Chapter 9

 

"What was that all about, a bathroom break?” asked Miles when Calvin returned to the bridge.

"Yeah I stopped at Tau Station to use the head. Nothing gets past you does it." He took his seat at the command position.

"Well how am I supposed to know what you did over there?"

"You're not. That's the beauty of it."

"Too long for a snack, too short for a booty call," Miles paused. "I think."

Calvin rolled his eyes. "Sarah, release us from the station and request clearance for departure." She acknowledged him and began speaking into her headset.

Miles spoke again. "I mean, maybe it was a bathroom break." Calvin could tell Miles really wanted to know why he'd taken their ship on such a tangent and gone aboard the station alone. They all did. But he wasn't about to say.

"You were right," said Calvin. "You backed up all the toilets on the ship forcing me to make a pit stop. But, now that that's behind us, we can keep going."

"Must we discuss this on the bridge?" asked Summers, repulsed.

"You'd rather discuss it somewhere else? Like the mess hall?" Miles laughed.

Calvin waved at him to be quiet. "Sarah, what's the word?"

"We're all clear, standard heading. Not even a floating bolt in our way."

"Kind of nice to be at a port with no traffic for once, isn't it?” asked Calvin.

"You said it," replied Sarah.

"As soon as we're clear of the station, engage the main engines then best jump to Aleator."

It wasn't the first time he'd used the phrase but Sarah still gave him an odd look. "What does that even mean, best speed?"

"It means use your judgment."

"I hate it when I have to use my judgment."

Calvin looked to Summers. "I suppose you want us to go as fast as possible."

"Yes. But it hardly matters now. Like you said, Raidan will be long gone from Aleator."

Calvin smiled. "You know, Summers, they say acceptance is a major step in the grief process. I'm proud of you."

She ignored this remark. "Of course Raidan's head start is no thanks to your bathroom stop."

He laughed and sat back. "What's our ETA?"

"Eight hours," said Sarah.

Calvin looked at the mounted clock. It reflected Standard Time. "Red Shift takes over in three hours. How are you guys holding up?"

"Just fine," Sarah and Shen said in unison. Summers nodded.

"I'm tired as hell," Miles bellowed from behind the defense console. "Thanks for asking."

Calvin laughed. "As long as you have the energy to complain, you have the energy to push buttons." He stood up. "Well guys, as much as I hate to say it, I need to get back to reading those files. And this time I'm actually going to do it."

"Sure you are..,” said Sarah.

"I'm serious," said Calvin, sounding more defensive than he’d meant. He looked to Summers. "You have the deck."

Once inside his office, he grabbed a water bottle before crashing into his chair and scooping up a pile of printouts. "Where to begin?" The question he hated the most. Out of a mountain of boring materials he had to chew through, which would he tackle first?

He decided to look over the crew manifest again, beginning with the senior staff. But this time he was going to thoroughly research the histories of each officer in great detail. Everything from their economic backgrounds, conditions growing up, family situations, past employers, various residences, all the way down to their favorite childhood candy. To do this he had to get up once more, briefly, to grab his portable computer. And so began the very tedious task of constructing psychological profiles of everyone most likely to sympathize with Raidan.

"All right, Lieutenant Gates, let's start with you."

Since the Harbinger was an Alpha class ship, it had a dedicated communications officer. Calvin believed that was the best starting point since it was that person's job to alert Praxis of any mutiny attempt going on. If he could prove the comms officer was linked to Raidan somehow, that would go a long way toward explaining how the mutiny happened without any word getting to the station—if there had been a mutiny.

"Born in the Theta Belt to middle-income parents. Military father, unemployed mother. Moved around the outer colonies while aged six through fifteen. Attended small public schools, usually not for more than a year, eventually enrolled in the Arcadiuo School of Flight and Piloting. Wanted to fly freighters, eh? What happened to that dream?" He flipped through some more pages and did a bit more searching on the computer. "Wow those are bad grades. Then you transferred to a military academy with a focus on kataspace engineering and subspace systems. I'm surprised you got accepted. Hmm..."

Strangely Gates' grades at the second school were top tier. Not perfect, but close. A huge shift in very little time. "Unusual but not unheard of... did you have a coming of age experience that forced you to grow up?" Calvin mused. "I doubt it was joining the fraternity." He checked to see if anyone else on the Harbinger had been a member of that fraternity. A few had but he didn't see any meaningful connection there. He kept notes of the different angles he wanted to investigate Gates and would then pass that along to his staff who would do the grunt work.

Before he finished, the alert on his desk flashed on and off, followed by a shrill whistle. He tapped the button. "What is it, Sarah?"

"You'd better get in here, sir."

"All right, I'm on my way." He tossed his papers aside and darted for the bridge. When the door slid open he marched inside. "OK, what are we dealing with?"

"Distress call, it's coming in ten minutes from our position at present speed," said Sarah. "It's repeating on all channels."

"What's it say?" Calvin moved to the command position but did not sit down, even though Summers relinquished the chair.

"It's generic and automated, repeating over and over. No details. But I recognize it. It's a standard feature on many civilian craft."

"Too bad it doesn't give us much to work with," Calvin mumbled. "What's the nearest ship besides us?"

"The ISS Candle, but she's docked at Tau station with most of her crew ashore," she looked up. "They might not make it in time."

Calvin looked to Summers. "Opinion?"

"Protocol is very clear. All Imperial ships, military or otherwise, must respond to any confirmed, authentic distress call if they are the nearest ship or within a click. We should respond."

"Even though it takes us out of our way and gives Raidan an even bigger head start?" He tested her.

"There could be people dying on that ship, Lieutenant Commander. This takes precedence."

"For once I agree with you so, Sarah, lay in a course. Nice to see a human side of you, Summers. It looks good."

Her eyes narrowed. "What's that supposed to mean?"

He changed the subject. "I trust you to handle this, Commander. You need experience commanding this ship," he stepped aside and pointed at the command chair.

She nodded and took the seat. The moment she did, she snapped to action. "What can you tell me about that ship, helmsman?"

"It's adrift, engines and thrusters are not burning. It's also small, but I can't tell what it is yet."

"Ops, as soon as you can, get a good scan of it. Defense, engage the stealth system. Helm, slow to half a percent at one click's distance." She looked at Shen. "I want to know if that ship's damaged externally. If it is, there's a good chance a hostile vessel is out there ducking our sensors."

"Aye, aye," they acknowledged her and Calvin was impressed by her command skill.

"OK, we're within one click. Slowing to half a percent and changing approach vector," said Sarah.

"Initiate a condition one alert on all decks, but don't raise our shields yet. I don't want to give us away."

"You got it, bosslady," said Miles, and there was a faint chirp.

"I said condition one, mister." Summers stood up and walked toward the defense console.

"We are at condition one!"

Calvin couldn't help but smirk.

"What, no lights?" Summers looked around, the bridge seemed exactly as it had been, calmly lit by soft white lights.

"Yeah there's lights," said Miles, pointing to the tiny flashing light on his console.

"What about the ceiling lights and the klaxon?" Summers was dumbfounded.

"Calvin had them removed a long time ago," said Sarah.

Summers spun to face him. "You had them removed?"

Calvin shrugged. "Don't you think lots of red lights and noisy alarms are exactly the kind of distracting things you don't want on the bridge during a critical moment?"

She looked ready with a retort but Sarah cut in. "We're at five thousand meters and closing fast."

"All stop.”

“Answering all stop.”

“Ops, what do you have?"

"The vessel has no political markings of any kind and it’s flying no colors, could be that their lights are out. No obvious damage to the outer hull, though. It's a Model B personal yacht made by a Polarian corporation out of Riyu Seven. Designed for two passengers but only one life sign is aboard which appears to be stable."

"One person?” asked Calvin. "Who'd be this deep into nowhere in a ship like that? That's like finding a speedboat in the middle of an ocean."

"Someone with stones," said Miles.

Summers looked at him. "Bravery and stupidity are two sides of the same coin."

Calvin went to the ops station. "What are we dealing with, Shen? A Polarian?"

"A human, actually." He tapped his console. "Err... now I'm not so sure."

"What do you mean, not sure?"

"It's a modified human, sir."

A chill traced Calvin's spine, rippling through his body while flashes of buried memories came to mind, images from his deepest, darkest nightmares. "What kind of modified human?"

"Database lists it as a type three remorii."

"Ok, helm, bring us into docking range and open a channel," said Summers.

"Belay that order!" Calvin cut in.

Everything felt exactly like it had on the Trinity... years ago.

"Sir?" Shen looked back at him but Calvin shifted his attention to Sarah.

"Close the channel and accelerate to five percent until we're six hundred kilometers away then get us into a deep jump, at least eighty percent potential. We're getting the hell out of here. And, Miles, keep that stealth system engaged."

"Sir?" Summers asked, more demanding than Shen.

"Sarah, under no circumstances will you attempt to contact that vessel or go anywhere near it. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir," she said, complying immediately. "One-twenty degrees yaw and heading about."

"We have to respond,” said Summers. "As long as he's sitting there he's harmless."

"He's lucky I don't blow him up right now."

Miles turned around. "It isn't too late for that, Cal. I've always got a couple of aft missiles ready to go."

Summers stepped into Calvin's line of sight. "A word please, Lieutenant Commander." She nodded toward his office.

"All right," he said, gesturing for her to lead the way.

Once the door slid shut Summers erupted. "What are you doing? We have a duty to do!"

"Sometimes, for the good of the crew, a few rules have to be broken and hard decisions made."

"We have a duty as people, not just as officers!"

Calvin sat down at his desk, barely able to stand. As loud as Summers was, she was nothing compared to the resurgence of buried memories twisting his brain. Everything about this whole situation felt so damn familiar, he could scarcely separate the Nighthawk and the Trinity in his mind. He could still see his friends' faces as clear as blood soaking paper, and the echo of screams spreading from deck to deck were even worse.

He shivered, feeling unusually cold and as Summers ranted he just sat there in a deep stupor, no longer in the present.

"You need to pay attention to me!"

He snapped back to his whereabouts and, very calmly, looked her squarely in the eyes. "Summers, do you know what a remorii is?"

"No."

"It's a creature that comes from a secret planet called Remus Nine. A type three remorii is, effectively, a lycanthrope."

"Werewolves?" Her curiosity twisted to skepticism. "There's no such thing."

"Technically, of course, you are correct. Lycanthropes do not occur in nature. But neither do blue roses, and yet they have huge gardens of them on Capital World. You must remember the orange and blue grounds at Capitol Square, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Well, just as those flowers were engineered, animals have sometimes been engineered. And even though the Empire has broken its back to shut the science down, some fifty years ago the genetic experiments of Remus Nine gave birth to all kinds of modified humans. The most dominant two were types two and three, strigoi and lycanthrope. They are different, they aren't really vampires and werewolves. For example strigoi don’t need to suck blood and they don’t wear capes and live in coffins, and the lycanthropes aren’t very wolf-like in appearance. Sure, compared to a man they’re hairier, more muscular, have claws, and are feral. But otherwise they’re nothing like wolves. Some say their creation was inspired by ancient superstition and lore. I could believe that, man—as usual—isn't content until he's tried something crazy, so instead of finding The Lost City of Gold he decided to make one. And by the time the Empire caught on and put these scientists out of business, most of them were already dead—killed by their own creations. And now thousands of modified humans are still unaccounted for. Intel Wing estimates their numbers have grown."

"They can reproduce?"

"Not sexually. But, like a virus, they can transfer their likeness to a host. A whole, healthy human being with the right blood type does the trick. O-positive is most vulnerable. Which, unfortunately, I am."

"So our distress call sender is a werewolf and he can turn other people into werewolves? And that's why we're not going to respond to his distress call even though duty demands it?"

"That's correct."

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."

His eyes narrowed.

She didn't back down. "What's the problem? We need silver bullets?"

"No, regular bullets work fine. You just need a lot of them. Although incendiary seems to work best."

"You're exaggerating."

He gave her a deadly stare. "You know nothing about it."

She raised a skeptical eyebrow.

He glanced away and stared at his desk for a minute, letting the memories flow unrestrained. Even after all this time they were still excruciating, in ways he could never describe and very few people could understand. Maybe no one could. Certainly not Summers who stood there, doing her duty, demanding to know why he'd ordered them away. She needed to know why. Even if she could never appreciate it fully. There are dangerous parts of the universe that no one speaks of, and she shouldn't be ignorant of them while serving as his second.

"Summers, have you ever heard of the ISS Trinity?"

"Yeah it was a command cruiser for the 7th Fleet, but it had some kind of design problem and exploded a few years ago because of a coil leak. We talked about it as a case study for particle..."

He interrupted her. "That was just a cover-up.”

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that isn't what actually happened."

"And... you know this because of some kind of secret intelligence file?"

"No." He looked at her for a few seconds. "I know this because I was there."

She folded her arms in an attempt to look skeptical but her eyes betrayed her curiosity, he had her full attention.

"Back before I was a member of Intel Wing I served on a navy ship. I was a Third Lieutenant—barely had the copper emblem a month—and I was a pilot in training, the inexperienced green-shift officer who saw very little flying time but, regardless, had the helm when it all went down." He chose not to tell Summers about his relationship with the young operations. Thinking of Christine's warmth and kindness was far too painful, and none of Summers' damn business.

"I had only been on the ship for a few months and wasn't that well acquainted with most the people aboard. But I knew the XO, he'd sort of taken me under his wing. He used to teach at Camdale, where I went, and he liked to talk about home. We used to play cards and stuff. Anyway, this particular day both he and the CO were on duty to help us train. We felt like we were really getting the hang of it until we picked up that distress call."

He paused and sipped his water bottle, letting his eyes stare past Summers and the walls around him until they disappeared. He was there again, sitting at the helm, feeling a surge of energy as the XO ordered him to change course and go to condition one.

"We followed standard procedure," Calvin continued. "We did everything by the book, you would have been proud." He shook his head. "And as we approached, the CO had us run some scans and assess the situation while trying to contact the ship. The distress call was automated, coming from a large civilian transport called the Starweaver. She was adrift with several main systems offline but showed no external damage. We identified the ship as one that had gone missing two days before, but her present position was more than three clicks from her flight plan. And the number of life forms aboard was much less than what we’d been expecting.

"The ship answered our hails only once and the staticky garbled response was impossible to make out for sure. But to me it sounded like 'don't come after us, there's no one left,’ but I wasn't sure and I didn't speak up. The CO was a by the book kind of captain and demanded we respond, and we did. Once we were within ten-thousand kilometers we did a deep scan and found that all 37 life forms aboard were humanish... but there was something unusual about them. They had an elevated amount of certain hormones. The XO recognized what it meant and went into a ballistic panic. He ordered the ship to evacuate the region but the Captain overruled that command and told me to dock with the Starweaver. I'll never forget the way the William—the XO—looked at me. He begged me to withdraw the ship to a safe distance."

"So what'd you do?"

"I obeyed my captain. I was a green officer and knew what I was supposed to do, and I did it without hesitation. Will looked so betrayed. At that point he got desperate and ordered the defense officer to fire on the Starweaver. Which she didn't do, of course. The Captain had Will dismissed from the bridge and confined to quarters. As the marines dragged him away he screamed that we'd all die if we boarded that ship. Of course, no one believed him." As Calvin spoke he looked through the window of his memories with such clarity he saw the ghostly lights of the Trinity's bridge.

"We docked with the Starweaver and the Captain sent over medical teams and a small security detail to help bring everyone aboard without incident. We got word that their ship was smashed on the inside—like there'd been a fight, but no sign of an enemy boarding party. We found twenty-nine survivors and almost a hundred bodies before we pulled away—eight people had died since our original scan. The Captain had me set course for the nearest medical facility where we could drop off these refugees—it was twelve hours away. In the meantime, the survivors were put into our infirmary and our med staff was put on full activity. But we couldn’t get any information from our new passengers, they were in no shape to answer questions.

"For the first hour everything was fine, but then several systems started crashing. Doors wouldn't work. Lights flickered and died. And communication between decks became spotty and unreliable. A team was dispatched to the infirmary to make sure their systems had adequate power, but we lost contact with them and they never returned. A second group was sent and they vanished as well.

"At first we blamed it on the failing comms systems, but when no one returned to report, we got more than a little anxious. The captain sent half a platoon of soldiers to the infirmary where they came face-to-face with what was left of our medical staff and those we'd sent before, our friends and colleagues—I didn't see them, but I remember hearing the description over the radio. Bodies littered the floor, torn up and mutilated patternlessly. But the dead were the lucky ones. The living were in torturous agony as their bodies changed, transforming into vile murderous night creatures. And by the time we realized what we'd actually brought aboard, Strigoi... vampires, it was too late.

"The infection spread through the lower half of the ship like lightning and the captain sealed it off, forced to trap even normal humans in an effort to contain the threat. And those stuck below didn't have a chance. They screamed and screamed over the radio pleading for their lives and pounded against the doors until they succumbed to the contagion or died. After an hour we didn't hear them anymore. Just silence.

"At six hours out, the shield doors came unhinged and the creatures started pressing into the upper decks, their hunger and bloodlust barely abated. The captain ordered security checkpoints set up in every major corridor and he sealed off all the vital areas he could, like engineering and the bridge. Crews were ordered to hold their lines, hand to hand if necessary. But they had little chance. The fighting moved swiftly from deck to deck and when arms ran low we all realized we'd be dead soon.

Calvin stared into the wall, musing. "It's a strange thing, you know. To look at death face-to-face and know there's nothing you can do. Like a cold scythe curling around your neck, pulling you in. And do you know what my thoughts were?

Summers didn’t say anything.

“Selfish terror! I thought I was too young to die. And if I could save my skin I would, even if it meant leaving everyone else behind. I didn't care about duty or honor, I just wanted to live. But there was no chance for escape, and as our thoughts turned from fear of dying to the chance of becoming one of them... it was very tempting to use the last of our shots on ourselves. One man even did. I didn’t see him, he walked around the corner—then came the crack of his gun and the thud of his body, I …”

He paused for a minute, shaking his mind free from the images. “Anyway, what kept us going was the communiqué we received from an Intel Wing Cruiser with two companies of Special Forces soldiers. They told us help was on the way. We just had to keep it together a little bit longer.

"I was lucky I didn't see much of the action. But I could hear the screams echo in the shafts and down the corridors. And the eerie sound of fangs and claws scratching against bulkheads. The infection reached us just as we were making our emergency dock with the cruiser. The last strigoi who came at us..." Calvin choked. "I'm sure it was Will, or what was left of him. But the evil eyes glaring at us with prejudice weren't his. The real William was dead, and this husk that resembled him was a sick insult. My friend... with those sunken eyes, bloody tattered clothes, taut pale muscles, and dripping fangs was something else... and it was my job to shoot him... I was the only one with ammo left."

"But I hesitated. The others beat and clubbed him, and the captain took my gun and shot William over and over. But, before he died, he managed to bite the ops officer." Calvin’s eyes burned but he masked his emotions. "She was... a friend." Calvin shut his eyes, trying to block out the terrible image of dear Christine's face squeezed with agony as he watched her convulse and drop. And even worse than the crystal-perfect picture of her agony was the nagging certainty that it’d been his fault. He’d failed to act. And that had cost her… everything.

He cleared his throat. "The uh... Strigoi managed to bite the ops officer's wrist and she went unconscious. We tried to make a tourniquet around her wounded arm but we weren't doctors and we didn't do it right, or else we didn’t do it fast enough, either way the venom had spread too far by the time she could get proper treatment. Special Forces stormed the ship and took control, killing off every last Strigoi they could find and everyone turning into one. They cleared us one by one, checking us over thoroughly, before allowing us on board the other ship. My bitten friend was allowed aboard, because we believed an amputation could save her. That the tourniquet had trapped the venom. She was a fighter and didn't succumb to it, despite being unconscious. After we were evacuated they swept poison gas through the Trinity hoping to reclaim it, but new orders came down the line and they ended up destroying the ship. Shooting it until it was dust. By the time we got to the nearest medical facility there were only fifteen of us left from the Trinity, out of a crew of four hundred."

"And what became of your friend at Ops?"

"They hooked her up to all kinds of machines that kept the poison from overcoming her brain, but they could never manage to rid her systems of it or reverse her condition. Even with a complete blood transfusion. She spent weeks unconscious as our very best medicine tried to save her life against the most savage of toxins ever designed. Because strong pain medicines hindered the process she had to stay in horrible, horrible agony. Eventually, when it seemed the stalemate would have no end, they revived her to ask her what she wanted. She begged the doctors to end her life. I saw her face just before they did," Calvin recalled how gaunt and grey it'd turned. "She looked old, like the ordeal had aged her decades." His heart was crushed anew but again he would not show it to Summers. He’d loved Christine, and it was because of her, more than anything, that he hadn't seriously pursued any romantic relationship since. "Well... suffice it to say I'm not going to subject my crew to that."

When Commander Summers spoke, her tone was respectful and genuine, but still duty-driven. "With respect, sir, that is a very moving story. And I'm sorry for your loss. But you're letting your past experiences affect your judgment. You're too emotionally involved here and you're blurring the lines between different types of remorii."

"There is no line!" He stood up angrily. "They're all sick perversions of nature that have no right to exist!"

"You're saying that one modified human is exactly the same as another and they're all guilty by association. I don't believe in that and neither should you. Besides, the fellow stranded out there is only one person."

"He's not a person."

"He can't help what he is. We have a duty to do and a chance to save a life here."

"What if saving him means condemning fifty others to die?"

"Think about this, Calvin, this lycan is out here in the middle of nowhere, and alone, he might have valuable information."

Calvin seriously doubted this one had any information worth even five seconds of his time, and he really wasn’t interested in her moral argument. He didn’t consider himself an amoral person, he’d simply decided long ago that remorii weren’t human beings and didn’t deserve to be treated like human beings—they didn’t even deserve to exist. But Summers was right about one thing, he was letting his emotions affect his judgment. And he realized if he didn’t deal with this lycan, someone else would. Someone who wouldn’t understand the danger. He should destroy the ship. But, if he did, Summers would report that to the Fleet. And he didn't want to think of the consequences of that.

"All right, Commander, we'll respond to that signal. But we'll do it my way, and that means absolutely no objections from you—is that clear?"

"Yes. As long as you aren't careless I have no objections."

"Oh trust me," his eyes narrowed, "Careless is the last thing I’m going to be." He stood up and led the way back onto the bridge. "Sarah, full about and set a course for the stranded vessel’s position, and keep monitoring that distress call. We're going to pick up the remorii bastard after all."

Miles gave Calvin a look of surprise and made a whipping motion with his hand but Calvin ignored him and took his seat at the command position.

"E.T.A. nine minutes," said Sarah from the helm.

"Good." Calvin tapped the direct line to Special Forces headquarters at the bottom of the ship. "Major Jenkins, we'll be docking with a small craft in a little under ten minutes. There's only one person aboard but he's a remorii so use every precaution. Incapacitate him first and get him into the lock up. We'll question him after."

"Affirmative," the Major's deep voice came over the small speaker. "Just say the word."

"Incapacitate him?" Summers looked bewildered. "Shouldn't we at least talk to him?"

"Oh yes, absolutely we should," said Calvin. "But only after he's behind a forcefield."

She opened her mouth to retort but Calvin was quicker. "No objections," he reminded her. She closed her mouth and looked frustrated.

Once they were in range, Sarah answered all stop and connected to the tiny vessel. "Clamps are in place."

"Okay, Major, execute breach."

"Affirmative, breach in progress." They waited and after what felt like the slowest fifty seconds ever, the Major reported. "We’ve got him and all hands are back aboard."

"Good work. Lock him up and I'll meet you in holding." Calvin jumped up. "Sarah, get us back on course to Aleator, best speed and, Summers, you have the deck."