Mercury's Bane: Book One of the Earth Dawning Series

by Nick Webb

  The officer looked as if he would rather be doing anything than delivering his message. He leaned even closer to speak the next few words.

  “But that’s—” The admiral bit off the words. She forced a smile for those assembled. “If you’ll excuse me, something has come up. As soon as the review is complete, we will begin training on new maneuvers based on our analysis from the last mission. McAllister, you have the floor.”

  And she was gone, King at her heels, the door slamming behind them.

  Something was up. Something big, to make her leave like that.

  Chapter Eleven

  Venus, 49 kilometers above surface

  Tang Estate, New Zurich

  “Just tell me what I’m looking for.” The admiral’s voice was halfway between ugly and desperate. “Oh, for the love of … look, we don’t have the time to be checking every computer in the lab. The Telestines are going to mobilize as soon as the alarms trip. The team will be at the lab in three days, and they don’t know what they’re even looking for. I’m sitting on a message from the mission specialist right now, and they don’t even have a guess.”

  There was a pause, and Nhean knew that she was staring at the message. He cast his eyes down at one of the screens. He knew the message she was looking at. He knew, in fact, every communication that had gone between the Rebellion outpost and the mission team.

  None of us know what we’re looking for, the message read. Give me anything, any detail. The team is anxious, and half of them are planning to go off and look for kidnapped family members instead. I don’t think I can stop them.

  His frustration was clear. Nhean felt some sympathy for that. But while there was only one mission for William Pike, there were many for humanity.

  He wondered why they thought there were humans there at the research station—the target. He’d been toying with the idea of asking his Telestine contact if there truly was a human experimentation program. Tel’rabim was one of their greatest advocates within Telestine society—surely he’d throw him a bone, some snippet of information on the subject.

  But if some of them had decided to use captive humans as lab rats, would they listen to a lone voice of dissent? Even one as powerful as Tel’rabim?

  “Are you still there?” Admiral Walker’s voice was curt. The FTL packet transmitter caused a slight waver in her voice where there was none; she’d hate that. Now that he’d given them the tech to speak with him—stolen off a Telestine satellite that had, as his father would have said, fallen off the back of a truck—she treated him as if he were one of her soldiers.

  He did not bother to remind her that he was not. Their interests were aligned, but he was not a member of the Rebellion. He did not take commands from her. She could forget that at her peril.

  “Yes.” He kept his responses short. His voice should be distorted enough to be genderless, but the admiral was getting closer every day to learning his identity. The less audio he gave her to work with, the better. “I can only tell you what I know, and that is that the Dawning is movable. It has been moved between laboratories before.”

  “So it isn’t the laboratory itself.” There was relief in her voice.

  “I did check that. To the best of my knowledge, no.”

  “But all we can do is hope that it’s small enough to get onto a shuttle.”

  “Yes.”

  “And if it’s not?”

  Nhean settled back in his chair and fixed his eyes on the swirl of clouds outside the window. He waited until his anger dissipated before he spoke.

  “If it is not, we will be in roughly the same situation as before.”

  “No, we will not.” Her voice was flat. “We will have lost forty-six fighters. Almost five percent of my pilots. We will have tipped our hand regarding the fact that we have a fleet at all, and we will have a smaller fleet to use next time for an attack—an attack they will be better prepared to repel.”

  “Admiral, with all due respect, our fleet was so outmatched that no marginal change in their present defensive structure will make the slightest bit of difference. The fact that those fighters succeeded at all is a miracle.”

  A silent, simmering anger came down the line.

  Nhean could work with silence. He pushed himself up to pace, hands clasped behind his back, eyes still fixed on the clouds. “Did you think the Telestines were unaware of our activities? Did you think they had not noticed our Rebellion?”

  They was a silence. “Yes,” the admiral admitted finally. “I did.”

  Nhean raised his eyebrows. At least it wasn’t bluster. He had grown used to face-saving lies in the earliest permutations of the Rebellion, and it had been tiresome. General Essa had been the worst. At least Walker had a sense of pragmatism and dignity about her.

  “They don’t know where it is,” Nhean said. “Or, at least, I am fairly certain that they don’t. I am not certain they can reliably tell the difference between military base activity and standard station activity.”

  There was only silence.

  “Admiral?”

  “So you’re telling me....” She took a deep breath. “That if they take revenge for our attack two weeks ago, it might be anywhere, and on anyone?”

  He paused to stare at the communications unit on the desk, a half-smile on his lips. Their relationship was one of deception—a tenuous alliance at best. Every once in a while, however, the admiral surprised him. Now, panicked not that the Telestines might come for her, but that they might come for someone else, she surprised him a great deal.

  He tried to reassure her. “For all we know, they may think that the attack two weeks ago was the entirety of our fleet. I think we can safely assume that if they truly believed any one of our settlements was a Rebellion base, the settlement would have been gone long ago.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Insomuch as anyone can be sure of anything where the Telestines are concerned.” He was giving away too much of his speech pattern. He paused to consider before he spoke again.

  She interrupted his train of thought: “Our mission specialist mentioned potential military activity on Earth. Could that be leading up to an attack?”

  To tell her, or not? Nhean considered for a long moment.

  Yes.

  “There may be a factional dispute going on within Telestine society.”

  “Really?” She sounded as if the thought had never occurred to her before.

  “It’s hardly out of the question.” Simpler words. Simpler sentences. “Earth is not their home. I don’t know if they all agreed that settling here was wise. I’m given to understand there’s a cult of some sort—more than one perhaps, but it’s difficult to know how similar they are in that respect. We see similar disputes among our people aboard the space stations and moons. Competing power structures. Groups with diametrically opposed interests. The Telestines could be the same. Which, if true, would be … fortuitous. Competing interests can be exploited, after all.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.” She paused, and he could see her staring into the middle distance. A still shot of her, a candid photo taken some eleven years back in the hallways of Ares Station at Mars, hovered on one of his own screens. He wondered what she looked like now. “How do you know about the faction dispute?”

  He hesitated. The truth was that he didn’t know, not for a fact. It was only a suspicion, a shadow in the data he saw. Instinct. And how could he tell if his human instincts could be trusted to shed any light on Telestine society?

  “I cannot share that at this time.”

  “We are on the same side, are we not?” Her voice was tight.

  How little she knew. She, of all people, should have guessed.

  “My sources remain my own, and the Rebellion, of all people, should understand the need for secrecy.” He took a seat once more. “I am awaiting confirmation on several pieces of information.”

  “A factional war could be exploited.” The words were a reminder and a test.

  “U
nlikely at the moment, if we can’t figure out what the factions are or how to interact with them. May I remind you that we have yet to find a way to interface reliably with their computer systems, however reliably they can interface with ours?”

  “What does that mean?” she said. The question was sharp.

  “It means that the Telestines are eminently capable of interacting with us when they so choose, and they may, indeed, have been doing so for quite some time.”

  “We see their communications.”

  “I don’t mean the broadcasts.” Every year, or thereabouts, the Telestines liked to remind humanity of the treaty between them. There seemed to be increasing emphasis placed on the loyalty of the individual to the best interest of their species. That had been one of the first hints that all was not rosy in Telestine society, but that was not the matter at hand right now. Nhean looked at the communications unit as he spoke. “Haven’t you wondered at some of the information coming from the Rebellion cells on Earth?”

  There was a very long pause.

  “How do you mean?”

  He bit back an instinctive oath. She knew. He knew that she was well aware of what he meant. No one in their right mind, this high up in the Rebellion, would be unaware of the possibility he was implying. She just wanted him to say it outright. She wanted him to be the one suggesting it.

  He hated soldiers.

  If she wanted him to spell it out, she was going to have to work for it. “I mean that many of your cells still refuse to be identified. They’re able to conceal their location. And their information is unusually complete.”

  “They could be reporting from within the labs. It’s what I would do if I were in their position.”

  Was it? He wondered. “If they’re in the labs, they’re working only with Telestine equipment.” He was losing patience with this game. “And that’s impossible, as we well know. I think you understand the point I am making, Admiral.”

  She ignored that. “If they’re surrounded by Telestine technology, they might well have figured out how to use it,” she retorted at once.

  That was an intriguing thought. In the meantime, he was not going to continue to let her dance around the issue. “Do you not think it possible, Admiral Walker, that some of your sources are Telestine?”

  “No,” she said flatly. “Why? Are some of yours?” Accusation was heavy in her voice. Traitor.

  He did not particularly care. A great many people might call him that before this was done. In the meantime, he would not let her take some imagined high road. “Telestine sources could be useful. You were the one who suggested exploiting the brewing factional conflict.”

  “Not by working with any of them.”

  “Any benefit to them in the short run would surely be outweighed in the long run.”

  “Even so.” Her voice brooked no argument. “None of them can be trusted. To them, we are insects. Do you truly believe any of them would help us?”

  “Some of them do. There have always been factions of humans who advocated for other species—why not Telestines advocating for us? Tel’rabim—”

  “No.” A flat denial.

  He took a deep breath. “Admiral, are you quite sure that your principles aren’t harming the Rebellion?”

  She cut the call at that, and Nhean’s eyebrows rose. Interesting. Very interesting.

  He strolled to the window again to look out at the billowing orange Venetian clouds, and asked himself the question he asked every time he spoke with her—the question the rest of the Rebellion seemed not to think to ask: what was Admiral Laura Walker’s endgame?

  It bothered him that in five years, he still had not come up with an answer.

  “Sir?” Parees had appeared silently, as he always did.

  “Yes?” Nhean did not look over.

  “We’re detecting Telestine fleet activity near Jupiter.”

  Nhean froze. “Jupiter? How did they get there without us knowing?”

  But it would have been easy—far too easy. Who knew the limits of Telestine technology? They had given humanity the dregs, and what they kept for themselves....

  Now, he shook his head. “Warn them. Warn Walker. And get me whatever feed you can on the Telestine communications. We’ll help the Rebellion however we’re able to.”

  Laura Walker’s end game was no longer important. He might not trust her with a fleet—but humanity could not afford for it to be destroyed.

  Chapter Twelve

  Jupiter, Ganymede’s L4 Lagrange point

  Command Center, New Beginnings Station

  The room was silent. Everyone looked studiously away from Walker as she rested her fists on the desk. Her chest was heaving. Telestine sources? Did their source on Venus not understand what the Telestines had done to humanity? Did this person honestly believe that she would trust a Telestine with anything?

  “Ma’am.” It was Commander King. “Even if the Telestines are behind some of our intelligence, even if they’re just trying to get us to take out their enemies in other factions, we’ll take them down.”

  “You think it’s good that we would fight for them in their faction wars?” Her head swung, and she was pleased to see King flinch at the look on her face. “Spend our own blood to buy them victory?” She could barely get the words out. “Show them our ships?”

  “Any ship we take down now is one less to take down in the final fight,” Delaney offered.

  “The final fight is supposed to happen with their defensive grid down, they aren’t supposed to have fighters in the air at all!”

  The room fell silent.

  “Our sources are not Telestine.” Walker cradled her elbows in her hands as she forced the words out. “I refuse to believe that. We would know.” She swept her eyes over the room and the others nodded quickly. They knew better than to disagree right now. Every one of them met her eyes and she knew from the tightening of their lips that even if they did not believe her, they would not speak of the suggestion again. She could live with that. Her eyes fixed on Larsen, whose gaze was firmly fixed on his screens. “Larsen.”

  He looked up and seemed to see the tension in the room for the first time. He looked around himself and cleared his throat awkwardly.

  “Uh, it’s just—I am getting the weirdest feedback coming in on our systems. It’s like the outpost on Adrastea ... disappeared? Not quite disappeared. It’s like trying to look at something through steam, you know? Lots of static.”

  “Solar flare?” offered Captain Noringe.

  Larsen shook his head. “Adrastea is the second closest moon to Jupiter, so it’s tidally locked and the sun is completely blocked out for the next hour. It couldn’t be a flare….”

  The rest of the officers looked at one another. When the line on the desk rang, everyone jumped.

  Walker reached out to open the call. “Admiral Walker.”

  “The Telestine fleet has found you.” The distorted voice was back, calm. “They seem to have appeared near Adrastea and are sweeping the system. I don’t know if they know where the fleet is, but they’ll find you soon.”

  “Clear the station.” Walker heard her own voice speaking. “Delaney, King, with me to the Intrepid. You too, Larsen and Harris. Noringe, Lee, and Kim, to your ships. Everyone take your direct reports. Larsen, sound the evacuation order. Everyone move.”

  “What do we do when we’re there?” Ensign Harris had stood up, but she was frozen there.

  “Evacuation first.” Walker’s voice was sharp. “Get the station between us and the Telestines, dump all the thrust you can to get around the side of the planet, and then cut your engines.” If they were drifting, giving off no signals, there was a chance the Telestines wouldn’t see them. “Let’s not be sitting ducks.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Larsen punched a code into the computer and the klaxons wailed to life. “People should be leaving the shuttle bays any moment now. It’s a red alert, no one should be stopping for anything.”

  “Add a timer. We can�
��t afford to wait.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” No one moved.

  “Now!” She jerked her head at Delaney and King to follow her; Harris was already moving.

  New Beginnings Station was far from full; thankfully, King had suggested long ago that they should keep as many people on the ships as possible, even while docked at the station, and have the shuttles on constant alert and ready for the rest of them, in order to be able to leave at a moment’s notice. Maybe the only ones who will die today will be the officers, she thought with black humor. Walker took the corridors toward the heart of the ship and the ladders that would lead them to the shuttle bay.

  The countdown was flashing there on the walls—5:35, 5:34, 5:33—and Walker nodded in satisfaction to see the groups emerging at a jog from hallways nearby. No one was carrying anything, and no one was panicking. They drilled new Rebellion soldiers obsessively on the layout of their ships, and the soldiers now made their way to their assigned shuttles without shoving or jostling, though a few called goodbyes to one another.

  “What’s going on?” A new soldier paused in the doorway of Walker’s shuttle.

  Walker pushed him inside without answering and pointed to one of the seats. She strapped herself in and watched as the other officers did the same. She caught Harris’s eye as the door of the woman’s shuttle closed, and they both gave nods.

  In a way, they had been waiting for this since day one. It was almost a relief that the Telestine attack had finally come.

  Or, it would be if they didn’t all die in the next few minutes.

  “Ma’am.” Delaney settled next to her. He pitched his voice low. “Do you have a plan once we get to the ships?”

  “Yes.” And no one was going to like it. She shook her head at him. “No details yet. Still working on the specifics.” She didn’t need him arguing with her while she thought.

  “All shuttles loaded.” Larsen’s voice sounded, incongruously, from the pilot’s chair and over the linked intercoms. “Depressurizing shuttle bay.”