“Jake Price,” Rug said once she reached him. “Something has happened.”
“Yeah? What’s going on?”
“There has been an arrival. Another wormhole has opened.”
“Another wormhole? The desk-jockeys can’t be happy about that.” Wormholes were now illegal under galactic law, though Jake could kind of understand that, since their use compromised the fabric of the universe. “Did another warship manage to escape the Steele System?”
“Many warships have emerged,” Rug said. “An entire fleet of them. But these are no human warships.”
“Who, then?”
“They are of Quatro make, Jake Price. These ships were sent by the Assembly of Elders—by the government whose tyranny I and my comrades risked our lives to escape.”
Jake nodded, remembering everything Rug had told him about the Quatro government and their promise of equal prosperity for all, which had ended up translating into starvation and slavery when the rubber hit the road. “Are they attacking?”
“No. Your species has already sent a vessel to speak with them, and to ascertain the reason for their arrival.”
“Oh,” Jake said, nodding. “Well, that doesn’t surprise me. I’m pretty sure your Assembly of Elders is going to get along with the Interstellar Union just fine.”
Pride of the Fleet
© Scott Bartlett 2018
Cover art by Tom Edwards (tomedwardsdesign.com)
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
This novel is a work of fiction. All of the characters, places, and events are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, businesses, or events is entirely coincidental.
Chapter 1
Kick Down the Door
Amber lights pulsed as Seaman Jake Price ran down corridor after corridor, trying to concentrate on finding his way through Tartarus Station despite the alarm’s constant assault on his ears.
He’d been able to make it out of the Outer Wing easily enough. The Union bureaucrats had kept him there so long that he knew that part of the station by heart. But the moment he’d reached the hatch that let into the rest of the station, he was lost.
Something must have gone pretty wrong. The desk jockeys would never have left that hatch unguarded unless all mayhem was breaking loose.
That was certainly what the blaring klaxon suggested. It had woken him from a deep sleep, and absurdly, his first thought was that he’d slept through breakfast.
Never would have happened in the Steele System. His daily routine was slowly losing the clockwork rigor left over from life in the Darkstream military. The bureaucrats were keeping Jake and the other Steele System refugees in a state of limbo—cut off from the rest of the galaxy, alone, wholly unsure of what would become of them.
It had been affecting all of Oneiri Team; the elite team of mech pilots he’d found himself commanding during what they now called the Mech Wars. A fitting name, considering the most notable combatants. The Progenitors hadn’t been able to keep his pilots down, but lately, it seemed the bureaucrats were succeeding where the aliens had failed. Ash, Beth, Marco, Maura…Lisa and Andy…they all grew increasingly listless, sleeping longer and speaking less. Showing less and less interest in what might be happening in the galaxy around them, and in what might become of them.
And yet, when the screaming alarm and blaring lights had spurred Jake from his bunk, he found the Outer Wing empty, as well as the other Oneiri members’ bunks. Apparently, they’d chosen today to be on time for breakfast.
The station only had two cafeterias, centrally located so that meals would disrupt the station’s routines as little as possible. For every meal, guards had escorted Oneiri Team and the other refugees through a labyrinth of corridors, until they came to a sea of metal tables and chairs, where they ate the sort of freeze-dried gruel that served as food in space.
Now, Jake racked his brain to remember the route, which he’d paid only passing attention to before. Every intersection looked familiar, which made sense, since they all looked basically the same. Was it a left here, or a right?
Not for the first time, his inability to use his implant to contact his teammates made him curse. Away from Steele’s system net, the things were next to useless, and integrating them with the station’s narrow net had not been at the top of the bureaucrats’ to-do list.
At last, he reached the cafeteria to find it milling with thousands of people—well beyond its official capacity. Clearly, it was being used as some sort of staging area. Or as a corral for panicking station workers. That seems more likely.
Keeping track of the time was one of the few things his implant was still good for: it took fourteen minutes of searching to track down Oneiri Team. He found them in the usual arrangement. Marco Gonzalez sat with a hand on his chin, staring into space, no doubt turning something over in his mind. Ash Sweeney and Beth Arkanian leaned back against a cafeteria table, joined at the leg. Andy Miller and Lisa Sato sat apart from the others, having some sort of lovers’ quarrel, from the looks of it. And Maura Odell sat alone, wearing a faint grimace, as though wondering how she’d ended up here.
Seeing Andy and Lisa together brought Jake a sharp pang, even though they were arguing. It had taken him a while to figure out what those pangs meant, which had helped him to realize just how out-of-touch with his feelings he truly was.
Is not knowing your own feelings a male thing, a soldier thing, or a human thing? He found it hard to tell.
“Oneiri, attention!” he barked.
For a moment, they all just looked at him, blinking. It was the first time since they arrived back in the Milky Way that he’d given them an order of any kind. Then Marco, of all people, jumped to his feet first, planting his right foot firmly on the ground and holding his arms at his sides like iron rods.
The rest of Oneiri followed suit—first Maura, then Ash and Beth. Andy and Lisa stood last, twin frowns flashing across their faces before vanishing as quickly as they’d appeared.
That was like Andy, but it wasn’t like Lisa. Ever since they’d picked her up, adrift in space, after she’d escaped from the Progenitor ship…ever since then, she’d been different.
“What is this, exactly?” Jake asked, sweeping his hand in the air to take them all in. “What are you all doing?”
“Waiting to see whether we’re about to get blown up or not,” Andy said. One of his legs ended at the knee—a souvenir from the conflict in Steele. Since arriving on Tartarus, he’d been fitted with a prosthetic that seemed to serve him as well as the leg had. The bureaucrats did that for us, at least.
“Andy, you didn’t undergo the training that the rest of Oneiri did. You only served with us during the final fight, back in the Steele System. If you’d been with us from the beginning, you’d know that Oneiri doesn’t sit around and wait to get blown up. Oneiri acts, and when opportunity knocks, we don’t just answer—we kick the door down. This is opportunity,” Jake said, glancing past them at the chaotic cafeteria. “And for the rest of you, there’s absolutely no excuse for failing to capitalize on it.”
“What would you have us do, Jake?” Marco asked. “We’re just as cut off as we were before.”
“You’re cut off by your own sloth,” Jake snapped, and Marco recoiled slightly at the hardened tone. “It’s pitiful, how quickly you’ve let the desk jockeys make you weak. The same goes for me—I’m big enough to admit that. We haven’t kept up our PT. Take us away from our mechs, and we’re apparently fine with letting ourselves slowly fall to pieces. Even Gabriel Roach would have known better than that.”
That remark brought some winces. But not from Beth. “Marco’s question was good. What are we supposed to do?”
“What do soldiers do when faced with a situation full of unknowns? We gather intel. This is the first time we haven’t been under the watch of armed guards.
Do you think everyone in this cafeteria is just as in the dark as we are? The bureaucrats deliberately kept us isolated and ignorant, and my money would be on everyone knowing more about the current situation than we do. My guess is, these people are here because they’re civilians. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t sensor operators, administrators, shuttle pilots fresh from a run—people with knowledge about what the hell is going on. People who have never heard the phrase ‘operational security.’ I want you to spread out through this cafeteria, pretend to be whoever you need to be, and get me answers to the following questions: what the hell is going on? And where are our mechs?” He glanced around at them one last time. “Please tell me I don’t have to order you not to phrase the second question like that.”
“No, sir!” Maura Odell said.
“Good,” Jake said. “Now go, and report back in ten minutes with answers!”
Twenty minutes later, they were all jogging away from the cafeteria and toward one of Tartarus’ three flight decks—which, according to a mid-level systems administrator, had been shut down and sealed off seven months ago for no real reason. That timing happened to coincide with the Steele refugees’ arrival in the Milky Way.
As for what was going on: according to a lidar tech who’d required some persuading, multiple ships had suddenly appeared in the Hellebore System, ships with profiles that matched those fought by Captain Vin Husher during what the lidar tech had called the opening battles of the Third Galactic War. Whether that was an exaggeration or not, it certainly told Jake a lot more about the current climate in the galaxy. Before, they’d only heard that Husher was putting a sour taste in the Interstellar Union’s mouth, but the specifics had been hazy.
Now, Jake felt pretty sure he knew why: the Union wanted to avoid war at all costs, but Husher knew it was inevitable. He was engaging with reality, while they were engaging only with their own ideology. It all made sense, now.
“Lisa Sato!”
Jake noticed Lisa jump at the deep, rumbling voice, which was followed by heavy footfalls that vibrated through the deck.
Turning, Jake saw Rug pounding up the corridor after them. The enormous quadruped cut an intimidating figure, to be sure—flanks heaving as she galloped toward them, she resembled a cross between a panther and a bear, and she was larger than both. He could almost understand Rug’s approach startling Lisa…except that she’d known the Quatro for longer than he had.
Strange.
Lisa walked forward, extending her arms toward the alien, almost hesitantly. “R-Rug, it’s good to see you! Where were you?” At last, she wrapped her arms around the Quatro’s broad neck.
“I saw you leaving the cafeteria, but it took some time to make my way through all the humans without trampling them.”
“I’m sure they appreciated that,” Jake said. He’d forgotten about Rug in his desperation to find his mech, but now he wondered whether her own quadruped mech might not be with Oneiri’s. The Quatro’s machine seemed to share its origin with Jake’s—there was good reason to believe they’d both been built by the Progenitors, especially since mechs of similar make had driven several humans and Quatro pilots mad. Gabriel Roach had become one of those crazed pilots. He’d allowed himself to permanently fuse with the alien mech he piloted, and soon after that, he’d murdered one of his own teammates. “Rug, the system is under attack, and we’re pretty sure we know where our mechs are. Does that interest you?”
“It does, Jake Price,” Rug said, dipping her massive head. “One way or another, I suspect we are about to step onto the galactic stage. Meanwhile, the Quatro Assembly of Elders negotiates still with your Interstellar Union. I already know what one of their requirements will be. They will demand to be given custody of my brethren and I, who fled from the Elders many years ago. I will not allow that to happen.”
“The Union is no government of mine,” Jake said. “But I take your point. Either way, our short-term goal is the same. Let’s get those mechs.”
Unlike the Outer Wing hatch, the hatch leading into the flight deck was guarded. Neither Jake nor the other Oneiri members were armed, and they approached with hands up, keeping Rug in reserve in case things came to blows. The great alien hunched out of view from the guards, ready to charge, in case things went south.
It turned out that wasn’t necessary. The guards saw the sense in allowing seven trained mech pilots to join the fight for the system, and when Rug padded past to follow Oneiri onto the flight deck, Jake saw the guards look at each other and shrug.
Jake spotted his alien mech straight away, towering over the MIMAS mechs that stood in formation around it.
The hulking, shapeshifting monstrosity reacted to him as he approached, its front folding down to reveal a cocoon waiting to envelop him. As for the MIMAS mechs, they all responded to the short-range commands sent from their pilots’ implants, hatches popping out to lower to the deck behind, becoming ramps.
As he climbed into his mech, Jake wondered whether the Union bureaucrats had been able to gain access to it, or whether they’d tried.
“Can I bum a sedative?” Jake called to Marco, and his teammate tossed over a fat, red pill after digging it out of a compartment inside the hollow of his MIMAS.
Jake slapped the pill into his mouth, descending into the mech dream within seconds.
Both MIMAS and alien mechs were controlled using a technology called lucid, which Darkstream had developed after fleeing the Milky Way. Lucid gave structure to your dreams, using them as a platform to run simulations, which were incredibly immersive in the way a dream was for the dreamer. Installed in mechs, lucid merely simulated a very specific dream: a dream identical to reality, except that in it, the dreamer became the mech.
Inside the dream, Jake rose to his full height, massive shoulders rolling back and metal hide rippling in the halogens. He wore the mech’s power like a glove.
We missed you, the alien mech whispered to him. We are ready to kill.
Ignoring it, Jake turned to the others. “Let’s do this.”
Chapter 2
Dishonorable Discharge
“Captain Vin Husher, do you know why you’ve been brought before this special commission?” The Winger, who resembled a blue jay, leaned forward as she spoke, perhaps attempting to pin Husher to his seat with her beady eyes.
“I have a pretty good idea,” Husher said.
“Oh? Why don’t you outline your idea for us, then?”
“Well, I’m sure you’ve received multiple being rights complaints from citizens of Cybele, and maybe even a few from members of my crew. That’s one reason. Then, there’s the fact that by attacking Teth in the Concord System, I dashed your attempts to strike a peace deal with him.” Husher locked eyes with President Chiba as he delivered this last reason. The president of the Interstellar Union, a Kaithian, sat next to Kaboh, who shared his species. Kaboh was Husher’s former Nav officer—he’d resigned just a week ago, after a month of waiting around in Feverfew to see how the IU would decide to handle Husher.
The president didn’t sit on the commission running this hearing, and neither did Kaboh. Several Union politicians did, though. The commission was made up both of Union politicians and Integrated Galactic Fleet members in equal part. They sat at a long, curved table that half-ringed the room. A platform kept the table well above the rest of the chamber, and the spectators sat in chairs below. Everyone faced Husher, who sat alone, scrutinized by all.
“Those sound like potential grounds for a dishonorable discharge to me, Captain,” the Winger said. Her name was Ryn, and she chaired the commission. “Would you agree?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because my version of ‘respecting being rights’ differs dramatically from those of my accusers. Their version involves dividing society up and pitting the parts against each other, so that short-term, ineffectual ‘solutions’ might be forced down everyone’s throats. I agree that we have a problem when it comes to interspecies relations,
but because my methods for dealing with the problem differ, I’m branded a pariah.”
“I think you may be sidestepping the issue,” Ryn said. “When you consider some of your—”
“I’m not finished,” Husher said. “My accusers claim to follow ‘liberal values,’ but they’re utter hypocrites. One value they piss all over is the idea that it’s possible to rehabilitate anybody—that everyone, even criminals, are capable of reform. Allow me to illustrate the way they’ve completely abandoned that principle: let’s for a moment entertain the false assumption that I’m wrong to suggest alternate methods, and that they’re right. Even if I acknowledged that, I wouldn’t be given the opportunity to change my ways and follow a new course. No, now that I’ve been branded ‘toxic,’ I’m to be stripped not only of my position but also every platform for speech available to me. Even if I ‘reformed,’ my accusers would still try to silence and marginalize me. Why? Because this isn’t actually about protecting marginalized groups. It’s about targeting groups they perceive as more powerful than they are. And since I belong to such a group, they will never stop targeting me. If my accusers actually cared about underprivileged beings, then they would try to give ‘offenders’ an incentive to reform. They’d embrace those who ‘changed their ways.’ But it isn’t about that. This isn’t a ‘just cause’—it isn’t any cause at all. It’s a power game, and one that’s being played at the highest levels. I refuse to play it with you. Do what you will to me—I won’t play your game.”
Ryn nodded, barely reacting to Husher’s words. “And how do you justify your unsanctioned assault on Concord?”
“Just twenty years ago, Teth and his father strove to wipe out all sentient life in the galaxy. They nearly succeeded, and if it hadn’t been for Captain Keyes’s sacrifice, they would have. The idea that Teth would adhere to even a temporary ceasefire is absurd. He was always going to strike to kill—now, at least, we’ll be on wartime footing when he does.”
Ixan Legacy Box Set Page 26
