Authors: Zachary Jones

Refusing Excalibur (8 page)

BOOK: Refusing Excalibur

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“Not in your current state, no. But you will be in time. I’m sure of it.”

“And what makes you think that?” asked Victor.

“Because I think you’re the right man for the job.”

“And what makes you certain of that?” asked Victor.

The man chuckled; it was a dry sound. “Nothing is certain in this universe. But some things, some people, have the probability to do…interesting things.”

“Probal…probal…”
Probability
was more syllables than he could handle at the moment. “You think I can do…stuff?”

The man sighed. “In a word, yes. Do—Did they have poker on your world?”

Victor swallowed and said, “Yes.”

“Then let’s just say, from my point of view, if you were one playing card, you would be an ace.”

“An ace? You’re not making any sense,” Victor said.

“Yes, well, you’re not exactly firing on all cylinders,” the man said. “We should talk after the sedatives make their way from your system. You’ll find a dispenser in the wall near your bed if you need food or drink. I think you’ll like what’s on the menu.”

“Wait!” Victor stood as he yelled. “I’m not done asking questions!”

No answer came. Victor was alone again.

He sighed. He felt tired and hungry. He looked to the bed and felt drawn to it, tempted to return to the oblivion of sleep. But sleep meant dreams, and he doubted he would have any good ones.

Hunger was easy enough to deal with. He hadn’t eaten since…

He sat down on the bed, his appetite gone. He settled for staring down at the thick carpet. Digging in his toes, he found it far more interesting than such an activity had any right to be. Probably due to the drugs.

He looked at the door and staggered to it. He kept from falling, but whatever was in his system was playing hell with his sense of balance. He grabbed the doorknob and tried to turn it, but it didn’t budge. He pulled, and the door didn’t so much as jostle. He considered breaking it down, but that felt like more work than he wanted to do. Instead he put his back to the door and slid to the floor. Without really noticing, sleep overtook him. It was mercifully dreamless.

***

When he woke up, still propped against the door, he felt better. Not good but better, functional. The sedative seemed to have worn off. Of course, without the drugs, the pain in his heart had an edge to it which he didn’t feel before. Like a splinter, digging deep into his soul. Something he might ignore for the moment or at least pretend to.

The Stone—that’s what the man had called this place. It had to be a base of some kind. But whose? It could all be a cruel, convoluted trick pulled by the Lysandrans, but Victor doubted it. If they had wanted to torture him further, there were more efficient ways of going about it.

He glanced down at his undershirt and boxers, and decided to look around for more substantial clothing.

He walked to the room’s single bureau and pulled open the top drawer, finding several neatly fold shirts of varying colors. He pulled out a black shirt, as well as a matching pair of pants from the drawer below.

He dressed himself and looked at the mirror set in the wall. Dressed all in black, as a man in mourning should be.

His stomach growled and practically dragged him to the food-and-drink dispenser. He hit a button labeled Breakfast
,
and, after a few minutes, a plate with a steak and eggs came out.

He grabbed the knife and fork included with the meal, and dug into the high-protein food. Neither the steak nor the eggs were the real thing. They had the slightly odd texture of cultured food. Not that it surprised Victor. One shouldn’t expect real food to come from a dispenser.

The meal was still satisfying. He felt his mood improve gradually as he digested, hard to believe as it was. He wondered if the food had been seasoned with mood enhancers but decided against it. He had captained starships long enough to know that few things could improve morale like food.

“Enjoying your breakfast?” asked the man over the hidden speaker.

Victor looked up. His senses were sharper this time, and he could pinpoint a spot on the ceiling where the voice must be coming from, though no speaker was visible. He suspected the voice could have been projected from any part of the room. The man probably elected it to come from above for effect.

“That dispenser is first-rate. Makes me wish I had one on the
Osprey
.” Mentioning his old ship hurt, but it was a dull pain.

“Yes, it’s been, oh, forever since it was last used. I’m glad to see it’s in good working order.”

Victor’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “My memory is a little hazy from the drugs and all, but I distinctly remember you calling this
the Stone
during our first conversation. What is this place?”

“Ah, yes. This is my home base of sorts.”

“I gathered that much. But it doesn’t really tell me what or where this place is. Is this a space station or a planetary base? I could be on a starship for all I know,” Victor said.

“It’s probably best I show you.” The room’s door opened.

Victor’s curiosity overrode his suspicion, and he walked to the door. On the other side, he saw a tubular corridor of polished rock with a flat bottom.
Am I underground?

A solid line appeared on the floor, leading to Victor’s left. “Follow this line please. This place is a bit of a labyrinth.”

Victor stepped into the corridor. “What if I don’t want to follow the line?”

“You’re welcome to explore the Stone if you like, but you won’t find anything interesting. Unless you follow the line, that is.”

Feeling contrarian, Victor turned right, away from the direction the line indicated. The corridor was long, with doors on either side. Closed doors with no visible ways to open them. He approached a few to see if they had motion sensors, but they remained shut.

Victor looked down and noticed the line of white light had attached itself to his feet like a glowing string. A rather passive-aggressive reminder of the direction the hidden man wanted Victor to go.

He continued to explore for several minutes, running his hands against the walls of the corridor to feel the smooth rock. After nothing but similar corridors, boredom took hold.

He sighed and turned around to follow the line. After several more minutes, he reached what looked like a circular blast door, closed tight.

He took a step toward the door but hopped back when it opened. The hinges didn’t so much as squeak when the door swung out. Inside was a brightly lit room, a command center by Victor’s guess.

He stepped inside. What he saw took away his breath. Like walking into a large domed stadium made of polished rock. The largest holomap of the Milky Way galaxy that Victor had ever seen hovered in the air above him, filling the volume of the dome.

He noticed a long slash of red stars in one part of the galaxy. For a moment, he thought they represented red dwarves, but that didn’t make any sense. Red dwarves were the most common type of a main sequence star in the universe, evenly distributed across the galaxy, not concentrated in one area. So it must be an empire then; that made some sense. On a whim, he studied the whole galaxy and found highlighted, within the red, a particular star system.

Sol, the birthplace of humanity. The long-lost homeworld of all intelligent life. Everyone knew where that solar system was; its place was marked on every starmap Victor had ever seen. Directly on the opposite side of the galaxy from the Savannah system. Far from his reach.

Savannah had been cut off from the solar system ever since the gates ceased to work. If anyone had reached the solar system using conventional jump drives, Victor had never heard of it.

“Enjoying the view, I see,” someone said, their voice coming from behind Victor.

He wheeled around and saw an old dark-skinned man, with a fringe of white curly hair. Short and slight, dressed in a loose, almost robelike coat that reached down to his knees. Victor’s eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”

“You can call me the old man,” the stranger said.

“Not much of a name,” Victor said.

“It’s the only one I need.” The old man glanced up at the projections. “Impressive, isn’t it?”

Victor grimaced with annoyance at the change in subject but turned his attention to the galaxy rotating overhead. “It’s quite a decoration.”

“Oh, that’s no decoration, despite its beauty.” The old man pointed a shriveled finger at the display. “That is the most detailed map of the galaxy you’re ever likely to find. What you’re seeing is every object ever catalogued by the First Civilization’s cartographers.”

“Hardly unique. Plenty of First Civilization maps are around,” Victor said. The Republic Naval Academy had one.

“Ah, true. But all those are one thousand years out of date. The one floating here is current.”

Victor gave the old man an incredulous look. “Current?”

The old man smiled. “Yes, current. Well, as current as my deep scouts can keep it. It takes years for some of them to return. But none of the information projected is more than a couple decades old.”

“Deep scouts? Those are some kind of probes, I assume,” Victor said.

“Yes, though much more sophisticated than the probes you’re familiar with.”

Victor glanced at the map and then back to the old man. “They’d have to be, if what you’re saying about that map is true. Which begs the question, how did you come into possession of such advanced tech?”

The old man shrugged. “I knew where to look.”

Victor’s brows furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“I assume you’ve heard stories of First Civilization supply caches hidden around the galaxy?”

“Yes,” Victor said. He had always considered them fairy tales.

The old man pointed a finger straight up and circled it around. “This place, the Stone, is one of the larger examples of those caches.”

“And that’s where you found the deep scouts?”

“No, actually somewhere else. A factory really. I can’t update the map if I have access to only a finite number of deep scouts. This place is a combination command center and drydock. The only one of its kind.”

“A drydock for what?” Victor asked.

“Follow me and find out.” He walked by, close to Victor.

On a whim, Victor reached to grab the old man, but Victor’s hand passed through the old man as if he weren’t here. “
Hrmmph
. I should’ve figured you wouldn’t be here in person.”

The old man’s smile became lopsided. “You can figure what you wish. Now please follow me. You will be impressed. Trust me.”

Victor, suspicious and curious at the same time, followed the old man’s holo.

A door on the other side of the large room opened for the old man as he approached. Victor found it odd that the doors would open for a hologram. He followed the old man into a room dominated by a large window, looking out into a vast rocky interior.

“Are we inside an asteroid?” Victor asked. Then he saw what was within this space, and his breath caught in his throat.

The most beautiful starship he’d ever seen.

The old man, smiling, leaned toward Victor. “Try not to drool.”

Guessing the ship’s exact size was hard, but she was much larger than the
Osprey
. Her hull was long and flat like a blade. But, for all her size, she looked fast. Really fast. “Is that a—”

“First Civilization ship? Why, yes. The IUM
Excalibur
.”

Victor turned to the old man in disbelief. “IUM? As in,
Interstellar Union Military
? You have an actual
First Civilization
warship
?”

The old man nodded.

“What kind?”

“The
Excalibur
is a battlecruiser.”

Victor pointed at the
Excalibur
with an outstretched arm. “That thing is worth more than…well…anything! And you have it just sitting here?”

“Yes, waiting for the right person to take command.”

“Who?” Victor asked.

The old man gave him a disappointed look. “Now don’t be dense, Victor. You are that person. Or at least I hope you are.”

“Me? Why? Why would you give a failure like me a ship like that?”

“Well, for one, you’re not a failure. You’re one of the finest warriors of your generation.” The old man’s expression became sad. “You just happened to find yourself the victim of a great crime.”

Victor looked back at the
Excalibur
and felt something he had not felt since the day he was first offered command of the
Osprey
. It felt like falling in love.

He looked back at the old man. “What do you want from me?”

“To save the galaxy.”

“The galaxy seems to be spinning around just fine,” Victor said.

BOOK: Refusing Excalibur

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