Filcher looked down at Jolo with watery eyes and something close to panic on his face. And then Johnson Raimey, commander of the other Defender, Resolute, stood. He smoothed his jacket and stuck out his jaw. “We defend the Federation, from the core to the farthest reaches of known space.” The other Fed officers all joined in, hoorah-ing and hear, hear-ing. Barthelme was shaking his head side to side. He started to stand but Jolo held his hand out to stop him.
“What about your agreement with the President?” yelled Jolo. The room got quiet.
“What of the President?” said Raimey. “We’ve not had a word in days, and fear that something is amiss. Especially after the attack by this rogue BG outfit.”
“What is this ‘agreement’?” said another.
“Tell him,” said Jolo. “Tell him what you told me and Barthelme a few weeks ago. Tell him about your decision to run. Tell them this was no rogue Grana force, but one small strike in a calculated offensive against the entire Federation.”
The room erupted in loud voices. And then Filch started to speak and they slowly quieted down. The admiral told the truth, finally. He told all of the Fed captains present that the training exercise was a ruse simply to get as many Fed ships away from the core, away from a BG attack they could never defend against. He kept them in comm silence so they wouldn’t know the Bakanhe Grana were moving their forces to the core. He told them the BG would have slaughtered them all. Their numbers beat the Fed by a factor of ten. And that his agreement with the President was also with the BG. The BG would let some of the Fed live on an oxygenated, green planet, and he’d been waiting on rendezvous coordinates. Coordinates that never came.
“And what of the rest of the Federation citizens?” said one of the female gunboat captains.
Barth could sit no longer. “They will die. All of them. The whole damn human race. Right now as we sit here at this fancy table, y’all dressed up like a bunch of bureaucrats, the BG is systematically taking down the Fed core. While all of you sat around in the fringe, the BG was moving closer.”
“You told us the comms were locked because the training mission was going to use new tech,” said another officer. Filch did not reply, and Jolo started to almost feel sorry for him. He came for us. Trant, the old gunboat captain, stood up and ripped off the Fed captain’s wings from his jacket and threw them onto the floor. They skidded and bounced between either side of the tables and landed under the dais where Filch stood. The other captains joined in, cursing their highest ranking officer. Their job was to defend the Fed, and he’d robbed them of that chance.
Filch put his hand up. “There’s more,” he said. “There’s more.” Another pair of Fed wings bounced off the lectern. More followed. “It’s the President,” said Filcher. The room quieted. “I knew that leading you out here to avoid a conflict would mean the end of my command. But it was the only way I knew to save as many as I could.”
“What of our families!” yelled one of the transport pilots.
“We should return to the core now!” yelled another. Jolo knew this was going to turn ugly and wondered if he should get Katy out, but he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. A thin officer with a gray goatee, suddenly jumped onto the table, ripped off his wings, threw them down then spit in Filch’s direction. Then he reached into his jacket and pulled out his Fed issue plasma gun. It was a small hand gun that all officers carried. The man pointed it at Filcher and Jolo tensed.
“If the BG make it to Sarnos my family is… they’ll be taken…” said the thin transport captain. The gun dropped for a split second and then it came up again and Jolo could see the muscles in the man’s arm start to tense. Jolo stood and pulled out the Colt in one smooth motion and suddenly the transport captain’s small gun was on the floor with a hole in the handle. But when Jolo looked at Filch he was falling back behind the lecturn. Trant had shot him with a rifle from the back of the room. No one said anything.
Jolo jumped up and found Filch on the cold floor under the vid screen. With no armor, a shot from a plasma gun is a death sentence. Some survive with parts missing. The plasma burns you from the inside and Filch took a shot right to the chest. Trant knew what he was doing. Filch was heaving but no air moved. He struggled and gagged and pulled Jolo down next to his face and fought for words. Finally, Jolo’s ear right next to his lips, Filch said his last words: “I didn’t know, but the President is a BG synth. They were never going to spare any of us. They are coming.” He choked and wheezed, then looked Jolo in the eye. “Run.” And then his head fell back onto the floor and he was gone.
……
What will become of Jolo, the Duvalites and the remains of the Fed fleet? Will they run further out into the fringes or head to the core and fight a hopeless battle? Find out
