Rift in the Races (102 page)

“Look,” said Captain Metumbe seated next to Captain Asad. He pointed to the section of the wall monitor behind Queen Karroll, which showed a view that had been fixed on
Citadel
. Just left of the glowing sphere a stone tower had appeared, Tytamon’s tower. It hung there, slightly higher than midway, motionless, a cylindrical satellite in the orbit of a luminous space fortress.

A moment later Altin sat down next to Aderbury. The Queen leaned back and whispered something to him, which he replied to in similar kind. When she looked back at the admiral, she was smiling.

“It seems that Blue Fire has offered to send your people home,” she announced.

The admiral was not the only one who frowned. “She what?”

“Blue Fire sends her apologies for the awful mistakes of the past, and she will gladly send you home as a way of making it up to you.”

There was a round of commotion amongst the ship captains, and background noise from the crewmen on board those ships whose captains had joined this conference from locations where others could see. While many seemed skeptical, far more were ready to take the offer and go home. That much was obvious from the expanding wave of nods and even, on a few faces, smiles. Imagine really being able to go home. Just like that. It was clear that the majority hoped it was truly possible. And, in as many minds, the question: what was the point of continuing?

The recent experience above Goldilocks—Blue Fire—made it pretty clear that the Hostile world was more than a match for them … at least for now, and definitely with the help of the wizards from Prosperion. And they were tired. The swell of hope that had come with the anti-magic missile attack had just been burst like an over-filled balloon. The collective wind was gone from most of them. A peaceful settlement would feel much less like defeat.

“Bullshit,” said Captain Asad. “You have broken our alliance, the agreements we made, the last
accord
you made with us, in favor of siding with the enemy—in mid-fight, no less. You have spent the course of this last year learning our machines and buying the time you needed to complete your ship while playing the part of friend. When you were ready, when your orb was done, you turned against us. You sent your man Altin, whom I made the mistake of finally trusting, to take us out. And that only after you sent him to infiltrate my ship and assassinate a passenger entrusted to my care, a passenger that was a member of your family as I recall, which further proves what kind of person you are. And now you want us to turn over our ships to whatever the next part of your plan is?” He let go a short, ironic laugh. One note. “We may have proven ourselves to be stupid beyond belief, gullible beyond measure, but eventually we learn.” He peeled off a nasty look for Admiral Jefferies. “
Eventually
.”

“Captain,” said the admiral, but it came out weak, bereft of anything like authority, certainly nothing to stop Asad’s tirade.

“Let me guess,
Sir
Altin,” said Captain Asad as he leaned down and placed both hands on the table, his head thrust forward as if it were the barrel of a gun. “
She
is going to need us to tell her where it is, isn’t
she
?”

A puzzled expression came upon Altin’s face as he recoiled from the ferocity of the captain’s every aspect. He wasn’t quite sure what the captain meant, and it probably wouldn’t matter anyway. So he said nothing.

“Admit it, Meade. She doesn’t know, does she?”

Altin looked at the Queen, but she too was obviously expecting him to reply. “Know what?” he asked.

“Where Earth is. Don’t play stupid with me. We’re past that now.”

Altin shrugged. He had no idea. “Let me ask.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, his left hand absently moving to his right. The captains around the fleet shot concerned looks to one another around the video stream.

Altin finally opened his eyes. “You are correct, Captain. She does not know where it is.”

Captain Asad laughed again, once more a short, violent sound. “Of course she doesn’t.” He turned to the admiral. “And how convenient that we should give her the coordinates at Her Sweet Majesty’s request.”

There wasn’t much Altin could say to that, so he sat back. This was the Queen’s thrust to parry.

“I don’t blame you for your reluctance, Captain. Or any of you for that matter,” said the Queen. “And you don’t have to take Blue Fire up on her offer to send you home. You are still welcome on my world for as long as you would like to stay. You may count Tinpoa Base as permanent, and it will remain so for as long as you choose to keep it. The same for Little Earth.”

Captain Asad started to say more, but this time the admiral did cut him off, standing as he spoke and putting a hand on the captain’s arm. “Your Majesty,” his voice was stiff, but he made an effort to sound polite. “As you can imagine, we have much to discuss.”

“Indeed,” she said. “I will leave you to it.” Altin didn’t even speak and all the Prosperions were gone.

An uncomfortable silence followed the departure of the Queen. Captain Eugene was the first to break it. “So, what now?” she asked, her voice strained. “In the matter of one day, we’ve managed to lose all our advantages over the Hostiles; lose our Prosperion allies, or at least our preferred status with them; lose an entire fleet’s supply of nukes; and, if I am being honest, lose our self-respect thanks to that display on the part of Captain Asad. And now we find ourselves having to decide whether or not we want to give up the coordinates of our home world to the very force that obliterated Andalia, and if we do that, we base the decision solely on the assurances of the people who just turned on us in a fight or, at the very least, suddenly took a middle ground despite agreements they had made. We can do that or, as Captain Asad is about to say, we can ‘turn tail and run,’ looking at another decade in space where, a few days ago, most of us hoped to have the help of the Prosperion wizards to get us all home straight away. They still might, if we trust them to do it, which is now up in the air, and would, again, require helping them find the Earth.” She paused for a breath, long enough to shake her head in disgust. “Bravo, Admiral. A fine day’s work. I can’t wait to see what you and your little council of favorites have in store for us tomorrow.”

The admiral’s chin was in his hand, his jaw held tightly between his thumb and forefinger, as if in an effort to keep from speaking out of hand. Or else he just didn’t know what to say.

“I say we take out Prosperion,” said Captain Asad. “They won’t see it coming. They think we’re whipped and will just fall into line. They expect us to go crying to them to send us all home like cowering dogs. But we’re not. We can take them out, then go back and finish the job on Goldilocks. It’s probably mostly destroyed anyway. For all we know, this whole thing is a bluff just to make us go away.”

“I doubt it’s a bluff,” said the admiral, still gripping his chin and staring at the console with a vacant look. “Look around.”

Revulsion seemed to drip from Captain Asad’s every pore like acid eating through plate steel. “Shall we have Earth’s first galactic Shiloh, Admiral Beauregard? Will you be our Judycki? Call another conference while the Hostiles reinforce? Our Tuckfield, too fair-minded to shoot down a few satellites? You reek of the cowardice that makes you want to believe their lies.”

“And what if they’re not lying,” said Captain Eugene.

Captain Asad’s fists slammed heavily on the table. “When have they ever told us the truth? When? What single time? How can you even say that out loud? Look out your windows, for crying out loud. What the hell is wrong with you? We are drifting out here without a single missile between us, and you think they might
not
be lying?” His neck swelled and tendons stretched like taut cables beneath his skin. His whole body quaked with the violence of his perplexity, his inability to comprehend how this conversation was even happening.

“They aren’t lying,” said Colonel Pewter. The rarity of his voice in conference stilled the murmuring that had begun. “Their Queen is a soldier, a warrior. I know her type. She’s not the kind to stoop to that sort of duplicity unless it was a last resort. She’d rather play the lion than the fox. And, as Captain Asad rightly points out, she is not in a position of last resort. Her victories are direct and this one she clearly thinks she has in hand. I believe the deal is exactly as she says it is, about sending us home, and about the intent of the Hostile world.”

“Even you don’t call it Blue Fire. Your own daughter’s words.” Captain Asad sat down and shook his head. It was clear he felt he was trapped in a room full of idiots.

“I believe what Orli says about the Hostile world is true,” said the colonel. “Especially now. I see no reason not to. You see what they did to us. They transported us back here. All of us. At once. The Queen is right, that planet, or creature, whatever it is, could just as easily have put us in the sun.”

“If they even teleported us anywhere,” spat Captain Asad. “For all we know, we are still in orbit around Andalia, all of us living some goddamn collective hallucination brought on by the Hostiles, whoever they are, and they’re just waiting for us to hand over the coordinates to Earth so they can come and finish the job. And before you say that’s impossible, think about the crap we’ve just been through. Can you honestly tell me any of the last ‘two years’ has seemed any more plausible than that?”

“Why wouldn’t they just get the numbers from our system?” asked Captain Eugene. “Any first-year cadet could discover as much. How many Prosperions do you have aboard your ship right now, Asad?”

“None in about an hour. I’m going to jettison them all when I get back.”

“You will do no such thing, Captain. That is an order.” The admiral’s expression was absolute.

“Your orders have brought us nothing but shame and disarmament. Frankly, I think we need a vote of no confidence. I recognize you took the job under duress, but you are clearly not up to it.”

Looks of shock passed around the group, but so did a few nods and gestures of approval, several thumbs-up and a few who simply pointed at Captain Asad as if to say, “Bingo.”

“You want this fucking job, Asad?” said the admiral suddenly. “Then take it.” He got up and stormed out of the conference room, leaving everyone to glance back and forth at one another in surprise.

“You see, he’s weak,” said Captain Asad. “I’ll take the job, and we will finally win this thing.”

“No offense, Asad, but you are rash and quick to anger,” said Colonel Pewter. “And we don’t need another field-promoted admiral. Not now.”

Captain Eugene openly agreed. “You’ll only get us killed.”

“Blind trust and cowardice has nearly got us killed,” Captain Asad countered. “Every one of you all aquiver over the magicians and their dragons and ridiculous swords and sorcery, wetting yourself with the shudders of your enthusiasm the first chance we had to go down to Prosperion like a bunch of giddy dogs seeing their master has come home. It was sickening. We came out here to do a job. An entire planet of people were obliterated. More than half of your comrades have been killed out here too. You remember them, don’t you? The ones who won’t be going home. All killed by the same enemy, the enemy you want to embrace now. The enemy that just ripped your ships out of orbit and sent you back here to grovel before that gold-plated liar who calls herself the
War
Queen. Your armories are empty. You’ve been played like fools. And still you want to cower and grovel before her? How can that possibly be? Are you all so blind? Am I the only one who can see how obvious it is?

“She just asked us to tell them where we’re from. The endgame of this whole ridiculous ‘magical’ charade. Who cares if it’s real or a dream? It’s all been for this one thing. To find our world and do to it exactly what they set out to do all along: wipe us out. Do you really intend to help them get it done? Why don’t we just offer them a ride?”

The murmurs began again. Private conversations had between captains ship-to-ship, as long-time friends took counsel with one another in whispers behind the backs of hands.

“I call a vote of no confidence in Admiral Jefferies for this time tomorrow,” said Captain Asad, feeling the tide of opinions rising beneath his ship. “And I present myself as successor, at least until this Hostile threat is done.”

One by one the monitors of the other captains and the colonel flickered and went dark.

Captain Asad sat back in his chair and glared into the monitor on the wall, his expression as dark as the void that filled the screen behind the sinister glowing orb of
Citadel
. Captain Metumbe, the last to get up from the table, walked by Asad and patted him on the shoulder in a gesture of support. “Tomorrow, we’ll get it done, my friend.”

Chapter 83

A
ltin found Orli in the
Aspect’s
sick bay and made no qualms about teleporting himself directly there. When he first appeared, Doctor Singh had been startled by it, as had the nurse, but Doctor Singh convinced the woman not to call for security.

Now, Altin stood over the slumbering Orli looking into her face. Her eyes were closed and her skin glistened with a sheen of perspiration, but he knew enough of Earth machinery to understand that the steady beeping of the equipment meant that she was still alive. He watched her sleeping and felt his heart fill with familiar joy, his love for her infusing him with happiness, at least for a time. Long enough to remember, as always, the truth of it, that he had lost hers.