Gabe walked into the rig bay again, feeling as if it hadn’t been all that long since the last time that he’d been there. It had only been a handful of hours since the battle had taken place, and the techs were still swarming over the rigs that had been in the fight. Broken equipment was being switched out for fresh parts; battered armor was replaced by fresh metal. He watched as a group of techs worked to rip out a piece of shrapnel that had lodged itself in his CTR’s lower leg. Somehow, he hadn’t even noticed it. Maybe the interface had assessed it as non-critical, but the techs clearly did not agree.
He approached one of the techs, a harried looking woman that was directing her fellow workers like a general on a battlefield. She nodded to him as she spoke with a pair of tired technicians who were showing her something on a display.
“…Yeah, that launcher is done. Get it off the rig and replace it. We should have at least four of those things in Storage Nine, but if we don’t go talk to Chief Lyman over at Bay Four. He might have an extra or two.” She waved the technicians off, almost shooing them on their way, and then turned to him. “Captain Miller?”
Already knowing he wasn’t bringing good news, Gabe gave her a half-hearted smile. “I need Angel Squadron online and ready to move.”
The chief looked at him with a blank expression. “I understand, Captain. We’re going to have all of the rigs back online just as soon as we—”
“I need them now, Chief.” Gabe shook his head. “We have a priority mission. Everything else can wait.”
She stared at him for a moment. Then she sighed. “Should have known that was going to be how today would turn out.” The chief pulled out a small display and tapped a few controls. “I can get you out of the bay within the next thirty minutes, but you’re going to need to be careful. Angel-Four took some bad shots to their launchers, Three has a hole clear through one arm, and Two might need a wholesale replacement for their rifle.”
Gabe winced. Not the best list of things to rush, both on a tactical and personal level. Pain was a way that the BCI told its users that the rig was in danger; piloting an already damaged rig was going to hurt quite a bit. “How bad is my rig?”
“A bit of shrapnel damage, some blast scarring along the front.” She tapped at her display a little more. “Some impacts on a tetherdrive binder. Was going to replace it in case there’s damage we couldn’t see, but that would cost us at least three more hours. If you want out of here sooner, you’ll need to treat the acceleration a bit carefully.”
“Thank you Chief.” Gabe turned back to the rig as she strode off, shouting. The scars his rig had taken gave it a severe, almost barbaric appearance. He just hoped that it wouldn’t suggest to the strangers that they might as well turn on the Wayfarers when they were weak. With everything else that had been happening, the last thing the fleet needed was another enemy.
“Going out again, Angel Boy?”
Gabe froze for a moment and then forced himself to relax. Speaking of the last thing he needed… “Hello, Ms. Nakani.”
When he turned around, he saw Nakani leaning with her back against the wall of the rig bay. She gave him a little wave, and he nearly groaned. The look on her face did not promise good things. “Yes, Ms. Nakani? How can I help you?”
“Oh my, how polite! I can see that I’ve almost got you properly trained.” Nakani’s smile broadened. “And this time, it’s not about what you can do for me, it’s about what I can do for you.”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Nakani, but I’m kind of in the middle of something.” Gabe folded his arms. “Whatever you want to talk to me about can wait until I’ve gotten back.”
Nakani rolled her eyes and pushed herself off of the wall. “That’s not any way to treat someone you owe a favor to, right? Besides, I’m just trying to make good on a debt here.”
Gabe blinked. “A debt? I thought I was the one who owed you.”
“Twice. You owe me twice.”
“I don’t care!” Gabe threw his hands up in the air. “I’m not the one who made the rules for this stupid game you’re playing!”
The mercenary raised her eyebrows. “A game, huh? You obviously aren’t paying close enough attention.” She leaned in and poked two fingers into his chest. “I take debts very seriously, Angel Boy. That’s something you should always remember. Understand?”
Gabe stepped back, rubbing his chest. “Fine, fine. I owe you, and apparently you owe me—though I don’t understand why we don’t just cancel out one of the favors I owe you.”
“Because then we’d all drink less.” Nakani spread her arms wide. “At least, that’s how we’d normally handle it. Here aboard this damned teetotaler convention, I’ve had to improvise.”
Feeling a headache building between his eyes, Gabe put and hand to his temple and tried not to grit his teeth. “Ms. Nakani. What. Do. You. Want?”
“As long as you ask me so nicely, I guess I’ll tell you.” Nakani folded her hands behind her back and straightened. She started to pace around the corridor as if she were a Directorate officer on a bridge somewhere. “I’ve heard you are heading out on yet another long-range scouting mission. One where you might run into these Wild Colony folks again?”
Gabe shook his head. How she’d managed to hear about the mission when he and Susan had just made the decision seemed odd. Perhaps she’d somehow made friends on the Concord’s bridge? “We think that the signal is coming from the strangers, not the Wild Colony task force.”
“Well, the last time we thought that, we got ambushed.” Nakani held up a hand to stop his defensive response. “We could always be luckier this time, but it could just as easily be the bad guys trying to lure us out so they can cut us to pieces. There’s no guarantees, right?”
He grunted. “I suppose that would be correct.”
She grinned widely, like a cat with a rather unfortunate fish in front of her. “In fact, there’s a lot of different possibilities out there. The strangers and the Wild Colonies could be working together. The strangers could just want to make sure we are still here. The Wild Colonies have found the signal too, and are racing us to get there. All kinds of things could be out there.”
“We’re trying to cover all kinds of possibilities, Ms. Nakani.” Gabe nodded back to his rig. “It’s why we are leading with CTRs rather than the scout rigs.”
“True.” Nakani nodded absently. “So you’d be ready in case it turned out to be the enemy. You could fight your way back to the fleet. Hopefully.”
Gabe nodded. “That’s correct.”
“Even though they’ve already shown that they could ambush you from beyond your range. And then pick you apart while you try to get close.”
He paused. An unpleasant hunch started to form in the back of his mind. “I’m…sure that we could improvise.”
Nakani’s eyes glimmered with a hint of triumph. “Of course you would. I mean, you already have come up with something using an SAR to catapult you forward, but I’m sure your CTRs could manage something close to it.” At that moment, another bit of shrapnel came free of his rig’s shoulder, along with a sudden rain of sparks. The techs began shouting and dancing back, trying to avoid the rain of metal and electrical discharges.
Gabe looked from the rig back to Nakani. He was losing the battle to avoid gritting his teeth. “I’m sure we will, Ms. Nakani. We Wayfarers make do. We’ll handle it.”
“Right.” Nakani gave him a flat stare. “Combat aside, of course, I’m sure you’ve made all kinds of plans. For instance, you’ve probably already planned what you’ll do if that signal turns out to be a distress call.”
He blinked, thrown off a bit by the words. Would his flight be able to help the strangers if they really needed help? Maybe if they had a ship that needed to be moved, or rigs that needed to be recovered? It only took a glance back at his rig to tell him the answer to that.
When he looked back at Nakani again, he found her grinning again. His next words felt like they needed to be dragged out. “Just what are you suggesting, Ms. Nakani?”
“Just Nakani, if you don’t mind. We’re pals, after all.” Nakani grinned. “I think that your little mission might benefit from having someone with a bit more…experience along. Someone with no weapons, maybe, but an awful lot of tetherdrive capacity.” She put her hands on her hips and leaned forward. “My pilots were out there already, during the battle, but we weren’t taking the hits you guys were. I bet we could beat you into space if we needed to.”
Gabe stared at her. “You’ll be flying an unarmed rig into hostile territory. I can’t guarantee you’ll make it back alive.”
“As if you can guarantee that you will make it back alive?” Nakani laughed. “Nothing’s certain, Angel Boy, but I’ll give you credit for trying. If you decide to take us along, at least. If you don’t, all bets are off.”
He watched her for a moment longer, looking for something he could use to help him understand. Finally, he gave up. “Why? You aren’t a Wayfarer, and you definitely aren’t some Directorate pilot. Why put yourself at risk for us?”
She blinked. The grin slowly slid off her face, and she looked away. “I mean, I could say a bunch of stuff to answer that, Angel Boy. It’s not like I can live if the rest of you get killed, so anything that helps you guys technically helps me. I could even say that I just want to fly. You know, easy stuff to understand.”
Then she looked back at Gabe, and her eyes burned for a second. “They took Rodrigo. Hope-Nine. Remember him?” When Gabe nodded, she continued in a low, lethal voice. “I thought that he’d just gotten himself killed. So it goes, just the facts of life. Then I heard him.”
Gabe drew back slightly. “What? When? Does he need help?”
“I think he’s past that now.” She shook her head. “His voice was on the channel during the fight. It was part of that screaming that was jamming everything.”
He felt a chill. His mind went back over the screaming again as he tried to decide if he had recognized the voices of his own missing pilots in that jumble of chaos and static. “So they took him.”
Nakani nodded. “Yeah, they did.” She looked away again. “I guess you could say I am doing it for him. Because if we hadn’t signed up to bother you bunch, he wouldn’t have been out here to get taken like that. And cause as irritating as you fun-killers are, you’re better captors than whatever is waiting out there.”
Then she turned her eyes back on him, and her smile was back. Sharper than before, and with a hint of anger still lingering in the backs of her eyes, but once again a wall between her and the rest of the universe. “Plus, it’s just good business to cross off that many debts. One I owe you, one you owe me, and one I owe Rodrigo. You see?”
Gabe nodded slowly. He glanced back at the rig bay, where the technicians were still hard at work. “We’ll leave in roughly forty minutes. If you can be ready by then, you’re welcome along with us.”
“Deal, then.” She stuck out her hand, and Gabe took it, after a small hesitation. Her grin only widened. “There, that wasn’t so hard, was it? We’ll make a proper gambler out of you yet, Angel Boy.”
“Fat chance, Ms. Nakani.” She stuck out her tongue, and Gabe rolled his eyes as she turned and walked away. Still, as he turned back to his own machine, he felt a faint flicker of hope. Perhaps the Lord was sending him something to lighten the load now.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Either that, or he was going to need all the help he could get with what he would find in a few hours. He’d know soon enough. Until then, all he could do was have patience.
Susan stood in front of the doorway and waited.
She was once again escorted by Corporal Shen, who stood behind her with arms crossed. Two more members of the Concord’s security forces were standing on either side of the hatch, waiting for her to approach. They were getting impatient; despite their best efforts, the Wayfarers had never really mastered Directorate levels of discipline, and both of them kept peeking at her when they thought she wasn’t looking.
Their nervousness was probably justified. After all, they didn’t know why she had called for Captain Wong to be escorted aboard, and they were sure that an Admiral should have something better to do than wait outside a prisoner’s compartment. Of course, they didn’t know that the only other thing currently on her list was watching Gabriel throw himself into the unknown again.
Susan suppressed the frustration and anger she felt at that. Her logical side told her it was the right move. Any commander needed to be able to risk the assets at her disposal to accomplish the mission, and making contact with the strangers would be crucial to the fleet’s survival, now more than ever. Yet she just wished that there was some other option than shoving Gabriel into the fire every time the fleet needed something.
Still, the delay had been long enough. She gestured to the guards and waited as one of them unlocked the hatch and checked inside. When Shen started forward, she motioned for him to stand back. The corporal studied her for a moment, and then nodded. Then she strode through the hatch alone, while the Wayfarers sealed it shut behind her.
It was a familiar scene, though Commander Hummel was now absent. Captain Wong was once again waiting for her, sitting at a table. He had a slightly listless air about him which disappeared when he looked up. Instead, his eyes lit with that same familiar dislike. She waited while he rose from his chair in respect, acknowledging him with a calm nod of the head. “Captain. Thank you for meeting me.”
A slight hint of amusement filtered in through Wong’s expression. “It was not an invitation I was able to turn down, Admiral.” He glanced past her at the hatch. “Your bodyguard is not accompanying you today?”
Susan shook her head. “No. I decided that our conversation was best kept private.”
Wong stared at her silently for a moment. “If you believe my answer will change without our subordinates present, then you are mistaken.”
If it had, then Captain Wong would not have been the man that she believed him to be. Not for the first time, she wished Nevlin had fallen into her hands instead—for multiple reasons—but she put aside that dream. “That was not what I was hoping for, Captain. After all, in your own way, you are following the path of duty and honor.”
He tilted his head slightly. Though his expression remained formal, she could tell that he disliked hearing those words from her. “Then may I ask what we have to discuss, Admiral?”
A fair question. She had spent the last hour turning over the thoughts in her mind, searching for what to say, but nothing had come yet. Still, she had no intention of giving up now. Susan folded her hands behind her back and spoke in a low, even voice. “Captain, you remember I had asked you for certain information the last time I was here. My hope is that your duty to those you served with would compel you to provide me with that information, particularly after that last attack.”
Wong fixed her with a determined look. “The risk remains that you would sell that information to provide your own people with safety while endangering the Known Worlds. I cannot surrender those details under such circumstances.”
“Sell the information? How?” Susan arched an eyebrow at him, willing her features to remain calm. “In case you were not informed, there was no negotiation, no demands for surrender from our current enemies. Only an ambush. We could not even trade the information for our lives if we wanted to, Captain.”
The Directorate officer’s face remained firm, as if cast in iron. “You are still an enemy of the Known Worlds. I cannot assist you.”
“Even when you are preserving the lives of your own crews by doing so? I can guarantee that the Wayfarers have no interest in attacking the Known Worlds or the Directorate. All they ever wanted was peace. We were not enemies until we were made so out of need. Can you justify dooming all of us to death just because of your own pride?”
He did not respond. Instead, he pointedly turned his face away, though not before Susan had seen another small reaction. This time, his eyes had flickered with more than just anger, however. She’d seen a glimmer of triumph, ugly and bitter. Clearly, he expected the Wild Colonies to kill them, but a part of him apparently seemed to want that result. Why?
Susan grimaced and looked away. There had to be some way to get around his defenses, some way to convince him to speak. There was too much at stake to allow one officer to stand in the way. What was driving him? Perhaps it was only logical that he hated her. After all, he’d served with Nevlin. The odious man had probably filled Wong’s ears with all sorts of tales about her treachery.
The memory of the man who’d betrayed her in the Directorate and abandoned Wong to his fate still rankled. She tried again, hoping to avoid the thought of the repulsive fool. “Your stubbornness is not serving anyone, Captain. If you provide me with the information we need, I give you my word that I will never turn against the Known Worlds, or use that information against their survival. Your enemy is my enemy now. You can trust me on that.”
He turned back to her, the contempt almost plain on his face. “I will never trust someone who betrayed their oath to the Directorate, Admiral.”
The response stunned her slightly. As he looked away again, his face settled back into a more neutral expression. His posture reminded Susan of when she had confronted him on the burning remnants of his bridge. He had been ready to die on that bridge; of that fact, she had no doubt. Only the safety of his fellow Directorate personnel had kept him from doing so. Apparently, that gesture had stretched his ironclad honor as far as it would go. Susan tried not to judge him harshly. As a former Directorate officer herself, she knew how much even that had cost him, and in any case, Captain Wong had not betrayed his subordinates and fled.
That fact brought her train of thought to a halt. She studied him for a few moments longer. His expression didn’t change, and he ignored her with blatant disdain. From what she’d seen of him, Wong was an honorable man, one who kept his own code of conduct despite the occasionally toxic nature of command in the military of the Known Worlds. His sense of honor had somehow survived, despite Nevlin’s treachery. Would that same honor have held if Nevlin had ordered him to butcher the Wayfarers after they’d surrendered? Did Captain Wong have a line he would have refused to cross?
Susan spoke, trying to keep her words neutral. “Tell me, Captain, do you still consider me a traitor?”
If Wong had been taken off guard by the question, he gave no sign of it. At most, his nostrils flared slightly, and anger burned in his eyes. “You are a disgrace.”
He fell silent again, as if he hated the fact that she’d drawn even that much from him. Susan met that smoldering gaze and smiled. “If anyone was betrayed, Captain Wong, it was me. We both know by whom.”
Wong glared at her. More words ground out of him, delivered in that same voice. “Empty words. You turned on us.”
“The Directorate turned on me. On all of us.” Susan shivered internally at the rage in those eyes. It was almost enough to convince her to call Shen and the others in. Then an idea occurred to her. “Just like it has turned on you.”
He stared at her in surprise, his mask of anger breaking for the first time since the surrender. Then he made a sound that was half-snarl and half-laugh. “The Directorate betrayed me? What kind of lies do you think I would believe?”
Susan kept her voice level. “I have not lied to you, Captain. I do not need to.”
She turned away for a moment, drawing out a display device. It took her a moment before she could pull up the records, but she found what she was looking for quickly enough. With a feeling of triumph, she slid it across the table to where Wong sat, and waited until he looked down at it.
The device showed a miniature star map that was burned into her memory, one she’d never been able to forget, no matter how hard she tried. Wong’s gaze was locked on the map. His brow furrowed for a heartbeat, and then his eyes widened in recognition.
“Good. You’ve studied it.” Susan waited another heartbeat, and icons representing ships appeared. Red figures depicted the positions of the pirates that had once infested Riaskat. The few scattered points of blue light were the task force the Directorate had sent to wipe them out. As Wong watched, the battle started as the red ships swarmed out to meet the isolated blue forces, sweeping across the system in a bloody wave. It played out in accelerated time, with the recording condensing days and weeks down to seconds and minutes.
Lights flickered and disappeared as the two sides began to trade blows. Susan drew in a breath and held it as the one representing the cruiser Peleus vanished. Many of her friends, including Narissa Paxon, had been on that ship. None had survived. Then she looked back up at Wong and forced herself to speak and ignore the terrible memories playing out before her.
“They were waiting for us at Riaskat. Everyone knew it after the fact, but we did not. Our ships were surrounded, outnumbered. Panic spread through our ranks. We were dying.”
Wong glanced up at her, his gaze suddenly uncertain, and then he looked away. He had to know where she was going now, though she doubted he knew why. At least, he had not yet admitted it to himself.
“There was a point where everything seemed lost. Half our ships were destroyed or crippled. Our only rig carrier had been destroyed before she could launch anything, and the pirates were closing in. No reinforcements were coming, and they’d damaged our resonance drive. We could not escape.” Susan paused, those desperate memories flashing before her eyes as she watched the task force fall apart from the bridge of the flagship. “And then…”
“Admiral Nevlin saved you.” There was no conviction in Wong’s words. It seemed as if he was speaking to try to cut her short rather than prove a point.
Susan had no plans to accommodate him. “Theodore Nevlin sat crying on the bridge until he locked himself in his stateroom. He had to be restrained before he could reach an escape pod.”
Wong flinched at the edge in her words, an edge Susan knew it would be useless to try to avoid. She remembered her outrage at her superior officer. He’d wanted to escape, to run before the fleet had even formed up for cascade. His expression when he’d been told the system was inoperable had been all she needed to recognize him as a coward. She’d been the only officer left on the bridge when she saw the opening; the executive officer and half of her staff had gone to confine Nevlin. There’d been no time to consult with anyone. The orders had to go out.
“I was the one who saved us, Captain. It was my command that brought us out of Riaskat.” Susan looked back down at the screen. She saw the Directorate ships burst into a frantic maneuver. Pirate craft had scattered in surprise as the cruisers drove a wedge through their ranks. Their attempted pursuit ran straight into overlapping fields of fire as the cruisers formed up and doubled back. The remaining flecks of blue retreated in the chaos, going dark to avoid detection.
When she lifted her eyes, Wong had turned away from her. She knew he could see it, the moment she’d taken command. The difference between Nevlin’s incompetence and her own skill was too great for him to deny. Not when he’d seen the contrast firsthand.
“I led them, all of them, for the next seven weeks. I gave the orders while Nevlin stayed locked in his rooms. The orders were given in his name, because we all knew what would happen to the other ships if they knew he’d fallen apart. We had to preserve morale, hold off the enemy until help came.”
The flecks continued to meet each other over the accelerated time, showing battle after bloody battle. Susan ignored it, knowing the memories would be waiting for her in her dreams, and leaned forward. “And when I got back, they were waiting.”
She let the silence weigh on him for a moment before she continued. “We were separated for debriefing. It was necessary for security reasons, we were told. I was informed I was to speak to no one, not even my fellow survivors.”
“The next time I saw them, it was at my court martial.”
Wong’s head jerked up, and she smiled bitterly at him. “I was to be exiled, Captain. Dismissed from the service, and shamed for my cowardice during the battle. The other officers from our flagship testified against me, one by one, until Nevlin himself took the stand. Any defense I could have made was hopeless. The only reason I wasn’t executed was likely because those few officers who’d survived with me would have found their honor and told the truth, otherwise. As it was, many of them were forced out of the service in less dramatic fashion for their defiance.”
“They could have been telling the truth already.” Wong sounded as if he were speaking despite a terrible wound. He still did not meet her eyes. “Why should I trust anything you say? Especially now, when you’ve betrayed your oath to serve and fought against the Directorate?”
“Because that fate was exactly what lay in store for you, Captain.”
He met her eyes at last, his face going pale with shock.
Susan gestured again, and the Battle of Riaskat faded. It was replaced by the battle they’d just fought, the one that had ended with Wong’s surrender. “Do you really think that a man like Nevlin would permit you to give any account of your service here? After what you’d heard me say?”
Wong’s face darkened. “He couldn’t have kept everything quiet. The entire bridge heard…” Realization dawned.
“That’s right.” Susan waved her hand, and the image disappeared. “He would have gone after them, too. Their families, their friends, any leverage he could brandish or buy, until they’d all betrayed you, or been cast out themselves. In the end, it would have come to the same conclusion. A scapegoat, someone to carry the burden while the Directorate preserved their hero.”
She looked around the room again, straightening her uniform. “You want to preserve your honor, to avoid becoming like me? To not be branded a traitor and a disgrace? Too late.” Susan leaned in, placing both hands on the table. “You are already branded. You are already disgraced. The first words out of Nevlin’s mouth the instant he returns to the Known Worlds will be a carefully prepared story about a mutiny and a treacherous subordinate. Anything else would require him to have the bravery to face the consequences of his failure—and if there is anything we both know, it is that he lacks the courage to even approach that task.”
Susan pushed up off of the table and stepped toward the door. “So continue in your silence, Captain, if you wish. Continue hiding what you know, and continue to make it harder for me to preserve all of our lives. But do not continue to tell yourself it is because you hate me, or because your honor demands you to let us all die. The truth is, you know very well you aren’t punishing us by your actions. You’re punishing yourself, and anyone close enough to get caught in the blast radius.”
A wave of the hand opened the door, and she stepped out. Wong was staring at his hands when she closed it again. Better to let him stew than to give him the chance to shout back at her. The denial would come, but it would be harder to convince himself if he was left with his doubt and his memories. She could only hope he would emerge from that terrible struggle willing to work with her, for all their sakes.
As the hatch sealed behind her, Susan Delacourt started down the corridor toward the bridge. Gabriel would be nearly to the target by now, and she wanted to be there when he reported in. There was too much work to be done, and she knew exactly where her duty lay.