Mission Pack 2: Missions 5-8 (Black Ocean Mission Pack)

by J. S. Morin

  “I mean, it wasn’t a stupid decision. We were at war, and I guess technically we had them outgunned. But when half the ship’s systems are fresh out of the designers’ computers, maybe you don’t take a slight edge and hope everything works to spec. Because it didn’t.

  “The fight was going pretty well. Fighter-to-fighter, we were outnumbered, but we had plenty of backup from the turrets on the Odysseus. Plus, if I may say so, we had the better pilots. I think if Ahab had played it straight, we’d have taken a bloody nose and walked away from an orbiting scrapyard of Eyndar ships. I don’t know what made him decide to try out the crown jewel of the experimental systems just then, but he did. Maybe he wanted to give it a real ruggedized test. Maybe he was thinking he was taking too much damage. Maybe the damned thing just took a power surge and turned itself on. Who the hell knows?

  “But the Odysseus had a new astral-drive. Hot shit. Game changer of a weapon. It could slip in and out of astral on the move—theoretically. Imagine a ship flickering in and out of realspace, firing at will, always having its guns ready and bearing on an optimal firing angle, gone before enemy ships can maneuver to react. Scary shit, right?

  “It worked twice. The Odysseus dusted a light cruiser and put a hurt on one of those half-pint battleships the Eyndar love so much. Then it popped out and back, finished off the battleship and a few fighters. Then it disappeared and never came back.

  “We didn’t know what happened. Couldn’t raise them on the comm. The Typhoons didn’t have the type of scanners to be able to track them through astral. Suddenly it was four squadrons of Typhoons against an Eyndar carrier ship and about two hundred fighters.

  “I wasn’t ranking officer. Once it got obvious that the Odysseus was gone for the duration, Commander Blaise Roquefort of the 402nd Bladewings gave the order to surrender. It was three-to-one odds, not even counting the carrier. Command school teaches you not to engage any worse than two-to-one; you’re supposed to withdraw. Since we had nowhere to withdraw to, Roquefort decided to roll over for the dogs.

  “Well, since I’ve never been good at giving up for my own good and didn’t really relish the idea of an Eyndar prisoner colony, I feigned comm trouble. Oh, everyone saw right through it, and after a few choice words from Roquefort, I had to admit I heard the order. So I claimed I didn’t speak enough Eyndar to broadcast a surrender—which was true, I never passed the extension course in their language. When that didn’t work either, I contacted Lieutenant Commander Brandt of the 559th and Lieutenant Commander Shen of the 340th Squadrons on a private channel and arranged a little mutiny. They put me in command.

  “I gave a little speech over the all-squadron channel. I don’t remember how it went, but something along the lines of “fuck these guys, let’s fight it out.” I mean, we destroyed a colony; we weren’t getting taken alive except to die slowly and painfully. I’d always imagined dying quickly and stupidly, without a lot of seeing it coming.

  “So, we gave them hell. No one from the other three squadrons survived. We wiped out every last Eyndar ship, including the carrier. Only me and eight of my Half-Devils made it. Problem was, we were in the middle of nowhere with no astral drives, no food, no place to land that wasn’t a radioactive wasteland.

  “So I ordered all of us into a stable orbit around that burnt-out world. We turned life-support down to bare minimums to save energy. As commanding officer, I set up a comm beacon broadcasting a distress call. Scarecrow had orders that if my Typhoon went dead, she was next in line to make the broadcast.

  “But it never came to that. It was four days before Search and Recovery picked us up. We were in rough shape, but the nine of us pulled through. There was an inquest, and it got kinda ugly. I mean, my comm records showed a mutiny, after all. But thanks to us, there was a record of the incident, and none of the Eyndar force survived to make a proper report back to the empire. Plus, it was a cowardly order to disobey; some of the admiralty thought we did the right thing, disobeying a direct order or not.

  “None of it could get out to the public, or even Earth Navy at large. A few of us might have looked good, but a whole lot of people would have looked like assholes and idiots. Bad navy math. So they went with the training accident cover story for the missing crew, undisclosed combat losses for the fighter pilots. They disbanded the four squadrons involved, and shuffled the surviving Half-Devils between dead-end assignments or paid us to resign. Anything so we’d shut up about the whole thing.

  “They never found the Odysseus, and I guess after a while, they stopped looking. But Scarecrow never gave up trying to figure it out. And apparently she found it. That’s where we’re heading: to claim the wreck for ourselves.”

  # # #

  They waited, staring at him. “That’s it. Story’s over.”

  “So…” Tanny said. “You did dust eleven Eyndar ships and get kicked out of the navy for disobeying an order.”

  Carl scowled at her. “No. I dusted thirty-five and got official credit for the shot that finished off the carrier, but I didn’t think you’d have believed that version. And I didn’t get kicked out of the navy. I got hush money to resign because I’d seen too much to keep mixing with regular navy personnel.”

  Roddy chuckled. “What sort of intake nozzle lies to women to make himself seem less heroic?”

  With a pointed look anywhere but at Tanny or Carl, Esper added, “It’s sweet, in a way.”

  “Which lies do we believe?” Mriy asked, picking her teeth with one claw. “The old lies, or the new?”

  “I’ve heard the story before,” Mort said, after having kept his peace through the whole of Carl’s retelling.

  “So it’s an old new lie?” Mriy asked with a shrug. “He’s used it before?”

  “So fucking what?” Roddy hopped down from the couch to pace the room. He looked in Mriy’s direction as he gestured at Carl. “So he lies. You just crawl out of the jungle or something? The man does it for a living. If not for him lying his ass off, we’d have been locked up years ago.”

  “Or free and living a nice, honest life delivering cargo,” Rhiannon said. Carl had almost forgot she was in the room. “How come you never told me the truth? Did Mom and Dad get the real version, Tanny’s lie, or some other made-up bullshit? I bet you didn’t win the Mobius in a poker game, either.”

  “Carl? Win?” Roddy scoffed. “Those don’t belong in the same sentence with poker. Those don’t belong on the same galaxy with poker.”

  Mort cleared his throat. “I’ve heard the story from other sources. Firsthand accounts, as it were.”

  “Scarecrow? Carl said you’d met,” Esper said. At least someone paid attention when he talked. He was getting the impression that certain factions in the crew were beginning to filter out his voice.

  Mort made eye contact, asking permission. Carl shrugged. What was the point of covering it up at this point? “I’ve met all the survivors of that battle,” Mort said. “There was an inquest, but Carl wasn’t there for it. He wasn’t fit. His squad-mates broke him out of a hospice and brought him to me for help.”

  “A hospice?” Tanny asked. “What the hell happened to you that ARGO’s military doctors couldn’t fix?” For the first time since Scarecrow came aboard, something like human compassion showed in his ex-wife.

  Carl shrugged. “I was out. What do I know?”

  Mort scratched his head. “There’s… well, there’s this magic trick I taught Carl when he was younger. You all saw the results in Lloyd’s head. Carl’s brain is split a hundred different ways. He can break bits off and reattach them easy as bread dough. Entirely my fault, really. He had such a… flexibility with the truth; it was astonishing. I blame Chuck Ramsey for that—biggest liar I’d known up to that point. Anyway, that’s neither soup nor crackers. Point is, they told me the story, warts and all. Carl might be able to talk a lion through a mouse hole, but I don’t see eight others being able to put one past me.”

  “Fine, so assume it’s all true, and that crazy little witch
knows where the battleship ended up,” Tanny said. “Then what? We cut it up into pieces and sell it off? How long would it be before ARGO backtracks the salvage to us and raises a fleet to come dust us and scatter the ashes?”

  “Maybe long enough to make us rich as czars and buy our own planet outside ARGO space,” Carl said. “How long can we keep this up? We’re one or two botched raids from running out of food or fuel, or getting caught by some petty warlord’s security force. And one of these days, we’re going to have to face up to the fact that we can’t keep enough food on this boat to feed Kubu. That’s not being cold-hearted; that’s plain old starvation. He’s already too big to leave the cargo bay, and by the time he’s full grown he’ll be as big as the Squall. We get enough money, we can find him someplace with a wildlife preserve to hunt in. Or hell, maybe we buy a bigger ship. This is our chance at a legendary payday—Ali Baba-type loot—the sort of thing we admit on our deathbeds and gets made into a holovid with galaxy-wide distribution.”

  “I’m sold,” Roddy said.

  Tanny shot him a glare. “You were sold already.”

  “He has a point though,” Esper said, using that oh-so-earnest voice to Carl’s advantage for once. “We need a long-term plan for Kubu.”

  “That laaku, Inviu, had a place for him,” Mriy said. Before anyone could raise an objection, she added, “We could return and occupy it.”

  Laaku eyes rolled in their sockets. “Yeah, great hiding spot. ARGO would never find us there.”

  Rhiannon raised a finger, seeking attention before she spoke. “How rich?”

  “Trillions new,” Carl replied. “Billions as scrap. Who knows what’s still functioning in the wreckage? Come on, guys. This is our chance. We gonna be small timers on the run forever? This could be the biggest score ever.”

  Mort stood straight, separating himself from the wall he had been leaning against. “Why not? I’ve been on the run going on half my life. What’s one more poke in the eye to the powers that be? Maybe this time we’ll put a dent in them.”

  Roddy toasted with a can of Earth’s Preferred, the cheapest swill brew that humanity exported. “All joking aside, you had me even before you started using words that ended in -illions. Now you’d have to pay me off not to jump at the chance.”

  A low growl issued from the back of Mriy’s throat. “I like our many small hunts. This one had better be worth it.”

  Carl pointed at her. “I’m counting that as a ‘yes’. Esper? Think of Kubu… plus, maybe there are survivors that need to be laid to rest.”

  “They wouldn’t be survivors if they did, you idiot,” Roddy muttered.

  Esper pursed her lips and shook her head slightly. “This feels off. Something doesn’t sit right, and I can’t say why. There’s got to be more to this.”

  Carl nodded gravely. “Well, since I don’t think Kubu gets a vote, and to be fair, Scarecrow’s not part of the crew, that puts us at four to two. We’re doing it.”

  “Hey!” Rhiannon piped up. “What about me? Don’t I get a vote?”

  “No,” Carl and Roddy said in unison, then exchanged a glance. Only Carl continued. “Listen, Squirt. I’ll drop you anywhere you want, within reason. But this is my ship, and you’re not part of my crew. You’re a passenger here, like it or not. You don’t have any role here. When we took Esper on, she busted her ass to fit in. You? You just sit around drinking and watching holovids.”

  Rhiannon pointed to Roddy, who had a beer in hand and the remote to the holoprojector at his side.

  “Roddy’s an entirely different case. He can drink all day and watch holovids while keeping forty kilotons of spare parts flying.”

  “Nice…” Rhiannon muttered. She didn’t look at Carl as she stormed off to her quarters. The bottle of wine went with her.

  Carl followed, and when the door slammed between them, he shouted through it. “Fine! You want a vote? It’s four to three, and we’re still going.”

  Tanny watched with a cold glare that chilled Carl to the gut. “We done here? I’ve got a heading to set.”

  # # #

  A subsonic tone roused Charlie from her slumber. She’d grown acclimated to the alarm function of her TeleJack; it set off a sympathetic response in her brain that alerted her. The first thing she smelled was Blackjack, seeping from his sweat-stained sheets. For a split second, she imagined that the squadron was back together and sharing a barracks on some backwater outpost too cramped to give officers private rooms. But a split second was enough nonsense. Blinking, Charlie realized just how tired she’d been. Normally two hours was enough to recharge her; but finding out she’d been awake for five days, she’d given herself three. It hadn’t been enough.

  She’d given Blackjack’s quarters the once-over before crashing, but they deserved a second look. He still hung the medals from his tour of duty on the wall, which meant that his crew was OK with his naval career. The double-necked guitar told her that he was still pretending he could play. But the double-neck was more popular with laaku guitarists—probably belonged to that mechanic, Roddy. Must have meant the two of them were friends, not just coworkers. He still kept his laundry everywhere, so he hadn’t gotten diligent or organized since she’d last seen him. Good to know Blackjack was still Blackjack.

  The climate controls were warmer than she kept the Mermaid. Having fallen asleep in her jacket, she was sticky with sweat. From her TeleJack, she bought up the specs on the Turtledove-class starship, looking up the basic facilities that the Mobius should have. It was a custom job, more aftermarket than original, but there were some things the roving spacer just doesn’t uninstall. She got a chuckle checking out the engine, shield, and weapon specs, which looked nothing like the initial scan she’d run from the Mermaid before transferring over.

  Rummaging through her duffel bags, Charlie found a towel and a fresh set of clothes. It would feel good to wear something clean. There was barely room in the Mermaid to bunk down, let alone shower. Without showering, changing clothes was just repacking spoiled meat.

  With a press of the release sequence, the TeleJack unclasped from her forearm. Without its weight, Charlie felt unbalanced. She set it on the bedside and began to undress, clenching and unclenching her fist to work stiff muscles. Not wanting the crew to get the wrong idea, she used one foot to bulldoze aside Blackjack’s unwashed clothes to make a spot for her own. Satisfied that her pile didn’t touch the landscape of male clothing, she nodded and gathered up her towel and change of clothes.

  Every eye in the ship’s rec room turned her way as Charlie crossed to the shower. The cooler air out of Blackjack’s quarters cooled the sheen of sweat across her skin, and the metal sucked heat from her bare feet. She offered a twitch of a smile and a little wave. This wasn’t a parade. What were they staring at?

  Odd bunch, Blackjack’s crew. A drunkard laaku—none of them could touch a beer without getting hooked. Obviously abusing Blackjack’s friendship to stay on the crew. A predator species from the ARGO directory of conquered worlds. His sister and his ex-wife. An apprentice wizard, and the guy who was like Blackjack’s guardian angel, star-drive, and personal watchdog rolled into one. An actual watchdog that could talk. And now Charlie. It seemed like he needed someone normal around, someone he could talk to about normal things.

  They were probably all good people. If ever there was a judge of character, it was Blackjack. He knew the brass-kissers from the smooth customers, the lazy good-for-nothings from the lighthearted killers, the shuttle pilots from the aces. If they were good enough for him, they were good enough for her. But they were a bunch of freaks, staring at her.

  Shaking her head, she dropped her towel and change of clothes on the floor outside the shower and hopped in.

  # # #

  The crew convened in the common room, around the holovid. The Mobius was halfway past nowhere, in the abyssal portion of the astral, and leaving civilization farther behind by the moment. It was time to find out where they were heading.

  Carl notic
ed that Scarecrow had changed into a tank top and baggy slacks and wore her TeleJack once again. She hadn’t worn one when she and Carl had served together—not exactly naval standard issue—but she seemed attached to it, and vice versa. Punching a few buttons brought up a wireframe view of a planetary system, a gas giant orbited by a half dozen or so moons.

  “This is an uninhabited system,” she said. “Galactic survey lists the star as pre-nova, or some bullshit—I don’t have the official report. Anyway, the worlds are uninhabitable, but a couple of the moons support life. No one did a detailed surface scan of the moons—until now. I scammed data from a bunch of xeno-poachers, looking for specimens. Their unmanned probe lost contact, but not before sending this.”

  The image in the holovid shifted, showing something that looked like a thermal imaging overlay. Numbers floated in the air beside the moon. Earth Navy’s flight school had included a number of courses in mathematics and physics, but nothing came lurching back to the forefront of Carl’s brain to make any sense of what he saw.

  Scarecrow took the pervasive silence as a hint. “You don’t see it? Look.”

  The image shifted, with the planet disappearing and another dense array of data taking its place. Carl glanced over at Roddy, who replied with a don’t-look-at-me shrug. Tanny stood with her arms crossed, steadfastly refusing to participate.

  It was Esper who finally spoke up. She squinted and leaned close to the holovid. “Those are the same data sets, scaled by a factor of about eighteen.”

  “Yes!” Scarecrow said, raising her hands and looking up at the domed canopy. “Don’t you see? That second set data is the energy signature from the astral drive tests on the Odysseus. It’s classified, so the poachers had no idea what to make of it. But one of my standard data crawls picked up on the pattern match and flagged it. This is it! The Odysseus crashed or landed on G5344-4-3.”

  “How poetic,” Rhiannon said deadpan.

  Roddy slurped down the last of a can of beer and popped open another. “Hey, kid, no one’s getting attached to a world with a doomed star, let alone a moon around one. Farmers don’t go around naming their puppies.”