Tactics of Conquest (Stellar Conquest) (31 page)

“For a while,” Spooky countered. “As you pointed out, eventually you would have tired of it.”

“Yes.” Bogrin said no more, but simply smoked and looked out at the void rushing by.

On the other side of the room, Trissk paced back and forth like the upright lion he resembled. After ten years, he had grown into his prime, his mane full and his muscles rippling. Though not as bulky as a Sekoi, he flowed with contained menace and power. “I do not fully understand what we are doing here.
Conquest
fights on, and now we abandon her and our fellow warriors, for what?”

“You didn’t have to come along. As you Ryss have no Blends, some other could have represented your race,” Ezekiel said mildly.

“I was the logical choice. I have the most experience dealing with humans and Sekoi. I command our small contingent. I could not send another in my place, or I would have looked like a coward. However, I fear I may still look like a coward, as I will be elsewhere when the fight finally comes to tooth and claw.” He snarled and slashed a hanging curtain, which slowly raveled itself up afterward. “I also do not like this virtual reality. What satisfaction is there in attacking a simulation?”

“You can always go back to your body in the cocoon,” Ezekiel replied. “Though without the link, you won’t be comfortable. And you can’t get out and roam around. This ship doesn’t have the extensive gravplating of
Conquest
, so you need to be sealed up and cushioned in case of hard maneuvering.”

“I agree with the young Ryss, though,” Bogrin said around his stogie. “It is time to hear what this is all about.”

Ezekiel sat in a chair, placing his hands on the arms as if on a throne, and smiled. “We’re going to meet my family.”

The two aliens stared in puzzlement, and Spooky lifted an eyebrow in a very Vulcan manner. “I always thought Raphaela had her own base somewhere in the outer reaches of the solar system. I even had people searching for it in the decades before we departed, but I never found it.”

“Space is too vast even for your resources to find it,” Ezekiel said with satisfaction. “And we were very careful. If Earth ever fell, no one could know where it was, what it looked like or how to detect it. With the Meme sucking information out of everyone’s head, if anyone knew, they would too.”

“Absen could have found it,” Spooky groused, “but he didn’t want to put enough EarthFleet resources against it. But, I suppose that’s now proven fortunate.”

“Precisely.”

“Would you two cease sharing inside anecdotes and explain yourselves?” said Trissk, striding up to Spooky and looming over the small Vietnamese man.

Ezekiel waved diffidently and said, “Before he died, my father convinced my mother to set up a secret base, a young and healthy living machine little different from a ship. With that, her shuttle, and the resources of the Asteroid Belt and the cometary halo, she and my brothers and sisters had everything they needed to assist EarthFleet without ever getting co-opted by it.”

Spooky grunted, moving out from under Trissk’s shadow. “Brothers and sisters? I never knew. Were they part of the ‘black box’ team of scientists that cracked so many technical challenges?”

“Yes. They were quadruplets, and they were not only part of the team, they
were
the team. No other humans were ever brought out to the base, though Mother did recruit some smart normals to form a second cell on Mars.”

“As a blind. I see,” Spooky said.

“So that’s where we’re going? This secret base?” asked Trissk.

“Exactly. If we can find it, we can show Mother what we’ve done, and the allies we’ve made. She can give us a wealth of information about Earth. If there are any resistance movements, any soft underbelly to Meme rule, she will know about them. The trick, though, will be making contact.”

“Did you not arrange codes and signals, in case you returned?” Bogrin asked.

“Of course. The tricky part will be dodging or getting rid of all the Meme sentry drones lurking around the system, and making sure that when we transmit, nobody sees or follows us. If I was Mother, I would be extremely careful. On the other hand, she must already know that the Empire has been attacked here. The battles and the destruction of the two Guardians would have been visible throughout the system and beyond.”

“Then we had better get started killing drones, don’t you think?” Trissk snarled. “Show me how to use this ship’s weapons, and I will be your gunner. Let us begin the hunt.” He paced around the room as if looking for a fire control station.

“I have a better idea.” Ezekiel gestured toward the front screen, which appeared to be a window opening onto space itself. The view leaped forward until they stared at the shark-like shape of a Meme sentry. “
Roger
, think you can sneak up on that drone?”

“Of course, Zeke,” the voice of the ship came back.

To the two aliens, this was just another VR wonder. Spooky, though, nearly jumped out of his skin.

“I will keep that expression permanently in memory,” Ezekiel laughed. “In fact…” A moment later a holographic image of Spooky, with completely unrehearsed shock on his face, appeared on the wall. “Priceless.”

“
Roger
is sentient,” Spooky accused. “All these years we have been working together, you kept this from me.”

“Only so I could reveal it to you at the proper time. What, you think you’re the only one that gets to have secrets?”

A slow smile stole across Spooky’s face, then a belly laugh burst forth from his lips. He bent over, clutching his knees and letting out several gasps and
whoops
. Ezekiel had never seen the man so unabashedly amused. “Well played, sir. Well played.”

“If you can breathe now, take a look at the screen.”

The four gathered in the front of the sumptuous control deck to see the sentry looming closer and closer. It seemed to be unaware, almost somnolent. Suddenly it jerked and thrashed as two tentacles leaped forth from
Steadfast Roger
and speared into the tiny ship. A moment later it calmed, returning to its former stillness.

“Give
Roger
a few hours and he will break through its conditioning and steal all the current Meme communications codes and protocols. Then he’ll have that sentry doing our work as well. If all goes as planned, he will quietly call the drones in this area of space to him one by one and take them over. Pretty soon, we’ll have our own little fleet reporting only what we want back to the Meme, and also searching for the base signature that I supplied. It may take a few days or a few weeks, but eventually we’ll track Mother down.”

The four, each a warrior in his own way, stared at the screen and watched the future unfold.

THE END of
Tactics of Conquest
. Captain Absen and his stalwart crew
will return in
Conquest of Earth,
coming in summer of 2014.