First Command

by Scott Bartlett

  Lucy twisted toward him. “The target’s shield is down.”

  “Good. Use the next Ogre on another target, Tim. I’ll let you determine the most viable one.”

  Al took a breath, trying to ignore the questions hammering on the door of his brain. Was Lucy right about that behemoth belonging to aliens? The only intelligent species humanity had ever encountered were the Xanthic. But they’d only ever attacked Earth. What would they be doing in the Dawn Cluster—and how did they get here without anyone between here and the wormhole noticing them?

  And, perhaps most horrifying of all: why were they working with human pirates?

  Forget about that for now, he scolded himself. As long as we keep our heads, we’ll get out of here in one piece. No pirate force was going to take out the New Jersey. Not even one backed up by a Xanthic battleship.

  “The pirates have entered laser range and are firing,” Lucy said. “Our shield is taking a beating, sir. Their main lasers are weak, but our force field won’t stand up to all seven of them for very long.”

  Al felt himself tense as he watched his missiles sail across the intervening space, wishing that Veronica Rose, Frontier’s CEO, had seen fit to assign even a single logistics ship to fly with him.

  I just need to start cutting down their numbers. If I can do that soon, we’ll be able to escape.

  Then, Lucy’s body went rigid. “Sir. The Ogres are turning again. They’re headed back toward us.”

  Al stared wordlessly at the holotank. Impossible. It shouldn’t be possible. But it was happening, and the alien craft clearly had something to do with it.

  “Our shields just went down, sir.”

  A wave of fatigue crashed over Al, and his chest tightened again, more sharply than before. “I can’t breathe,” he gasped, collapsing forward into his restraints as his vision blurred.

  Billy Candle was clawing at his own restraints, freeing himself from the XO’s chair as he yelled for someone to get a medic. Lucy just stared at him from her console, her mouth open. The last thing Al saw was how white her face had become.

  Chapter Two

  Norfolk, Virginia

  Sol System, Earth Local Space

  Earth Year 2290

  In Tad Thatcher’s experience, executive officers were about as busy as they made themselves. He’d had XOs who never stopped in their mission to make sure their ships ran as efficiently as possible, acting as a sort of force multiplier for the captain’s authority. He’d also had XOs he barely knew were part of the unit, since they managed to weasel their way out of having any real responsibility—although Thatcher considered those situations just as much the captain’s fault as the XO’s.

  As XO of the USS Hepburn, Tad Thatcher kept himself busy. So busy, in fact, that he found himself putting together a new drill schedule in his upstairs office, when he should have been downstairs enjoying home leave with his pregnant wife.

  This should only take a couple more hours. Then there’s the exercise plan Captain Wilcox wants me to put together for the marines, but that can wait till tomorrow…

  He liked to keep the news on while he worked, even aboard the Hepburn—he’d download the latest in 24-hour chunks and play it while putting together an inspection report or assigning Engineering personnel to handle the next routine reactor shutdown.

  This wasn’t to keep up on the daily happenings throughout UNC-controlled space, however. Far from it. No, he simply worked fastest with someone talking in the background. He didn’t know why, but he’d always been that way.

  And of course, the best sort of background talking was the kind he could safely ignore. Any of the largest news outlets fit that bill nicely. Almost without fail, they prattled on endlessly about things that failed either to convince or compel Tad Thatcher.

  By definition, for something to count as “news” it had to be something that almost never happened, so Thatcher could count on the news to always tell him things that were very, very unlikely to ever concern him. And the way modern news outlets sensationalized everything, trying their best to inflame their viewers and listeners—that only made Thatcher feel safer in ignoring it. It was, by and large, trash.

  Today was different, though. Today, Thatcher found himself looking up from his work, staring at the white, rounded speaker sitting on his desk as the newsman told him something that would change his life forever, along with the lives of every living human.

  “We interrupt this broadcast to bring you some unsettling news from the planet Barton. The colony there has been completely overwhelmed by Xanthic troopers. These troopers were not brought by a fleet superior to ours, as we have always feared. Instead, they seemed to emerge from under the ground, boiling up from cave and sewer systems to brutalize the civilian population living on the planet’s surface.”

  The Xanthic. They’re back. It had been hearing his grandfather’s stories of fighting the Xanthic fleet fifty years ago that had led Thatcher to join the U.S. Space Fleet, with the dream of one day commanding his own warship. His grandfather’s generation had forced the Xanthic back, but not before they laid waste to seven human colonies. Now, it seemed they’d added an eighth.

  “After comparing images of the aliens attacking Barton with the bodies recovered from wrecked Xanthic ships in the past,” the newscaster went on, “xenobiologists say they’re certain they belong to the same species.”

  Thatcher drew a hand over the mustache and beard that had been growing since he returned to Earth, and he suppressed a shudder. His grandfather, Edward Thatcher, had been one of those to board a Xanthic craft. When he judged Tad was old enough, and he saw his grandson was serious about joining the Fleet, he started sharing the darker details from the war, so that Tad would be prepared if he ever had to face the Xanthic.

  Edward couldn’t share everything, since he was sworn to secrecy—in particular, Thatcher noticed his grandfather never gave any details about the Xanthic ship he’d boarded. But one detail he did divulge was how the surviving Xanthic crewmembers had all suicided, drawing their scythe-like forearms across their own respiratory tracts. They must have known what we’d do to them.

  “Kathy Hong, a leading xenopathologist, has pointed out that Barton is located in one of the star systems affected by the interstellar gas cloud that enveloped local space three years ago. The nature of the cloud has been a topic hotly debated in the scientific community ever since it abruptly dissipated within a few weeks of its arrival. Now, Hong is proposing a new theory: the cloud was a transmission medium for Xanthic genetic material, which it deposited in underground reservoirs suitable for their incubation. Hong’s peers are calling the theory wildly speculative, but alternative explanations are sorely lacking as experts scramble to—”

  “Stop broadcast,” Thatcher said, and the speaker cut off. He couldn’t tell whether tying in the gas cloud was just the newscaster’s attempt to make the public even more afraid than they were going to be. To make sure they kept paying attention to the news.

  At the time, the arrival of the interstellar gas cloud had been frightening. Astronomers warned the cloud was dense enough to cool planets. Worse, the dust and gas would infiltrate the upper atmospheres of habitable planets, eating away at the oxygen there. But the true doomsday scenario had come from their prediction that the gas cloud would arrest the solar wind that naturally flowed within each star system, protecting planetary lifeforms (like humans) from the high-speed electrons and ions that tear constantly through space. Without the solar wind to usher them away, they would rip into planetary atmospheres, and then into the molecules that made up the life on those planets.

  Except, none of that happened. The interstellar gas cloud that arrived proved extremely unusual—in its size and the speed of its movement, but also in the fact that it dissipated so fast. Yes, some of the effects the astronomers warned about took place, but after the cloud’s disappearance everything quickly went back to normal.

  Thatcher pushed himself up from his desk and crossed the office,
forcing himself to walk with a measured stride, and to refrain from yanking the door open. He headed downstairs to find his wife with her Lenses pushed up onto her head. She was leaning forward, keyboard folded and dangling between her legs as she stared into space.

  “Lin,” Thatcher said, standing uncertainly in the doorway. “You heard the news?”

  His wife’s almond eyes met his, her mouth forming the perfect “O” it made when she was distressed. Without a word, she got up, her straight black hair swaying as she crossed the room to embrace him. He hugged her back, intensely aware of the firm lump that pressed against his abdomen, where their son was growing.

  “Elise just texted me,” she said. “The Xanthic.” Head tilting up, she stared into his eyes. “You’ll be deployed again, won’t you? Before your home leave ends.”

  He hesitated, then nodded. “Probably any day now.”

  She continued to stare into him, and he knew what was going through her mind. His enlistment date was coming up soon. If he didn’t re-up, then he’d be home with her and their baby. He’d be safe.

  Unless the Xanthic bring the war all the way to Earth. Unless they win.

  He knew Lin wouldn’t ask him not to reenlist. Not when he still hadn’t achieved his dream of commanding a warship. Not when humanity so clearly needed him.

  But she was thinking it. He could see it in her beautiful brown eyes.

  His Lenses buzzed, and he slipped them out of his breast pocket, unfolding them and putting them on.

  “I’m being called into base,” Thatcher said, frowning. The message didn’t say to prepare for deployment—it just said to report to Rear Admiral Faulkner of the U.S. Space Fleet Forces Command at the Hampton Roads Naval base.

  It’s obviously something to do with the Xanthic. But why aren’t I being deployed?

  He’d find out soon enough. And he had a feeling he wouldn’t like it.

  Chapter Three

  Hampton Roads Naval Support Base

  Sol System, Earth Local Space

  Earth Year 2290

  What other surprises can today possibly bring?

  As Thatcher marched briskly toward his superior’s office, black boots clicking smartly on polished tile, he was still puzzling over the reason a rear admiral would want to meet with him specifically.

  The admiral’s staff car had whisked him from his house and through the base’s security checkpoints. He’d sat in the back of the empty car for the ten-minute ride, his fingers laced between his knees, as he stared out the front window and lost himself in thought.

  He enjoyed the commute to and from the base, and he often wished it were longer. People who complained about commute times baffled him. That was when he got his best thinking done—when the answer to some problem that had long been nagging him would pop into his head.

  He could have taken his own car to the base, but why do that when the admiral had offered his staff car? Things were expensive enough on Earth without turning down what assistance his employer offered. The U.S. Space Fleet liked having its personnel on humanity’s home planet, which had become the New York City of local space when it came to the cost of living. As for NYC itself—well, he’d have to go private military for a hope of affording that. I’d probably need to own my own firm. Neither of those seemed likely to happen anytime soon.

  Besides, who wants to live there?

  If he was being honest with himself, planetside life made him restless in general. He was the polar opposite of most spacers, who were drawn to the Fleet by the promise of adventure, of traversing the stars and learning their secrets—only to learn that life in space was mostly cramped, cold, and boring.

  But Thatcher liked the simplicity, and the routine, of spacer life. Strangely, the tight framework imposed by space gave him a sense of ultimate freedom. The sense that what he did truly mattered, and that the fates of his ship and her crew were intimately bound up with how well he performed each task.

  He’d felt that way even as a junior officer fresh from training.

  He rapped smartly on the office door, just below the plaque that read “REAR ADMIRAL ZEBEDIAH FAULKNER.” A voice called for him to come in.

  Entering, Thatcher found Admiral Faulkner sitting behind his desk, which was bare other than a keyboard connected to a pair of Lenses folded neatly beside it, and a mug of steaming coffee sitting on a granite coaster. Another mug sat in front of a man wearing a business suit, who twisted in his seat to smile at Thatcher, revealing a scarlet tie. His attire contrasted with the admiral, who wore a navy-blue cardigan with epaulet tabs that displayed his two stars.

  Thatcher tried not to eye the man in the suit. Who could smile on a day like today?

  “At ease, Commander,” Faulkner said as Thatcher came to attention, saluting. “Please, have a seat. Can I get you a mug?”

  “No thank you, sir.” Thatcher sat.

  “Down to business, then. I’m sure you’ve heard the news about the Xanthic, and you must be wondering why you received a message to meet with me, instead of deployment orders.”

  “The thought had crossed my mind, sir,” Thatcher said, again suppressing the urge to glance curiously at the man sitting beside him.

  “Commander, meet Chief Petty Officer Lionel O’Malley, from Frontier Security.”

  Grin widening, O’Malley offered his hand, and Thatcher gripped it, pumping it twice. “Pleased to meet you, Commander,” O’Malley said, speaking with a light Irish accent. He didn’t call Thatcher “sir,” since they weren’t part of the same military structure, as much as private military companies tried to pretend they were. Thatcher was glad O’Malley didn’t. He would have been insulted if the man had pretended that to his face.

  “And you,” Thatcher said. He wasn’t disdainful of private militaries, exactly. Plenty of good friends had chosen to join their ranks instead of re-upping, in exchange for a salary that more than doubled what the Fleet could pay.

  Thatcher had gotten no shortage of job offers himself, especially as his enlistment date approached. But he’d turned them all down. He hadn’t become a spacer of the U.S. Space Fleet to make money. The mere idea of that was laughable. He’d joined because he wanted to serve his country and to protect her people. To safeguard what few liberties the UNC, with their widespread surveillance and daily little indignities, had left them.

  Just as his grandfather had.

  “Commander,” Faulkner said, “we’ve known about the attack on Barton longer than the media has. Barely twenty-four hours longer, but long enough to start taking some action. The Xanthic’s sudden appearance has put us in a…strange position. And it’s pushed us to take some strange actions.”

  Thatcher nodded, and waited, unsure what to say. Beside him, O’Malley seemed somewhat tense, though he was clearly striving to look relaxed.

  “Lionel here is a recruiter for Frontier,” the admiral said at last.

  Blinking, Thatcher stared back at his superior, dumbstruck. So. This is just another job offer. But why is it happening in front of a flag officer?

  “I know this must seem highly unusual to you, like I already said. Trust me, I never thought I’d be in the position of encouraging a Fleet officer to join a PMC. Personally, I’ve never liked the way they piggyback off our recruitment efforts, picking off our trained personnel without ever having to invest in training themselves.”

  O’Malley shifted in his seat.

  “Nevertheless,” the admiral went on. “Frontier is part of a corporate alliance called the Oasis Protectorate, responsible for servicing and defending America’s premiere colony in the Dawn Cluster. Lately, increased pirate activity in the Cluster’s northern regions has complicated their job. It seems the pirates are banding together like they never have before. And a recent incident has led us to believe that things in the star cluster may be about to get just as interesting as they got for Earth Local Space.”

  “What incident, sir?”

  “Thatcher, you must not repeat what I’m about to tell you, u
nder pain of treason. Do you understand?”

  Thatcher’s eyes never left the admiral’s as his stomach slowly sank toward his feet. “Yes, sir.”

  “A Frontier ship—a Griffon-class light armored cruiser, called the New Jersey—was just attacked in the Tempore Region by a battle group consisting of seven pirate ships and an eighth vessel which we have good reason to believe was an advanced Xanthic craft.”

  The admiral paused, and Thatcher sat perfectly still.

  Apparently satisfied that he’d absorbed the news, the admiral continued. “I’m sure you can appreciate that if this got out, it would destabilize the Dawn Cluster in a way humanity can’t afford right now, teetering on the brink of war as we are. The alien craft the New Jersey faced had the ability to turn the cruiser’s own missiles against her. During the engagement, Frontier lost their best captain, Alfred Vaughn, to a heart attack. His XO was able to take command and get them out of there, though the cruiser was heavily damaged and is currently undergoing repairs. The company needs a replacement for Captain Vaughn.”

  A thrill shot through Thatcher’s chest, and he noticed his breath deepening. It was a strange sensation, next to the dread Faulkner’s words had caused him.

  The admiral nodded, as though Thatcher had spoken his excitement out loud. “With the way the UNC limits the number of ships we can field, you’re years from receiving your first command—in the Fleet. But I know you’re more than ready, Commander. And if you accept an offer from Frontier, you could be captaining your first ship by the end of the month.”

  “You’d need to challenge some aptitude tests,” O’Malley put in. “The Ogre and Hellborn missile school exams, as well as tests on the ship’s engineering plant, shiphandling, tactics, interstellar law, leadership, safety, communications, and…well, a lot of other things.”

  “He can do that en route to the Dawn Cluster,” Faulkner said. “If the glowing report his direct superior gave is any indication, Thatcher will barely need to study.”