Chapter 18

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Chapter 18: Dust out the demons inside

A one-hit wonder. That's what they'd call me. The guy who beat the Cranions thought he could one-up himself. Thought he could single-handedly win a war with the Koraxians. Instead, he doomed humanity.

No, navel-gazing is not the most productive exercise in the world. Certainly not a great motivator. But I needed something to latch onto at that point, and the best I could do was consider my legacy. "What legacy?" A fair question.

If anyone could understand, I had a feeling it would be Convier. A little more trolling through my memory banks dug up a lot of information on him. Dude ran the Non-Aligned Region pretty much all on his own. Freed various Vansara species from the Koraxians--I gathered as much from what he said, anyway. Oh, and he blew up his share of Terran ships, stole their cargo, ransomed their crews, and more or less made a nuisance of himself to the authorities. He danced around the most important issue, when pressed: what would he do if the Koraxians conquered the Terran Alliance, the Salmaxians, the Oolians? Ironic that a man who spent his life disrupting the status quo now had his own status quo to preserve. To him, in his life story, he was the hero--not the villain. Nobody ever thinks they're the bad guy, right?

We docked with a large asteroid in the Toralicus asteroid field. The field itself was a vast, failed solar system, nestled between the fringes of the Alliance and the Salmaxians. A faint, brown dwarf star dimly illuminated the icy rocks. No important FV routes came through here, not that anyone would want to in the first place. Not unless you wanted your ship to get pocked full of holes.

Lana deftly guided the ship toward one of the bigger asteroids. I was impressed with the way she swung the ship around each hazard, weaving through the moving puzzle of rocks, big and small. She must have had a lot of practice. Theo occasionally had to shoot one down to prevent a minor collision. The asteroid ahead grew larger and larger until I realized just how big it was. You could have fit a decent-sized city in there--maybe 50,000 people. Knowing the realities of asteroids, though, I had a feeling the base itself occupied less than 10% of the internal volume. The rest was simply a source for minerals and, especially, water ice. Enough for a handful of people for their entire lives, for sure.

Absolution slingshot around the asteroid and headed for a small opening on the other side. Lana coasted us inside and docked in a cavernous bay. We had to wait as a pressurized corridor was extended to the side of the ship. It latched on and I heard a telltale hiss as it equalized with Absolution's atmospheric pressure. A door near the rear of the bridge opened vertically, and Arcturus was the first to head through. Lana gestured for me to follow him. She and Theo brought up the rear. I wondered why I hadn't seen Byron yet. Figured I'd meet her in time.

The corridor itself was dark and felt rickety under my boots. It was cold, definitely not heated well--if at all. We had to walk quite a distance before getting into the base proper. Another door opened up at the end. Lights dangled from the ceiling in this part of the base; the walls were gray stone of some kind, sanded down to a smoother finish. The floor consisted of metal grates, hiding the uneven rocks below. I memorized the winding path we took through the base's corridors in case I ended up needing to make a hasty exit, and we soon came into a large control room. Viewscreens and consoles lined the walls, and several tables displayed tactical maps and little model ships, no doubt used for battle planning. I wondered how much battle planning you really needed when all you had was a ship like Absolution. Seemed to me your main options were "retreat" or "go down fighting."

A young man who sat at one of the consoles stood up when we entered.

"Son," Arcturus said, "This is Robert Maxwell." The boy extended his hand. I didn't want to be rude, so I gave it a grasp and shake. "This is my son, Jeremiah."

"Nice to meet you," the boy said. "I've read about you."

"Nothing bad, I hope," I teased.

"Dad doesn't really like me reading about war heroes, but they're a pet obsession of mine."

Yeah, Arc didn't seem too thrilled about it, but he didn't say anything. I realized I'd found my out, though. All I needed to do was nurture Jeremiah's sense of hero worship and he'd become putty in my hands.

Daddy Convier got right down to business. "What communications have you picked up? How is the war progressing? Any incursions into our space?"

Jeremiah looked down at the screen he'd previously been occupied with. "The Koraxians have been focusing on the border sectors of the Terran Alliance. I don't think they're interested in us. But, a couple hours ago, something changed."

Convier folded his arms. "Do tell."

"I started retrieving messages from some of our contacts deeper within the Alliance. A handful of Koraxian ships--about fifteen--have fanned out and started what I could only call a search pattern."

"How so?" I was glad Convier asked, because I wanted to know, too.

"They're hitting random fold vectors, ones we don't use and don't really know about. I put together the flight paths from a few of them. I could be wrong, but I think they are narrowing in on Earth, or at least one of the nearby systems."

"I could have told you that," I said. "If they want to conquer us, the best way is to decapitate. Take out the homeworld."

"But these ships are avoiding combat. They aren't attacking anyone and aren't sticking around to put up a defense."

"They probably plan to come together at Earth to wipe us out," I said. "Which brings me to the question of the hour: what are you guys going to do about it?"

"Nothing," Arcturus said flatly. "I have my own space to defend."

"Defend with what? Unless you have a massive space fleet I don't know about, when they're done with Earth they can just swoop in here and do the same to you."

"We have resources. We can hide. We can wait them out."

"I doubt you can hide whole planets. What about the people you freed? Are you going to hide all of them?"

He sighed. "What do you expect me to do? They have to defend themselves, sooner or later."

"I think there's an alternative, one that will save your people, and mine."

"I'm listening."

"You clearly have experience sneaking into Koraxian territory and taking things you aren't supposed to."

He nodded.

"I say we should try to take the biggest prize of all. Korath himself. Their leader."

"That's insane!" Lana snapped.

"Is it? I managed to disable an Oolian Cruiser with a handful of people. I took out several Koraxian ships myself. They aren't invincible. They have the numbers, they have the firepower, but they don't know how we think. And they can't be everywhere at once."

Convier rubbed his chin, obviously considering my proposal. He glanced at his son. "Jeremiah, get in touch with Darrex. We're going to need backup for this."

Jeremiah balked. "Um... how much should I ask for, Dad?"

"All of it."