The Expansion Box Set, page 36
part #1 of The Expansion Series
Torres relented, shrinking down and dialing back the intimidation. Behind Asha, Brandt took her hand off the pistol holstered under her left arm and relaxed also.
“So,” she said quietly, “you started a war and lost everything, and now you want us to side with you?”
Asha turned to face her, his facial expression revealing nothing but his feelings pinning her to the wall.
“What other choice do you have?”
Torres gave the news to the admiral in person with Brandt beside him.
He had left the Ichi in the hands of Sarvanto and piloted the Tanto himself over to the gigantic colony ship, There he could see the battered frigate being worked on by dozens of engineering crews in shuttles and performing EVAs on her outer hull. As they worked, they swarmed over her wounds like ants on a bullet-holed body. The Tanto had docked with permission, found an escort waiting for them and followed them directly to the bridge. The bridge easily three times as large as their own ship’s. They waited outside the admiral’s quarters before being admitted to the big stateroom.
“At ease,” Dassiova said.
The usual uniform of a fleet admiral had been abandoned in place of the more practical flight suit the other officers also wore. Brandt noted that her former commanding officer, with his reputation of being a hard-ass and very much the soldier’s soldier, wore a pistol on his right thigh.
“Sir, I thought it better we brief you in person about our conversation with the Kuldar,” Torres said.
“Take a seat,” he said. As he directed them, he made eye contact with Brandt and flashed a look of recognition that didn’t seem friendly. “Tell me.”
“In a nutshell, Admiral, the intel is partially correct,” Torres said. He sat stiffly, ready to stand when the fleet commander did.
“Only partially? Lay it out for me like I’m five, son,” Dassiova growled at him. He had had too long a day already to be messed around with information in small doses.
“They did start the war, only it seems by proxy; they attacked another alien race and in short order the Va’alen arrived and destroyed their home world. The gateway technology was Kuldar, but the Va’alen took it over after the survivors fled and followed them to this system. The Kuldar then sent a prototype scout ship ahead to find somewhere to go—based on the same technology as the gateway so I’m assuming that it’s a static Fold Drive of sorts—nly they never came back. We know why, because they crash-landed on Earth and that’s wh—”
“Just the current events, Captain,” Dassiova interrupted. “Assume I’ve read a goddamned briefing docket before I came all the way out here.”
“Sorry, sir,” Torres said quickly. “So it looks like there is or at least was another alien race who the Kuldar described as looking a little like us. That the tech we all use to defeat the physics of spacetime all originated in the same place at one point.”
“So we’re in the middle of someone else’s war and we have inadvertently picked sides?” the admiral asked testily.
“Seems so, sir.”
“Well, shit,” he answered. “And now our options are to limp home, having half-destroyed a few trillion credits of prototype fleet ships with a few hundred alien refugees, or what? Dive right into their war?”
“Sir,” Brandt said as she leaned forward, “it’s not for us to tell the admiral what to do b—”
“You’re absolutely, unequivocally, goddamned right it’s not,” Dassiova said. The tone of his voice was so low and controlled that it would have been far less intimidating for him to draw his weapon and pointed it at her head.
She continued tentatively. “But I imagine that would be a decision for our command back on Earth to make. All I’m saying is that the tech advances and the resources on offer in this system are worth a little risk to keep exploring.”
“Your opinion,” Dassiova said with mock deference, “is duly noted, Commander. Did it occur to you to that I also have a functioning brain and I, being the fleet admiral, might even be privy to information that you two renegades aren’t? You know the sensor readings from the drones have been transmitted back to Earth and the eggheads back there are having a fit just thinking about the raw materials?”
Torres and Brandt exchanged a brief look as Dassiova went on.
“The way Earth sees it,” he said, “it doesn’t make a damned bit of difference who pissed on whose yard first; this system either is or isn’t worth the risk of exploring for resources. They believe that it is. The real question remains, can we win?” He banged a fist down onto the desktop as he spoke and startled them both by the suddenness and loudness of the gesture.
“Well, sir…” Torres began.
“Rhetorical question, Torres, pipe down and you may yet learn something,” Dassiova told him. “If these Kuldar are good for their word that they can give us advanced tech which we will be sharing with all of the territories back home. There will be a combined fleet in this sector in as little as six months. That’s how long it would take to retrofit just about every big ship we have, and all of those ships better be sporting the most insanely powerful alien ray guns available if we have a hope in hell of defeating the bastards who attacked us. We will not seek a diplomatic resolution with the Va’alen, but the fact remains that while that gateway device is still operational they can bring infinite reinforcements through, as far as we know.”
He paused for a moment, lending gravity to his next words.
“We need to destroy that device, bring back the Kuldar refugees and then return with a bigger fleet to mop up what’s left of them, which, from what our probes are telling us, is a hell of a lot more than we’ve already faced.”
Brandt and Torres sat back in stunned silence.
“So, what do you need from us, sir?”
43
Proxima Centauri b Orbit
“How many more?” the Master Petty Officer yelled through his suit’s speakers at the seamen at the foot of the dropship ramp.
In helpful answer, which he realized would guarantee him an ass-chewing later, the seaman shrugged unhelpfully back up the ramp as the line of nervous aliens trudged past him.
Even though they had been briefed, the troops from the Venture were totally taken aback by the sudden influx of unexpected emotions they felt when in proximity to the Kuldar. Nervous tension cramped their muscles, elevated their heart rates and made managing the evacuation an almost impossible task. Their unit commanders sat inside the command centers onboard the dropships that had settled in three different locations on the habitable ring of the dull, red-bathed planet. They watched as the bio-sign readouts of their troops spiked and dipped at such an alarming rate that twice the operation had almost been cancelled and the vessels returned to their mothership. They had followed orders and stayed the course.
They were refugees; scared and nervous about the arrival of the new aliens who had fought with the enemy of their people. Refugees who now faced uncertainty at the mercy of these same aliens whom their leaders had placed total trust in for the very survival of their entire race.
Little wonder why the armed soldiers, placed to line their route, appeared only as metal humanoids with reflective plates where their faces should be. As they passed the soldiers, the population of thin-limbed, large-headed aliens looked at them with fear and wonder in their big eyes. They carried weapons and gave off no emotions, so they sparked fear in the young and the old of the Kuldar, despite the assurances from their queen that they were to trust in her and go with the metal people.
Most of them had never set foot inside a spacecraft, had never even seen one. Their people possessed only the single ship, which had been left behind by their ancestors. Only the queen and her inner circle had ever taken that ship off-world, and even that had run the risk of bringing the Va’alen down on them. It was the arrival of these aliens that had done that; had brought a swarm of Va’alen to the skies above the ring of life on their planet. Two of the demons had landed on their world and fought with the newcomers. Rumor had spread that those two Va’alen had destroyed a legion of the metal people before they blew themselves up to demonstrate their power. These rumors, wildly exaggerated with each excited retelling, had served only to increase the spreading fear and panic among the Kuldar.
“We’re at capacity,” shouted the master petty officer. He waved at the advancing line of Kuldar to stop where they were.
The aliens were holding all the belongings they could carry, and shuffled to a halt. A few moments of panic ensued when family groups were separated either side of the cut-off line. Some ran back from the dropship to reunite with family members. The senior NCO lost his temper and took off while the ship was still under capacity. He was impatient and couldn’t cajole them to fill every seat. He gave up, and as one ship rose high into the sky, another swooped in to settle down and drop its own cargo ramp. Another armor-suited alien waved the Kuldar forward to climb the sloping metal and take seats in the strange craft taking them to unknown and frightening new places.
“It is alright,” a soothing Kuldar voice said over their frightened mutterings. “We will all be together on their ships, and we will be together on a new world where the Va’alen cannot find us.”
They shuffled forward, reassured by the words of one of their senior leaders placed among the people to keep them calm.
The Ichi was already at capacity. Their only vacant cargo hold had been filled with close to a hundred Kuldar—the queen, her husband and family at the heart of the small community there. The basic needs of the aliens—food, water and waste recycling—had hastily been met with the retrofitting, but the Kuldar on the Ichi had been specially selected for their engineering knowledge and ability. They didn’t have much in the way of possessions, but what they did have seemed paltry in comparison to the almost obsessive human attachment to possessions.
These few, the engineering vanguard, were hard at work alongside the scientists and engineers of the human crew. They were all tasked with developing the integration of technology between the two alien races and working on the biggest problem: how to make the two systems interface.
The primary objective, according to orders from Earth, was the development and implementation of an advanced weapons system.
Torres was pissed.
He had jumped to command, undoubtedly too early in his career, only to find himself the captain of a ship mere minutes later. Such a jump was unheard of. It was circumstance and a healthy dose of luck—good or bad depending on how anyone looked at it—that led to the set of occurrences that put him in command. He hadn’t had that command stripped from him, not yet, even when the four ships and their respective captains, who all had far greater experience than he did, arrived from their home system. Dassiova, a man with a fearsome reputation, had left him in command of the Ichi. In private, the admiral had told him how he had done a good job and achieved the mission, even if he had a number of ‘developmental issues’ to address with him when they were safely back in home waters.
After that, he had heard nothing. He had been, to use the seaman’s vernacular, totally and utterly ‘mushroomed.’ He’d been kept in the dark and fed bullshit.
No further orders came, no communication to or from Earth was put through, and everything he needed to know was filtered down from the admiral. Torres wasn’t a renegade at heart and was certainly no maverick soldier hell-bent on doing things his own way, but he was finding himself increasingly pissed at being left out of the loop.
I may be young, he thought to himself as he paced his quarters, maybe even too young to have a command like this, but hasn’t my record shown me to be competent? Haven’t I achieved my own success with nothing to do with family connections or privilege? So why am I not being involved in the big picture?
He decided to seek his own answers to that and left the bridge. He was accompanied by a man Torres had fetched personally. Together they walked to the cargo bay where the guarding soldiers of his crew admitted him access. There he greeted the Kuldar by returning the gestures of their bowed heads and their fingertips touching their foreheads before they spoke. The man Torres had brought with him moved behind him reluctantly, either because of the early hour or a fear of the alien race. Torres heavily suspected it was the lack of sleep that caused the lagging in his steps; he had known the man to be awful at getting his ass out of bed even seven years earlier.
“Are my people from the other ship here?” he asked the Kuldar.
“No,” the Kuldar greeting him said excitedly. “You are the only one of your people here.”
“Good,” Torres said. “Is Asha here?”
He was led to the alien who had made first contact with his crew and found him working over holographic plans projected in orange light, which were swiped away when he approached.
“Asha,” Torres said, “I have brought one of the best minds of my people to work with yours. Asha, this is Doctor Paterson.”
Paterson stepped forward, awkwardly bowing stiffly, and then touching his thumb and forefinger to his forehead in greeting.
“How can I help you, Healer Paterson?” Asha asked, the translation device misinterpreting his words.
“Not that kind of doctor,” Paterson said. “I’m a scientist.”
Asha checked the translation. “How can I help you, Scientist Paterson?”
“The captain and I had a little idea,” Paterson said, “and it’s one that needs whatever tech you’re running on your ship.”
Asha’s face registered confusion; some of Paterson’s words hadn’t translated properly.
“Try not to use any abbreviations or metaphors when talking to them,” Torres said quietly. “It confuses the software; it’s only programmed about forty-five percent of language so far.”
Paterson nodded in small apology.
“We need the device you use on your ship to mask your readings,” he explained. “I think I know a way to improve it.”
“Improve it?” Asha asked. “How?”
“We detected you by your energy signature,” Torres explained, “because it’s almost the same as ours. We use the same kind of energy source as you do. Paterson here thinks he can modulate the energy output to the same frequency as your disruption device.”
“The shroud?” Asha asked. Their best approximation would have called it a cloak, but translating as ‘shroud’ made sense. Nobody liked the words ‘cloaking device;’ it felt a little too fictional, despite their sudden appearance in a place that felt almost entirely fictional.
“Yes,” Torres said. “Can you give us access to it?”
Asha bowed his head slightly as if in thought. They both felt a wave of apprehension, perhaps even a slight amount of fear, as he spoke the next words.
“This I cannot do without permission from my queen, and she will want to know what you need this for.”
“Well…” Torres said. He seemed apprehensive, as if he was about to admit to breaking his grandmother’s favorite vase. “That’s where it might get a little… sticky.”
“You want to do what?” Admiral Dassiova yelled as he stood from his chair and slammed both hands on his desk. “Are you out of your mind, Captain?”
“No, sir,” Torres said. He stood still and to attention; the tried and tested method of surviving an ass-chewing from a senior officer. “If the admiral would just hear me out—”
“Hear the rest of your suicide mission that involves the intentional destruction of a billion-credits’ worth of warship under my command? Have you even considered what the captain of the proposed ship is going to do to you?”
“Yes, sir, I have. At length. The way I see it is this,” he said, speaking quickly before the admiral chewed him out again, “the fleet is under-gunned and too damaged to risk a head-on fight with the Va’alen. If we just left the system for six months or a year, then we would lose the foothold and be facing unknown enemy numbers when we returned. We know we can’t take them on hand-to-hand without heavy losses unless we use battle mechs; even those will need some serious upgrades to get the job done. You said it yourself, Admiral, that gateway represents infinite enemy reinforcements and we need to take it out. I believe that the risk versus reward stakes are high enough to sacrifice a wounded frigate.”
Dassiova sat heavily and stared at the young man. Torres had risen from a smooth-faced boy in one of his peacekeeper units to a UNID-attached commander who somehow managed to end up in command of one of the most important missions in Earth history. The admiral held his breath, honestly not knowing whether the kid was insane, arrogant, or brilliant, and let it out in an exhausted sigh. He leaned back and rubbed his face, trying to remember the last time he’d grabbed more than an hour’s sleep.
“Let’s just agree that I’m willing to humor this little fantasy of yours, Torres,” he said more quietly. “Tell me the plan.”
“Sir!” Captain Halstead protested, her eyes glistening with tears of rage at her frustration. She wanted to let rip on the very junior captain; killing him with her bare hands in front of the fleet admiral would certainly be outside the doctrine of military discipline. Her Australian accent grew more pronounced when she was angry, and right then she was very angry. “You want to give him my ship, just so he can intentionally destroy it?”
“Hold your horses,” Dassiova said. “Look at the bigger picture here. I know the Norton is your baby and you know that I know you’ve captained her exceptionally, but we need to face facts; she’s too damaged to make the series of jumps required to make it home unless she’s dependent on the Venture as she is now. What Captain Torres is proposing is a way to achieve the mission, make our next mission viable, and get us all home safe and sound, where—” the admiral held up a hand to stop the interruption that was about to explode from her mouth, “—where I will ensure that you and your crew are given the next warship fresh out of the shipyard. Hell, you can even rename her the Norton’s Revenge if you like.”
