“Those skinny little synth girls won’t make it to the core admin buildings. They’ll all be shot.”
“Oh, you mean with one of your energy weapons?” said the President.
Filcher nodded. Then the President picked up the gun under the chair and pointed it at the girl. She didn’t move. Before Filcher could say no, the President fired. The energy blast flowed into the girl and at that range Filcher thought she might pop. Filcher’s gun was old, before there were stun settings. His gun delivered as much as a Fed rifle carried by the marines. A human target would have been burned dead instantly, the heat would have blown out through the top of the head, or a leg. But not this thing.
The girl’s eyes closed yet she remained standing, and then her eyes opened again and she looked around.
“Who are you?” said the President.
“I am Alyce. Ward of the Bakanhe Grana, made on Montag by the Creators.”
“She just reboots.” The President shrugged, and for a second he let his guard down and Filcher could see he was tired and beaten. “I’m going to save as many of us as I can. Help me.”
Filcher nodded, feeling beaten himself.
“Two final things,” said the President. “If you come across Vargas, kill him. And lastly, soon, the Fed will send the fleet on a training mission in one of the far reaches of the galaxy. Some in the military will go rogue and not leave. They’ll be destroyed. You must take as many as you can. Use your influence. Remember, our job is to save as many as we can. Those ships that stay in the rendezvous point will be spared.”
Galaxite
Arcon 7 Jump Point
Three pirate ships feasted on the remains of the UFP Fortinbras like vultures eating a dead carcass. The smaller ships were busy and well lit, men in jet-packs corralling as many boxes as they could into their holds. The dark, cold Fortinbras was laid bare, now fully broken into two separate pieces. The sight was unsettling and unnatural to Jolo, like when an arm is broken and bent the wrong way. A pair of disabled deep space gunners, neither generating heat, both with UNITED FREIGHT on the side, both with black holes where thrusters once were, drifted nearby.
“Vargas!” came a loud, rough voice on the comm. “This is Radar Mantis of the Succulent Beast. You’ve had your pick, you know the rules, now stay clear.” His words, both angry and somehow jolly, bounced around the bridge of the Argossy.
“What about the two survivors?” said Jolo.
“What do you care?” said Mantis.
“I don’t.”
“One of the scouts got away.”
Jolo was glad they’d escaped. I should have forced them to come with me though, he thought. The man who didn’t know how to use a rifle and the lady in the blue dress got lucky. “I need to access the bridge. I want the manifest. I ain’t gonna take a box.”
“Alright. In that case help yourself, Vargas.”
So Jolo and Koba jet-packed into the burned out forward compartment of the Fortinbras. Koba checked the logic array panel in the rear of the bridge, pulled off the cover, but the board was already gone.
“Did Mantis and his crew grab it?” said Koba.
“Probably not,” said Jolo. “Maybe the captain got it before the end. Or maybe it’s drifting out there in space. Now we’ll never know what was in the black box.”
“What about the backup?” said Koba. “You can’t not have a backup. The only problem is where would it be?”
Computer, Jolo thought, were are the backup logic boards on Allesar 405 Class freighters?
Forward compartment, captain’s ready room, next to operations. Would you like a schematic?
Yes, thought Jolo. And suddenly he could see the layout of the forward compartment in his mind.
“Come on,” said Jolo. And Koba followed him off the bridge, down one level, then along a dark corridor, their helmet lights cutting through the black, occasionally flashing on bits of broken ship suspended in zero gravity.
The sliding door to the captain’s ready room was stuck open about five inches. The large, well-funded freighters often had real wooden furniture, not like the military boats where a seat was a piece of metal bolted to the floor. When the BG boat put a hole in the hull and the forward compartment depressurized, everything in the room tried to squeeze out through the five inch crack and got stuck. A wooden sofa leg was sticking out, the red velvet back of a chair was swedged in just below that, and at the bottom was the remains of the captain.
Jolo held out his arm to move Koba behind him. “Don’t look,” he yelled. But it was too late. Koba threw up in his suit, and Jolo could see little yellow bits on the inside of his face shield. While Koba wretched and cursed, Jolo called for Greeley to come with the torch. The upper part of the captain’s body had been squeezed through. He’d long since been freeze-dried, but it was still a gruesome sight and it saddened Jolo to see it. This was the only captain to ever stand against the feared Jolo Vargas. This captain had bested him, only to be tricked by a BG Cruiser.
The Fortinbras had been betrayed by the BG, and in most circumstances Jolo would be happy to see a BG and a Fed ship taking shots at each other, but this was different. Jolo hadn’t felt truly afraid for his crew in a long time. He thought back to the moment when he was running through the Argossy in the dark to have Hurley engage the kicker, all the
