Randoms (11 page)

I watched on the screen as the enemy grew larger and more menacing, as they fired on us and we shook like a plane going through turbulence. I understood that there was a good chance we were going to die. Maybe it was a certainty. We were either going to be destroyed by the enemy or destroyed when we crashed into the enemy. The only chance we had was that the ship would realize it had nothing to gain and back off. It showed no sign of doing that.

Then there were a dozen or more flashes in quick succession. The ship rocked. Lights flickered. I heard the distant rumble of explosions. Unlike on TV shows, no consoles exploded, but I watched as several dimmed and more than half extinguished entirely. All around me the officers of the
Dependable
tapped furiously at screens and keyboards, trying to bring their stations back to life, but the bridge was now cast in a gloomy twilight.

“Shielding is fluctuating,” Urch said. “Damage reports from all decks.”

“Stabilize defenses,” the captain said, her voice steady. “Restraint doesn't seem to be working. I didn't want this, but I won't make it easy on them. See what you can do to dissuade them, Mr. Urch, and if you have a clear shot for a dark-matter missile, take it.”

Urch bared his teeth as he fired off several PPB bursts. The Phandic ship returned fire, and then things, which were really bad, got a whole lot worse.

As if someone had pulled a switch, gravity was gone. My stomach dropped out, and the concepts of up and down were distant and fond memories. This didn't feel like the disorientation of leaving relativistic space. This was something far more physical and unpleasant. I felt like I was falling, plummeting; not vomiting took all my concentration. Whatever means the ship used to generate gravity had been damaged or destroyed, and if I hadn't been holding on to the railing already, I would have gone flying the instant the gravity failed.

Then, seconds after I became weightless, we were spinning wildly, as the
Dependable
lost stabilizers and went cascading through space. Anything not tied down was thrown by the powerful force of the ship's mad gyration. The captain, in mid-order, was
cast out of her chair. Everyone on the bridge was hurled from their stations. Everyone but me, still clinging to my rail. I heard cries of frustration as the officers tried to right themselves, tried to make it back to their consoles, but between the lack of gravity and the spinning of the ship, it was impossible to find a destination. There were cries of pain. Blood floated in thick globs in the weightlessness. Someone's tooth sailed past me.

Then the ship came under control, and the gravity returned, but not in that order. The gravity was half a second ahead of the stabilizers, so when the ship suddenly righted, nearly everyone went flying through the air like popcorn in a popper—some hitting the walls, some the floor, some the ceiling, some one another in midair. When everything became still, the bridge officers were cast about like battered toys. I struck the wall hard, and my arm was jerked painfully, but I was not seriously hurt.

The captain was trying to get up as she clutched a clearly broken arm. Urch had been hurled halfway across the bridge, and now lay terrifyingly still. Ystip seemed to have broken her leg, but she had dragged herself back to her console and reestablished our course to collide with the enemy ship. She was, I realized, the only being on the bridge capable of resuming her station. A few others were moving, slowly, but the crew had been almost entirely neutralized.

I looked again at Urch, motionless. I looked at his weapons console. I looked at the captain, who was typing into her data-bracelet keyboard using her one good hand.

“Trying to get backup crew, but there are injuries all over the ship.” She glanced up at me. “Until a replacement arrives, I need you to operate weapons, Mr. Reynolds.”

I stood still, staring at her, understanding what she had
just told me but not believing it. I couldn't do what she asked. There was no way. I wasn't a trained weapons officer. I'd noodled around in the sim for a couple of hours, but that was it. She could not seriously want me to do this. I told myself that, but I knew it wasn't true. She needed me to step up for the simple reason that there was no one else.

I swallowed and ran for the console.

I tapped the screen and quickly got an image of the enemy ship, but it was moving fast, engaging in countermeasures that made a lock-on difficult. Identifying the engines or any other specific system was harder, so much harder, than it had been in the simulation. This wasn't like what I'd practiced, which had been challenging but possible. This was so much more complicated. Our ship was moving. The enemy was moving. There were flashing lights and indicators demanding my attention. Text scrolled endlessly. We were about to be blown up, and I was powerless to do anything about it. The chair might as well have been empty for all the good my sitting in it did us.

The Phandic captain's voice came over the speakers again. “Confederation ship, you are severely damaged and significantly outmatched. Surrender and your lives will be spared.”

I was desperately trying to get a lock on something, anything, but it was impossible to nail down. Every time I thought I had a target in my sights, it slipped away. The ship moved across the screen too quickly. My head hammered; my hands shook. This wasn't possible. I was not good enough. Maybe brilliant Charles, or strategic Nayana, or agile Mi Sun could have done it, but I was just a random.

I wanted to tell Captain Qwlessl that she'd made a mistake, she needed to find someone else, but I knew there was no time.
I had to make it work. I had to, or we were all going to die. I took in a deep breath, and I tried to make myself believe I was not at the weapons station, and this was not life or death. I was playing a game. This was the newest, most vivid version of Halo, and here I was in the most intense vehicle sequence ever created. It was just a game, I said. I did okay at games. I sometimes won the tough levels without having to save and start over. When I played, sometimes I liked to pretend that it was real, that it counted. Now it
was
real, and I needed to pretend it was just for fun.

I almost had their life-support system locked, but then it was gone. I was blowing this. Failing miserably. They were going to destroy us without me even firing a single shot.

I remembered all the little tricks Urch had taught me to compensate for the movement of two ships, and I honed in on my target—the engines. I failed, and then I failed again, and I failed a third time, but on the fourth try I got a lock. I fired off a volley of PPB blasts, and my console told me I had scored a direct hit on the target. There were three satisfying flashes against the saucer's hull. I pumped my fist in satisfaction and checked the readout. I had done only superficial damage.

In my limited combat experience, I'd figured out a few things about this enemy. They had better weapons, but we were supposed to have better shields. There was apparently a rock-paper-scissors balance of power between the Confederation and the Phandics or Phands or whatever they were. This time they'd come out with a stronger rock, and that's why we were taking this beating; they had improved their weapons, and we were defending ourselves with old shields, this battle could only end one way.

The one chance we had to survive or avoid capture was to
try something they didn't expect. I had to throw away the rule book and do something entirely unexpected. It was time to go James Kirk on them.

The old one. Not the new one.

•   •   •

Here's my problem with the
Star Trek
reboot. I enjoy those movies, don't get me wrong. They're a blast, and I know my dad would have liked them too. I don't have any problem with them tinkering with core ideas about the franchise. In fact, I love that the new movies take place in an alternative timeline so you can keep the old continuity without making the new one a slave to it. Brilliant.

My problem is with Kirk's new attitude. The old Kirk would break the rules, but only when the rules stood in the way of the principles the Federation was sworn to uphold. He believed in the Prime Directive, but he would throw it out the airlock if obeying it meant people would suffer or die, because, at its core, the Prime Directive was meant to preserve life. Old Kirk is a tough guy, but a completely moral tough guy. New Kirk, on the other hand, seems to get a charge out of breaking rules and risking lives. Tell him not to do something, and he'll do it, if only for the pleasure of being a maverick. You can explain it away, I guess. This Kirk is younger than the first Kirk was when we first met him. This Kirk grew up without a father. I suppose it makes sense that he would be more reckless, but half the time he comes across as nothing more than a troublemaker, the sort of clown the original Kirk would have declared a menace.

I was about to break some rules, but in the old Kirk tradition. I was not getting a thrill out of doing what I'd been told not to do. I wanted to get out of the situation alive because I
was on a spaceship, going to a space station, and I could not accept the injustice of dying now. I refused to let my mother fall victim to her disease because these flying-saucer bullies wanted to flex their muscles. I believed the Phandic ship was wrong and we were right, and following the rules was not going to save us.

I looked up at the viewscreen and saw the Phandic ship hovering before us. That thrill of fear coursed through me, and I willed it away. I looked down at the screen and scored another lock, again on the engines, and I did not hesitate. I would not. The speakers were on, and the Phandic voice was telling us to surrender and prepare for boarding. The alarms and beeps and buzzes of the consoles were thrumming in my ears. The bridge smelled of blood and sweat. I had a chance, and I took it.

Urch had explained that the rules required I fire only one dark-matter missile at a time, and after each firing assess the extent of the damage. Okay, that was fine if you weren't about to be destroyed. I wasn't interested in finding out how well the evil aliens could dodge my missiles, especially since they would almost certainly know the Confederation rules. They would be counting on them.

They weren't counting on me. I fired five dark-matter missiles, one after another, and my console assured me each of them was locked, but they were all on different points of the saucer. My hope was that if they tried to dodge one, they would just be setting themselves up for a more direct hit from another.

As soon as those five were away, I locked in another set and released five more missiles. I had just unleashed half our arsenal at the enemy, and in case that didn't give them something to think about in the seconds between launch and impact, I peppered them with as many PPB bursts as I could fire. I didn't
even care if I had a lock. I just wanted to scare them. I just wanted to do something.

“History,” I shouted, paraphrasing alternate-timeline Picard, “will remember the name
Dependable
!”

I kept firing and firing and waiting for them to return the favor and blow us to pieces. I fired again, and they did not answer. Instead I saw pinpricks of light on the saucer's hull as the first of the missiles struck. Then another. Then more than I could count, because the ship was enveloped in a cloud of fire as the hull of the saucer cracked open and the oxygen was sucked out. I checked my console. Four of the missiles had gone wide, but the other six had smacked against the Phandic ship like a blast of dark-matter shotgun pellets. The saucer shuddered, and small explosions burst from one extreme edge of the hull, as though the ship burped fire. Then the entire hull began to glow, as heat spread out from the initial explosion, red then white, and the screen was filled with light as the enemy vessel burst into a tiny nova. The flash lasted only an instant; then the hot debris quickly cooled and vanished against the black backdrop of the void.

I had destroyed a spaceship.

CHAPTER TEN

A
hush fell over the bridge as everyone who was still conscious came to understand that we were not going to die. The flow of time seemed to change for me, switching from a direct drive forward to a weird staccato as reality stopped and started. The captain was by my side, patting me on the back with her good arm. Urch was now on his feet, looking absolutely terrible with a crushed nose, a gash across his face, and apparently a head wound—his thick locks were dripping with blood—but he was alive.

He took one of his huge hands and wiped it down his face, and then shook off the excess blood. “You blew the excrement out of that ship,” he told me.

I nodded. I wasn't quite ready for speech.

How many beings had I just killed? It wasn't a video game. It wasn't pretend. Were dozens dead? Hundreds? They were all gone because of what I had done. They had been trying to kill us, and that counted for something. It counted for a lot, but it was still unbelievable.

“Thirty seconds to tunnel aperture,” Ystip called.

“Enter tunnel as soon as possible,” the captain said, relief unmistakable in her voice. “Best speed to Confederation Central. I want to see damage reports and repair estimates as soon as they're available. Get health teams up here and deploy them to all decks. I want every being on board accounted for
within ten minutes. No one is dying in a dark corner on my ship. I want to see a prioritized repair schedule as soon as possible. And Mr. Reynolds, thank you for saving our lives, but it is time for civilians to clear the bridge.”

“Yes, ma'am,” I said. It was just as well, because I needed to go back to my bunk and seriously decompress, but not literally, because this was a spaceship, and we had almost done exactly that.

•   •   •

Several hours later my data bracelet chirped, and I received a text message informing me that the captain had called a meeting and my attendance was required. My HUD projected a yellow translucent path that led me to a conference room whose main features were a massive banner with the Confederation gas-giant symbol and an oval table around which already sat Captain Qwlessl, Dr. Roop, Ms. Price, Urch, and the three other human applicants. Urch, I saw, was now fully healed, as was the captain. Dr. Roop had sent a message to our delegation informing us that no one among us had serious injuries other than Mi Sun, who had broken her collarbone, but she showed no sign of having been hurt now. Clearly, the Confederation had some powerful medical mojo.

I liked that no one had been permanently harmed. I did not like that they had all arrived before me. It made me feel like I was either an afterthought or the subject of the meeting. I didn't know which would be worse. I took the only empty chair, between Urch and Dr. Roop.

“First of all,” the captain began, “I want to apologize to our guests for the rough ride. Obviously, the enemy attack was unexpected, but failures of gravity and stabilizers, even
in combat, are extraordinarily rare. Unfortunately, as you experienced, they are not impossible. That said, we have the finest safety protocols known to exist, and despite the damage this ship took, we suffered no loss of life or critical injuries.”

That was good news. And impressive.

“I've exchanged several beacons with Confederation command,” the captain continued.

“Hold on,” I said. “How can you do that? It's going to take us hours to get to the station, so how are you trading beacons?”

“Comm beacons are constructed of photons, which travel much more rapidly than matter,” the captain said, though her voice suggested she didn't think this was a particularly good time for a lesson. “They tunnel at about thirty times the speed a ship can.”

I nodded. “Sorry.”

“Your interest is commendable, and it will serve you well,” she said, “but I'm afraid we have more pressing concerns right now. There is a great deal of unhappiness about what happened on the bridge during our encounter with the Phandic ship. Several governmental councils are displeased that a member of an applicant species participated in the conflict, and they are troubled by how the battle resolved.”

“How it resolved,” I repeated. “Do you mean that I destroyed that ship?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice flat.

“Given the alternative,” Urch volunteered, “I'm not sure I share that opinion.”

“I agree, Mr. Urch,” the captain said. “Mr. Reynolds performed to the best of his ability, and he likely saved the
Dependable
and the lives of all on board. That the Phandic
ship had hostile intentions is beyond doubt. We witnessed the destruction of our shuttle and the murder of the Ganari delegation. Nevertheless, there are concerns.”

“What exactly are these concerns?” I asked, though I had a pretty good idea.

“You deployed ten dark-matter missiles, launched consecutively, against the Phandic ship. Command thinks that was excessive.”

I looked around the table, trying to get a sense of just how serious this was. “Is it a matter of expense?”

“Not as such,” the captain said. “Military supplies should never be squandered, but it is more a concern about your aggression.”

Dr. Roop cleared his considerable throat. “Zeke, did you seek to destroy the Phandic ship, or were you merely trying to disable it?”

I had that queasy feeling I get when I've messed up and been caught, but I still wasn't sure what I had done wrong. We had been in battle, fighting to survive, and I'd fought. Wasn't that what I was supposed to do?

“I just didn't want us to get killed,” I said. “And I didn't want us to get killed because I wasn't able to do what I'd been asked to do. The captain needed me to stop that ship, and I did what I thought would work best. I figured I had one chance to get it right, and I took it.”

The more I spoke, the more confident I felt. Of course I had done the right thing. There had been nothing else to do. Politicians liked to get attention—I knew that. They could say what they liked, but the facts spoke for themselves. To demonstrate my confidence, I leaned back in my chair and steepled
my fingers. “As Captain Benjamin Sisko once said, ‘Fortune favors the bold.'”

Nayana coughed politely. “Actually, I think it was Virgil. It's from
The Aeneid
.”

More quietly, Mi Sun said, “Moron.”

I noticed Nayana was smiling at me. It wasn't the full-wattage, supernova smile of a girl trying to get me to fetch her sparkling water, but it was still pretty compelling. Maybe some girls like it when you keep them from dying in the cold vacuum of space.

The captain was rolling her trunk in little circles, in a way I suspected meant she was mulling over my bit of
Star Trek
wisdom. “Fortune certainly favored us today.”

“Here's what the detractors will say,” Urch told me. “One missile might have stopped the attack but allowed some of the Phands on the ship to reach life pods. There could have been survivors whom we might have questioned.”

“Life is not measured in military terms,” the captain said. “It has its own value. But yes, understanding why they chose to attack the Ganari would have been of some use to us.”

“I didn't know any of that,” I said, now becoming frustrated.

The captain raised one of her heavy hands. “I understand, Mr. Reynolds. Frankly, I think the committees do as well. I also think, if I may speak bluntly, that there are some on those committees who will choose to interpret things otherwise.”

“I see,” said Dr. Roop. “It's like that, is it?”

“It is,” she agreed.

Ms. Price dusted off one of the sleeves of her business suit. She adjusted a wayward strand that had broken ranks from her military-grade bun. “It's like what, precisely?”

“It might be helpful to know something about how the
Confederation operates,” Dr. Roop said. “In the same way that many of your nations have ruling bodies made up of individual beings, we have bodies made up of groups. There are trillions of sentients in the Confederation, and so there are thousands of elected officials, and these are organized into governing committees, each with its small area of oversight. Inevitably, there are those who seek more power, and they seek that power through calling into question the actions of other committees or government offices. The question of which species to initiate is often politically charged, and this time more than ever because of certain . . . unfortunate circumstances.”

“Usually the selection committee participates in the initiation of new species,” the captain explained. “They would also decide what to do in an emergency, such as a delegation being murdered or a member of a delegation violating our treaty with the Phandic Empire.”

“Violating a treaty!” I said, maybe louder than I should have. “They attacked us. They killed the Ganari, who were just like us—just a bunch of kids who were ready to go on an adventure, and now they're dead. Their families are grieving because their kids were murdered in cold blood. I don't see how there are any fine lines here.”

“I agree with you, Zeke,” the captain said, “but there are politicians who have to deal with the fact that our treaty forbids the use of excessive force against a vessel without providing sufficient opportunity for civilians and nonessential personnel to evacuate. There are those who are already claiming you are guilty of war crimes.”

“Maybe the best thing to do would be to send him back,” Ms. Price suggested, her voice suddenly a little jaunty. “A new
random should be easy to acquire on short notice. As long as we stick to the original parameters, and choose an American, then no one can have any objections. My government already has a short list of viable candidates.”

“I have no objection to this proposal,” Charles said.

Thanks for the contribution, Chuck.
I glowered at him, and at least he had the good grace to turn away.

“In an ideal situation, the selection committee would pick a new group from the Ganari,” Dr. Roop said, “presuming they are still willing to participate. They might also review Zeke's status. The situation is not ideal, however.”

“A ship conveying all five members of the committee went missing six standard months ago,” the captain explained to the humans. “The members are presumed dead, and there has not yet been an election to replace them.”

“So we're stuck with him?” Mi Sun asked. “I mean, look at him. He's a war criminal,
and
he's still at level one.”

I'd been so distracted that I hadn't checked my heads-up display since the attack. I looked at it now. It read 2965830/1000. I surreptitiously checked the chart on my data bracelet. I had almost three million experience points, and I could now level up to eleven, more than double what Mi Sun had. Her scorn about my level wasn't going to bother me. The business about me being a war criminal was another matter.

“Why weren't we told about the Phandic Empire?” I asked. “Dr. Roop, you told us that the Confederation was a peaceful place. You never mentioned that these guys in flying saucers are kicking your butts all over the galaxy.”

“Do not be disrespectful,” Charles said.

“Bite me, Chuck,” I said. “You don't get experience points
for being a suck-up.” I looked at Urch. He shook his head and bared his teeth in approval. “It would have been useful,” I continued, “to know that the Confederation is involved in a war with guys who significantly outmatch you.”

“It's not exactly a war,” said Dr. Roop. “It is more like an ideological disagreement—with weapons.”

“The Confederation and the Phandic Empire have been clashing for centuries,” the captain said. “Usually the conflicts take place in peripheral locations, and things rarely escalate to violence.”

“Let me guess,” I said, my stomach twisting as I spoke. This conflict sounded suddenly familiar to me, and I knew where I had heard of it before. “The Confederation and the Phands fight primarily over access to Former artifacts.”

All the aliens were now staring at me. “How did you know that?” Urch asked.

“Because this whole thing is like
Colony Alpha,
that's how.”

“Give the stupid TV shows a rest,” Mi Sun said.

I didn't respond in the way she deserved. I didn't tell her that
Colony Alpha
was not stupid. Some of the elements were spot on. It was my father's show, even if he had stumbled upon these truths by blind luck. In that story, a lone human colony found itself in the middle of a war between benevolent aliens, who were clearly losing, and evil, imperial aliens, who were on the cusp of victory. In order to survive, the humans had to side with the bad guys, and the show asked a lot of tough moral questions—or at least it was supposed to before the rewrites.

“The Confederation and the Phandic Empire have learned to live with each other,” Dr. Roop explained. “Conflicts arise, but usually they are resolved quickly and without much bloodshed.
Unfortunately, the attack today is part of a recent pattern of Phandic escalation.”

“And some are already afraid that Mr. Reynolds's destruction of the Phandic vessel will further antagonize them,” the captain said.

“Next time,” Urch said to me, “you should show them how nice you are by letting them destroy you.”

“We do have treaties dictating the rules of engagement,” the captain said, raising her voice slightly, “but in my view, as Mr. Reynolds was unaware of them, and because his world was not a signatory to them, he is not bound by them. The Phands will not see it that way, but the councils will have to.”

Ms. Price sighed. “Look, this may be uncomfortable, but I'm here to represent the best interests of my world. I'm not here to make friends.”

Snarky-retort restraint. Check.

She turned to me. “Zeke, you're a nice guy. We all like you, and I suppose it's possible we are alive because of you, but you've become a liability to this mission, to Earth's chances of joining the Confederation, and very possibly to the Confederation itself. I think it would be in everyone's best interest if you were to resign from the delegation. I know that's not the way things are usually done, but surely under the circumstances we can make an exception.”