Excelsior (37 page)

“Yes, sir.”

“Ahh… hold up, Captain,” Davorian said from the helm.

“What is it?” Alexander snapped.

“The nav data appears to also have been erased.”

“What?” Alexander cursed viciously, and Korbin cringed. “What about the backups?”

“Also wiped.”

Another stream of curses blistered out.

Korbin didn’t know how Max had managed to break into all of those systems, but he’d definitely gone too far. If he had been more subtle about things they might have gotten away with pinning it all on Williams. Now the truth was bound to come out. With her history, having been captured by the Confederates, fleet investigators would zero in on her in no time. If Alexander had known about her brief imprisonment in Confederate territory, he probably would have turned her in himself. At this point, all that she would accomplish by waiting to confess was to buy time for herself, but if she turned herself in, fleet investigators would pick through her brain until they found memories and thoughts to incriminate Max, too, and in the end they’d execute her anyway. There was really only one way out. For the greater good.

Korbin unbuckled from her couch and stood up. The ship’s current state of zero-G cruising made it easy. Alexander turned to her with a furrowed brow, about to ask what she was doing. Then she pushed off the couch and drew the combat knife from her utility belt. No live-fire weapons were permitted on the bridge, but knives were necessary in case someone needed to cut their way out of their safety harness.

Alexander craned his neck to watch her float away. Then he appeared to notice the silvery glint of the blade in her hand. His eyes flew wide and he lunged against his restraints.

Korbin regarded him with a small, pitying smile before turning to address the rest of the crew. Raising her voice, she said, “Long live the Confederacy!” and then she plunged the knife under her sternum, straight into her heart. The searing heat took her breath away and sent her body into spasms. She was dimly aware of people screaming at each other. Then Alexander appeared floating beside her, his expression frozen somewhere between horror and fury.

“Why?” was all he asked.

Korbin struggled to move her lips. She was about to lose consciousness, and there would be no coming-to after that. “N-ot the enemy,” she belched out with a painful gasp. “We are.”

“Sirena!” he screamed at her, but she was gazing up at the main holo display and the warped pattern of stars around the mouth of the wormhole. The black of space grew, snuffing out the stars, swelling and flowing toward her like a living thing until it was rapping with greedy knuckles on the shuttered, starlit windows in her eyes. With a final, shuddering sigh she let the darkness in, and out went the light.

Part 3 - The Last War

“Patriots always talk of dying for their country but never of killing for their country.”

―Bertrand Russell

 

Chapter 34

They conducted clean-up under full gravity. Davorian gradually ramped up thrust to avoid splashing the floating globules and balls of Korbin’s blood. Despite that, the cleaning bots took more than an hour to scrub the deck clean, and Alexander could still see the faded stain of her passing. They’d bagged her body and sent it to the morgue without ceremony.

She was a spy, a traitor, so no tears would be seen to be shed, but that didn’t stop Alexander’s eyes from burning with the threat of them.

He couldn’t understand it. She’d been his right-hand for more than five years! How could she turn on him—on all of them—so easily? Her last words had been clear enough—[They’re] not the enemy. We are—but that sentiment still didn’t connect to reason in his brain. She had two children back on Earth! He’d met them! She’d betrayed them equally in all of this.

The shocks had kept coming after her act of hari-kari. The logs weren’t the only thing missing from the Lincoln. While everyone was still reeling from her suicide, Doctor Crespin had reported that all the mission samples were missing from quarantine storage on Blue Deck. Either Korbin had stolen and hidden them, a tactic that was unlikely to yield lasting results—or she’d jettisoned them from the nearest airlock before everyone had entered the G-tanks.

Alexander had Stone and his MAs investigating, but his gut told him that the samples were floating in vacuum somewhere on the Wonderland side of the Looking Glass. As for the rest of Korbin’s actions—the long-term consequences had yet to be fully measured or felt, but leaking the Lincoln’s mission data to the Confederates could easily precipitate another war once the Confederacy realized just how important Wonderland was.

The flesh around Alexander’s eyes tightened with simmering rage, and he saw the star field narrow to a paper-thin slit. The bridge was silent, everyone going about their tasks with a minimum of interaction and a maximum of introspection.

Hayes broke that silence with an update from the comms station. “Captain, I’ve updated Admiral Wilson with recent developments. We’re still a few light minutes apart, but he’s summoned you for a private meeting. Would you like to take it here, via your HUD, or in a more private setting?”

Alexander considered that. He could feel Korbin’s ghost haunting him from the empty couch beside his. It would be nice to have an excuse to get off the bridge for a while.

“I’ll take the meeting in my quarters, Lieutenant. Davorian—you have the conn. Don’t hesitate to interrupt me if there are any further developments.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Stone—”

“Captain?”

“That goes double for you. We need to know A-S-A-P what else Korbin got up to.”

“Aye-aye, sir.”

Alexander unbuckled and crawled sideways out of his acceleration couch. A cleaning bot whirred by, still scrubbing at stubborn stains. He stepped over it with a grimace, and waved the elevator open as he approached. On his way up, he focused on taking slow, deep breaths to calm himself. The Confederates had gone too far this time.

As he reached his quarters and breezed through the door, the lights snapped on automatically, bringing the sitting room, wet bar, bed, bathroom, and the adjoining wall of his office into focus. A simulated viewport in the sitting room showed a warped view of stars. A hologram of him and Caty hovered above his nightstand. Alexander’s gaze lingered on Caty’s face as he passed from the living room to his office. He waved open the door and strode straight up to his chair, flopping into it with a sigh.

Half-raising his comm band to his lips, he said, “Call Lieutenant Hayes.”

The call went through and Hayes answered, “Ready captain?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

The holocam on Alexander’s desk came to life and a red recording light winked on. The lights in the room dimmed, and the holocam began recording his expression to grant Admiral Wilson a delayed visual response. Given the two-minute comm latency between the Lincoln and Wilson’s flagship, they would have to take turns speaking, so Alexander settled in to listen to a monologue that was almost sure to be a stern lecture on shipboard security.

Wilson appeared after just a few seconds, his white hair glowing blue in the light of a tactical map projected in the foreground.

“Captain de Leon, I’ve just finished reviewing your report. I’m glad the spy chose to reveal herself, because now you and your ship can join the defensive formation around the Looking Glass without suspicion of your loyalties. That said, I’m also deeply concerned. Your mission has been compromised so thoroughly that we may as well have conducted it jointly with the Confederacy. Had we known that, we could have allowed Confederate access to the wormhole from the start and avoided this entire war.

Sirena Korbin will go down in history for having single-handedly taken all the significance out of that war. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of people who effectively died for nothing. If she hadn’t killed herself, she would have gone through a very public trial and execution. But she must have known that, hence her decision to accelerate the process.

“I’m not sure how you missed noticing a spy in your midsts, particularly you, Alexander. She was your executive officer. Then there’s the matter of Lieutenant Williams to discuss, but for now, all of that is the least of our concerns. If there was any negligence on your part or from your fellow officers, I’m sure fleet investigators will uncover it when all of this is over—assuming you don’t die in the fighting.

“The message that was leaked from your ship with Confederate encryption arrived six months ago. It was received and provoked an immediate response from the Confederacy. They went into round-the-clock production of a colony fleet capable of claiming Wonderland for their own. Needless to say, the Alliance has matched their efforts. We’re in a race for our lives right now—quite literally.

After reviewing the data you sent us, the problem has become abundantly clear to both sides. Whoever gets through the wormhole first will have the ability to ambush any other ships traveling through from the other side. The David Davorian Radiation Belts on the Wonderland side of the wormhole mean that any ships emerging from the wormhole will have to power down completely until they’ve cruised through the belts. That makes them easy pickings for any ships already waiting on the other side of those belts.

I’m going to give you a few minutes to think about that and respond to everything I’ve just said. Hopefully, given your firsthand experience, you’ll be able to give us some additional insight that will help us to overcome that problem.”

Alexander blinked. He hadn’t thought about that. But if all it took was to get warships on the other end of the Looking Glass to prevent the other side from doing so, then why hadn’t the Alliance already sent theirs? That was the first thing he asked.

Wilson replied a full two minutes later. “The President has ordered us to hold position and defend the Looking Glass at all costs so that we can escort the colony fleet through to Wonderland when it arrives. Our fleet will be going to Wonderland with the president and his ministers, as well as all of the Alliance’s best and brightest citizens. We’re talking about a partial evacuation of Earth. Thanks to those radiation belts, Wonderland is much more defensible than Earth. So much so, that the Alliance has decided to move its seat of government to Wonderland. If we make it through the Looking Glass ahead of Confederate forces, then we’ll effectively be able to slam the door in their faces. They won’t be able to risk following us, no matter how much firepower they send, because we’ll cut them down instantly on the other side.

“That means we’ll have uncontested reign of an entirely new planet that is as good or better than Earth. It won’t take long for us to outstrip the Reds in every possible way, but to ensure our victory, we’ll be standing ready to nuke the hell out of them. And if they push us, that’s exactly what we’ll do. It won’t be a case of mutually assured destruction anymore, because no matter what happens to Earth, we’ll still have Wonderland.

“By now you should understand why we’re holding our ground here. The Confederates are here, too, but right now we’re sitting just out of effective laser range with each other. Should they attempt to close the gap, we’ll open fire. Likewise, I’m sure they’ll fire on us if we try to get any closer.

“It’s a standoff for the time being, and our Intel suggests the Reds are also waiting for their colony fleet to arrive before they make a move.

At the moment we outgun them, but that isn’t expected to last, which is why you’ll be joining our defensive screen immediately. If they try to wrest control of the wormhole from us, even one extra ship could make the difference. We have supply ships waiting to re-arm and re-fuel the Lincoln as soon as she arrives. I’m going to give you a few more minutes to process, Captain.”

Alexander gaped at the hologram of Admiral Wilson and slowly shook his head, trying to process everything he’d just heard. As a Captain in the fleet, his brain should have been greedily absorbing tactical and strategic information, but it sounded like all of those decisions had already been made, so all that was left to consider were the personal ramifications.

Wilson had said that Korbin’s treachery meant hundreds of millions had died, and that meant that Catalina was almost certainly dead.

A painful lump rose in Alexander’s throat and he worked some moisture into his mouth so that he could speak. “Admiral, under the circumstances, I think it would be best for you to pass along any personal messages that might be waiting for myself and my crew from loved ones back home. It might help to remind all of us what’s at stake here.”