Excelsior (43 page)

Catalina counted the silvery specks of distant starships to pass the time while waiting for the captain of the ship to announce that they were leaving orbit. She found there were twenty specks, and her brow furrowed. She could have sworn there’d only been twelve a moment ago. Maybe the fleet was repositioning itself, more of it coming into view. That had to be it, Caty thought, nodding to herself.

Catalina watched a pinprick of fire ignite and engulf one of those specks. She frowned, squinting at the sight. The ship’s thrusters, she decided. This was it. They were moving out!

Then the fire faded, and gone was the silver speck.

Catalina blinked. Was she seeing things? It had to be some mistake, a trick of the light. Then another ship erupted in an orange ball of flame, and promptly winked out of existence. Catalina’s heart pounded.

She tried switching to the crew’s comm channel so she could get some information, and her helmet was instantly flooded with a confusing babble of voices, dozens of passengers all asking the same questions at once.

The sound cut off abruptly, and a stern male voice interrupted, “Please remain calm and remain in your seats. Hostilities have erupted between Alliance and Confederate forces, but our point defenses should be more than sufficient to shoot down any missiles that come our way.”

A flurry of questions, pleas, and demands erupted in the wake of that statement, but no further explanations followed. Catalina had the feeling that the crew had more important things to do right now than mollify the colonists.

Another flare of light punctuated that thought and underlined the seriousness of the situation. They were in a colony ship in the middle of a war zone, and they weren’t equipped for war. Catalina turned to look at Dorian, he was still smacking his lips, chewing on air, blissfully oblivious.

Turning back to the view, Catalina’s eyes drifted out of focus. Blood roared in her veins, adrenaline sparking through her body, urging her to to something, but there was literally no course of action she could take. It wasn’t as though she could pilot the ship to safety or bail out with a parachute. The passenger cabins were all aboard the ship’s detachable shuttles, so technically they could abandon ship if their shuttle pilot deemed it necessary.

She saw a glittering cloud of debris emerge from the starfield, heading straight for them. One by one, each twinkling speck erupted in brief burst of flame and then vanished. A shadow fell over them, and their view of Earth was blotted out by a dark, bristling gray beast—an Alliance battleship. Catalina watched, wide-eyed as it flew by, missiles streaking from its bow in a steady stream.

That glittering cloud of debris grew nearer and nearer until it came into sharper focus, and she saw it for what it really was—a wave of enemy missiles. Missiles went on exploding, intercepted by unseen means. She remembered reading somewhere that lasers were invisible in space, and she decided that the battleship must be shooting the missiles down.

Catalina stared at the underside of that giant ship, trying to identify individual gun emplacements. Then the surviving missiles streaked in. A dazzling burst of light blinded her, and she winced away from the sudden glare. Dorian started crying, and then the deck lurched and the ship shuddered. Suddenly zero-G was gone and they were being pressed hard against the backs of their couches. Catalina gritted her teeth and grimaced, fighting the urge to scream. Dorian did scream. Worried for him, she managed to turn her head despite the impossible weight of it. She saw Dorian’s face scrunched up in terror, his eyes streaming with tears, and she struggled to speak over their shared comms channel, telling him that everything was going to all right.

Turning back to the view, she saw that they were headed straight up to Earth. Lights flickered inside the passenger cabin, dimming to a soothing blue glow, and then the speakers inside Caty’s helmet crackled with a new voice.

“This is your shuttle captain speaking. We lost the colony ship and four shuttles. Ours is damaged, but not too badly. I’m taking us down for an emergency water landing. Please familiarize yourselves with the nearest exits and the life vests under your seats, and remain seated and strapped in at all times. Thank you.”

Catalina’s eyes widened. Her heart pounded erratically in her chest. We lost the colony ship. We’re in a damaged shuttle, heading back to Earth for an emergency water landing.

Earth grew larger and closer with every second. The view she’d thought to be so breathtaking before was now terrifying. She imagined the gleaming ocean swallowing her and Dorian whole, dragging them down into its black and briny depths. Caty shook her head to clear the image away, reminding herself that the shuttles came equipped for water landings.

The heavy hand of acceleration didn’t let up, nor did Dorian’s cries. He was terrified. She couldn’t blame him. She was terrified, too. Catalina tried to reach under her seat for her life vest, but her arms were pinned to her couch and too heavy to move. Biting back tears, she cursed her stupidity. What had she been thinking? They never should have left Earth. Wonderland had seemed like an easy out from all of their problems, but she should have known better.

Humanity couldn’t run from itself.

 

Chapter 41

Alexander dropped into his acceleration couch and strapped in. Relief tubes snaked out, but he didn’t even blink at the intrusion.

“Hayes, Vasquez, report! What’s going on out there?” Alexander demanded, even as he summoned a tactical map from his control station.

Vasquez was first to reach her control station. “Our fleet is on our way out of the wormhole, headed back to Earth. The Confederates appear to be following us out, but they’re a lot further in than we are.”

Alexander frowned. He already knew from the date and time on his comm band that they’d been awakened from the G-tanks early.

“What about the enemy fleet? Did they open fire? Did we?”

“Our missiles are still locked and loaded in the launch tubes,” Cardinal reported.

“I’ve got nothing on our scopes,” Vasquez added. “The Confederacy is still holding fire.”

“Then what's the general quarters alarm about?”

“Looks like it was sounded automatically by the ship’s threat detection system,” Hayes said from the comms.

“So where’s the threat?” Alexander asked, feeling exasperated.

“What the… Captain, more than half of the Confederate fleet is missing!” Vasquez reported.

“What? Check the sensor logs. I want to know what took them out.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Incoming message from Admiral Wilson,” Hayes announced.

“On screen,” Alexander replied.

Wilson didn’t look well. His cheeks were pale and gaunt, his eyes wide and feverish. “Admiral, I was just about to contact you,” Alexander said. “It looks like the fleet encountered some type of emergency and the autopilots turned us around.”

“Don’t repeat to me what I already know. Listen up, Captain. I’m dealing with the Confederate Admiral right now. He’s beyond reason, and accusing us of tricking his fleet into a suicide mission.”

Alexander shook his head. “A suicide mission?”

“Confederate ships were ripped apart by tidal forces inside the wormhole. They were lucky to escape with the few ships that they did. The only reason we escaped unscathed is because we were trailing far behind them.” Alexander blinked. So that’s what happened. Admiral Wilson went on, “They think we knew that the wormhole was no longer traversable and we tricked them into going through first.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. We just returned from a successful trip through the wormhole. If something’s changed since then, we were equally unaware of it.”

“Tell that to Admiral Zhang.”

“What do you need us to do?”

“I’m handing the negotiations to Carter. Maybe he can talk some sense into those ant-brained communists. Failing that, we’re going to press the advantage that nature’s just given us, and blow them all straight to hell.”

Alexander nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“I’m transferring you now, keep me posted.”

“I’ll do my best to avoid another war, Admiral,” Carter replied.

Admiral Wilson disappeared, and Admiral Zhang took his place. Alexander was taken aback at the enemy admiral’s appearance. His nose was streaming with blood behind his helmet, and his face was blistered and red with a profusion of broken blood vessels.

“Admiral Zhang,” Carter began. “It’s a pleasure to—”

“Do not speak,” Zhang rasped. “You will listen. I am told I do not have long to live, so I do not have time for lies. My fleet was all but destroyed by the wormhole. We were not even a third of the way to the center when this happened.”

Carter shook his head. “The wormhole must have collapsed since we last traveled through it, but I can assure you we had no knowledge of the danger.”

“Lies!” Zhang coughed up a bit of bloody spittle that stuck to the inside of his helmet and blurred their view of his face. “You knew. That is why you allowed us to go first. That is also why you stopped accelerating long before you reached cruising speed. Otherwise, why not remain at your negotiated range of one light second? When our fleet began to be ripped apart, yours was more than five million kilometers away. That is over fifteen light seconds. We are only now beginning to catch up to you.”

Alexander blinked, confused by what he was hearing. He switched to a private comms channel with Lieutenant Davorian and ordered him to double check those facts. If true, it would go a long way toward proving what Admiral Zhang was saying.

Beside him, Carter shook his head and sighed. “Admiral, we negotiated one light second as a minimum range, not a maximum. We needed to wait for our colony fleet to catch up to us.”

“You think we are fools.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Yes, you did, but perhaps you were equally unaware of your government’s treachery. I encourage you to contact Earth. When you do, you will learn that your colony fleet is armed, and firing on what few ships we have left in orbit. Perhaps you will not believe me, but we did not fire the first shots. We were ambushed. There is a reason your colony fleet did not launch with ours. They were just another part of the ruse. Congratulations. I believe the writing is on the wall, but you will not kill this old fox without a fight.”

The connection ended abruptly, and Zhang’s face disappeared. It took Alexander several seconds to recover, but Carter was much faster on the uptake.

“Contact Admiral Wilson! We’re about to come under fire.”

Alexander worked some moisture into his mouth so he could speak. “Hold on. They’re still a long way off,” Alexander replied, studying the tactical map and the range between the two fleets. “Let’s not be in a rush to start another war.

Carter turned to glare at him.

“Who’s the Captain of this ship?” Alexander made a show of glancing down at the rank insignia on his pressure suit. “Oh, I guess that’s me.”

“Admiral Wilson was very clear that I should inform him as soon as I concluded my negotiations.”

“And you will, but not yet.” Turning away from his XO, Alexander said, “Davorian, what do our logs show?”

“It’s true, Captain. We were holding back the whole time at zero thrust. They put us in the G-tanks for the hell of it. Admiral Wilson must have known that the wormhole had collapsed.”

“So how did the Confederacy miss seeing that?”

“It’s not immediately obvious from sensors. If I had to guess, I’d say the Alliance compared the nav data from our return trip to the data from when we went through the first time. Like that fleet command might have noticed a change that tipped them off.”

“Either that, or Carter’s right and we were waiting for the colony fleet to catch up.”

McAdams spoke next, “If that’s the case, why put us in the tanks?”

Good question… Then realization dawned, and Alexander’s eyes widened. “They were worried that there’s another spy somewhere in the fleet. They put everyone in the tanks to avoid tipping off the Reds ahead of time. Hayes, what about Earth? Can you confirm that the fighting has already started there?”

“We’re ten light minutes away, sir.”

“I can wait.”

“Well, I can’t,” Carter said.