| |
A coffin sat near the force-fielded edge of the shuttle bay with the blackness of the void and the streaks of bending reality tunneling out into the distance aft of Tenacity. Draped in the blue and gold-starred colors of the Republic, it wasn’t clear whose remains rested within, only that the crewperson had left instructions for “burial in space” as a part of their contract. It was an archaic tradition, but no small number of spacers lacked permanent homes, save their ships.
Jaxan thought of Dad, then. They’d buried him on the South Side, in a plot with his parents, on a day of driving rain. A detail of old cops had helped her as pall bearers and they’d draped his casket in a similar fashion, in the colors of the Force, even though he hadn’t served in twenty years and had quit in disgust.
The crew of Tenacity—those not actively manning stations or seeing to repairs—assembled by department blocks around the bay, all looking inward at the shrouded coffin. Faintly, the ship thrummed, like some elemental force unconcerned with the comings and goings of mere mortals. Occasionally the whir of a power tool echoed from the open side hatches as work in the rest of the ship went on.
Raker stepped forward to the coffin and the assembled crew stiffened instinctively. Jaxan straightened her own spine. Like Raker, she wore full dress for this. All the officers did, and most of the enlisted had at least straightened up their fatigues, if they hadn’t found time to don their service whites. She saw many bandages, many slings and casts, and a few crewmembers that looked to need help to remain standing.
After a long pause to stare at the casket, Raker looked up and around. Slowly, he pivoted, letting his fierce expression play across the gathering. She caught the bluey glint of his artificial eye as it passed over her before settling again on the shrouded form.
“We are on our way back to Sanctuary,” he said in a voice that had no problem carrying across the bay. “Sanctuary,” he repeated with emphasis. “More than a name, now. Literally, ‘place of safety’ in a galaxy gone mad.” He stepped forward and touched a white-gloved hand to the casket. “And we go without many comrades and friends.”
A sniffle echoed. Jaxan’s gaze darted to the source, across from her on the opposite side. Rougan looked to be working to keep his face passive and she wondered if the body belonged to one of his people. Behind him, in the front row of his Engineering team, a wiry little youth reddened as his eyes glistened.
Rodriguez, Jaxan thought and forced down a knot in her throat. Aldene...others.
“The first settlers of Sanctuary fled madness, too,” Raker was saying. “Ancient record tells us Old Sol had become unlivable and yet, still, its children squabbled over her. They drained the bounties of neighboring systems to sustain that dying husk, and themselves. Wars followed. Misery followed. And the first Sancutarians cast themselves out into the void, risking all in search of a place not based in cruelty.”
The captain turned to again scan his audience. “It hasn’t always been a perfect union. It hasn’t always been a Republic. And it’s certainly not one world, anymore.” His stare lingered for a moment on Lieutenant Aval, standing beside Ensign Regal, close enough to support the heavily-braced and bandaged young woman. A faint, almost-smile crinkled her lips.
“But that ideal of a ‘place of safety’,” Raker said, “a place where all peoples—not just humans, not just one credo or religion or language—but all souls can find a place where they are safe to be has endured.” He pivoted to point to the shroud and its many, many stars. “A hundred worlds and peoples have embraced that, have chosen not only safety, but belonging.”
Jaxan felt eyes upon her and looked to Aval’s left. Varely stood there, eyeing Jaxan until their stares locked and he found a reason to look away. She thought then of First Families and class divisions and scoffed inwardly at Raker’s lofty words. Belonging. Dad would have scoffed, too. The only place any of us belongs is in the ground, she could hear him grumble. Yet, he’d served, in his way. Always.
And so did she. Here.
“As all of you standing here know, many have made a different choice,” Raker was going on, voice darkening. “What’s more, they’ve shown their determination to shatter that safety, that union. Across dozens of systems and battle fronts, even as I speak this, they attempt to tear that down.” His expression crinkled into unvarnished fury. “For Golgotha—gah—it’s now very clear; there is no belonging; there is only submission.”
Faint growls and a shifting of feet stirred the air.
“That is what our comrades, our friends no longer standing here with us gave the entirety of their lives for. They belong to us, with us, forever. They refused to submit to the last.”
He turned to the coffin and presented it with a salute.
“And they would not have us do so.”
A ping sounded from the overhead speakers, followed by the shrilling of pipes. Jaxan grimaced, never having liked them, or the maudlin tunes the Fleet still carried from eons-old nautical traditions.
With a crackle and a discernible whump of depressurization, the forcefield receded from the mouth of the bay, rippling close to Raker as the furthest stretch exposed to vacuum. The coffin tumbled free into the void, silhouetted only briefly against the weird phantasms of FTL before unknowable oblivion took it.
The service broke up as the last pipe note faded.
And Jaxan had one more duty, here, forcing her way through the crowd as department blocks dissolved with a susurrus of conversations and orders.
“Commander,” she called out, “a word?”
Varley halted just shy of an exit and turned, grinning at her. “Well, you finally caught me, Jaxan.”
She stiffened at his tone of voice, but recovered instantly and gestured for him to step aside, into a corner near a workstation where they had some semblance of privacy. “It does seem you’ve been avoiding me, sir,” she said with a glower and maneuvered so that he’d have to force his way past her, if he wanted to leave—not quite cornering him. “I’ve contacted you many times.”
His grin widened, annoyingly handsome, annoyingly obscuring. “And you no doubt know I’ve been busy.” He shrugged. “Repairs, personnel exchange from the Bucephalus, and every department’s short.”
“Scott, come on,” she pressed, and tried a smile of her own, something disarming. “What are you going to make me do here?”
He arched his eyebrows and drifted a little closer. “I don’t know, Khiry.” His proximity wasn’t quite inappropriate. “Is there something you have to do?”
“Commander,” she cut him off, recalling with anger how she’d seen this act used on Varley’s many conquests aboard ship—and Khiry Jaxan was no one’s conquest. “You and I both know all the contraband down in Storage Four wasn’t just Aufmann’s.” She stared straight into his eyes, jaw fixed. “You saw the logs, too. Someone else had that android bring that crate in with the Ridevian Flesh Art and the other odds and ends.”
Varley’s smile remained impassive, but a glint of sweat gathered at his hairline. “Then it seems you still have work to do, Lieutenant.”
“That Ridevian foulness helped sustain the Arathra when they hatched,” she pressed. “And that Dreamblood of Arguvan likely stimulated them.”
“Then someone’s guilty” he leaned in very close, eyes sudden smoldering, and it was inappropriate “of neglect.” He pulled back, nonchalance returned as swiftly as a curtain drawn. “But as I recall from a previous conversation you and I had, neither of these things are particularly illegal.”
“But smuggling is certainly a violation of regulations.” She held up her chin. “Especially for an officer.”
Ugliness crept into Varley’s gin. “Then you’d better have very good proof.”
“I’ll find it.”
“Maybe.” He brightened and patted her on the shoulder, let his hand linger a moment too long before breaking contact and brushing by her. “I wish you luck, Jaxan.”
She turned to watch him go, infuriated by his arrogance, his confidence. Infuriated at the lingering warmth of his hand on her.
Infuriated that she was really looking forward to this particular investigation.
“I’ll bet you do,” she muttered.
***
“LIEUTENANT VEKKLA,” a voice said from behind Rougan, “reporting with my team from Bucephalus, sir.”
Rougan turned from the Reflex Furnace workstation and instantly had to control his reaction as he found himself looking at a ghost.
He’d been expecting the work crew from the battlecruiser escorting Tenacity back through Sanctuary space. The Old Wolf had been limping along at barely Void Speed Three on just the Ventral nacelle. Now that they were pretty clear of the threat of Golgothan attack, the other ship was able to shuttle over help.
What Rougan hadn’t expected was a Xokan.
Immediately, he noted the differences from Zillix. Vekkla had a more orange hue to its flesh and a darker patch around one of its slit eyes. More, the cephalopod seemed longer-limbed and twitchier in movements. Rougan scolded himself for his ignorance as he fully turned to face what was very much another being altogether.
“Lieutenant,” Rougan replied, touching his fist to his chest in casual salute and greeting. “Glad to have you!”
“I have brought twenty,” Vekkla said, gesturing with a tentacle towards the turbolift door, out of which issued a clutch of overall-clad spacers. “The rest are on their way up from the shuttle bay.” The Xokan met Rougan’s gaze. “Hopefully, that will be enough?”
“Plenty,” Rougan replied, smiling and extending his hand. The cephalopod accepted it with a twist of one of its appendages and Rougan was pleased not to squirm at the blubbery squeeze and tugging of suckers within its coil. “You’ve got somebody with Singularity Shaft experience?”
“That would be me,” Vekkla replied with what was obviously eagerness. “And I understand you have quite the mess in your Number Two.”
Rougan simultaneously chuckled and shuddered—knowing what still coated and crusted the interior of the Event Horizon Matrix. “That would be putting it lightly. We’ve gotten a start on it, but it’s slow going and a tight space.”
“Tight spaces are something of a specialty of mine, sir.”
It took Rougan a moment to realize the humor in the Xokan’s airy voice. He grinned and gave the cephalopod’s tentacle another shake before releasing it. “Glad to hear it, Lieutenant.” He patted his belly—somewhat diminished after the hardships of the last week, but still very much a thing. “I clearly am not!”
The bubbling ripple from Vekkla’s breathing slits startled Rougan until he recognized it as laughter. Zillix had rarely been so evocative. That a Xokan could be more extroverted should have been as obvious as the variety of personalities amongst humans. Rougan sighed inwardly. He still had a lot of work to do.
But it was the people that made the ship. All kinds of people. He owed it to Zillix and the others they’d lost to remember it.
“I have not been on a Fenris-class before,” Vekkla said, looking around. “The arrangement is not that different from the Union-class.”
Rougan’s grin tightened slightly. There was no mistaking the pride in the Xokan’s voice. The Unions were more than twenty percent larger than Tenacity with heavier guns and shields and slightly better top speed. Until the Liberty-classes started coming out of the drydocks, they were the meanest things in space.
But none of them had been through what Tenacity had endured.
“I’ll show you the way, sir,” a new voice spoke up from behind them.
Rougan and Vekkla turned to find Spencer standing at attention. The young man touched his fist to his chest crisply. “Spacer First-Class Spencer, sir. I know the access chute and the mechanism and I’ve been on clean-up, the last day or so.”
“Excellent, Spacer!” Vekkla replied. “I will be glad of your assistance.”
Spencer grinned with a genuine glitter to his eyes, and Rougan knew he was seeing another Xokan where Vekkla stood. “If you will follow me, Lieutenant?”
Vekkla turned and gestured to its party and a trio of spacers followed it as Spencer led the way to the handholds climbing up into the access chute.
Rougan watched them go.
After the horrors of the last several days, he’d keyed up the paperwork he’d long avoided and queued it for transmittal to Fleet Commend upon their return to Sanctuary. He hadn’t been sure they’d accept his retirement, now that the galaxy was convulsing in war. God knew they’d need everyone. But a shadow had clung to him since it’d become clear they were going to get home. The idea that a younger officer—like this Vekkla, here—might have done better, been faster, saved a few more crewmembers—had tormented his sparse sleep.
Still, watching Spencer scuttle up to the chute, followed in a fluid rush by Vekkla, a new light filled Rougan. Glancing across Main Engineering, which echoed now with the babble of fresh help from Bucephalus, milling about and looking for direction, Rougan saw purpose, again.
These kids. None of them had any idea. Human or otherwise, they looked for someone to guide them, someone to make them a crew.
Tom Rougan might not be much for crawling through access chutes, but he could do that, for sure.
With a blink to his on-board AI, Rougan brought up the un-signed resignation communique in its memory, antiseptic text glowing inside his eye. Another blink erased it. All he saw, now, were spacers needing direction.
“All right,” he barked and strode towards them, “we didn’t bring you over here to stand around gawking! Haven’t any of you seen a real starship before?”
***
YLURA PAUSED OUTSIDE the conference room entrance, suddenly uncertain she could do this. The buzz of the bridge’s activity in her earbud called her back to her station. She could return to work and forget this, just go when they reached Sanctuary and were dismissed for leave. She could disappear into the Service, just as she’d disappeared onto Morvena.
But that wasn’t why she’d come back.
Touching the door chime brought a response from within. “Come!”
The door whisked back and she stepped through. Dath sat at the head of the conference table, reading something from a holopad that he set down to beam at her. Battle damage had left his ready room and greater privacy unavailable. But as the door slid shut once again at her back, Ylura figured it would be enough.
“Ylura,” he greeted cheerfully.
“Captain.” She stiffened her back and folded her hands behind it, seeking reassurance in the formalities. “Engineering reports another eight hours to restore Dorsal Number Two. After that, we should make Sanctuary in twelve.”
“Very good, Lieutenant,” he replied, then arched his eyebrows. “That, ah, could have just been transmitted to me. Or Varley would have mentioned it in his update.” His playful grin straightened slightly. “Was there something else you needed?”
“Yes. Dath, I...” She swallowed. The speech she’d rehearsed and the self-control she’d prepared both failed her before that smile, that unnerving half-machine stare. She unfolded her hands, put them on the back of one of the unoccupied chairs. “When we return to Sanctuary,” she began again, “I’ll report to Fleet Command and submit myself for assignment.”
“Of course.” He folded his arms, the smile slipping slightly, and leaned back in his chair. “I can...send a recommendation.”
There was little doubt from his voice, or the mischievous gleam of his aura where that recommendation would put her. But she shook her head. “I don’t want you to do that.”
His aura dimmed, as did the smile. “I see.”
“I will accept whatever the Fleet thinks is most appropriate for my skillset,” she pushed to get out. “And I have messages to convey from my uncle and from Morvena, as you know.” Her words were speeding up with her desperation to finish speaking before emotion or doubt derailed the attempt. “Regardless of where I end up, it may be some time before I’m released. Tenacity will be on the move, by then.”
“Tenacity is shot to hell,” Dath snorted. “She’ll be going nowhere for months, at least. There’s time.” His aura darkened with surprise and hurt delayed till that moment. “I thought...” his throat bobbed after his voice cracked. “We’re still short a Systems Officer.”
“And there are plenty of those available.”
He leaned forward over the table, spearing her with his stare. “None of them as good as you.”
“Dath...” Ylura winced and looked away for a moment. His hurt throbbed in the air, mingled with hers. Her voice barely came out a whisper now. “You’re making this harder than it needs to be.”
“Well, I’m not going to make it easy,” he said with that damnably handsome grin and a note of forced humor.
She blinked and realized tears were beading at the corners of her eyes. “It’s already almost impossible,” she got out.
He sagged back in his seat, absorbing the reality fully now. His aura revealed it, taking on the hue of a fresh, purpling bruise. The scars suddenly seemed more livid, the ugliness about him crowding out the remnants of his good looks.
“Why?” he rasped. “If not for...” He cut himself off with a grimace and looked away, out the viewport slit towards Bucephalus, coasting at their flank. The words he left unsaid still rang in the silence. When he spoke again, it was barely audible. “Why did you come back?”
Ylura nodded, knew he’d ask this. “Sanctuary is home,” she replied with the rehearsed answer. “The Fleet is home. It took me ten years on Morvena of not finding what I’d already had to realize something so simple.” She held up her chin. “And my home needs me now, more than ever.”
“Ylura.” He looked right at her, right through her—as though he’d mastered Shala and could see into her aura. “I need you.”
She couldn’t help another wince. He was the wounded ruin again, pawing at her for comfort in that damned life pod. He was standing, facing her outside the hatch to that damned shuttle again.
“And that’s part of it, too,” she answered him at last, with strength that surprised her. “Dath. I’m glad it was you and Tenacity that I returned to, first. Because” she held up a placating hand “and I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but I needed to put the past behind me before I could fully come home.”
He snorted without humor. “And how else am I supposed to take that?”
“As a man,” she told him. “As a good man with his own destiny, his own strength and power, which are going to be desperately needed in the coming days, maybe years.” She took a step forward and set both palms on the cool tabletop, leaned over it to hold his stare. “Dath, you need to be that man, your own man, just as I need to find my own way.”
He scowled. “I haven’t been even half a man in a long time.” His tone brightened and he sat up, put his elbows to the table and folded his hands together, almost prayerfully. “But these last few days, with you around, I was closer to full than I’ve been in years.”
She shook her head. “That wasn’t me, Dath. That was you, forced back to the surface, finally, by the moment.” She smiled genuinely at him. “Your time has come, at last.” She paused. “So has mine. I need you to accept that.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Yes, you do,” she replied softly. “More, you need to.”
Silence lingered between them. The thrum of Tenacity’s prowl at Void Speed was louder than her carefully controlled breath. Dath’s aura had cleared of some of its shadows, had more the shade of a morning sky, right after the break of a midnight thunderstorm.
“Those things...were in my mind” he frowned “made me see things.”
She winced, gulped back the images they’d assailed her with, nodded. “Whatever you saw, know that their intent was to hurt you.” She forced herself to hold his gaze. “They were mind-weapons; not reality.”
“That may be so,” he answered quietly and there was a momentary shimmer in his good eye. “But I think they were real, too.”
Ylura flinched at the false-memory of the disaster that might have been her life. “Maybe, they were,” she replied huskily. “But we make our own reality as we go, don’t we?”
The storm cleared completely from Dath’s aura, left placidity. Cold. “That is so.”
Again, the silence lingered.
Unable to tolerate it any longer, Ylura straightened back up and cleared her throat. “Captain, all other things aside, it has been an honor.” She touched her fist to her chest in salute. “Wherever I end up, I will know that I served on the best ship, with the best commander in the Fleet.”
He smiled back at her, then stood and returned the salute. “And we’ll find another Systems Officer.” The old, mischievous grin took over. “But you will never be replaced.”
***
“COMING UP ON SANCTUARY space,” Zovga announced from the helm. “Dropping down to sub-light drives in three...two...one...”
Dath gripped the armrests as the transition rippled through hull and bodies. The main screen hologram squirmed and snowed over in static for a fraction of a second before resolving into familiar star patterns and a ringed planet swelling off to port—Osiris, gas-giant sister-world to Sanctuary. They’d already crossed into the star system.
“Reduce speed for planetary approach,” Dath ordered as the striated globe fell behind them and they coasted down the gravity well.
“Aye, sir,” the Korthan replied, working his station. Patches of plasticky bandage-sealant stood out like wax on the scales of his face, but he seemed otherwise over his injuries. “Fifteen minutes to Main Dock.”
“Captain,” Clemens piped up, pivoting to face him. “Fleet Command is hailing us and sends their welcome!”
A little smile crinkled his face. “First the welcome; then the court-martial.”
Clemens frowned at first; even after all this time, obviously not quite following his sense of humor. “They, ah, do request immediate status reports.” She listened at her earbud a moment. “We’re being directed to Sub-Dock Fourteen.”
“They’re not wasting any time,” Dath murmured. “Going to jump to repairs, right away.”
He wondered how badly the Republic had been hurt. Pelton on Bucephalus had told him they’d lost two sector headquarters stations and dozens of ships, but he’d only picked up fragments of that on his way out to rescue Tenacity and stabilize the front. Clemens had reported other snatches of information as she intercepted loose chatter from subspace; stories of disaster and retreat and anarchy. She’d reported a lot of Golgothan chatter, too, well into what had been Republic-claimed space.
Tenacity was going to be in demand again, soon.
“Also receiving a direct communique from Admiral Gunderson,” Clemens was going on. “He requests contact with you as soon as is practical.”
Dath frowned thoughtfully. Gunderson had Fifth Battle Squadron, Home Fleet; when they’d left, orders had come from Jericho, commanding all Home Fleet, and directing Tenacity as independently-assigned, nominally to Ambassador Hayley. “Sounds like I’ve got a new boss,” he muttered good-naturedly and looked around the bridge. “And the Fifth? Sounds like we’ll be going out again, soon.”
Alvarez smiled over his shoulder and growls of appreciation were going around the bridge.
Dath made himself glance Ylura’s direction, just as he’d made himself not look at her once since he came up to the bridge, that morning. She was smiling, too. He forced himself to keep his own in place as he met her eyes. Likely, she sensed the falseness of it; but maybe she’d appreciate the effort.
The visions pumped into his skull like venom by the Arathra returned, like some kind of post-traumatic phantasms. He ground his molars, even as he kept the smile in place, forcing down bile and the false-memories. But they lingered, clung to his psyche with tiny fangs. Ylura had said they were mind-weapons, not truth.
But maybe truth was just worse, and the hallucinations simply symptoms of a deeper illness.
Gah! He gave himself a shake. The spidery bastards had really gotten to him. He couldn’t wallow in this. He couldn’t let Ylura think he was.
Kerina glowered from a long-neglected back corner of his mind.
They both had more important things to worry about.
“Clemens, inform Admiral Gunderson I’ll be in contact the moment we have Tenacity safely docked at Fourteen,” he ordered.
“Aye, sir,” she replied. “Oh, and, Captain? Bucephalus is signaling her intent to break off. Admiral Pelton wishes us the best.”
“Signal our gratitude.” Dath smirked. “They’re done escorting invalids, it seems.” Glancing over the systems schematic in the corner of the main screen, noting all the sections blanked out as damaged or incapacitated, he thought that invalid was putting it lightly. He cleared his throat and called out, “Systems?”
“Captain?” Ylura called back brightly, impenetrably.
“Based on ship’s current status and repair requirements, how long a stay in drydock would you estimate we’re looking at?”
She turned back to her console and keyed up a couple schematics, eyed them momentarily. “One, possible two Void Drive replacements. Three shield generator coils blown out. The Number Four Particle Cannon melted down in that last exchange. Severe electronics damage. Extensive hull damage.”
Varley whistled from where he sat at the Ops station, in place of the off-duty Regal, and turned to chuckle at Ylura. “Maybe it’d be easier to tell us what’s still good on ship, Lieutenant?”
That triggered laughter from the others and even a chortle from her as she pivoted to face Dath again. “I’m no dock master or engineer, Captain; but I’d say Tenacity is looking at two months, minimum, in dry dock.”
“A bit of time,” he noted with a hint of defiance, leaving unsaid to her, time to change your mind.
Her grin in response was as opaque in meaning as her voice had been before.
He sighed inwardly. Giving up was not among his traits.
A flash over Sanctuary triggered a blat from the sensors. Dath stiffened, nerves instantly awash in a prickling tide of tension. Another flash followed, streaking out over the blue-green curve of the orb rapidly-swelling in the main screen. And another, slashes tracing out in cyan that burst in mini-suns. Dozens of them.
“Weapons fire?” Dath barked, leaping from his chair to his feet.
“Checking,” Alvarez replied, hunching over his display. “Almost looks like proximity-fused missiles!”
“In orbit? Are they firing on the docks?” He turned to Ylura. “Systems, what’s happening?”
“It’s...not weapons fire,” Ylura murmured in confusion. “It’s like Lieutenant Alvarez says; they’re deliberately setting off missiles, but prematurely. Dozens of them! And not anti-matter loads; looks like chemical charges!”
“Chemical charges...?” Dath frowned.
Laughter erupted from the corner of the Ops station. Varley was shaking in his seat, there. Dath glared at him in shock, wondering if something had snapped in his XO. But the other man didn’t look deranged; he looked and sounded relieved.
“What the hell, Scott?”
“Fireworks!” Varley exclaimed between sobbing pauses for breath. He pivoted to Dath, shaking his head. “It’s fireworks, Captain! Jerry-rigged!” He glanced around the bridge, then back at Dath. “They’re saluting us, sir!”
Dath started to reply, but his mouth dangled open as the words eluded him. Turning back to face the hologram, he quickly recognized the multi-colored flare of super-heated gases at the ends of arching missile trails. Fire glinted off the metallic skins of dozens of Republic starships arrayed in orbit; not exactly a grand review, but everything from spindly-hulled destroyers to dreadnoughts of the Union-class, flinging out sprays of projectiles and no doubt infuriating quartermasters with the waste.
And Tenacity, last battlecruiser of the Fenris-class, last Republic starship to limp home from the disaster of the Golgothan blitz, coasted through the silent, mini-cataclysms, bathed in their triumphant glare as she decelerated.
Smiles went around the bridge. The firework flashes from the main screen lit their faces. Ylura beamed at Dath, eyes glassy with emotion that, at last, was very obvious.
Throat momentarily knotted, Dath cleared it. “Clemens,” he said, pointing at the hologram, “pipe this through all stations. Let the crew see.”
Let them see that the Old Wolf had made it home.