12
Massif hadn’t waited for Clement to give the order. He had engaged the LEAP drive and the Beauregard had slipped from normal space into its quantum-fluid bubble for a period of 0.086 seconds before automatically shutting down. In that time the Beauregard had traveled an indeterminate amount of distance and scrambled most of the crew’s brains. Clement felt his mind returning to normal slowly, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle coming together. He looked out on his dimly lit bridge as his crew struggled to regain their wits.
“Thank you, Ivan,” he croaked out before clearing his throat and sitting up higher in his command chair. All the main systems on the bridge had blinked out and were rebooting.
“You’re welcome, sir,” said Massif.
“Mika . . . ” He had to clear his throat again, then, “Where are we?”
“Uncertain, Captain,” the pilot said from her station, her hand quivering on the controls and her voice weak. Clement could see she had been shaken by the LEAP transit. “My main tracking console is knocked out, but the underlying telemetry says we’re still in the Trinity system.”
“In the neighborhood, then?”
She turned, a wan smile on her face. “In the neighborhood, yes, sir.” Then she ran her hands over her console more certainly as systems began to come back online. “I think I can get us a visual, if that would help, sir.”
Clement nodded. “As good as anything, Lieutenant,” he said. With that the main display screen lit up. It showed a blue-green mass in sunlight looming over them, but half the planet was eclipsed in darkness.
“Jesus Christ! Is that Bellus?” said Clement.
“I think so, sir. We were on a general heading for her, but I didn’t think we’d be this close,” said Massif.
Just then Yan returned to her station. “Systems coming back online, sir. We’re just slightly less than eighteen thousand kilometers from Bellus, sir,” she said.
Clement got on his com to Hassan Nobli. “That was quite a calculation, Engineer. Another tenth of a second and we’d have been in the mantle of the planet.”
“You said you wanted my best guess, sir. You got what you asked for,” replied Nobli.
“I did indeed. Thank you, Nobli.”
“My pleasure, sir.”
Clement shut off the com and then turned to Yan. “What happened with my nukes?” he asked in a demanding tone.
“I’ve already done a quick analysis, sir. The yield . . . the yield was insufficient for a fission explosion, sir,” she said.
“Insufficient? You mean they were duds?”
Yan nodded. “Essentially, sir.”
Clement slammed his fist on the arm of his command couch. “I thought we verified the nuclear yields back at Kemmerine Station?”
“We did, sir. My only conclusion is that the warheads had insufficient plutonium mass for detonation, and that some kind of masking agent was used to deceive us,” she said.
Clement sat back in his command chair, his face flushing red with anger. “In other words, we were sabotaged by Admiral DeVore.”
“It appears so, sir.”
Clement leaned forward in his couch, clasping his hands together, speaking softly so that only she could hear. “We’ve been outsmarted by Elara DeVore for the last time, Yan,” he said through tight lips. He felt like someone had just cut open his body and let his guts fall to the floor. “This betrayal . . . ” he started, “this betrayal is absolute, Yan. And it’s not the first time.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I now know who betrayed me at the Battle of Argyle Station. Elara DeVore. That’s how she was able to advance through the ranks of the 5 Suns Navy so fast. She sold us out, all of her crewmates and friends onboard the Beauregard, for her own advancement.”
Yan hesitated. His words were filled with anger and resentment. She could almost feel his pain. But . . .
“That was a different war, Clement. It’s over now. Now we have to focus on this ship, this crew, and how to save them,” she said.
He finally exhaled and took in a deep breath. “I can’t deny that I want to crawl inside one of those whiskey bottles, Yan. Forever.”
“You can’t,” she replied. “This ship needs you. Hell, I need you. The over-promoted rich girl from New Hong Kong. You’re the only person who can make this work, Clement. We all need you.”
Clement sat back, thinking. “If she was willing to go this far, she had to have an accomplice on board, someone to back her plan up.”
Yan nodded. “Wilcock,” she said.
Clement bolted from his seat. “Get your sidearm, Commander. Mika, get us into a higher, stable orbit over Bellus and maintain.” He looked to Adebayor and Massif. “The two of you are to go to the armory and bring back one sidearm and one cobra rifle for each of you. When you return, seal the bridge and only open it on my personal orders. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” came the chorus reply.
“Mika, seal the bridge while they’re gone, and only open it for them when they return.”
“Will do, sir,” she said.
Clement grabbed his cobra pistol from his discarded EVA suit and primed it, then looked to Yan. “Ready?” he asked.
“Ready, sir,” she said with a nod, loaded pistol in her hand.
Then the two of them headed off the bridge and down the gangway, toward the forward missile room at a dead run.
“You know I could be working for Admiral DeVore as well,” said Yan as they ran to the forward missile room.
“You could be,” admitted Clement. “But if you are then now would be a good time for you to put a cobra round in my back.”
Yan reached out and stopped him. “You know that’s not going to happen,” she said. He looked at her, his face not giving away any emotion one way or another.
“I hope that’s true, Yan. If I’m wrong about you then this whole mission is a suicide run, and every life on this ship is forfeit.”
“It is true, sir,” she said. “I’m loyal to you.”
“Good,” he said, again without commitment, then, with a nod of his head, “let’s go get our traitor.”
They picked up their pace, weapons drawn.
When they entered the missile room, two decks down and directly below the bridge, Captain Wilcock had his cobra pistol to the back of Middie Telco’s head. Yan and Clement stood in the doorway, their sidearms laser-targeted on Wilcock’s forehead.
“Traitor,” said Clement, his aim not wavering. “What did you do to the warheads?”
Wilcock looked at him with disdain, but chose to answer. “Depleted uranium casings. Fooled all of you into thinking you had a fully functional nuke,” said Wilcock as he shifted to put Telco’s head between him and their targeting laser sights.
“That action could have killed us all. Those LACs had us dead to rights.”
“I was ordered to sacrifice my life for this mission, if that was required,” replied Wilcock, emotionless.
“Ordered by Fleet Admiral DeVore.”
“Of course. Now enough of this. Let me through to the shuttle or Middie Telco here will get a softball-sized hole in his head.”
Clement shook his head negative. “That’s not happening,” he stated flatly.
“This isn’t a negotiation, Captain.” He said the last word with open anger. “You’ve got five seconds to step out of the way.”
Clement exchanged a glance with Yan. She took one step to the right.
“Keep moving,” demanded Wilcock. Yan took another step, followed by Clement yielding the door opening. “More!” he said as he moved with Telco toward the yawning hatchway. Yan took two more steps, Clement one, and then Wilcock pushed Telco toward them and ran for the door, slamming the hatch behind him as the three of them tried to untangle themselves.
Yan ran to the door. “Sealed,” she said. Clement waved her aside and raised his pistol at the door lock from barely a meter away.
“Jesus!” exclaimed Yan as she and Telco dove for cover. Clement fired at the lock mechanism, blowing the door clean off its hinges and into the hallway, then scrambled through the hatch and started running after Wilcock. He slid down the metal stairwell rails, barely touching the stairs with his feet as he ran. When he made it to the cargo hold Wilcock was ahead of him, running for the open shuttle door. He had one shot from almost 10 meters away with a close-range weapon.
He didn’t hesitate. The kinetic cobra round hit Wilcock in his outstretched left hand just as he was reaching for the shuttle stair railing, bits of metal and flesh splattering against the shuttle’s hull. Wilcock fell in a sprawl off the shuttle steps and onto the deck. Instinctively he reached for his wounded hand with his free one and his pistol went skittering away. He howled in pain as Clement raced across the deck and then went into a slide, kicking Wilcock’s discarded pistol under the shuttle. Seconds later Yan and Telco arrived, along with Pomeroy and a slew of the rest of the crew. Wilcock was still howling like a schoolgirl, holding his shattered left hand.
“Take charge of our prisoner, Mr. Telco,” Clement said, then turned to Pomeroy, “Get him patched up, with as minimal medical supplies as possible, no pain meds, and then throw him in the brig.”
“Uh, we don’t have a brig, sir,” said Telco.
Clement looked around the deck. “Well, we used to. Put him in the shuttle air lock then and attach him to a tether until we decide what to do with him.”
“Aye, sir,” said Telco as he and Pomeroy hauled the whining traitor off the deck.
Clement looked at Yan. “My cabin, five minutes,” he said. She nodded as Clement stormed off.
Clement stopped at the bridge to give the all-clear and then ordered Massif, Ori, and Adebayor to begin a survey of the light side of the tidal-locked Bellus.
“What are we looking for?” asked Massif.
“Any place to set down. We may have to hide for a while. And get a bead on that Ark ship. I want to know where they’re heading.”
“Aye, sir,” came the responses, and then Clement made for his cabin. When he opened the door, Yan was already inside.
“That was too goddamned close,” she said as he entered.
“No kidding. That bastard Wilcock. Worthless piece of shit.”
“You’re forgetting Admiral DeVore.”
Clement shook his head. “No, I’m not. But we can’t deal with her out here. We can deal with Wilcock, though,” he said. They both sat down, facing each other. Clement leaned forward.
“This is my fault, Yan. DeVore thought I would drink my way through this trip. She was counting on me not being the man I used to be. She expected I would be the lout I’ve been on Argyle Station for the last nine years since my war parole ended. She thought she knew what I would do. Well, I didn’t disappoint her. I am that man. She played me easily enough. And to think I even slept with her on Kemmerine,” he finished, shaking his head in disgrace.
Yan opened her mouth to talk but said nothing for a moment, then, “I disagree, Captain. You foiled her plans. We should all be dead by now, but you’ve saved us. You are not that man on Argyle Station. I know she’s had you under observation for at least the last year, probably more than that. You were the perfect patsy, but you beat her. We’re all still alive.”
Now it was Clement’s turn to stay quiet. After another minute he spoke again, changing the subject.
“I’ve no time to waste on Captain Wilcock right now. We have a military Earth Ark ship bearing down on us with a hundred times our firepower. We have no nukes to defend ourselves, and an Admiral back home who has deceived us and sacrificed us to the wolves for her own selfish reasons, and I’m just trying to figure out what to do next.”
“About which part?”
Clement looked at her. “First things first. Wilcock, I guess. I’m having a hard time trying to avoid my first impulse,” he said.
“Which is?”
“His actions warrant execution,” he said. Yan went quiet and pensive at that. “You don’t agree?” Clement prompted.
“I do agree.”
Now it was Clement’s turn to get quiet again as he thought about things. Finally, he stood up, his decision made, and Yan stood with him. “Call all ship’s personnel to the loading dock in twenty minutes, save for Mika and Ivan.”
“Yes, sir,” said Yan. The two stood together as she looked at him, hoping for more, but he stayed resolved. With nothing more to say, she left the room to inform the crew. Once he was alone, Clement went to his cabinet and poured himself a glass of the Argyle whiskey. He drank it quickly, in one shot, to steel his resolve. He’d killed many enemies on the field of battle, but this was the first time he’d considered executing a man, even if he was a traitor.
Clement looked at the bottle again, and all it represented. He’d crawled in and out of a bottle like that a dozen times since the war, always wondering what had become of his friends, but never allowed to know what became of them by the rules of his war parole. Well, now he had found out. Elara DeVore was the one who betrayed them, no, him, at the Battle of Argyle Station. He wondered if delivering him to the 5 Suns Navy had been part of the deal she had obviously cut with them to betray the Rim. In any case, it had undoubtedly led to her decade-plus rise in the 5 Suns Navy, all the way to Fleet Admiral. Like he’d said to Yan, Elara DeVore always had a backup plan.
He looked at the bottle, longing for another hit, if nothing else just to numb the pain of his memories of DeVore, and of being her lover. He’d been through a lot in his life, but he had never felt betrayal like he felt it now. That’s what DeVore had robbed him of, his ability to trust anyone from now on.
He turned away from the bottle, focusing on his tactical pad but not really looking at it. Captain Wilcock had no doubt been deceived by DeVore just as he had, but Wilcock had willingly put the entire crew in mortal danger, he’d committed treason, and mutiny. In Clement’s mind, there was no real choice. Wilcock had to die. Regrettably, he was merely a pawn standing in for the person who was the true villain here, the one who should be standing for execution. In that moment, he silently vowed he would bring Elara DeVore to justice. Then he stood, and spoke out loud in his empty cabin.
“You’ll be the first person I’ve ever executed, Captain Wilcock,” he said quietly to himself, “but probably not the last.” Then he put the bottle away and left his cabin, heading for the loading dock.
Captain Wilcock was sealed in the shuttle air lock, facing the largest exterior door on the Beauregard. His injured hand was crudely wrapped and he winced in obvious pain, missing at least two fingers from his left hand. It would be cruel to extend that pain, thought Clement.
Most of the crew were now gathered around in a disorganized group, and Yan was the last to arrive with Lieutenant Pomeroy. Clement wasn’t happy. He stood on the gantry landing, looking down on his crew.
“Commander Yan,” he called out.
She snapped to attention and stepped forward, looking up at him from the deck. “Sir.”
“Organize this rabble,” he ordered. She did. Within a few seconds the crew had organized itself into three rows of five and two of four, by rank, with only Wilcock, Clement, Yan, the deceased Middie Daniel, plus Ori and Massif (who were busy running the ship) missing from their ranks. Clement signaled to Telco to activate the com so that Wilcock could hear the conversation from inside the air lock, but not reply or be heard by the crew. Once that task was complete, Clement started in.
“We are here to enact punishment on a traitor, Captain Craig Wilcock, who deceived this ship and her crew by placing nonexplosive nuclear warheads into our defensive armament, thus endangering the entire crew aboard the Beauregard during the attack by the Earth Ark ship. I have debated those actions, along with his placing Middie Telco in peril by holding him hostage with a cobra pistol to the head, and his attempt to steal our only shuttle to escape justice. I believe Captain Wilcock was working with Fleet Admiral DeVore of the 5 Suns Alliance Navy, another traitor, to use this ship as a test to seek out the power of the Earth Ark ship we encountered. This ship and her crew were no doubt considered an acceptable expense by the 5 Suns Navy, or at least by Admiral DeVore herself. Neither I nor any of my crew were informed of this except for Captain Wilcock, who clearly had an escape plan in place if this ship was destroyed by a superior force. As captain of this ship I cannot condone, forgive, nor commute the penalties for Captain Wilcock’s actions. I therefore sentence the traitor, Craig Wilcock, to capital punishment by evacuation into the vacuum of space, as prescribed in the 5 Suns Alliance Navy Code of Military Justice.”
The crew was dead silent at this. Clement could hear Wilcock banging on the air lock door, a quiet thudding sound as he realized his final fate was at hand.
“This ship, her crew, and this mission have been betrayed by the Captain, the Admiral and the 5 Suns Navy. It is now up to each of you to decide where your loyalties lie. We are now a crew without a nation, a ship without a flag. We cannot trust the 5 Suns Navy, which commissioned this ship, nor the Fleet Admiral. Each of us, therefore, must decide our fate from this point forward. As my last order as the captain of this 5 Suns Alliance Navy vessel, I order the execution of Captain Wilcock and will carry it out myself. From that point onward your decisions to follow my orders will be completely voluntary. I leave that decision to each of you.”
Clement stepped down from the gantry to the cargo deck and walked to the air lock door. Wilcock was in a panic, beating the door with both his hands, leaving a bloody stain on the window from his injury. The pain in his face as he faced the terror of his own demise was obvious, but Clement reminded himself of Wilcock’s cowardice, of his betrayal, of the people on the Beauregard he could have killed. He knew it should be Elara DeVore in that air lock, but she wasn’t here, and Wilcock had done enough to warrant this punishment on his own. He wondered if he could do the same thing to DeVore as he was doing to Wilcock. He decided at this point, he could, to both of them.
He activated the outer door controls. The interior alarms went off as Wilcock panicked even more, looking for any way out. Clement pressed the release button.
The doors parted and Wilcock was quickly sucked out by decompression, his body dangling about ten meters outside the air lock, still tethered to the ship, spinning and writhing in cold space. He flailed his limbs as he spun around, out of control, with nothing to grasp on to but his last breath. In seconds it was over, his body rigid and lifeless. Mercifully Clement detached the tether, allowing him to float away toward Bellus, where his body would burn up in the atmosphere. Clement closed the outer doors and activated the atmosphere controls, flooding the air lock with environment again, then turned back to his crew.
“All hands, return to stations. Command crew will meet in the officer’s galley in thirty minutes to discuss our next actions. Dismissed,” he said, then walked straight past Yan and back up the gangway, heading toward his quarters.
Clement shut the officer’s galley doors as the last of his command crew squeezed into the small space. Present were Yan, Nobli, Ori, Massif, and Lieutenant Pomeroy, who Clement had specifically invited. He’d left Adebayor to manage the ship now that Mika had put it in a stable orbit around Bellus, and they were only a few meters from the bridge at any rate.
“To business then,” said Clement. “We’re alone in an unknown star system, we’ve been betrayed by our commanders and are undoubtedly considered expendable by the 5 Suns Alliance Navy, and most especially Fleet Admiral DeVore. Are there any objections to my declaration that the Beauregard currently flies no flag, and that the decisions we make to survive are ours, and ours alone?” No one in the room said a word.
“Your silence is considered acceptance of our new standard. I will note in the log that we all took this stand of our own volition. From this point on, I propose that we adopt the 5 Suns Alliance military code as a temporary makeweight from which to conduct our onboard affairs. We are not pirates. Please state any objections now.” Again, there were none. “Good. Now that that business is complete, I need reports on the condition of the ship, our tactical status, and a review of the data we have compiled on Bellus.” He turned to his right. “Commander Yan?”
“The ship is running smoothly on all systems. We have forty-eight conventional warhead missiles remaining at our disposal, although it is uncertain how effective they would be against the Ark ship. On a tactical basis, the Ark ship remains in a deep-dive course inward toward Alphus. From their current approach they could either do a burn to establish a stable orbit around the planet, or accelerate and use it as a slingshot to change their course back out toward Bellus, and us.”
“We won’t survive another encounter with that Ark ship, especially if we have to fight them with conventional weapons,” said Clement.
“Is there another option? I mean, besides conventional weapons?” It was Mika Ori, the former fighter pilot, asking the question.
Clement exchanged a brief glance with Nobli. “No other options that I’m prepared to discuss at this time.”
“But shouldn’t—” started in Yan.
Clement cut her off. “Not at this time, Commander,” he said firmly, then turned to Ivan Massif. “What have your surveys of Bellus turned up, Navigator?”
“We’ve made six orbits of the planet, sir. Our initial survey results have been . . . surprising.”
“Such as?”
“We’ve identified abundant fresh water on the planet sir, above the ground. The planet is tidally locked to the Trinity star, with the same side facing the star constantly, and conditions are remarkably stable throughout the biosphere. There are high mountains in both the extreme north and south that receive regular snowfall and produce a near-constant melt that proceeds toward the equator of the planet through deep river valleys, where they collect in numerous freshwater lakes and seas. Surface temperatures throughout eighty percent of the planet average twenty-four degrees Celsius, with very rare variations. Vegetation is pervasive and there appears to be a lot of potential for animal life. There is also a large saltwater sea near the equator of the planet that could provide the seeds for ocean-based lifeforms.”
Clement nodded. “Sounds like a paradise.”
“There is one other issue, sir.” This came from Pomeroy. Clement nodded for her to continue. “When I was conducting a survey for bioforms, I discovered signs of . . . more advanced life on the planet, sir.”
“Advanced? Say what you mean, Lieutenant,” demanded Clement.
“I would say, sir,” she said hesitantly, “that these bioforms were organized in such a way as to be almost immediately recognizable as organized communities, sir.”
“You mean some kind of, uh . . . intelligent communities?”
“Yes, sir. Things like simple artificial canals to serve the communities, potential crop fields, things of that nature. Sir.”
“So there’s some kind of potentially intelligent life on Bellus?”
“I would say so, sir,” Pomeroy said.
Clement unconsciously rubbed at his chin. “Perhaps there’ve been missions to this system before. Could they be military bases left by previous Ark missions? Either from Earth or potentially from the 5 Suns?” he asked.
Pomeroy frowned slightly as she considered his question. “It seems unlikely that these are military settlements, sir. They aren’t giving off any indications of advanced technology. They look more like primitive settlements, sir.”
Clement leaned back in his chair. “So we have a mystery. We’ll have to take all of this into consideration should we go down to the surface. For now, let’s continue our surveys and not jump to any conclusions.”
“Aye, sir.”
“One other thing, Lieutenant. As of right now I’m giving you a field promotion to Lieutenant Commander. This will become official once we decide whatever fleet we’ll end up serving in.” There was a chuckle at that around the room. He turned to Yan.
“I also want you to promote the middies to full ensigns. They’ve all earned it,” he said.
“Understood, sir,” Yan replied.
Clement turned to Nobli. “Status of the LEAP drive, Chief?”
“Ready to use at any time, sir,” he said.
“So we can escape whenever we want; we just have nowhere to go.”
“Exactly, sir.”
Clement nodded. “Keep her ready, Chief. We may need to bug out of here at any time.” He leaned forward then, addressing the entire room. “Continue with your surveys. As a precaution I want us to look for a safe place to set down, hopefully away from these communities, or whatever they might be. Mika, that will be your job. Ivan, I want you to let me know when and if that Earth Ark changes course or speed. If they use Alphus to slingshot toward us, we may have to find cover, and fast. Keep all the other systems at optimal. Be prepared for anything. Remember, we’ve been betrayed by the 5 Suns Alliance, and the Earthers are to be considered hostile until further notice. Dismissed,” he said.
As the room emptied, Yan stayed behind for a private word.
“What about those ‘communities’ on the surface of Bellus?” she asked.
He considered her question for a moment. “Despite what Pomeroy says, I have to believe they’re military. If they are, we may be stuck between a rock and a hard place. I’ll need options, Yan. That’s where you come in.”
“That is my job, sir,” she said.
He nodded. “Then I’ll leave you to it.”
She left without another word. After a few seconds Clement followed her to his bridge, and an unknown destiny.