Earth Fleet (Rebel Fleet Series Book 4), page 7
“Stay here for a minute,” I said, “I wanted to take this call on the bridge. Fex needs to see me firmly in command, not in the shower.”
“Ah, right. I’ll stand at your side.”
“Chang?” I called out. “Give me a wide-angled pickup on the cameras, will you? Project Fex onto the central console.”
Fex’s head and shoulders appeared in the midst of the bridge projection table, zoomed in to make him about three times his natural size. The effect was alarming.
“Fex, my man!” I said in a friendly tone. “What can I do for a comrade who’s fought Imperials to the death at my side?”
Fex didn’t speak right away. He was ape-like, but his eyes were quick and highly-intelligent. As primates went, he was tall and lanky with short dark hair that covered his body. To me, he looked like a skinny yeti.
“Captain Blake…” he said at last. “Why do you insist on provoking me like this? Didn’t you learn your lesson the last time I visited Earth?”
Fex was referring to his disastrous campaign to subjugate humanity. Using trickery, Ursahn’s help and Earth’s own fledgling fleet, we’d managed to drive him off.
I laughed in a hearty manner. “Come on, Fex,” I said. “It was your Kwok ships that ran from us. Didn’t you learn your lesson?”
There was a short delay due to the transmission distance. We were quite a few AU out from his location. Even with improved comm equipment that could cheat the limitations of radio waves that crawled around at the speed of light, there was a delay.
Fex winced before he responded. “Insults? First, you damage helpless ships in a craven manner refusing my invitation to honest battle. You’ve also ignored my request to surrender. Instead, you provide only insults and trickery.”
About then, I began to frown. I gave Chang the pause signal, which he acted upon immediately. Our out-going transmissions froze.
“Is Captain Urgh listening to this talk?” I asked.
Chang consulted his displays. At last, he nodded. “I think so. Fex is relaying everything said on an open channel. Looks like the Terrapinian ship is monitoring the conversation.”
“Cagey bastard…” I said.
Quite unlike most Kher, Fex and his kind were at least as underhanded as your average human. They were always playing three angles at once.
“What’s he doing that’s so tricky, Captain?” Hagen asked.
“He’s actually calling me to make me look bad to the Terrapinian crew. If he can make me seem unreasonable to accept offers of peace, if he can make us out to be the problem, he can break the Terrapinian’s trust in us.”
Hagen looked alarmed. “You don’t think the turtles would fire on us, do you?”
“Nah. They’d just stand by and let us fight alone against Fex’s ships.”
“That’s bad enough…”
“No answer, Blake?” Fex demanded suddenly. “Have your transmission systems failed you? Are you fearing to speak?”
“Bastard…” I said, making a spinning motion toward Chang, who reopened the channel.
“Fex, sorry about that!” I said. “I just got another report in about your new tech.”
Whistling, I pretended to go over a computer scroll with interest.
Hagen leaned over the arm of my chair and glanced at the blank scroll in some confusion—but he didn’t blow it and ask what the hell I was doing. He was beginning to catch onto my personal style.
Fex’s eyes narrowed like those of a wet cat. “New Tech?” he snapped. “What are you talking about?”
Still marveling at a blank page, I rolled it up and handed it ceremoniously to Hagen. “Put that in the vault,” I told him.
Hagen stepped away like he was carrying the crown jewels.
Turning back to Fex, I shook my head and clapped my hands slowly. “I’ve got to hand it to you, Fex old man. You sure can make some powerful enemies. Do you have any idea how many heavy-duty aliens want us to help them out now? They see us blow up a few tugs, and they figure we’re at your throat.”
“Blake,” Fex said stiffly. “I think you’ve gone mad. We haven’t got any new tech, or alien enemies—”
At that point, Fex was jostled. A smaller figure leered, pushing his head into the frame.
It was none other than Dr. Shug, who’d been promoted to Secretary Shug, the last I’d heard of his rank.
Shug was another primate. He was much smaller than Fex, but he was no less sneaky. He was, in fact, a genius.
“Blake,” he said. “This is Secretary Shug. I order you, as an officer of the Rebel Fleet, to stop casting out random statements. If you’ve been in touch with the Imperials—”
Long ago, I’d learned that one of the easiest ways to get a secret out of someone was to pretend you already knew it. That dropped their guard and caused them to speak more freely. They often gave you critical clues if you could fake it well enough, or your opponent might even blurt out the truth on the spot.
So far that hadn’t happened, but I wasn’t done fishing yet.
“Not just the Imperials, sir,” I said. “The Nomads visited me no more than an hour ago. Your advances are well-known. They mean to stop you.”
Of course, I hadn’t had any kind of contact with the Imperials. In fact, the idea that Shug had guessed wrong and mentioned them instead of the Nomads—that in itself was alarming.
Just what new tech had these apes discovered? What could be so big that it held the attention of both the Imperials and the Nomads?
My mind was racing. Everything made more sense to me if Shug was involved. He was a great scientist, a genius like Abrams, but infinitely more knowledgeable and dangerous. He was the kind of being who might actually make a ground-shaking discovery.
If he was with Fex… Well, maybe there really was some major scientific breakthrough involved here, even if I hadn’t seen any direct evidence of it yet.
“Blake,” Shug said, interposing himself between the camera pickup and Fex who looked annoyed. “This goes beyond any squabbling about pathetic star systems like this one. You’ll have to talk to us privately. You’ll have to be debriefed.”
“Uh…” I said thoughtfully. “I don’t see how that’s going to happen, sir. Earth Fleet is here to aid the Terrapinians in repelling an invader. Unfortunately, you are directly associated with that invading fleet.”
Shug spread his lips and flashed a lot of big, square white teeth at me. That wasn’t a threat among his kind; it was a show of stress and deep thought.
“This is all nonsense,” Fex announced, looming over Shug’s much smaller form. “You’ve got nothing, Blake. ‘Earth Fleet’ indeed! I count one Terrapin cruiser and one Earth ship. We’ve been watching you since you entered the system, and I’m not interested in your bluffing. Not today.”
“Really?” I asked in an innocent tone. “Your sensors still can’t pick up phase-ships? Even our new, larger vessels? That’s almost disappointing... I thought maybe—never mind. I guess that just because your tech is advancing in one zone doesn’t mean you’re keeping up with us in everything.”
Hagen’s eyes slid over to me then slid back to the apes on the screen again. They seemed to be growing more upset with every word I spoke. My hints and half-statements were driving them to paranoia.
That, of course, was my intention.
“All right, Blake,” Fex said. “If you won’t stand down and let us board you, we’re at an impasse.”
Shug spoke up again. “Admiral Fex,” he said. “This is a civil matter. My authority supersedes your—”
“Ah-hah!” Fex said, waving a long thin, hairy finger over Shug’s head. “Didn’t you hear Blake, sir? He stated clearly he’s allied with Terrapin. He said we were in a technical state of war. The Rebel Fleet as a whole isn’t mobilized now, and you don’t have any authority to command me and my ships.”
Shug looked resigned. He nodded and turned back to me. “Blake, don’t die for these reptiles. You’re too good of a commander for that. We might need you—the Rebel Fleet might need you—before long.”
For the first time, I took Shug’s words seriously. The situation was odd and dramatic.
The relationships between all the various Rebel Kher species were complex and ever-changing. We were like distant relatives that gathered on the holidays and fought like dogs—but who were still bound by tradition and fear to stand together when an outside threat approached.
It was a difficult moment. I was torn in my loyalties. When the Imperials or Nomads got involved, Fex, Shug, the Terrapins—we were all brothers. But was that really happening now? Or were they trying to dig deeper to trick me, just as I was trying to trick them? It was hard to know.
“I’ll keep those thoughts in mind, Secretary Shug,” I said at last. “Blake out.”
After the channel closed, I sat brooding in my chair, staring at the deck.
“Captain?” Hagen asked after a dozen long seconds drifted by. “What are your orders, sir?”
“I’m thinking,” I said. “What are the enemy doing?”
“They appear to be gathering into a single mass—a wedge-formation.”
I looked up at last, and our eyes met. “They’re going to jump?”
“Maybe, sir,” he said. “It’s hard to tell. Our positional data on them is hours out of date. If they—”
“Abrams!” I roared, using my sym to send my voice booming over the PA system all over the lower decks. “Report immediately!”
Abrams reported-in less than ten seconds later. “What is it, Blake? Have you gone even closer to the brink of madness?”
“Abrams, load up the next jump point on our list.”
“What are you talking about, man?”
“You heard me. Open a path. Jump us after that next batch of tugs.”
When we’d initially plotted our first attack against the ships that were steering comets out of the Oort cloud toward the inner planets, we’d come up with a list of targets and selected one of them. The math had been worked out for seven different jumps, but of course, we’d only taken one of these paths so far.
“But Blake… that data is old. The ships will have moved. The local debris will have shifted, too. What you speak of will be dangerous and fruitless.”
“Load the data. Form the rift. We won’t go through if we don’t have to. And Abrams? Make it a low-power rift. I want it to fade fast.”
“Uh… all right, sir.”
Maybe he’d caught on. My tone, my urgency… Abrams was a huge pain in the ass, but if he thought his posterior was in actual, physical danger, he could move pretty fast.
Commander Hagen was sweating. He knew the score.
“You think they’re going to short-jump it right out here. Right on top of us—right?”
“Yes,” I said. “They had to be plotting that move. It makes too much sense, whether or not they thought we’d let them board and surrender.”
Hagen nodded, and we went into emergency mode, accelerating in local space and gearing up the power modules to form a rift.
“Uh…” the comm officer said. “Captain? Urgh is calling us. He wants to know what the hell we’re doing.”
“Tell him to follow us. Tell him we’re going to jump, because an attack is incoming.”
“Urgh is refusing, sir. He’s asking us to stand-down.”
I fumed and nodded. “Damned primates. They conned him. It’s too easy to convince desperate people you’re honest when they want to believe your lies so badly.”
“The rift is ready, sir,” Hagen called out.
“That was pretty fast,” I said.
He shrugged. “Abrams did update the software. Seems to actually work better.”
The rift formed ahead of us. It was small, tight, and brightly colored. We glided toward it at speed.
Seconds later, we plunged into the anomaly, and were filled with a fear of the unknown. At the same time, it was a relief to get out of that region of space.
=13=
“Captain, something is following us through the breach,” Langston announced.
The input from our stern cameras flashed up on the central display. We watched tensely.
“How long until that rift closes?” I asked.
“Its short term,” Hagen said, “but it will still be viable for crossing for at least six more minutes.”
Six minutes. That was a lifetime when you were on the run.
“Should we accelerate?” Hagen asked. “We can put some distance between us and that rift until it closes.”
I shook my head slowly.
“No,” I said. “Helm, come about and hit the brakes. We’ll wait right here and ambush Fex if he’s following us. Any sign that his ships have left Terrapin?”
“No sir,” Langston reported. “His ships still appear to be orbiting over the Terrapinian homeworld—but they’re light-hours away. We’re seeing where they were in the past.”
“Right… Keep monitoring their activity anyway.”
Maneuvering tactically against an enemy inside the same star system was a new experience for me. In past space battles, we usually didn’t have visual contact ship-to-ship until we were quite close.
Since rifts allowed our ships to move faster than the speed of light, it was possible to fight a ship in local space even while it appeared to be on the other side of the system. The reason was that light crawled along at a steady rate when compared to the incredible distances. That meant the status of the fleet orbiting Terrapin which we were watching now was old news, not current reality. For all we knew, they were already chasing us.
Tension reigned as Devilfish slewed around and faced the rift she’d made herself. Had our attempted escape come too late? If Fex and his fleet were on our tails, they could simply use the rift we’d made to jump again and therefore land right on top of us.
No one spoke much for about two minutes—then a large vessel nosed its way through the rift.
“Unknown ship approaching, sir,” Langston said promptly.
“I can see that, Commander. Have you got an identity signal from her yet?”
Langston hesitated for several long seconds, checking her instruments. At last, she sighed.
“It’s a Terrapinian battlecruiser, sir.”
“Urgh’s ship?”
“Almost certainly.”
I frowned and spun to face Hagen. “I thought he was going to sit behind and wait for Fex to ‘inspect’ him.”
Hagen shrugged. “Maybe he changed his mind. Or, maybe he’s decided we’re endangering his homeworld by not surrendering to Fex.”
Turning back to the screens, I rubbed at my lank hair. When had I showered last? I couldn’t recall.
“Shouldn’t we at least open our gun ports, sir?” Mia asked.
She looked anxious at her station. Her kind were killers, and they enjoyed nothing more than the thrill of the hunt. Even if we might lose and all die—she wanted to fight.
“No,” I said, “stand down. You can ping her hull, Langston, but everyone else just relax until we know Urgh’s intentions.”
They sat back away from their controls—all except for Mia, who was hunched over her gunnery station. She looked disappointed and frustrated.
“If you let me hit him now…” she speculated. “I can kill him before he’s able to strike back.”
“Sorry Mia,” I said firmly. “Stand down.”
She did as I’d ordered, but her tail twitched irritably. Things might not go so well for me later tonight in our private quarters—but that was just too damned bad.
After a few moments, Urgh hailed us.
“Captain Blake?” he asked. “Is this the ambush we’ve been expecting? Is this your entire purpose for fleeing, to gain advantage?”
“Yes,” I said firmly, and everyone on the bridge looked at me in shock. “This is an ambush. Please position your ship at our flank. When Fex follows us through this breach, we can destroy his ships one at a time.”
Everyone relaxed as I said this, suddenly realizing what I was talking about.
“That would be a dishonorable act,” Urgh complained.
“Not as dishonorable as squatting on an ally’s homeworld, dropping comets on the planetary shield and demanding subjugation.”
Urgh thought about that for a few seconds. “You humans value your freedom quite highly,” he observed at last.
“That’s right,” I said. “We do. We’ll die for it.”
“That’s irrational. Terrapinians will only risk death for two things: survival and honor.”
“Humans extend their concept of honor to include political freedom,” I explained.
Urgh’s face lit up and his mouth opened as if he was struck by a new thought.
“That explains so much!” he said. “All your bizarre behavior and violent, over-sensitive ways. If you value self-determination so greatly that you’re willing to die for it—”
“We do,” I said. “In fact, it supersedes other dishonors. We’ll suffer those rather than submit to being the slave of another.”
“Bizarre and disorderly…” the Terrapinian captain mused. “But what you say fits your behavior. I will make a note of it.”
“In the meantime,” I said, “are you interested in joining us in the defense of your planet? Or do you willingly accept the humiliation Fex has offered?”
My words were intended to sting, and they did the job.
“You insult us and ask for our help at the same time?”
“No,” I said firmly. “I’ve offered help. I’m asking if you will accept our aid and remain free.”
He pondered my words seriously for a moment. “Would it not be a greater dishonor—?” he began at last.
“No,” I replied quickly.
Time was running out. Langston had signaled me, the rift was active again—something else was coming through.
“No,” I repeated. “It wouldn’t be a greater dishonor to break your word with Fex. He has broken his word with you already.”
“How so?”
“He’s lied to you. He has no intention of withdrawing from Terrapinian space. He will capture your ship, then go right back to besieging your homeworld. All promises of peace from him are false.”
