The Terran Gambit (Episode #1: The Pax Humana Saga) (25 page)

“We will give them their chance, Captain, but something tells me the Major and his men might face a little resistance.”

“Sir! There’s been another explosion on the
Phoenix.
Looks like a secondary explosion, sir, from a short near their capacitor banks.” The sensor officer studied his readout closer. “And it looks as if it damaged their sensor and communications array. It’s sending out a broad spectrum signal, as if the auxiliary power system just got dumped into the array.”

“Can we hail the boarding party?”

“No sir, the new signal is interfering with our communications.”

Titus came up behind Admiral Trajan. “We did hit them pretty hard, sir. Power surges are to be expected after a battle like this.”

Trajan snapped his head and skewered him again with his gaze, before turning back to tactical. “Be ready with those guns, Lieutenant.”

8

J
AKE
M
ERCER AND
B
EN
J
EMEZ
jogged toward the fighter bay, stopping by the marine barracks to check if anyone was still there.

“I’d imagine they’ve all been recruited for damage control,” said Ben.

“Probably. But we’re going to need a bigger army than the two of us.” He poked his head into the barracks, and sure enough, it was empty. He keyed open the arms locker using his command code and tossed an assault rifle out to Ben before selecting one for himself.

“Jake, you realize that if we repel their boarding party, the
Caligula
will just blow up the ship? This is supposed to be a surrender.”

“I know. That’s why we need the
Caligula
to think the surrender is proceeding normally for awhile.” He gave Ben an abbreviated version of his plan, then opened a comm channel to engineering.

“Alessandro, what’s our status?”

Bernoulli’s voice crackled over the speaker. “I need another hour, friend. This crystal substrate has taken a beating like a naughty cheap prostitute.” Jake grinned at his friend’s caustic sense of humor. The chaos that had sounded through the speakers from engineering the last time they had spoken had died away, thankfully.

“Fine, buddy. Take all the time you need,” Jake said sarcastically.

Alessandro’s voice indicated the humor was lost on him. “Excellent, friend. Bernoulli ou—”

“Alessandro, if we don’t get the hell out of here within half an hour, we’re screwed. Got it?” Jake yelled into the console. “What’s the status of our communications and sensor array?”

The quick change of subjects didn’t faze Alessandro—Jake knew that was his modus operandi. “Functional, Jake. Why?”

“Any way you can make it look like we just had a system failure down there, and send out some white noise as a jamming signal? We need to stop all Imperial communication between their ships and with the soldiers about to land on our fighter deck.”

A moment’s silence.
“I suppose if I dump power from one of the cap banks, it’ll look like a secondary explosion from an overload, and then if I do a direct feed from the auxiliary power line right into the sensor array, it might come across as an accident,” he said, seeming to read Jake’s mind. It had to look like an accident or they’d attract Trajan’s ire—more of it.

“Good, do it.”

“But Jake, that will damage our sensor array. And we’re using nearly all our auxiliary power for life support. I can’t guarantee we’ll be breathing much while that thing is on.”

“Understood. Mercer out.”

He glanced up at Ben. “Let’s get down there. It’s show time,” he said, as they swept out the door. On the way to the fighter bay, they came across handfuls of marines carrying wounded to sickbay or otherwise assisting those engaged in damage control. The pair grabbed the marines who were armed, and by the time they arrived at the fighter deck’s conference room they had rounded up ten soldiers, including Sergeant Pearson, the gruff marine commander of the
Phoenix
that Jake remembered from the transport the day he arrived at Liberty Station just a week or so ago.

Jake pointed at the emergency bulkhead that separated them from the fighter bay doors. “This is our defense point. No one gets past here. Understood?” The marines all nodded.

Sergeant Pearson spat a wad of chewing tobacco on the floor. “What are we looking at, sir? Ten? Twenty?”

“Sensors indicate four troop carriers. You do the math, Sergeant.”

The man reached into his pocket to draw out his snuff, and thumbed a wad into his lower lip. “Yeah, that’s a shitload all right.”

Jake forgot to smile, and started spouting off a stream of commands. After nearly a minute, he continued giving instructions, almost not hearing the voice interrupting him.

“Captain?” Jake almost didn’t understand what Ben was saying. “Captain?” Ben said again.

Captain. He still couldn’t believe he was hearing those words directed at him. The thought terrified him. People were going to die today because of his decisions. Innocent, good people. He wasn’t sure he was ready for that.

Then why the hell did you take command, dumbass?

“What is it, Ben?”

“Sir, the Captain’s place is not on the front lines of a firefight, but on the bridge.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, Ben, we’ve got to repel these sons-of-b—”

“Captain, your place is on the bridge. There’s more to command here than just a firefight. Get the hell up there, Jake,” he said, and Jake could almost feel the reproach in his voice. It should have been him. Captain Watson had chosen his protégé, and it should have been him. Jake suspected that Ben knew it, and wondered if his friend had suspicions. Most likely.

But they’d all be dead by now if Ben were the captain. Jake knew it. “Fine. You got this?”

Sergeant Pearson spit another brown wad onto the floor. “He’s right, sir. Let us grunts do our job and you go do yours. Don’t worry, we’ve dealt with these pussies before. I commanded the battalion that took out the Imperials in D.C. three years ago. Pushed the motherfuckers into a corner of some office building, and then blew them straight to hell.”

 “Get up there,” Ben repeated. Jake swore, and tossed the assault rifle to a marine who carried only a plasma-rpg launcher before running out the door.

“Arrogant bastard,” Ben muttered under his breath.

* * *

“What do you think, Commander, is today our day to die?” Ensign Ayala didn’t even look up from her console as she spoke, but continued her work of coordinating weapons repair crews.

Po looked up at her, concerned. The fact was, she had thought they were going to die during the final stages of the attack not an hour earlier, but once she saw the look in Jake’s eyes when he was dealing with Admiral Trajan, she wondered why she had given up so easily.

“You know, Ensign? I don’t think so. But then again, it’s what we all signed up for, didn’t we? For battle and glory, or revenge or what have you.” She knew what her motivation was when she first joined. The searing memory of her husband’s stiff body still freshly engraved on her mind. And the rest of them. She continued speaking, so that the thoughts wouldn’t surface. “Why did you join?”

“The Empire destroyed my world when my grandparents were still children, Commander. They turned it into a radioactive wasteland that won’t be safe for human habitation for thousands of years. Our people pledged to return, but as they reached out to the stars, they made another pledge. A pledge to never lift up the sword against anyone. It’s strange, Commander, when an enemy invades and utterly destroys, and then the victim blames itself for the violence and promises to amend its ways.”

“So you joined the fleet to explore then? To see new worlds and cultures?” Po noticed some odd readings from her board, and could only think to absentmindedly ask obvious questions.

“No, Commander. I set out to end the Empire. With whatever tools I have at my disposal.”

Po glanced up in surprise. “So you don’t eschew violence? Like the rest of the people of Belen?”

“I will not strike another human. I will not wield a weapon and draw blood. I will not raise my voice in anger. But an ion beam cannon? A railgun turret? Will I relay orders to weapons crews to use them against the machinery of the Empire? I will. My father nearly disowned me when I joined the Resistance. He said I was rejecting our traditions. Our culture. Our beliefs. But I think to stand by and let the Empire continue to exist is an even deeper betrayal of our beliefs.” She paused, and looked up, a quizzical expression on her tattooed face. “Does that make sense?”

“A little, I guess.” Po turned back to her console. An odd power build-up on the sensor array….

“It sure didn’t to my father. My mother sent me with her blessing, but even she didn’t quite understand my reasoning. She prayed her rosary and begged the saints to change my mind. She promised a life of service to Saint Anton, the patron saint of Belen, if he would come to me and turn me from my chosen path. But here I am.” Her smile made the leaves and branches splaying up onto her face contort, making Po wonder how early the Belenite youth received their tattoos. It was comforting having the young woman around—like having a personal spiritual advisor, someone who could look down on any situation and reassure them all that it was in god’s plan or Minerva’s plan or Buddha’s plan, or whatever other deity the young woman was attuned to.

An explosion rocked the ship. Po had gotten used to the relative calm that had settled in after the battle, and she could feel the blood drain from her face. “What was that?”

Ensign Ayala scanned through the damage report streaming in from the computer. “It’s the sensor and communications grid down by engineering. Something overloaded. And now our transmitters are broadcasting a jamming signal. It’s like white noise is overwhelming every band, sir.”

Po grimaced. “Well that’s going to put a damper on Admiral Trajan’s mood.”

* * *

Several minutes after the secondary rattling and reverberations from the explosion settled, the door to the bridge slid open and Jake Mercer strode in. Po glanced at his collar.

“He didn’t.”

Jake couldn’t even muster a smile. “I’m afraid he did.”

Po shook her head. “But I would have sworn … I would have bet my life savings on him choosing Ben. So the Captain’s dead then?”

“Yes. And really, so did I. It came as a complete shock.” He wondered if he’d be able to lie to Po. He’d discovered over the past three years that she was uncannily perceptive. It was like she could read peoples’ minds, know exactly what they needed to hear, and then tended to put an arm around your shoulder and proceed to solve all your problems. Eventually, her callsign, Grizzly, had morphed into Mama Grizzly, and then just Mama.

She cast him a knowing glance. “But all the same. I’m happy for you. I’m not sure how we’d have managed … otherwise.” He could tell she chose her words carefully for the sake of the surviving bridge crew, who huddled at their stations, shell-shocked and unspeaking. As he looked around at them all, he knew something had to be done. Something had to be said. If their morale stayed this low, they’d be killed within the hour, too demoralized to do anything about it.

He approached the captain’s chair. His chair. Gripping the armrest, he still didn’t feel quite prepared to sit in it, and so he stood behind it, and started looking at each crew member in the eye one by one.

“Captain Watson passed away twenty minutes ago. Before he died, he named me Captain of the
Phoenix
, and ordered me to get the ship to safety. Ladies and gentlemen, fellow officers,” his eyes drilled into the helmsman, a young man who couldn’t be over twenty. Jake could see the fear in his eyes. “My friends. In the short time I’ve served with you, as I’ve come to know you over the past week, I’ve come to realize something. All of you have passed through trial by fire. I served with many of you before Dallas. You’ve known victory, you’ve known defeat. But there was one thing that bound us together, and that was our solemn oath to each other that as long as one of our fellows was in bondage or oppressed, we would not rest, we would not give up until that brother was freed and could stand on his own two feet.”

As he spoke, he noticed the change in the helmsman’s eyes. The fear turned, almost imperceptibly, to determination as the young man set his jaw firm and frowned. Jake moved his eyes over to another man sitting at tactical, his face crusted with dried blood from a gash on his forehead.

“But we hit a snag, and had to postpone freedom for awhile. We had Reconciliation, which the Empire used as a pretext for suppressing us further. But then, when I was assigned to the
Phoenix
, and I met you good people, I knew I’d come home. Because when I look into your eyes, I see people who never give up. I see people who don’t back down.”

He shifted his eyes to Ensign Ayala, who fingered away a stray strand of her bleached white hair that hung in her face. “I see people who I would bleed for, people I would sweat for, people to whom I pledge my life and my sacred honor. Today, we’re going to fight once more. Some of us may not live to see the fruits of our labors, but I swear to you,” he paused, letting his words sink in as he shifted his eyes one last time to Po, who stood at the head of the tactical octagon, a shadow of fierce determination replacing what had before looked almost like suspicion. Did she know? No. She couldn’t know.

“But I swear to you,” he repeated, “that we will win, we will get to safety, and that some day, in a week, a month, a year, I don’t know, but we will return, and we will free our planet once and for all. I promise you.”

The silence pervaded the bridge like the calm before a storm, but it was a restless silence, as Jake saw the eagerness in his crew’s eyes. Not bad for his first time, he thought. He’d never imagined himself giving a motivational speech in his life. His thoughts momentarily flashed back to his father on the filthy couch, and their last meeting where he’d vainly tried to convince the man to make something of himself.