Authors: Tony Gonzales
Jonas looked uncomfortable.
“You heard the story about how the
Morse
was a gift from Empress Jamyl?”
he said.
“Who hasn’t?”
Mordu said.
“Well, what I didn’t tell anyone is that she
told
me she was going to do this to him,” Jonas said.
“Do
what
to him?”
“Make him immortal,” Jonas said, looking down.
“I had no idea what she meant.
But she also made it clear that I’d never see him again.
I guess one of us was wrong.”
Mordu marveled at Jonas.
“What other secrets are you hiding?”
“That’s the darkest one I’ve got,” Jonas said, fixing his eyes on the implant.
“I
know
Vince.
He didn’t choose this.
No chance.
That’s why I have to go back.
It’s my fault this happened to him.”
Korvin spoke up.
“Can you show me aerials of the colony during the attack?”
he asked.
Jonas gave him an incredulous look but complied anyway.
“Zoom in there please, sector one-dash-four,” Korvin said, pointing.
The image focused on one of the peculiar trucks on the northern part of the grid.
“No one can figure out how the colony was overrun so quickly without reinforcements,” Korvin said.
“Well, my gut tells me the cavalry was hiding in plain sight.
If your friend Vince is immortal, then his clones had to be in one of those.
There’s no place else they could be.”
“Were there Amarr ships overhead?”
Gable asked, drawing everyone’s stare.
“Yeah,” Miles said, speaking up.
“Bunch of them.”
“Then it’s possible,” she said.
“Those trucks are big enough to hold clone revival units.
If the ships could communicate with them, then limited amounts of state information could transfer quickly enough between clones.
It would explain how Vince knew where to find Mack the second time around: A copy of him was inside one of those CRUs when the original was killed.
That implant would have to be the piece that bridges what data can’t be transferred at death … somehow.”
“Now you’re making sense,” Mordu said, adjusting his hat.
“Here’s my offer: a billion credits for the return of Vince Barabin to this station, dead or alive.”
Everyone’s eyes bulged except for Jonas’s.
“That’s suicide money,” he said.
“Pretty much a verdict on our odds.”
“Correct,” Mordu said.
“To be clear, I only want the tech delivered intact.
If you can do that, the money is yours.”
“Then we have an agreement,” Jonas said.
“Good,” Mordu said.
“Now tell me what else you need to make this happen.”
“Orbital artillery support,” Jonas said.
“One, maybe two strikes ought to do it.”
“
Look
at what’s on my head,” Mordu said, pointing at his hat.
“I can provide the capital ship and crew, but you’ll have to find a captain crazy enough to fly it into the gauntlet again.”
“I’ll do it,” Korvin said.
The room turned and stared.
“As long as there’s a support fleet to keep the Amarr off my back,” Korvin added.
“Are you seriously asking me to hand you the keys to a dreadnought?”
Mordu asked.
“If I screw up, I’ll wake up in a Federation brig,” Korvin said.
“That’s a pretty strong incentive to get this right.”
“Point taken,” Mordu said.
“Then I’ll provide the support myself.
Risky venture for you, isn’t it?”
“I used to be in the Federation Navy,” Korvin said.
“If they knew about this, they’d be sending me down there anyway.”
“I’ll fly the gunship,” Jonas said.
“And support the team as best I can from the air.”
Miles, who was biting his fingernails for most of the discussion, leapt out of his seat.
“Whooaa,” he yelped, shaking his head.
“Everyone just wait a minute.
This.
Is.
Crazy!
What are you going to do when you get down there?
Flag a Paladin down and say ‘Hey buddy!
You seen Vinny around?’”
“Vince is holding still for us,” Jonas said, pointing to the trucks.
“We don’t need the live specimen.
Just the clone will do.”
“Then I’m going with you,” Gable said, raising her hand as Jonas was about to protest.
“If it’s a clone you’re after, you need a CRU expert, or else you’ll end up killing him again.”
“Then it’s done,” Mordu said, as Jonas and Gable exchanged looks.
“I need forty-eight hours to prepare.
I suggest you use the time to work all this through with each other.
As soon as I have what I need, we go.
Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Jonas said.
Mordu took off the hat and left it on the conference room table.
“You should try that on,” he said.
“A man with balls as big as yours earns the right to keep it.”
* * *
GABLE WAS FEELING WELL
enough to walk on her own, and with that strength came a renewed sense of curiosity.
But she quickly learned that, as on Pike’s Landing, she was very much a prisoner here, restricted from leaving the
Morse
or exploring many parts of it.
Before leaving with Mordu and Mack to plan the mission in more detail, Jonas asked her to be patient.
There were standing rules for operatives on classified missions, he explained.
Annoyed, she inquired about General Kintreb’s fate, only to be told that he didn’t survive—but nothing else about the exact cause of death.
Whatever karma might have been restored during the meeting with Mordu evaporated on the spot.
Jonas was the exact same person he always was—self-serving, untrustworthy, and deceitful.
It was evident in the people he surrounded himself with: Mack, a deranged monster; Mordu, a megalomaniac; and this incessant revolt against faith!
If anything, the backlash was just bolstering her spiritual resolve even more.
Besides the medical bay, the only place she was permitted to visit on board was the galley.
Wandering inside, she noticed several of the crew chatting, some of whom nodded toward her.
The ship’s engineering officer—Miles, she believed—was sitting far away from the crowd, all by himself.
A half-eaten meal was in front of him, and he was drawing a fork through the food in slow lines.
Anxiety was etched all over his face.
“Do you mind if I sit here?”
she asked.
Miles looked up and appeared somewhat shocked.
“Sure,” he said.
“Make yourself comfortable.
You feeling any better?”
“Very much so, thanks,” she said, settling into a chair.
“Good,” he said.
Then he went back to staring at his unfinished plate.
Sensing that he wasn’t going to start a conversation anytime soon, she decided to break the ice.
“You seem a little down,” she said.
“Miles, right?”
“Me?”
he said.
“No, I’m solid.
I mean, yeah.”
It was a valiant attempt to retain his composure, but it didn’t last.
One glance at Gable’s sympathetic eyes was all it took.
“Alright, you got me,” he confessed.
“I don’t have a lot of friends around here.
It’s part of the whole ‘ranking officer’ thing.
Keeping it professional and stuff.”
“Of course,” Gable said.
“I’m a good listener, if you need one.”
“Right,” Miles said, swallowing a knot in his throat.
“So, the crew’s all pumped up about taking the
Doystoyov
down.
Talking about it like it’s a party or something, high-fiving each other and stuff…”
Gable watched as he reached for his ice water with a trembling hand.
“They don’t get it,” he said.
“I mean, how often does anyone ever get to watch a ship with six thousand people on board break apart?”
He took a deep breath before continuing.
“Six
thousand
people.
Can you even get your head around that number?”
Looking around nervously, he spoke in the lowest voice he could.
“I do this because I’m good at it,” he said.
“Not because I love it.
I don’t want to die aboard a ship.
Until now, it’s been easy.
I could deal with it.
But this Core Freedom thing freaks me out.
It could have just as easily been the
Morse
breaking apart out there.
Next time, it just might be.”
“You’re much braver than you give yourself credit for,” Gable reassured, trying to channel all the wisdom that Sister Marth had imparted on her.
“We all get strength from different sources.
Where do you get yours?”
“You call this ‘strength’?”
Miles said, gesticulating with his eating utensils.
“Look, I can’t let the crew see me like this.
Not now.
Can we talk about something else?”
“Sure, Miles.
What would you like to discuss?”
“I don’t know.
Ask me something.”
“Alright,” she said.
“Why don’t you tell me about Mack?”
“What about him?”
Miles asked.
“I mean, he obviously scares the piss out of everyone, but—”
“What happened to him?
How did he—”
“You mean the scars?”
“Yes.”
“He’s a Seyllin survivor,” Miles said.
“Possibly the
last
survivor of the catastrophe.”
Gable’s eyes widened.
Seyllin was the kind of once-in-a-millennia disaster about which everyone remembered exactly where they were when they heard about it.
Some 190 million people died that day; there were less than a million survivors.
“What do you mean ‘last’?”
“I mean, he was the
last
man aboard the
last
dropship to take off before the planet was destroyed.
We know that because Jonas was the pilot who got him out.”
“You have to be kidding me.”
Miles seemed much more confident now.
“Mack was about thirty meters underground when the gamma pulse hit,” he said.
“Everything above that depth was fried.
You’d think that someone with half his face burned off would take the first chance to leave, but he didn’t.
Instead, he stayed to make sure others like him made it out.”
“Others like him?
What about everyone else?”
“He’s a Mannar.
Most of what was left of their population lived on Seyllin.”
Gable thought about how Mack had coldly executed the Valklear who delayed their only chance of escaping from Pike’s Landing.
“We got a dropship into one of their spaceports, and there he was, along with some other Mannar guys.
They had taken control of the port, pulling purebred ethnics from the crowd and turning away just about everyone else.
No one got out of there unless Mack approved.
He was the angel of death down there.
As soon as the hold filled up, he ordered the pilot to take off.
But Mack refused to get on board.
Captain Varitec flipped.”
“What did he do?”
“The Feds blockaded the system while we were off-loading survivors onto the
Morse.
No ships were allowed to get in, so we knew the clock was running.
Captain Varitec gave the
Morse
to me and Blake, relieved the dropship pilot, and took it back down to the surface himself.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah.
Everyone else was heading the other way.
Fed Navy ships helping the rescue effort warned him to turn back but didn’t try to stop him.
They all warped out.”
“He did that, knowing what was coming?”
“Sure did.
That’s why he never has a hard time finding crew for the
Morse.
Word about that kind of thing gets around.”