are you saying?” he asked. “The Ch’Tauk started the war.”
“They started it because your precious chain of command decided to wipe out the Ch’Tauk three years ago. They found out about it and struck first and it serves us right.”
Lee stared at the woman. He hadn’t heard about the plan to invade Ch’Tauk space. He had been on Earth prior to the invasion, awaiting reassignment, and had been kept out of the top level briefings because he lacked the clearance. His mind spun with the information.
“You can’t believe that the human race deserved genocide,” he replied, trying to anchor his self in the moment.
“Have you seen the way Hathaway looks at Tuxor?” Melaina said. “And did you notice there are no non-humans on his crew? There are thirty species represented in the Confederacy, dozens that are allied, and that man outlawed them all to Resolute.”
Once again Lee had to stop and think about what the woman was saying. He hadn’t actually noticed the crew of Baal. He had been too busy trying to set up plans to recover the battleship.
“How do you know this?” he asked.
“I asked one of the soldiers he had left,” she said. “They obviously haven’t seen many women lately. I only had to bat my eyes and wiggle my ass for them and they told me the whole story. Hathaway is a xenophobic bigot, Lee, and I wouldn’t trust him for two centimeters if I were you.”
Lee stared at the woman who was now eye to eye with him. He was trying to absorb the information she had given him, but he was having trouble overcoming his training. He had served in the military his entire adult life, even when there had been no military to serve, and he found it difficult to push his loyalty to the organization aside. He suddenly and awkwardly realized that he was wearing neither a shirt, nor a vacuum suit.
“Did you really wiggle your ass at them?” he asked, staring blankly at her face.
For a long moment, neither of them even blinked at the other. Suddenly, a small giggle erupted from Melaina’s throat. It soon blossomed into a full-bodied laugh. Lee joined her in the laughter and they stood nose to nose, laughing at each other. As the laughter subsided, the two looked into each other’s eyes.
“Please, Lee,” Melaina said, wiping tears from her eyes. “Watch your back with Hathaway. He and his whole crew are unstable as hell.”
“I will, Melaina,” he replied, putting his hands on her shoulders. He felt the soft blue fabric under his fingers and the warmth of the woman’s skin beneath. “I’ll be careful.”
She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, surprising him. Stunned, he didn’t stop her as she pulled away and walked to the door. He turned to her as she pressed the door release. She looked back at him.
“I’ll keep an eye on your back for you as well, Lee,” she said, a small smile crossing her lips. “Besides, I like the view.”
Lee watched her as she walked into the corridor. There was a shout from the room next to him and a catcall. He walked to the door and stepped out himself. The two drunk soldiers had come back out to the hall and were looking down the walkway at Melaina as she left.
“Sack time, gentlemen,” he said to the two men. “Find your beds and get some sleep.”
“Who the hell are you?” the uninjured soldier said, slurring his speech as he advanced on Lee.
“I’m the man who’s going to tell Admiral Hathaway about two of his crewmen getting drunk and getting their asses kicked by a fighter pilot,” Lee answered, turning back to face the men.
The men stopped as if the words took a long time to register. The taller of the men, the one with the injured arm, appeared to size up Lee. He tapped his partner on the shoulder and both men turned back to their own room. Lee could hear them grumbling as they walked, but decided to let them go. As he stepped back into his own room, he decided to let the admiral know about the men anyway.
17
Busy with the preparations for their mission to find Resolute, Lee had barely had time to speak to Captain Ortiz in the five days since he and Melaina had met in his quarters. In fact, since that night, he had barely had time to speak to anyone except for the pilots who were transferring over from Baal, and the engineering teams from the Edison who were trailing back and forth, trying to revive the carrier’s fusion power plant.
As Lee monitored the landing of the five new Peregrine fighters that had been delivered earlier that morning, he heard a familiar voice echo from the landing bay. Alice had been working non-stop to get the landing bay of the Terran Princess ready for departure. She had personally moved most of the private ships over to the hangar bay on Baal and had helped move the immense prison transport further back in the Princess’ hangar, making room for the new fighters.
“Alice,” Lee called to the blonde woman. “Wait up. I want to talk to you.”
Alice turned to see Lee sprinting across the deck. For a moment she seemed to smile at him, the same smile he had seen back when they had first met. The smile faded away, though, as he approached her, into the scowl that seemed to have taken over her face since the battle. He slowed as he came closer and put out his hand to her shoulder in a move meant to be friendly.
She pulled away from Lee and turned back to supervising the positioning of the fighters. Lee noticed that his own Crowned Eagle fighter had been placed in the lead part of the formation, still gleaming bright silver in the deck lighting. The remainder of the ships retained their golden brown coloring, making his own ship seem like a king among peasants.
“Alice, wait,” he said, trying to get her attention back. “We really need to talk.”
“Okay,” she said. “Talk.”
Lee walked around her to see her eyes. She tried to squirm away from him but he stepped in her path. Once she had seemed so passionate toward him but now appeared to be repulsed by the thought of sharing the same room as him.
“Alice, you’ve got to stop this,” he said, trying to reason with her. “I need to know what’s happened to you.”
“Nothing has happened to me, Lee,” she replied angrily. “Everything is just fine. Now if we are done talking, I need to get back to work.”
Again, Alice tried to walk past him. He reached out his hand to her shoulder to try to stop her, but she pulled away. She stopped walking and crossed her arms, looking at him with a defiant patience.
“Look, Lee,” she said. “We had a good time, okay. A really great night and all, but that’s all it was, okay. Now would you just leave me alone?”
“Alice, I don’t know what I did to you to make you so angry, but I’d like you to tell me so I don’t make the same mistake with the next woman I meet,” he said, resorting to humor to try to lighten her mood.
“You self-absorbed asshole,” she said, uncrossing her arms and leaning towards him. “What makes you think this has anything to do with you?”
“Well, there were only two of us there … an
d since you’re the one who’s angry, I assume I’m the one who did something wrong.”
She stared back at him, a barely controlled rage burning in her eyes. He braced himself as she brought one hand up to her head. Instead of bringing it around to strike him, though, she covered her eyes. Her shoulder seemed to slump. When she took her hand away and looked back at him, he thought he saw the beginnings of tears lining the corners of her eyes.
“Lee,” she started, “it really has nothing to do with you. You are a great guy and I really enjoyed our night together, but—”
Lee moved closer to her, raising his hand to her shoulder. As he did so, she seemed to collapse into him, her head burying itself into his shoulder. She was taller than him, but at this moment she seemed very small. A great sob swept through her as he held her tight.
“Alice, I’m so sorry,” he said, stroking the back of her hair. “Whatever this is, I’ll try to make it right for you.”
“Oh, Lee,” she said, pulling back from him and wiping her eyes. “There’s really nothing you can do and I am being so stupid. I should be the one apologizing.”
“You haven’t done anything wrong, Alice,” he said, reaching up and wiping away the tears that had trailed down her cheek. “I mean, I’m actually used to sleeping with a woman and having her cry about it later.”
She looked back at him and grinned, a coughing laugh shaking her for a moment. There was a hint of the Alice he had seen weeks ago in her face just then. Although muscular and mature when she was working, just then she seemed like nothing more than a little girl, and he wanted to protect her from whatever had happened.
“Lee,” she said. “It’s just that … there used to be somebody special in my life, a long time ago. He’s gone now, but I see so much of what I loved about him in you.”