No Man's Space 1: Starship Encounter (19 page)

The protesters entered the North Star and blocked the gates to stop us from shutting them. More and more men entered the ship without authorization. We’d arrested their leaders, but it hadn’t stopped them. Instead, a brute with thick arms who carried a baseball bat had just boarded the ship, followed by a legion of equally armed men, thirsty for destruction.

One of them took a bottle out of a bag, tied a cloth around its neck, lit it, and launched it into one of the rooms. The ship absorbed most of the explosion, but we had to stop them or they’d end up blowing us up.

“Get guns and electric batons ready,” I told the men. “I want everyone armed and ready to stop them. Use non-lethal force if you can, but don’t shy away from violence if you can’t avoid it. Better us than them. Got it?”

The men nodded at each other, and Flanagan rubbed his hands together. His face showed the hint of a smile in it: finally some action! He took out his electric baton and produced a secondary gun from one of his boots. He wasn’t supposed to carry so many weapons on him, but he was twice my size and I wasn’t going to tell him off. If someone wanted him to follow the rules, they could approach him themselves. Selfish, you say? No; I call it survival instinct.

Flanagan would lead the way, and Banner and I would each take a group of men and ensure that we’d cleared the rest of the decks aboard the North Star. I looked around, but Banner wasn’t there. He’d disappeared.

“Where the hell has Banner gone?” I asked.

What a coward! He’d gone without even fighting. We were about to fight a group of protesters, a small mob. It wasn’t a reason to leave his post as an officer and become an outlaw!

“He’s there, sir.” Flanagan pointed at the security footage from the outer decks. Banner was unarmed and running straight into the angry mob.

I tapped on the intercom. “Banner,” I said, “come back here before they flay you. What do you think you’re doing?”

“Sorry, Wood,” he said, “but someone has to do it. It’s been an honor to serve with you.”

“What do you mean, an honor?” I said. “That’s what you say when you’re about to do something stupid. Come back here before I court-martial you.”

He waved his hand over his ear and muted me.

“Don’t you even think of muting―” I began through another channel.

“It’s useless, sir,” one of the engineers said. “He’s muted us all.”

He was in the hands of his maker or whomever he believed in. As for the rest of us, we were screwed if we lost my second in command just before a battle.

“Turn on the sound, dammit,” Flanagan told Gupta.

Gupta’s hands shook as he gestured at the screens, fearing a violent reaction from Flanagan. He eventually turned on the microphones near the mob to be able to hear Banner’s last moments.

There was nothing we could do aside from watching. He’d be dead by the time we got to him.

“He’s gonna get badly hurt.” Flanagan laughed to himself and copied the screen’s output to a larger screen on the bridge. Everyone else gathered around him to watch with morbid curiosity. We’d soon be attacked by the mob, and many of us would fall before controlling them. Not to mention the destruction they’d cause along the way.

We were already at a disadvantage, and breaking more parts of the North Star was only condemning us faster.

We couldn’t do much aside from depressurizing the outer decks and letting the protesters die of decompression, but that would kill Banner too.

“Sir, should we turn off life support and lock them outside?” Gupta asked.

“Give him a couple of minutes.” My mouth talked faster than my brain. We didn’t have a couple of minutes, but I didn’t want to do like Captain O’Keeffe and end so many lives unless it was our last resort.

The protests had spurred a rebellion, and nobody could stop them. The men broke doors, smashed computers and control panels, and even tried to burn down our storerooms. I turned on the sprinklers to control the fires, but they were trying too hard to break stuff.

Don’t they realize that their taxes pay for Navy ships? It was only going to make them pay even more the following year. Why doesn’t anyone think about taxes when they’re in the middle of a revolt?

“Oh, yes.” Banner spoke to the protesters sarcastically and with his classic annoying rich kid tone that everyone hated. “I’m sure that you can destroy our ship while we’re undermanned and about to be attacked by the enemy.”

“And are you going to stop us?” one of the rebels shouted at him. He was aggressive and armed with a large hammer. He was about as tall as Flanagan and would’ve made any grown man cower in fear and cry for his mother.

Instead, Banner smiled casually at himself with a condescending undertone. “On the contrary; I’m here to watch history unveil itself. Several of my countrymen want to destroy a ship because they’re angry, while the enemy – which could well be the Cassocks – mercilessly destroys us. But you have the right to express yourselves, whether it’s creatively or destructively. I won’t complain.”

The men stared at him with curiosity. Nobody was supposed to remain in control of his emotions or his bladder when facing such a mountain of a man.

“Oh, you hadn’t heard of it, have you?” Banner continued with a half-bored tone as if drinking a glass of scotch in the wardroom. “We’re about to be attacked by an entire fleet and they haven’t even accepted our surrender. They don’t care that you have women or children aboard the port; they seem fixated on destroying everything.”

The protesters stopped breaking things and gathered around him. They weren’t violent anymore, just listening at him like one listens to a prophet or a messiah.

Banner stepped forth and clasped both hands behind his back in a classic officer’s pose. “We were about to leave the port to fight the enemy and delay the unavoidable. If we’re unable to defeat them, we’ll immolate ourselves with an unheard-of explosive capacity and take down as many enemy ships as we can. I can’t ask you to risk your lives to save the port, but I ask you to leave peacefully and pray that we’re successful. If you aren’t religious, just hope for the best.”

The protesters stared at each other and hesitated. They were armed, and their arm muscles flinched with the tension of holding their hammers, bats and other weapons.

Flanagan roared in laughter. “They’re gonna kill him,” he said.

“Shut up, Flanagan,” I said.

He was right, though. You can’t stop a mob and make them turn around just because you’re trying to save them. They’re a mob; they wanted to break stuff.

Instead, the protesters lowered their weapons.

The large guy said, “Can we help?”

The others nodded in unison and offered to help too.

Banner turned to one of the cameras so that the protesters didn’t see him and winked at us. He turned his intercom back on. “Problem solved, Wood,” he said. “We have a bunch of volunteers waiting for tasks to be assigned to them.”

“Come back to the bridge, Banner,” I said flatly.

Know what? I don’t mind that someone else succeeds, but I hate to acknowledge when someone follows a hunch against my will and proves that he’s right.

The North Star was ready to take off in our last attempt to stop the enemy. It didn’t matter whether we won or we lost; we were likely to fall either way. Banner had stayed on the outer decks to assign his new volunteers to different tasks, and in the meantime I had to captain the ship and make sure that I didn’t get us all killed.

“They’re deploying a bunch of ships.” Gupta passed several updated maps to me, showing fighters and short cylindrical ships that looked like bombers.

“I guess it isn’t a social visit,” I said.

“Shall we open fire, sir?” Gupta asked.

“Let me talk to them again,” I said. “Just in case they’re lost and looking for a way back home.”

Gupta turned on the communications systems and sank into his chair as if he’d expected the enemy to kill us outright just by sending a message. I was serving with the bravest men in the Navy.

“Hi again, buddies,” I told the invaders through the intercom. I waved at the screen in case they were catching the images too. “I’ve noticed that you’ve come back for more of the same. We’re outnumbered and we know you can crush us, so why don’t you say what you’re after so that I tell you why we can’t give it to you.”

No response.

“You know this is against all articles of war, don’t you?” I continued. “You’re supposed to let us live if we yield before you destroy us. And, honestly, I don’t think we have much choice.”

Nothing.

I told Gupta to turn off the communications. At least we’d tried, and now it was either them or us. More likely them, but nobody could blame us for not trying.

“Get the men ready for a party,” I said. “We’re at war.”

Banner reached the bridge once we’d taken off and set course for the enemy. “Have I missed anything?” he asked. “I was setting tasks to the men.”

“Just a lieutenant’s insubordination and unnecessary risk,” I said. “And he’s been lucky enough to survive.”

“Really?” Banner looked surprised. “Haven’t heard of him.”

I threw one of the greasy neural controls and HUD glasses at him. He took it with one hand and hesitated before putting it on. “Someone could clean these every once in a while,” he said.

“Tough luck that we don’t have time for it.” I pointed at the neural link I’d placed around my head. If I ran the risk of catching something, everyone else had to put it on too.

Banner sat on the commander’s chair beside mine and turned on the star chart. His glasses showed so many enemy dots that he tried to reduce the noise. It wasn’t noise; it was the enemy fleet.

“Shit,” he murmured. “Are they real?”

“Nah,” I said sarcastically. “Gupta’s spent the morning adding them to a simulation.

Banner didn’t like the news. He tapped on his HUD glasses and eventually turned them off and went back to holographic simulations. They were less precise and more difficult to see, but at least you didn’t have all the enemy bombers right in front of your nose. It can get intimidating if you’re as outnumbered as we were.

Hatfield entered the bridge and ignored the complaints from some of the bridge crew. Doctors weren’t supposed to leave sick bay during a fight unless there was a medical emergency elsewhere. He ignored them and sat on the subcommander’s chair. He produced an expensive collectors’ neural control from his suit’s chest pocket and a pair of glasses from an inner pocket. He put them on and stared at us, surprised. “I can’t believe how you can use the ship’s equipment and place it on your heads. Do you have any idea of who can have used it?”

“Midshipmen, probably,” I said.

“Exactly.” Hatfield nodded and took out some disinfectant towels for us. “Midshipmen have questionable hygiene habits. I wouldn’t get close to anything they’ve touched.”

“And why are you on the bridge?” I asked.

“Because you lack officers,” Hatfield said, “and doctors aren’t born doctors. I didn’t have the soul to become a captain, but I was a lieutenant for longer than either of you. I can stay here and help during the battle… unless you’d rather have one of the midshipmen sitting here.”

No, I’d rather keep the midshipmen away from the bridge. I thanked him, gave him control of a third of the ship, and crossed my fingers that he remembered that being an officer isn’t about attending balls or dancing, or about acting polite. Being an officer is about surviving and making your crew survive.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Being an officer is like riding a bicycle.

His participation on the bridge was against the rules, and it sounded awesome. Who cared about the rules anymore? The Admiralty had lost touch with us, and only Banner’s father was able to contact us. We could do with a third officer who was over 5 feet tall.

We sent our fighters and unmanned drones to fight them, but our guys kept falling like roaches running into one of the wealthier regions on Earth. They had no chance against the enemy.

We were going to be annihilated by an enemy that we hadn’t even met. Difficult times require difficult choices. It was time for us to use all our cards and hope that it was enough.

“Blow up our satellites,” I told the men. “Blow everything up as long as it has an enemy ship within range.”

We blew up the satellites, and the few men aboard the spaceport kept shooting. We destroyed a bomber or two and a few fighters, but that’s all we achieved with a brutal collection of nuclear weapons.

Hatfield controlled his fighters with expert accuracy, and Banner and I did just as well. Eventually, our ships fell one by one under the constant rain of projectiles and bright beams from the enemy. I’d never seen those weapons before. Enemy ships were so technologically advanced compared to us that they weren’t even trying.

“Just tickling them,” Flanagan said. “We might as well stop and let them engulf us.”

I wasn’t going to give up. If I had to fly the North Star towards the enemy and blow her up, I would. Even if it turned out to be useless, I had to give it a try.

“We should’ve brought the lightbulbs with us,” Kozinski murmured.

“Lightbulbs?” York glared at him. “Lightbulbs are useless against this enemy; they’ve told us already. What do you want them to think, huh? That we can’t do anything but grunt work?”

“But I was trying to―” Kozinski began.

“You were trying to make us look like fools,” York said, “as always.”

“Gentlemen, please,” I warned them.

“Sorry, sir,” Kozinski said.

“Won’t happen again, sir.” York nudged Kozinski and stared sternly at him.

The bombers flew over the spaceport, launching bombs and drilling holes in her hull as if it were made of paper.

I stood up and got ready for my final speech. The men no longer hesitated; they knew what I was about to say.

“Gentlemen,” I said, “there’s no point in continuing this journey together. Our only choice is to blow the North Star up in the middle of the enemy fleet, and we only need one man for this. It’s time for you to head over to the escape pods and return to the port.”

The men stood up, looked at me, and glanced at each other.

“I think we’d made it clear, sir.” Flanagan stepped forward and headed for the captain’s escape pod on the bridge. “This is a formal mutiny. You can accept our company in this suicidal mission or you can jump into a pod and go back to the port yourself. I’m sure that Lady Elizabeth will be glad to see you again.”

York and Kozinski both stepped beside Flanagan and pointed at him.

“What he’s said,” York said. Kozinski nodded in agreement.

The crowd had spoken: they didn’t care that I was their officer, and they were ready to die with me. Should I be happy or annoyed about it?