Orion Fleet (Rebel Fleet Series Book 2) Page 4

  There was lots of steel tubing everywhere. The stairways, catwalks, even the railing around the various workstations was made of it. I guessed that made sense—the place was built to last.

  There were a few big screens on one wall of the main operations room, and they depicted a high resolution imagery of Earth as seen from various satellites. Some of the images were wire diagrams, laying out the Solar System—or at least Earth’s local space.

  “That’s the Moon, Mars, Venus…” I said, studying the planets circling our stylized-looking star. “But what are those dots? The green, red, blue contacts?”

  Most of the contacts circled Earth, but others were much farther out. Some of the red ones, in particular, were almost off the map.

  “You don’t miss much,” Jones said, walking with me to the screens.

  We craned our necks and looked up. He pointed.

  “The red ones are enemy contacts. See the names? Beta, Tango, November-2.”

  “Enemies? Russian or Chinese?”

  He looked at me in surprise. “No, no,” he said. “Those nations aren’t our enemies these days—rivals yes, but not dangerous. The green dots are our probes. The blue dots are from other nations on Earth. We’re all essentially allied and sharing data now.”

  “And the red ones?”

  “Those are alien,” he said. “Of unknown origin.”

  I stared up at the map of the heavens with him in silence. The magnitude of it gave me a chill.

  Sure, I’d been out there. I’d been abducted by the Kher and press-ganged into their armada—but I hadn’t thought about them keeping tabs on Earth. I mean, it only made sense—but it was kind of frightening.

  =7=

  They didn’t let me see the ship right off. I wanted to—but maybe they didn’t fully trust me yet. I could have told them that was a good instinct.

  Now, don’t get me wrong—I’ve always been loyal to Earth and respected as a man who could get a difficult job done. But with all that said and done, I wasn’t the most reliable guy around when it came to keeping secrets and following orders with precision.

  Jones showed me to my quarters. “Someone will come get you for lunch,” he said, and left me there.

  The room was beyond tight. It was hard to turn around without bumping your head, butt or elbows into something, and when I sat on the narrow bunk my knees were almost touching the opposite wall

  “Stateroom my ass…” I muttered as I unpacked my luggage.

  The cubicle was a private one at least, but it reminded me of something a junior officer might be assigned to in the Navy—aboard an obsolete submarine. I knew they had a limited amount of space inside this facility, but they had a whole mountain to hollow out. One would think they could have drilled a decent set of living quarters.

  When I finished organizing my meager belongings, there wasn’t much to do. Jones hadn’t exactly ordered me to stay in my quarters, and I honestly could have used a nap—but that was out of the question. The situation was too enticing.

  Accordingly, I popped out into the hallway and took a look around.

  I glanced left and saw no one. But when I looked right, Abrams was standing alarmingly close in his white lab coat.

  His hands were clasped behind his back, and he wore an especially sour look on his face.

  “Just over seven minutes,” he said. “That might be a facility-wide record, Blake.”

  I glanced at the wall he was standing beside. On the far side of it was my bunk, visible right through the translucent wall.

  “You haven’t been peeping again, have you, Doc?” I asked.

  “Very funny. I was worried about this. You haven’t been given full clearance in this facility, but already you’ve begun to disobey implicit—”

  “Could you show me the way to the head, Doc?” I asked innocently. “It’s been a long trip, and I’ve had three cups of coffee this morning.”

  He eyed me critically. I could tell he wasn’t buying my excuse, but at least he stopped complaining. He led me to the restroom, and I made a grand show of taking a leak.

  When I stepped out again, I’d dared to hope he would be gone. But that wasn’t in the cards. He told me it was time to eat lunch, and he dogged me all the way to the mess hall.

  We consumed a better-than-average military meal, and I asked him when I’d be allowed to see my old ship again.

  “You want to see Hammerhead?” he asked. “Not the new vessel?”

  “Well, I’m sure you’ve done all right with the design,” I said. “But whatever you’ve come up with can’t compare to Hammerhead. Let’s admit it.”

  He looked at me like he’d swallowed a bug.

  “What do you mean?”

  I shrugged. “Your ship is just a cheap Earth-made knock-off, right? As long as it’s serviceable and not too clunky, I guess it will—”

  My words seemed to injure his pride. He became instantly defensive.

  “We’ve improved on several design elements!” he said loudly. “The propulsion system is larger, but ten percent more efficient by weight. That’s enough to propel the vessel with nearly as great an acceleration curve as your so-called fighter-class Hammerhead. Further—”

  “That much power, huh?” I interrupted, chewing on a roll. The rolls weren’t half-bad if you laid down a thick coat of butter. “I guess you must have duplicated the anti-grav system then.”

  His face drooped, and he shut up.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “You’ve struck a nerve,” he admitted. “We haven’t been able to duplicate the Kher’s anti-grav system. The physics are very delicate, involving interlacing self-perpetuating fields of strong and weak-force—”

  “That all sounds cool, Doc,” I said, “but do you realize you can’t fly this ship at anywhere near her maximum acceleration without anti-grav?”

  “Others have made this point. There’s no need—”

  “We’ll be the proverbial spam-in-a-can if you try!” I said, shaking my head. “The G-forces will kill the crew.”

  He narrowed his eyes, and he stared at me for a moment.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked him.

  He leaned back and sighed.

  “I’ve made a mistake,” he said. “I should have seen this coming, but I didn’t. I think your application to work here will have to be revoked, Blake.”

  “What?” I demanded. “You wanted me to help you out. Don’t you remember?”

  “Of course, but I was operating under a misconception. I realize now that you’re not here to see Earth’s first ship launched successfully. You want to fly her yourself. That’s utterly impossible.”

  I thought about that. I seemed to recall, a few sentences back, that I had said something about “we” being spam-in-a-can, not a generic crew.

  “That’s crazy talk,” I told him. “I know I’m not qualified, and I’m not even interested. I’ve had enough of flying among the stars. It’s dangerous out there, you know?”

  He didn’t look like he believed me. He was no dummy. “It’s probably best we abort this entire thing—”

  “Ah!” I hooted. “I get it. You can’t take any criticism about your project, right? I understand. Lots of techie types get upset when someone says a bad word about their big metal babies. If that’s how it is, I don’t want to work on Icarus anyway.”

  He glowered at me, and we both fell silent for nearly a minute. I’d called his bluff, and I could tell he was thinking it over carefully. While he did so, I buttered up a fresh roll.

  “All right,” he snapped at last. “You can stay. But let’s be clear. You’re not going to be a crewman on this new vessel. That is never going to happen. You showed too much irresponsible behavior when you were part of the Rebel Fleet. We can’t stomach any similar games here. Do you understand me?”

  “I hear you, Doc. Loud and clear.”

  “All right then. Let’s go downstairs.”

  I didn’t know there was a “downstairs,” but I fo
llowed him curiously. He led me to a spot where fresh drilling was evident. The rock here was roughhewn and lighter in color. The rest of it had that darker, slicker look of stone that had been polished and oxidized by decades of human habitation.

  A steel staircase led down into gloom. I followed Abrams, and as we walked, lights flickered into life ahead of us and flickered out behind.

  “This is the new section, where we’ve done fresh drilling.”

  “Excuse me, Doc,” I said, “but it occurs to me it would be kind of difficult to squeeze a ship of any real size out of this hole.”

  “There’s another shaft that leads directly up to the main ramp and the exit. It hasn’t been breached yet to join the primary passageway. When we’re ready, we’ll link the two tunnels and take the modules out of the mountain.”

  “That sounds like a plan, but building this craft in a hangar would be a lot simpler.”

  He stopped and turned to face me. “You’re right. But we couldn’t chance it. Jones showed you their surveillance probes, didn’t he? Those spy systems would detect anything we assembled on the surface. This location was the best bet we had to prevent that.”

  I shut up and let him lead me down into the gloom. I figured we had to be a good five stories below the main complex when we finally came out into a large chamber.

  There, I saw the most amazing sight. It wasn’t a complete, assembled ship, but the bones were all there. I could see them plainly.

  They’d built the ship in modules. Each of them was about the size of a moving van, more or less. There was a crew quarters, an engine section for the tail—no, there were two of those. One for each side, I guessed. There were also large cylindrical tanks that might be for holding propellants, gases…

  “What’s that thing over there?” I asked. “The polyhedron?”

  “That’s the core of the sensor array.”

  “It looks big and exposed. What kind of warship has something that big on the outside?”

  He looked at me like I was some kind of idiot. “This isn’t a battlewagon, Blake. This is a vessel of exploration. It has minimal armament.”

  My mouth sagged open. Everything I knew about the big bright universe beyond our star system indicated it was a maelstrom of chaos.

  “This thing can’t fight?” I demanded. “How are you going to keep it from being blown up?”

  Abrams gave me a sinister, knowing smile. “Your reports aided us in that area. We studied what we knew of this vessel’s technology, and we reviewed designs buried deep within Hammerhead’s data core as well. We built this ship along those standards.”

  I put my hands on my hips and walked around it, mentally assembling the various pieces. After a full minute, with Abrams looking in quietly, I turned to him.

  “I’ve got it,” I said. “You guys are crazy.”

  “You recognize this vessel?”

  “Damned straight I do. This is the sneakiest, most-evil and hated kind of ship in the galaxy. You built a phase-ship, didn’t you?”

  “That’s right. You’ve fought with them before. They weren’t so easy to deal with, despite very light weaponry.”

  I looked back at the modules, trying to envision the entire finished ship. It would be long, and lean, but not as big as her sisters in the Imperial Fleet.

  They were building a phase-ship down here in the dark. A ship that could use stealth by remaining partly in hyperspace and partly in normal space. A sneaky, evil ship built to surprise the unwary, or to flee silently away from danger.

  Phase-ships were slow, but they were dangerous when they managed to get in close. I figured the Earth scientists had looked at all their options and chosen this design for their first foray into space.

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about all that, as I’d hated phase-ships from the first time I’d encountered them, and so did everyone else who’d ever served in the Rebel Fleet.

  =8=

  “I get it now,” I told Abrams. “I get the whole story. This ship is all about sneaking around. Why did you guys put such a big sensor array on it? Well, because it’s more of a spy than anything else.”

  “Exactly,” Abrams said, stepping forward and running his hands over the sleek, dark hull. “We need information, Blake. Surely even you can see that. We’re blind in this universe, at the mercy of every larger, older civilization out there.”

  It did make a kind of sense. A sneaky spy-ship could bring home valuable intelligence.

  But I didn’t believe that was all Earth-Com had in mind. This kind of ship could be deadly and cheap to build as well.

  When the Germans had decided they couldn’t afford to build a serious Navy of capital ships to face the Allies in World War Two, they’d built U-boats instead. Similarly, stealth could allow Earth to participate in interstellar conflicts without having to play fair.

  “I don’t know,” I told Abrams, shaking my head. “The Kher aren’t going to like this.”

  He came close, and his manner became intense.

  “We know that,” he snapped. “Don’t you think we know that? We’ve scanned the catalogues of Rebel ships. They don’t seem to build phase-ships, deeming them to be dishonorable.”

  “But you figured you don’t have any choice. Not if you’re going to compete with the big boys.”

  He backed off. “We don’t have to compete—not at first. For now we only need to know where the enemy is, how many ships they have... That sort of thing.”

  I eyed the phase-ship warily. “This thing could start a war just by being discovered by the wrong planetary Navy. You are aware, Dr. Abrams, that these ships are more than frowned upon by the Rebel worlds? They’re considered evil inventions of the Imperials.”

  He pursed his lips in irritation. “Perhaps bringing you here was a mistake after all.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” said a voice behind me.

  We both turned to confront an Air Force General. His name was Vega, and he was the same two-star who’d I’d met long ago on the Pentagon lawn. His head was shaved as closely as you could get to bald without being bald. A crew-cut so tight you could see right through to the shiny scalp below.

  Behind him another familiar officer trailed—Lt. Commander Jones. They both looked to be in very serious moods.

  “It was our impression as well that this ship wouldn’t be received well by the Kher,” the General said. “Your concerns are therefore noted, and they’re valid. But we felt we had to do it, Blake. We had to take the chance. If any of these other planets decide to conquer us, we’re virtually helpless without a space-going Navy.”

  It was true, of course. I took a deep breath and listened to what they all had to say. They were taking chances—but every day that Earth lived without a fleet of her own was considered to be an even greater risk.

  We gathered at a meeting room about an hour later. Abrams was there, along with Jones and General Vega. A few other staff flunkies sat stiffly in seats on either side of them. The flunkies were listening intently, but they stayed quiet. I had the feeling this was the battle I’d heard about, and that it had been going on for quite some time.

  “The time to launch is now,” Abrams said. “We’re virtually finished with the vessel.”

  “We’ve yet to fully train a crew, or defeat the anti-grav technical problem,” Vega objected.

  Abrams shrugged. “That doesn’t matter. We’ll fly her slowly, well under her engine’s output capacity. If she’s going to suffer a system failure, we need to know now. We need a test flight even at low speeds.”

  “Can I say something?” I asked.

  “Certainly, Lieutenant,” General Vega prompted.

  “I hope this isn’t out of line, but I’m one of the very few Earthers who’ve flown a vessel like this in open space. In fact, I’ve fought with and defeated a phase-ship very much like this one—”

  “Dammit Blake!” exclaimed Dr. Abrams.

  The other two looked at him in surprise.

  “What’s the problem, Doctor?�
�� Vega asked him, glowering in annoyance.

  Abrams aimed a long finger at me and made jabbing motions as he spoke. “I knew I couldn’t trust you! You promised you wouldn’t attempt to secure yourself a position on the crew of this vessel. I’ve done studies of every astronaut on NASA’s roster, as well as ship’s crewmen and Air Force people. You’re not on my list for consideration.”

  “Well Doc,” I said, looking innocent and surprised. “I have to say, I had no such intentions. All I was suggesting was that I might be able to consult on the piloting of the vessel, having actually been in contact with them in open space. But now that you’ve brought it up, there is some merit in what you’re suggesting—”

  “Shut up, Blake! I’m not suggesting anything!”

  By this time, General Vega was pissed off. “Abrams, could you excuse us?”

  Abrams stared at him. I could feel the tension.

  These two clearly didn’t get along. I could see right away why. The technical term for Abrams personality type was “dick” and that couldn’t help but irritate Vega. From the commanding way that Vega ordered him out, however, I calculated that the military man was the one with the final say.

  With poor grace, Abrams withdrew from the meeting and disappeared. General Vega looked at me speculatively for a moment.

  I returned his hard stare with an affable look of my own.

  He nodded at last, then ordered everyone else out—everyone except for me.

  “I’ve read your profile, Blake,” he said. “You’re trouble. Everywhere you go, things break, and people get upset.”

  “Then why didn’t you throw me out of here too, General?”

  He squinted at me. “Because I still think you can be useful. You know I’ve been fighting with Abrams about launching this ship. He wants to do it now. I want to wait. What’s your opinion?”

  “What would be gained by waiting, sir?” I asked.

  He looked down. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Ever since you brought Hammerhead down to Earth and gave her to me, that question has haunted every high-ranking officer in the service. They gave me command of this rat-hole station as a perk, but I hardly care about that. What matters is what we do with this ship.”