Adrian Saunders was holding eleven armed Corti soldiers hostage on their own ship. They didn’t seem happy about it, but when the alternative had been slaughtering them with impunity they were at least understanding, and were informed enough about human capabilities to be very cooperative.
He had decided that Plan B wasn’t working for him.
It had sounded straightforward when Treoffa had explained it. The Zhadersil would be raided by Corti and eventually more Hunters if he was believed to still be on board. That was why Plan A had been to have the Corti transportation ship eject the stasis pod into space for the Hunters, thus writing him off as an unfortunate loss, while in actual fact the Hunter ships would have been piloted by his comrades who would then pick him up and return him to the Zhadersil.
Plan B was for when that plan failed, and he had to pilot the entire Corti vessel back after exterminating its crew. In this case the official Corti records would indicate that the human they were after had taken control of the vessel and was taking it who-knew-where. Not ideal, but so long as Treoffa could shut down the locator beacon the Directorate wouldn’t have any reason to go looking for it in the vicinity of the Zhadersil.
But unlike the Hunters, the Corti weren’t being actively aggressive, and mostly seemed terrified when he leapt out of hiding to kill them.
It was beginning to bother him, and that’s where Plan C had come from.
“So,” he said to them, waving his sword back and forward between them and causing them to shrink back in fear. “This is real fucking cliche, but I need you to take me to your leader.”
+++++
“That is most unusual,” Ship Second Tlkitz mused, running through another scan. “The two teams I sent down to storage room thirty-seven are leaving as a group, but the thirteen who were in that room are still there.”
“Maybe there is something going on down at the storage room?” Ship Master Crfti suggested. “Get in contact with them, see what they have to say for themselves.”
“As you say, Ship Master,” Tlkitz said obediently, and turned to the communication console to his right. “Investigative teams, report.”
There was a delay. Longer than he would have expected. He activated the communicator again. “Investigative teams-“
“We’re fine,” came the response at last. “Everything’s fine here. We’re all just coming up to the command deck.”
“To the command deck?” Tlkitz queried. “If all is well, return to your stations.”
“Negative, Ship Second,” the investigative team responded again, almost plaintively. “We will be coming to the command deck. We have something to deliver.”
Tlkitz hesitated. That was puzzling, there was nothing he was aware of on the ship that would ever need to be delivered to the command deck, save for the occasional protein tablet for the hard working Ship Master and his trusted Second.
“Ship Master,” he said uncertainly, “the investigative teams are on their way here. They have something to deliver.”
“What have they got?” Ship Master Crfti asked. “I’m not hungry enough for a protein tablet.”
“I’ll check,” Tlkitz replied, and turned back to the communicator console. “Investigative team, what are you delivering?”
At that moment the door to the command deck literally burst apart to reveal a human with a fusion sword.
The human bared its teeth at them. “A surprise, motherfucker!”
Adrian had done his best James Doakes impression and there had been nobody else around to appreciate it. That had been disappointing, but he was getting used to nobody knowing what the hell he was talking about and he didn’t let it slow him down.
He pointed the fusion sword at the Corti sitting in the most commanding chair.
“You’re the dickhead in charge here?” he demanded.
The Corti leader shrank back in plain horror at the current situation. “All hands, defend me!” he cried out desperately. “Fire on the human!”
There was hesitation from all corners, all members of the command deck crew glanced at their kinetic sidearms with the kind of forlorn looks that told him they knew exactly how useless they’d be.
“Respectfully, Ship Master,” said one of the Command crew, “but with what?”
“Look, mate,” Adrian said, addressing the Ship Master, “I’m about to offer you a way to stay alive, but if you don’t want it then someone else can always get promoted.”
He let the words sink in, and the Corti leader regained his composure. “The Directorate will not allow this to pass lightly,” he warned Adrian, “but I will listen to your demands.”
+++++
The situation aboard the Zhadersil had been tense. Plan A had not worked – in fact it had failed spectacularly when they had discovered that the Corti ship had been a heavy scout with a Sealed FTL drive – and now they were waiting to see if Adrian would manage to return.
“This is not an ideal situation,” Treoffa had said, “but we have little choice to hope everything goes as-“
“It’s here!” Trycrur excitedly interrupted. “The Corti ship just appeared in a lower orbit!”
“We’ll have to go out and board it,” Chir said. “Treoffa still needs to disable the beacon, and we need to guide it onto the flight deck.”
“Adrian only managed fifty-six percent of his simulated landings with any success,” Trycrur reminded them. “We don’t want him ramming a heavy scout through the Zhadersil by accident.”
“We need to make sure it’s actually him, first,” Treoffa told them. “I’ll contact the ship, just in case the plan has failed spectacularly.”
+++++
Two hours later, Adrian was back on the flight deck of the Zhadersil, its massive space now substantially filled by ten Hunter ships, the Corti Salvage runner, and most substantially by the Heavy Scout, the Endless Sequence.
“You know, Chir,” he said to the Gaoian as they strode across the deck, “I know the power is back on, and all this new air is sealed in, but I don’t think I’ll ever be comfortable walking around here again.”
“I know what you mean,” Chir replied, glancing nervously at the end of the flight deck where metal turned into the black void of space. “But you know, I find it a little hard to believe you didn’t end up killing all of the Corti on the scoutship.”
“I’m a soldier, mate,” Adrian replied, “not a murderer. They didn’t put up any resistance, and they were all too happy to get into their escape pods when told to.”
“You don’t think that was a mistake?” Chir asked. “What if they tell the Directorate?”
“They will tell the Directorate,” Adrian said. “They’ll tell them what I said I was going to do.”
Chir responded with his approximation of a confused frown. “Which was?”
“I had them enter the coordinates for the Hunter homeworld,” Adrian told him. “I told them I was going to war.”
“And they believed you?!” Chir asked, clearly aghast at the idea of anyone going to the Hunter homeworld.
“Mate,” said Adrian with a broad smile, “I can be very persuasive when I need to be.”
“We’re amassing quite the fleet,” Zripob observed as Adrian and Chir reached the airlock. “Pity we don’t have enough people to fly all of these.”
“I thought you wanted to go home,” Adrian asked. “Or at least get back into that war you were fighting in.”
“The Dominion-Celzi war,” Zripob replied. “Yes, I was just considering that a mercenary company with a fleet of this size would be quite the substantial force. The Dominion, or alternatively the Celzi, would shit their collective pants if they came against this kind of force.”
Zripob gave an undulating croak of laughter. Stealing a ship from the Corti Directorate had brightened his day, and the more vessels he saw housed in the enormous flight deck the more he found himself wondering what the future could hold if he managed to take control of such an assembly of vessels.
Could it be possible for him, a low born pond-raker, to ascend to the lofty heights of Fleetlord? It didn’t seem so far-fetched right now.
“What’s that war even about?” Adrian asked. “From what I’ve heard it has been quite drawn out. Who are the good guys?”
“It’s a political thing,” Chir inserted, “there are no good guys. That war is a significant reason for my people being reluctant to join the Dominion at this time, in spite of other benefits. It has proven itself to be a meat-grinder.”
“I don’t really pay attention to such things myself,” Zripob admitted. “As long as there’s someone willing to pay for mercenary work I’m happy.”
“And when the war inevitably ends?” Chir asked. “What will you do then?”
Zripob croaked his laugh again. “Then there’s easy guard duty for freighters or work as bodyguards. Just because there’s peace doesn’t mean there’s no danger.”
“Especially not with that message the Hunters put out, I imagine,” Adrian mused.
The laughter died in Zripob’s throat, the amusement left his eyes. “That is true,” he said. “So maybe I’ll have to find work far away from any humans. No offence intended.”
“My main worry,” Adrian said, “is that there are more humans out there, and that maybe they’re not capable of fucking up a small army.”
“More to the point,” Chir said, “how will those around them react to the news? We know you’ve outclassed a thousand Hunters – taken ten of their ships in the process – but that’s not common knowledge.”
Zripob gestured his agreement with a bobbing motion. “Their friends will become their enemies,” he said. “It will come down to a matter of pure survival.”
“It’s a matter of survival for us as well,” Chir reminded him. “Except the Hunters will come for us either way, so we actually want our human here.”
“I think that maybe,” Adrian said, rubbing his chin, “I really will need to declare war on them.”
They stared at him in combined horror. Zripob had never heard of anyone who was willing to throw their military at the Hunter brood – he’d have called anyone who suggested such a plan insane – but this man had already given the Hunters a bloody nose without much preparation and had even walked through a dissipating trace atmosphere and survived.
“I won’t say they don’t have it coming,” Zripob said, “but how do you expect to win such a war?”
“I don’t know if I can,” Adrian admitted with a frown, “but it seems to me that we’ve got a few aces up our sleeve. First thing’s first, though: we’re going to need some much better weapons.”
+++++
With all that had been going on, it had taken Treoffa days to trawl through the enormous number of logs, reports, and manifests in the Zhadersil’s memory banks. She was not accessing it through the ship’s own operating system, and as a result the file tables were not being read. Each file she had opened had been a complete mystery until she had started reading.
But she was finally done, or at least she was done reading everything that seemed important. The complete picture was much as Bekmer had posited, and matched what she had come to suspect herself.
Earth had produced a sentient race once before, and they had built the Zhadersil. From the records of those final days, almost all V’Straki had been exterminated by a final genocidal campaign by their enemies, and had been destroyed with such completeness that it was little wonder that almost nothing remained.
And now the final record; the last words of Shiplord Xagh. Any creature of their homeworld may be recognised by the ship as a commander.
The human could command the ship.
Treoffa leaned forward with both hands on her desk, her breathing and movement both under her strictest control, her body and temper both feeling taut enough to snap. She knew that it must be possible -somehow – to use this to take control of the ship for herself, but she couldn’t see how.
For the life of her, she simply couldn’t see how.