Gabe soared through space.
There was nothing around him but vacuum. Even the distant stars seemed to be little more than a dull shimmer in the void. He couldn’t detect any planets, asteroids or other craft. His comm array was silent; there were no incoming signals, and something told him there never would be.
He felt…uneasy. Normally, the chance to enjoy a patrol alone was a rare treat. This time it was different somehow. There seemed to be no power in his flight, as if he was just hurtling along without any choice. The solitude was suffocating.
Desperation welled up in Gabe with all the force of an internal geyser. He cleared his throat to open his communications. “Angel Lead to Command. Do you read me?”
No response. He tried again, fighting to keep his voice even. “Angel Lead to Command. Derek, anyone, do you read?” Silence. “Susan, where are you?”
There was a whisper on the back of his neck. He froze, feeling a sudden bolt of terror. When he turned, something out of a nightmare waited for him.
It looked more like a monster than a ship. The twisted leviathan appeared to claw its way through space above him, burrowing through the void on some malevolent mission. Gabe had seen it before, but never this close. He almost thought he could see faces screaming in the fluctuations in its shields. Each spike and talon seemed to reach for him.
Acting on pure instinct, he tried to bring up his rifle. The aliens had never seemed hostile to him before, but the way they had taken apart the Imperious meant he couldn’t take the chance. No matter what, he couldn’t be captured by them. Who knew what they would…
His hand was empty. Worse, it was his hand, his bare hand. It should have been the metal frame of his CTR, guided by his thoughts while he half-slept inside the protection of the gravitic cocoon in the rig’s chest. When Gabe looked down, he saw only his flight suit. To his horror, he began to pivot in place, turning the distant stars into dim streaks. His spin accelerated, spinning him faster and faster. Panic seized him, and his breath came up short. He was defenseless, and darkness clawed at the edges of his vision.
His view of the ship distorted as the light began to fade. It grew even more monstrous, with a gaping maw that threatened to swallow him. Gabe thrashed, trying to escape. They were going to take him. He was—
Awake. He jerked in the chair and banged his knee against the lower surface of the desk in front of him. It sent a sharp stab of pain through his leg, and he bent over the desk a bit and groaned. One of the few other people in the archives glared in his direction for a moment before they went back to studying the information on their own desk.
Gabe took a few moments to steady his breathing and calm his heartbeat. Lord knew how he had managed to fall asleep in the intelligence section, but it probably wouldn’t make him any friends within IntCent. He turned his attention back to the screen and punched a button, trying to hunch down and avoid eye contact with anyone else.
Not that it was entirely his fault. The IntCent personnel had been as determined as they were diligent. He’d been answering their questions and going over the available data on the strangers for nearly four hours. By the time they had let him leave and search for data on his own, the ship’s clock was already showing deep into the ‘night’ cycle. Gabe had ignored the time, intending to pour over the data he’d requested until he’d found an answer to the problems he'd faced. Sleep had taken him instead.
“Good dreams, Captain?”
Gabe jumped again, banging his knee a second time. It wasn’t any better than the first. Still, he gritted his teeth and half turned. “Admiral Delacourt, I’m surprised to see you here.”
Susan’s smile was completely professional, a brief moment of amusement before her expression closed down into formality. He had to look in her eyes to see the glimmer of affection and humor lurking there. “So I see.”
She glanced around the room, well-concealed amusement still leaking through as she studied their surroundings. “Have you taken to spending your time here, then? I had some difficulty tracking you down.”
“I doubt that.” He hadn’t figured out everything about how she could appear and disappear at will, but he already knew that if there were any secrets at all onboard the Concord, she would be the first to find them. Gabe noted the quiet presence of a bodyguard lurking in the background; she was actually here in person. “Just looking for a new room to hide out in, Admiral?”
“An admiral has no need to hide from anyone, Captain.” She glanced at him, and her eyes sparked with more humor. Then she looked past him, to where his screen was still flickering. “Reports from the Surveyor? I would have expected you to be going over the information on the aliens.”
“Strangers. And no.” Gabe waved a hand, trying to dismiss the ache still running through his knee. “IntCent gave me plenty of time to work on that information already. Thanks.”
“So I heard.” She repeated the words with a particular sense of irony, and Gabe grimaced. “I don’t know how you’ve managed it, but it appears you have made a lot of friends here, Captain.”
“Friends?” Gabe stared at her incredulously.
“Of course. Why do you think they keep calling you down here?” Susan saw his expression and snorted softly. “Commander Michaels has been very enthusiastic about your insights during their threat assessments. She has said that you are a very capable intelligence officer. I believe she mentioned transferring you from your rig to work here full time.”
Something of his horror must have shown on his face, because Susan gave a cough that was suspiciously like a chuckle. Gabe had to fight down a laugh of his own. Indignation and a kind of self-aggrandizing amusement ran through him. He didn’t know what kind of friends tortured their buddies the way that IntCent had been raking him over the coals lately, but he couldn’t imagine a worse fate. “Well, I hope that you were able to convince her otherwise, Admiral.”
“I did ask her to share you with the rest of us on occasion, at least. She may have trouble doing so once your rigs begin more active patrols, however.” Susan’s smile faded a little as her eyes returned to the screen. “I admit I am surprised at your choice of reading, however. Not quite as adventurous as usual for you.”
“Hard to adventure on an empty stomach.” Gabe shrugged.
Susan glanced at the others in the room and then raised an eyebrow at him. “We aren’t quite in danger of that yet.”
Gabe noted the careful way she phrased those words and nodded quickly. The last thing the rest of the fleet needed was to hear him being gloomy about their prospects of survival. “Actually, I think our latest scouting missions might have turned up something that could help with that.”
She nodded in return. “Yes. The reports of the possible fuel sources near the gas giant. They should be enough to refine the fuel needed to send out more patrols again.”
“Not just that.” Gabe glanced back at the screen and started punching in commands. He brought up the latest reports from the RSR flights. “They picked up signs of a comet nearby. Lots of ice we could use there.”
“As long as the Fountain’s purification equipment remains undamaged enough, yes.” Susan’s eyes flickered with interest; water was, of course, harder to do without than food. “How far would we need to go to chase down this comet?”
“The patrols have it passing by the second gas giant in a couple of days—more than enough time for us to set up shop and pull fuel from it. I’d say that refilling the canteen would be more than worth the delay, don’t you think?”
“As you say, Captain Miller.” Susan tilted her head to the side, her eyes still on Gabe’s screen. “I will bring it up with the Council and your father immediately.”
“Of course, Admiral.” With a rising amount of confidence, Gabe continued entering commands. “As for the food situation, do any of the captured ships still have an…ARX-DR10 processor? I think it is some kind of replacement part equipment, but some of the pieces look like they could fit into the hydroponics sections aboard Harvest. Might get some of their farms up and running again.”
Susan broke off her study of the screen to give him a brief search. “You’ve been working hard on this, haven’t you? I heard mention of that equipment, but we haven’t been able to find it aboard any of them. Apparently, we mauled them just as badly as they did us.”
He grimaced. “Well, at the very least, we can try. Could give us a lot more leeway with supplies.”
“Very true.” She cocked her head to one side and smiled again, a little more softly than before. “Did you find anything in the Surveyor’s data, then? Perhaps IntCent could spare you a little to go visit them.”
Gabe blinked. At the very least it would get him out of some of his meetings. “Sounds good to me. I haven’t seen anything so far, but every eye could help, right?”
“Absolutely, Captain.” She leaned in close for a moment, her hand on his arm. “Thank you.”
He felt a brief burst of accomplishment that ran through him as she straightened up again. “Any time, Admiral.” Gabe watched her leave the compartment before turning back to the data with renewed purpose. Perhaps it wasn’t all just a desperate attempt to look busy after all.
Susan left IntCent feeling a measure of incredulity. She never would have expected Gabriel to have devoted himself to the study of logistics, of all things. The man had always been an inveterate rig pilot, almost offended at any attempt to compel him to act as an officer rather than a frontline warrior. Whatever had finally convinced him was an unexpected blessing.
She couldn’t quite shake a feeling of discomfort, however. If the problems the fleet was facing were blatant enough to pry his head out of a rig, were they just as obvious to the rest of the Wayfarers?
As she strode through the corridor on the way back to the OMNI chamber, she noted her bodyguard Corporal Shen had once again fallen in beside her. It still seemed odd to have someone accompanying her, especially after so much time using OMNI to transmit her projection, but she accepted it as a security measure. Not that she expected any of the Wayfarer crew to turn on her, but surprises could always happen.
Her mind was still turning over that thought, half in amusement, when she turned the corner and came to a dead stop.
Captain Arland Schreiber was standing in the middle of the corridor ahead of her.
More accurately, the avatar that OMNI used to communicate directly with her was standing there, looking for all the world like an actual person. He wore a Directorate uniform a handful of centuries out of date, and his bluff face was a testament to both his uncompromising demeanor and the shrewd intelligence that had driven him. The records from his time were fragmentary, but they all spoke of a man dedicated to the war against the Wild Colonies.
Susan was used to the avatar, despite the shiver of discomfort that went through her sometimes when it was around. There was an eerie sort of humanity to the thing, though that was an obvious simulation. No one had been foolish enough to trust actual artificial intelligences after the Burning Times, and if one had been installed aboard the Concord, someone would have found and destroyed it long ago.
What she was unused to, however, was seeing the avatar outside the OMNI chamber. In fact, she was fairly certain it had never happened before. She did not find the new development charming in the least.
Schreiber’s eyes locked onto her. The avatar studied her for a moment, and yet another shiver went through her as she mentally compared his features to those of his distant descendant, Hartwinn Schreiber, the current Keeper onboard the Compass. There was no trace of Hartwinn’s bookishness in Arland’s posture or expression, but some part of the family resemblance showed through, anyway. Perhaps it was only in the shape of his jaw, or the way he seemed to claim ownership of the Concord simply by being in it. It was curious to wonder if that came from an inherited arrogance or simple assertiveness.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Admiral Delacourt.”
“OMNI.” She still refused to pretend the avatar was human, no matter how it appeared. “I’m surprised to see you here.”
“I am capable of limited projection outside the OMNI chamber.”
“Of course.” It made sense. After all, that was how she had been ‘traveling’ to many of the ships in the fleet lately. “Do you have something to report?”
“Interference and subversion routines have been detected within the fleet. It is advised that we place our ships on a high state of alert. Identification of the intrusion assets must be given the highest priority, with rapid quarantine measures put in place once they are located.”
“Interference? Subversion routines?” The vocabulary seemed…familiar somehow. She couldn’t quite recall where she had heard it before, but it did even less to put her at ease. “I haven’t received any reports about any disturbances.”
“No reports will be made.” The avatar made a dismissive gesture. “Intrusion assets are experts at infiltration. There is a limited amount of time before significant portions of the fleet are compromised.”
Concern began to fill her as she considered the avatar. The way it was speaking did not give her a feeling of confidence. Were the thing human, she might have even called it paranoid. A human officer spiraling into conspiracy theories and instability was a bad enough situation. In a supposedly secure computing system, archaic and somehow advanced enough to be poorly understood, it was far more worrisome. Perhaps this was the reason that the OMNI system had been left unused and forgotten for so long?
“OMNI, run a system diagnostic. For the sake of…system security and integrity.” She tried to keep her voice even and undisturbed. Susan was not entirely sure what triggers the avatar might read in her expression, but she was fairly certain that it would react badly if it realized that she was considering shutting it down.
“Diagnostics running.” The avatar folded its arms across its chest. If anything, its expression seemed even more cross than usual. “It is a waste of resources and squanders valuable time, Admiral. The threat to the fleet is real. Subspace transmissions were detected, with a focus on this fleet. Response echoes were detected as well. The enemy has placed an agent within us.”
Susan frowned. She had never heard of subspace echoes or anything of the like, but it sounded entirely too much like what the technicians had talked about when they were attempting to figure out how OMNI worked. Could the system pick up on signals that the rest of the fleet was simply ill-equipped to intercept? Or was this simply a figment of the system’s electronic imagination? “What enemy are you talking about? The Directorate? Captain Gabriel’s strangers?”
A flash of irritation crossed the avatar’s face. “No, Admiral. The Directorate is not the enemy. These newcomers are not the enemy. There is only one enemy, and they are coming.”
Susan tilted her head. It took everything she had to not tap her foot impatiently. “Who is coming, OMNI?”
“The Wild Colonies, Admiral.” The avatar fixed her with a cold stare, Arland Shreiber’s eyes lethally intent. She felt an entirely new tremor of fear run through her, unrelated to the system’s impersonation of an actual human being. “They have found us…and they are coming.”
“Is this possibility likely, Admiral?” Clark Miller’s kind eyes were worried now, but he retained much of his calm demeanor. Without it, Susan was relatively certain that the war council she had convened would already have started to fall apart at the statement that she had just delivered. “The Wild Colonies are not a threat to ignore, but I do not know how they could have tracked us out here. Surely even the Directorate would have a difficult time finding us now.”
“I’m not sure, Speaker.” Susan used that honorific carefully; it always helped shore up her authority among the other Wayfarers to give appropriate respect to the leader of their cause. It was increasingly difficult not to see him as just Gabriel’s father, but appearances needed to be maintained. “The OMNI system has been crucial to our efforts to guide and protect the fleet, especially during the combat against the Directorate forces, but much of how it works remains unknown. I am not entirely sure how much we can trust its assessment of the situation.”
The others in the meeting seemed dissatisfied with the response, a fact that Susan could easily understand. The OMNI system had been able to provide a small summary of the signals that it had intercepted, but was unable to condense them into an explanation that anyone short of a theoretical physicist could understand. By the end, the avatar had seemed almost as frustrated as she had been.
It did not help that the number of officers in the room had grown considerably. The end of the fight against the Directorate had resulted in several destroyed Wayfarer ships and the loss of the veteran officers aboard them, but seven Directorate capital ships had survived the battle and were now under the control of the Wayfarers. The new officers were newcomers, often promoted from among the crews of the escort craft or the executive officers from the surviving original Wayfarer defense fleet. In more relaxed times, she would have preferred to delay including them until they had finished shaking down their ships.
That was not an option, however, nor had it been possible to allow the captured Directorate crews to handle the ships on their own. Unlike the ships captured from Bennett Securities, the Directorate ships had been virtually impossible to disarm, and the Directorate crews would have presented a terrible security risk if left on their own vessels. Instead, Susan had ordered them shifted over to the barely functional Achilles and Phorcys, leaving the more intact Leonteus, Odysseus, Antiphus, and Ajax in the hands of inexperienced skeletons crews. The captains of those crews looked even more uncertain and unhappy than their more experienced companions—not that most of them were thrilled with the situation.
Gabriel raised his hand before the muttering among the officers could grow. “Was OMNI at least able to tell us where the infiltrators are? If we had that much, we could at least check things out. Narrowing it all down could help us figure out if we can trust it in the future.”
There was a murmur of agreement among the others, but Susan shook her head. “Apparently these subspace echoes are very difficult to narrow down—a fact that the Wild Colonies apparently use to their advantage. It is the first I have ever heard of it, however.”
Colonel McCallister, the Wayfarer saddled with supervising the mercenaries on the Penance, grunted. “I would have expected a Directorate officer to be more familiar with their enemies than that, Admiral.”
Susan eyed the Wayfarer officer carefully. McCallister was a dependable officer, so the critique was not quite as severe as it would have been coming from others. Still, he raised a valid point. “Most of the Directorate’s conflict with the Wild Colonies takes place in particular border regions, Colonel. Information from those conflicts is usually heavily restricted, though I will admit that contact with our old enemies has been…limited of late. To be honest, even the informal communication channels have had very little to report from that area for some time.”
“Because they haven’t changed much, or because they haven’t seen any of them lately?” Captain Ndigwe, from the Deliverance, frowned. “It seems odd that the information would be so classified when they are an enemy the Directorate was built to counter. What would happen if you encountered Wild Colony warships outside the usual area?”
Another valid question, and one that Susan had often raised herself—privately, of course. “There were informational packets distributed to Directorate commanding officers, to be opened once the enemy was encountered. They would have more data to be used in the event of a Wild Colony encounter.”
There was a short silence after those words. Clark Miller was the first to respond; the Speaker’s voice was pitched with curious neutrality. “To require officers to react based on last-minute information seems…unwise.”
“A good way to say that it seems asinine, Speaker.” Captain Pa’s voice was rough with incredulity. The commander of the Foundry was a practical man, and it was obvious he was having trouble believing her. “Any officer under those conditions would have been lucky to escape with their lives. They wouldn’t even know what formations might be most effective. How has the Directorate managed to fend them off for so long in the first place?”
Susan’s face heated slightly, but she firmly reminded herself that the Directorate was not hers to defend anymore. “As I said, I believe contact with the Wild Colonies has been limited in scope for the past few decades. Most Directorate action has been to suppress piracy or eliminate rebellious forces. It is possible that very few skirmishes have occurred with the Wild Colonies, but I have not heard any details of that nature.”
Captain Myra Lennon, the newly minted commander of the Ajax, snorted. “Probably because whoever ran into them got wiped out while they were still unlocking their briefing packet.” She shook her head. “Of course, we wouldn’t have access to any kind of information like that, would we?”
“The Directorate somehow failed to provide our fleet with it, yes.” The dry statement provoked a chorus of chuckles around the room, but Susan was beginning to feel real concern. Without that data, it would be difficult to anticipate a threat from the Wild Colonies. Worse, she couldn’t even be sure if a possible threat existed, as she had no way of confirming OMNI’s speculation. She would be leading the Wayfarers into battle blind—a terrible idea even in the best of circumstances.
“Well, they have, in a way.” Captain Veringer, from the Harvest, looked around, as if surprised to find himself the focus of attention. Then he shrugged. “The Directorate forces were probably given an intelligence brief, and we have their officers and computers, do we not? Perhaps some of them could be persuaded to share what they know.”
A murmur of agreement went through the gathered officers and elders, at least until Clark Miller gently clear his throat. The Speaker of the Way looked at Susan; caution was clear on his face. “I trust, Admiral Delacourt, that the Directorate personnel would be persuaded humanely to cooperate?”
“Or maybe not so humanely?” The muttered comment from Captain Trinh, from the Emancipation, nearly brought Susan’s head around, but she caught herself in time. It was only logical that the Wayfarers would not feel much kindness towards the prisoners that had put them in their current situation; likewise, expecting rigid professionalism from these less disciplined officers was folly in itself. Those reasons were probably why the Speaker had brought up the point to begin with. It gave her the chance to respond and establish policy without seeming to descend into a dogfight.
“Of course, Elder Miller. They are in the same situation we are, in many ways, and every Directorate officer knows how important it is to stop the Wild Colonies from destroying the lives of others.” She ignored the quiet voice that was insisting otherwise and continued in an even tone. “I will see what information I can find immediately. For now, Captain Miller has endorsed a plan to begin refueling efforts in this location, at least until we can recover water from a passing comet. After that…”
Mr. Grey knocked softly on the door to the room. It was relatively late in the evening, as far as time could be measured onboard a spacecraft, and he was certain that the person he’d come here to meet was at home. The information from the Contact left him no room for doubt. The only question would be how much attention he would attract by visiting so late. His task was already complicated by a number of factors, and he did not want to increase the difficulty still further by adding any more witnesses than necessary.
There did not seem to be many onlookers, however. The other occupants of the ship were mostly asleep; unlike the Faithful Heart, the Bountiful Joy was only a converted passenger liner. What little military presence onboard was summed up by a double handful of police officers, and the civilians onboard would likely protest at any close examination of their living quarters by the supposed authorities. As usual in most of the Known Worlds, those in charge were likely far too easily influenced by the opinion of their lessers, and had caved in to their expectations. He had seen it time and again during his various assignments, and he was unsurprised to find that tradition alive and well, even among these zealots.
The door slid open, and a woman dressed in informal wear greeted him. She blinked sleepily at him for a moment, her eyes void of recognition. “Who’re you? What do you want?”
The lack of fear in her voice surprised him; surely even among the civilians of the Known Worlds, people took more care for their safety so late at night! Yet, as Mr. Grey considered the situation, he was forced to admit that perhaps the relative security of the Wayfarer ships had lulled them into relinquishing those fears. It was a very human reaction, and one that Mr. Grey could understand.
“I am here to visit the Verde family. Are you Mrs. Verde?”
A puzzled frown spread across the woman’s face. “Yes, I am. Who are y—”
Before she could finish, Mr. Grey stepped forward. His left hand snuck beneath his coat to touch a device concealed within the skin over his sternum. It was a simple bit of technology, little more than a button attached to a curious kind of transmitter.
The effect the signal had on Mrs. Verde, however, was immediate. Her features went abruptly rigid, her eyes rolling back in her head. He caught her with his right hand just before the seizure started, molding his expression into a mask of concern. “Mrs. Verde? Mrs. Verde, are you all right?”
There were no other heretics in the corridor at the moment, but it usually paid well to be careful of unseen eyes and ears. Even a well-meaning eavesdropper could be the end of an otherwise perfect operation, and Mr. Grey was not about to suffer his downfall now. Not when he had been warned of the consequences, should he fail.
Mrs. Verde was still shaking in his grip, but the seizure was already fading. He saw her eyes start to roll forward again. She was blinking and jerking fitfully as he lowered her to the floor. Mr. Grey stepped past her and into the hovel they called a home and quietly shut the door behind him.
It was far from a luxurious apartment. He would have wagered that before the passenger liner had been converted, it would have been shared between two families barely able to pay for the fare of passage; now there were four people living here, sharing the double room.
Mr. Verde was slumped across a small table, an overturned bowl of some substandard gruel near his arm. Mr. Grey could see the arm of another individual on the floor through the doorway to one of the sleeping rooms; he labeled the individual Verde Junior, given the adolescent size of the hand. There was no sign of Little Verde, the youngest, but he suspected she would be around close by. The Verde family had strict instructions to be present at this hour, isolated and together. Though he doubted any of them would have known why, they would never had dared break that pattern of behavior.
He waited patiently until the tremors had faded. Mr. Verde pushed himself up, his leathery features slack and unfocused. Mrs. Verde sighed near the doorway, unclenching her hands. The trembling limb of Verde Junior went still, before pulling back out of Mr. Grey’s sight. One by one, the family of Verde began to pull itself back together, and gathered around where he stood.
All four of them wore blank expressions, yet an avid kind of light flickered within each of their eyes. The Verde cell had been acquired before the heretics had begun their journey; their cover had remained secure in the ensuing battles. They had not had the opportunity to sabotage the heretic warships, and their implants lacked the security access to designs that would have helped them grow their numbers or signal the Contact. Had the heretics been defeated as planned, the cell would have been considered expendable. Even if they had launched in an escape pod, Mr. Grey wasn’t sure such low value assets would have been recovered.
As it stood now, however, the Verde cell was about to be repurposed. Their time for redemption had come, and they knew it. Mr. Grey smiled at them, and a pale reflection of that twisting of the lips answered him. “Welcome, friends. It is time for our work to begin.”