Authors: B. V. Larson
Battle Cruiser (39 page)
Could this be a difficult moment for her? Had she found another so quickly? Or was she perhaps less committed to her beliefs than I was, and more willing to go with the flow of her family’s wishes? She was still young and untested after all.
Full of conflicting emotions, I stepped close to her. The agents surrounding us fidgeted, but they allowed it.
“William,” she said, “I’m so glad to see you. The news reports—it was so grim. Your ship, when it started to spin—I thought it would blow up.”
“Never,” I said. “
Defiant
is indestructible. I know, as I’ve done my damnedest to wreck her.”
She smiled faintly, but she didn’t laugh.
“Why the long face?” I asked her quietly. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s my mother—she didn’t make it. The damage to her organs was too great. She was an oldster, you know. Their tissues can’t be regenerated easily.”
She broke off into tears, and we embraced.
The agents leaned closer, but I tried to ignore them. I wanted to shout at them to be gone, but I knew they were just doing their jobs. After all, they’d failed to keep Chloe’s mother alive. Who could blame them for exhibiting paranoia now?
“Another victim of the Stroj,” I said when we parted. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
We comforted one another until Admiral Halsey approached and cleared his throat. He gave me a smirk, completely misunderstanding the situation.
“Always good to see a young man return to his girl,” he said, laughing. “She’s broken up over you, I can tell. Don’t tell me you’ve injured her heart!”
“No sir,” I said.
“Good, good. Well, it just so happens I’m in charge of CENTCOM now, and there is a small but important matter for us to discuss. Please report to headquarters after the gathering.”
“Tonight, sir?”
“Yes, tonight. It’s important.”
He left me then. I frowned after him.
“Go,” Chloe said. “I’ll wait in the city for you—if you want me to.”
I smiled. “Of course I do.”
Leaving the chamber, I was unsurprised to see Zye hobble toward me in the passageway near the sky-lift. I shook my head at her.
“Zye, get back to medical. Your leg is broken, woman!”
“I’m well. I came to check on you.”
“The battle is over,” I insisted. “I’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And the children?” she asked. “What about the children?”
“I haven’t forgotten, Zye but we need you healed. Until then I will investigate. I’ll be sure to use all the tricks you’ve taught me.”
That seemed to settle her down. I walked her back to the station’s hospital and left her there. She wasn’t happy, but she was resigned. She had to take the time to heal. While I was there, I visited with Rumbold. He had new radiation scars and parts of his face were a livid red.
“You look good, Rumbold,” I lied.
“Right,” he huffed. “You’ve been learning how to lie from Zye, haven’t you?”
“Am I as unbelievable as all that?”
“Worse.”
We laughed together, and I looked over his prognosis. I was surprised to see that he was expected to recover. He was far over his allotted lifetime budget in healthcare costs. Someone in the accounting department must have had a heart. Star Guard was doing its best for him. Knowing that made me proud to serve the Guard.
Taking the sky-lift down to the capital an hour or so later was a glorious experience. The city seemed so full of life and hope. It was night, and every light in town was burning.
When I reached the ground, I realized the people were in the streets celebrating. They’d all watched the battle in the skies, and they were rejoicing because our side had won—this time.
It took me nearly two hours to get through traffic to CENTCOM. I found a grim-faced Admiral Halsey waiting for me.
“You took your sweet time, Sparhawk.”
“Everyone in the city is cheering in the streets, sir.”
“Hmph, that may well be, but it won’t affect the outcome of this hearing.”
I frowned. “What hearing, sir?”
I looked around me, and I saw a number of high level staffers were present. They’d gathered into a circle around a central display stack. They were as quiet as pall-bearers carrying a casket.
“What’s this about, Admiral?” I asked. “I thought we’d resolved our disagreements.”
“That makes no difference,” Halsey said. “This is an official matter.”
“Concerning what?” I demanded, becoming exasperated.
“Concerning your promotion to the rank of captain. It was illegitimate, as it was performed by a nonperson. An infiltrator. A Stroj spy.”
Suddenly, I understood. Halsey had fallen back upon a technicality. He’d found a way to defrock me after all.
Nodding, I reached up and removed my captain’s bars. The nano-adhesive struggled to prevent the act, but they came off at last with a tearing sound.
“You’re right,” I said. “I’m nothing if not a man who plays by the rules as they are written. My rank was illegally given to me.”
Halsey stared at my bars, which I offered him. He cleared his throat, and took them from my hand.
“Just so. Now, please hold up your right hand, William of House Sparhawk.”
Confused, I did as he ordered.
Then, to my surprise, he swore me in and presented the bars to me again. The gathered group clapped at the end. I’d grossly misinterpreted their presence. They were here to witness and properly approve of my promotion.
It felt good to know my captaincy couldn’t be stripped from me again—at least, not without good reason.
-54-
It was two weeks later when I caught up to the man I’d been tracking since
Defiant
had returned to Earth. We were in Paris at the time, a city that had swollen since the Cataclysm and now was home over a hundred million souls.
We found Edvar Janik at the city outskirts near the shores of the English Channel. Unfortunately, Zye was with me when we confronted him in his dingy flat.
He didn’t survive the encounter. Zye’s left hand squeezed his neck fractionally too hard and there was a snapping sound heard by all. The body slumped, but it didn’t die for quite a while.
The man was a Stroj. Zye, therefore, wasn’t guilty of murder, only overzealousness.
After we reported Edvar’s death, Star Guard lost interest. They helped us only by providing satellite imagery and access to classified databases. It was enough to find a likely spot on Earth’s vast globe to search.
Considering the matter closed, CENTCOM denied my request for a tactical squad. As
Defiant’s
captain, I considered bringing my marine contingent down from the ship, but technically marines were only sanctioned to serve in space, never on Earth unless there was a dire need.
Today, there might be a real threat, but I thought it would be a small one. A lightly armed force would serve best.
Flying to the location and landing on crusty ice, I thought I’d made the right choice as to who to bring with me. Zye marched at my side in the relentlessly blowing snow. Her eyes were hard, and her face was grim. Red scars from her recent injuries still stood out on her cheeks.
Her femur was holding up well. She barely limped now.
Behind the two of us marched nine of House Astra’s agents. In my opinion they were better troops than the agents of House Sparhawk. My father’s men were loyal for the most part, but they were more like butlers and spies than they were true, hardened fighters.
Today, I wanted to lead people who would follow me into the unknown. People who knew how to kill, should the need arise. Therefore, I’d asked Chloe if I could borrow some of her agents, and she’d consented as it was for a good cause.
Zye found the cave herself in the end. We’d known the general coordinates, but knowing a hidden location was within a thousand meter radius was one thing. Finding the actual entrance in the ice—that was another.
She found a suspicious fissure with a stub of artificial pipe sticking up. She crashed her boots and fists into the crusty snow.
The agents gathered around, fingering their pistols and shivering in their cloaks. No amount of explaining had made them grasp quite how cold the Antarctic could get.
Zye broke through quickly. That wasn’t really a surprise. This wasn’t a fortification, it was a hideout.
We entered the ice cave in Zye’s wake. The walls were a glossy blue. They reflected every wavering flicker of our shoulder lights. The camera drones that had managed to survive the icy winds followed us, documenting everything as we traveled underground.
When we reached the chamber we’d sought, we found what we were looking for. Thousands of them.
Zye grabbed up an armful of the clattering steel tubes and hugged them to her breast.
I looked on, understanding her emotion but finding it strange to witness all the same. To her, these tubes were children, infants. The very stuff of Beta life encapsulated.
Zye turned to me, and I thought I saw a touch of wetness at the corners of her eyes—but that might have been due to the stinging cold. She’d refused to wear a mask.
“Thank you, Will,” she said. “I knew you wouldn’t let them die.”
I smiled, and I patted her arm awkwardly.
Together, we ushered the Astra agents into the chamber and put them to work. They bent and filled sacks with tubes.
One of the agents stopped me when he had as many as he could carry. He gave me a baffled look.
“Captain…what are we supposed to do with these things?”
“Keep them frozen,” I said brightly, “and don’t let Zye see you drop one if you value your existence.”
He turned and saw Zye eyeing him fiercely.
After that, the agents worked with more precision. They handled each of the tubes gently after plucking them from the ice with exaggerated care.
* * *
A few weeks later, I met with Admiral Halsey on Araminta Station. He squinted out a massive viewport down onto the blue-white swirl that was Earth’s dayside face.
“Congratulations on your advancement to full Admiral, sir,” I said.
“Hmm? Oh yes, thanks. Make yourself comfortable, Sparhawk.”
I walked to his desk, eyed the chair in front of it, but rejected the idea of sitting there. He was standing, so I stayed on my feet as well.
Halsey, for his part, continued to gaze out the window down at Earth.
“Do you know why I called you up here today?” he asked.
The truth was I had no idea. But there were guesses in my mind.
“Because you wanted to give me a new mission, sir?”
He finally looked away from the viewport and faced me. “Your father’s spies are still the best. My compliments.”
“Oh no, sir,” I began, but he put a hand up to stop me.
“Don’t bother. I’m not offended. In fact, I now see your political connections as an asset to your command status and Star Guard in general.”
It grated on me to have him think my shrewd guess was due to spying, but I kept quiet with an effort of will. I’d learned over the course of my career it was very difficult to get an idea out of a superior’s mind once it was transfixed there, and that trying to do so might even entrench the thought more deeply.
“I didn’t summon you here just to give you something new to do,” he continued, turning back to the blazing glory of Earth again. “I also wanted to hear more about your self-assigned mission to Antarctica.”
“I made a full report, sir. The camera drones captured every moment, in fact.”
“Yes, of course. I saw plenty of snow and steel tubes. That’s not what I’m talking about. What I want to know is why you think the Stroj were placing Beta embryos at our poles in the first place?”
“Poles, sir?”
“Yes. Are your father’s agents slipping? We found another stash up at the North Pole.”
I hadn’t known this. Immediately, I began worrying about Zye’s reaction. “What’s the status of the tubes?”
“Hmm? I don’t know…I suppose we’ve got them in storage somewhere.”
“They’re safe?”
“Safe? I guess. They aren’t all that dangerous.”
He wasn’t getting my meaning. I was thinking about Zye, and how she saw them as helpless infants. I could tell they were nothing more than chunks of frozen meat to Admiral Halsey. I decided not to press the matter. I could look into it later.
“Anyway,” Halsey said, “why do you think they did it?”
“Perhaps they thought they could rebuild their invasion forces out in the rocks.”
“Nonsense. Space is plenty cold enough. No need to transport them down to Earth then back out there. No, the only reason the Stroj did this was to provide raw materials—to build more Stroj on Earth.”
I immediately saw his point. “Stands to reason,” I said.
“Glad you approve. The strange thing is that Betas could hardly be used as infiltrators, so why keep so many here?”
“You’re suggesting they were to be converted into troops?”
“Invasion troops, to be exact,” he said. “Commandos. The force would be too small to grab and hold territory, of course, but think of what they could do if they hit CENTCOM. A thousand Beta-based Stroj infantry, taking out our command center. Killing all our cadets.”
The thought was alarming. “Is there any evidence to suggest—” I began.
“Not directly, but it doesn’t really matter what their specific goals were. They obviously intended to create a force on Earth for ground operations. You know what that indicates to me?”
As he asked this, he looked me squarely in the eye.
“What, sir?” I asked.
“That they aren’t finished with us yet. They found their way here and mounted a sucker-punch operation, but they failed to take us out on the cheap. Now, we’re alerted. We’ll build up our defenses. They have to know that, but they’ll come back at us anyway. Eventually they’ll come out of the dark from somewhere, with greater strength.”
I found his thinking to be difficult to refute. Most of Earth’s populace was celebrating now, assuming the threat was over. They wanted to go back to their old ways, without looking up at the skies in fear. Those of us in the Guard, however, remained vigilant.
“You’re saying we must build up our fleet,” I said. “I’m in complete agreement there.”
“I’m saying more than that. I’m saying we can’t just sit here waiting around for the enemy to hit us. The next time, they might come at us with a hundred cruisers. We just don’t know. We have to find them, Sparhawk. We have to know what we’re up against.”
Finally, I was beginning to understand where he was going with this.
“The only ship we have that could go exploring is
Defiant
,” I said.
“That’s right.”
“But the battle cruiser is also our best defense.”
“At the moment, yes.”
We eyed one another. I shook my head. “CENTCOM won’t send
Defiant
into the blue. That sort of exploration hasn’t been approved since the Cataclysm.”
He brought up a single finger and waved it at me. “We’ll see about that. What I want to know is where you stand. Let’s say a year or two goes by, and we’ve got a dozen new destroyers and a strong set of missile bases ringing Earth. Would you be willing to command
Defiant
? To take her beyond the limits of our star system?”
For some reason, I immediately visualized the moment when my crew found an ER bridge into the unknown and dared to cross it.
Once a vessel started on such a path, there was no turning back. It was like stepping into an abyss—you just hoped that when you hit the bottom, there was something soft there to land upon.
My heart was pounding, and my eyes were shining. I knew the answer in my heart. I think we both did.
“Yes sir,” I said firmly. “I’d be willing to undertake such a mission.”
“That’s what I thought,” he said, turning back to the dazzling glow that was Earth. “Dismissed, Captain. We’ll talk further when the time is right.”
I left him there, and for the next hour I walked around the outer ring of Araminta Station in a daze.
It had been a century and half since Earthlings had left their home system. To do it again—I didn’t think that I’d ever wanted anything more.
The End
From the Author:
Thanks Reader! I hope you enjoyed
BATTLE CRUISER
. If you liked the book and want to read more about this universe, please put up some stars and a review. Let me know what kind of mission you’d like to see William Sparhawk take on next.
Star Force and Undying Mercenaries fans should not worry! More books are coming soon.
-BVL
More SF Books by B. V. Larson:
STAR FORCE SERIES:
Army of One
(Novella)
Gauntlet
The Undying Mercenaries Series:
Visit
BVLarson.com
for more information.