Across the Stars: Book Three of Seeds of a Fallen Empire, Page 3

  Retreating her steps and making a right at the last intersection, Erin found the decorated door of her squadron mate and good friend. She knocked softly on the door and announced herself, even though the computerized door screener would have already signaled that she was there.

  “So the prodigal returns at last!” Nathalie Quinn declared affectionately, drawing her inside and giving her a fierce hug. The short, fiery French-Canadian girl with sharp emerald eyes was usually reserved about such displays of affection; even as she came inside, Erin suspected something might be wrong.

  Aside from the brief moment of animation, Nathalie seemed unusually lethargic; she had yet to take off her flightsuit from the recent battle, even though it was quite warm in the crew’s quarters.

  Ho-ling Chen, their close friend, remained seated on her chair, busy reading a book on her electronic notebook. Ho-ling had put on a sleeveless shirt that exposed her sinewy arms and sat with her feet carelessly propped up on the table.

  “We’re glad to see you,” Nathalie continued, tucking her dark curls behind her ears. “They told us Arnaud’s team had returned with heavy casualties, but they wouldn’t say yet who made it back safely. And–Erik?” Nathalie added.

  “Yes, he’s back in his quarters.” Erin nodded. Nathalie shrugged and looked down, then began to fidget with her sleeve.

  “So what happened out there?” Ho-ling asked, finally turning to them, breaking her farce of composure and indifference. There was a disturbing quality of hidden pain in her eyes. Erin waited to determine what had been the cause of it.

  “I really don’t know if we’re supposed to talk about the mission until we’ve given the information to the Earth Security Force Council.” Erin admitted.

  “Oh,” Nathalie said, disappointed.

  “But then again,” Erin continued, “Kansier’s sending some information to Knightwood and Zhdanov so they can prepare their arguments. And he didn’t order us to keep quiet. Besides, you were both in the other alien ship, and who else are you going to tell?”

  “Don’t get yourself into trouble on our account,” Ho-ling protested, turning away abruptly, but Nathalie was having none of it.

  “Forget her,” she shrugged, “and let us know what the aliens look like. Did you see any? Are they disgusting? How many heads and arms and do they have? Or–if they’re really awful, maybe I don’t want to know.”

  Erin laughed. “You’re in for an even bigger surprise than you imagine. I think we should wait until Katrin gets here. I’d hate to have to repeat everything.”

  Nathalie and Ho-ling grew silent. Nathalie’s smile disappeared, and her lips compressed to a thin red line.

  “We didn’t want to tell you, Erin, until you’d had a chance to recover from what you’ve been through, but–Katrin–” Ho-ling faltered, her eyes to the far wall. Nathalie had been watching her, her heart-shaped face emotionless. Then tears suddenly sprang to her eyes, and she buried her face in her hands.

  “Katrin?” Erin cried in protest, but Ho-ling only nodded.

  “Akira, too, and several of the others–”

  “Not now, Ho-ling,” Nathalie interrupted sharply. “She’s already got so much on her mind, and all those losses in the infiltration team–”

  “It’s all right, Nathalie, I’ll be all right.” Erin insisted, but even as she said it, she knew it was a lie.

  No, it couldn’t be! How could it be that they would all not be coming back? Not Katrin! Not Katrin! Not her dear friend, not one so young, so full of life! How could she, Erin, have passed the day in debriefing and not have known? How could she not have sensed that one so dear had left the world forever?

  Battle was a game of luck, but knowing what could happen and experiencing it were two different things entirely. The true horror of it all had never set in before; Erin had seen but paid little attention to the rings of debris trapped in orbit around Pluto and Charon, the rings of debris that the cadets called the sea of lost souls.

  Pluto, lord of the dead, had claimed them for his own.

  Chapter Two

  “Glad to be home?” Asked Kansier.

  “Definitely,” his co-Captain said and nodded. “I have never felt so relieved to see anyone or anything in all my life.”

  As the Stargazer approached the brilliant blue Earth after six long months in space, the bridge crew gazed transfixed by the swath of vapors that danced about the slow-turning globe. No mere words could describe the beauty of it or imitate the primal joy in the hearts of the crew that had returned home at last.

  The debriefing session of the top officers of the Stargazer took place two days after the bridge crew had visually sighted the Earth and scarcely four hours after the flagship had docked in the second largest cargo bay of Central City’s Security Base. Before the second flight crew left the bridge, Colonel Kansier informed his navigators and weapons system operators that they would have to accompany him and Major Dimitriev as well as the other eight officers from the first and third bridge crews to the Security Council Conference room in Central City’s Council Headquarters building. The surviving members of the infiltration team had been invited to attend the meeting after the first hour, but they had only to stay briefly to give their reports and explain their mission as the Council viewed the footage.

  Erin waited behind the others outside the conference room; there were two great Greek columns with a double helix of cobras wrapped around the base. Ahead she could see her friends: the ruddy, fair-haired Russian Nikolai Kaganov, the big blond Viking Einar Andersen, and Erik Ross standing at attention behind Kansier and Dimitriev and the Council aides.

  When they were at last invited into the United Earth Security Force Council room, Kansier scanned the room and met eyes with the UESF Secretary/President Hilbert, Vice President Maria Portocarrero, and Vice Chief Kathryn Hines-Gallo; several representatives he knew from the Ural Base including Fabrichnova and Tipler had already arrived, as well as representatives from Yokohama. And there were others he knew from the Central European Security Base and from the Cairo Security Base–but all of the faces were a blur right now. Knightwood, Zhdanov, Cheung, and Colonel Arnaud himself were already seated near the open seats reserved for the Stargazer’s crew; Kansier led the others to their seats and waited for Hilbert to convene the meeting.

  “Glass of cranberry juice?” said one of the aides.

  “Yes, thank you,’ Hilbert took one sip of his refreshment, as did the other participants.

  As it turned out, the Council wanted to know every minor detail concerning the strategic firing of the weapon that had breached the alien hull, the statistics surrounding casualties for each moment the Stargazer had remained in the line of fire, how many lives it would cost to buy precious minutes if the Council decided another infiltration were necessary. They wanted to speak with the navigator who had piloted the ship during battle, lieutenant Fenwick, and hear his insights into what the best evasive adjustments had been.

  And they found it interesting that the alien ship had fired only a few small shots at the Stargazer, that in doing so they had been forced to immolate some of their own pilots since none of the space between the two ships had been entirely clear. The infiltration unit arrived some time later and answered a barrage of questions for nearly two hours before being dismissed. Kansier and Dimitriev remained to discuss the reports the infiltration team had compiled; Erin Mathieson-Blair and Erik Ross remained as the second bridge crew navigators, along with the four other officers from the third and first bridge crews.

  Secretary Hilbert said very little by way of introducing the UESF Council’s plans; Erik found the man tremendously boring, with a slow laborious way of arriving at a point. In ten minutes, his entire speech offered no more than a summary documenting historic decisions and the difficulty with which they had been implemented. From Hilbert’s position, the Council might decide to continue with its present attack strategies, or for the hell of it, it might just try something different, but what that was he wasn
’t sure. He really wanted to avoid the messy business altogether.

  Clearly, though Hilbert had not considered the possibility before, the enemy was after something besides simple global annihilation, or the Earth would not have been spared. So Hilbert delivered an appeal for a brainstorm to determine precisely what the enemy wanted and how best to give it to them so they would finally go away. For all he knew, the enemy was merely using the Earth as a drill site to strengthen its soldiers against a race who, unlike the inhabitants of Earth, could possibly pose a significant threat to them.

  As he spoke, Hilbert’s gaze lingered on Dr. Knightwood, his lips spreading into a smile, his eyes vacant but soft. Hilbert was a painfully thin man with angular features. His light brown hair was thin and fine and seemed to cling to his skull; his sallow skin seemed stretched over his prominent brow. Yet he was not, on the whole, as ill-formed as these singular features; his face was well-shaped and his cheeks were round, and when he was looking at Knightwood, his eyes turned calm as a millpond, and a thin but pleasant smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. However, Hilbert was in most ways, thoroughly unimaginative, a slow, plodding sort of man, with little talent and a lot of brilliant supporters who controlled him in subtle ways. Hilbert had no wife; and as stated perviously, he made no attempt to conceal the fact that he admired Knightwood.

  Meanwhile, Knightwood tried to contain herself as she had masked her anticipation over her own forthcoming speech. She had some new developments to present once the rest had had their say, information that would render the entire discussion unnecessary. Yet she remained silent. Let the others speak; she might be able to determine better what side each person’s bread was buttered on and how best to use the information to her advantage.

  A moment later, Mr. Tipler rose in his chair; though a plain representative, he was nonetheless esteemed by the Council for his manipulative abilities and unswerving eagerness to rip the jugular of anyone who stood in his way.

  “Who could have guessed that we were fighting our brothers?” Tipler, a grey-haired man with a bronze complexion and blue eyes that twinkled like ice, entreated dolefully, showing open palms to the assembly. His hawkish eyes darted over his audience in a calculating way, hidden by an expression that was a farce of sincerity; as happened so often, one could not tell his true nature by his outward appearance. “Yes, that’s what these aliens are–the odds alone that we share a body form by coincidence are astronomical, and so we must consider that through some intervention, though the means we shall never know, we share a common ancestry with these creatures who have returned to our world.

  “And what do they want with us? some ask,” he continued authoritatively, shaking his head. “Perhaps nothing. Perhaps they had no intention of ever disturbing us, perhaps they wanted merely to check up on humanity’s progress, but some event must have changed all of their benevolent intentions. I say we are to blame.

  “Yes, all of this time we have taken the wrong approach.” He nodded somberly, refusing to brook interruptions. “The day the first alien ship arrived–you all remember, don’t you? We never intended to keep it for ourselves, and yet we allowed it to remain hidden. That was our first mistake, the first of many.

  “We can now see from the picture we discovered there and the footage of Arnaud’s brave team that our aliens are the same, that though their people on board have disappeared, the ship is rightfully still theirs. When they came to us, desperate to find their possession, we offered no help, but we sent out our own fighters to attack them, making it clear we intended to keep what we had found, what was never ours to take,” he glared around the room, making Knightwood among others feel uncomfortable.

  “Who here would not fight for what is ours?” He asked. “Indeed, perceiving we were merely defending the Earth, we have done just that. And who here would abandon fellow comrades? For all they know, we may still hold them prisoner or have killed them ourselves. Would we not demand justice, exact revenge? Then why can we not understand, can we not even recognize the cause of our enemy?” He paused dramatically, shaking his head, then slapped the table with both hands.

  “I say we should give back what was never ours and return the alien ship to them. Perhaps if we can make them understand that we never meant to deny their claim, that we misunderstood their intentions, then they will forgive us and leave the Earth at peace once more.”

  Erin bristled as she listened to Tipler’s specious suggestions. What he said struck her as a self-righteous castigation against those who attempted to protect the planetary colonies and citizens on Earth, an effort to escape his own culpability and exonerate the council from wrongdoing, as if the military types had waited a bit longer to defend the Earth, the council would have decided to talk first–and then the fighting would have been averted. Never mind that years ago the training bases and the United Earth Security Force itself had been the Council’s idea.

  The others had politely waited for Tipler to finish; most of the Council wore approving faces. Recently, some of the council hierarchy had grown irritated that the UESF hadn’t completely gotten rid of the alien threat yet and openly questioned its competence; the majority of the regional council representatives could not hide their growing fears that global eradication would be the retaliation for the Earth’s recent infiltration of the alien spaceship. Even those that thought Tipler was being ridiculous to suggest such a thing this late in the game would have given the Earth-grounded vessel back in an instant if they thought the Charon aliens would let bygones be bygones.

  In the long pause, the UESF members could see that a few of the councilors were beginning to be persuaded by Tipler’s suggestion. If annihilation were inevitable, then what harm could it do to see if Tipler’s theory could work?–Erik could almost read the question on the Councilors’ faces. Tipler’s position was attractive, even he had to admit. Who knew? Maybe the aliens would simply leave if they had what they wanted. Maybe the Charon aliens would leave if the Earth relinquished the first alien spaceship to them.

  “Don’t even suggest giving them the ship!” Erin’s voice suddenly interrupted the silence; there was a deadly cold edge in her voice, a quiet, dangerous chill that had never been there before. As Erik watched her, she came to her feet so fluidly, so rapidly that it seemed she had not really moved at all.

  Erik smiled inwardly at her temerity–as much as he was alarmed by it.

  “You’ve been ignoring the facts.” Erin shook her head. “Does anyone remember the man in that picture that we found on the grounded alien ship?” she asked, meeting Knightwood’s eyes; Knightwood in particular had spent a lot of time analyzing it. As several of the others nodded, Erin continued, directing her argument to them. “Do any of you remember the building that rose behind him in the distance? The bight white, intricately ornate buildings, the decorative dome? You can just imagine how much pride the people of that city took in their architecture, can’t you?”

  “Yes,” Fabrichnova agreed.

  “But this city,” Erin continued and gestured to the small, frozen image in the holo-monitor, “the city we saw first hand in the other ship–just look at it! Have you ever seen a more oppressive scene? A mass of violet buildings that in no way resembles the architecture in the picture we found. And what about the holo-projection of volcanic mountain ranges?” She pointed to the vidigital footage in the frame on the wall, which pictured mountains like crude grated rust, tinged with the vermilion of fissures in the volcanoes’ facade, with scraggly trees dotting the low-lying hills before them. “Why are they there? They’re hardly attractive at all, but you can be sure someone went to a great effort to make the city look like a real place for a reason.” Erin paused.

  “True.” Cheung conceded, uncustomarily putting his head on Tipler’s chopping block.

  “Why then would they choose to recreate such a horrifying place if it did not hold some significant meaning for them?” Erin demanded. “If it were not their home environment? If they can cast images that real, why
wouldn’t they want to surround themselves with a paradise if they could?”

  Even Tipler nodded then, listening with greater interest.

  “Now, if you recall the other picture,” Erin continued, “you can see that at the very least, that would make the philosophies behind these images strikingly opposed. The geography which we can see most certainly is. But you want us to believe that these people are the same just because they may look alike to us?” She demanded, her voice rising. As they watched her, her eyes took on a strange hypnotic quality, shining with the glow of resolution and conviction.

  “Have there not been Civil Wars in the countries of our past?” Erin continued with passion. “How similar did the nations of the Earth seem even when they went to war over their differences?”

  “Hmm,” Knightwood said, considering that argument, and several of the representatives nodded.

  “Now take a look at the creatures in the footage.” Erin turned to gesture at the other vidigital still, still looking at the councilors but avoiding Tipler’s gaze. “As you can see, they’re wearing a completely different garb from the flightsuit we discovered in the grounded ship on Earth. And again the man in the picture we found there wasn’t wearing anything like our Charon aliens. Then there is the writing you have all had a chance to examine–now while it may be similar, as Knightwood already pointed out, our cryptographers tell us it is not exactly identical.

  “That should mean something to us,” Erin shook her head forcefully. “Many of our world’s countries, though often at war with each other, all used the same roman script. So even if they are related–they are clearly not the same people.”

  “Interesting,” Zhdanov said to Cheung.

  “I don’t have a neat little hypothesis for anyone about who the Charon aliens might be. All I’m saying is that we have no idea why the Charon aliens are here, and we did nothing to them before they destroyed Gallagher’s Pluto base.” Erin continued. “All we’ve received from them so far is hostility, no gestures of cooperation–but you want to give them the ship on Earth and see what they’ll do with it? If you ask me, I don’t think we would have very long to regret that mistake.”