The Expendable Few: A Spinward Fringe Novel Read online

  “After the British exiles were settled, I was allowed to retire from Freeground Intelligence and pursue my medical career, putting as much distance between me and the political arena as possible. However, I often served as a watcher for Intelligence while serving as a medical officer, which made me perfect for an assignment on the First Light. As some of you already know, I was the intelligence oversight officer for the duration of that short tour. I retired again to pursue research in genetic restoration and advanced maturation. After completing my first human trial with Ayan Rice, she decided to leave for various reasons. The Puritan Party began calling her departure a defection when they secured a parliamentary majority, and she’s been branded a traitor along with most of the surviving First Light crew.”

  “The New Liberals don’t see things the same way. Most of them believe that the First Light mission never ended. They look at Ayan Rice, Minh-Chu Buu, Oz, or Terry Ozark McPatrick as you know him, Jason Everin, Laura Everin, as well as Jacob Valance and see a group of people who are gathering an incredible amount of information about the galaxy beyond our borders. They also acknowledge that they may be forming relationships and gathering technical knowledge that could be crucial to the survival of Freeground in the future. Saying so in public forums is beyond taboo, however. Captain McPatrick and Jason Everin are deserters. If they returned, they would face charges of treason, desertion, terrorism and sedition. They’re guilty of two charges on that list, and would be executed.”

  “So, how do we fit into this huge mess?” asks Remmy. I can’t help but agree that it’s about time we were told, not that I’m ungrateful for Doctor Anderson’s timely save.

  “I’ll get to that in a minute,” Doctor Anderson says with one of his gentle smiles. “With the help of several representatives in the New Liberal Party, a few active and retired friends in the military and other people in power, I’ve been reactivated with my former rank in Freeground Intelligence. Colonel Gregor McPatrick has been reactivated as well, and we’ve been gathering people into teams so we can recapture the Sunspire before the Order of Eden finds her.”

  “Okay, so we’re going to join one of those teams,” Remmy says, his eyes as round as saucers. “And by Sunspire you mean the former First Light, the ship that took out the Paladin.”

  “That’s right. The Sunspire was renamed the First Light when it was assigned to Jonas Valent and his crew.”

  “But when their mission failed,” I start mechanically. The story of that crew, the ship and the events since are like gospel in my mind. I recite. “The ship was refitted with technology the First Light crew brought back and renamed the Sunspire. Eventually Terry Ozark McPatrick was put in command in name, but it’s well known that there was so much oversight that every decision he made was scrutinised and criticised. He and Jason Everin left to find out if Jonas Valent was still alive, because a man who looked a lot like him, Jacob Valance, was running around the galaxy, cashing in as a bounty hunter. The Puritan Party and the Order of Eden call him a terrorist, but if you watch his speeches, you’ll realise that he’s a freedom fighter.” I look from one face to another before going on. They’re all paying attention, mildly surprised that this information is coming from me, but all intensely interested. “Then the Holocaust Virus started infecting artificial intelligences, forcing machines to kill anyone who wasn’t a member of the Order of Eden cult. The Sunspire was infected, killed everyone aboard and began patrolling the Blue Belt, destroying targets of opportunity and any ship it couldn’t infect. The biggest kill was the Paladin - a mobile space station twelve times her size.”

  “Thank you, Commander Patterson,” Doctor Anderson tells me. “Colonel McPatrick and I are almost finished recruiting crew members to take the Sunspire back. When she’s under our control, he’ll assume the commission of captain while I’ll lead the Intelligence unit. You are one of five groups I’m recruiting specifically for my operations. You all have infantry training, great overall ratings, and specialisations that will be critical in the very near future.” He takes a moment to check our reactions. Mary leans back in her seat, cool and quiet. Remmy’s mouth is hanging open. Isabel actually looks equal parts excited and shocked. I’m a spectator. This is a holomovie and I’m just hoping I’ll like the ending. Doctor Anderson goes on. “You can sign up with me or go back to prison. The current government won’t allow you to return to Freeground station proper unless it’s in chains, so after your service with me is finished, you’ll all be free to leave Freeground space.”

  “But not to return,” Isabel says. “We’re exiles.”

  “Exactly. The political environment could change given time, maybe in your lifetime,” Doctor Anderson tells us. “But the Freeground you return to won’t be the same as the one you left.”

  “What’s the mission after we retake the ghost ship?” asks Remmy.

  Isabel smacks him in the shoulder. “Don’t call it that.”

  “Why? That’s what the Sunspire is - no crew, all automation, killing everything it sees.”

  “All you have to concern yourself with is retaking the Sunspire,” Doctor Anderson tells us. “We’ll be in range of the Blue Belt and her hunting ground in about two weeks. You have that long for recovery, to learn everything there is to know about the ship, and to get some coordination going in group sims. We plan on taking the Sunspire with a few hundred soldiers, so every group will have to be sharp. By the time we arrive, I need the four of you to be a command crew.”

  Hundreds he says. Hundreds against a ship that wrecked a carrier twelve times her size and has the soul of a serial killer, stalking its victims in the Blue Belt. I’m almost glad my mind is still a little hazy. I let my idle eyes drift towards Isabel, who sends me a warm smile that almost cuts through.

  Chapter 7 - The Most Random Test

  The revived necrotic veins of the reanimated crew of the Sunspire are shambling towards us. The moaning, cracking, and scraping sounds are a result of flesh forced into service after its time.

  The four of us, Mary, Remmy, Isabel, and I, made it all the way to the transit control system before getting cornered. Now there are hundreds of them in our area, and, who knows how, but most of them remember how to use weapons. I step behind a reinforced service door and fire my Vex without looking. There are so many of them stumbling and jerking towards us that I know I have a good chance at hitting something.

  “How the hell did this happen?” asks Isabel.

  “Nano-medicine,” Remmy replies. “The Sunspire managed to take direct control of the crew by infecting their brains, or maybe their nervous systems with nanobots. Those nanobots must have built cybernetic nerve controllers, so this crew are pretty much deadly puppets.”

  “But some of them look...” Isabel hesitates, taking a moment to fire her Vex sidearm several times. She plugs one squarely in the forehead, burning through the protective layer of the slack faced crewman’s vacsuit. She follows up with a second shot, misses, then burns through the upper half of his head with the third. “Well, some of them look dead.”

  “The nanobots are obviously building life support systems into some of these people,” Remmy says as he desperately tries to hack into the onboard transit system using his communication unit.

  “This is ridiculous,” Mary says as she takes cover to reload her rifle. “Why the hell would the Sunspire go to all the trouble of reanimating the whole crew? It would be less complicated and more reliable to build defence drones. That, and they wouldn’t have a habit of slipping in their own drool.”

  “I don’t think that’s drool,” Remmy says from where he’s taking cover across the hall.

  “I’ve chosen to believe it’s drool,” shouts Mary, slapping a fresh clip into her rifle.

  “But it’s not. Observe the colour and lumpy-”

  “Don’t fuck with my comfortable ignorance!” Mary replies as she pulls the trigger, sending particle bolts through the next wave of mindless crew.

  “Hey! I think I got it!” Remmy shouts
, finally. “Get ready to get on the main tram! It’s straight to the control column from there!”

  As promised, the tram behind us lights up, and the doors open.

  We rush in, me in the lead and Mary at the rear, firing at the mob to keep them at bay just long enough. The doors close and the tram car starts to move down the length of the ship.

  The simulation ends; we completed the primary objectives. Our eyes open and we are back in the lounge.

  “Well, that was bullshit,” Mary says, removing the little input node from between her eyes. “Zombies? Really?”

  “I know,” a tall, grey haired man says from where he is sitting closest to the window. “It was thrown in as a half-joke by Doctor Anderson. You’ve finished all the sims we wanted to test you with, and I’m more than a little surprised.”

  I look him over in the dim light and recognise from the red slashes up his arm that he’s a colonel. He also bears a remarkable resemblance to the last commander of the Sunspire, Terry Ozark McPatrick.

  “I didn’t mean any disrespect, Sir,” Mary says peevishly. It’s something she does: offering an apology with enough attitude to cancel it out.

  “You were ordered to enter the simulation and complete the tasks assigned. You did so without letting your opinion get in the way. You have nothing to apologise for, Soldier,” replies the Colonel. “It doesn’t matter that it was the Doctor’s idea of a joke.”

  “I thought it was hilarious,” Remmy says, grinning.

  “What did you think of the simulation, Commander?” asks Colonel McPatrick.

  “I thought it was unlikely. I doubt that’s happened anywhere, and I couldn’t imagine an artificial intelligence would see that as the most efficient way to crew their ship.”

  “It has happened, technically. The science is based on the work of a researcher who lived a couple of centuries ago. Don’t tell Anderson this, but I find the similarities between that researcher, a fellow named Doctor Shawn Gray, and our Doctor Anderson a little too clear. Their kind might have brought us the vacsuit and artificial gravity, but genius is unpredictable, especially behind closed doors.”

  “I’m of the same mind, Sir,” I tell him. It’s true. The Holocaust Virus is the first example that comes to mind. “It’s an honour to meet you.”

  “I wish I could say the same,” Colonel McPatrick says as he stands and straightens the top of his black and red uniform. “I don’t like the idea that the best people Doctor Anderson could find for our mission are also the most disobedient and least trustworthy citizens. You’re the last of the five teams aboard. Visiting the other four has twisted my stomach in knots. If my nephew wasn’t out there, making Freeground Fleet look like a ragtag, do-as-you-please drifter colony with guns, I would have stayed in retirement.”

  I did not expect that from someone like him. He’s fit for his age, and seems as sharp as any commander I’ve ever served under. Hearing his opinion is insult piled on top of injury. I do my best to disregard his attitude.

  In the two weeks since I was released from therapy by Doctor Anderson, we haven’t been told what the specifics of our mission will be, only that we’re in a mobile station and are on our way to the Blue Belt. We’re to retake the Sunspire and remain aboard after, but the question of why has never been answered. “So we’re going to be tracking down your nephew after we take the Sunspire back,” I say.

  “Bullshit mission,” Mary says, barely under her breath. She’s the only one who would dare do so. Isabel and Remmy have fallen into the habit of letting me take the lead when speaking to superior officers.

  “Secure that shit!” Colonel McPatrick barks. “I won’t take mouth from officers who can’t follow simple rules while they’re in civilian dress.”

  Everyone recoils in their seats. The colonel has a voice that could crack bulkheads.

  He takes a breath and lets it out slowly. “The Sunspire will eventually make her way to a location near Captain McPatrick, and an attempt to retrieve him may be necessary. The Sunspire is a carrier, and as such, we can run several missions at a time. Yours will be made clear after the ship is recaptured and her fitness is determined. I’m here to congratulate you on your performances in the simulation testing. The four of you scored second highest out of the five command crews Doctor Anderson recruited, so you’ll be leading a full boarding contingent onto the Sunspire. You’ll receive the mission details in thirty hours, brief your unit in thirty two, then you’ll depart this station in thirty four.”

  “Is there any way we can get the details sooner?” I ask. It’s always better to know earlier rather than later; knowledge is essential to preparation.

  “No. You’ll get the details when you get them.”

  “Colonel,” Mary addresses, sitting rod straight in her seat. “Why didn’t you get officers with spotless service and civilian records for this?”

  “You’re too smart for that question, Sergeant,” Colonel McPatrick replies. “If this mission were in line with the political alignment of Freeground right now, then I would have the people I want. The Puritan Party doesn’t want us operating out here at all, but we managed to get this mission going thanks to some political manoeuvring and a willingness to work with the trash of Fleet. They don’t expect us to succeed, and if we do it’ll be a big win for the New Liberal Party.”

  “Big deal,” Mary replies.

  “Permission to speak freely,” I whisper to her.

  “Oh, fine,” she spits. “Permission to speak freely, Sir?” she asks Colonel McPatrick.

  “Out with it,” he replies.

  “Why do we care? We could cut and run at the first sight of an unguarded hyperdrive equipped shuttle.”

  “You care because a short term of service is the path of least resistance to real freedom. The galaxy isn’t what you think it is. There’s chaos out there, and it’ll eat you pod-born children up like chum. At least when Fleet Intelligence is done with you we’ll make sure you’ve got what you need to make a go of it.”

  “Besides, If you run, you’ll be found. I’ll hunt you down myself if I have to. Then you’ll be executed. If you serve for a couple of months, and we get a few key objectives taken care of, then you’ll be freed into exile and when the New Liberals come into power, we’ll see about allowing you back. No prison sentence, no executions, you’ll be bloody heroes to the opposing party. It’s better than you deserve.”

  “Thank you, Sir,” Isabel says. Her soft voice and smallish appearance seems to momentarily disarm the colonel, who turns on his heel and starts for the door.

  “Orders in thirty hours. Be rested, be ready,” he says without looking back at us.

  “Sorry about all this,” I say to Mary. I know Isabel and Remmy earned their way into the situation with their actions as civilians, but Mary is another story. She was caught with my contraband, and I can’t stop feeling guilty.

  “What? For helping me keep my career mostly trouble-free by pretending to be my boyfriend for years?” Mary asks. “If it weren’t for you, I’d still be a private, or I would have been shifted into the Fleet re-training program as a low-grade tech.”

  “You were caught with my contraband,” I remind her.

  “Yeah, that’s nothing compared to evidence of years of gross misrepresentation. Bet you didn’t know there was a scanner in your bedroom. They knew something was up when there was no record of us having sex in the six years we’ve been faking it.”

  “Oh,” I reply, feeling deeply stupid. Freeground Fleet specifically stated that their staff’s bedrooms and bathrooms were safe from surveillance, but that was before the Puritan Party took power. “I should have known better.”

  “You’re not the only one,” Mary says. “I’m gonna go clear my head and get some shuteye. See you in ten hours.”

  “You never even threw him a freebie?” Remmy asks. “I know you’re a lezzie, but not once in six years?”

  Isabel smacks him in the back of the head, not for the first time either. “You really don�
��t get people at all, do you?” she asks. “Mary’s like his sister.”

  “Oh, right. That could be nasty,” Remmy admits. “Sorry, Clark.”

  “No worries.” I sit there, looking out at the glittering line stretching across the transparent section of hull. It looks like a tightly grouped parade of stars, but I know it’s the Blue Belt, the Sunspire’s hunting ground. The mobile station is decelerating towards it.

  “Need snacks,” Remmy says, rising from his seat. “You guys want anything?”

  “No thanks,” I reply.

  Isabel shakes her head.

  My comm sends a tingle up my arm and I look at it, summoning the message. HEAD’S UP! ISABEL ASKED FOR THE ALL-CLEAR AT LUNCH.

  I delete Mary’s message, wishing she’d given me more notice. The ‘all-clear’ is something that women ask Mary for when they want to make sure she wouldn’t mind if things got intimate with me. Even though Mary tries not to stand in the way of my relationships by giving the wrong impression, women who are interested - and there haven’t been many - always feel they have to have a talk with her on the side, as if she’s my coital guardian.

  Isabel and I have shared plenty of time since I woke up on the Amazon, sometimes alone, just talking. She likes to talk about home, and her huge family. I heard the few latino communities are busy, with children everywhere and a rich culture that hails back to old Earth days. In all my years on Freeground, I have never set foot in one of their pods. I even visited several of the primarily Oriental pods, but never the Latinos. After talking to Isabel over the last two weeks, I wish I had.

  All I have to offer in return are war stories. She asked about my family, but nothing could interest me less. I thought I was the most boring sod on the ship.