Shatternity: Part 1, Chapter 1

[Robert Maxwell]

What the hell, I figured I'd post some original work here. It's space opera, of a sort, so it kind of fits in with the general theme.

Technically, I am posting the introduction and Chapter 1. I'll post a chapter at a time so as not to clutter the place up too fast.

Comments are certainly welcome!

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Introduction

They say it's best to begin at the beginning. In my case, "The beginning of what?" seems like a good retort. Where do you begin telling the story of a man--yours truly--whose history spans thousands of years? Now that's a legacy.

I could start with my parents, the lunatic missionaries who cruised the galaxy spreading the message that Jesus was a powerful time traveler from the distant future. I'm not sure how the aliens they preached that to really took it, considering they didn't come back from their last trip.

I could tell you about the endless stream of stodgy old nannies and young, sexy, hopelessly unqualified babysitters that performed the major part of my "raising."

There's also my brother, Richard, who thought defecting to the enemy in the middle of a World War was a good idea. That's just the kind of guy he was: an idiot.

Since I don't know where to start, why not give you a brief summary of my early years?

I was born in East Chicago in 2050. I later found out the part of Chicago I was born actually consisted previously of a large lake. The wonders of civil engineering never cease to amaze me. Like I said, my parents--Jacob and Aikaterine--they weren't around much, spending most of their time trying to save the souls of species who'd probably have sooner devoured them than be proselytized. Generally oblivious to the fact that they had two sons who needed attention and guidance, I felt like an orphan long before their ship officially went missing.

By 2066, I'd become a typical, gawky teenager. I lived in what they called the Western Alliance at that time, and tensions with the Eastern Confederation were rising. At that age, though, the only rising I cared much about occurred in my pants. You can probably relate. My friends were June and Mark, the former of which died at the outbreak of the war, and the latter basically vanished not long after hostilities began. It took many years before I found out what became of him. Not long enough, my opinion.

The war itself--World War III, or whatever the historians of later eras wanted to call it--didn't last long, but it took its own toll on me, physically and mentally. I ended up losing 38% of my body to an enemy warhead. Hurt like hell, as you might imagine, at least until I passed out. I woke up with the missing parts replaced by cybernetic implements. I never remembered signing a consent form, but the military docs assured me that since I was an orphan and a minor, they could pretty much do whatever they wanted with (and to) me. I became military property, forced to serve in multiple wars--they wanted to see how well their new cybernetic technology worked, after all--and eventually proved myself competent at more than just killing people.

Glossing over a whole bunch of relatively boring history, I wound up commanding my own ship, the Protector. As the brass liked to keep me far away, presumably out of trouble, I ended up patrolling the border of an unknown region--some space our friends, the Oolians, warned us to stay out of.

Me not being the kind of guy to listen to a warning like that, things only started to get interesting when I tried to find out what they wanted us to stay away from.

That's "interesting" in the Chinese sense, mind you. Not good.

Part 1: The Koraxian War

"Whoever starts out toward the unknown must consent to venture alone." - Andre Gide

The Oolians warned us not to stray too far into the buffer zone they called the Non-Aligned Region. They said we didn't want to know what was beyond, the dangers that lurked there. They worried that we would bite off more than we could handle.

We should have listened to them.

Hindsight is always 20/20, isn't it?

Chapter 1: The Encounter

Space travel doesn't quite work the way it used to. In the early days--the latter half of the twentieth century--you had simple rockets. That was pretty much it. You applied enough thrust to escape gravity. Going anywhere near a fraction of lightspeed was unthinkable except in the annals of science fiction. Warp drive, hyperdrive, sleeper ships, relativistic vessels, wormholes... yeah, people had a million ideas for how humans might one day travel distances that would normally take several lifetimes to cover.

As it turned out, someone had done most of the work for us. Not far into the twenty-first century, some strange properties were discovered in certain areas of space. One such area was near the edge of Earth's solar system. We soon detected others via telescope. Describing them accurately would require a lot of math, something that--despite my cybernetic processors--I was never too good at and never liked much anyway.

See, they're called "fold vectors" or "FVs." Created eons ago by the first sentient race to spread across the galaxy, they allow instantaneous travel from one point to another. Each fold vector is connected to one or more other fold vectors. With the right equipment, you can generate a field to activate a nearby fold vector and send yourself (and whatever happens to surround you, such as a ship) to another fold vector. It's a little like a wormhole, and a little like folding space. I leave the deeper details to the experts, of which I am most definitely not one.

The problem with FVs is that nobody knows where they all are. The Idaltu built them, and all the complete maps died with them. So, each race to ascend since has had to create their own maps, by sending ships through fold vectors and figuring out where they emerged, then hoping they can come back through the same FV (sometimes you can't.) The Oolians and their allies tend to be kind enough to share their maps with each other. That's how we puny humans got ours. It would have taken decades to map out the hundreds of FVs we now know about thanks to the maps.

What this all means is that, to control access to a given region of space, you have to monitor its fold vectors. Unwelcome visitors, you blast to pieces as soon as they appear. There are also some substances that can temporarily "foul" a fold vector. Outlaws have a habit of using them to avoid police pursuit, but the military applications are fairly obvious, too. There is no known way to completely destroy a fold vector. Were such a thing known to be possible, everything that follows might have been avoided.

February 12th, 2098. I, Captain Robert Maxwell, commanded the USS Protector, operated under the auspices of the Interstellar Space Exploration Administration, an arm of the government of the Terran Alliance. ISEA was really a huge bureaucracy--bigger than pretty much any other part of the Alliance government. It managed the vast swath of territory humanity had claimed, though it is more accurate to say the Oolians tolerated us saying "this space is ours, please stay out." My ship, you couldn't call top-of-the-line. Maybe ten years ago, that would have been apt. These days, it felt a bit long in the tooth, and the looming launch of the new Orion-class ships had me feeling like a bit of a relic. Forty-eight years old, commanding a ship the brass generally considered an afterthought, with a crew of mid-tier misfits the higher-ups thought were suitable for long-term deep space assignments, I felt like someone had tossed me into a raging river without a life jacket. "Don't worry, you'll be fine," they said. "Nothing ever happens out that way. The Oolians just want someone to keep an eye on it, an early warning system."

"What am I supposed to warn them about?" I asked during my briefing.

"Anything unusual," was their vague response.

Really, what's "unusual" in space? My cosmological specialist could talk my ear off for days about the properties of any region we ventured into, how special and unique it was. I always had to keep myself from yawning.

So, with their vague orders, we patrolled Jacob Sector. Named after my father, as I understood it. It figured. Their ship, the Good News, disappeared from this region about thirty-four years previously. The end result of that was the Oolians marking a bunch of FVs in this sector "Do Not Use" on our official maps. Real helpful. They refused to elaborate on why we shouldn't use them. It turned out they had good reasons for that, but I was never the type to take "no" for an answer, especially when it was for my own good.

That day, three weeks into our patrol mission, one of the FVs--a "Do Not Use" one--lit up on our scanners. Collins, my tactical specialist, looked a little panicked. "Sir, we've got something coming in on a red FV. Uhh... it's not ours."

Poor guy never had seen combat. His cybernetics--patterned after mine, believe it or not--were implanted voluntarily. He once thanked me for "blazing the trail," for proving the stuff could work, that a human body wouldn't shrivel up and spit out every last piece of technology attached to it, if it was cared for properly. I really wanted to tell him to fuck off, but dammit, the kid was sincere. I laughed a little, thanked him, and a few years later, the request for a transfer to my ship came in. I approved it, naturally, figuring I could count on him to do my bidding without question. It didn't quite end up being that simple, but he made a good addition to my crew, nevertheless. I just hoped I wasn't there the first time someone took a shot at Lieutenant Collins. He had "potential headcase" written all over him.

Those fears surfaced as Collins tried to parse the scanner readings from the "forbidden" FV. He didn't know what was going on, and neither did I. The Oolians gave us ship profiles for every species they knew about, or so they said. This one triggered a specific but odd response in our computer: "HOSTILE SHIP. IMMEDIATE RETREAT ADVISED." These words flashed, bright red, at Collin's face. He looked across the bridge at me. "It says we should retreat."

"Retreat? Are you kidding? It won't even ID the ship?"

He shook his head. "It claims not to have any details, just that we should run."

"Which is exactly why we aren't going to," I said, adding an authoritative tone to my voice. No, we weren't going to run. We were there to monitor unusual activity, and by God, this was damned unusual. I wasn't about to head back to base with nothing more than, "some weird ship popped up and we split."

I activated the console in front of me, getting a visual read on the ship. It looked nothing like anything the Oolians told us about. The thing about most ships is that, regardless of species, you could normally identify the significant features: support craft bays, engines, weapon emplacements, things like that. This one had the form of a sphere covered in long, deadly-looking spikes. It had a crystalline quality to it, and glowed internally. Even without visual enhancement, it was plenty bright. Ambient power readings went beyond most everything in our records. Only an Oolian Cruiser seemed like an even match to this ship. Suffice it to say, this beast projected power. It wasn't enough that the ship was dangerous--it deliberately wanted to appear so. Something was innately aggressive and hostile about it.

I turned to Rydia Arnold, communications tech. The Oolians gave us some pretty good translation technology, enough to (they said) muddle through even a first contact scenario without much trouble. "Please tell me they are hailing," I pleaded.

She shook her head. "They're ignoring our automatic greetings, too. I don't think they want to talk."

"Of course not. That would actually be helpful. Tactical, let's put up a defensive posture... limited weapons, charged armor." I called her "Tactical" because I really, really hated saying "Starsmyth-Kennedy." No, I mean it. Such a mouthful. It drove me insane. Why did I ever accept someone with a name that long when I knew full well I'd have to blurt it in the heat of battle to issue orders? Sooner or later, I'd probably start calling her "Tac," just out of laziness.

She stood there, steely and unshaken, working the computer to carry out my orders. Deep down, I admired her resolve. I wondered if dangerous situations didn't really bother her at all, or if it was just a very effective front. With me, there was always alarm, just beneath the surface. I'd been in enough firefights and enough hostile situations to know when the shit was going to hit the fan. My heart palpitated, quite annoyingly, as if I needed to be reminded this situation was not good, threatened to go completely out of my control, and jeopardize the hundreds of people for whose lives I was directly responsible.

The ship glowed even brighter for just a moment--you could almost call it a flash--and one of its sharp spines rapidly ejected, making a beeline for my ship. If their vessel design left little room for ambiguity, their weapons might as well have been billboard advertisements. THESE ARE SHIP-KILLING SHARDS! THEY WILL KILL YOUR SHIP!

Oh, I got the message loud and clear. "Get us the hell out of here! Seriously! Now!"

The ship took a moment to cycle up its FV drive, and we were gone. I imagined the shard soaring through the empty space my ship had occupied only seconds before. I got a tiny bit of satisfaction from it, but really, I was disturbed. Who were they? What did they want? Why did they show up and start shooting at an obviously inferior enemy?

The Oolians would be called to account. I wanted to make sure of that.

 

[Galen4]

Hey Robert,
First off, I love the "off the cuff" first person style you're using here. I laughed my ass off on more than one passage. The contemporary dialogue and exclamations worked, and they don't always with this kind of story. I like the FV explanation...it was direct and informative. You made an old sci fi concept actually sound interesting. Not easy.
Keep it up.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Thanks, Galen! I'll see about checking out some of your story, too.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Next chapter:

Chapter 2: Having Escaped

Yes, we got away. Outmatched, outgunned, and I had little doubt we would have also been outmaneuvered, had we tried to stick around and put up some kind of pointless resistance.

The FV we used took us to Vega, not far from the Star Station Docking Platform, affectionately abbreviated as "Dock Plat," or "DP" if you don't mind sounding the slightest bit perverse.

The legend went that the engineers who designed it couldn't settle on a name, and the whole thing was referred to as "Docking Platform Project #1," so the name stuck. In the end, no one cared about the name, and at least it was easy to translate into alien languages, since all the sparefaring peoples we encountered had a similar concept.

So, in no time, it became a hub for commerce. In times of war, it made an excellent staging ground, being a mere two jumps from Earth. Staging military ops from our home system always seemed like a bad idea--it would motivate our enemies to find an FV path to Earth. Not something most of them cared about, generally, with Earth being a bit off the beaten path: no strategic FVs leading to other interesting star systems were found in the Sol system. Terran Intelligence thought of this as a blessing, but our more businessy folk considered it a competitive disadvantage. But, hey, that's why most of them set up shop on the Dock Plat.

The station itself was a gigantic, flattened, rotatic disc. From a distance, it didn't look that big, until you realized its thickness represented over two hundred levels. It could house a quarter million people in relatively close quarters for an indefinite period of time, but it usually boasted "only" eighty-thousand permanent residents, and about three times that in weekly traffic.

All that said, the station remained heavily defended at all times. Perhaps the greatest achievement of human engineering in history, never to be left to chance. Both the Compton and the Hammer stood guard here, the latter of which coasted out to greet us upon our arrival.

Both ships were like the Protector: large, moderately armed, able to hold off a fleet of lesser attackers for quite a while. Until we encountered that peculiar alien ship, I believed the only thing that could dispatch a ship like mine easily was an Oolian Cruiser.

Lt. Arnold gave them all the standard, friendly "hellos," and they guided us toward the station. We pulled into one of its massive ship bays, big enough to hold a dozen ships this size, and waited for the Lieutenant's report of "docking completed, sir."

The console on the arm of my chair began to beep at me, signaling an incoming communication. I accepted, and saw the familiar face of Admiral Marianne Degenstein, commander of the Docking Platform.

She sighed before even saying "hi." "I should have guessed you'd be the first one to run into the Koraxians. I'd like to see you in my office as soon as it's convenient."

"The what?" I had never heard that name before.

"I'll explain once you get up here. Don't keep me waiting, Robert." The screen went black. Funny, I didn't remember her having that much gray hair the last time we talked.

I gave some more thought to the Admiral on my way up to her office--there were, after all, various elevators, escalators, and conveyors involved. Having left my ship in the hands of station engineers for service and repair, I knew I had a least a few hours before they'd give the all-clear and let us be on our way. Standard procedure after any combat encounter: report to a base for inspection and repairs, even if no damage is known to have been inflicted.

So, back to the Admiral. I married her, once, back in 2089. We'd just beaten the Cranions after six years of war, and there was a huge celebration on Dock Plat. She commanded the station at that time, too, and the two of us--drunk off our asses, mind you--stumbled into the Salmaxian Temple of Finance, hands all over each other, and I'm not even sure the poor alien priest understood anything we said, but he put one and one together and decided we were trying to get married. And, just like that, we had a valid marriage. Thanks to interlocking treaties with the Salmaxians, it was recognized by the Terran Alliance, too.

Needless to say, our superiors were less than pleased, and it took a minor diplomatic incident to get the whole thing straightened out. I think, as punishment, they would never promote the Admiral beyond this post. Since she was my superior, and I had just basically won a war, I got off lightly.

All this floated around in my mind as I stood there in her office. I wondered if she still blamed me for everything. I mean, I can't help being this attractive. It seemed a little unfair.

I kept my hands clasped behind my back, maybe one of those nervous habits picked up as a side effect of military training. "You look uncomfortable," she said flatly, only glancing up from her desktop display.

"Eh, a little."

She stopped what she was doing and looked up at me. She took a familiar tone, in an attempt to make me more comfortable, I suppose. "How have you been, Robert?"

"Not bad. Not much to complain about, other than being shot at unprovoked."

She nodded. "What's beyond the Non-Aligned Region has not been common knowledge at any level below the Admiralty. The Oolians didn't want word to get around, and they convinced the Salmaxians and others to keep it under wraps. But now, the gauntlet has been thrown down. The Koraxians have attacked."

"To be fair, all they did was take a potshot at one ship. Are we really that concerned about it? We're not thinking of going to war again, are we?"

"So, no one's told you yet? A few hours ago--about the same time you were attacked, I gather--a small Koraxian fleet appeared in the Borderline sector. They wiped out our listening post there. There have been other, unconfirmed reports of encounters with unknown ships, as well. We have lost contact with the Lavinia, which was patrolling Rigor Vulcanis. We do not believe these are isolated incidents. We have conferred with the Oolians and agree that this is a prelude to a full invasion."

"But... why us? Why now? If their ships are all as powerful as the one I saw, we don't really pose a threat to them. Do we have something they want?"

"We've been trying to get a straight answer from the Oolians on that. They claim not to know what the Koraxians want with us, but we think they're stalling. They have agreed to commit a few token Cruisers to try to scare the Koraxians off, but we have no guarantees that will work, either. The Oolians have assured us diplomacy is useless, but we are sending an envoy anyway. Things are moving very quickly and I have been given authority to reassign vessels from the 3rd Fleet to defensive maneuvers."

"And, of course, the Protector is part of the 3rd."

"Yes. I want you guarding Earth. I remember what you did during the Cranion War. This is no time for reckless heroics, Robert. We need to be very, very careful here. The Cranions were an inferior enemy. The Koraxians, by all our measures, are not. We want to avoid a full-scale war with them at all costs."

I frowned. "I don't like being kept away from the action."

"There won't be any 'action' if we can help it."

"No offense, Mary, but they've attacked us. They've declared war. All this--envoys, defensive maneuvers, shows of force--it's just wasting time."

"You're an expert on Koraxian psychology now?"

"No, but I do know war, and nobody attacks first and then asks to talk. If they thought negotiation would get them what they want, they wouldn't have opened with attacks."

She sighed, lowering her voice. "Be that as it may, it is out of my hands. After everything we've been through, no one wants to fight another war. They will do anything possible to avoid it. President Cuerva has made her mandate very clear: if there is any alternative to war with the Koraxians, we will pursue it. The Oolians have backed this policy. If war cannot be avoided, all known space will be engulfed in multilateral conflict. Once the Oolians and Koraxians start taking swings at each other, they will not care who is standing between them."

I crossed my arms, admittedly being a little defiant. "And so, instead of preparing, we are just going to pretend this isn't happening."

"You have your orders, Captain."

"And I will carry them out, like always. But when things start to get out of control, I am not going to sit around and wait for the Koraxians to reach Earth."

"If things get ugly, you have my assurances that you will be on the front lines."

I smiled. "I wouldn't have it any other way."

She went back to her desk display. "Good day, then, Captain."

"You, too," I murmured on the way out of her office. I knew the official orders would be on my console aboard the Protector. The crew would be filled in on the nature of our new mission, but also forbidden from discussing it with their families, be they on Earth or a colony. The last thing we needed was widespread panic, or worse--the media picking up on it, and sparking mass hysteria.

I wondered if Mary was right, that we could avoid war. She didn't really seem to believe it, herself.

I've always thought, too, how much all that early stalling cost us. Would things have turned out differently, had we simply gone straight to war and met the Koraxians with the full force of our power? Would my role have played out the same way?

I gave fleeting consideration, many times, to revising the scenario. In the end, I just felt I could do more good elsewhere, elsewhen.

 

[Galen4]

So I see war is on the way.
It will be interesting to see if this parallels Trek-similar stories or if you're going in a different direction.
Good stuff.

 

[Mistral]

OK, very cool. I like the dialogue and the character. I see hints of B5 and Trek blended in but it has it's own "flavor" even so. And in naming your President-were you, by chance, imbibing a wee dram of South-of-the-Border liquid courage?

BTW-while I like it your avatar is darned distracting when I'm reading. Good Job!

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Thanks, guys!

The President actually has a fairly significant backstory that ties into the events that caused World War III. I don't know if I'll cover that in this story, but yes, she was born and raised in Venezuela. Her name's similarity to a certain alcoholic beverage is purely coincidental.

The way I'm conducting the war in this story is a bit different from how Trek typically does it. Besides that, the storyline is about considerably more than the war.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Next up:

Chapter 3: Circumvention

Earth. Say it enough times, it starts to sound a bit silly. Maybe that's why we branded everything "Terran." "Earther" doesn't really roll off the tongue, does it? "Human" has a lot of connotations, when translated, that our diplomats were never comfortable using it. But if we're "Terrans" from the "Terran Alliance," well, that all fits together nicely, right?

The first time I saw the planet of my birth from orbit, it was in ruins. World War III had just broken out, I'd lost everything, and it was only my fortunate encounter with a friendly platoon that saved me. They took me out of their way to the O'Hare Spaceport, and put me on an automated pod bound for Mars. To make a long story short, I never did make it to Mars, but I did see Earth--black clouds, raging fires, and darkness where once had been light. Kind of a troubling visual for a 16-year-old, really.

Now, though, it looked just fine, a pretty blue marble. Not quite as novel as the first time, or the second, or the third. I reached a point, somewhere along the way, where I just didn't find staring down at planets that interesting anymore. Maybe it was all the combat. I got used to staring at planets, seeing only hostility. I'm going down there because I have to fight someone. Always, that was my thought. It became a thing of menace rather than beauty. And, in the final analysis, I never found it that beautiful in the first place.

The Protector rendezvoused with Earth Station 1, although docking was not necessary this time, since we'd just been checked out at Vega. The flight controllers there accepted our new orders and we began defensive patrols. Those involved flying from one FV to another, in sequence, making sure nothing came through that shouldn't. Considering the only one anybody ever used went to Proxima, it seemed a tremendous waste of time, effort, and resources to check each one, but protocol was protocol. What if the Koraxians found a backdoor into our system? What if their starmaps were more complete? Anything was possible. And our FVs were sprinkled all over the system. One by the Sun, one out by Pluto, one smack in the middle of the Leonids (who the hell thought that one up, anyway?), and a couple more in seemingly random locations between planetary orbits. Fold vectors, being gravitationally bound, stayed the same distance from the nearest attractor at all times, fortunately. I guess this allowed the Idaltu to have a more reliable and accessible navigation system, since you could always find an FV in the same place, relative to nearby stellar bodies.

A communique came through my console that a shuttle was on its way. Seriously, that's basically all it said. "ES1 reports shuttle away, destination Protector." Whoever was aboard didn't want their name broadcast all over the system. I ordered a temporary delay to the patrols, and I had a pretty good idea of the visitor's identity, too, and headed down to Bay 1 to confirm.

Bay 1's massive, metallic iris curled open as I watched from the flight control station, above the bay itself. A small shuttle coasted in and set down gently on the smooth floor. The iris closed, and the display in front of me spat out indicators about repressurization. I took the elevator down to the bay itself, knowing it would be done repressurizing by the time I got there.

I stepped out into the massive bay, making my way past other ships--shuttles, fighters, a couple tugs, a cargo hauler. I watched a few individuals disembark the shuttle: Fleet Admiral Maury Sellis, a notorious micromanager; and Agent John "Jack" Robertson, Terran Intelligence. Jack--he was the one I expected, with all the secrecy about his arrival.

I walked up to greet them. "Gentlemen," I said, nearly forgetting to salute the Admiral--a gesture I threw in quickly, before he noticed my lapse.

"Captain," Sellis acknowledged with a nod.

We exchanged pleasantries for a moment, then started walking towards the exit. Sellis got right down to business. "I understand you already spoke to Admiral Degenstein about the situation with the Koraxians."

"That's right. I must say, I am not too thrilled with my assignment, either." I hoped my little hint would get Sellis' attention. He loved to change things around, and his authority superseded Degenstein's. Strangely, he didn't take the bait.

"You'll have to take it up with her. I have more important priorities." It wasn't like Sellis to rebuff me. Normally, he jumped at an excuse to undermine one of his subordinates. That was his whole reputation! Hell, he seemed to get off on it. But this time, I got a "not my problem." What the hell?

I looked at Jack, who shrugged but didn't say anything. I followed the two of them to one of the unoccupied conference rooms--no windows, soundproofed, no recording devices of any kind. Private.

Jack shut the door behind us and locked it. Sellis leaned over the oblong conference table with a serious look on his face. "We're planning for contingencies."

"We know the Koraxians won't negotiate," Jack elaborated.

"The President insists on diplomacy," Sellis continued. "We are convinced it will fail. However, she does not want to hear any talk of war plans. We are taking the initiative ourselves."

"Our data on the Koraxians is limited but valuable," Jack said. "There is, apparently, a large resistance movement within their society, opposed to war with us--or anyone, for that matter. While their people are gearing up for war, the resistance is likely planning acts of sabotage and protest."

"Okay, I will admit to not knowing anything about the Koraxians," I said. "Can we count on their dissidents to help us? What kind of government do they have?"

"It is, strictly speaking, a despotic empire," Jack explained. "The resistance operates at great peril to themselves. We suspect their members would be executed, if discovered."

"Then how do we know about them?"

"We gleaned it from the Oolians, when we pressed them for information. They gave us the names and locations of a few contacts. It seems they've been in touch with the Oolians for years, but operate covertly."

I nodded. "Where do I come in?" I knew Jack wasn't here for a friendly visit. They had a purpose in telling me all this.

Jack came up alongside me. "You will follow your official orders--patrol this system. If hostilities break out--and it's almost guaranteed they will--you will receive new orders. There will, actually, be a large number of reassignments, all planned in advance, taking effect once we are in an open state of war. We can't wait for the President to sign off on everything. By the time she hears about it, she won't be able to stop it."

"I don't get it," I admitted. "Are you talking about mutiny, here? What does the C-in-C think about all this? Is he in on it?"

"He authorized this plan personally," Sellis stated. "It's not a mutiny. It's initiative. By the time things are in motion, she will see the light. Once we're at war, what choice will she have? Diplomacy will have failed."

"Okay, I think I've got that part. What about the Koraxian resistance? Are you going to send me to help them or something?"

Jack: "We will send you to meet with one of their leaders. We have no idea what they would want in return, or how we could help them. At this point, a friendly overture is more important than material support. That said, if you can help them, you will be authorized to do so. You will be out of contact with the chain of command, so you will have a lot of discretion."

"So, you want me to help them, if I think it's a good idea?"

Jack put his hand on my shoulder. "I hand-picked you for this one, Robert. You've got good judgment. You can tell friends from foes. You can also show our strength, which they will value."

"When can I tell my crew about this?"

"Not until you get the official orders," Sellis instructed. "No one below Captain rank is aware of this plan, and we want it to stay that way until it's activated."

"Got it."

"A complete information packet will be transmitted along with the new orders. It will tell you where to go, and when, and clarify your orders. It will contain all we know about the resistance as well as the Koraxian government and military. You won't have much time to get briefed, but we are still compiling the data ourselves."

"Well, that all sounds good." I didn't really know what to make of it, honestly. I sensed the tension emanating from both men. While they talked like they were in the clear, legally, I got the feeling they weren't too happy about going behind the President's back with this. Really, how accepting would she be, finding out moments after a Koraxian attack that her authority over the military had essentially been revoked? I'd acted on my own before, but it was always within the general spirit of my orders and objectives.

Something about all this felt wrong, but I couldn't pinpoint it. Jack and the Admiral, at least, seemed confident in the information they'd obtained from the Oolians. So did I, for that matter--they weren't known to be liars.

After making sure I understood what was coming, Sellis excused himself, leaving me alone with Jack. Jack dropped any formal pretense and gave me a good slap on the back. "Don't fuck this up," he said bluntly.

"Oh, easy for you to say," I smirked. "I'm the one that has to go out there and do all the work. You get to sit in your cozy office on Earth and read the intelligence reports."

"Not this time. They want me in the field."

I turned around, sitting on the conference table, and folded my arms. "Is it really that bad, they're sending fossils like you out there?"

"Oh, be quiet. They want me because of my extensive experience. I did manage to survive being held captive by hostile Cranions, didn't I?"

"Until I rescued you, if you remember."

He smiled. "Still. They could have easily killed me. I have the power of persuasion."

I chuckled. "And somehow, it's never worked on me."

"Back to the subject at hand: do you have any misgivings about this mission? Remember, it's me you're talking to."

Yup. Jack Robertson, my former mentor. Back when he was a Captain and I was his XO, word got around that we were a kind of two-headed monster--Robert Robertson, they called it. He gave orders, and I made it happen. No truer was that than during the Cranion War, when they took him hostage on their homeworld, hoping to use him for diplomatic leverage. He'd told me to end the war, or something to that effect. "We will end this war." Something like that. Whatever. It was all the excuse I needed to take some initiative of my own. Analyzing alien architecture was never one of my strong suits, but I did manage to figure out the weak points in the Cranions' terrestrial infrastructure. I nailed it--hard. In a matter of hours, most of their war machine was reduced to dust. They had no industrial capacity left. What choice did they have? They surrendered.

The Oolians brokered a peace deal, and Jack was released. That didn't stop certain factions from attempting to derail things, though. Wang Kovals--one of those xenophobic extremists who objected to any friendly relations with alien powers--managed to assassinate a Cranion ambassador and frame Jack for it. I had to hand it to Kovals, he framed a guy with a great motive for murder. A long story later--one I might get to here, eventually--Jack was cleared and Kovals got caught. But the damage to his reputation had been done. Jack quietly "retired" and I was left in command of the Protector. Little did I know, at the time, that Jack joined Intel and began spying for them. It sure helped to have a friend in a place like that.

So, he was right about one thing: I couldn't deceive him. He taught me how to command--not just lead, but command. I used to think there wasn't a difference, when I led young men into battle on rough, inhospitable planets. They put their lives in my hands. I learned, slowly, that that was the easy part. Jack taught me about command, like I said--more than putting their lives in your hands, but their careers--their goals, ambitions, dreams. "Keeping them alive is the easy part," Jack once told me. "Giving them a reason to live, that's your job."

He put it simply, but he was right. It was about more than survival. You had to be surviving for something. You needed a reason. I needed a reason. At that moment, I found myself searching for one.

"I don't want to betray my oath," I stated honestly, with no trace of humor in my voice. "Even if the C-in-C has signed off on this, it doesn't feel right."

Jack nodded. "You have to think of the greater good you are serving. Your oath is not simply to the President, but to everyone. You will 'defend the peoples of Earth and her Colonies, their freedoms and guarantees,' even if it means bypassing the President, briefly."

"If the Koraxians are ruled by a despot, like you said, I bet they never even have problems like this."

"Not for very long, I would imagine," Jack said.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Chapter 4: Tension

I massaged my temples as I slid back into my command chair, feeling a nasty headache coming on. You would think, being a cyborg, I could have just told the implants in my head to make it go away, dull the pain, open up or constrict the vessels, something. But, no, I can't do that. Doctor Joseph Ramirez of the Ceres Military Research Facility explains:

"While the Mark I Cybernetic Augmentation Kit was designed with maximum survivability in mind, it was installed in an individual with no formal medical training. We therefore found it potentially dangerous to allow him access to all of its medical features. Though it could be programmed to eliminate pain and virtually any other discomfort from the user's body, we determined it could result in adverse side effects, especially due to the patient's lack of professional medical knowledge. It will keep him alive, but he may not feel very good about it."

Basically, those bastards on Ceres decided that, since I'm not a doctor, I might misuse the medical features of my implants. All I can say is, "no shit!" So I still have to see a doctor for every stupid thing. On the other hand, I didn't mind heading down to the infirmary to see the luscious Dr. Carina al-Salam. I don't know why they always gave me hot female doctors. The brass at the top must love me. Or, they figured a crew composed mostly of virile young men would be more likely to report for their annual physicals if their doctor had a nice rack. They're smart like that.

Not that I would really go see her over a lousy headache. All she'd do is give me a little pill, and I'd be hurting again in a few hours. Seemed like a waste of a trip.

My headache only got worse when my XO reported to the bridge. Commander Wilford Ramsey, possibly one of the worst executive officers in the fleet, stumbled onto my bridge and crept up to his seat, next to mine. Whereas Lt. Cmdr. 'smyth-Kennedy reached this post in spite of her family history, this guy was a product of pure nepotism. Dad kicked Confed ass all over east Asia. His father's father was the theater commander, for that matter. And then there was Papaw, one of the heroes of the Eurasian War, notorious for his number of hand-to-hand combat kills. Yup, this guy came from a military family, and I'm sure he signed up to make his patriarchs proud, but he just wasn't cut out for it. He ambled from post to post, and his COs never said an unkind word about him--officially. But his jacket listed the reasons for each of his transfers, and you could pretty much read between the lines.

"Requested transfer from USS Vengeance: found patrol duty unsuitable."
"Shortened tour at Rigor Vulcanis; allergic to local flora."
"Departed Earth Station One, May 2088: logistical support for the Cranion conflict."

"Logistical support" being code for "cargo babysitter." This guy had "dead-end career" written all over him. And yet, they kept socially promoting his worthless ass until he was XO of one of the most revered ships in the fleet. Hey, that's not tooting my own horn, either--the Protector earned its reputation. It was typically assigned a lot of fresh faces, mixed with some veterans, in hope of shaping the newbies into the best the Interstellar Operative Navy had to offer. My Tac Officer, the aforementioned Jenna Starsmyth-Kennedy, had proven herself. Samuel Collins was more or less her protege, and he slowly grew into his role with experience.

Lieutenant Arnold, as I understand it, tutored under some of the best translators the Oolians had to offer. While the computer could do most of the work, it required a trained specialist to fine-tune the translation, clean up artifacts, and avoid misunderstandings. And with me in charge, you can bet there were a lot of potential misunderstandings. She was young, but good at her job, and I suspected she had a bright future ahead.

And then we had Commander Ramsey, who only showed up for duty when he felt like it, barely did anything right when he did show up, and the only thing I'd ever trust him to "execute" is pulling his pants up in the morning--and sometimes, not even that.

Ensign Kyle Yuro, my navigator and pilot, diligently bounced us around the Sol System, performing our patrol. "Diligent" really is the only word I could use to describe him. He never said much. He didn't laugh at my jokes. He didn't participate whenever I ribbed Ramsey for his gross incompetence. He just took the ship wherever it needed to go. I mean, I didn't even think to mention him until now. That's how much he blended into the scenery. I would say, "we need to be here," and it would happen. He never complained, never asked questions. A great navigator who deserved a better Captain, I thought.

I watched the little screen on the arm of my chair, noting the ships moving in and out of the system. Nothing really significant. We were the biggest ship in the area, actually. Everything else consisted of ferries, cargo haulers, barges, merchant ships. I wondered if any of them knew about the Koraxian attacks--that we were on the brink of war. Then again, when were we not?

Nine years ago, we ended the war with the Cranions. We've had skirmishes with the Pap'rians since then--slimy, hateful little bastards. The Vorchons caused nothing but problems ever since we displaced the colonists at Alpha Centauri for them. The colonists would blow up something belonging to the Vorchons, then the Vorchons would blow up a colony ship, and things just kept on going back and forth. Pirates operating out of the Non-Aligned Region struck at merchants on a regular basis, probably supported by some bitter Cranions. Every so often, a ship would be scuttled as the Dor'Tel tried to snatch it. While nobody wanted to destroy their own ships, it was a better option than letting the Dor'Tel Machine have them.

So, it wasn't like we didn't live with conflict every day. We did. Nobody seemed to mind. We weren't in an open state of war with anyone--not really. Not since the Cranions. And nothing compared to the devastation wrought by the last World War. And yet, the thought of the Koraxians--their powerful ships, the fact that they made the Oolians anxious, the very idea that we were plotting to circumvent the President's authority to fight them--the Koraxians just seemed different. It would not be an ordinary war. I had no illusions that we would beat them handily. Though it took six years to put the Cranions down, we were never in danger of really losing to them. We lost a lot of ships, and a lot of people died, but we had the overall advantage.

This time, I wasn't so sure. The one ship I saw looked tough enough to ground my ship into space dust, and still have enough fight left in it to do it a few more times. Even the Oolians were worried, so I was really worried.

And so, at that moment, I didn't so much mind the patrol. It was consistent. It was predictable. It made me feel a little better.

But then the orders came. My console beeped at me. Red letters flashed. The new orders.

And, almost simultaneously, the forward viewer on the bridge lit up with the face of President Beatrice Cuerva, looking stern and formal, as always. But also scared shitless. I'll never forget that.

When she spoke, I realized how much trouble we were in. "Attention: all ships within reach of this communication. You have received new orders. I did not authorize these orders. You will stand down immediately and await further instructions."

Commander Ramsey looked at me, as much shaken as he was oblivious to the big picture. "What're we gonna do, Cap'n?"