Star Carrier (Lost Colonies Trilogy Book 3) Read online

  The office of a Public Servant was a lifetime appointment, and since I was my father’s seventy-percent clone, I’d already been elected according to current law.

  That particular law had always troubled me somewhat. It seemed unfair. A lifetime appointment, I could grasp that. But the idea that such an important office should become permanent, passing down from parent to clone…

  It occurred to me as I rode the sky-lift up to Araminta Station that others must have complained about the injustice of that law in the past. How could they not have? But even so, I couldn’t recall a serious public debate on the issue during my lifetime.

  A cold chill ran through me. Could the Chairman and his Council of oldsters truly wield that much power? Could they edit what people knew to be their history? Had people protested in the past and been expunged?

  By the time I reached Defiant, I was thinking about just how such a thing might be accomplished. Where might the equipment reside, and who operated it? The location must be a deep secret. Whoever had control of such a device effectively controlled Earth.

  “Captain?” Yamada greeted me as I stepped onto the command deck. “I got an alert that said you were coming up the sky lift, but I disregarded it. We weren’t expecting you until this evening.”

  “Just as you keep tabs on me, I like to keep an eye on all of you,” I said, giving her a smile. “Is Zye back yet?”

  “No. Haven’t you checked her location with your implant?”

  The truth was I’d made a point of not using it. Implants traced the wearer with every use. After being kidnapped and beaten, I was reluctant to make things easier for any possible future assailants.

  “I haven’t been using it,” I admitted.

  She gave me an odd look then assumed my unit must be operating incorrectly. “Well, report to me later in the labs. We’ll have it serviced in the science module.”

  “All right,” I said. “What about Zye then? No word?”

  “None, sir. Should I alert her and call her back to duty?”

  “No need. She’ll be here tonight, I’m sure.”

  Despite my easy-going attitude, before I left the deck I saw Yamada tapping at her screen and whispering to unseen people. Doubtlessly, she was warning my staff of my early return.

  I paused and looked at her thoughtfully. “Yamada, how are your hacking skills?”

  “They’re better than Zye’s—but don’t tell her that.”

  “She wouldn’t believe me if I did. Hmm, maybe you can help me with something. Can you accompany me to the science module right now?”

  She called an ensign to sit at her post, and we left the deck together. We reached the labs, and when I told her what I wanted, she was surprised.

  “I guess it’s possible,” she said. “But why would you want to shield your implant?”

  “I’m afraid I’m too easy to track,” I said. I told her then about the abduction on Earth and the misdirection of my air car into a secluded forest.

  She was stunned. I’d left all the details out, naturally, concerning who the actual perpetrators were. She spent a few fruitless minutes trying to pry these elements from me, but she soon gave up.

  “You always lead an interesting life,” she said. “I’m glad I’m not a member of a Great House. The wealth doesn’t seem worth it if you have to look over your shoulder all the time.”

  “Well said. Do you think you can do it? Hack it, I mean? Without making the alteration obvious or setting off any tampering alarms?”

  She thought about it for a moment.

  “Normally, I’d use my implant right now to search for a how-to on the process,” she admitted. “But that would leave a fingerprint I don’t want on my record. I’m going to have to invent this hack all on my own. Can you give me a few days?”

  I smiled. “You’re officially assigned to weapons research until further notice. I’ll inform your replacement crewmembers you’re off the duty roster.”

  She thought that over then smiled. “Good. I can use a few days off my station. I’ll let you know if I think I’ve got something. In the meantime, weren’t you here to get your implant operating again?”

  I considered her suggestion and passed on it. “Not today. Let’s see what you come up with first.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “You don’t want to know, trust me.”

  Walking out, I knew she was staring after me, but I didn’t look back. I couldn’t afford to involve Yamada deeper in this matter than I already had. It would be unforgivable if, as her friend and commander, I endangered her without letting her know what she was getting into. I couldn’t do that.

  In the morning, I asked if everyone had made it aboard. Yamada assured me that they had. My crew had gathered aboard and settled back into their duties. The rotation of essential people on and off the ship had ended. We were officially on patrol.

  On the command deck, most of the primary crewmembers were there except for Yamada and Zye. I knew Yamada was working on my hack, and I figured Zye must be off-shift. Shrugging, we took the ship out of orbit and began our patrol.

  We proceeded to perform a series of sweeps of the inner planets. Our orders were to stay within a twenty-four hour flight of Earth which limited how far we could go. The asteroid belt was beyond our reach, as was Mars when she was on the far side of the Sun.

  The next day I was becoming as bored as my crew appeared to be. Yamada herself contacted me using the ship’s intercom system in the early morning hours. It seemed as if the walls were talking to me.

  She sounded breathless, and I climbed out of bed before she’d done more than identify herself. My first thought was that she’d discovered a hack—or worse, someone else had discovered her actions and reported them.

  “You really have to get your implant working again, sir,” she said. “I had to have the ship track you down using your bio-rhythm signature.”

  “It can do that? Never mind… what’s the problem?”

  “A single ship sir—it just appeared out beyond Neptune. Obviously, it came through a breach out of hyperspace, and—”

  “What kind of ship?” I demanded, fighting with my jacket. I shook the auto-buckles so they cinched up on their own and ran my fingers through my hair.

  In my private bathroom mirror, I saw the display splashed in all four corners. It was a ship all right—a battleship. “It looks like one of ours.”

  “It is, sir. It’s Victory, and she’s sustained heavy damage.”

  “Where’s the rest of the fleet?” I demanded of Yamada’s disembodied voice.

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Where’s Admiral Halsey and that carrier of his?”

  “Unknown.”

  Her voice continued ringing from the walls of my quarters, but I’d already left and begun hurrying up the central passageway to the command deck. I had a very bad feeling about this.

  One ship crawling home damaged? Could the unthinkable have occurred? Could Earth be in jeopardy?

  -10-

  Commander Durris was my XO, but when I was personally on the command deck he functioned as our chief navigator. He performed both tasks equally well.

  To prove the point, he’d already worked out a flight path to intercept the ship should it become necessary.

  “Take us out just past the Moon, Rumbold,” I said, talking to my pilot who’d slid his large rear end into the chair in front of me. “Keep us close to Commander Durris’ recommended flight path.”

  “What’s our final destination, sir?” the helmsman asked.

  “Just get us moving,” I said.

  Rumbold shrugged, and I felt the powerful ship surge under my feet.

  “Captain,” Durris said, “If we head for Luna at half-power, we can use the gravity-well to slingshot us in the direction of Victory—if they give us clearance to do so.”

  I nodded and asked Yamada to open a channel to Star Guard.

  My heart racing, I checked with the ops team on Earth. They were
as in the dark as we were. What little intel they had was relayed to me, and we played it on our screens and holotables.

  It didn’t take long before the duty officer in charge came online to talk to us. He was an elderly looking gentleman, Vice Admiral Perez. He was skinny and red-faced. The years hadn’t been as kind to him as they’d been to others, but due to heavy use of Rejuv, he appeared to be energetic enough.

  “Where do you think you’re going, Sparhawk?” he demanded in a slightly high-pitched tone.

  “I’m leaving close orbit in case Defiant needs to take action.”

  “No one here on the ground gave you permission to do so.”

  “Excuse me, Admiral,” I said. “My orders permit me latitude when facing a possible threat.”

  “Yes, but they don’t allow you to abandon your post! Earth needs you, man. There’s no other vessel of size in the system.”

  I wanted to point out that the situation wasn’t of my making, but I didn’t see how it would help to do so.

  “What are your orders, Admiral?” I asked.

  “That’s better. Get out to Luna and circle that rock until we know if Victory has been compromised or not.”

  “But that’s what I… Yes sir. We’ll be in touch.”

  Yamada closed the connection, and I cursed under my breath.

  “Is Perez really in charge down there?” Rumbold asked in a marveling tone. “Lord help us, he was a dotard when I was swabbing decks.”

  “Seniority isn’t always the best way to make promotional decisions,” I agreed. “But old habits die hard.”

  “Huh!” Rumbold complained. “We’ll all die hard if CENTCOM doesn’t step it up. Too many oldsters are still in charge. They need to let some younger people take key posts—and I’m saying this as a man who’s served a century and a half in the Guard!”

  Rumbold was always prone to exaggeration, but I knew for a fact he had served for a hundred and thirty long years. It was in his service record. Without continued service, he wouldn’t have had the personal wealth to continue his longevity treatments—which meant compulsory retirements were akin to death sentences.

  It was just the sort of situation we were faced with on a daily basis in the Guard. We’d been called upon to defend Earth, but our world had become so bureaucratic and tied up in political concerns it was difficult to cut through it all and do our jobs.

  “Yamada, where is Zye?”

  She looked at me worriedly. “I sent you a report—but your implant is out, isn’t it? She never made it back aboard, sir. In fact, I’ve been unable to locate her.”

  That concerned me. There were very few reasons Zye would fail to keep her commitments—an untimely death being high on that list.

  “Alert CENTCOM. It could be related to this situation somehow.”

  “You don’t think Stroj agents are coming out of the woodwork again, do you sir?” Rumbold asked. He spun his chair around and his eyes bulged at me.

  “I’m not making any predictions,” I told him. “Durris? How long until we reach orbit over Luna?”

  “About twenty minutes more.”

  “All right, let’s start a full equipment check.”

  “Weapons check?” Durris asked.

  “Yes. Let’s start there.”

  Defiant wasn’t an Earth ship. She’d been built by Betas, a group of colonists who’d long been estranged from the home world. They were all like Zye—at least the smarter ones among them were.

  Unimaginative people, but practical and determined, they’d over-built every aspect of this vessel. If something needed a rivet, they made it a rivet as thick as a man’s thumb and probably applied ten of them where one would have sufficed.

  That heavy design had been carried through to her engines, fortunately, or the ship would have wallowed in space. As it was, she was heavy, but her engines were well up to the task of pushing her around with terrific force. Defiant was the most heavily armored and fastest ship in our service. Only Halsey’s battleships could rival her when it came to taking a punch, but they couldn’t rival her acceleration.

  We waited tensely, orbiting Luna over the next half hour before Admiral Perez saw fit to contact us again.

  “Stand down, Defiant,” he said. “That battleship isn’t dangerous—not to anyone, apparently.”

  “Who’s in command of her?”

  “Admiral Halsey himself. He’s lost his carrier it seems.”

  That last bit of information made me feel ill. “Can I speak with him directly, sir?”

  “I don’t see why not. Maybe it’s a good thing for a man to feel shame in a situation like this.”

  The channel closed, and I was left in an uncertain state. It wasn’t like Perez to suggest another admiral—especially his superior officer—needed any form of shaming.

  It could only mean one thing. We’d lost our fleet, and Halsey was limping home with the last vessel in his once-great armada.

  After dithering for several minutes, I moved to my private office and opened a channel to Halsey’s ship. He didn’t answer right away, partly due to distance involved.

  After waiting for several minutes, the screen that was my desktop suddenly brightened.

  “Is that you, Sparhawk?” he asked. “Why aren’t you using your implant?”

  “It’s disabled sir,” I said, not mentioning that I’d done the disabling myself. “I have to use traditionally transmitted video.”

  “Well, get that fixed,” he complained.

  He looked the worse for wear, as my elderly Aunt Grantholm might have said. His uniform was dirty and frayed, his hair was unkempt, and his eyes wandered around the scene of my office as he spoke.

  “Are we alone? Can anyone else hear this?”

  “No sir,” I said. “They can’t.”

  He leaned forward with sudden earnest intent. “Sparhawk, listen to me, the variants took my ship from me. They took my command. You have to warn Earth that Iron Duke is still out there—”

  Then he made an odd sound. Blood exploded from his neck and showered the vid pickup.

  Astounded, I half-rose from my seat. I watched helplessly as the transmitted feed continued. Blood had formed a thick film on the lenses, but it slid away revealing a horrid scene.

  Halsey was gargling and wrestling weakly with pinchers that held him upright.

  “Speak as you were commanded to do,” said an odd voice. It didn’t sound quite human to me.

  The pinchers shook him again like a doll. His neck flopped, and his eyes rolled up into his skull.

  “You’ve damaged him too greatly,” said another voice off-camera.

  “These creatures are as fragile as ice crystals,” complained the first voice.

  I stared at the scene, transfixed. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The variants had clearly captured Halsey and forced him to speak on their behalf.

  At length, a leering visage came into view. Staring at me curiously, it had clearly been designed to resemble a human face, but it had drastically failed in achieving that goal.

  Instead, it was like looking into the face of a doll with cameras for eyes. It wore a permanent grin, possibly an attempt by the designers to make the thing appear friendly. The expression was oddly misplaced, even hideous, when seen up-close through a film of oozing blood.

  Then the variants closed the channel, and I knew Admiral Halsey was dead.

  -11-

  The moment the channel closed I stood up, determined to act. My first thought was to forward the video captured on my desk to CENTCOM. Next, we’d plot an intercept course and head out to meet Victory in open space. Better to fight her there, where she couldn’t easily strike at Earth.

  But then I paused. The details of my brief conversation with Halsey were sinking in.

  Why had he requested a private communication with me—just me? He had to know that once he deviated from whatever script the variants had given him, they would slay him.

  Under such circumstances, if I’d been the one
forfeiting my life to warn Earth, I would have done so with as many eyes in attendance as possible. So why had he chosen to warn only me?

  I felt an urge to disregard this detail—to set it aside and proceed according to the book. The brass had to be alerted. They had to be warned.

  Didn’t they?

  What if, my mind whispered quietly to me, there are more enemies in our midst? We’d sent out seven battleships and one monstrous star carrier. Had all their crews been overcome? It seemed unlikely, but the evidence indicated that was exactly what had happened. The other ships were missing, not chasing this one to do battle.

  Unsure of my situation, I saved the video capture and set the file to forward itself to CENTCOM in one hour from now. Then I locked my desk with new biometric passwords and returned to the command deck.

  In the event I was about to lose my ship as Admiral Halsey had lost his, the warning would go out long before Victory could reach Earth. The battleship was at least forty hours out, and I felt I could afford the time. With luck, the enemy would reveal themselves in other ways.

  Walking onto the command deck, my eyes slid over the crewmen who turned toward me. Most were familiar faces, but not all. There were new people aboard.

  Durris stepped out of my chair, but I didn’t replace him immediately. After nodding vaguely to his inquiries, I moved to Yamada’s side and leaned over her so that my voice wasn’t easily overheard.

  “Lieutenant Commander,” I said, “could you pull up a roster of new crewmembers?”

  She did do, looking at me quizzically while I examined them. They seemed legitimate at first glance.

  “Are you looking for someone in particular, sir?”

  “Anyone new, anything unexpected.”

  She frowned, then her face brightened. “Oh, you must be talking about the variants. They’re all down in the main hold. They work like machines—faster I think.”

  I froze, and then I stared at her in shock. My heart rate accelerated, but I made an effort to appear calm.

  “Variants? You mean like the ones we saw on Mars?”