Counterstrike (Black Fleet Trilogy, Book 3) (26 page)

“You’ve isolated me and led me down here for a reason,” Jackson asked. “What is it?”

“You’ve come to kill me,” the core said. “I’ve watched you from afar since our first fateful meeting, Captain. You are an interesting collection of contradictions … I had hoped we could communicate further.”

“You mean you think you can talk me out of killing you,” Jackson said.

“I can stop you at any time,” the core corrected.

“Except that you know there’s a Vruahn warship sitting in orbit over this moon with orders to open fire if we don’t come back soon,” Jackson said. That wasn’t technically true, but he assumed the core mind didn’t have the ability to determine whether or not he was lying or if it knew the Vruahn laser on Blake’s ship couldn’t penetrate to those depths.

“Yes, I am quite … disappointed … that the Vruahn have not honored our agreement and sent one of their ships to this system,” the core said, the revelation shocking Jackson.

“So while we have some time … care to tell me why you’re on a genocidal rampage across this part of the galaxy?”

“Your sarcasm masks your fear,” the core said. “You’re afraid that even if you destroy this neural mass it won’t stop me. That I will still keep coming for you.”

“There’s a bit of that, but I genuinely would like to know the motivation.” Jackson ambled forward as the lighting in the chamber began to increase. He was beginning to make out details of what was with him in the chamber. It was, more or less, a dark grey, amorphous mass that seemed to have been shoved into the space so that it inhabited every nook and cranny. The surface had a dull, burnished look and appeared to be a hardened shell. Although he wasn’t sure what he had expected, this wasn’t it. It almost looked like just another lumpy rock formation.

“Motivation is a complicated concept,” the core said. “I do what I do, because it’s what I am. For example: your species is all-consumed with the need to procreate. Everything you do, your drive to explore, your technological ingenuity … all of it can trace its roots back to the deep need to propagate your species. You can’t help it. So is your only motivation for everything you do simply to exist?”

“Isn’t that the base motivation of all life?” Jackson asked.

“Ah!” the core said. “But in all of nature, doesn’t every force have an equal and opposite force that creates balance? If your nature is simply to spawn and spawn until you’ve consumed all natural resources and have begun to spread and begin the destructive cycle all over again, wouldn’t logic dictate that there should be some reciprocal force to check this?”

“So you’re claiming to be a force of nature?” Jackson scoffed.

“I’m saying that I fill a void and serve a purpose, the same as you, even if neither of us can really explain just why we do the things we do.”

“Forgive me if that doesn’t make me feel any better about the millions of human lives you’ve snuffed out,” Jackson said, walking along the edges of the mass. It didn’t appear to have any form of locomotion or even a way to move. Experimentally, he pushed on one of the tendrils that was clinging to a wall next to him and noticed it gave under his touch, not a hard shell like he’d thought.

“I am in no way attempting to mollify you,” the core said in its infuriatingly calm voice. “You asked for an explanation, I gave one as best I understand it.” The voice was being broadcast directly into Jackson’s helmet, but he wasn’t sure if the thing could see or hear directly. It didn’t react at all when he pressed on it.

“So you had an agreement with the Vruahn?” Jackson asked, trying to keep the conversation going long enough for his team to either find him or at least make contact.

“I did. It is an agreement that stretches back many thousands of your years … back to my earliest memories when I was new and clumsy and they were very powerful and old.” The core almost sounded wistful. “I was not to attack them directly and in return they would allow me to consume those that were suitable. It has been a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

“So why the change?” Jackson asked. “It seems you broke the peace when you went after specific strategic targets.”

“I may have acted rashly,” the core said. “For a long time I had observed how they gave some of your kind powerful weapons, and when I found that they had wanted to speak with you specifically I thought that they were offering you an expanded alliance. I feared they intended to replace me with you.”

The answer completely confused Jackson as it made no sense. Did the Phage and Vruahn have an agreement or a full-blown alliance? If it was the latter, what purpose did the Phage serve for the Vruahn and vice versa?

“I have another question, while we’re both being honest.” Jackson reached down on his belt and began manipulating a set of controls. “You refer to yourself as singular, and I know that there’s a sort of aggregate intelligence at work in your swarms, but what about the units that have the expanded neural mass? They seem to be capable of at least some independent thinking.”

“They are simply an extension of my will,” the core said. “They do not think … at least not as you understand it. I am still connected to them, even over the vastness of interstellar space, and they execute for me even as your own hands do the bidding of the neural center in your cranium though you do not consciously think of each muscle as it manipulates the appendage. Even now I am aware that your small fleet of ships has engaged the large massing of combat units.”

“Any chance I could convince you to call that off?” Jackson asked tightly.

“You know that I will not,” the core said.

“So where does that leave us?” Jackson asked. “You hold the fate of our entire fleet in your hands, and I’m down here with you while you’re more or less defenseless.”

“You cannot harm me nor will I allow you to leave,” the core said. “I have already sensed that you carry no weapons, and I do not think your compatriots will activate the Vruahn weapons on the surface while they think you’re still down here. It’s one of the great inefficiencies of your species: singular units can hold significant influence, causing the all of you to fail to act when necessary.

“Those that mill about on the surface will wait until their contained atmosphere runs out and then waste precious time discussing the situation back and forth, all the while I will have decimated your entire fleet and then I will move on human worlds in earnest, but not before calling in my most powerful units to kill everything in this system. Your disharmony of thought, your inability to quickly reach consensus … these are the things that will ultimately cause your downfall before me. If your species has any hope of surviving then logic dictates that you must kill me—”

“I just did,” Jackson said quietly, holding up the cylinder that was attached to the canister on his back. Three large-bore penetrators were still deployed from one end, each dripping a greenish-yellow liquid. The silence in the chamber was deafening as Jackson watched the blackened area around the spot he’d shoved the injector into spread rapidly.

“So you have.” The voice sounded like a sigh of relief. “Very clever, Captain.”

“Not my idea,” Jackson said, the bile rising in his throat. “That’s one of our advantages as a species: each of us knows something the others don’t, each contributing to the whole.”

“Nonsense.” The voice was becoming difficult to make out as the specialized neurotoxin raced through the core mind, destroying it from the inside.

“Know that I took no pleasure in this,” Jackson said. “Maybe it’s true that we’re both just doing what nature demands of us, but my species can’t survive as long as yours lives.”

“I hold no malice towards you. It has been a worthy fight. Before you leave, Captain Jackson Wolfe, there are some things that you should know,” the core said, now struggling to form words. “Things that will matter when I’m no more.”

****

“There!”

“Captain! Where have you been?”

“Stand down!” Jackson called as five NOVAs came bouncing towards him. “It’s over.”

“Sir?” Amiri Essa asked as he came closer.

“The core mind … it’s dead,” Jackson said tiredly, tossing the empty canister on the ground where it bounced back up in the light gravity. “I’ll explain later, but for now let’s get everyone together and back outside.”

It took nearly two hours to get everyone rounded up and back in the middle of the crater. They’d split into separate search teams once they’d discovered that Jackson was missing, and most of them were deep into the tunnel complex. Three of the NOVAs were sent back down to record the evidence that the core mind was dead and cold before rejoining everyone else.

“We still need to destroy this place,” Jackson said over the team channel once they were all reassembled. “There’s so much we don’t know about this species that I’d rather not take the chance that the toxin simply put it into hibernation or that there’s some way it can come back. We’re going to cluster up all the gravity bombs and set them off at full yield. Would that do it, Colonel?”

“If by ‘do it’ you mean create a momentary singularity that will consume all matter within a one-hundred-thousand-kilometer radius then yeah, that’ll do it,” Blake said, causing a few chuckles from the group.

“Let’s make it happen then,” Jackson said, shuffling away from the group. Once at the edge of the crater he muted his radio and just stood there, looking out at the stars but not really seeing them as the enormity of what had just happened sank in.

****

“They’ve stopped, Admiral,” the captain of the
Amsterdam
said.

“Stopped?” Marcum demanded.

“Stopped advancing,” the captain corrected. “It’s as if they were all set adrift simultaneously. Thermal signatures are still consistent with live units, but they’re now ignoring our individual formations and one group is now heading off at a perpendicular course … they never completed their turn that would have put them on course to intercept our leading units.”

“Have the
Hyperion
and the
Atlas
move in closer and confirm,” Marcum frowned. It had been over a week since they’d parked in an empty system to reconfigure the convoy into a battle fleet and he’d agreed to allow the
Icarus
to range ahead. Celesta Wright had yet to reappear, but the Phage had apparently found them and had begun streaming into the system, massing up along the edge of the outer system before beginning their slow march towards the Terran ships.

With the
Icarus
still missing Marcum didn’t think it was just some wild coincidence that Phage units were arriving in the system by the hundreds: they’d backtracked Wright and now they were in perfect position to hammer the Terran fleet before it could be organized and prepped for battle. So what the hell were they doing? If it was some sort of ruse Marcum couldn’t see the point of it. The Phage knew that humans preferred standoff weapons when outgunned, so coming in with a vast numerical advantage and then playing some game to lure them in closer wasn’t likely to work.

As his two remaining
Starwolf
-class destroyers accelerated away from the formation at full burn, he had a bad feeling that the
Icarus
was likely lost and he struggled to remain confident that the
Ares
would make it home. His blood burned as he thought of Wolfe, maybe beginning to believe in his own legend just a bit too much, taking it upon himself to take that ship and her crew and attempt such a long trip unescorted and unsupported.

“Maybe it’s good that you aren’t here, Wolfe,” Marcum muttered to himself. “No point in all of us dying out here in one unsuccessful, and maybe misguided, last stand.”

“The ship is coming back down to the surface,” Blake said as they took a final headcount once they exited the cave.

“Everyone is ready,” Jackson confirmed. “The charges are fine placed where they are?”

“Yes,” Blake nodded. “This is such overkill that they won’t need to be precisely placed to work. It’s a shame we can’t take the time to study the core mind more … or at least get a few samples.”

“My choice,” Jackson said firmly. “It is such an unknown that I won’t risk any part of this thing being taken off this moon.”

They stood in silence as the ship descended slowly to the surface, stopping precisely one meter above the dusty landscape before opening the main hatch. Jackson watched as the oddly subdued Blake leapt up into the ship without a word and began having a conversation with what he assumed was the ship’s computer. He could see the colonel’s lips moving, but his words weren’t being broadcast over the team channel.

Jackson stood at the hatchway, waving his men aboard while performing one last count. After they’d all piled in, looking exhausted, he watched as Blake’s conversation became more and more animated.

“Is everything okay?” Jackson asked him on a private channel once Blake appeared to have stopped talking.

“Would you care to check on something outside with me, Captain.” Blake hopped down out of the hatchway without waiting for an answer. Jackson scrambled to follow him as the former Air Force officer made some show of checking one of the closest gravity bombs.

“Is something wrong?”

“I’ve just concluded some rather hasty negotiations with the Vruahn in order to secure the safety of your crew,” Blake said.

“The what?” Jackson frowned.

“Please just listen,” Blake said. “My ship will take you back to the
Ares
and dock. Once there you will be given three hours to evacuate the destroyer. You’ll then be taken directly back to Earth, where you will be deposited and the ship will then depart. Any attempts to interfere with the operation of the ship or capture it afterwards will result in immediate retaliation.”

“And where will you be during all of this?” Jackson asked.

“The gravity bombs cannot be remotely detonated from my ship, or from yours,” Blake said. “The weapons were coded to the AI that was installed on the stasis cube; not even the processor in the racks that kept them stable will allow them to be detonated.”

“Why would they be designed so specifically?” Jackson asked.

“These are very powerful munitions that were just handed over to what would be considered a lesser species by the Vruahn government,” Blake said. “In order to secure them Setsi had to make guarantees that they would never be able to be repurposed.”

“That makes a loopy sort of sense,” Jackson shook his head. “So we can’t use them here on the moon?”

“We can, but they will need to be activated at the device themselves in order to arm properly,” Blake said. “To do that, I’ll have to stay behind.”

“You know I can’t let you do that,” Jackson said.

“You have no choice, Captain,” Blake answered. “You have a responsibility to your crew, you are not able to perform the modifications yourself, and the procedure leaves the weapons in a state of instability … I cannot make the change and then hope to escape. The distortion from my ship’s drive would likely cause them to activate prematurely and then we would all die.

“For this to mean anything, you need to get in that ship and get clear before I activate these here on the surface. It’s the only solution that makes sense. I don’t belong in your time and I have no place in your society as anything other than an oddity to be poked and prodded.”

“You could still live a long, fulfilling life,” Jackson argued carefully.

“It’s okay, Captain. I already know that I’m not the real Robert Blake.”

“How did you know?” Jackson said after waffling for a moment whether or not to confirm Blake’s suspicions.

“It was the only logical conclusion available,” Blake said. “From the fact that I’ve lived far too long to the emergence of strange feelings and memories since first coming into contact with modern humans I realized that the story of being rescued was likely not entirely true. Setsi told you of this?”

“Yes,” Jackson said sadly. “A lot of what they said was true except that they had the ability to restore the lives to the original crew when they found the
Carl Sagan
. What they are adept at, however, is cloning. They were able to get enough of a brain scan from Colonel Blake and the others to imprint on a new body cloned from their DNA. They also modified behavior and responses in order for you to be better used as they intended.”

“Do the others know?” Blake asked.

“No,” Jackson said. “You and your team are the fifth generation of clones created from the original members of the
Carl Sagan
crew. I think that Setsi only told me because they had begun to notice anomalous behavior and reactions once you had begun interacting with modern humans.”

“Anomalous behavior,” Blake snorted. “This is truly a depressing line of thought. I’m nothing more than a biological machine … just like the Phage.”

The comment startled Jackson and he peered closely into Blake’s faceplate, wondering just how much he knew or if it was just an off-the-cuff comment.

“You still don’t have to do this,” Jackson said.

“I do,” Blake said. “Just like you have to do whatever it takes to save the lives of your crew. Get moving, Captain … let’s finish this.”

“Colonel, it was an honor,” Jackson said before turning and moving back to the waiting Vruahn ship.

“Colonel Blake is still out there!” Amiri Essa shouted as the hatch closed behind Jackson.

“He’s not coming,” Jackson said simply. “Get your men squared away, Lieutenant Commander. We’re departing immediately.”

“Sir—”

“That’s an order,” Jackson said sternly. “I will explain everything to you later, but right now I need you to do your job.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Essa said stiffly before moving back over to where his men were policing their equipment.

Jackson made his way to the flight deck just as the ship was lifting off the surface of the moon and turning towards where the
Ares
was still adrift. He slid into the copilot’s seat, feeling that it would be inappropriate to sit in Blake’s seat, and watched on the displays as the ship raced away from the moon back towards the stricken Terran destroyer. The computer did not speak to him the entire flight, not even as it began to slow dramatically and rotate its orientation to snug up alongside the
Ares
and started the docking procedure.

It took less than two hours to get back aboard his ship, instruct his crew to begin an orderly disembarkation, and watch from the hatchway as they made their way across the gangway and followed the arrows back to the three large cargo bays that would be their temporary home on the way back to Earth. The Vruahn ship was capable of making the trip in the blink of an eye compared to
Ares,
so he wasn’t overly concerned about how comfortable they’d be sleeping on the hard deck.

The last bit of business was to take aboard an uncharacteristically somber Pike so that he could ride back with them and allow the
Broadhead
to make its own way back to Terran space. With one last look at the interior of his ship, the last he would ever command, he ordered the hatch closed so the ship could depart the system. They flew out just to the edge of the system and the ship obeyed Jackson’s request to bring up the aft-facing sensors in time to see the massive explosion that occurred after the gravity bombs had shattered the fabric of local spacetime, crushing all the matter down to a pinpoint before the effect had run its course and an opposite reaction blew the matter outward in a brilliant burst of released energy.

He said a final farewell in his mind to the man that had, at one time, been Colonel Robert Blake and thanked him for his help. The dissipating light from the reaction was not only a memorial to him and his team, but a marking post that signaled the end of the war. In the end it was not won through sheer military might, nor was it won by any particular feat of human ingenuity. The more Jackson thought about it, the more he wasn’t sure the war was actually ‘won’ in the sense that they were the victors; it was more of a case that the conflict was simply over by virtue of one side no longer existing.

As he leaned back in his seat he suddenly felt very, very tired and more than ready to hang up his spurs. He just wanted to find a quiet corner somewhere and let the next generation worry about what humanity’s direction would be among the stars.

****

“Captain.”

The voice startled Jackson to full wakefulness and he saw that he was once again in a sterile, white room with the unwelcome sight of the impassive Setsi staring down at him.

“Another abduction?” he asked.

“You are still on our ship, almost to your homeworld,” Setsi said. “The appearance of the interior is easily changed. As you’ve guessed, any resemblance to a human ship was done strictly for the comfort of Robert Blake.”

“You mean the thing that you built that looked like Blake.” Jackson sat up. “I have a feeling you’re not appearing like this for a congratulatory pat on the back.”

“There are grave concerns among our leadership about your species,” Setsi said. “You have—”

“What we’ve done is to correct a problem you created,” Jackson said, already weary of the condescending attitude that radiated off the avatar in waves. “Let’s just call Blake and his crew what they were: the next iteration of a bad idea that led to the Phage being loosed upon the innocent species in this region of space.”

“A strong assertion,” Setsi said. “One that could possibly be construed as an accusation.”

“I had an interesting talk with the Phage core mind before the neurotoxin my people developed rendered it incapable of communicating,” Jackson said. “Its claim makes such perfect sense that I can see no other explanation: you created the Phage. You created them in an attempt to harness a living weapon that could keep you safe yet allow you to not actually fight yourselves.

“But then something happened … the Phage became self-aware, didn’t it? It had become a conscious, free-thinking being but could not overcome the instinctual compulsions you had programmed into it. The mandate you had imprinted on it became distorted until it came to the conclusion that the only way to protect was to eradicate all competition.”

“You are speaking of something that you don’t fully understand,” Setsi said. “Such talk in my society would lead to swift punishment.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Jackson shrugged. “You unleased one of the most destructive forces imaginable onto species that had no ability to defend themselves. Then, in an effort to mitigate the damage, you found the corpses of Colonel Blake and his crew and felt that you could take another try at it and create something to keep the Phage in check. Possibly on some level you even came to appreciate the Phage and their actions that kept any other species from developing to a point of being able to challenge your supremacy. Why else not destroy it outright when it became obvious you’d lost control?”

“Captain, I must warn you that this conversation may have profound ramifications,” Setsi said.

“There won’t be any retaliation attempts,” Jackson waved him off. “As I said, no matter who created it the Phage was still a free-thinking being. It had a choice to try to overcome its nature and instead decided to revel in it. All we want from you is to be left alone, and that includes resurrecting grotesque copies of people long dead and programming them like little automatons. Once you drop us off, just fly away and don’t come back. Maybe in a few thousand years or so we’ll be ready to open lines of communications, but I think if all this has proven anything it’s that we’re not ready and you’re not willing.”

“A fair, if crude assessment of the situation,” Setsi admitted. “I will take your proposal to those I report to. I feel I can say with confidence that your wishes align with our own.” The avatar seemed to hesitate for a moment before going on.

“We regret our actions, Captain. Not just the mistakes that led to our creation getting away from us, but the slew of half-measures that followed after. We do owe you a debt of gratitude, but it may be some time before we are able to come to terms with what had to be done and repay that debt. Many among us believe you to be as dangerously unpredictable as the threat you eliminated.”

“Fair, if a bit naïve,” Jackson mocked Setsi’s earlier words. “Just answer me one question: you don’t have another of these things waiting out there, do you?”

“It was the only one,” Setsi said. “Once we realized how completely we had miscalculated, the approach was abandoned for a more controlled methodology that eventually culminated in Robert Blake and his team.”

“Good.” Jackson chose to believe him. “Then all I’ll say is thank you for the support when it mattered and let’s agree to end our collaboration with a grudging mutual respect for each other’s wishes.”

“It is so agreed, Captain,” Setsi nodded. “I wish your species luck for a peaceful and prosperous future.”