Retribution (The Long Haul Book 2) Read online

“I wandered off first,” Charm said. “He followed. It was my fault.”

  She trained the light on her children. “Empty hands, no food. Did you even make it to the provisions store?” The twins shrugged and remained quiet. “We can try again tomorrow, the three of us. At least you still have your shoes. Put them on and let’s get home.”

  Loke and Charm did as they were told. An orange cat sauntered out from the shadows and rubbed up against Charm’s leg. She picked it up and squeezed the squirming animal against her chest. “It was all this kitty’s fault.”

  “Put that thing down,” her mother said. “Stray cats are full of disease.”

  It had begun to purr in her arms. “But the starvers will get him,” Charm protested. “Can’t we bring him home? Please?”

  Tarrace Edmund frowned at her daughter. “It will be your responsibility… feeding it, giving it water, cleaning up after its mess. Do you understand?”

  Charm nodded and hugged the cat harder. Loke rolled his eyes. The family set off towards the lights of main street.

  Chapter 2

  “Four more enemy vessels closing in from the starboard side, sir. Our cannons have their coordinates locked in.”

  Commander Alexander Edmund stood next to the young officer at the weapons station, hands clasped behind his back, observing the red alien ship markers on the holographic grid before them. “You don’t need to wait for my permission, Lieutenant Gertsen. Open fire and turn them into dust.”

  Bennoit Gertsen relayed the order to the automated cannon chambers twenty-four levels beneath the bridge of SS Retribution. Both commander and lieutenant felt the slight shudder under their boots as the warship unleashed sixteen ripper-class missiles into the heavens. They looked up at the main view screen and watched them detonate simultaneously a thousand kilometers away. The rippers were small, but they were lightning fast. This second wave of attacking alien ships had been as unprepared for the barrage as the first four ships.

  “You have to give the Terran weapon manufacturers credit, Lieutenant. They know how to build bombs.”

  Gertsen puffed out his chest and grinned triumphantly. “Yes sir, they sure do.”

  “They’re efficient, I never said we had to be proud of them.”

  The officer nodded and looked down sheepishly to the floor. “Of course not, Commander. I’m just relieved to see the Pegans aren’t as big a threat as we’ve always been taught.”

  “The Pegans,” Edmund repeated the word disdainfully, “were never meant to be a part of this mission.” He stepped down from the sections ring and took a seat in one of the six stools at the hexagon-shaped tactics table located in the center of the bridge. “But now that we’ve been diverted into their system, we can’t afford to take them lightly. Over-confidence is even more dangerous than pride this far out.” The Commander pressed a keypad button set into the edge of the table; a larger three-dimensional image of their space sector sprung up from the surface. “Gather round, people. The most important question we need to answer at this point is where these attack ships are hiding in all… of this.” He spread his hands out, encompassing roughly a billion cubic kilometers of mostly empty cosmos. Lieutenant Gertsen and four other command officers slipped into the remaining stools. “How are they getting in so close without our scanners detecting them?”

  Navigation Colonel Lornay Simmons pointed to a section of the map scattered with what appeared to be a thin band of circulating dust. “They’re obviously using this outer asteroid belt for cover.” She moved her finger an inch to the left—a few million kilometers according to scale—to the steady pinpoint of blue light representing Retribution. “We’ve picked up a lot of ambient radiation signatures from the rocks there. They could very well be scrambling our signals.”

  Edmund nodded at the Nav-Colonel without looking at her. After Gertsen, she was the youngest officer serving on the bridge, almost half the commander’s age. She also happened to bear more than a striking resemblance to Edmund’s wife. Stealing Retribution and her crew at the end of the Worlds War had been Edmund’s most punishable crime, leaving Tarrace behind on Mars was his greatest moral sin. “It seems plausible enough, but the radiation field isn’t affecting any of our systems this far out. These ships are remaining undetectable until almost fifty-thousand KMs.”

  “I believe we may be dealing with magnetic distortion,” another officer offered.

  Edmund turned his attention to Science Major Fredrik Weldheim. “There aren’t any rocks in the belt large enough to create that much magnetic interference.”

  “Not from the asteroid belt.” He tapped at the keypad on his section of table and the image before them focused in. The dusty sprinkle of rocks vanished outwards, and a much larger spherical object came into view. “From Pegasi 51’s most outer planet, Taranis.”

  “Taranis is still forty-eight light hours from our present position,” Gertsen argued. “It may be the biggest planet in the system after Grannus, but it can’t possibly be interfering with our sensors this far away.”

  “Ada,” Weldheim called on Retribution’s full-integration assistance computer. “Display magnetic polarity field of the sixth planet.”

  “Accessing Taranis planet information,” the computer replied in a deep, decidedly female tone.

  Two towers of concentrated green lines shot out from the planet’s poles, and began separating evenly like the petals of twin flowers opening. Taranis shrunk down as the blossoming effect continued. By the time the computer had finished its three-dimensional rendition, the planet was little more than a dull point of light in the center. The magnetic influence encompassed an oblong-shaped region of space that trespassed inwards towards the star all the way to the third planet’s orbit. It extended outward past the asteroid belt and well beyond Retribution.

  “My God,” Colonel Simmons uttered. “No wonder we haven’t been able to see them until it was almost too late. That planet’s radioactive magnetosphere dwarfs Jupiter’s at least ten times over.”

  “Indeed it does,” Weldheim affirmed. “And it appears the people living on the second planet have taken full advantage of its effects.”

  “Retribution is one of the most powerful warships ever built by mankind,” Commander Edmund said. “One on one we can take on any intelligent hostile threat that comes our way.” He looked at Gertsen directly to drive his final point home. “But the advantage will always go to the home team. We’re playing in their field. They know how to use this system against us.”

  “Are you suggesting we abandon the rescue attempt, Alex?”

  Edmund glared across the table, knowing full well that’s exactly what his Second-in-Command wanted. Corwin Barret was the oldest officer serving in his skeleton crew—perhaps the oldest serving in the entire military body of the Republic of Sol Planets. But age and experience didn’t justify disrespect. The fact he was Alexander’s father-in-law made the first-name drop even more inappropriate. “I never said that, SIC. But now that we’ve committed, we’re going to do it right.”

  Barret waved his words away. “We’re chasing after ghosts when we should be heading for the Alderamin system.”

  “It wasn’t a ghost,” Weldheim interrupted. “The transmission was legitimate.”

  “The transmission may be legitimate,” SIC Barret countered, “It’s the source I doubt. How could that ship have survived after seven centuries?”

  “Ambition,” Gertsen said. Everyone at the table fell silent. The lieutenant cleared his throat. “That ship was called Ambition, and we can’t continue for Alderamin until we’ve found her missing captain.”

  “Ambition,” the ship’s computer spoke again throughout the bridge. “A mining vessel constructed in the mid twenty-third century. Military refit completed in the year 2329.”

  “We know what Ambition is, Ada,” Edmund sighed. “Thank you.”

  The computer continued. “Ambition—the largest space-faring ship ever constructed by humankind. Ambition—destroyed in the year 3040 under
the command of Captain Shain Ag—”

  “Thank you,” Edmund repeated. “That last part hasn’t been verified. Stick to the facts, or don’t bother reporting at all.”

  “I don’t know how much more verification we need,” Simmons said. “The distress call from Captain Agle explained everything. We know what became of Ambition in the end. We may have arrived ten months too late, but finding the Exodus shuttle would answer a lot of ancient questions.”

  Edmund stood up from his stool and rubbed his eyes. “Finding Agle out there in all that magnetic interference will be like searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack, if he’s even still alive at all.”

  Helm-Master Marie Mara weighed in. “The shuttle he set out in was only carrying enough rations for six months.” The woman’s feet dangled a full six inches up from the floor. She may have been tiny, but Edmund’s third-in-command was the most capable, strongest officer he’d ever worked with. “The math isn’t that difficult to figure out… Four months without food and water. This is no longer a rescue effort, it’s a recovery mission.”

  SIC Barret smacked an open palm down on the table. “We have to continue with our original mission. The other ships won’t be far behind. Let them find Exodus.”

  Ada cut in before Edmund could reply to his father-in-law. “New enemy contacts. Six vessels approaching. Distance—forty-eight thousand kilometers and closing.”

  The officers set away from the tactics table and returned to their stations. What had become of the heroic Captain Agle—Ambition’s thirty-first and final commander—would have to remain unanswered a little while longer.

  Chapter 3

  Alderamin 4 loomed outside Ly Sulafat’s window like a great purple and grey bruise against the backdrop of space. The Hunn-ephei home world. Five and a half lightyears from the planet of Pega. The prison ship had made the journey in less than six days.

  “It probably isn’t as bad down below, Captain,” Hadar Cen said next to him. “I’ve been assured humans can even breathe the atmosphere at surface level without oxygen assistance for up to thirty minutes.”

  “How comforting,” Sulafat replied quietly. “Do you have to keep calling me that?”

  “Captain? Of course I do. You’re still our leader whether you like it or not.”

  “Some leader. From ten thousand followers to forty.” He’d almost said forty-two. It was still hard coming to grips with the loss of two of his crew. Milun Mosa Cyon had committed suicide two weeks into their captivity. She was only twenty-one years old. Platoon Chief Benes Yildun had died accidently—or so the Pegan officials had claimed—during a routine prisoner quarters inspection. Sulafat sighed and looked away from the depressing alien world. He leaned closer to Hadar and whispered. “I haven’t given up on us, son. We’ll figure a way out of this. I may not live long enough to see the day, but I’ll make sure the rest of you get back to Earth.”

  Hadar smiled. “I’ve never been to Earth, Captain. None of us have.”

  “A figure of speech. Or maybe it’s some ancient ancestral instinct built into our makeup. We all want to go home.”

  A voice cut in over the speakers throughout the prisoner cabin of their transport vessel. “Entering planetary atmosphere in one minute. Please ensure your safety harnesses are buckled.”

  Sulafat stood instead of buckling. He turned and faced the other thirty-nine Ambition prisoners seated in the uncomfortable benches behind him. “We’ve seen what the Hunn are capable of during our captivity on Pega. They can read our minds… they can get inside our heads and pull out our deepest secrets. I say let them. Give those grey bastards what they want. They’re powerful, but they can’t control our will. Show them they have something to fear.”

  “We’ve done that already, Captain,” Wez Canis shouted to be heard over the roar of atmospheric engines cutting in. “It’s the main reason we were packed up and sent here.” The big squadron boss elbowed the prisoner buckled in next to him and grinned. “We’re just too damned unruly to keep in one place for too long.”

  “And we’re too important to both Pegan and Hunn civilizations to do away with completely,” Sulafat shouted back. He clutched at the spinal support column behind his bench as the ship began to rumble beneath his feet. “We’re their guarantee against any future retribution from Earth.”

  “No one from Earth is coming for us,” another voice yelled. “We lost the war, and Ambition is long gone. We’ll all have been dead for more than a century by the time they come looking for us, if they even do.”

  Sulafat stared at Tor Emin and touched the center of his chest where the Pegan chest brace hugged his ribs. Its mechanical hooks were deep inside of him, repairing his damaged heart, keeping him alive. It still ached from time to time where the ex-general had shot him with a side cannon. If they were onboard Ambition, Emin would’ve spent the last ten months, and longer, in the brig. But they weren’t on Ambition anymore. Both men were prisoners now, serving out life sentences. Both men wanted their captivity to come to an end. Sulafat Ly and Tor Emin had been forced into an uneasy alliance for the greater good of their fellow crew members. One day that alliance would be over. Until then, the two would set their mutual grievances aside.

  “Then we’ll have to speed the process up,” Sulafat finally replied. He looked at the men and women strapped into their benches. “The Pegans and Hunns have mastered faster than light travel. We can get home if we use their technology. I’m not going to spend another ten months settling with our situation. I’m not going to waste another week or single day adjusting. Once we land on this planet I’m going to find a way to get us right off again. Are you with me?”

  Heads nodded and voices mumbled approval.

  “Goddamn it, people, you can do better than that!” The Captain shouted. “Are you with me?”

  The forty prisoners roared, Tor Emin included.

  Hadar pulled him down into the bench seat. “You’d better get strapped in, Captain. The ride’s about to get rocky.” Sulafat buckled up. “Good speech, by the way. Short and to the point.”

  “Speeches are about the only thing left I have to offer at my age.”

  “Isn’t it your seventieth birthday tomorrow?”

  Sulafat watched as purple and grey clouds began to streak past their window. The prison ship began to shake. “Don’t remind me.”

  Chapter 4

  2399 - 642 years before present day

  Triton Base – a colony of eleven-hundred people living on Neptune’s largest moon

  “Retrieval in one minute.”

  Anton Yurmechki rested his hand on the woman’s shoulder and gave her a gentle shake. “Relax, Mary. It’s all automated from here on in. Nothing you can do or say now will make any difference.”

  Mary Lasseter leaned back into the chair, exhaled a deep breath she wasn’t aware she was holding, and kept an eye on the digital countdown at the corner of the screen. The men and women working with her at the control tower had abandoned their own monitors, and were clustered around Base Commander Yurmechki and his second in command. “Fifty seconds. Deceleration has begun.”

  They had a bird’s eye view of Neptune’s swirling blue atmosphere from the recovery vessel’s main camera. Triton Base was a comfortable three-hundred thousand kilometers from the outer-most planet’s surface, but the ship closing in now was less than a tenth the distance away. The object caught in the giant planet’s gravity was even closer.

  “We can’t lose it,” Yurmechki said quietly. “We won’t lose it.”

  “Forty seconds.” A button on Mary’s control panel flashed green. She pressed down on it. “Tractor beam fully charged.”

  A twinkle of white appeared against the bands of shifting blue. The object. Someone cheered behind the Commander. “There it is!”

  It had appeared on Triton Base sensors forty-eight hours earlier from the depths of space, traveling at half the speed of light. Nothing natural moved that fast through the cosmos—not without intelligent assistance
. Its power signature had been picked up shortly after; regular radioactive bursts at seven-minute intervals. The object was being propelled forward with fold drive capability. This wasn’t a rogue asteroid wandering in from the Kuiper Belt. It wasn’t an unidentified probe sent from some distant alien civilization.

  Only one manned ship had ever ventured out beyond the Sol system. A small piece of the warship Ambition was returning home after seventy years. Commander Yurmechki and his people would do everything possible to bring it all the way.

  “Twenty seconds,” Mary announced. “Its fold drive has cut off.”

  “Magnify,” the Commander ordered.

  The white twinkle became a spherical object recognizable to them all. “Definitely an old-style video drone,” Yurmechki said as it came into focus. They could see its pitted silver surface reflecting blue from the clouds of Neptune’s quickly advancing atmosphere. “My God. Why did they send it back? What could’ve made them break the silence?”

  The silence had been one of Ambition’s prime orders—no contact with Earth until the primary objective of destroying the threat from Pegasi 51 had been achieved.

  No one gathered in the observatory had any answers for Yurmechki’s questions. They remained quiet until Mary resumed the final countdown. “Tractor beam deployment in five… four… three… two… one…”

  The slight tumbling rotation of the drone ceased. A second green light appeared on Mary’s board. “We’ve got it.” A louder round of cheers erupted around her. “Beam reversal initialized.”

  Yurmechki clapped his associate on the back. “Bring that ship home, Lasseter. Let’s see what our little drone has to say for itself.”

  Chapter 5

  Commander Edmund stared at the frozen image of white static on his computer screen and repressed the urge to shudder. The ancient video had been terrifying mankind for centuries, and though he’d watched it hundreds of times in the past, the forty-seven second transmission still managed to frighten him on some primal level.