Friends in Command (Sons of the Starfarers: Book IV) Read online

  Would it have given her more satisfaction to be one of them, tasked with killing the Imperials in close combat? She didn’t doubt that she’d be very good at it. But then she thought of her father and put it out of her mind.

  On her way back to the bridge, she stopped at the command center to see if Katya was there. Instead, she found Jason.

  “Why aren’t you on leave?” she asked. “Is this another assignment from the captain?”

  “You could say that,” he answered, not looking up from the screen. “Though it’s more of a commission than an assignment.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He grinned. “Aaron’s offered me a full six months of his pay as captain if I can find his brother. He’ll pay me in trade goods, too, since stars know what the local currency will be worth after this war.”

  “He agreed to that?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “But do you really think you’ll find anything this far out from the rest of the star cluster?”

  He shrugged. “Who knows? It’s certainly better than doing whatever else passes for fun in this starforsaken system.”

  “Yeah. Well, good luck with that. I doubt very much you’ll find what you’re looking for in this place.”

  Jason’s eyes lit up, and his grin broadened to an outright smile. “Funny you should say that,” he said, leaning back and cracking his knuckles triumphantly. “I believe I just have.”

  Mara frowned and peered at the screen. It showed the raw data from the docking control registry for the past three months. It took her a moment to find what Jason was referring to, but there in the center, next to a local date from about two months ago, she saw it:

  ASSN: 7S9 MEDEA 07:49

  “Stars of Earth,” said Mara, her eyes widening. “The Medea—that’s the Deltana brothers’ starship, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right. I’m running the transponder codes right now, just in case this is a different Medea on the docking record. If the codes check out, though, then this is proof that Aaron’s brother was here.”

  This complicates everything, Mara thought, wondering how they were going to break the news to Aaron. She could guess how he would take it—and more importantly, what he would want to do with the information.

  “Let’s tell him together, in private. I’ll let him know we’re coming.”

  Jason shrugged. “Makes no difference to me.”

  You’re wrong, Mara thought. It makes a very big difference indeed.

  Questionable Decisions

  “You found him?” Aaron asked, perking up. In a single instant, all of his apprehensions about his assignment to Ithaca evaporated.

  “Not exactly,” said Jason, speaking in Deltan for Aaron’s benefit. “What I found is record his ship came through this system and docked at main station here.”

  “When? Where did he go?”

  “That last question I cannot answer. But I can say when he was here. According to station registry, it was little less than two months ago, about ten standard days after Battle of Colkhia.”

  “Stars of Holy Earth—he was really here.” Aaron rose to his feet and began to pace the narrow space of his quarters.

  “‘Was’ being the operative word, sir,” said Mara. “Wherever your brother went, he isn’t here now.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Aaron mused, too caught up to hear her. “He should have headed for New Hope Station as soon as he got here. What happened?”

  “The records do not say,” Jason answered.

  “There’s no sense in going after him if we don’t know where he went,” said Mara. “We need more information.”

  Aaron shook his head. “No, we won’t find anything else by sitting here. Isaac is too cautious to leave a trail that we could follow.”

  “But he did use true name of his starship,” said Jason. “Not an alias.”

  “That’s because he knew it wouldn’t match the alias he gave the Imperials. He thought the danger was from them—that’s why he went so far out of his way after fleeing Colkhia. The rift…”

  His mind raced as he processed this new information. A light freighter calling itself the Medea had passed through the Ithaca system shortly after the Battle of Colkhia. The data from the station records showed that it was indeed Isaac and Aaron’s starship. That meant that Isaac had fled from Colkhia through the Shiloh Rift—but why had he gone missing after he’d made it safely here? Ithaca was on the jump beacon network, which meant he should have had a straight shot to New Hope Station as soon as he’d arrived. He’d evaded the Imperials, only to fall to something else.

  But what?

  “The trail is cold,” said Mara. “The best we can do is notify the fleet commanders and have them run a search of all the nearby systems.”

  “No,” said Aaron, shaking his head. “Isaac would have headed back to headquarters immediately, without stopping at any of the nearby systems. Something happened to him here—something that kept him from returning to New Hope Station.”

  “Like what?”

  He put a hand on his chin and turned to face the window. Was Isaac out there somewhere, waiting for Aaron to save him? Was he in danger? The Imperial battle fleets were still months away, and almost certainly wouldn’t strike them here. Isaac needed his help more urgently than anyone else.

  “Jason,” said Aaron, “were there any other ships that came in around the same time as the Medea?”

  “I do not remember, sir. I will check.”

  “Do that. And Mara?”

  “Yes, Captain?”

  “Raise the alert and make sure the crew is ready to leave on a moment’s notice. With the way things are going, I don’t think we’ll be in port much longer.”

  Jason saluted and left the room. Mara, however, stayed until the door hissed shut.

  “Sir, what are you thinking?”

  “I think that Isaac never made it back to headquarters because he was being hunted,” said Aaron.

  “By who?”

  “That’s what I intend to find out.”

  She folded her arms and stared at him. “Does that mean you intend to abandon your post?”

  “Not ‘abandon,’” he said, waving his hand. “We were sent here to secure the local sector. If this is where my brother went missing, then clearly the sector is not secure.”

  “You don’t know that for certain.”

  “No, but I can feel it. Something’s wrong here—something’s very wrong.”

  “And what do you intend to do exactly?”

  He turned and looked out at the beckoning starfield. “The person who was chasing my brother must have come through the Shiloh Rift. If Jason doesn’t come up with anything, that’s the best place to look for clues. I don’t think Isaac would have stopped at any of the systems along the way, so we’ll have to head for Bethel on the other side.”

  “Bethel?” said Mara. “For a ship our size, that’s at least a two-week journey from here!”

  “If he came through Ithaca, then he came through Bethel. And Bethel isn’t that far from Colkhia, so it’s not like we’ll be out of touch with the fleet for long.”

  “And what if we find nothing?” she asked, her tone rising. “What if we get to Bethel, and the trail is just as cold there as it is here? If we leave, we won’t be getting any closer to him—we’ll only be going further.”

  “Yes, but we might find something that will lead us to him.”

  “But you don’t know that. And meanwhile, we know that the Imperials are on their way to invade us again—and this time they’ll be a whole lot stronger than they were before. When they do, the fleet is going to need every ship they can get. Aaron, they put you in command of this ship because they trusted you to do your duty. But running off after your brother’s ghost isn’t serving anyone—it’s only serving yourself.”

  Aaron bit his lip. Was Mara right? Was he doing this for himself? No—his brother was still out there somewhere, in need of his help. The selfish thing would be
to stand by and do nothing.

  “Thank you for your opinion, Commander. You’re dismissed.”

  “But—”

  “I said, you’re dismissed,” Aaron repeated. “I’ll let you know when I have further orders for you.”

  Mara gritted her teeth, but gave him a stiff salute. Without a word, she turned and left.

  * * * * *

  The cryotanks radiated out from the center of the deck like guns stacked barrel-up. In many ways, it was an apt comparison. The tanks were designed for rapid thawing, using a specially formulated cocktail of stims to bring the commandos up to combat readiness within ten minutes of cryothaw. They were not merely soldiers, but assets honed to peak performance and frozen in that state to be unleashed on command.

  Mara oversaw the process from behind the main console, where Mathusael controlled the equipment and Phoebe directed the two medical assistants under her command. One by one, the commandos stepped naked from the decanting chamber after receiving the requisite injections for the stims. The medical assistants directed them to the coffin-like tanks, where they lay back to await the descent into cold sleep.

  “Let’s take it nice and easy, one at a time,” said Phoebe. “Pallas, we’ll start with you.”

  “Affirmative,” he said, staring expressionlessly at the ceiling.

  Before this war, I would have blushed to see a man naked like that, Mara thought to herself. Now, it’s no big deal. In Fourth Platoon, everyone had seen each other naked at one point or another—there hadn’t been much privacy on board the Aegis. Besides, after fighting in close combat together and witnessing so much carnage and death, a little bit of skin didn’t seem all that shocking.

  Pallas lay against the inclined chamber with his eyes closed and his hands by his side. Phoebe keyed the start code, and the glass front slid shut with a hiss.

  “Rachel, Paris, how are we looking?”

  “Vital signs are all nominal. I’m not seeing any red flags.”

  “Same here.”

  “Good,” said Phoebe. “Inject the catalyst and start the flash freezing process.”

  The two medical assistants turned to their consoles and keyed in a series of commands. Inside the cryotank, a syringe attached to a robotic arm inserted itself into Pallas’s vein. As the dark gray liquid pumped into his blood, the chamber filled with a cloudy gas. His body tensed, and his skin went red and blotchy before turning a pale blue. On Phoebe’s monitor, the line representing his heartbeat grew faster and shallower until it began to flatline.

  “Rachel, what are you seeing?”

  “We’ve just crossed into the safe zone, Lieutenant. He should be going into cryosleep now.”

  “Paris?”

  “Sensors show an even temperature distribution. Core body temperature is dropping at an acceptable rate. It looks like everything’s by the book—the automated systems should be able to take over from here.”

  Phoebe sighed in relief. “Good. Set the tank to full automation and move on to the next one.”

  As the medical assistants finished with Pallas and moved to the next cryotank, Mathusael leaned over to Mara.

  “I heard you spoke with Aaron about Jason’s discovery in the station registry.”

  Mara turned and stared at him. “Don’t you have work to do, Chief?”

  He shrugged. “Phoebe’s the one operating the equipment. She only needs me to be here in case something goes wrong.”

  “Be sure to double-check those injections against the subject’s body weight,” Phoebe was saying. “This one’s got a higher body mass, so we’ll have to flash freeze him about five degrees lower.” If she noticed Mara and Mathusael, she was too focused on her work to care what they were talking about.

  “Yes, I spoke with him,” Mara admitted. “Did you?”

  “Briefly. He told me he’s confirmed that his brother came through this system before he disappeared.”

  “Apparently, yes.”

  “From what I’ve heard, that’s the first sign he’s had since Colkhia. It means a lot to him—finding his brother, I mean.”

  Mara nodded but said nothing.

  “Listen, Commander, I know that you technically outrank me, but I’ve been around a bit longer than you and I feel that I should give you some advice.”

  “What sort of advice?”

  “Aaron told me how adamant you were with him about not leaving our post,” said Mathusael, looking her in the eye. “I know you only have his interests at heart, but I think that you’re trying to control him a bit too much. The fleet didn’t put you in command of the Merope-7. They gave that responsibility to Aaron.”

  “I’m fully aware of that, Chief,” said Mara. “But the fleet gave me a responsibility to the crew of this ship as well.”

  “The fleet didn’t give you that position—Aaron did. The fleet wanted to make me second-in-command.”

  Mara frowned. “Really?”

  “When I enlisted, I saw that they’d given Aaron a commission and requested a position on his ship. They knew he was a loose cannon, so they wanted someone older to keep an eye on him—someone that he already looked up to. I declined, so they granted his first choice instead, which was you.”

  “But you were the last one they assigned to us—how did that happen?”

  Mathusael shrugged. “It took a while for me to navigate the bureaucracy. I’ve been to the Coreward Stars, so they wanted to put me in a more forward position where my knowledge would be useful. But once I’d learned that Aaron had his own ship, I had to find a way to get assigned to it.”

  “I didn’t realize that they almost made you the first officer,” Mara said. “If you feel I haven’t been doing as—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, waving his hand. “Rank and position don’t matter to me. What matters are my friends.”

  The medical assistants finished and moved on to the next cryotank. Phoebe looked up from her work long enough to give Mara a puzzled look, but it was clear that she didn’t know what they were talking about. They waited until Phoebe was busy with the next soldier, then returned to their conversation.

  “Do you feel that I’m smothering him?”

  “A little bit, yeah,” Mathusael admitted. “But I also think that you’re a bit overwhelmed yourself right now. Am I right?”

  Mara frowned. What was he getting at?

  “I don’t mean to get too personal,” Mathusael continued, “but I can see that your father’s death has been hard on you. Do you blame yourself for what happened to him?”

  So we’re back to this again, Mara thought to herself, her hands twitching. She stared straight ahead at the cryotanks and didn’t answer for a long while.

  “You can be straight with me, Mara,” said Mathusael. “I’m here for you.”

  “No, I don’t blame myself for his death,” she said at length. I blame myself for what I did about it.

  “That’s good,” he said. “I’ve seen far too many people beat themselves up over things that were not in their control.”

  “Yeah, so have I.”

  Mathusael nodded. “You seem to be doing really well for yourself, considering what you’ve been through. I’m impressed. You’re a strong woman.”

  “Well, I have to be, considering all the people who depend on me.”

  “That’s right. And I take back what I said before about not being able to see you as a homemaker. I have no doubt that if life had turned out differently, you would have been a fine wife and mother. Hell—when this war is over, you may still yet.”

  His words touched her more than she expected. Still, a nagging voice of self-doubt made her cock her head.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because it takes a strong woman to raise a family—or a man, too, for that matter,” he explained. “I don’t mean someone who’s tough. This war has made a lot of people tough, including you, but strength is something different.”

  “Different how?” she asked.

  “Stren
gth is an inner quality that takes time to nurture and grow. A war like this won’t make you any stronger—if anything, it’ll sap your strength until you’ve got none left. That’s why so many people come back from wars feeling like hollow shells: The experience made them tougher, but it took away all their strength.”

  “And you don’t think this war has made me hollow?”

  “Not at all,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve seen how much you give of yourself for your friends. You’ve got a lot of strength left in you, Mara, and I don’t think this war will drain it out of you.”

  She took a deep breath and nodded. “Thanks, Chief. That’s good to hear.”

  “Call me Mathusael. And about Aaron, can I give you some advice?”

  “Sure.”

  Mathusael put a hand on her arm and looked her in the eye. “I know you care about him, but it’s not a good idea to try and control him. He’s already had enough of that from his brother.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, really. You want to help him, take the soft approach. He’s going to make mistakes, but he needs to be in charge for once in his life. And don’t worry, he’ll learn to live up to the responsibility that’s been placed upon him.”

  He’d better, Mara thought.

  “Thanks for your advice, Mathusael. I’ll see what I can do about it.”

  “Sure thing, Commander,” he said, grinning as he patted her on the shoulder.

  They said nothing else for the remainder of the cryofreezing process, but the silence didn’t feel cold—at least, not to Mara. As for Mathusael, she doubted he ever felt cold about anyone. Perhaps that was why High Command had wanted to make him first officer.

  I need to be more like that, she decided. It’s what the men and women of this ship need of me.

  * * * * *

  Colors splashed across Aaron’s field of view. They exploded outward like droplets in an oily puddle, or fractal petals of a hundred flowers opening up all at once. Greens and reds, blues and yellows—the contrast was sharp, yet it soothed him like a shot of hard liquor. The best part was that there would be no hangover afterward.