serious business.”
“The business of serious extortion.”
“Now, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. We aren’t pirates, mate! We are a serious political force. We lost several ships and good people fighting for Earth just yesterday. If we can get the supplies we need in an orderly fashion, your ship won’t have to slaughter people at malls next week when you run out of food.”
I took a deep breath. He was right about raiding, it was dangerous for the people on the ground. It was hard for me to take our ragtag group seriously as a political power because we were so new, so green. But we were like a separate nation now. We were trapped in our ships. We knew things no one else on Earth understood. Our mission was life and death, not only for ourselves, but possibly for the rest of humanity as well.
“Okay,” I said. “I promise to play the role of a Star Force Commander. If they take us seriously, this will all go more smoothly for everyone.”
“Exactly. Glad to hear it.”
“What would you have done if I didn’t agree, Jack?”
Commodore Crow sniffed. “I wouldn’t have given you the name of Pierre’s ship.”
I smiled. That was it, the first smile since my kids had died. I blinked at the thought. Crow’s slippery maneuvers had brightened my day somehow. I had a sudden thought then.
“Crow?”
“Yeah, mate?”
“You weren’t really a Captain in the Australian navy, were you?”
A deep breath. “I never said I was. Not exactly, anyway. Keep that under your hat, will you, professor?”
“Of course,” I said. And I meant it. “Now, can I have the name of the Frenchman’s ship?”
“Who said he was a Frenchman?”
“Well, I assumed-”
“He’s Canadian.”
“Ah, I see. So he speaks English fluently, I take it?”
“And several other languages as well.”
“And the ship’s name?”
“The Versailles,” said Crow, with a hint of an apology in his voice.
“He named his ship after a palace?”
“Yes, well… he believes in tradition. Anyway, contact him if you want an update on the political situation. I’ll leave you in his capable hands. Crow out.”
14
As Crow had ordered, I took up a position about fifty thousand miles above the North Pole. We encountered a whole new problem at that point, weightlessness. At first, it was kind of funny. Sandra laughed at me, as I floated away from my chair. I called to the ship and had it tether me with one of those instantly grown arms. The thin cable felt warm around my waist. It was a creepy feeling, as I knew now the thing was made up of about a million tiny, squirming nanites. Just knowing that made me itch when the arms touched me. It was like being touched by arms made up of fleas that had all interlocked their legs together and formed a chain with their bodies.
I didn’t laugh, but it did give me my second smile since I’d lost my kids for good. Sandra and I were equals when weightless in space. The ship had us both on leashes. Then we noticed all the liquids we had around the place in cups and cans were now floating with us. This took a while to clean up and sort out. The nanites weren’t super good with liquids. They could form hard surfaces of their liquid metal, or turn the floor porous and suck it up, but those skinny black arms were simply no good at catching liquids out of the air.
After a few hours of drifting, we got into a routine and things were almost normal. We were going to have a problem with liquids, however, I could see. We only had so many squeeze bottles and we had no way of handling cooking properly. It was a good thing, I realized, we were only expected to hang out on sentry duty for half of every day. I was looking forward to returning back to my familiar gravity-well long before our first shift was over.
“Shouldn’t you call that Pierre guy?” asked Sandra, drifting over the new couch with a roll of paper towels. She’d found one last floating dollop of orange soda and was determined to catch it.
“I should,” I said, “But somehow I’m not looking forward to it. The truth is, besides being distracted, I’m a little embarrassed.”
“Why?”
“Well, he’s some kind of internet scam artist, from what I gather. Who knows what kind of embarrassing crap he’s been spouting off to Senator Bager. It just seems so unprofessional. They must think we are a bunch of nuts, and we’ve acted like kids. Kids who accidentally got hold of nuclear weapons.”
“Your first time talking to a Senator?”
“Definitely. What a way to start my political career.”
“Just get it over with.”
“I will, after we figure out how what we are going to eat for lunch.”
We never did get to eat lunch that day, however. I’d just managed to get a floating frozen rice dinner into the microwave and slapped the door closed before it could drift out again when the Alamo spoke up. I’d been dreading the words it spoke.
“Enemy ships detected. Emergency signal received. Gathering initiated.”
Enemy ships? I thought. Knowing what was coming, I tried to grab the cable arm that tethered me and pull myself down against the floor. I managed to do it, but I’d guessed wrong. The ceiling was the floor this time. Everything began to fall, sag or slide toward it.
“Alamo, secure everything you can!”
Arms snaked out but it was too late in many cases. Bottles broke and spilled their contents in slow, glugging motions. The fridge slid up the wall it had been against and dented its top against the roof of the ship.
“Alamo, new standing order: When about to accelerate due to some alert, secure everything first.”
“Program rejected. Overridden by prior programming. Options not set.”
I gritted my teeth. “Alamo, as soon as you can when we get an alert call, secure all equipment and personnel.”
“Program set.”
“Also, Alamo, turn us right side up.”
“Ambiguous statement. Command rejected.”
“The deck that has been the floor since I was kidnapped by this crazy ship. Make it the floor again, turn the ship so that our acceleration pushes us against it.”
“Command accepted.”
Another series of sliding sounds and a few crashes soon followed. I sucked air through my teeth and put my hands over my head. The microwave missed me, as did the fridge, but my rice bowl caught me in the back of the head. It was still uncooked and frozen, and I felt like I’d been hit by an iceball. Sandra yelled something from the main bridge, but I didn’t hear exactly what it was.
“You okay?” I called out to her.
“Quit screwing around with the ship!” she called back.
She didn’t sound hurt, so I didn’t pursue the matter.
“Alamo, where are the enemy ships? Are they in our sector?”
“No.”
“How many ships are there? Put them on the forward screen.”
“There are three ships. They are being displayed.”
Paranoid, I stepped unsteadily out of the kitchen area into the main bridge. The forward wall showed the dark circle representing Earth in the center now. I looked around for a few long seconds before I spotted the rust- red contacts. One was on the wall to the left, one to the right, and one was crawling along the floor. I’d almost
