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Gambit by Christian Kallias
Captain Russell Philips looked at the five cards he was dealt and suppressed a sigh.
He glanced over the table of his quarters to his first officer, the dealer in this game, and feigned a smile as best he could. Tonight had not been the captain’s night in terms of winning hands.
“How many cards, Cap?”
Russell looked at his hand again. Not a single pair, and no matching colors. He could very well change his entire hand, but that would tip off his opponent. So, he discarded the two lowest, a two of clubs and a seven of hearts, and requested two replacements.
His first officer was a pretty human female, thirty-five, with blue eyes and dark-red hair. Her smile lit up any room she was in. But her appearance was not to be confused with weakness, as Russell had learned early on working with her, even before making her his first officer on the Fenix. Jena could be as deadly as she was beautiful.
Jena grabbed the cards and delicately put them under the deck.
“Tell me, Cap, when are you gonna grace us with your presence on the bridge again?” she said before dealing the new cards.
“Not sure what you mean. I’m on the bridge every day,” said Russell as he put his hand on the cards and paused. “And I thought we agreed you’d drop calling me that.”
“Sure thing, Russ, I’ll drop the ‘Cap’ routine, if you drop the bullshit of deflecting my questions.”
Russell smiled as he dragged the cards back to his side with the tips of his fingers before lifting them into his playing hand. As he placed the new cards next to the three others, he heard the faint noise of his artificial muscles inside his mechanical arm, and that gave him pause as he looked at the new cards Jena had dealt.
A two of diamonds and a seven of clubs.
You gotta be shitting me, he thought, trying to stay stoic about his situation.
The robotic appendage was nearly as precise as the arm it replaced. And it also was the reason why the captain seldom left his quarters these days. At least, physically.
“What’s wrong with using holo-presence?” he said.
Jena sighed. “It’s a sign of weakness, with all due respect.”
“Perhaps, but I value my life, and I’m still unsure if I owe this,” said Russell as he lifted his robotic arm, “to a member of this crew.”
“And now we add paranoia to the mix.”
“You and I both know we’re not exactly running a tight ship with a trusting crew.”
“I hope you don’t include me in this statement.”
“You’re here playing poker with me, aren’t you? That should tell you something.”
“More like wiping the floor with you but point taken. So, what’s your bet?”
She wasn’t wrong. Russell hadn’t gotten a single good hand the entire evening. He grabbed at his remaining chips, all three of them, and pushed them forward with enough volition that the pile broke into an uneven line on the table.
“All in,” he said.
Jena had a hard time not smiling from ear to ear.
“You’re a terrible bluffer, and I’m not sure of the message it sends when you say all in with that many chips. But I’ll gladly put you out of your misery,” she said, picking up three chips from her huge collection and putting them in a neat pile in front of Russell’s scattered ones. “What do you have?”
Russell revealed the cards one by one as if to create a moment of suspense.
“Not your night,” said Jena as she revealed a full house and scooped the chips to her side, creating well-ordered piles.
“Not my year,” added Russell.
“I’ll grant you that we’ve had better ones, but it could be worse.”
Russell sighed. “If you say so.”
Jena grabbed the cards from the table and added them to the deck before tapping it on its side to make sure all the cards were aligned.
“You’ve been through a tough time; you lost your arm and nearly your life in the process. It’s shaken you to the core. I get it. But running this ship from your quarters, and doing so by purchasing an expensive holo-presence projector instead of paying the crew, that’s not making things any better. Speaking of salaries, how long do you think the crew will be willing to go on missions unpaid?”
“They’ll get paid on this one.”
“Yeah, I clearly remember hearing that about the last three jobs we took.”
“Not my fault we failed our assignments. It’s almost like—” but Russell stopped short.
“Like what? Spit it out.”
“Like someone on the crew is working against us.”
Jena sighed. “Look, Russ, you’re my friend as well as my commanding officer, and I’m perfectly fine in that position, even without pay for the time being, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that the accident changed you, and not for the better.”
“You can’t understand how it feels,” said Russell, flexing his robotic hand a couple of times fast enough so that the whiny mechanical parts could be heard. “I—I look at this, and I feel like I may have been betrayed. What’s next, my head? I don’t want to end up a levitated brain in a jar.”
“It’s called a vat, and that’s a cheap shot at Alby.”
Alby, their engineer, no longer had a body, just his brain floating in a vat of nutrient-rich liquid, enclosed in a hovering and modified drone enclosure.
“And surely,” Jena added, “you’re at least trusting him among the crew, right?”
“Yeah, he’s a Vor, and he thinks he owes me a life debt. They’re kind of serious about these things.”
“You did save his life.”
“I must have saved everyone’s life on board this hunk of junk at one point or another.”
“And you should trust that we remember that and make your presence felt. It’s been months, Russ.”
Before Russell could rebut Jena’s argument, the ship rocked, the lights in the captain’s quarters flickered, and an alarm blared over the comms. Soon, a voice boomed around them.
“Officers to the bridge.”
Russell gestured Jena with his head. “Go, I’ll meet you there.”
“Will you?” she said, stopping in front of his door.
Russell quickly looked at a holo-feed on his wrist holo-computer; it showed the empty hall outside his quarters before the door opened for Jena.
“You know what I mean,” he said.
Jena left without comment and with enough disappointment breaking through her facial expression that Russell didn’t need words to understand her frustration.
Russell grabbed the thin holo-presence device, a piece of expensive Vor advanced tech modified by Alby so that the captain could project a holo-image of himself throughout every square inch of the ship. He attached it to his right temple and closed his eyes.
* * *
The captain’s holographic body materialized on the bridge, a few feet in front of the captain’s chair. He made sure to activate a mental link with Jena so she’d hear the exchange with the crew while on her way to the bridge.
“Report!” said Russell.
“We’ve dropped out of hyperspace, shields have been raised,” said Del’Ron, the Yindreel pilot.
Yindreels were nearly extinct, a thin humanoid race with greenish-gray skin that had enhanced reflexes and fast processing brains, making them perfect for piloting starships. Especially a ship as small and maneuverable as the Fenix.
“I can see that, what I’m interested in is why?”
“Unknown. Either our engine malfunctioned, or we got hit.”
“There’s only one race who can target a ship in hyperspac—”
Before Russell could end his sentence, a Vor destroyer uncloaked in front of the Fenix, appearing in all its majesty in the viewport.
“That answers that, then,” said the Vor weapons officer, Knurr. “One day, Cap, you need to tell us why every Vor vessel we meet either warns us to turn around, or point-blan
k engages us. What did you do to piss off my people?”
Vors were proud, strong, lizard-like humanoids, with heavy metallic-looking scales that doubled as armor, and as such, the Vor rarely needed to wear much in the way of clothes, or even body armor, as nothing short of a high-powered weapon would make a dent in their scales.
Knurr’s scales were a metallic grey with a slight crimson hue, depending on how the light bounced off them.
To this day, Russell had not revealed that part of his past to his crew. More precisely, the grudge the Vor held against him, and neither did he cultivate any wish of disclosing why.
“One day, maybe I’ll tell you, but not today.”
“They’re hailing us,” said Del’Ron.
“Ignore it,” said Russell, slightly more dismissively than he intended.
The lift’s door to the bridge split open, and Jena stepped out and came to sit next to the captain.
“Kind of you to join us.”
Her short gaze was brief but loaded with subtext, and Russell could tell she didn’t like the way he was trying to deceive the rest of the crew, trying to hide their bond from them.
“What are our options?” asked Jena.
“Engineering,” said Russell while mentally opening a channel with the aid of his holo-presence device. “Can we jump back to hyperspace?”
Alby’s vat-floating brain appeared on the holo-screen. The brain lit up as thoughts formed words to be spoken through a synthesized speaker. “The hyperspace engine has been hit slightly, and I’m already in the process of repairing it.”
“ETA on jump capability?” asked Jena.
“About three minutes, maybe four. I would like to mention at this point that this Falkor-class destroyer has a faster hyperspace engine, so trying to make a run for it in hyperspace doesn’t seem like a viable tactic. They could easily catch up with us, reacquire a lock, and shut us down again.”
Russell didn’t need that explanation, and neither did Jena, but the captain understood that not all crew members were made equal in terms of their understanding of technology or tactics.
“They’re hailing us again,” said Del’Ron, who had taken over the communication’s station since the late departure of a member of a crew.
A position that Captain Philips wasn’t in a hurry to fill.
“We gotta get moving, though, or we’ll miss our shot at cashing in on our bounty,” reminded Jena.
“I’m well aware of that. Options, anyone?” said Russell.
“You’ve got to be kidding us, right?” said Knurr with disdain. “You don’t even show yourself in the bridge—we haven’t seen you in person for months—and now you want advice from us?”
“That’s enough!” interrupted Jena. “This is neither here nor there. We’re in a crisis situation, and your captain has asked you for insights, so be the good Vor soldier you never were and do what you’re told for a change.”
Knurr punched the console in front of him. “Or what?”
“Or you’re welcome to leave my ship,” said Russell, his voice ice cold. His hologram pointed a finger to the side. “Airlock’s that way.”
Knurr growled but eventually looked away.
“Anyone else have any brilliant ideas to waste valuable time we don’t have?” asked Jena.
“I suggest we answer the Vor’s hail,” said Del’Ron. “Could provide us with precious time while we get the hyperspace engines back online.”
Jena gazed at Russell. She had always been smart enough not to push Russell to tell the story of his disdain and conflicting feelings for the Vor, probably thinking that Russell would tell her when he thought the time was right. As often in their interactions, she didn’t need words to convey what she was thinking; they knew each other that well.
Russell nodded ever so slightly, a gesture so faint it had been imperceptible to the rest of the crew.
“Audio only,” said Jena. “Let’s hear what they have to say.”
The speakers boomed with a deep and full Vor voice. “I’m Captain Tor’Lon of the Vor destroyer Sekhmet. To the crew of the rogue Fenix, you’re housing a Vor citizen in your midst, and we ask that you return him at once. You have five minutes to comply, or we’ll destroy your puny ship. Tor’Lon out.”
“Charming fella,” said Russell.
“Look on the bright side,” said Jena. “For once they’re not here for you, Captain.”
“And it looks like Knurr now has another option if he wishes to leave the ship,” said Russell with a grin. “One that doesn’t involve explosive decompression.”
“Very funny—they’d execute me on the spot,” Knurr snarled.
They would, indeed, and Russell knew that. Vor didn’t look kindly on defectors or treason. Russell wondered which of these sins his crewmate had committed. He wasn’t the only one.
Del’Ron swiveled his chair to face his Vor crewmate, Knurr. “And why would that be?”
“Let’s just say I may have exaggerated how I ended my relationship with the Vor military,” said Knurr with way less defiance than usual.
“Hmmm…” Russell cleared his throat, “death by exposure to the freezing emptiness of space, or death by being shot by a platoon? I don’t envy those choices.”
Knurr roared, “You wouldn’t, would you?”
The bridge was silent as Knurr figured it wasn’t the time to piss off his captain. “I’m sorry,” he retracted. “That was out of line. What about an option where I still breathe at the end of the day?” he proposed instead.
“Do I hear you volunteering to provide a tactical solution to our current predicament?” asked Russell.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. But if we do this, it will probably only work once, and we’ll escalate our relationship with the Vor.”
Jena lifted an eyebrow. “You call our current stance with them a relationship?”
“Well,” answered Knurr, “if we do this, next time they’ll open fire without warning.”
“Now I’m curious about this solution of yours,” said Del’Ron.
“I think I can safely say that we all are,” added Jena.
“Very well. I can get us past their shields,” said Knurr, keeping his gaze low. “One well-placed torpedo, and they’re history.”
“Let’s assume I’m willing to escalate the situation to being actively hunted by every Vor ship out there, which I’m telling you right now, I’m not. Explain how we would do this?” Russell asked.
“Whatever it is,” interrupted Alby over the still open holo-link to engineering, “I object to destroying a fellow Vor destroyer.”
Russell frowned. “Fellow?”
Sure, Alby’s brain, his only remaining biological part, was Vor. And Vors did not kill Vors as a matter of principle. But Russell was surprised to hear Alby’s stance in a situation like this. Especially since it wasn’t in Alby’s best interest to let his existence, however limited in the absence of a full body, be known by his former race.
“I’m still a Vor,” said Alby.
“But you’re a member of this crew first, right?” asked Jena, rightly sensing that would have been Russell’s next question.
“Affirmative, and I think I know where Knurr is going with this. I am also aware of the frequent security weakness that plagues most Vor ships, though I can’t guarantee they haven’t fixed it by now.”
“Why would they?” argued Knurr. “Nobody outside some Vor officers knows about it. During our war with the Terrans, they never found out about it.”
Until today, thought Russell. He would rather exploit the weakness, but still keep the ability to use it again in the future.
“Very well,” Russell said. “Alby, we’re running out of time, so let’s try to do this swiftly. How do we exploit the shield’s vulnerability without destroying the ship, and preferably without them even knowing we did? If that’s an option at all.”
“It is, Captain. But I need to use the last of our nanite-gel. So I’ll need your permission on this.�
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Russell wasn’t happy to hear that. They’d used the nanite-gel to graft synthetic skin atop his artificial arm, and there was still a good patch open in the middle of Russell’s forearm where he could see the fake bones. The muscles and tendons moved about when he used his robotic hand. He had been hiding it under clothing, but he wanted the opening covered as soon as possible.
Unfortunately it took time between doses, and they only had enough gel to close the open gap in his arm.
Jena’s gaze again told the entire story of where she stood on the issue. And since there were a lot of credits attached to their current mission, he’d probably be able to buy all the nanite-gel he needed after payday.
“That’s okay, do what you have to do.”
Jena smiled and nodded slightly to convey her approval while the bridge remained silent. When Alby spoke again, their time was almost up.
“Package beamed into the ship.”
“Mind clueing us to what you did?” asked Russell.
“I reprogrammed the nanites in the gel to attach to a critical part of their hyperspace engine before beaming it over. Unless they look for it specifically, they’ll just think their engines have stalled. I also programmed the nanites to stop interfering with their engines in a couple of hours, at which point they’ll scatter around and deactivate, making them nearly undetectable. The Vors are going to scramble and scratch their heads as to what happened. Once their engines are back online, we’ll be far gone.”
“The Vors are hailing us again, and their weapons are locking on,” said Del’Ron.
“Then it’s time to get the hell out of here,” said Russell.
“Aye, Captain,” said Del’Ron before the ship jumped to hyperspace.
* * *
The Fenix jumped out of hyperspace. It had just entered Sector-3 of the Terran Empire.
The Dogs of God Page 34
