by Kal Spriggs
***
"Hey Skipper, what's the good news?" Lieutenant Elvis Medica asked as the guards closed the door behind Forrest.
"We're alive, so that's something," Forrest said. After the lighted corridors, the darkness of the cell seemed absolute. He felt around until he found the wall, then slid down to sit. "It's not the best situation," Forrest said.
"We've been captured by pirates, Skipper," Lieutenant Patricia Hersey said, "of course it isn't the best situation." The female lieutenant’s dry humor brought a smile to Forrest’s face.
"About that..." Forrest took a tense breath. "There's a Marius Giovanni in charge of all this. I don't know if he's one of the fakes, like the ones a few years ago, but if either of you get out of this and I don't, then the United Colonies needs to know."
"Yes, sir," they both responded.
The silence after his grim comment punctuated just how dire the circumstances were. Odds were that no one knew they were still alive, much less could plan a rescue. Even if the United Colonies did know they were alive, they didn't know where to even look for them. Any moon, planet, or asteroid could be host to a base like this. Forrest thought the gravity felt light, but there could be gravity generation or negation covering any range of locations.
Lieutenant Medica spoke up, "Any news on the rest of the crew?"
Forrest considered that for a long moment. "He told me there's some other survivors," he said after a moment. "I don't imagine there's many." His chest ached as he considered his first command. The Bowie hadn't lasted long. Maybe if he'd been faster, smarter, or just better, then his ship and crew would still exist.
Lieutenant Medica seemed to sense his distress. "Sir, it wasn't your fault, what happened..."
"Legally and morally speaking," Forrest interrupted, "it is my fault. Or at least, my responsibility. I was in command, I knew there was the possibility of attack." I had no reason to expect three enemy cruisers, but I should have realized that the platform and any traps it contained weren't the main threat, he told himself.
"In any case," Forrest said, "getting everyone out of here also happens to be my responsibility. So we're going to work on that. I'm going to go ahead and describe everything I saw when I wasn't wearing a bag over my head and everything I heard. I want you two to put it all to memory and then we'll see what we can come up with." He gave a tense smile, "And from here on out, let's operate under the assumption that we're being observed at all times."
***
"...operate under the assumption that we're being observed at all times."
If only you knew, Reese sneered. He watched on the display as Lieutenant Commander Forrest Perkins described what he'd seen of the base. Reese had only just returned from his latest acquisition, the timing just off that he hadn't had a chance to encounter the other man in person during his tour. He didn't doubt that Marius Giovanni had planned it that way, possibly to avoid such a confrontation.
My wife's lover, he thought, his blue eyes flashing in anger, under my control. He had never imagined that he'd have the chance to have a reckoning with the man. There'd been plenty of sleepless nights spent thinking about Forrest and Alannis, thinking about how his wife sought comfort with another man.
Reese's gaze went to his datapad. He'd bypassed the base's security system long before, so with his datapad he could access the controls to the entire cellblock, the environmental systems to that section, everything. With the touch of a finger he could vent the atmosphere from the entire cellblock and watch the man die in writhing agony.
Or I could tweak the environmental system, Reese considered, nothing major, just enough to increase the carbon monoxide content so that he and his cellmates would quietly fall asleep and never awake. If he did it right, no one would ever know he'd done it, it would look like a calibration error, one not noticed until it was too late.
He reached out for his datapad, but his hand froze a few centimeters away. It would be so easy. Forrest Perkins had slept with his wife. Reese's investigators and spies had confirmed that much. The two had spent time on dates, he'd even played with young Anthony William. The festering rage that Reese felt boiled over at that thought and his hand moved forward again, this time to hover less than a centimeter from the screen of his datapad.
Everything Reese had done, he had done for Alannis and their son. Forrest wasn't in the wrong, at least not intentionally. As far as he knew, Alannis was single, Reese was out of the picture. He didn't know, couldn't know the whole story.
If Reese killed him, it would be murder, plain and simple.
Reese drew his hand back, then. It would be so easy to become the murderer and monster that Alannis thought him. Too easy to fall into the trap of despair. How could I face my son, he thought, knowing that I had become exactly what Lucius had painted me as?
No, he wouldn't take Forrest Perkins' life. It wasn't necessary and, truth to tell, if Alannis thought the man was decent enough, then he probably was a good man. Of course, that didn't mean he needed to make his life any easier. He knew Marius's plans for the survivors of the Bowie. Every prisoner they'd taken, every ship that Reese's people had captured, all of that had a purpose.
Reese turned off the display and picked up his datapad. With the touch of a few buttons he modified the standing orders for the Bowie's crew. Time to set some things in motion, to put those prisoners to good use. And maybe make that bastard sweat a bit, Reese thought with a cold smile. After all, just because Forrest wasn't at fault, it didn't mean Reese had to be nice to him.
***
The cell door opened and a pair of guards waved at them to come out. As Forrest and the others stepped into the corridor, he saw other cells along it opening and he recognized men and women in the uniforms of the United Colonies being brought out.
"What's going on?" Forrest demanded.
"Quiet, you," a guard snapped.
Forrest's back straightened. "As the commanding officer of these personnel, I demand to know what is going on," Forrest snapped.
The guard scowled at him, but he gave him a nod. "You're being taken to processing. After that, you'll be put with the other prisoners. Got it?"
"Yeah," Forrest nodded. He didn't like the term "processing" but he wasn't about to put up a fight, not as long as they weren't facing execution. Learn more, he thought, use that knowledge to escape... or at least to get out a transmission or warning.
The guards moved them along, but Forrest managed to get a head-count of his people at least. Twenty-seven, he thought with despair, twenty-seven out of a crew of a hundred and seventy. That meant that one hundred and forty-three of his crew had died in the ambush.
The guards brought them to what looked like a medical lab, where they were stripped down and then sprayed with decontaminating foam. After that, they were given the opportunity to dry themselves and then they were screened.
Forrest frowned at some of the examination methods, they were far more thorough than he expected, complete with blood and genetic samples and on-site analysis. It was more like a military induction physical than what a group of prisoners could expect.
The last station was a full neural scanner and Forrest felt uneasy as they strapped him into the equipment and conducted the scan. It was a long, dull process, surely time intensive for what they intended. Neural scans like this one were used to check for brain-trauma or mental instability and had once been used to screen for psychic ability under Amalgamated Worlds. After the scan was complete, the doctors and guards ushered him onwards and soon he was dressing once more in his uniform, freshly washed and folded.
As the rest of the survivors of his crew assembled, Forrest gave them nods and pats on the shoulder, counting heads and trying to give them confidence. They were together, they could begin to plan an escape. Oddly, Lieutenant Hersey was the last of the group to come out, even though Forrest remembered her going in first. "What took you so long, Lieutenant?" Forrest asked with a smile. "Did you fall asleep?"
"Sorry, Skipper," she
replied, "they put me through a couple rounds of scans. I guess they were worried I'd suffered from a head injury or something."
"Maybe," Forrest said, but he felt his stomach twist in worry. Some of the other crew members had reported being sent for "additional testing" but all of them had included the neural scanning. Forrest had begun to feel extremely uncomfortable. Something was off about all this.
The guards gave them time to finish dressing and then escorted them down to a larger room. "Work party starts in two hours," the lead guard said. "There's rations and water here. I suggest you eat up, it'll be a long day for all of you."
The guards departed and Forrest turned his attention to the rooms other occupants. They were a mix of uniforms, he recognized some in the Shogunate uniforms and others in the uniforms of the Centauri Confederation and even the Colonial Republic. They stood in groups, though as a whole they stood solidly together.
"I'm Lieutenant Commander Forrest Perkins, of the United Colonies," Forrest spoke.
"You were captured, then?" A harshly accented man spoke. He had a collar rank of Kaigun Chusa, if Forrest read the Shogunate correctly. That meant he outranked Forrest and had probably commanded a cruiser, maybe even a squadron.
Forrest nodded, "Yes sir."
"I am the senior ranking officer, Kaigun Chusa Haro," the Shogunate officer replied. "I would suggest that your people follow the guards' instructions. We will spend most of the next ten to twelve hours in heavy physical labor."
Forrest didn't miss the insinuation that he should do otherwise. He gestured at his crew and then moved up to where the officer stood. He didn't miss how several of the other nation's officers also gathered.
"What can you tell me about the situation outside?" Kaigun Haro asked. "Though be aware, they will hear everything we discuss."
"We've established something of an alliance between the United Colonies, Tau Ceti, the Shogunate, and Admiral Collae in order to hunt down Reese Leone," Forrest said. That much Marius Giovanni had seemed to know already. Presumably Reese knew it too. "I gather there's been ships lost by all parties, and from your presence here, prisoners taken. Though I was under the impression that more prisoners were taken than I see here."
“Marius Giovanni has taken far more than you would expect,” a Centauri officer sneered. “He has kidnapped many officers, some right off the streets in Elysium!” Forrest looked closer and then blinked as he saw the admiral’s rank on the other man’s collar. “He took me right out of my mistress’s house!”
“Where is everyone, sir?” Forrest asked as respectfully as he could manage. That the Centauri officer hadn’t seemed to care about admitting to a mistress offended him quite a bit… and also lived up to every stereotype Forrest had heard about the Centauri’s senior officer ranks.
Kaigun Haro's face went hard, "There is another prison barracks, but it is now empty. There are fewer of us every day."
Forrest had a sudden mental image of watching his crew dwindle, day after day. "What, why?" Forrest's mind recoiled from the thought, "Are they killing--"
"Nein," a Tau Ceti officer interrupted. "Not killing… recruiting."
"Recruiting?" Forrest blinked in surprise, "How?"
"We don't know," Kaigun Haro said softly. "But they take a few, each day. Some come back, confused, exhausted. Some don't. Some we see again, only they wear the uniforms of Marius Giovanni's Nova Roma Imperial Fleet. Good men, men I have served with for years will look me right in the eye and tell me that they know their place, that they have sworn loyalty to his cause."
Forrest stared at them. He couldn't imagine one of his crew doing that. They were sworn to the United Colonies, to Emperor Lucius Giovanni.
Even as he thought that, the hatch opened. A guard stood there and as Forrest and the others turned, he began to read from a list. Most of the names were those of the other prisoners, but the final two names were from the crew of the Bowie. "...Petty Officer Martinez, and Lieutenant Hersey," the guard finished. "You are assigned to a special duty work party. Step into the corridor."
Forrest wanted to step forward, to demand to know what was happening, but Kaigun Haro put a hand to his shoulder. "Don't," he whispered, "they'll simply gas us all and drag out the ones they want. Passive or active resistance, they'll take the ones they want."
Shit, Forrest thought. As the two looked at him, he gave them nods.
He just prayed that they'd come through all this.
***
Lieutenant Elvis Medica scowled as a guard tapped him on the shoulder with his baton. Elvis rubbed at his aching back but he moved back into line and rejoined the human chain as they loaded boxes onto the light freighter.
The boxes all had scanner labels, but they could contain almost anything. Loading a light freighter like this could be accomplished with a forklift for far less effort, but either Reese's people didn't have that kind of resource, or they simply didn't mind putting their prisoners to work.
Any thoughts of rushing the freighter and attempting to escape were easily dashed by the presence of a half-dozen armed guards in full tactical armor. The guards didn't seem particularly worried, probably because of the dozen or more other guards that walked the upper catwalks.
"How you doing?" Lieutenant Commander Perkins asked as he passed him a box.
"I'll live," Elvis grunted as he passed it along. "You think they're rigged for observation here?"
"Unlikely," his Skipper replied. "Too much background noise, too many changes."
"This isn't the hangar you described," Elvis said as he caught the next box. "Is it?"
"No," Lieutenant Commander Perkins replied, "it isn't. That was military, this feels more like a cargo or refit hangar." He nodded down the way, at the next ship in the row, "that wasn't here either."
That was a sleek-hulled warship. The curving hull and smooth lines suggested it hailed from the Centauri Confederation, even if the space-black paint hadn't made that clear. The Centauri liked to use stealth technology on their ships, especially their lighter hulls. Elvis had written a few papers about the tech during his time at the Academy. He wouldn't mind spending a few hours taking the ship's systems apart.
Like any of the guards would indulge me, he thought with a snort.
"She's the Widowmaker," one of the other prisoners spoke up. "Out of Elysia, one of the Centauri's strike vessels."
"Strike vessels?" Elvis asked.
The man spat on the deck, "The bastards use them to attack colonies or military facilities that try to break away from President Spiridon's authority. They're fast and you can't believe how hard they are to spot. They carry cargoes of missiles and Centauri Commandos, and President Spiridon has used them to instill terror."
"Less talk, more work," A guard nearby growled.
They went back to work, but Elvis couldn't help glances at the sleek, black warship. If it was so fast and stealthy, how had they captured the vessel?
And if it's so very fast, he couldn't help but think, wouldn't it be perfect for an escape?
***
Chapter VII
Sol System
Neutral Space
January 17, 2410
"Well," Senior Captain Daniel Beeson spoke, "at least they agreed to meet us in neutral space." Though the Sol System housed a number of colonies, mostly centered on Earth's Moon, Mars, and a few scattered around Jupiter and Saturn's moons, all of them were technically independent.
The Centauri Confederation still claimed the system, but with Centauri's ongoing civil war with Tau Ceti, they had an ongoing agreement not to station military forces in the system.
Mostly because there's not much left here to fight over, Daniel thought grimly.
"I have the oddest feeling, sir," Lieutenant Giovanni said softly. She was standing next to his command chair, in her role as Princess, rather than Lieutenant. "Staring on the world that we all came from and seeing it this way."
"You aren't the only one," Daniel replied. He shook his head, "I don't think
anyone aboard has been here. She's kind of beautiful, isn't she?" He made a mental note to be certain that all his people had time to see the planet, if only from a distance.
Earth hung only fifty thousand kilometers distant, a blue-green gem set among the stars. Daniel felt an odd sense of veneration, like he'd stumbled across a photo of his great-grandmother when she was a confident young woman. He was proud of Earth, proud of what she had accomplished.
Yet he also felt sorrow. The homeworld of humanity was now filled with the ruins of vast cities that wars had looted and gutted. At the prime of Amalgamated Worlds, over thirty billion people had lived there... and now the populations of the largest cities were under a million. Most of the inhabitants lived the shadows of the former cities as either subsistence farmers or hunter-gatherers.
Millions of the inhabitants had fled to the colonies, millions more had died in the sacking of Earth, when the Shadow Lords had swept in to loot vast stores of artwork and historical artifacts and every bit of industry they could take. Millions more had died in the follow-on battles and raids as the Centauri and Tau Ceti fought over the scraps.
But the vast majority, billions of men, women, and children, had simply starved to death as the planet's infrastructure failed. It didn't matter how many cargo runs of food and supplies had come in, the starving populace had descended into first panic, then riots, and then an orgy of destruction where no one dared to land, for fear of being hijacked or murdered.
No one knew the true depths of horror that had occurred in Earth's vast cities, where rape, murder, and even cannibalism became so common-place that the media had ceased to report on the conditions.
Daniel's grandmother had come out on one of the last transports from Earth, before the last spaceports were overrun by warlords and looters. She'd told hair-raising stories of how her family had managed to survive and get to that transport.
