Star Carrier (Lost Colonies Trilogy Book 3) (34 page)

-61-

Okto recovered quickly from her injuries, and she was able to walk two days after the battle. We decided to transfer her to one of the surviving Beta battle cruisers.

She seemed to accept that we were no longer blood-enemies. She wasn’t exactly friendly, but she wasn’t angry or accusatory, either.

“When you come back to the Beta Cygnus system again,” she said, “we will only attack if you threaten us.”

“Excellent,” I said, taking her statement in the best possible light. “That’s a beginning. If Beta ships come to the Solar System, we’ll hold our fire until you’ve shown your intentions.”

That level of cooperation seemed to please her. She reached out a hand, startling me. Was she going to shake my hand?

No... Instead, she rubbed at the fabric of my sleeve.

“It’s too bad,” she said, “about Yamada. We could have enjoyed ourselves.”

I cleared my throat and let my hand drop without clasping hers.

“I’m sure you’re right,” I said, smiling. “Farewell.”

Okto left, limping onto an escape pod and closing the hatch. We watched as she traveled to her people’s ship and boarded safely.

Lorn was even easier to get rid of. We simply stuffed him into a survival pod and released it into friendly space. He grumbled steadily over the radio until we closed the channel. The pod turned away from us and headed back toward the Stroj home world.

“We could have taken him all the way home,” Yamada said.

“No way!” Rumbold said. “The Stroj are unpredictable. We’re lucky they never fired a missile at us that landed.”

“Rumbold’s right,” I said. “We couldn’t take the chance. I wonder what sort of greeting he’ll get when he returns home.”

“Maybe they’ll tear him apart and use him for spare parts,” Rumbold mused.

I had to admit it was a possibility. But I’d come to believe in Lorn’s resilience. If I’d ever met a survivor, it was Lorn.

All of us felt a distinct sense of relief as we turned away from the Stroj system and made our way back toward the outer regions of the star system.

Once our course was set and we were flying at a leisurely pace away from the bright white sun, I gathered my top staff and held a meeting. Where should we go next? That was the key question on the minds of my officers.

“Captain,” Durris said, speaking up first. “I think I speak for all of us when I say you’ve done a magnificent job out here. The variant rebellion—if you can call it that—has been put down. The trouble is: what do we do next?”

I looked at each of them, my eyes moving from face to face. Durris, Yamada, Rumbold, Director Vogel and a few other officers stared back. Morris was still recovering, and I was hoping to see Zye later back on Earth. It was good to have friendly people all around me.

“We’ve struck a blow for humanity today,” I said, “but that’s not good enough. Back home, there are forces at work. Forces that would undo everything we’ve done out here on the frontier.”

They shifted uncomfortably. Several frowned. These were Star Guard officers. They were used to following orders handed down from CENTCOM without question.

To allay their fears, I lifted a cautioning hand.

“Wait,” I said. “I’m not talking about starting some kind of coup or a rebellion against CENTCOM.”

They relaxed visibly. Some seemed to exhale for the first time since I’d started speaking.

“The forces I’m talking about are illegitimate. They exist outside our official government. They control all of us through terror at the top and ignorance at the bottom. Most Earthers are completely unaware of their existence.”

Proceeding to tell them all about the Council and the Chairman, I was surprised none of them scoffed or interrupted me. They’d seen too much and trusted me now more than ever.

In some cases, I’d let drop hints or even provided evidence. This time, I gave them a full briefing. Vogel helped with supportive testimony about what had happened to us at CENTCOM. Yamada backed me up by explaining how she had hacked my implant—and how she could do it for everyone else aboard.

They were listening, but they were glassy-eyed. For the most part, they wanted to go back home, back to Earth, back to their old lives. They wanted to leave war, strife and adventure behind and take a rest.

But it wasn’t to be. I explained the reason why next.

“So you see,” I said, “the Council created the fleet, manned it with variants, and sent it out to sweep away our own colonists. If we hadn’t gathered forces here and put a stop to it, the armada would have exterminated the Stroj and kept on going.”

“But that’s just it,” Durris said, interrupting at last. “Isn’t this over, Captain? The fleet’s gone. It’s been put down.”

I shook my head. “They’re building more ships—new variants, a new carrier, more battleships. They’ll send this new fleet out on the same mission as the last. They’ve been building since we left, and they’ll keep sending out fleets until the job is done. Only then will they declare that Earth is safe—with them still in charge, of course.”

“But we can expose them, surely,” he pressed. “All we have to do is fly home, go directly to the press, and release all the evidence you’ve just shown us. They’d never get away with their plotting at that point!”

Vogel leaned forward, shaking his head. “You don’t understand these people. They will transmit a morning update the moment we return to the Solar System. In fact, auto-update software is buried in the data core of this ship.
Defiant
will log in for the update the moment they can get a patch file transmitted to our location. You won’t remember anything about a Council or a Chairman soon after you return to the Solar System.”

Durris turned to me. “But
you
will!” he said. “You’ve hacked your implant. You’ve bypassed it. Yamada and Vogel can hack all our implants—even the variants. We’ll be whole of mind when we get back home.”

“We could do that,” I said, “and we could broadcast our message as you suggest. What do you think they’ll do next?”

He blinked, thinking hard. “I don’t know. Maybe they’ll give up. Maybe they’ll go into hiding after we expose them.”

I gave him a grim smile. “I will suggest another scenario. They will alter the minds of those who have heard our messages. The masses will wake up believing we are traitors. After all, haven’t we just destroyed Earth’s own fleet? Are we not villains of the worst stripe?”

“But… won’t the people believe us?”

“Perhaps they will at first, but not after they’re updated. If we go home and expose the Council, they will act. They will rewrite history and send their battleships—of which they should have two by now—to destroy us.”

“Two battleships?” Durris asked, incredulous.

“Yes,” I said. “
Resolution
, and another vessel built while we were on our voyage.”

“We can’t stop two battleships with one battered cruiser,” Durris said.

“No,” I agreed. “That’s why we have to take a different course of action. Vogel?”

Director Vogel leaned forward to explain. “We have a hard choice to make. We could accept our fates and rejoin Earth. All of us who have hacked implants must remove them. We’ll then be updated, and if we’re lucky, we’ll be allowed to live.”

“That’s not going to work!” Yamada said in concern. “They’ll know what we did. They’ll be furious. We destroyed trillions of credits worth of hardware!”

“Well,” Vogel said dismissively, “I didn’t say that path would be easy or plausible. But neither is the other one.”

“What is the other path, Director?” Rumbold asked, speaking up for the first time.

Vogel leaned forward, lowered his voice, and spoke quietly. His manner was similar to that of any conspirator throughout time.

“We’ll go home immune to updates, and we’ll behave triumphantly. We can doctor our logs and after-action reports. In our scenario, the Stroj were the ones who defeated the variants after heavy losses. We’ll claim the mission a success, and we’ll point to our realignment with the Beta colonists as proof.”

“They don’t even
like
the Betas,” Rumbold pointed out.

Vogel shrugged again. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll look innocent. That will allow us to approach Earth in a stealthy manner. We won’t be cloaked, mind you, but we’ll be taken in as a friend.”

Durris appeared to give an involuntary shudder. “What you speak of is treason. Vile treachery!”

“No!” I said, entering the conversation again. They all looked at me. “No. We’re not going to lift a finger against Star Guard or our legitimate government. Instead, we’ll deal with the Council directly.”

“How?” Durris asked.

Vogel and I exchanged glances. “Before we get into that, I want you all to tell me what you’re thinking right now. Where do your hearts lie?”

They looked glum all around. Circumstances had put us all in an impossible situation.

“All I ever wanted to do,” Yamada said, “is live the noble life of a naval officer. A spacer in Star Guard. I never wanted any of this!”

“None of us asked for this duty,” I admitted, “but here we are. Sometimes, war is thrust upon a military man from an unexpected angle. At that point, hard choices must be made.”

Vogel looked at me sidelong. “What about you, Sparhawk?” he asked. “Are we looking at a rare man like George Washington, or are you more like Napoleon? Will you see the need for a strong leader after this is over? Someone dedicated to straightening Earth out in his own image?”

“A good question,” I said, waving down Rumbold, who’d begun to sputter angrily at the director. “I’m not seeking glory or rulership. I doubt such things would even be possible. With the Council excised, our government should function the way it was meant to. No further intervention should be necessary.”

“Are you sure about that?” Durris asked. “Have you asked yourself how Earth has been so peaceful for so long? What will you say when a rebellious leader rises, or a foolish movement threatens to tear Earth apart?”

“Let it happen,” I said, “as it should have all along. Let the chaos of a disorderly society engulf us all. People managed to thrive before the oldsters and their ‘morning updates’, so why should they fail to do so after they’re gone?”

Rumbold slapped the table with an open palm. “I’m in,” he said. “If we don’t do this now, we’ll never get another chance to make things right.”

Yamada sighed then nodded. “I’m in too. I don’t see a way out of it. I don’t want to be erased or tricked into playing the part of a slave any longer.”

Durris shook his head as he studied the glimmering computer table between us.

“This isn’t what I signed up for either,” he said. “But I’m going to go along with Vogel’s crazy plan. Not because I think it will work, or even that I think it’s right, but because I can’t stomach the idea of Earth sending out more variant fleets to slaughter people pointlessly.”

I nodded, accepting his statement without comment. The rest of the group swore their allegiance, with or without fanfare, to the plan.

Soon, the meeting was over. Just like that, we’d become rebels. Mutineers…

Traitors.

-62-

Getting back to Earth took a few weeks, but it wasn’t all that difficult. We started off by following the Beta ships at a respectful distance. After three jumps, we knew where we were and took our own path.

When we arrived home at last, we were prepared physically but not mentally for what must happen. Vogel had worked tirelessly with Yamada to outfit every crewman and variant with an update-blocker. Our implants were back in and sore to the touch, but they could no longer be used to alter our memories of past events.

CENTCOM contacted us the moment we entered the Solar System.

“
Defiant
,” said traffic control, “good to see you made it home. Please transmit your report. We’re uploading your update now.”

We were ready with a carefully falsified set of files. Durris threw up his hands when it came to transmitting that pack of lies.

I stepped forward, reached out and touched the transmit tab. The reports began uploading to CENTCOM’s servers. Since we were far from Earth, it would take hours to reach them.

“We’re really doing this?” Durris asked me.

“You can have your implant patched back to normal,” I told him, “if you wish.”

“Where will I wake up then?”

“In a ship full of traitors, no doubt. Physically, you’ll probably be on a bunk in the brig.”

He blinked in surprise. “You’re that dedicated to this, Captain?”

“XO, listen to me. I’ve met these people, you haven’t. They’re holding Zye captive even now, a member of
Defiant’s
command crew. That act and countless others are illegal.”

“Zye…” he said. “You’ve mentioned that name before, but I have no memory of any such person.”

“That’s precisely the point!” I said, then controlled my voice. “Are you in, or out?”

“I’m in,” he said after a moment’s hesitation. “I’m sorry. I promised, and I’m still in. It’s just—it’s against my nature. It’s so hard to do this.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “It’s hard for me, too.”

“Captain!” he called after me as I moved to exit the deck.

I turned to face him.

“Watch out for that Director Vogel. I don’t trust him.”

“Good advice. Thank you.”

Despite my words, I’d come to trust the director. I’d relied on him throughout these final steps. He’d overseen much of the detailed work of hacking our implants, falsifying records, and so on. Now, he was going to play an even bigger role.

When I reached his laboratory pod, he was waiting. There was a variant on the operating table, cut open.

“We have to have more troops,” Vogel told me. “We’ll have to get to Mars to pick them up.”

I stared at the variant on the table. “Must it be these creatures?”

“There’s no other way. If we take
Defiant
herself into orbit and drop missiles on Earth, the Star Guard battleships will take us down in return.”

The variants and the council had been busy since we’d left over a month earlier. They’d built a twin to the
Resolution
. The new battleship, christened
Fearless
, was accompanying her sister in far orbit. In time, more ships would be built, and they’d fly to the stars to finish the task the first fleet failed to accomplish.

“All right,” I said. “We must act naturally. Keep fixing the variants we have aboard. They’ll be our carriers.”

He agreed, and we parted ways. It was only a few hours later when I was summoned urgently.

“Captain Sparhawk,” Yamada said in a surprisingly even voice. “CENTCOM would like a word with you.”

“All right, I’ll take it privately in my quarters.”

We were still too far out for a real conversation. With a few hours lag-time, I was forced to just listen to the incoming transmission. The face that appeared on my screen to deliver the message was a surprise.

“Aunt Ellen?” I said aloud, but of course, she couldn’t hear me.

She began speaking then—and it might have been more appropriate to say that she was screeching.

“William J. Sparhawk!” she cried. “I can’t believe this! You were always such a truthful boy. Why send us a packet of falsehoods? Why claim victory when we’ve suffered such a tragic defeat?”

There was no point in answering her as she was light-hours away. Instead, I waited wearily for the rest of it.

“You’ve ruined us,” she said. “No one is going to buy the idea that a pack of rabble-rousing peasants in the out-systems managed to destroy the greatest fleet humanity has ever built.”

She fell into a dramatic fit of hard-breathing, and she was clearly fighting back tears.

“We’ve only rebuilt
two
of those battleships,” she said. “At great expense, I might add. The fervent hope here on Earth was that two would be enough to replace our losses. Imagine the Chairman’s shock when he learned you’ve managed to lose them all! The Sparhawk name might never be cleared.”

Internally, I felt a wave of relief. She wasn’t aware of the depths of my deception. She’d come to the conclusion I was involved in this disaster somehow and had assumed I’d covered my tracks for political reasons.

But then, the more I thought of it, the more I came to understand her outbursts. She was acting. She wanted to make sure that none of the taint of this catastrophe affected her directly.

My lips wanted to twitch upward in a smile as she went on hysterically for some time, lamenting the loss of so many brave spacers and so forth. It was obvious she was recording this and planned to distribute it.

Dutifully, I listened to the whole thing before making a neutral response that was consoling, if not apologetic. At no time did I accept responsibility for any of it.

When I’d transmitted my reply, I closed the channel and allowed myself to grin. I was back home, and the political maneuvering had already begun. The good thing was they’d yet to figure out that we represented a real threat.

We made it most of the way to Mars before CENTCOM began to get suspicious. We’d told them we were damaged and in need of repairs. They’d accepted this, to a point. But they changed their minds when we stopped off at Phobos.

“Vogel,” I said, contacting him directly with my implant, “Earth is aware something is wrong. Grab every variant you can, ignore any transmissions from Earth, and get back aboard
Defiant
immediately.”

He didn’t argue for once. In fact, he scrambled to obey.

There were any number of ways our plans could have been hinted at. Phobos staffers might have reported that our ship was in remarkably good repair. The updates Earth was sending us were bouncing off our implants, and the local net had already reported the error.

Some unknown error might have even come up during the official review process of our after-action reports. The reports had hidden flaws in them. Things that didn’t add up when inspected closely.

Or, the answer could have been even simpler. One of our crewmen could have had a change of heart or experienced a slip of the tongue while transmitting private messages to family members back on Earth.

It really didn’t matter. What
did
matter was the fact that the brass was beginning to suspect we weren’t what we seemed to be.

I weighed my options as Vogel frantically loaded his variants aboard. They marched up the docking tube like a long line of ants pouring through a tunnel.

It seemed to me the best option was to keep moving closer to my target. Not rushing, but never slowing down, either.

I’d fly
Defiant
right down into that hole in the ground they inhabited if I had to.