“Antonov told me you were on the fast track to becoming a Fleet’s Captain before Broken Sky,” she said, her tone neutral, the same careful expression one may have while talking about a person’s recently deceased family.
“Yes, sir,” said Clarke, matching her tone. “As it turns out, I’m not fit for command.”
That earned him a quizzical look.
“You really believe that,” she said, examining his face. “Your performance the last couple days suggests otherwise. If the Defense Fleet would not have you, you could’ve gotten a job as a freighter’s captain for almost any corporation in the Edge, made a fortune. Instead, you chose to fade into obscurity and become a cargo hauler.”
“Sir, as a hauler, if something goes wrong with the ship, I’m not responsible for the death of hundreds of people.”
Navathe’s expression darkened. “Broken Sky? Hells, Clarke. What happened to your ship wasn’t your fault, you must know that.”
Clarke shrugged without energy. Talking about the battle didn’t make him angry, like it had done at first. A decade of memories helped cool off some memories. Never the regret though.
“Doesn’t matter who’s guilty,” he said, “Applegate’s crew is still dead. Nothing is going to change that.”
“When the pirates hailed us, Pascari suggested we should attack them head on. In hindsight, I can see that idea for what it was, a suicide mission. Without you keeping calm during a crisis, my crew would be dead,” Navathe said, her gaze focused so intently on Clarke it burned. “Don’t you forget it, Clarke. If it’s responsibility you’re hiding away from, remember there’s still responsibility in choosing not to lead. After all, you’re letting innocent people be led by the second best choice, and sometimes that isn’t enough.”
A long time ago, in very different circumstances, Captain Yin had told him something similar. He had been a young officer, still fresh from the academy and already promoted. He could feel the animosity from the other officers his age, the huge responsibility weighing on his shoulders. He had been of a mind to reject the promotion before Yin found him and changed his mind.
The memory made him smile. Navathe interpreted it as a victory.
“You know,” she told him, “my husband served in Asteria Station during Broken Sky. He lived another five years before his kidneys failed him, you know, thanks to you. Those were five years of happiness we shared precisely because you commanded Applegate and not some Tal-Kader crony.”
Clarke’s eyebrows rose a notch, and he found that words failed him. Navathe wasn’t expecting a reply, though, since she returned to the holo.
The sleep cycle had only a couple hours left when Navigation connected to the bridge with an emergency message.
“Captain,” the pilot’s voice said, “you really want to hear this.”
The man patched the message without waiting for Navathe’s confirmation, a break of protocol that instantly put Clarke on high alert. That pilot was scared shitless.
A holo appeared, showing a man dressed in the impeccable formal garb of a Defense Fleet admiral, a river of ribbons stuck to his chest. He had a long, elegant forehead, black eyes just a tad too far apart from each other, white and gray hair, and a hooked nose that gave him the air of a bird of prey. His pursed, small lips finished the image.
“To New Angeles and all its in-system space forces, I am Admiral Ernest U. Wentraub of the SA Defense Fleet Sentinel. This is an emergency broadcast for all available ships to deploy at once in interception path against Free Trader Beowulf, designation FT89900.0b. Beowulf is guilty of harboring EIF terrorists inside their ship and plotting an attack against the people of the Edge. They’re to be detained at all costs. I repeat. To New Angeles…”
What? Clarke was too stunned to feel anything but confusion. Antonov said we had ten cycles on the Sentinel.
The pilot cut the feed. “The message loops after that,” he said. Then, he cursed loudly and said, “There’s also a message directed for us, Captain.”
“Patch it through,” said Navathe, her voice a dry rasp.
A new man appeared on screen, this one younger, about Clarke’s age, dressed in captain’s garb.
“Beowulf, this is Captain Riley Erickson of the SA-DD Vortex, Defense Fleet Sentinel. We’re on your tail. Surrender now or we’ll use lethal force against your ship.”
The message ended there. Captain Erickson was a man of few words.
Who are these people? Clarke thought. There had been a time where he had known, if not by name, then by sight, all the admirals and battleship captains of the SA. There was something about Admiral Wentraub that made him uneasy, like looking at the picture of a corpse. The man didn’t belong at the command of a navy fleet.
At the back of his mind, panic threatened to settle in, a burning tsunami that would wash away all reason and logic. With the Defense Fleet here, it was likely the EIF’s quest had ended before it started. He could feel their presence looming over him, a dangerous shadow waiting to pounce.
“There’s a visual?” asked Navathe.
“Visuals won’t pick them up at that range,” said the pilot, “but the computer confirms a ship registered at about same time their message arrived. It’s moving fast.”
A destroyer, Clarke realized. It must’ve run ahead of the Sentinel fleet to catch up with them. Back at Jagal, someone must’ve betrayed the EIF.
Clarke did some quick math in his head. The protons carrying the information to the computers had arrived just now, but the Alcubierre point was less than a quarter of a light-day away from New Angeles. All vessels in a military fleet could pull .1c without trouble, double the normal speed of a merchant ship. If Vortex had been on the move for the last six hours…
“Shit,” breathed Navathe. “We’re fucked.”
“Don’t worry about them,” said Clarke, “they’re too far away from us.”
“We’ll be in targeting range of their computers in an hour,” Navathe said. Her hands hovered over her controls, vying to make a decision. “We have to surrender.”
“They’ll kill us anyway,” said Clarke. “We need to save the crew, first. Talk to Antonov, alert the crew, have them man their posts and don pressure suits. Let me try to figure this out.”
“Not even you can make us escape from a battleship…”
“I don’t intend to,” said Clarke, getting up. He floated to the bridge’s lockers, where the pressure suits were kept. If they came under fire, and he had little doubt they would, they would need to be able to survive if the ship suddenly lost atmosphere. He tossed one suit to Navathe and donned one himself, expertly maneuvering his body in zero g while racking his brain for possible routes and escape plans.
As he did so, Navathe woke up Antonov and showed him the messages, while at the same time donning her own suit.
“Antonov’s on his way here,” Navathe said, her voice muffled after she put the suit’s helmet on and had to switch to a comm channel. “You found us our magic solution?”
Clarke had never thought much about matters of religion. But, as he floated toward Captain Navathe, he imagined that, if an afterlife existed beyond the endless void, Isaac Reiner would be watching them from there, wondering if the EIF was about to get his daughter killed.
“No magic, sir,” he told the captain. “Gravity assist. We accelerate all we can, slingshot around New Angeles and use the planet’s gravity to hide us from Vortex’s targeting computers. We head for the nearest Alcubierre point and hope to lose them from there.”
“What about the New Angeles’ garrison? They’ll shoot us down.”