AGU SCI 1: The Star Brotherhood (16 page)

"Right," Vyx said. "Everybody stay alert for any subterfuge. We have no idea what this person will tell us or attempt to do. I'll join you as soon as I send the report."

The cover of the stasis bed had already rolled back before the team entered the maintenance bay. As they surrounded the bed, they were surprised to find an attractive female. Kathryn had prepared a mildly salty drink of cool water and nutrients according to the recovery specs in the ship's sickbay computer. She placed her left hand under the woman's head and lifted gently to ease her intake. As the straw touched the woman's lips, she began sucking the liquid down at a furious rate.

"Easy," Kathryn said. "You can have all you want, but don't drink too fast. Just let it slide down your throat gently."

The woman drank half the liquid before pausing to take a deep breath. "Thanks, I felt parched. Uh, where am I?"

"You're aboard the freighter
Scorpion
," Byers said. "We found you in a derelict freighter."

"Ah yes, the freighter. We were looking to see if there was anything worth salvaging when our captain notified us that the DeTect system had picked up a ship headed this way. There wasn't time to return to our ship before the other got here, so the captain told us to take cover and they'd return. We waited as long as we could, but they didn't come back, and we were almost out of oxygen. We hurried down to the sick bay and hopped into the stasis beds. That's all I remember. Uh, have you awakened Russel?"

"I'm sorry," Nelligen said, "but the power cells in the other bed failed. The person inside was long gone. There was nothing I could do."

"Poor Russel," she said sadly. "He always did have the worst luck. Is it okay to sit up?"

"If you feel well enough."

"I do. I actually feel pretty good, although I'm still thirsty."

"Have some more of this recovery liquid," Kathryn said as she extended the cup.

After finishing the liquid, the woman struggled to sit up. With Kathryn's help she managed to get upright and get her first good look at the crew that had rescued her just as Vyx arrived. As she looked at him, she said, "Oh my God. Victor? Victor Gregorian? Is that really you?"

~ Dec. 30
^th
, 2288 ~

Vyx was shaken by her recognition and stood there with his mouth partially open as he stared at her and tried to place her. He didn't immediately deny the greeting because her naming him had been so swift and positive, but he didn't confirm it either.

"You don't recognize me, do you?" she asked.

"I think you have me confused with someone else."

"There can't possibly be two such outrageously handsome men who look like you and have a tiny mole on their right ear. I could never forget your face. I had a mild crush on you once."

"What's your name?"

"I'm Ursula Rolando."

"Sorry, I don't recognize your name. I think you're mistaken about our having met. Perhaps it's just déjà vu."

Ursula giggled. "No, I'm sure it’s not déjà vu. But I have to apologize because I gave you a name you wouldn't know. When I knew you, my name was Bethany Childress."

"I don't recognize that name either."

"How about Cadet Childress?"

"Cadet Childress?"

"I was fourth class back when you were a 'firstie.' You assigned punishment duty once when I arrived late for a training session without a good excuse for my tardiness."

As Vyx stared at her, an image of Cadet Childress formed in his mind, and he realized this could be that same woman from so many years ago. "What are you doing out here, Childress?"

"So you remember me?"

"There's nothing to remember. I was never at any Academy. I was home schooled."

"I'm talking about the Northern Hemisphere Space Academy."

"NHSA? You think
I
went to NHSA?"

"I know it. I had a schoolgirl crush on the brilliant and dashing Victor Gregorian until he simply disappeared one day."

"My name is Trader Vyx."

"Victor— Vyx— almost the same."

"My real name is Bernard Vyx. I never liked the Bernard. I use Trader now."

"Oh. Okay. My mistake then."

"We're in a part of space that sees little traffic. What are you doing out here?"

"Just passing through. The security officer aboard our freighter, the
Marcoussa
, spotted the hulk and the captain decided to stop and check it out. You do what you have to do to make a credit these days."

"Yeah, we know all too well." Vyx took a deep breath and added, "We'll have to get a cabin ready for you, so why don't you recuperate in here until then. Kathryn will stay with you. Are you hungry?"

"Famished," Childress aka Rolando said.

"Okay, we'll see you at dinner in a few hours."

"What do you think?" Vyx asked as the four agents settled into the lounge.

"She has to be SCI," Byers said.

"No," Brenda said. "If she were SCI, she would have known better than to say anything about recognizing Vyx, and then also claim to have known him from the Academy. That's against everything we're taught."

"Could she be a plant?" Nelligen asked.

"You mean someone put here to get us to reveal we're SCI?" Vyx asked. "No, there was no way of knowing
we'd
find her, that we'd spot the ship, or that we'd stop to investigate if we did spot an old hulk. We were all over this part of space trying to avoid whoever it was that was attacking us until we could fix our FTL drive. The chances of our coming across that derelict was one in a billion."

"I still say she's SCI," Byers said. "She was just awakened from a year-long sleep and wasn't in top form. Just think about how confused you feel in the minutes after you've awakened from a long, deep sleep. She slipped up is all."

"What are the chances that could happen to us twice?" Nelligen asked.

"Twice?"

"Yeah. Have you forgotten? Brenda and Kathryn were assigned to the team after we discovered them as prisoners in Shev Rivemwilth's new hideout."

"Oh, yeah. I
had
forgotten. Well— that doesn't mean it can't happen again."

"I have to send an update to the message I just sent to SCI," Vyx said, "and give them this new information. Only they can answer our questions about Rolando's status as SCI. Unless and until we learn that she is, we treat her as an outsider and a possible threat."

A few hours later, all five members of the team were relaxing in the lounge.

"We moved Rolando into Cabin Six," Brenda said. "She was exhausted from just the walk to the living quarters, so she went to bed after eating three bowls of soup. It'll probably be several days before she's fully back on her feet."

"I mounted a camera in the quarters corridor and tied it into the interior vid system," Nelligen said. "The system will alert us when she emerges from her cabin and record any travels."

"I guess that's about all we can do for now," Vyx said. "It'll probably be six weeks before we hear back from Intelligence on Quesann."

"What do we do in the meantime?" Nelligen asked.

"We head for Bleadalto. We placed a beacon in the derelict so Space Command will be able to find it when they have someone in this area, and I sent a copy of all the logs we downloaded and the logs from our helmet cams. I can't imagine there's anything left for us to do here."

"What about Russel's body?" Byers asked.

"It'll still be there when Space Command shows up, and we have business on Bleadalto."

"And Rolando?" Kathryn asked.

"If she's not SCI, we leave her on Bleadalto. She can make her own way from there."

"Just dump her on Bleadalto? " Brenda asked. "Is that any way to treat your Academy sweetheart?"

Vyx looked at her with an amused smile. He knew she was kidding. "Of course. It's what I do with all my women when I tire of them."

"We already knew about Lippaula. Just how many other sweethearts have you dumped on Bleadalto?"

"Dozens," he said whimsically. "Perhaps hundreds. Didn't you know? The planet is overflowing with them."

"Just don't get any ideas about dumping me there."

"Don't worry. I have other plans for you."

"Such as?"

"I'll show you tonight."

"Promises, promises, promises," she said with a smile.

Over the next few days, Rolando fully recovered from her year of stasis sleep. The team of agents were friendly towards her but careful not to discuss anything related to SCI. As far as Rolando was concerned, they were just an independent freighter crew who made a living through legit shipping jobs, with a little smuggling on occasion.

Rolando told them she had been an engineering assistant on her last freighter, so she joined Nelligen on his daily maintenance rounds. He was impressed by her intelligence and knowledge but kept a close eye on all her work to ensure there were no efforts at sabotage.

The
Scorpion
was almost halfway to Bleadalto when the bridge computer summoned Vyx to the bridge to receive an incoming message. After listening to the Space Command orders twice, he returned to the lounge. Only Nelligen and Byers were there at present. The constant droll repartee they enjoyed so much as they played cards had driven the women from the room.

"What's up?" Byers asked.

"New orders from HQ on Quesann. We're to change course so we can rendezvous with the
Stuttgart
, SC Destroyer GSC-DD2012. The meeting place is two months from here. I laid in the course and we're headed there."

"Why do we need to rendezvous with them?" Nelligen asked.

"They didn't say. I guess we'll find out when we get to the RP."

"It must have something to do with Rolando," Byers said.

"That's the most likely answer. Perhaps she's wanted for criminal activity."

"You guys just can't accept that she's SCI," Byers said.

"We'll accept it, if and when Space Command says it's so," Nelligen said. "Until then, she's just a spacer we rescued."

"Owing to the attack on our FTL and sub-light engines, I was nervous about this part of space before we came across the derelict," Vyx said, "but since then I think I'm becoming a bit paranoid. Nels, can the DeTect system be tied to the system that builds the DAFTA envelope so the process is started as soon as an approaching ship is detected?"

Nelligen thought for a few seconds before responding. "I think so. It'll take a little jury rigging, but we should have all the necessary electronics on board. Why?"

"When we reach the rendezvous point we'll have to shut down and wait if the warship isn't there. If whatever destroyed the freighter we found is still around, I want our envelope up as soon as possible. If it happens in the middle of the night, an automated build function could already have the envelope half constructed by the time we reach the bridge."

"You don't really think they're still around, do you?" Byers asked. "That was fourteen years ago. They
must
have been on their way to Region Two."

"We don't know that," Vyx said. "We also don't know what happened to Rolando's ship. Were they destroyed by the same ship that destroyed the freighter?"

"I've been thinking about that," Byers said. "Perhaps the freighter captain had discovered that Rolando was SCI and used that 'approaching ship ruse' as a way to get rid of her and Russel."

"They didn't
need
a ruse," Nelligen said. "All they had to do was leave Rolando and Russel behind at the derelict ship. Who could know the sick bay still had energy in its emergency power cells?"

"Perhaps the
Marcoussa
was a victim of the same group that almost got us," Vyx said.

Two weeks into the voyage to meet the Space Command ship, the DeTect system alerted the crew to an unexpected anomaly. The crew raced to the bridge and discovered that the ACS hadn't canceled the FTL envelope, meaning that the anomaly wasn't directly in their path. Vyx put an image of the DeTect log up on the large monitor at the front of the bridge. It indicated that they had passed within eighteen hundred kilometers of a large object with a power signature.

"It's stationary," Vyx said.

"With a power signature like that, it's sizable," Nelligen said as he looked up at the DeTect log.

Vyx cut power to the FTL drive so it stopped producing new envelopes but didn't cancel the existing envelope, effectively stopping the ship in space. "Let's go back and see what we passed."

"Is that wise? " Brenda asked.

"I won't drop our envelope, so we should be okay. We'll just perform a flyby at twenty-five thousand kilometers and see why someone is stopped out here in the middle of nowhere."

"What if it's the Denubbewa?" Kathryn asked.

"The what?" Rolando said.

"The Denubbewa," Kathryn replied. "The enemy that's been trying to take over Galactic Alliance space."

"Since when?"

"For about three years now."

"I've never heard of them."

"You've been sleeping for the past year," Brenda said, "and before that the news was classified and limited to military circles."

"We think they're the ones who attacked that freighter you were checking out," Byers said.

"Can't be. That happened eons ago. Didn't you see the hull?"

"Of course we did," Nelligen said."That's their trademark. They fire thousands, or tens of thousands, of tiny missiles that sort of— melt— holes in the hull, then detonate a tiny nuclear charge at the opening. The crew dies either from radiation or lack of atmo. From the bridge logs, we determined that the attack occurred fourteen years ago."

"Fourteen years? That's eleven years before you say they began attacking the GA."

"We don't know how long they've been here or what direction they came from. We only know that Space Command first encountered them in the farthest part of Region Two."

"No matter who it is, we should have a speed advantage over them," Vyx said. "The Denubbewa ships are reputed to be slower than the
Scorpion
."

"This is a great little ship you have here," Rolando said. "How did you get an FTL drive that's even faster than some Space Command vessels?"

"Most of the Space Command vessels out this way are capable of Light-9790. Our max is about Light-487."