Osprey chronicles comple.., p.133
Osprey Chronicles Complete Series Boxed Set, page 133
Kelba lifted a hand, then hesitated, her head turning to the side. Something had caught her attention. “One moment, please.”
Her hologram froze, paused with her mouth half-open. Glancing to the side, Jaeger saw that Grayson’s hologram had frozen as well, and the holograms of Briggs and Hart had disappeared entirely. The staff must’ve been conferencing in private.
“Ten bucks says they don’t go for it.” Toner folded his arms behind his head, stretching. “Because they’re right. It’s a stupid-ass plan.”
“It was our plan.” Jaeger gave him a reproachful look.
“Stupid. Ass. Plan.”
“You have used this word before,” Art said, speaking for the first time as he turned to Toner. “Please, Puncher, explain. What is a buck?”
Toner froze in his stretch. Then he gave a slow, lazy grin. “It’s a—”
“We will do it.” Kelba’s hologram twitched back into motion, skipping several frames. The woman folded her hands primly behind her back, gazing coolly around the circle. Grayson’s hologram remained frozen.
“We put ourselves in your hands,” Kelba said. “For the sake of all our futures, we will commit to this alliance through the coming invasion.”
“What?” The word escaped Toner like a squawk before he composed himself.
Jaeger inclined her head to the fleet captain. “I’m glad to hear it.”
“There are conditions,” Kelba said coldly.
“Speak them,” Kwin allowed.
“We require increased food and supply shipments. My people are on starvation rations, and you have an entire planet at your disposal. If you truly mean us well, as long as you bar the door to our landing on the planet, you will at least see that your allies are well-fed.”
Something flickered in the corner of her vision, and Jaeger glanced over to see Grayson rubbing his ear, having returned to the conference without fanfare.
Tiki lowered her antenna in the faintest sign of agreement. Kwin repeated the gesture.
“Agreed,” Jaeger told Kelba. “What else?”
“Our government is new and still recovering from a catastrophe,” Kelba said. “There is much unrest in our ranks, and our civilians will not be pleased to see our military once again taking command of our destiny, even if it does so in their best interest. Sarah Jaeger. Though many of us have no personal memory of you, holo-documents and written stories of your mutiny still abound through the Tribe. You have become a folk hero to the civilians. Nearly a legend.”
“I have no interest in popular approval,” Jaeger said stiffly.
“Yet here we are,” Grayson said. “With your name graffitied fresh across the bulkheads every morning. Our mission requires unity, Captain, and we’re drowning in confusion and chaos. Civilian and military communities must be of one accord in this matter. You must address the fleet. You must be that voice for unity.”
Jaeger closed her eyes. Endorsement. These people wanted her to endorse their new government, giving it legitimacy in the eyes of their mistrustful population.
“I will not allow you to use me as a political mouthpiece, Minister.” She barely managed to keep her tone even. “I don’t know nearly enough about your administration and policies to do so in good conscience.”
“We ask you to say nothing that isn’t true,” Grayson said smoothly. “If this alliance is worth preserving, surely you will be willing to say as much publicly.”
Damn you. Jaeger glanced around the circle. Somebody, she urged silently. Jump in. Object.
Neither Kwin nor the Locauri seemed to appreciate the danger in what Grayson was asking her to do. They only watched, waiting for Jaeger’s answer. She glanced over her shoulder to see Toner frowning thoughtfully. Then he gave the tiniest shake of his head. He couldn’t think of a good excuse to refuse, either.
“Very well,” Jaeger said. “I’ll address the fleet. But I’ll do it in my own words, Minister. Captain. I will not allow censorship, and I will not read your pre-written speech off a teleprompter.”
Kelba’s head lowered in the tiniest of nods. “Acceptable.”
“As long as we can review your speech ahead of the broadcast, of course,” Grayson added.
“Agreed,” Jaeger breathed. The back-and-forth could take months before they all agreed on what Jaeger would say to the crowd. She hoped it did. The idea of endorsing these people made her stomach churn.
“Does this conclude your list of requirements?” Kwin asked.
“It does, Captain Kwin.” Kelba lifted her chin, staring up at the tall alien. “Now if you’ll excuse me. We have much work to do.”
Her hologram flickered and vanished. Half a second later, Grayson followed suit. Muttering similar excuses, Kwin and Udil took their leave as well.
“I don’t know how we’re going to handle the increased supply shipments,” Jaeger muttered into the silence that followed.
“What are you talking about?” Toner drawled. “I just brought in enough weird alien jellyfish to fill half a fighter bay. Screw Puncher-of-Dragons. They should call me Catcher-of-Leviathan.”
“Is that stuff any good for eating?” Jaeger asked.
Toner shrugged. “I mean. It’s no roast of amputated arm, but I’m sure Bufo can stew it into something halfway decent. Clark says we can fish out of Locaur’s seas like this for months before we need to start worrying about population management. The supply shipments are the least of our worries, Captain. With all this seafood, we could throw a party.”
“You will do that,” Tiki said.
“Huh?” Toner turned to her, cocking his head as if he’d misheard.
Tiki hopped to the conference room door, Art sticking to her like a shadow. “Today, there is bounty,” Tiki said. “Tomorrow, there is war. We will share all that we have because the dead do not eat. It is the way of things.”
“I sure hope there’s not war tomorrow. I thought we had at least a few days.”
Jaeger nudged Toner sharply in the ribs to shut him up. “You’re right,” she told Tiki. “We will have a feast while the meat is still fresh.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“How’d your field trip go?”
Toner leaned against the bulkhead outside Seeker’s quarters, his arms folded, his gaze fixed on an empty place in the air. To get past him, Seeker would have to step over his outstretched legs.
Seeker sighed and rubbed his eyes. He’d returned from his patrol to meet with this new unfolding catastrophe of imminent invasion. He’d filed his report, then solely because Elaphus had ordered it, gotten some rest.
Two hours. He couldn’t get two hours of sleep without someone trying to crawl up his ass with a microscope. “Ask the captain. I’ve already filed my full report with her.” It had been a full, honest report of his brief foray into the mining operation. Nothing omitted. “I have nothing to hide.”
Toner ran long fingers through his stringy hair, examining it for split ends. “Sarah’s kind of busy right now, drafting up speeches and stuff. So I’m following up.”
Seeker frowned, running through some brief mental calculations. “She’s too busy to follow up. But you’re not. Are you spying on me?”
Toner glanced over, his eyes glittering behind his hair. “It’s not personal.”
“You don’t strike me as the MP type.”
“No, that’s you.” Toner straightened, moving with a kind of restless speed that made Seeker check his sidearm. “You’re the MP type,” Toner snapped. “That’s what the whole goddamned Seeker Corps is. You go out in your fancy jets if there’s an alien to slaughter. The rest of the time you skulk around spying on each other, ferreting out wrong thinking, making dissidents disappear, making sure the whole population toes the company line.”
Seeker held up his hands. “Sounds like you have a bone to pick with a past that only you remember.”
Toner growled and turned, slamming his fist into the bulkhead hard enough to leave a dent. He rounded on Seeker, but the man had learned to ignore these histrionics. “Do we have a beef, Toner? You and me, from before? Something we need to settle?”
Toner glowered at him. Then, slowly and to Seeker’s surprise, he let out a breath and slumped back into his lazy slouch. “Not really,” he muttered. “Not…directly. Only met once or twice but even then…”
His gaze fell to the side, and reluctantly, he said, “I’ll say you never really did me wrong. Or her.” His gaze lifted again and Seeker was startled, as always, to see how shockingly blue his eyes were in the dim light.
“But it’s not about you. The Corps did us wrong. All of us. The Seekers. If what the fleet is telling us is true, they fought a civil war to get your shiny black boots off our throats. But that’s okay now.” His mouth broke into an utterly humorless smile. “They have a brand new government, all shiny and silver. Or, in this case…Gray.”
Seeker scratched his chin and frowned at the stubble there. He was overdue for a shave.
In a population as small as Tribe Six, political inbreeding was inevitable. There were only so many charismatic, competent leaders to go around. Seeker hadn’t been entirely surprised to learn that the current prime minister of this new civilian government was a longstanding member of the fleet military, with deep ties to the Seeker Corps leadership.
Similarly, it hadn’t taken him long to accept that in his past life, he’d been a senior member of that selfsame Corps. Or that the Corps played no small part in keeping the fleet orderly. By any means necessary, was the last line of the Seeker motto, carved into the bulkhead of his fighter. It was the first thing he’d read upon waking to his second life.
“All this amnesia drama is a pain in my ass,” Seeker muttered. “As far as I’m concerned, Toner, that wormhole is Tabula Rasa. Wipe the slate clean. I don’t give a shit what happened before it.”
“If your memory came back today? Would you give a shit then?”
Seeker shrugged, holding open his empty palms. “I’m not a scab. It’s not in my nature. I don’t remember what I might’ve been before, but I know that much. Can I count on you harassing me about it every day for the rest of my life? Should I pencil a few minutes of it into my schedule?”
When Toner didn’t answer, Seeker decided to take a risk. He reached out and put a hand on the man’s bony shoulder, making him look around sharply. “You read my report. I talked to the prime minister for about ten minutes, and all I wanted to do was break his goddamned face. This crew is my family now. I’ll put myself in the brig before I put them in danger.”
“Oh, you won’t get that far,” Toner dismissed. “Not with that tracker planted in your guts. If you turn on us, you’ll be too busy shitting out your brains to be of any use to your brother.”
Seeker froze. “What?”
“I must be cruel only to be kind.” Toner grinned. “Don’t hurt my little sister.”
“Fuck.” Seeker let out a breath. Another one of Toner’s stupid jokes. “A man like you has no business being on a command staff.” He drew back his hand and resisted the temptation to wipe it clean on his uniform.
“You sure as shit don’t want me on your enemy’s command staff.” Toner slapped Seeker on the back, turning to direct him down the corridor. “Come along, Jack. Your brother is holding my niece and girlfriend hostage, and he’s not being very fucking subtle about it. Let’s talk about backup plans.”
Seeker blinked but started walking. “What?”
“I’ll explain everything. Oh, you’re gonna need a different surname, by the way. Now that the Corps is here, things are going to get confusing if we keep calling you Seeker.”
“I don’t care what you call me,” he muttered. Then, he quickly added, “As long as it’s not Shelby fucking Grayson. Jesus, what a shitty thing to do to a kid. My parents must’ve been assholes.”
Toner threw his head back and laughed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“Good morning, Tribe Six.”
She drew in a breath and glanced down at her notes, then set them aside. No crutches. She wasn’t going to hide behind a paper shield for this.
“This is Captain Sarah Jaeger of the Osprey.” She gave a small chuckle. “Not that I expect you to know what that means, exactly. It has been…a confusing and difficult time for everybody. I don’t have the full story. You don’t have the full story. But I do have my story. Since we’re all writing the human story together, I’m going to share it with you.”
“There’s, um, something I need to talk to you about.”
There was a small supply closet in the Osprey’s central column, not far from the general crew showers. A pile of pilfered mattresses lined the floor. A small display screen cast the only dim light in the room. Jaeger spoke into the shadows, her volume barely above mute. Toner didn’t need to hear what she had to say. He’d seen the speech already. She’d pre-recorded it.
Portia shifted her weight, digging her elbow into Toner’s ribs as she rolled to face him. The woman was all angles and sharpness. Her fingernails were sharp. Her teeth were sharp.
Toner licked his lips. “I have history.”
Portia’s lips curved into a smirk. She waited for him to go on.
“Baggage, too. I don’t know.” He rubbed the back of his neck restlessly, at the electronic collar coiled around his spinal cord. “A whole lifetime of it. I was never trying to run away from it. Not really. I guess I didn’t think I could escape it. Then the wormhole happened…”
Portia’s smirk faded, and she studied him with solemn dark eyes.
“Then the wormhole, like, un-happened. Now it’s all coming back to me. I don’t think I’m really the same person I was when we met.”
“You are,” Portia said.
Toner started.
“The Jefferies tube monster.” Portia’s smirk returned. “First mate, commander, Puncher-of-Dragons. You are that person.”
She walked her fingers up his bare chest. Her hand spread wide like a spider. “But you’re not only that person any more than I’m only a soldier preprogrammed for expertise in piloting and espionage. It’s okay to be more. At least, that’s what the captain has insisted since the day I climbed out of that activation tube.”
Toner stared up into Portia’s narrow, teasing face. “I have a girlfriend.”
Portia winced, and Toner winced in sympathy, wishing he’d found a better way to say it. Like the idiot he was, he also wished he’d shut his mouth and not go on blabbing. “Or I did, before. Then the wormhole—and things got…lost. Then the memories came back, and we were always together even if we were apart and seeing other people and now she’s here, except I don’t think she remembers much now either and I—”
Portia silenced him with a kiss. “Why are you telling me this?” she said, once they’d caught their breath.
“I don’t want to hurt anybody,” Toner mumbled.
“That’s sweet. But I really don’t care what you do on your own time.” Her eyebrow arched. “Or who.”
“Oh.” Toner could think of nothing else to say.
Portia sat up and shuffled around the darkness until she found his uniform. She tossed it onto his chest. “Now come on. I don’t want to miss the party.”
“I joined the Tribes program years ago because I wanted to build a new, better home for my family. I believed in the mission.” Jaeger swallowed hard. Saying those words felt a bit like running complex calculations on the fly. She had faith in them, in a general sort of way, but they were nonetheless difficult. As best she could tell from her scattered, shattered memories, they were true. Still, she was terrified of lying entirely by accident or saying something the fleet could twist and use against her later.
“I believed that the Tribes could find us that new home. Then, as the years wore on, as we wandered across the stars, getting colder and hungrier and more desperate, I started to understand that the Tribes didn’t have all the answers. They might’ve meant well, in the beginning, but their plans, their methods for finding us a planet to settle…they weren’t bearing fruit.” We were dying, was what she’d wanted to say. From incompetence and greed and pure malice. Of course, Kelba wouldn’t let those lines slip into the speech. “We were languishing.”
“You still are.”
Occy glanced over to see a repair droid lurking in the deepest shadows of the picnic shelter, like a spider trying to hide from the first light of dawn. The air was misty, and the scent of wood fires, roasting nuts, and hearty stews blanketed the settlement. The day was young, but already preparations for the feast were well underway.
“You still are,” Virgil repeated. “Languishing. Now you once again face annihilation.”
Occy shifted his weight, making more space on the picnic table. He didn’t expect Virgil to join him like some friendly crewmate, but it seemed like the right thing to do. On his display screen, Captain Jaeger continued her speech.
“I guess that’s life,” Occy said. “One damn thing after another. Right?”
“I have spent the night comparing what we know of the coming swarm to your capability to thwart it. Even if your new human-Overseer-Locauri alliance were unshakable, your chance of success is very low.”
Occy cocked his head. There was a mug of steaming tea in his lap, and he bought himself time to think as he took a sip. It wasn’t very good tea. They were saving the last of the really good food for the party. “Probably,” he said.
Virgil turned its sensor arrays to focus on Occy. “Jaeger could flee. Save the Osprey and her crew, and strike out into the universe again, seeking a new planet not constantly threatened by invasion and war.”
“What about all the people up in the fleet?” Occy asked. “What about all the people down here? The Osprey can’t fit them all. What about the Locauri? This is their home.”
“It is foolish, trying to save everybody,” Virgil snapped with enough force to make Occy jump. “Better to cut your losses and save what you can when the chances of saving everybody are so very slim.”
