Pledge Allegiance (2 page)

She probably wanted that barb to sting but I shrugged it off. I knew what my life had become. I had no delusions about who I was now.

“So you’re going to come swooping down here and take me away from all this?” I asked cynically.

“If that’s what you want. It’s certainly what my employer, Solomon Vess, wants.”

“Really?” I asked. “And what interest does Solomon Vess, who I assume is a very important man, have in me, an ex-captain from the Imperium Force?” I emphasized the “ex” part.

“He’s an important man, Blake. He owns Solomon Vess Industries, a successful galactic trading company. And he’d like to make you an offer.”

“An offer,” I repeated flatly. I had no interest in listening to offers from galactic billionaires or humoring Jane Baltimore any further. “Not interested,” I said. “I don’t need a job.”

“You already said that,” she said. “But I think if you hear what the offer is before you—”

“Listen,” I said, cutting her off, “I don’t know anyone called Solomon Vess and I have no idea why he would want to offer me anything. I know you’re just doing your job by coming here and talking to me on his behalf, but I’m really not interested, okay?” I swallowed my drink and headed for the door, my interest in playing WarZone now gone. Chow was just going to have to give me more time to get the rent. Tomorrow, I’d hit the tables hard.

“It’s about the
Oregon
,” she said as I reached the door.

That made me pause, but only because it had been unexpected, not because I wanted to discuss my old ship. In fact, that was the last thing I wanted to talk about with anyone.

The smoky, noisy atmosphere in the Dragon had become cloying. I felt like it was wrapping itself around me and squeezing the life out of me.

I pushed through the doors violently and stepped out into the alley. The bouncers glared at me, wondering if I was going to cause trouble. Recognizing me again and deciding I was harmless, they ignored me.

I walked along the alley, away from the glowing green sign and into the darkness.

And all the way home, I kept glancing up at the stars as if they were long lost lovers.

M
r. Chow had changed
the locks. My key didn’t fit when I tried to get into my apartment. I kicked the door in frustration and then stalked downstairs, my already bad mood worsening. I banged on Chow’s door with my fists until I heard him moving around inside his apartment.

“What do you want, Blake?” he called through the door without opening it.

“I want to get into my apartment,” I said.

“It isn’t your apartment anymore.”

“Look,” I said, trying a softer approach, “I know I’m late with the rent but if you give me a little more time, I can…”

“You’re always late. Every month. No more chances. Goodbye.”

I heard him walk away from the door. “Hey,” I shouted, banging on the door again. “What about my stuff?”

“It’s in the box,” he said. “Now go away. Get out of my building.”

I noticed a small plastic box a few feet away. Inside were my few meager possessions: some clothes, the contents of my bathroom cabinet, and a half-full bottle of bourbon.

Everything I owned was in that small box. That didn’t make me feel sad or depressed—I’d never been one for collecting a large amount of material items—but seeing my life’s possessions all together in one place made me realize that I was a nobody and my life was going nowhere. Hell, there was a war going on and I was drifting around on a dead planet with no future. I used to be a fighter with a purpose, a warrior fighting the war against the Horde.

No point dwelling on that now. I had more immediate concerns, like trying to find a place to live.

As I stepped out onto the street, a heavy rain began to fall, hissing down between the buildings and onto the road. Because of the way the planet had been mined in the past, the rain on Iton-3 always smelled of earth and minerals. If it got into your clothes, they smelled for days, even after they’d dried.

I took shelter beneath the awning of a closed store across the road and huddled there, with my plastic box of belongings beside me, while the raindrops pinged off the awning like a barrage of bullets.

The rain showed no signs of relenting. It looked like I was going to be spending the night sheltered in this doorway.

A movement in the shadows by the door made me jump. My heart rate calmed down again when I realized it was just a homeless guy huddled in the shadows beneath a ragged blanket. Looking at him, I could see my own future. I had no prospects, no work, and nowhere to live. It was going to take some serious gambling to get me out of this hole, and I barely had enough of a stake to get me into the lowest level WarZone game on the planet.

From where I sat right now, huddled under an awning while the earthy rain poured out of the night sky, it looked like I was well and truly screwed.

I’d learned a year ago that there were some things you couldn’t come back from. Maybe being thrown out onto the streets was one of them.

A long black car with darkened windows pulled up in front of the store. One of the windows buzzed down. I got ready to pick up my box and leave. If this was the store owner coming to tell me to move, I was in no mood to argue.

As the window lowered, I saw Jane Baltimore sitting behind the wheel. “Nice night,” she said. There was no humor in her voice despite the sarcastic comment. I wondered what it would take to make her show an actual emotion.

“Just perfect,” I said.

“You going to stay in that doorway all night?”

I looked around at the dry doorway and the rain lashing down onto the street. “Looks like it.”

She looked up at the night sky through the car window and said, “Do you ever wish you were up there again, Blake? Up among the stars?”

The honest answer to that question would be “All the time” but I wasn’t going to let her know that. Instead, I shrugged and said, “Maybe. Sometimes.”

She nodded as if she knew I wasn’t telling the whole truth. “If you want, you can be up there tonight. Solomon Vess wanted to meet with you on his ship,
The October Girl
. She’s in orbit around the planet. We can go right now, if you like.”

I felt a shudder of excitement at the prospect of being in space again. Sure, I would have to listen to this Vess guy, but at least I’d be dry and warm. And it wasn’t as if I had anything better to do.

I looked at the homeless guy in the corner and said, “Hey, buddy, you take this.” I slid the plastic box containing my belongings toward him.

I got up and ran to the car’s passenger-side door, sliding in next to Baltimore quickly to avoid the rain.

She pressed a button to close the darkened window, and then she joined the traffic on the street. The car’s heater vents blew against my cold, wet skin, making it tingle.

Baltimore wasn’t much of a conversationalist. She drove in silence, following the signs to the spaceport.

“So how long have you been working for Solomon Vess?” I asked to break the silence.

“Two years. Before that I fought in the Horde War.”

I knew she’d been a soldier. That toned body wasn’t the result of going to the gym or having body modification surgery.

“What unit?” I asked.

“The Legion.”

I resisted the urge to let out a low whistle of appreciation. The Legion was one of the toughest units fighting in the Horde War. Its members came from the planet Pelagio, which was mostly ocean, save for a few islands where its inhabitants lived.

The citizens of Pelagio were members of a brutal fighting culture and that environment produced the Legion, the planet’s finest warriors. They fought alongside Earth and the other human planets in the Horde War and their feats of bravery were legendary.

When I said nothing, Baltimore looked over at me. “Are you surprised?”

“Surprised that you’re from one of the most elite fighting forces in the galaxy? No, not really. I don’t think I’ve ever met a legionnaire before. How did you go from fighting in the war to working for Solomon Vess?”

“I’m not done fighting yet,” she said.

I didn’t pursue that any further except to say, “This job offer that Solomon Vess wants to talk about, does it involve fighting? Because you might not be retired from that life, but I am.”

“I told you,” she said, “it’s about the
Oregon
, your last command.”

Then it dawned on me why a billionaire might track me to Iton-3 and send someone down to the surface to collect me.

“Stop the car,” I said.

“What?”

“Stop the car, I’m getting out.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s only one reason why someone like Solomon Vess would want to meet me. He’s a grieving relative, isn’t he? He had a sibling or cousin or some other relative serving on the
Oregon
and he blames me for their death. He tracked me all the way here so he could take revenge.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Blake.”

“Stop the car,” I said.

“It isn’t like that. I’m not stopping the car.”

I searched through my memory for the name Vess. Had there been a crew member by that name? Of course, they didn’t have to have the same last name to be related to the billionaire but it was a place to start. A name came to me. “Ensign Georgia Vess,” I said. “Don’t lie to me, Baltimore. Solomon Vess is connected to Ensign Georgia Vess, who was lost on the
Oregon
. What was she, his cousin? Niece?”

“She’s his daughter.”

“You might as well stop the car, Baltimore. I’m not going to meet a man who blames me for his daughter’s death. I blame myself every day for every single soul who was lost on that ship. I don’t need to listen to someone’s personal grief and blame.”

“He doesn’t blame you for her death, Blake.”

“Of course he does. There’s no other reason he’d want me on his ship.”

“I told you, he wants to make you an offer.”

It didn’t sit well with me. Why would Vess want to make an offer to the captain responsible for his daughter’s death? It didn’t make any sense. And if the man wasn’t after revenge, then he must be pursuing some sort of closure. I was pretty sure I couldn’t help him with that; I didn’t have any closure myself when it came to the destruction of the
Oregon
.

“He needs to understand that I can’t bring his daughter back,” I said.

Baltimore looked at me and, for the first time, I saw a hint of a genuine smile cross her face. “Maybe you can.”

“What do you mean?”

“We believe that Georgia Vess, Solomon’s daughter, is still alive.”

“What? That isn’t possible. All hands were lost except for myself and Lieutenant Schafer.”

“That’s what everyone thought,” Baltimore said. “But now we have reason to believe that some of the crew survived. They’re on the surface of Savarea.”

“But that’s a Horde planet,” I said. “Nobody could survive there and not be captured by aliens.”

“They have somehow,” she said as we arrived at the space port. “And Solomon Vess is putting together a team to go and rescue them.”

W
e walked
through the crowded space port to the area designated for private shuttles. Baltimore showed her credentials to the staff behind the departure desk and we were waved through immediately. The perks of working for a billionaire, I guessed.

I followed her along a glass and steel corridor that led out to the runways. Some of the older shuttle designs needed the runways to get airborne but most of the newer models were equipped for vertical take-off. I was sure that Solomon Vess’s shuttle would be the most modern version available.

I was right. The shuttle, painted white with the Solomon Vess Industries logo painted in black on its flank, was the latest model. It looked brand new. The hatch was open, a set of stairs leading up to it guarded by four armed men in dark jumpsuits.

We walked past them and up into the shuttle. The vehicle was plushly furnished with leather upholstery and tables of dark wood, maybe mahogany. Each window had a set of dark blue curtains that matched the thick carpet on the floor. The shuttle was better-furnished than my apartment had been by a factor of a million.

Baltimore sat and gestured for me to do likewise. I sank into a soft leather seat next to a window. For the first time in a year, I was going to be able to see the stars clearly, and not through the screen of mist that covered Iton-3. Once we were in space, I wanted to make sure I had a good view.

The door closed and the locking mechanism whirred into place. The shuttle’s engines began to hum.

I had questions about what Baltimore had said to me in the car, but for now I wanted to experience every moment of my return to space so I pushed the questions out of my mind. I just wanted to see space and be awed by its beauty and vastness again, as I had always been when confronting the glittering void.

The shuttle lifted off slowly and smoothly. If the curtains had been closed and I hadn’t seen the runway falling away from the window, I wouldn’t even know we were moving. Vess had either hired a top-notch pilot or the shuttle was being flown by a computer.

I watched the space port get smaller and smaller as we rose at a faster rate. From up here, the city, with its lights and tall, dark buildings shrouded in mist, looked nothing like it did from street level. It looked almost civilized.

The air beyond the windows went suddenly gray as we ascended through the cloud layer. When we broke through into the clear sky above, I looked down at the sea of cotton candy clouds now shrouding the city from my view. Maybe that was the last time I would ever see Iton-3. If what Baltimore had said was true, if there were survivors from the
Oregon
, I owed it to them to at least try and rescue them from the alien planet they were stranded on.

The shuttle tilted so that its nose pointed skyward at an angle. As we began accelerating, I heard the click of the G-stabilizers as they came on to nullify the G-force when we reached a speed that would slam us back against our seats without the mechanical assistance. As it was, I felt no force pressing down on my body at all, which was unusual.

Even in the most modern aircraft I’d flown in, the G-stabilizers could only do so much, and some G-force would still be felt as acceleration increased. This shuttle was equipped with the very latest in-flight machines. Or maybe things had simply changed since I’d last been in one.

I watched through the window as we left the atmosphere and hit space. The stars shone with a bright clarity that I’d forgotten about during my time on Iton-3. Seeing them now in all their glory was like meeting old friends.

“
The October Girl
,” Baltimore said, pointing through a starboard window.

I looked out and saw Solomon Vess’s ship. She was a Class 1 cruiser, maybe five miles long and almost half as wide. She hung motionless in the void as if she were waiting for something.

She is waiting for something
, I told myself.
She’s waiting for me.

I wondered how much expense and trouble Vess had gone to just so he could meet me. I also wondered why he was so interested in having me on his team.

Sure, I was the captain who had been in command when the
Oregon
had been destroyed, but why would he think that qualified me for a search and rescue mission? A man with his means could hire mercs from any part of the galaxy to carry out the mission to save his daughter.

It didn’t make any sense that he’d come all this way just to hire me.

Maybe I should count my blessings. If there were crew members of the
Oregon
still alive, it meant the damage that had been wrought under my captainship might not be as terrible as I’d always believed.

The shuttle decelerated as we approached the big cruiser’s docking bay. As we slid into the bay with the smoothness of water running over a sheet of glass, I again mentally commended the pilot. Even when we touched down, the shuttle’s landing gear seemed to contact the steel docking bay floor like a feather drifting down onto silk.

The engines went silent and the hatch opened with a hiss.

Baltimore stood and beckoned me to follow her.

As we descended the steps that had been positioned by the hatch by the landing bay crew, I looked around at my surroundings. There were at least a dozen shuttles and a few fighters docked here, as well as a couple of freighters. Mechanics and technicians worked on the ships and unloaded shipping crates from one of the freighters. The place was alive with the sounds of conversation, the clank of metal on metal, and the hiss of welding guns that spat bright sparks skittering across the floor.

I glanced at the shuttle’s cockpit to see if there was a human pilot or whether the craft had been computer-controlled. An open hatch and a ladder leading down to the floor suggested there had been a human pilot after all, but he or she had already left.

“This way,” Baltimore said, leading me to a bank of transporters. She summoned one with a click of a button on the wall, and we stepped inside. It was spacious. Baltimore inserted a key into the control panel and pressed a button marked SV.

“We’re going straight to the quarters of the man himself?” I asked.

She nodded. “There’s no reason to wait.”

The transporter moved with the same smoothness as the shuttle. I couldn’t tell if we were traveling vertically or horizontally. After a few seconds, the door opened with a dinging sound and we stepped into a plushly-furnished foyer with leather-upholstered armchairs and a large semi-circular desk behind which stood a dark-haired woman with glasses. When she saw us, she smiled. “Hi, Jane. Mr. Vess is ready to see you. Just go right in.”

“Thanks, Velma,” Baltimore said.

A large door, which looked like it might be made of the same mahogany as the tables on the shuttle, opened automatically, revealing a huge room beyond. We entered and the door clicked shut behind us.

Even though we were in space, the huge windows had been rigged to show fields and a forest beyond. Simulated sunlight shone into the room as it would if the landscape beyond the windows were real. The room itself was long with some of the walls lined with bookshelves containing thick leather-bound tomes. Suits of ancient armor and displays of antiquated weapons stood on each side of the room beneath spotlights that accentuated their detail.

At the far end of the room sat a huge heavy-looking desk. Sitting at the desk was a man who could have been in his seventies, and standing next to the desk was a dour-looking man in his thirties. Both of them watched us silently as we walked past the armor and weapons toward them.

When we got near the desk, the older man stood. “I trust your journey was a pleasant one, Captain Blake?”

“Very pleasant,” I said, ignoring the title he’d used to address me. “Your shuttle pilot should be commended.”

He chuckled. “Mr. Morrow, here, did all the flying. So you approve of his piloting skills?”

I looked at the dour man. He stared at me with a look in his dark eyes that was either hatred or disdain.

“Yes,” I said. “I do.” I turned my attention back to the older man. I wasn’t in the mood for a staring contest with the pilot.

“Very good. Well, thank you for coming to see me. I’m Solomon Vess, as you’ve probably already guessed. How much has Jane told you about the mission ahead of us?”

“Not much,” I said. “She told me that there might be survivors from the ISS
Oregon
on the planet Savarea.”

“Oh, there’s no question about it,” Vess said. “They are alive.”

“How can you be so sure?”

He tapped a couple of keys on a keyboard that was built into the desk. “Listen to this. This transmission was picked up by a trading ship three weeks ago.”

A voice filled the room, coming from the speakers built into the wall. It was a woman’s voice. The transmission was broken in places.

“…Anyone receiving this message…survivors…stranded…Savarea…coordinates unknown…alert Imperium forces…request immediate extraction.” After that, the message died.

Vess looked at me as if expecting me to comment on what I’d just heard.

My earlier optimism at the news that there might be survivors from the
Oregon
on Savarea dimmed slightly. The message hadn’t mentioned any particular ship, such as the
Oregon
. It wasn’t much to go on.

“Those survivors aren’t necessarily from the
Oregon
,” I told Vess. “All that message tells us is that there are people stranded on Savarea. They could be from a trading vessel or any number of ships that fly in that area. That person could be anyone.”

“No, Captain,” he said, “that person is my daughter.”

I couldn’t argue with that. The man would obviously know his own daughter’s voice. “Okay, I guess that proves it. So what do we know about the planet?”

“Not much.” He pressed more keys, and a hologram of Savarea, as seen from space, floated in the air above the desk. I could see oceans, a desert, a jungle, but not much else.

“We can’t scan the planet in any detail,” he said, “because the Horde has placed signal jammers on the surface. They allow communications to and from the planet surface but block computer scans. Typical Horde behavior. This is what the planet looked like before the war.”

“So we don’t know the precise location of the survivors,” I said.

“Not the precise location, no. But I’ve had my scientists look at all the data surrounding the
Oregon
incident. They’ve come up with a computer simulation of the most likely area where the survivors would have crash landed on the planet.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “The
Oregon
didn’t crash on the planet. I saw her explode. And the only life raft that managed to escape the blast was the one I was in with my lieutenant.”

“Tell me about the life rafts,” Vess said.

“The
Oregon
was equipped with standard-issue Imperium life rafts. They’re small pods that are shot from a disabled ship into space so that the occupants have a chance of being picked up by a passing friendly ship. There’s a distress beacon that initiates automatically as soon as the raft is deployed.”

“And you’re positive that your raft was the only one to leave the
Oregon
before the explosion?”

“Yes,” I said.

“What if a life raft was fired toward the planet?”

I thought about that. It was possible. If a raft had been shot at the surface of the planet, Schafer and I might not have seen it because the
Oregon
had been blocking our view. Everything had been so chaotic.

“It’s possible,” I said. “The rafts have basic flight controls so, in theory, a crew could navigate to a safe landing zone on the planet.”

“Not just theory, Captain. It has happened. Those people made it to the planet’s surface and they are still alive. There’s no doubt about it.”

“Have you alerted the Imperium? Those survivors are serving soldiers. If the Imperium knows they’re alive, it’ll send out a rescue…”

“No,” Vess said, cutting me off. “The Imperium doesn’t know about the distress call. The only people who know about the survivors are the people in this room and the rest of the crew I have assembled to fly to Savarea on the mission.”

‘The Imperium has a lot of resources,” I said. “They might have a better chance to pull this off than a private undertaking.”

“They might have resources, Captain Blake, but they would go in there with all guns blazing, probably causing deaths among the survivors as well as any aliens on the planet.”

I nodded but said nothing. He had a point. Sometimes the Imperium acted in a heavy-handed fashion. Hell, not just sometimes; the Imperium way was to shoot first and ask questions later. That was the result of fighting a war where any alien species in the galaxy could be part of the Horde, but it did mean the Imperium might not be best-suited for a search and rescue operation. Not if we wanted the survivors on Savarea to still be surviving after the operation was over, anyway.

“My daughter’s life is on the line,” Vess said. “I will use every resource available to bring her back alive, but the Imperium is not part of my plan.”

“So what exactly
is
your plan?” I asked.

He grinned. “Does this mean you will be joining our venture? I need a captain.”

I nodded. If there were survivors from the
Oregon
and they were in trouble, it was my duty to help them. I may not be an employee of the Imperium any longer, but this was a duty that went beyond that. “I’m in,” I said, “but I have one question.”

“Then ask it, Captain.” He looked at me expectantly.

“Why me? Of all the people you could have picked for this mission, why did you choose the man responsible for the destruction of the
Oregon
in the first place?”

“That’s a fair question. After all, until I heard that distress call, I must have assumed that you were responsible for the death of my daughter, correct?”

“I guess so,” I said.

He shook his head and his eyes softened. “I never blamed you for Georgia’s death. After the
Oregon
was destroyed, I felt angry of course. But I was never angry at you. You were a fine captain, one who cared for his crew, which is a rarity these days.”