Chapter Four
Four years. They’d had that damned Xeno ship for four years while they studied it, took it apart, retrofitted it, and I couldn’t even remember what else. Where did they keep it? How the hell do you keep an enemy ship secret for four years?
I walked in a daze back to my berth and was glad I didn’t see anyone on the way. I’m not sure I could’ve carried on a conversation with anyone about anything at all. Somehow, the Federation had managed to tow an enemy ship into a dock somewhere and keep it secret while people mapped it, studied it, and experimented on it.
While I waited for the hatch to recognize me, more thoughts came to mind. How did they get all those people to keep a secret as big as that? I could only come up with two ideas: either the people who did the studies and retrofitting were now the crew, or they were dead.
A third option came to mind, and I realized it should have been the first: money. There were enough large corporations who could turn that kind of research into a profit. They could send their most trusted engineers and scientists, and even fund the work themselves, so long as they secured the rights to the discoveries. I felt better after that idea came to me. It was reasonable, less terrible than the alternatives, and made complete sense. Also, it gave me something to look forward to in the next few years. I wondered what kind of gadgetry would be “invented” in the near future. I hoped it would be more powerful weapons. Something that could punch through tough Xeno exoskeleton in a single shot. That’d make short work of the bugs.
Then I remembered I might not be around to see it. This was that kind of mission. The kind I might not return from—ever.
I needed a shower. Someplace quiet to gather my thoughts. I needed to process all the information I’d found in the briefing package.
I tapped a panel on the wall as I walked into the shower, and water began to fall from hidden openings in the ceiling. It adjusted to my preferred temperature automatically. A couple of taps on an illuminated panel made it a few degrees warmer. I had a little less than ten hours until I was on my way to Xeno-controlled space to drop a world-ruining weapon on a planet. It would never support life again. It would be a toxic, radioactive mess for centuries. I needed to relax and prepare myself.
The water was just what I needed. I put my head under it and focused my mind on it to block everything else out. I needed to calm myself so that I could get some sleep before I left. The scientists weren’t sure how long the ship would be in transit. It could be seconds, minutes, or hours. Either way, I wouldn’t be able to sleep once the journey started. I needed to be ready, awake, and alert.
Before I knew it, the shower temperature dropped 10 degrees. Even in our modern society, there were still people who worried about “saving the environment.” It didn’t make any sense to me. The battle station produced its own water using the excess power from the power plants and the hydrogen and oxygen collected from a nearby gas giant. In fact, there was so much water already being recycled by the 50,000-plus people living on the station, water only had to be produced an hour per week.
The station filled the tanks of any ship passing through for free. But it didn’t make a difference. Regulations said showers were limited to 10 minutes. Then incentives for saving water had to be applied.
At least this was a battle station and not a prison. I’d never been to prison, but the rumor was that instead of dropping the water’s temperature, electricity was applied to the pipe after the 10 minutes had passed. It would pulse randomly, increasing the voltage slightly with every shock. Nobody had died from it, as far as I knew, but it wouldn’t be fun.
The temperature of my shower dropped another 10 degrees. I could stay in until the system started refrigerating it, but there was no reason to. I almost felt relaxed enough to get some sleep. I’d take a shuttle from the station. The ship would rendezvous with us on the far side of the gas giant where the battle station gunners couldn't shoot at us even if they could detect us. Then we’d be gone.
I turned the shower off, tapped an inlaid icon on the otherwise featureless wall, and a small panel slid open and dispensed a single towel. Every shower had an automatic dryer built in, but some things were better accomplished with good, old elbow grease. Like my sword, a towel was a tool, and I used it to get the job done.
I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to relax. The environmental system was on and, truth be told, I was enjoying the breeze. My bed and other furniture were tucked away into the walls in a concentrated effort to save space. A tone announced someone was at my door and spoiled the moment
I thought about ignoring it. I was off duty. I could always pretend I wasn’t here, but then the tone sounded again.
“Who is it?” I growled.
“It’s me, Sir,” a female voice replied.
“Me who?”
“Reaver.”
Oh, hell. If it had been anyone else, I would have sent them away. And there I was, naked, clean, and tense while Reaver was just outside. I knew what she wanted, what we’d been dancing around for months, and felt a smirk curl one corner of my mouth. I had to fight hard, think about what the inside of a Xeno Queen looked like, and run through some math problems in my head to keep the obvious from showing. The tone sounded again.
Most people didn’t even know her real name. Everyone
