The Jolo Vargas Space Opera Series Box Set

by J. D. Oppenheim

  The Exeter had saved countless rim colonies in just this sort of mess. That big ship would come in and moments after it landed would be passing out big chunks of Fed green and water bottles to hungry, desperate people. The captain was named Johnny Yanagawa and as the Exeter’s fame grew so did his view of himself. Remember, the Exeter weren’t no military ship, and old Johnny had taken to wearing fancy leather boots and funny pants for horse ridin’. He even had a horse on board that he rode around the lower levels called Trigger.

  The Exeter was docked in Lareter getting some refits when word came in to make a run for Carnasus. They were about a week out when the message from the core came that things were worse than ever. So Johnny and his navigators decided they could cut it down to three days if they went through jump point one.”

  “What’s jump point one?” said Koba.

  “That’s the one you don’t go through any more.”

  “Earth,” said Katy.

  “Yep,” said Hurley. “Now even then, stories of bad juju on Earth had been going round and round. Boats getting lost. Weird shit. Monsters. But no real captain worried about fairy tales. Especially not Johnny Tanaka.

  The last message the core got from the Exeter was to say they were cutting time by jumping through Earth. The Fed braintrust waited for a few days and never heard another word from Johnny Tanaka and the big boat.”

  “What about the people on Carnasus?” said Katy.

  “The Fed sent a rescue ship a few days later that routed around jump point one, but it was too late. All dead. The whole colony. Hard to live with no water.”

  “Now Falstaff Corp was down their best boat and pushed the Fed to send someone after the Exeter. There was only one ship that could make the trip. The Arcadia. It was a brand new boat, not quite finished or they might’a sent it after the folks on Carnasus. It was the pride of the Federation Military. They called it an explorer class ship and some people joked they should’a called it the Exeter II, because she had all the Exeter upgrades and ten years’ of data from the Exeter engineers weighing in. Little mistakes in the design on the Exeter were corrected in the Arcadia.

  The Arcadia’s maiden voyage was a rescue mission to Earth. They were gonna find the Exeter. The captain of the Arcadia was Evinrude Trant.”

  “That Trant?” said Katy.

  “Yep. The Trant locked up in the brig in the bowels of this ship is his grandson.” Hurley took another sip of coffee. “Trant was confident he’d find the Exeter and prove all of the stories about Earth false. He figured there was some problem with the jump point so he brought some of the brightest minds from the core just in case they needed to recalculate the jump out. He figured he’d jump into the sector and find a bunch of dead, cold boats, stuck there, unable to jump out. It seemed logical.

  But he wasn’t dumb. He didn’t jump the Fed’s biggest, newest ship right into to Earth. He sent an unmanned shuttle in first. It was supposed to jump in, take some readings, sniff around a bit, then jump back and let all the smart dudes check the data.

  But the shuttle never came back.

  Trant waited about 24 hours, then sent another.

  And it never came back.

  Then two of the scientists snuck out on a shuttle, jumped to Earth, and guess what? They didn’t come back either.

  Now Trant was getting pissed. He figured there were pirates taking ships there and his ship, unlike the Exeter, had enough guns to destroy any pirate force around.

  So Trant jumps into Earth guns hot. He’s got four gunboats with him and he’s going to kick some ass. Orders to kill any boat that don’t show up blue on the screen.

  So he jumps in and the sector is clear. They came in pissed off wanting to hit something. But there was nothing. But you could see the Earth from our initial position: a black ball. That blue and green image the computer pulls up is old.

  So the scans pick up a Fed distress beacon coming from the planet’s surface. Trant goes for it and we were fine for awhile. But the moment we got close, that’s about when all hell broke loose. We ain’t even down into what’s left of the atmosphere and all five boats start getting pulled down. Controls don’t work. Couldn’t pull back out.”

  “That’s called gravity,” said Koba.

  “Nope. It was more than that. We felt the pull before we dove down into the atmosphere. Trant wanted a scout boat to go down first, but all the boats started getting sucked down. Trant ordered them back up but even a full burn wouldn’t gain us altitude. All we could do was sink down into the blackness of the dead planet.

  I heard the Arcadia was in communication with at least one of the scout boats, but no one knows what was said. Trant got desperate and launched the escape pods, thinking they might be too small to get pulled down. They launched 20 pods. I was in one with an engineer name Jasper Henry. He worked in the bottom of that big boat making sure made the water purifiers operated smoothly. He snuck me on the pod with him. And all the pods but ours along with the Arcadia and the four gunboats got sucked down.”

  “How’d you escape?” said Jolo.

  “Don’t know. There was an electrical storm in the upper atmosphere unlike anything I’d ever seen. Bolts of lightening where hitting the surface of the planet. One hit us and blew out the nav and everything else and we were just floating. The old pods were made to survive a large-bore ion cannon blast so Henry and me were still in one piece but I was crying my eyes out ‘cause I knew we was dead, but then Henry got all excited. He said we weren’t being pulled down anymore. Pretty soon he figured out a way to get the nav going and jump us out. We got picked up by a parts hauler a few days later, hungry and dry-mouthed.”

  “How come this ain’t in the archives?” said Katy.

  “Well, Henry owed a considerable sum of money on the core and figured his best move was to change his name and start over. He made me swear to keep the story quiet, but he died awhile back anyhow so I figure I kin tell y’all.” Hurley took a deep breath, sat down in his chair and reached for his cup.

  “Wait,” said Jolo. “You ain’t no Fed man. How’d you get on the Arcadia?”

  Hurley gave them all a brown and yellow toothed grin. “My diddy worked on the docks in Marlin and when the Arcadia dropped by for supplies, he was the man that loaded the food crates on board. One of them boxes had a 16 year old kid inside sucking on freeze-dried curry sticks and synth meat balls.”

  “Did your father know?” said Katy.

  “I left him a note and he kept quiet.”

  “So what’s pulling the ships down?” said Merthon.

  “Gotta be a power generator on the surface then,” said Barth, rubbing his chin.

  “Fairly large to generate field of that magnitude,” said George.

  “One more thing,” said Hurley. “Before we got hit and the comms went dead, we could hear Trant. He kept yelling for them to ‘fire on the source’. So maybe he was thinking the same thing.”

  “Did anyone make it to the surface?” said Jolo.

  “I believe so. Pretty sure the Arcadia was in contact with the Exeter. And we could hear Trant yelling at the gunboats and ordering the marine teams out.” Hurley paused. “I heard screaming. Like a war zone.”

  Jolo sighed, his plan seemed doomed from the start. “Are we nuts for thinking about this?”

  “Probably,” said Koba.

  “But how do we beat the synths without kinetic weapons?” said Barth.

  “We don’t,” said Katy.

  “Well, getting on the planet won’t be an issue,” said Jolo. “Just get near it, let it pull us in, then get the guns and hope we can find a way off.”

  “How sure are we about the weapons caches?” said Marco.

  “Earth’s population decreased by 74% in a fifty year stretch near the end. Whole cities were wiped out. All of it was left behind. I imagine we’ll find anything Earth had to offer, there for us to take,” said George.

  “Let’s sleep on this and see how we feel in the morning,” said Jolo. “Bar
th, you and the brain trust here,” he said, nodding towards George and Koba, “try to find anything else you can about Earth. Anything that might prevent ships from reaching the atmosphere.” Everyone stood and Marco gave him a look. “Oh, almost forgot,” said Jolo. “Merthon will leave with the Duvalites on the Sugoka.” Jolo shook the tall Vellosian’s hand, “Find a way to kill the Jaylens.”

  “I will. I’ll miss you all,” said Merthon. “There’s a rehydration tank that I can use and Marco will help Bertha lead what remains of the people from Duval. I hope to see you all again under better circumstances.”

  Everyone headed back to their quarters except Jolo and Marco. They both stared at the images the computer had pulled up of old Earth: cities and green forests and rivers, and those metal boxes on wheels that transported people and goods on black strips across the surface of the planet. There were no proximity sensors to prevent collisions. And they ran on internal combustion engines. Barbaric. Would there be any trees?

  “I’m proud of you,” said Marco.

  “Haven’t saved anyone. Haven’t even decided to go yet,” said Jolo. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going with Merthon. The Duvalites need leadership and I’ll do what I can.” He put his hands on Jolo’s shoulders. “You always do the right thing. Go with your heart.”

  Trant

  Jolo tossed and turned all night in the tiny cot in the spartan quarters he shared with Barth aboard the Persephony. He sat up in the darkness and stared across the room at the big engineer, snoring loud and deep. Barth would hit a bass note then raise up to a nasally high, then back down again. Jolo was thirsty. And he wished, not for the first time, that he was back on Duval, or in deep space in the Argossy waiting to relieve some big hauler of a bit of cargo. At least there, he had water. And options. And he didn’t have to sneak around to see Katy. Kray sent her off to be with the other female crew members, and stuck the rest of Jolo’s crew in the scraphole, a series of bunks near the main engine.

  “Go to bed,” said a tired voice. Barth hadn’t moved, but he’d stopped snoring.

  “What are we gonna do?”

  “I was gonna ask you the same thing.”

  “Sure as hell ain’t gonna go on a Fed death mission with that nutjob, Kray.”

  “Well, the nutjob has already shot down two ships trying to desert.”

  “Fed boats?”

  “Naw. Privateers.”

  Jolo sighed. “Earth?”

  “Let’s see… Nutjob’s death mission and get ripped to shreds by some little blonde-haired synth with those annoying red energy blades, or Jolo’s death mission to be killed by some damn ship-sucking Earth monster.”

  “You believe that shite?”

  “I heard enough of it coming from different sources to know there’s something going on. Monsters? Well, who knows, but I seen too much of this galaxy to rule anything out.”

  There was a moment of quiet and Jolo laid down again and took a few deep breaths, started to feel sleep coming at last. And then someone knocked on the door. Jolo jumped up thinking it was Katy. But the door slid open and there was a tired-looking, night-duty grunt standing there in a gray uniform. He looked at Jolo without saying anything and yawned.

  “Why are you here?” Jolo said finally. “And what unit are you in?”

  He scratched his head and rubbed his eyes. “Um, sorry. Holding. I’m from holding, sub-level 6. I believe one of your crew is there now.”

  “Why?”

  “Fighting in the water hole,” said the man.

  “Lemme guess,” said Jolo. “Big dude with an ill temper?”

  The man shook his head. “And this.” He handed Jolo Greeley’s sawed-off shotgun, the butt end sticky and wet with blood. “Sorry,” the man said. “He appears to have used it to some effect on a Federation man.”

  Barthelme sat up and put his feet on the floor. “Did he assault an officer?”

  “Yes. Captain of the Forntenroy. A Galaxy class freighter.”

  “Can I see my man?” said Jolo.

  “Yes, holding cell 34R sub-level 7. There’s to be an inquiry of course but he won’t be going anywhere until then.” The man started to salute, then stopped, and turned back down the dark hallway, the sound of the big engine in the background.

  Jolo turned the lights on and Barth squinted and put his hands over his eyes. The butt end of Betsy was dark red and glistening. Jolo took it to the sink, then remembered there was no water, and grabbed an old rag and cleaned the gun.

  “You want me to go with you?” said Barth.

  “No. You rest. I’ll go.”

  “Good. I really didn’t want to go. I just said that to be polite.” He laughed at his joke, slapped his pillow a few times and laid back down.

  “What are they gonna do to him?”

  “We’ll be lucky to get him back.”

  “Humans that can wield a firearm are in short supply.”

  “Never accuse the Fed of applying sound logic to any situation.”

  Jolo stared down through the invisible cell wall at Greeley. There was a cot, but he was laying on the cold floor on his side. His clothes were torn in some places and half his face was covered in blood. Jolo wondered if he’d been beaten with his own gun. Jolo remembered being in a cell just like this with Barth and Greeley not too long ago. He sat down on the floor. “Greeley, can you hear me?” The big man did not move.

  Jolo frowned. Greeley’s arm was tucked under him at an odd angle and he wondered if it was broken. It looked like he’d been thrown into the cell and now he wondered if he was conscious. Jolo walked down along the row of cells to the end. Most of the energy walls were opaque so he couldn’t see in, only a hazy silhouette. Jolo told the bot guarding these cells that Greeley needed medical attention.

  “34R’s vitals are within spec,” said the big gray bot.

  “That’s fine,” said Jolo, “until they are out of spec and he’s dead. And if he dies I will come back here and retire your ass.”

  “Threatening a Federation employee is an actionable offense.”

  Jolo went back to Greeley and watched him for awhile. His breathing was labored and half his face was covered in dry, black blood.

  “Stop worrying, Captain,” said a voice from behind. Jolo turned, and there, standing in the cell opposite Greeley was Marin Trant, once captain of the Federation gunboat Nymeria. The man who killed Silas Filch.

  Trant had turned the cell wall transparent and inside was a bed, a desk, even a large vid screen on the wall.

  “I thought they space-walked killers,” said Jolo.

  “You: maybe. Not me. Some wanted me dead. Some didn’t.” Trant stood there with his hands in his pockets. He looked clean, well fed, his skin supple like he’d had enough to drink. Orange coveralls. Jolo flashed back to Sol when they were about to send him off to a work planet.

  Trant pulled him back. “Any news?”

  “Kray’s going to attack some of the outer rim BG strongholds.”

  “Is he nuts?”

  “Do you wish you hadn’t killed Filch?”

  “Sometimes. But Filch never really had the best interests of the Federation in mind.”

  “In the end, I think he did. The President was a synth.”

  “Damn. You tell Kray?”

  “Yeah. They don’t really listen to me much.”

  “Me neither. Did he not see the vid?”

  “What vid?”

  “You’re not a very good pirate, Vargas. You recovered the listening post and you didn’t even think to extract the data? How trustworthy of you. Have you learned nothing from these idiots?” He laughed.

  “No one has ever accused me of being honorable.”

  Trant motioned him over and then turned on his vid screen. “Here’s what you missed. Trant showed him the same vid that Kray had shown just hours before.”

  “I’ve seen this.”

  “Wait.”

  The vid played just as it had before and at the end,
just like before, the Fed were victorious, but this time the vid didn’t stop. The Fed units were standing around and then all at once the Jaylens were alive again and the droids in space above them could not target the Jaylens because there were troops all around. Same with the land cats. In the end there were only the blonde girls standing.

  “How’d you get this? Why would Kray decide to fight after seeing this?”

  “Oh, he didn’t see it.”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  “Why? He won’t believe you. He has a plan, remember?” Trant stood there grinning like it was Jolo in the cell. “So what’s your move?”

  Jolo stepped back, looked over at Greeley still taking ragged breaths. “Run to Earth. Get weapons to beat the synths.”

  Trant started laughing. “Damn. You are quite the patriot. Defender of the realm. Federation man ain’t afraid to die and all that bullshit. Is Jolo Vargas really in there?”

  “How come the guy in jail is the only one who thinks I’m a trustworthy patriot?”

  “Okay. Here it is,” said Trant. “I want off this boat. There is a contingent of like-minded people who are ready to go with me. If you want to come you are welcome.”

  “Kray won’t let you out. He’ll blow you away before you can jump.”

  “Oh, he’s going to let me out. Only that’ll be the last time I’ll see him.”

  “You gonna kill him, too?”

  “The thought had crossed my mind. But no. I’m going to run. I think our chances are better if we travel a little lighter. Come with us.”

  “How’d you get the vid? And why hasn’t Kray seen it?”

  “One of my people got it before the listening post was compromised. The vid was altered, but we got a copy before they got to it.”

  “Why don’t you show it to Kray?”

  “Knowledge is power and all that,” Trant smiled. “The BG have spewed that little bit of fiction all over the galaxy. They probably don’t know where we are. Besides, Kray’s not going to believe it coming from me.”

  “I know the feeling. But the Fed have to know. It’ll save lives. Maybe prevent more useless deaths. Maybe if they saw it they’d decide to run.” Jolo took a step towards Trant’s cell. The invisible cell door hummed and made his hair stand on end.