The Renegat Read online

  Crisp blue pants, even crisper white shirt, a perfectly pressed dark blue dress jacket with the whitish silver stripes denoting her rank on the sleeves. She didn’t wear her medals or any of her commendations. She wasn’t in full dress, after all. Just everyday dress, the kind that usually occurred on a diplomatic mission.

  And perhaps that’s what this was. She just hadn’t been willing to admit it to herself.

  She was going to need to use a lot of diplomacy to win Admiral Hallock over to her side.

  An aide met her outside the docking bay. The aide didn’t introduce himself, probably figuring that Gāo knew who he was. She recognized him. He had a narrow face and a slight frame, and he was a favorite of Hallock’s. She generally used him to enforce protocol at various meetings.

  He led Gāo to a very different kind of ready room than she had seen from Ivan Preemas or even from most captains of DV-Class ships. Admiral Hallock’s ready room was filled with personal items. The walls contained rotating two-D images of the places Hallock had been. A blanket made by the Ededfds out of a plant native to their small corner of Idetan glistened like running water on top of a chair made of bright blue weeds from some other place that Hallock had visited.

  Everything in the room—everything, from the desk to the mug to the dangerous light fixture hanging from the ceiling—came from some corner of Admiral Hallock’s life. She collected artifacts and kept them in all of her personal rooms around the ship.

  It made her parts of this ship feel almost like parts of an alien vessel. Most Fleet ships had a sameness to them, but everything about Hallock’s ship seemed specially created just for Hallock.

  She wasn’t in the room. Gāo waited, hands clasped behind her back, wishing she wasn’t nervous. She looked at the images, most of them of different natural environments—skies of varying shades, some with clouds threatening to storm, some with two or three suns; waterfalls and ice flows, lakes and oceans, fields of grain and flat deserted land that looked like it had never seen water.

  The door eased open behind her, and Gāo started like a guilty child. So much for being the face of calm.

  She turned.

  Admiral Hallock wasn’t wearing her uniform, of course. She was wearing slacks embroidered with green and gold flowers, a matching gold shirt, and big green bangles on her wrists.

  “I hadn’t realized this would be a formal meeting, Bella,” Hallock said. Then she waved the unbangled hand. “Sit. Sit.”

  She indicated the chair made of weeds, but Gāo couldn’t bring herself to sit in it. She eased herself into the only regulation chair in the room, finding comfort in its sturdy and familiar black shape.

  Hallock smiled ever so slightly, as if she had expected nothing less of Gāo. Then Hallock sat on the weed chair. It creaked under her weight.

  “You have doubts about the mission,” Hallock said without preamble.

  “I was hoping I could get you to call it off,” Gāo said.

  “Based on what?” Hallock asked.

  Based on a thousand things, from the hopelessness of the mission to the pointlessness of it. The way that it was the opposite of a normal Fleet mission. The fact that no one who was helping her plan the mission thought it was a good idea.

  “I can’t find the kind of crew we need,” Gāo said. “The young officers are not ready for this kind of mission, and I can’t, in good conscience, send someone at the beginning of a career into something that will probably destroy them.”

  Hallock raised her eyebrows. “You weren’t young and ambitious once, Bella?”

  “I was, Admiral, and if ordered, I would have served. But I wouldn’t have volunteered.” That word echoed the phrase that Preemas had spoken to her. Victims, instead of volunteers. That phrase had haunted her ever since.

  “Vice Admiral d’Anano gave you a list,” Hallock said. “I saw it. One thousand names. None of them are suitable?”

  Gāo let out a small breath. “None of the captains are. I interviewed all of them. They’re disasters, each and every one of them.”

  “Are they?” Hallock asked.

  “Yes,” Gāo said. “They were passed over for promotions or demoted for a reason. Most of them are burned out and incompetent.”

  “Most,” Hallock said.

  “Yes.” Gāo felt irritated. Why couldn’t Hallock just trust her?

  Because Hallock wanted this mission to go, no matter what.

  “If you think this mission should happen, sir,” Gāo said. “Then let’s send an already staffed battle-tested DV-Class ship. Let’s send good people back there, who can handle whatever they find.”

  Hallock folded her hands on her lap. “I wanted to send six DV-Class vessels on this mission. I was denied. Then I asked for two. I was denied. So I asked for an established crew with a DV-Class vessel. Again, I was denied.”

  She said this all with a flat voice, but it couldn’t quite hide the thread of anger running through it.

  She said, “I barely got approval for one SC-Class vessel with a crew of misfits and failures, and then only because the Fleet never knows what to do with such people, particularly if they refuse to retire to some sector base somewhere.”

  Gāo’s breath caught. She almost felt as if time had frozen around her.

  She had often been in discussions with others in the Fleet about that very issue—the people who didn’t do as commanded, who didn’t live up to expectations, and who didn’t follow the rules for those who didn’t fit. Usually, people who didn’t fit left the Fleet itself, moving to starbases or sector bases, getting left behind if they were alive when a sector base closed.

  It became clear to them that they didn’t belong in the Fleet, and they respected that clarity, maybe even liked it.

  And then there were others, ones who made big mistakes or who seemed to rebel for no reason or who screwed up on levels that Gāo simply couldn’t understand, people who refused to learn or budge or change in anyway.

  “You don’t approve.” Hallock sounded almost amused. “They’re the problem, not us, Vice Admiral Gāo.”

  Ah, so they had gotten formal again. No longer a discussion between chums.

  “If they left the Fleet as we encourage them to do,” Hallock said, “we wouldn’t have to find a place for them. They would take care of themselves.”

  “I met a few people who still believed they had a future with the Fleet,” Gāo said, thinking of Preemas.

  “Oh, they do,” Hallock said. “Just not the future they thought they had. Not everyone can get promoted. Not every career moves forward.”

  “I know career people who are happy to stay in the same job,” Gāo said.

  “And none of them are on that list,” Hallock said.

  She was right, too. None of the people Gāo had interviewed had been happy where they were.

  Gāo said, “Admiral, I know you like the idea of this mission…”

  Hallock laughed. “You may stop being polite with me, Bella. You don’t like this mission, and I’m not going to cancel it. I’m not going to put anyone else in charge, either. You know Scrapheaps better than anyone else.”

  “But if you send a ship, they’ll also be experimenting with foldspace travel,” Gāo said. “Can’t you put someone else on this, like Vice Admiral Rwizi?”

  Hallock gave Gāo a chiding look. “Are you worried that the failure of this mission will go on your resume?”

  “Of course not,” Gāo said. She hadn’t even thought of that. She was shocked at the very suggestion.

  “Then get this mission underway,” Hallock said.

  Gāo had to try one last time. “Admiral, we could send them to that Scrapheap, and never hear from them again. I know you want definitive results, but I don’t think you will get them.”

  “Maybe not from this mission,” Hallock said.

  “Then why are we sending them?” Gāo asked.

  Hallock’s lips moved ever so slightly. Gāo couldn’t tell if that was supposed to become a smile or a frown.


  “You know why, Bella,” Hallock said.

  “I know what happens if the mission actively fails,” Gāo said. “But what happens if we send this ship and only get silence in return?”

  “Then we’ll try again,” Hallock said.

  A chill ran through Gāo. This mission wasn’t worth one ship, let alone two.

  Admiral Hallock smiled at Gāo. “I’m shocking you.”

  Gāo didn’t know how to answer that. The truth didn’t seem like an option, especially since the first thought to cross her mind was to wonder at Hallock’s grasp on reality.

  And then Gāo realized something worse: Hallock had a firm grasp of reality. She just didn’t care about the lives she was sending to that Scrapheap. Maybe she had never really cared about the lives under her command.

  “Pick the crew, Vice Admiral Gāo,” Hallock said. “And keep in mind that it will be better to have volunteers instead of victims.”

  Gāo raised her head in surprise.

  Hallock’s smile grew. “You reported on every candidate you met, Bella. Did you think those reports would go unnoticed?”

  The reports were really logs, mostly for herself, so that she could remember everyone she had talked to. She had spent a bit of extra time on Preemas, but only because he had been so unusual, and she hadn’t been certain of her response to him.

  “I think if I only pick volunteers,” Gāo said slowly, “I won’t get the best crew.”

  “But at least you’ll have an enthusiastic one,” Hallock said. And then her smile faded. “Because it’s not pleasant to deal with someone who doesn’t believe in the mission.”

  The sideways criticism bit hard. And reminded Gāo who she was dealing with. The woman who confided in her and pretended to be her friend was not Admiral Hallock’s usual behavior. Usually, Hallock made stinging comments like that, never balancing the sting with praise.

  “Get the ship underway, Bella,” Hallock said. “You’ve wasted too much time on this already.”

  Gāo stood, her teeth clamped tight. If this mission did succeed, she would waste even more time. And that didn’t even count what might happen if the ship disappeared into foldspace or met with some other disaster.

  “May I make a request, Admiral?” Gāo asked.

  Hallock sighed. “What?”

  “Would you please note my hesitation in your file on this mission?”

  “Because you believe in I told you so’s?” Hallock asked snidely.

  Gāo shook her head. “I just want a record of this, so that when someone investigates—”

  “If someone investigates,” Hallock said.

  “—they’ll know the idea was yours, and not mine.”

  “Seems to me that you’re focused on your career at the expense of everything else, Bella,” Hallock said.

  Gāo felt a surge of anger, and bit it back.

  “Actually, Admiral,” she said, “if I was focused on my career, we would never have had this meeting. I would have followed your dictates to the letter the moment you made them.”

  Admiral Hallock studied her for a moment, then inclined her head forward.

  “You’re a mystery, Bella,” she said after a moment. “And I don’t have time to unravel you.”

  She waved a hand, dismissing Gāo. Gāo left, feeling shaken and exhausted. And even more frustrated than she had been before she had gone in.

  She was going to have to pick an inferior captain to lead the wrong kind of ship on a dangerous mission that would not succeed. She could find no way around this.

  Even if she resigned, the mission would go forward.

  All she could do was try to find the best combination of crew members that she possibly could.

  And then she would have to wish for the best.

  Part Three

  The Rescue

  Now

  The Aizsargs

  The ship appeared out of foldspace, leaking atmosphere on both sides. Captain Kim Dauber caught the white edges of the ship before her bridge crew even noticed. She had been staring at the wall screen, trying to see the planet Vostrim as a whole, wondering if she needed to run a sector-wide diagnostic to make sure no part of the just-closed sector base was noticeable even to ships not in orbit.

  Then this ship appeared, close and in trouble.

  The wall screen had been set on two dimensions, and was scanning for anomalies in nearby space, which was why she even saw the white edges around the ship. Sometimes, through the right screen setup, that transition between foldspace and regular space made a ship of any color look like it had been outlined in white.

  The white faded around the edges, but the gray of the leak did not.

  “We’ve got a ship in trouble,” she said, without turning around.

  With those words, her bridge staff would refocus and take action.

  “Got it,” said Nazira Almadi, Dauber’s first officer. Almadi was working on a secondary console, her long black hair wrapped in a bun on the top of her head, her gaze focused downward, probably on readings on the console.

  Usually Dauber and Almadi weren’t on the bridge of the Aizsargs at the same time, because Dauber trusted her first officer to handle the bridge as well as Dauber herself did.

  But, fortunately for that damaged ship, Dauber had her best officers manning their posts today.

  She was in charge of closing down this section of space for the Fleet, making sure that the people who remained on Vostrim, where Sector Base Z had been located, wanted to leave the Fleet and continue their lives in Z-City after the base closed.

  She also needed to make sure that every Fleet ship had left the area, that no random ships had been assigned elsewhere and were returning, incorrectly, to the closed sector base.

  “The ship’s one of ours,” said Brett Ullman. He stood stiffly near his console, his features half-hidden by screens opaqued and floating around him. He usually worked navigation, but he was handling data flow right at the moment.

  “You sound surprised,” Dauber said without turning around. She wasn’t as surprised. The ship had come out of foldspace, after all.

  But the ship did look odd.

  “Configuration’s old,” he said. “We have nothing in active use that looks like that ship.”

  Dauber nodded, taking in the information, but not willing to examine it until later.

  “Whatever that ship is,” she said, “it doesn’t matter. It’s leaking atmosphere, and it needs help.”

  “I’m reading one hundred ninety-nine life signs on that ship,” Ullman said.

  “Let’s get them off the vessel,” Dauber said. “We’ll tow the ship, but I don’t want it near us.”

  She had learned that lesson years ago. Ships with foldspace capability could be touchy when they were in distress. Particularly after they had emerged from foldspace. Anacapa drives were delicate things that could malfunction. And sometimes ships brought back all kinds of other problems from that great beyond.

  “The great beyond” was how she thought of foldspace, even though the description was incorrect. Foldspace wasn’t beyond anything. It was something else entirely.

  The science around foldspace was constantly changing. Some believed it was a different region of the universe, a region that the Fleet had somehow tapped with its anacapa capabilities. That seemed as unlikely to her as a ship creating foldspace.

  All she knew was that ships could use the anacapa to jump to foldspace, and then return to the same spot in regular space hours later. She had used that technique in battle a dozen times.

  She didn’t think about foldspace or how it worked; she just used it.

  “I’ve been trying to contact them,” said Josephine Ornitz. Ornitz was short and round. She was reaching upwards on a new console, one she hadn’t even bothered to reconfigure for her height. She headed Dauber’s communications department, and hadn’t worked on the bridge in months.

  But Dauber had needed Ornitz for the sector base closure, so she was currently on th
e bridge. Which was lucky. Because, if Ornitz couldn’t contact the ship, then no one could.

  “Anything from them at all?” Dauber asked. “Distress signal? Anything?”

  “No,” Ornitz said.

  “It looks like a number of major systems are down, sir,” said Massai Ribisi, the Aizsargs’s chief engineer. He wore a nonregulation hat over his bald head, and was still in black exercise clothes. She had taken him from his daily personal routine to help her find any evidence of the closed base. “I’m not sure they can contact us.”

  Dauber frowned at the ship, no longer outlined in white. Any indication of foldspace had disappeared altogether, leaving the familiar pattern of stars—some of them faded and some of them glowing brightly against the darkness of space.

  “Get a rescue vehicle, and tell them to be prepared for anything,” she said. “Send fighters to escort it.”

  “You expect that ship to attack us?” Ullman asked.

  “I expect nothing,” Dauber said. “I’m preparing for everything.”

  Then she turned, faced the best bridge crew she had ever worked with. They were each handling a different aspect of this emergency, heads bent, fingers moving. Two security team members, who weren’t part of the bridge crew, stood near the door. They were a necessary but unusual addition because the Aizsargs had been dealing with the final closure of a sector base (and final closures sometimes made the locals crazy). The security team were the only ones looking directly at Dauber.

  Then she realized they weren’t look at her at all. They too were looking at the large two-D screen imagery, watching that ship leak atmosphere as it wobbled forward.

  “Prepare Deck Seven for the survivors on that ship,” she said to her Chief of Security, Vilma Lauritz. “I want that deck sealed off from the rest of the Aizsargs.”

  “Right away, Captain.” Lauritz had been working one of the stations near the door. She didn’t head below decks, the way that Dauber would have. Instead, Lauritz’s hands started moving rapidly as she isolated the deck.