Conquest cruised into Afrana orbit with exuberant fanfare, ending her journey only a hundred kilometers from Reloi Station, the Sekoi orbital fortress that dwarfed even the dreadnought. Absen had to put up with the excitement. All of Afrana’s media trumpeted the arrival, as well as the coming refits of Flensburg and the other warships in the system. Desolator had given assurances he could handle becoming a mobile shipyard for a time, upgrading defenses.
Shuttles stacked up nearby, queuing to dock with the dreadnought and disgorge personnel and supplies. The partial crew soon swelled with those reporting in, as well as visitors. Absen had to give orders to make sure no one stowed away, especially Marines. In fact, he turned over the task of keeping track of all visitors to Bull ben Tauros, who in turn enlisted Michelle. Absen ordered that the AI be given access to most of the internal sensors.
Some didn’t want to be left behind. Some were just stupid, and some snooped a bit too much and were politely sent packing. Most of those were probably corporate spies, looking for new technology to commercialize, but none were allowed to access anything vital.
Absen spent most of the first two days receiving delegations of dignitaries congratulating him on the new ship – boat, he reminded himself – touring the refitted technology, and generally making nuisances of themselves. He had to set a cutoff date for all but the highest level visits. Once that nonsense was over and done with, he got to organizing the expeditionary crew.
Unlike warships of his experience, the complement of Conquest would have to cover as many bases as possible. Science as well as engineering. Xenobiology as well as BioMed. Special operations and small craft as well as capital weapons. Marines and Aerospace as well as Navy. Three races, and the possibility of contact with more of them.
Just in case.
First he finalized his prime watch roster, the best bridge crew he could select. Okuda at the helm, of course, and Ford and Scoggins on weapons and sensors. He was ecstatic to see that Rick Johnstone had accepted a position at CyberComm, and Jill Repeth was a bonus for the Marine contingent.
Lieutenant Fletcher had picked up an unusual assistant at the Engineering station: Klis. One Ryss and one Sekoi on the bridge had been a condition of Conquest’s refit, and as a technologist, she was the closest thing to an engineering officer they could provide.
A Sekoi Blend named Bogrin would take the BioMed station, with Doctor Horton backing him up. While he’d been assured that the Hippo was an extremely competent xenobiologist and xenomedic – his race made no distinction between the two – Absen wasn’t going to fully trust an alien with human medical decisions.
That arranged, he moved on to the rest of the five hundred or so crew. He could have taken many more, given Conquest’s size, but his instinct for this mission was the fewer the better. With the bots and telefactors manufactured by Desolator, they already had better damage control than the crew of thousands, and the warbots provided force multipliers to the Marines.
And face it, Henrich. The fewer go along, the fewer will die if you screw up this all-new mission with all-new tactics and mostly new weapons. Not to mention Michelle Conquest, the wild card.
Deep in the bowels of the boat, Ekara had Engineering and Nightingale ran Weapons Systems, of course. Johnstone and Scoggins each had a good warrant officer working for them to head up their Sensors and CyberComm Systems subsections. Doctor Egolu and her team would stay aboard to deal with any AI or computer issues, and Flight Major Vincent “Vango” Markis would lead the Aerospace squadron.
Major Bull ben Tauros would have the Marines, with Jill Repeth as his battalion sergeant major. Chief of the Boat Ray Timmons had charge of damage control, and Absen quietly promoted him to Chief Warrant Officer Five, so that he outranked every other warrant officer and NCO aboard. That should forestall some difficulties.
It’s nice to be the Supreme Commander of Gliese 370 system, as well as the ranking admiral. Still, I’d rather be captain of a boat.
Absen spent the rest of the day discussing dispositions with his section heads, and the next morning gathered a working group to discuss special promotions for all the EarthFleet officers left behind. Captain Mirza would be promoted straight to full Admiral, and would become the military governor. While there was some agitation starting for a transition to civilian rule, it hadn’t turned into a groundswell yet.
And anyway, that would be Mirza’s problem. Conquest couldn’t return for at least eight decades, probably more, and he could put away the politics of governing and go back to the far simpler command of a vessel of war.
Next, he and his officers reviewed the latest news from Earth System. Of course it was all from 2089, thirty-six years old even at lightspeed, and told of preparations for the expected year-2110 arrival of a force of at least 64 Destroyers.
Yet, the year was 2125 now, and the attack had already taken place. Gliese 370 would not find out what had happened for 21 more years.
And even if Conquest headed straight there, they would arrive in the year 2161, though inside the time dilation of the near-lightspeed ship they would only age a few weeks.
It made Absen’s head ache.
If humanity had won the battle for Earth, there was no telling when the next enemy fleet would arrive to attack it. Meme strategic doctrine was to gather successive waves, join together in interstellar space, and assault any threat. As the news of enemy resistance advanced outward in a sphere around the system, larger and larger fleets of Destroyers would be dispatched, while the Monitor Guardians left behind generated replacements. It was a setup that had served them well for millennia.
Only the presence of the Bite on the edge of Earth’s space, the interstellar wasteland left by the battle between the Ryss and the Meme, might slow the Empire down. According to the Sekoi Blend agents of the Meme interrogated by Spooky Nguyen, there simply wasn’t much there except a few patrols.
By the end of that meeting it was common knowledge that they were headed toward Earth. It had been an open secret anyway, but now it was official. Absen didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, and he certainly was glad he had avoided the flood of requests for passage from civilians that now arrived. He simply denied them all with a memo that pointed out quite firmly that this was a military mission, and only once it was deemed safe would travel between the two systems be reopened.
Afterward, he crooked a finger at Commander Johnstone, pointing at the seat next to him as the others filed out. “Commander,” Absen said, “I want a read-only of everything that comes through the bridge to be fed to our AI. Make sure the information can only go one direction, to her, and put in as much ICE as you think is necessary to block or at least alarm if she tries to circumvent.”
“All right, sir. May I ask why?”
“If I do have to give her more control, I want her fully informed.”
Johnstone cleared his throat. “Sir, she makes me very uncomfortable.”
“Me too.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but it’s not the same. Inside cyberspace, well...I’m the best there is, of the organics, but Desolator and Michelle can run rings around me. I’ve built up walls of ICE to defend my VR space inside Conquest’s computers, but those won’t keep her out. They will probably just give me time to unplug the link and save my chips from being hacked, if she’s allowed full access.”
Absen nodded. “All right. Do your best. If it’s any help, I’ve set myself to treat her as I would any other dangerous person – Bull, for example. If he ran amok, he could cause a lot of damage, but I don’t ever worry about him, do I?”
“But we know Bull. Michelle is new.”
“The scientists say she’s lived a whole virtual life of twenty-one years or more, and still lives at ten times our time sense. I have decided to trust them, and Bull – he trained her in VR, after all – and trust her, at least to the point that I am not going to worry too much about it.”
“But you want fail-safes.”
Absen shrugged. “Trust but cut the cards anyway, a great President once said. Speaking of fail-safes, set up a separate program so that if any major crew section is knocked out, or both control centers, she takes over automatically to run the systems.”
“So she’ll be the ultimate backup.” Johnstone rubbed his neck, but eventually agreed. “That makes sense. I guess if things are that bad already, we might as well gamble on her...uh...”
“Good will?”
“I was thinking ‘sanity,’ sir.”
Absen laughed. “All right. Get to work on that. Dismissed.”
The next and final day before departure, Absen was awoken in the middle of mid-watch by the insistent beeping of his door. He shook himself awake and pulled on his trousers. “What is it?” he asked the intercom.
“Commander Johnstone wants you, sir. Says it’s urgent,” came the bridge watchstander’s reply.
“Johnstone’s not on shift,” Absen mumbled, and then said, “Put him through.”
“Sir, we’ve just caught two people trying to sneak aboard,” Johnstone said.
“So, send them packing. You read my memo.”
“Ah, yes, sir. I think you need to know who they are before you decide to do that.”
“Spit it out, son.”
Johnstone cleared his throat. “It’s Spooky Nguyen and Ezekiel Denham, in the little Meme ship.”
Absen grunted. “Good work. I was having nightmares about the little bastard showing up in my quarters unannounced again. How did you catch them?”
“It wasn’t me, sir. You put Michelle in charge of making sure only authorized personnel remained aboard, and you never rescinded that assignment. When she detected them, she put out an alert. The CyberComm watchstander logged it, which notified me.”
“Right, right. Tell her she did well. Where are they?”
“Under guard in the brig. Bull’s with them.”
“I’ll be right down.” Absen dressed and quickly made his way to the holding area at the edge of Marine country.
Bull met him and Tobias at the outer door. “They were hacking a StormCrow launch tube when WO1 Conquest detected them. I got the alert and told her to let them in. I met them with a couple of squads and took them into custody. They didn’t resist.”
Absen nodded slowly. “No, they wouldn’t. Probably were trying to stow away until we left, figuring we wouldn’t turn around. Lead me to them.”
“Aye, sir.” Bull took them through the outer portal to the inner one, a sealed door designed to contain anything they could think of. He input a code, waved a chip, put his face forward for a retinal scan, and then spun the large dogging wheel to open the heavy barrier.
Inside waited the two men, unassuming in nondescript coveralls. The Blend, Ezekiel Denham, sat on the bunk and rested his head against the wall with his eyes closed, while Spooky Nguyen stood as soon as Absen entered, bowing deeply. “Well done, Admiral. Your new security system has finally achieved adequacy.”
“Yes,” he replied, deliberately not mentioning the AI and her role. “Now tell me why I shouldn’t clap you in irons and toss you two overboard.”
“Because you like a complete toolbox.”
“Trying to manipulate me again, Nguyen?”
Spooky shrugged. “Just putting forth my best arguments. Ezekiel, Steadfast Roger and I made critical contributions during the battle for Afrana, and we’ve been instrumental in building up a vital intelligence organization on the planet for the last ten years – an organization, I might add, that has ensured against all manner of difficulties for humanity’s place in this system. The Sekoi are not nearly as jovial and friendly as they like to seem.”
“I know that, and I appreciate what you’ve done. You have become rich in the meantime, though...so why leave that all behind?”
Spooky laughed uproariously for a moment, and then stopped abruptly, merriment still in his eyes. “On Earth, Admiral, I ruled a continent. Had I wished, I could have taken control of the planet, and the system. I am not bragging when I tell you that you could not have stopped me.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
Spooky put his hands behind him to slowly pace the deck. “I was bored. And, certain skills I value were beginning to atrophy. Just because I can do a thing, does not mean I must, or wish to. I wanted to make a clean break, so I put Australia in General Alkina’s capable hands and joined you aboard Conquest. Here, on a new planet, I – we, Ezekiel and I – found new challenges.”
“So in ten years you ran out of challenges?”
Spooky’s expression smoothed, and Absen saw a hint of something else. Wistfulness? “Not yet, but...you know what, Admiral?”
Absen cocked his head but did not answer, waiting.
“I made a mistake. I seldom do, and even less often do I admit to one, but in this case, I did.” He took a deep breath, almost a sigh. “I should have brought Ann. I thought I would get over her, but I haven’t.”
Am I buying this? The incomparable Spooky Nguyen, human like the rest of us? All for the love of a woman? Or is he just giving an answer most will accept, to hide his real reasons? But does that even matter? Can I afford to leave him behind, if he wants to come?
“What about you, Denham?” Absen asked.
“I’m with him, Admiral. He tried to leave me here but I refused to let him.”
“You going to try to convince me you’re going home for a girl, too?”
Denham opened his guileless eyes and smiled a faint, angelic smile, an echo of his mother Raphaela’s overwhelming beauty. “Kind of. Three girls, really. Two sisters and a mother. I want to see my family.”
“Reasonable.” Absen rubbed his hands together and blew on them. It seemed oddly cold in the brig. “But even if I let him come,” he pointed at Spooky, “you’re the only human Blend in the system. We need you to maintain good relations with the Sekoi Blend overlords. They don’t really respect normals, no matter how much we’re augmented or hold the whip hand now.”
“Actually, sir, that’s all taken care of. My kids have taken over my role.”
“Kids?” Absen stopped, surprised. “They’re, what, under nine years old? How can they?”
“You forget that Blends develop much faster. As a half-pure Blend, I was adult at five standard years. My oldest quarter-Blend children are the equivalent of twenty years old, and of above-average intellect, and the rest will join them as they grow up.”
“How many did you have?” Absen asked.
“Eighteen. Nine pair of twins, all raised within the Nguyen Conglomerate as businessmen, spies and politicians. In a decade they’ll be leading the human community. In two or three, their children will join them, and will help rule the planet in a truly blended society, if I have my way.”
Absen paced for a moment. “Judas priest! You make me glad I’m leaving to be a mere boat captain.”
Spooky said, “We’re alike in that way, Admiral. We’re willing to take power to do a job, but it’s confining. More trouble than it’s worth, sometimes.”
“Don’t play me, Spooky.”
Nguyen spread his hands. “Facts are facts. Things change. Even if we find Earth’s system has held out, it won’t be the same. The Meme threat has slowed political and social alterations even while driving military technology. Here in the Gliese 370 system, things will start to change rapidly now that the threat has seemed to abate.”
“Abate?” Absen turned to face Spooky, questioning.
“Everyone in the system saw the video of Desolator wiping out that Destroyer with one bomb. The populace views him as their guardian angel. Their very existence is no longer in doubt, and that leaves open many paths to a variety of futures. Those futures must be managed. Guided. The Sekoi Blends will try to take control as a matter of course. It’s in their genes. Our human Blends will counter them, making sure humanity has a place alongside them. The Ryss, of course, have Desolator and his progeny to protect them.”
“So you’re saying that when we leave, it’s for good. Whatever we return to – on Earth, or here – will be radically different, maybe even inimical, when we get back.”
“Precisely, Admiral. Or should I say Captain, because you are abandoning your power base the moment Conquest departs. Are you sure you want to leave?”
A haunted expression flitted across Absen’s face. “Yes, and for the same reasons you claim. I thought I could make a new start here, but I never found anyone...”
“To love?”
Absen took a deep breath, seeing an angelic face that once filled him with fury. “Something like that.”
Spooky turned his back. If the admiral didn’t know better, he’d think the man was laughing at him.
Absen continued, “All right. You can join us. Denham, you’ll remain a civilian and work with the scientific teams. Nguyen, you’ll be one of my Stewards, with all duties accruing thereto.”
“Friends close, enemies closer, Admiral?” Spooky said.
“Are you my enemy, Nguyen?”
Spooky shook his head. “Not on your life, sir.”
“That’s what worries me.”