“The Alliance is a means to an end,” Rao continued. “In the end, Earth will become ours again and then we can separate ourselves from the affairs of the galaxy. In the end, Earth will be left alone by the Ch’Tauk and all others who would seek to do us harm. We will become the peaceful world we once were before humanity dared to go out into the depths of space.”
29
Battleship Resolute
Captain Alfredo Ortiz walked down the long corridor leading to the hangar deck in silence. He was carrying a bottle of vintage Kentucky Bourbon under his arm and a heavy heart in his chest. He had come to help his friend mourn the death of the woman he loved. Alice Bennett had been a difficult woman to know, but Ortiz had considered her part of his family when she served under him on the Terran Princess.
He had tried to reach Lee Pearce by radio after the man had returned to his ship, but the first officer had told him that his friend was unavailable. Alfredo had listened to the story of Alice’s death and knew that this was a conversation he would not be having over a loudspeaker. As soon as he was able to get away from the rechristened cruise ship, Ortiz had come to the old battleship to comfort the man.
The Resolute reminded Ortiz of ships he had served on when he was a young officer. It had a lived-in feel that the newer ships simply did not provide. Alfredo could almost hear stories being told from the deck plates of the ship as his footsteps echoed down the corridor. Ships like the Resolute had won many battles in their time, but had also suffered hundreds of losses along the way. As a former military captain, Ortiz knew that each one felt like a cut to its commander and Pearce must be feeling as if a limb had been amputated.
The cruise ship captain had first tried to find his friend on the bridge of the ship, but knew that his friend would not be there. When he looked to Pearce’s quarters for an answer, he was also disappointed. He knew that both places were where he should have found the other man, but he also knew that deep inside, the hangar deck would be where he would actually find the man.
As he stepped to the airlock door that separated the hangar deck from the rest of the ship, he looked at the warped bulkhead by the door. He wondered how much damage had been repaired in the forty-eight hours that Lee had been given when he reported to Perigee station. The little creatures that Lee had rescued all that time ago were truly miracle workers when it came to repairing and upgrading ships, but if they could not fix this, the damage must have been monstrous.
Both airlock doors slid aside to allow Ortiz to enter. He stepped into the small hangar bay and looked around for Captain Pearce. He saw where one of his transports had once rested on the deck, a hastily painted outline on the floor indicated where the ship would have been stored while the Resolute was out on one of its rescue missions, but it now stood empty. Near the sides of the bay, Ortiz saw the marvels that were the heavily modified Demon Squadron Peregrine fighters.
Despite recently returning from a massive battle, the ships still gleamed in the hangar bay lights. Their unpainted metal hulls seemed ghostly as they reflected their surroundings. During the battle, Ortiz had watched in fascination as the ships pushed the laws of physics to the limit with their acrobatic maneuvers in the face of the enemy. He also knew that the ships were only part of the success of the squadron.
“Lee,” Ortiz called, sweeping his head around to look for his friend. “Lee, it’s me, Captain Ortiz.”
There was no response from the other man, but Alfredo thought he knew where his friend was. On the floor were yellow outlines where each of the Peregrine fighters waited between missions. He could count the numbers on the floor and see that the spot marked 2 was empty behind another fighter. Ortiz walked carefully around the ships, looking for the man who had flown fighter number one in battle.
What he saw as he came around the corner was the saddest thing he had ever looked upon. Lee Pearce, who had stood tall in the face of swarms of enemy fighters, was a broken and defeated man. He was sitting on the floor, directly in the middle of Alice’s landing zone, with his head in his hands and his face buried in his palms. He could see the tracks of tears as they trickled from around his fingers and down his face.
“Lee,” Ortiz began, not really knowing what to say. “My God, Lee, I am so sorry.”
Lee Pearce, captain of the battleship Resolute and hero of many encounters with the Ch’Tauk, looked up at his friend with anguish etched into his face. His eyes were swollen and red where he had been trying to hold back tears. For the first time since he had met the man years earlier, Ortiz could see lines across Pearce’s face that had not been there before. Lee was more than twenty years Ortiz’ junior, but at this moment, he looked considerably older than the cruise ship captain.
“I should have been out there, Captain,” Lee said, reverting to how he used to speak to his old friend. “I should have been in the Eagle and gone out there to protect her…”
The man begun to sob as he thought of his missing fiancé and Ortiz felt helpless as he watched. Alfredo had heard that they had gotten engaged just before her death and knew that the pain must have been immense. He stepped closer to his friend and sat down on the deck beside him, placing the bourbon between them.
“Lee, you can’t blame yourself,” Ortiz began. “Alice was doing her job and she was very good at it.”
“She was a deck hand, dammit,” Lee exclaimed, turning on his friend. “I put her in one of these death traps and patted myself on the back when I saw that she could fly. She had no business being in a Peregrine, Captain. It was entirely my fault and now she is dead and I am here and it is not fair.”
Lee began to collapse into his friend as he continued to blame himself for Alice’s death. Ortiz wrapped a single arm around his friend and held him as Lee shook with fits of sadness. As the sobbing began to subside, Pearce pulled away from his friend and wiped his face with his sleeve. Ortiz picked up the bottle of bourbon and pulled off the decorated stopper. He had acquired the bottle years ago when he had retired from the service and had been saving it for his retirement from civilian service someday. Now he felt that the time was right to indulge in the amber liquid.
“Lee it wouldn’t have mattered if you were flying right next to her in the Resolute,” Ortiz said, holding the bottle up to the light. “If it was Alice’s time to go, then there was nothing in this universe that would have stopped it from happening.”
“You don’t understand, Alfredo,” Lee said, looking at his friend with reddened eyes. “You can’t possibly understand.”
“How dare you,” Captain Ortiz replied, suddenly angry at Lee despite his compassion. “Do you think that you were the only person who ever lost anyone, Lee. Didn’t you ever wonder what happened to my family?”
Lee looked back at his friend with a strange expression. He had once asked the other man about his family, but had only received vague answers about them being on Earth during the invasion. He drew a deep, shuddering breath and nodded to the other captain to continue.
“My wife and I were married for fifty years,” Ortiz said. “We had three beautiful daughters and one son. The last time I went home, I met my fifth grandchild, Lee. I held that little boy in my arms and felt that nothing in the world could ever feel like that, and I was right. When I had heard about the invasion of Earth, I knew that my duty was to the ship, but I wanted to return to Earth and hold that baby in my arms and protect it from those damned bugs more than anything in the galaxy. It took years before I could look at the picture of my wife and not begin to cry, Lee. I lost everything that day.”
“I’m sorry, Alfredo, I never knew,” Lee responded, now looking at the bottle. “I always assumed that…”
“I know, Lee,” Ortiz replied, looking around the hangar bay from his seated position. “I never talked about it, the pain was too great. Alice’s death is hard, my friend. She was a really special woman and I saw you bring her back to life after that garbage with Alan those years ago. But you know what, Lee. I envy her.”
Lee snapped
his head up to stare at the older man’s eyes. The confusion evident in his expression made Ortiz sorry he had stated his point in that manner, but he knew that he had needed to get the other man’s attention. He set the bottle back down on the deck as he leaned in to his friend.
“I mean, Lee,” Ortiz continued. “That at least Alice was out there, fighting for what she believed in when it happened. At least she had a chance. I wake up almost every night from nightmares of my poor wife screaming as the Ch’Tauk burn our cottage down around her.”
The two men sat in silence for a long while, listening to the air move in the hanger and feeling the vibration in the deck as the ship moved through space. Each was lost in thoughts of death and how they could have protected the ones they loved, but didn’t. After what felt like an eternity, Lee turned to his friend and indicated the bottle.
“You forgot to bring glasses, didn’t you?”
For a moment longer, neither man spoke. Then, without preamble or cause, they both suddenly began to laugh. It was a laughter of relief that helped break the mood in the hangar and bring both back to the present. Ortiz reached over and picked the bottle up. He raised it to his lips and took a long pull, feeling the smooth burn of the alcohol as it ran down his throat.
He finished his drink and handed the bottle over to his friend.
“My wife would have killed me if she saw me drinking straight out of the bottle,” said Ortiz. “But what the hell, I like living dangerously.”
“Thanks,” Lee said, bringing the decorative bottle to his own lips and taking a long drink of the liquid. He began to cough as he pushed the bottle away from his face. His eyes were watering as he swallowed the drink that had obviously burned his throat on the way down. “Jeez, how can you stand this stuff?”
“It’s an acquired taste,” replied Ortiz, carefully taking the bottle from his friend. “It’s better than that rot-gut you like.”
“At least the stuff I drink can’t be converted to thruster fuel,” Lee said, still trying to calm his breathing. “I think I can feel my stomach lining melt.”
“You have a weak palette, my friend,” said Ortiz. “This is high quality booze, here.”
“I didn’t say that I did not want any more,” Lee said, reaching for the bottle again. “After all, it wouldn’t be polite to refuse this gift.”
The two men sat on the deck between the two nearest fighter ships. They each took turns drinking from the squat bottle until it was nearly empty. As Lee put the bottle carefully on the deck, he looked at his friend with blurry eyes that refused to focus correctly. His head seemed to be having trouble staying on his neck correctly and he was leaning forward just a bit too far.
“Thank you, Fredo,” Lee said, slurring his friend’s name. “I had no right to say what I said when I said what I said…”
Ortiz laughed as he reached over and took the bottle again. He drained the last gulp from the bourbon and winced as the liquid when down. He then held up the bottle and shook it to see if there was any more. When he saw that there wasn’t, he set the bottle down with a clunk and watched it topple over onto the deck.
“I just realized that we forgot to make a toast, Lee,” Ortiz said, only slightly less drunk than his friend. “And you had every right to do whatever you just said. I loved Alice too, you know. She was like the daughter I never had.”
“I thought you said you had three daughters,” Lee said, counting on his fingers. “What happened?”
“I had three once,” Ortiz replied. “But none of them ever became pilots. I was so proud of that woman, Lee and of you, too. The Princess crew is long gone, but they were all my family for those three years.”
“That’s nice,” Lee responded. He held up his empty hand to the nearest fighter. “To absent friends.”
“To absent friends,” Ortiz agreed.
For another long moment, the two men stared at the fighters that were gleaming on the deck nearby. For some reason, Ortiz began to think of Christmas and how long it had been since he had been home to Costa Rica and his family. The ships looked like ornaments that his youngest daughter had once made and that his wife had insisted on hanging on their tree every year. He had always liked how the ornaments reflected the lights that his son had hung on the tree.
“Lee,” Ortiz said, starting to rise from the hangar deck floor, but not succeeding well. “I wanted to tell you. We finished the sweep of the battle zone. We didn’t find Alice’s body.”
Lee looked up at the man as he staggered to his feet. He seemed to be having trouble understanding his friend, but the look on his face made Ortiz understand that he recognized his fiancé’s name. For a moment, it looked as if the man was going to cry again, but he held himself together.
“Thanks for letting me know,” Lee said. The slur disappearing from his voice as his sadness began to sober him. “I appreciate this, Captain.”
“You are welcome, Captain,” Ortiz replied. “Maybe we should have done this, years ago. By the way, we could not recover the flight recorder either.”
“The flight recorder?” Lee asked, trying to focus on the piece of technology. “Couldn’t you find the transponder?”
“We didn’t find any wreckage at all, Lee,” said Ortiz. “She must have been totally destroyed by the Ch’Tauk. I am truly sorry, Lee.”
Lee watched the other man wobble away. He heard the airlock door open and close as Ortiz left the hangar, but continued to stare at the empty bottle on the floor. His brows knitted together as he tried to concentrate on something he had just heard. He knew that it had been important, but his alcohol infused brain refused to wrap around the information. As realization finally dawned on him, he looked up at the Peregrine fighter next to him and smiled an uneven smile.
“No wreckage?”
30
Ch’Tauk Home World
Ki’Bontri practically slid across the steps leading to the Winter Palace’s front doors. He had rushed to the Audience after being summoned by the Lord Camerlingo. He had needed to rush down from his dreadnought and to his private estate to retrieve his best clothing for the Audience with the Empress. The fleet had returned, burned and broken; only a short time ago and he had found that his quarters had been damaged during the final attack.
It had been raining at the Palace that morning, the pinkish liquid coming in great waves off of the Ch’Toma Sea. It was now late autumn in the Imperial city and the daily convection rains made the dark stone of the Palace like ice under the Primero’s clawed feet. He had chosen the bronze colored trousers that the Empress seemed to favor him in, but a silver lame blouse that made his black armor look even more highly polished.
Ki’Bontri adjusted his clothing, now wishing he had retained his blue Sash of Authority for its martial significance, and prepared himself to meet the Camerlingo. As he waited just under the lip of the roof, he wondered why the doors to the Palace had not already opened for him. He had always enjoyed the feeling of the enormous doors opening wide as he approached them, pulled by invisible servants who waited to open the doors as their only priority in life.
After what seemed like an eternity, the First among Equals stepped to the doors and pounded his hand against the thick panels. He stepped back and waited a little longer, a cold feeling of dread growing in his stomach. He had never been made to wait on anything since he had become Primero after his father’s death. Now the oversight was taking on malicious tones in his mind. He knew that he was emitting fear pheromones, but that the rain was masking the odor from any passersby.
He stepped to the door again, this time balling his four-fingered hand into a fist and banging on the door with his armored knuckles. This time, there was an audible click as the locks that held the doors together released. Slowly, one of the two massive doors moved inwards as a servant, bare-bodied and glistening from the humid rain, pulled the door wide to admit Ki’Bontri.
“Why have you kept me waiting?” Ki’Bontri asked. “I have been summoned by the Camerlingo himself for a
n audience with the Empress.”
The Courtesan blinked all four eyes lazily at the Primero, not seeming to care about the man’s bluster. Ki’Bontri was insulted by the little eunuch’s attitude towards a man of his stature. The last time he had been in the Winter Palace, the Royal Courtesan’s could not wait to obey his commands. Now that he had received the title of First among Equals, he should have been greeted with a crowd of Courtesans, eager to please him. Now, the Courtesan walked past him and pushed the door closed again without a second look.
The Courtesan returned to the Primero and waved his small hands to indicate that Ki’Bontri should follow. The Primero brushed his clothes down again, trying to dry the fabric and look presentable for his Audience. He left a trail of small pink drops on the black marble floor. He was led into the Palace and towards the Audience chamber. The servant pointed to the chamber doors and then the floor, showing Ki’Bontri where he was supposed to stand and wait to be called.
Ki’Bontri watched the creature left the ante-chamber with disdain. He noticed that there were no other Primero in the room and that helped to ease his fear of retribution. Although the battle had not gone as well as planned with half of the fleet left behind and the rest damaged into near scrap, he held out hopes that he could talk his way out of any major punishment. He did have the Empress’ ear, after all and had been in consideration for Consort.
The Audience Chamber doors opened with an audible sigh and the Camerlingo walked through. He was still as tall and imposing as ever, but he no longer wore the stylish clothing that Ki’Bontri had last seen him in. He was wearing the simple white sash that indicated his position and carrying the ubiquitous staff. He approached Ki’Bontri and looked down at him with disgust plain in all four of his eyes.
“Ki’Bontri,” the man said. “You have been summoned by the Empress. Are you prepared to stand before her Glory and answer for your actions?”
Resolute Omnibus (The War for Terra) Page 45
