Resolute Omnibus (The War for Terra) Page 6

  “I’m actually more interested in another story,” Lee began. “Like how you became escaped prisoners on a Ch’Tauk transport.”

  Melaina looked back at him. Her eyes narrowed and she gained of look of concentration. Her dark brows almost met over her green eyes. She pursed her lips and took a deep breath, mentally preparing herself.

  “This part is harder to tell,” she said. “I don’t remember all of the last three years either. I’ll try and tell you as much as I know, but you may need to talk to Tuxor to fill in the gaps.”

  “Just tell us what you can,” said Ortiz. At this moment, Lee thought he looked more like a grandfather than he had ever seen him. He saw the care that the last few years couldn’t take from him. He looked down at the woman and patted her shoulder.

  “Okay,” she began. “I’ll try. The Edison, as I was saying, was small and fast. She managed to get away from Karisia just as the Ch’Tauk began their orbital bombardment. We found out later that the invasion had happened everywhere. Earth had been attacked at almost the same time, as well as a dozen other Confederacy worlds. The bugs were out for human blood.

  “For about a week, we tried to reach the fleet where we were to rendezvous, but when we got there, there was nothing but debris and Ch’Tauk ships. We figured the military had also been attacked. The Edison almost got caught then, but we escaped again into M-Space. As we entered the jump point, though, one of the communications guys, I forget his name, found a marker buoy floating just inside M-space. After we retrieved the data, we destroyed the buoy so the bugs couldn’t follow.

  The buoy was a log entry from an old battleship that had been engaged in the attack and had been swept along when its carrier group escaped into M-space. The buoy held only one thing.”

  “And what was that, Miss Petros?” the captain asked.

  “Please call me Melaina,” she said. “I really hate being called miss.”

  The captain and commander looked at each other with smiles. They each nodded to her. She looked tired, but the two men needed to know how she had come to them and whether she and her colleagues posed a threat to the Princess.

  “We retrieved the data from the buoy and decrypted it. Someone on the Resolute wanted us to know where the fleet was heading.”

  Both men looked back at each other with a start. They both knew what she was saying was incredible.

  “Captain, is it possible that the fleet survived?” Lee asked.

  Ortiz stared at Pearce for a moment, considering what he had just heard. He looked down at Melaina.

  “Melaina … did the Edison follow the trail?”

  “No, sir,” she replied. “We thought it would be too dangerous, for both them and us. We decided to head into empty space for a while and try to sort out what to do. A few jumps later, we were orbiting an unnamed star somewhere that none of us had ever heard of. The Edison was a small ship and we needed supplies and a safe port, but had no idea where was safe anymore. The Edison’s captain — Maya Ditzler was her name — decided to head for Onyx port out in the far end of the galaxy. We were betting that the bugs hadn’t gotten there yet because there weren’t enough humans to make it worth the trip.

  When we arrived, the natives at the station almost ran us out of the system. They had heard about the invasion and didn’t want the Ch’Tauk attacking them as well. Tuxor and his people managed to convince the station retailers to sell us some food and supplies at ridiculous prices before they escorted us out of the system. We learned then that the Confederacy had fallen and humans had become intergalactic pariahs.”

  “We’ve experienced that as well,” said Lee. “We use passenger shuttles to go on shopping trips to resupply. Even then, we can only send two or three people at a time or the locals get jumpy.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed. “We had to use the evacuation ships to do the same. After that, we jumped around for about a year. I can tell you, being cooped up on a small ship with about a hundred dried-out frogs and the elves gets old fast. The air filters just weren’t up to that.

  We jumped into the Tigre sector to pick up some food supplies when we were jumped by the bugs. Edison was a tough ship, but she couldn’t cope with that kind of action. We were boarded and most of us researchers were taken into custody by the Ch’Tauk. The last I saw Edison and her captain, the bugs were opening fire on her.”

  Melaina paused for a moment to collect her thoughts as tears seemed to well in her eyes. This time, Pearce reached out and took her hand himself. She smiled and squeezed his hand. He noticed that her grip was a little stronger than before.

  “After that,” she continued, “we were taken to a prison camp somewhere near the Ch’Tauk home world. It all becomes blur after that. We were tortured, starved, poked and experimented on. Tuxor’s people had it hard. There was very little water at the camp. They did what they could to keep their skin moist, but many of them dried out and died. The elves fared a bit better, but only because the Ch’Tauk thought they were useless.

  A lot of the engineers just disappeared. We assumed they had been killed, or at least that’s what we hoped. Some of the others said they had seen labs where Ch’Tauk carved humans apart and tried to put them back together in a different order. We tried not to listen to those stories, but the nightmares made it hard to ignore them.

  About a week ago, the Ch’Tauk became really curious about the buoy we had recovered from the Resolute. Somehow, they had found out about the lost fleet and wanted to hunt it down. We resisted for a while, but then they stopped. A few days ago, they loaded some of us up. They told us we were going to be going home, and that when we got to Earth, we would give them the information they wanted. After that, they told us, we would beg them to die.”

  Lee held her hand through the story. She had not let up on her grip, and now he began to feel that the connection was the only thing holding her to reality. He could only imagine how she’d felt as she boarded the Ch’Tauk ship for Earth. Hope and fear must have torn her apart.

  “About halfway home,” she explained, “the elves discovered a flaw in the Ch’Tauk security grid. Since they were treated like servants by the bugs, they had access to other areas of the ship. When our restraints released themselves, we thought we had arrived on Earth. When the Ch’Tauk guards came for us, we, well, we freaked out. I saw friends who I had known for years attack the Ch’Tauk and tear them apart by hand. The hard exoskeletons that protect the bugs from plasma and projectiles only lasted a few seconds against angry engineers. It took us only a few minutes to overpower the guards. The pilots were no match for us by that point.”

  Lee noticed her use of the word “us” and made a mental note to ask her about her involvement in the uprising. For now, he glanced at the captain and kept his grip firm. She took another deep breath, shuddering a little at the memory of the violence.

  “We tossed the bodies out the airlock,” she continued. “I think that is when the escort ships caught on. Have you ever seen what happens when a body is ejected into M-space? You don’t ever want to know.

  “Anyway, we scanned the available exit points on our heading and saw a sensor shadow. We thought it was a Confederation cruiser or something it was so big. When we found out you were a cruise ship, well.…”

  Lee nodded at her and put her hand back on the bed.

  “I think I know the story from here,” he said. “Maybe you should rest now.”

  Melaina nodded to him and pulled the covers up a bit. She did look tired now, and deeply sad. The medical scanner indicated that she had been given a light sedative to calm her down. Lee glanced at Ortiz again and nodded towards the door. Ortiz stepped away from the bed and started towards the door. The only noise in the private room was the beeping of the medical scanner.

  “Oh, by the way,” she said, getting the attention of the two men. “I still know the coordinates. If you want them, I will give them to you. I think I’ve carried them long enough. They have grown so heavy.”

  She drifted off to sleep
as the captain and Pearce exited the room. Instead of returning to the lobby, Ortiz gestured Pearce into the next room down the hall. It was an empty room and the two men entered and locked the door.

  “Well,” the captain asked. “What do you think?”

  Pearce stood to his full height. In the enclosed room, the two men seemed to expand to fill the space. Lee took a deep breath.

  “I think we should go find that fleet.”

  7

  Commander Lee Pearce stood in the corridor outside the forward landing bay and stared out at the dead world the Terran Princess now orbited. It was a dark steel-gray color and showed almost no surface features even in the reflected light of its bright red sun. It made him feel numb to look at such desolation. It was early morning by the ship’s clock, but the planet below showed no difference between night and day.

  They had been following the trail left by the lost fleet for over a week now and had stopped to recharge the solar arrays. Although the M-space engines used a fusion reactor to generate the space-bending jump point, the ship’s other systems ran on an electric battery that could be recharged by solar energy. When the ship was a cruise ship, it had made sense as they typically travelled from Earth to a resort planet and back and could recharge at every stop. Now that the ship was more of a lifeboat, they needed to stop regularly to ensure their life support continued to function.

  Lee had come down to the hangar bay to see his ship. Since the rescue of the engineering researchers, he had been preoccupied with the planning and decrypting of the clues left by the fleeing ships. He had finally broken away from his duties long enough to come down and see if the fighter’s repairs had been started yet. Lee’s instinct told him that since the rescue, the need for a good ship was greater than ever.

  He shut off the viewer on the wall and turned back to the door to the repair bay. He activated the airlock door and it slid aside quietly. The inner door also slid open, and he walked into the small bay. He had expected to see his Crowned Eagle fighter would still be sitting on the circular spot. He had even imagined that it might still be smoking slightly from his last adventure. What he found was even more shocking.

  The ship was not there. He noticed engine parts and hull plating piled in the corner of the garage. There were tools out on the tables, as well as a thick orange fluid splattered onto the floor. For a moment, he had no idea what to think. The ship weighed over three tons and would not be easily moved in the state it must be in, but it was not where he had left it.

  He looked at the numbers on a small plaque by the door to confirm that he was in the right place. As he looked back, the door to the larger landing bay opened and a familiar form stepped into the garage.

  “Pearce,” said Alice Bennett, now dressed in a dark brown jumpsuit stained with the same orange fluid from the garage floor. “What a surprise!”

  “Alice,” he acknowledged. “Where is my ship?”

  “Direct and to the point,” she said with a grin. “I like that.”

  Lee looked at the woman seriously for the first time. She had a narrow face with a small, slightly upturned nose. Her hair was straight and blonde and currently tied in a pony tail that bobbed as she spoke. Her eyes were brown and had a softness that he found instantly attractive. As she stood there with the grin, he relaxed and tried to calm himself before continuing.

  “Miss Bennett,” he began again. “I seem to have forgotten where I parked my ship. I thought it was around here somewhere….”

  He mocked looking around the shop as she laughed softly at him. The laugh was teasing, but not mean. Once again, he found himself liking this woman. She uncrossed her arms and walked across the room to him. As she approached, she reached out her hand to him.

  “Come here, Commander,” she said to him as he took her hand. “I have something to show you.”

  She pulled him from the repair bay and through the airlock door leading to the larger hangar. As he entered the bay, he immediately looked to the prison transport ship still in the same place he had seen it land. The cargo shuttles were gone and he assumed they had been moved back to the upper landing bay where the ship stored its working vehicles.

  Alice turned to him when they had fully entered the bay. She reached out and took his other hand, holding both up between them for a few moments and looking at him appraisingly. Lee was momentarily uncomfortable with the woman’s forwardness. He was used to being the aggressive one in a new relationship.

  “I will make you a deal, Commander,” she said. “You stop calling me Miss Bennett and I will stop calling you Commander. Since I am not nine years old and your military doesn’t exist in this hangar, I think we can skip the formalities.”

  He nodded dumbly, thinking about what the woman had said about the military that he had served. She smiled again and turned back, releasing one hand and tugging at the other. They had to thread their way around several civilian vehicles that belonged to the Princess’ passengers, as well as the sleek shuttles the ship used in boarding them when they were in orbit. As he rounded the nose of a bark red private ship, he was amazed at the sight he beheld.

  His ship, its paint stripped down to its shiny metal hull, sat intact and gleaming on the landing deck. The rippled and damaged wing had been repaired and now was as smooth as glass. Even the dents that had been a part of the ship when he had first piloted it away from home and into the Princess originally had been smoothed and repaired.

  Perhaps the most amazing thing, though, was the sight of the dozen or so elves crawling all over his ship. They were still wearing the same long white gowns they’d had on when they’d stepped off the transport, but they appeared to have been cleaned. Their translucent hair, which he had learned was actually a highly-evolved sensory organ, trailed over the surface of the ship, checking the smoothness of the repairs.

  “W-What?” he stammered to Alice, dropping his hand from hers and rushing to the ship. “How you … I mean, did … how did they…?”

  “Calm down, flyboy,” Alice said, coming to his side. “Take a deep breath before you pass out.”

  Lee circled his ship, looking over every visible inch. He saw that the engine had still not been reinstalled, but that every other piece was in better shape than he had ever seen it. Several of the components sat on tables surrounding the fighter. He saw that the pieces, too, looked brand new.

  “When did they do this?” he asked Alice. He had learned that communication with the elves was useless. They were dependent on the Karisiens for translation. Alice walked around to meet Pearce at the nose of the ship while the elves chittered and hummed to themselves as they continued their work.

  “They showed up here three days ago while I was still in the garage,” she explained. “Honestly, I have never seen anything like it. They just build and repair constantly. As far as I can tell, they haven’t even slept.”

  “But the parts,” he said, still staring at the ship. “Where did they get the parts?”

  “These are still the same parts,” she said. “For the most part, anyways. I saw them tear up a few bits of a damaged civvy ship yesterday. These guys have built new machines to remanufacture some of this stuff. They are really incredible.”

  Lee looked back at Alice with a wide smile. She had her arms crossed over her chest and was staring at the elves with the same wonder he felt. She looked at him and smiled back. She stared at his eyes and cocked her head to one side.

  “Let’s allow these boys to work, Lee,” she said, gesturing toward a lift door by the wall. “Have you eaten yet?”

  Lee shook his head and followed her to the lift. Once they were inside, she pressed the button to raise the platform to the cargo level. The lift moved smoothly upwards as Lee continued to stare down at his gleaming ship. He could still see the little aliens scurrying over the shiny metal surface.

  The lift stopped and Alice stepped out onto a catwalk and Lee followed her down the catwalk to another door, where she activated the airlock and stepped through both doors.
As they shut behind him, Lee glanced to his ship sitting on the deck below one final time.

  “Where are we going?” he asked. “The cafeteria isn’t open yet.”

  Alice giggled back to him as she mounted a metal staircase leading up. He looked at her back as she walked up the stairs. He looked away awkwardly as she turned and looked back down to him. Once again, a small laugh escaped her.

  “I know a place,” she said, “that stays open all night.”

  They continued up the steps until they came to a short corridor leading back aft. The walls here were plain gray metal without the pretentious decoration of the upper decks. He realized they were in an area meant for crew only now. There were doors on either side of the corridor with simple handles, obviously not leading to areas that vented into space. At the end of the corridor was a simple airlock door. Alice activated the door and stepped through.

  They were now in a much smaller hangar deck. Instead of the cavernous ceiling with catwalks, this bay was only about ten meters tall and contained only cargo and multipurpose company ships. Storage bins lined the walls of the bay, near a conveyor meant to move large containers further into the ship’s cargo hold. In the center of the hangar, one multipurpose shuttle had its large side door raised.

  Alice walked across the hangar to the waiting craft. Lee followed, wondering exactly what the young woman’s intentions were. When she came to the door, she turned to face him. For the first time, Lee saw uncertainty in her eyes. She bit her bottom lip as he neared her.

  “I usually eat alone up here before my shift starts,” she explained. “It’s kind of my private dining room.”

  He looked inside the ship to see a small tray with a cup and plate. The ship was small, but had a spacious cargo area behind the pilot station where Alice had set out her tray. There was a blanket set on the floor of the cargo area. It appeared that Alice slept in the little ship.