New Frontiers (Expansion Wars Trilogy, Book 1) (9 page)

“Yes, sir,” Celesta said automatically and followed him out the door.

The admiral’s staff, along with Celesta and Accari, made their way down the wide, sweeping corridors of the facility past many curious onlookers before passing through the security checkpoint that led to the station’s command and control section. When Jericho Station had been lost, Marcum had moved his offices to the New Sierra Shipyards, an enormous orbital production facility, and had promptly set about refitting the sleepy, civilian-controlled platform into a bustling hub from which he controlled Fleet operations. Many of the production slips had been converted to maintenance berths and most of the ships docked on the outrigger arms were simply parked there, not even being serviced. Celesta had been concerned about the fact that their largest ship-building facility had been absorbed by CENTCOM at a time when they needed ships built more than they needed paper pushed, but she’d been told with a wink and a nod that it was all under control.

“Have a seat, all of you,” Marcum said as the door closed and locked. He motioned Celesta to the seat across from his desk. “So we’re all agreed that it was really the
Ares
the Darshik dragged all the way back to Xi’an?”

“Yes, Admiral,” Celesta spoke up. “Several former crewmen, including Ensign Accari, positively identified her from the damage she took that prevented her from coming back home.”

“If Wolfe had properly scuttled the ship
like he was supposed to
we wouldn’t have this problem,” Marcum growled, rubbing at his receding hairline with the palms of his hand.

“I disagree, Admiral,” Admiral Pitt said, walking into the office from a room off to the side that Celesta hadn’t noticed before. “The location of Wolfe’s derelict was highly classified and it was a system of no interest save for the Phage core mind that had been hiding there. We must assume that the Darshik found the
Ares
due to some connection to the Phage. That’s likely going to be an important fact later.”

“Thanks for stealing my thunder, Pitt,” Marcum snapped. “Okay … yes, we know the Darshik have a connection with the Phage, but not the one you’re probably thinking. Do those in this office with the proper security clearance remember the message Wolfe got at the end of the Battle of Nuovo Patria?”

“Something about a test being concluded,” Celesta said, trying to remember the exact phrasing.

“Our Vruahn friends had told us this was unprecedented, but that wasn’t necessarily true,” Marcum continued. “While I doubt Colonel Blake, or the copy of him, lied to us, we know that his area of operation was very limited … we’ve also learned that the Phage were everywhere, and when I say that I mean
everywhere.
We were so damn lucky that it’s almost comical. Many species far more advanced than us fell before them.”

“What do you mean ‘
We’ve also learned’
… learned from where?” Pitt asked.

“The Ushin were also selected to be purged by the Phage,” Marcum said. “They almost succeeded, but the Phage had to pull resources to deal with a new threat that ended up being a bigger pain in the ass than they thought.”

“Us,” Celesta said.

“Us,” Marcum nodded. “The fight we put up during that war caused the Phage to temporarily abandon the Ushin, likely with the intent of crushing us in a blitz and then moving back to finish them. Thanks to Wolfe and Blake getting to the core mind that never happened.

“So … that brings me to another interesting, highly classified bit of information. We didn’t stumble across the Ushin, they came to us. They’ve known about us since we started pushing our borders out, but our environmental preferences are so different we weren’t going to be competing for the same habitable planets, so they ignored us. The remaining Ushin know that we killed the Phage off for good and they want to repay us in some way, so they tracked our automated survey drones and waited for a crewed mission to show up to one of their planets.”

“What can they offer?” Pitt asked, leaning forward.

“No idea,” Marcum shrugged. “We have petabytes of data from the first contact team, and I can’t make heads or tails of any of it. They appear to be much more technologically advanced than us, but from what I can tell they don’t have shit for weaponry. Talking to the ambassador’s team, I get the impression two-way communication between us is still very clunky and it’ll be some time before high-level concepts can be discussed.”

“Fair enough.” Pitt leaned back on the couch. “So who are the Darshik?”

“They’re the other side of the coin,” Marcum said, flipping through some notes on his tile. “Ah, there we go. Okay, so the Darshik controlled six or ten star systems—you see what I mean about communication being tough—that butted up against what the Ushin recognized as their outer boundary. The Phage found them and began sterilizing their worlds before, inexplicably, they stopped. Two planets were spared: their homeworld and a second habitable colony world in the same system. This is where it gets a little muddy, but apparently the Phage issued the same ‘test’ and the results were different, thus the species was spared.

“The damage to the Darshik collective psyche, however, didn’t fare so well. They became isolationists and then they began a sort of quasi-worship of the Phage, apparently convinced the fuckers were actually
protecting
them, if you can believe that.”

“And then along comes humanity and kills their idol?” Celesta guessed.

“We’re not sure of the timeline but that’s our assumption,” Marcum nodded. “It raises some disturbing questions, however. Like how did they know where the core mind was located, and how did they know where we were located?”

“Vruahn help?” Ensign Accari spoke up, looking stricken as he realized how inappropriate it was for him to speak without being prompted first.

“We don’t think so, Ensign.” Marcum showed no sign of annoyance at having a junior officer interrupt his stream of consciousness. “One of the things we were able to glean from the Ushin is that the Darshik weren’t just left alone after the initial Phage assault; it seems they had continued contact with them, or it … I still have trouble considering the Phage a singular entity.”

“This makes more and more sense,” Pitt nodded. “The Phage wasn’t omnipotent. What better way to get the lay of local space and have defensible fallback locations than to find a willing partner? If the ‘test’ was to find a species with the traits it wanted in order to use them, then it explains why Blake had never heard of it. The Vruahn may have but they kept all the Colonel Blakes under tight control, so it’s not something they’d likely pass on to him … them.”

Celesta almost smiled at his correction. Like most people who had interacted with Colonel Robert Blake during the war, she had trouble coming to terms with the fact that he was a manufactured copy of an ancient Earth explorer, one of many that the Vruahn had used to try and tame their runaway creation: the Phage. Before coming clean about having created such a devastating lifeform, the Vruahn had been cloning humans to fight the Phage in an attempt to mitigate the harm it was causing. Once it became obvious that holding action wasn’t going to be enough, they stepped up their support of the human-led war.

“Captain Wolfe told me the core mind didn’t die quickly.” Celesta was talking before her brain could stop her mouth. “If there was a Phage unit in contact with the Darshik at the time of its death, it’s possible that it passed on our location to them in its final moments. What if it did that with ten other species, a hundred?”

“Whoa!” Marcum almost shouted and raised both hands. “Let’s throttle back here, Senior Captain … we’ll leave the wild speculation to the eggheads and we’ll do what we do: deal with the immediate military threat. Lieutenant Emerson, write that down as an action item anyway,” he said to his aide, a shapely young officer that was standing conspicuously close to Ensign Accari. “We don’t have to chase that rabbit down the hole ourselves, but we’ll pass on anything of interest.”

“I think it’s probably nothing,” Celesta said, rethinking her comment. “Because if it is then the ‘warning’ we received makes no sense. What are we interfering with?”

“They’re aliens, Captain,” Pitt said. “It’s a damn miracle they can talk to us at all, as our recent interactions with the Ushin prove. Let’s not throw away a solid theory based on the wording of a message transmitted by another species.”

“Did all this intel come from the Ushin?” Celesta asked.

“Most of it,” Marcum said evasively. “We’ve been developing other channels of information in parallel. But for now I think that about wraps this up … everyone but Captain Wright is dismissed. Don’t leave the station, though. We have a lot to do before we respond to the attacks on our ships and people. Get out of here. That includes you, Admiral Pitt.”

Once everyone had filed out and the door clanged shut again, Marcum leaned back in his seat.

“Now to discuss what I called you in here for in the first place,” he said.

Celesta had fully expected this. Her abysmal performance in the Xi’an System had to be addressed. She fully expected to be knocked back down a rank from senior captain and it was entirely likely she’d lose the
Icarus
.

“I want you on a
Dreadnought
,” Marcum said.

“Am I to serve aboard the
Amsterdam
, Admiral?”

“What? No, I’m not replacing Captain Everett nor am I demoting you, Celesta,” Marcum said. “Yes, you could have performed better as taskforce commander, but you could also have done a hell of a lot worse. We’ll debrief you fully on that later, but the important thing is that you’ve again showed that killer instinct I remember and love so well from the war. I want to put you on the bridge of a boomer and the
New York
is in need of a competent CO if we’re heading back into a fight.”

“I’m not sure what to say, Admiral.” Celesta was stunned. Commanding a battleship was what every warship captain aspired to whether they admitted it or not. The
New York
was one of the new
Dreadnought
-class ships that were of the same generation as her own
Starwolf
-class destroyer. Her face twitched as she momentarily thought of her ship.

“What would happen to the
Icarus
?”

“It will be captained by an officer of appropriate rank and experience,” Marcum said coolly. “I know she’s your first command, Celesta, but that ship belongs to the Terran Federation. It’ll be up to CENTCOM as to whose ass goes in the seat; more specifically it’ll be up to me. While I’m open to suggestions, I don’t want to give the impression that you have any sway once you’re out of Ninth Squadron.”

“That’s not what I meant, sir,” Celesta said hurriedly. “What I meant to say was is this a mandatory transfer?”

“You’re …. you’re actually thinking of turning down a top-of-the-line battleship?” Marcum’s mouth was hanging open. “What is it that makes you destroyer captains all batshit crazy? Or was it simply the proximity to Wolfe for too long that scrambled your good sense?” He sucked in a breath and let it out slowly.

“The
New York
is still inbound,” he said quietly. “Please take a couple days to think it over and we’ll talk again.”

“Thank you, Admiral,” Celesta said uncomfortably, rising as she realized that had been a dismissal. “I really am honored you think—”

“Just keep this in mind,” Marcum cut her off. “I place people where they can do the Fleet the most good, and by extension where they can do the Federation the most good, and by further extension where they can do humanity the most good. Your loyalty to your ship and crew is commendable, but as a Starfleet officer you have a higher duty. Dismissed, Senior Captain.”

Celesta had to constantly keep referring to the updated map on her comlink as she walked the corridors of the immense station. New Sierra was quite a bit larger than even Jericho Station had been due to the fact it had been built for heavy construction and large-scale production rather than maintenance and administration. CENTCOM had hastily converted the shipyard to its new headquarters, a move Celesta still didn’t understand. The ability to quickly field new starships seemed far more important than housing the administrative arm of the Fleet. For that matter, why did they even need to be in orbit at all? Housing and headquartering them on the planet’s surface seemed much more practical. She sighed as she walked. The war had taught them many hard lessons, but apparently they still had a long way to go.

She’d been walking down to the docking arm complex to meet the
New York
when she was docked, but her chirping comlink kept distracting her. It was a repeating text-only message from an unknown address asking that she make her way to crew processing as quickly as possible. All official Fleet communications were specifically formatted so she assumed the messages were either a glitch or something else. Either way, she ignored them. The next anonymous message, however, she couldn’t ignore.

Damnit Wright… you’d have made a shitty intel officer. Get down to crew processing and wait there. I need to speak with you immediately.

She began to have suspicions about who was playing games with the com system, so when she was almost to the arching entry that led to the crew processing section she was surprised when it was Agent Uba who intercepted her.

“You certainly took your time, Captain.” He grabbed her by the elbow and forcefully led her down a side corridor, looking about as he did to see if he was being noticed. He was wearing a Marine uniform that Celesta assumed was meant to allow him to blend in since the Terran Marine Corp was providing security on New Sierra for the time being.

“You promoted yourself to major?” Celesta asked.

“Actually I’m a full colonel, so call it a demotion,” Uba said without a trace of humor. “Majors are not only ubiquitous but are largely ignored or actively avoided. A colonel, on the other hand, is too memorable.”

“What’s this about?” Celesta asked, yanking her arm out of the agent’s hand as they marched down the service corridor.

“Someone needs to speak with you off the record,” Uba said. “Through there.” He was pointing at an unmarked door identical to the other half-dozen or so that dotted the corridor. Celesta, not for a moment thinking she was in any danger, walked up and opened the door, stepping into what looked like a recently vacated equipment closet given the amount of wiring dangling from the overhead tracks.

“You have some aversion to answering your messages?”

“Pike,” Celesta said flatly as way of greeting the impeccably dressed man standing in front of her. “Or is it Lynch?”

“Pike wearing Lynch’s clothes right now,” Pike said. “I understand you’ve just been given command of the
New York
. I suppose congratulations are in order.”

“I haven’t accepted yet,” Celesta said. “I get the feeling the appointment may be more about politics than my ability to command.”

“Of course it’s about politics,” Pike said. “Any decision about who is commanding a battleship is always political. Marcum wants her current CO gone. Actually, he’d like the moron prosecuted, but he’ll settle for drummed out of the chair in disgrace. The details why aren’t important. He also thinks he can push you through as the replacement, a war hero whom he has a personal working relationship with … the newly formed Parliament wouldn’t even pause to sign off on the posting.”

“Parliament?”

“I think they’ve changed the names of the old institutions just for the sake of change,” Pike shrugged. “If you walk around down there it’s the same old people playing the same old games. There’s actually a strange sort of comfort from it.”

“So why all the skulking about?” Celesta asked, wanting to get to the point despite the fact she was happy to have any chance to see Pike at all. The pair weren’t exactly romantically involved, but there was a mutual interest that had blossomed during their time together when it seemed the agent was always popping up where the ship she served aboard happened to be. But, both were far too driven with their work to make any sort of time for a relationship.

“Aston Lynch was asked by the President-elect to come up and meet with a few CENTCOM officials to begin the transition of civilian oversight from the old Confederacy to the new and improved Federation,” Pike said. “And no, I’m not actually performing the duties of a real aide … I needed to speak with Marcum alone and his time is as regimented now as Wellington’s, not to mention all the eyes that report on his movements.

“Anyway, when you were in there with him and Pitt, was the term
Prometheus
brought up at all?”

“No, it wasn’t,” Celesta shook her head. “What is it?”

“In addition to being a mythological figure out of Earth’s very ancient past, it’s the codename of a project that’s being run so black that I can’t even figure out who the principals are or where it is,” Pike said.

“Why are you asking me?” Celesta said. “I spend all my time on the bridge of a starship on patrol, not sitting in oversight meetings about Fleet projects.”

“Marcum knows what it is and we think he’s being fed information out of that project that pertains to the situation with the Ushin and the Darshik,” Pike said, his tone deadly serious. “This coincides with rumors of secret shipyards putting out a new generation of starship far more advanced than anything flying currently
and
the disappearance of your old boss.”

“What do you mean ‘disappearance?’” Celesta asked. “Jackson Wolfe is back on Earth … I just talked to Jillian a few months ago.”

“You may have talked to her, but she wasn’t on Earth at the time.” Pike shook his head. “Jillian and the children also packed up and moved to Arcadia while the provisional government was setting up before New Sierra was selected as the capital. She was heading up the training program for a new branch of service last I heard, but Jackson isn’t there with her. It could all just be marital troubles, but it’s a bit too convenient for my liking.”  

“This feels like you’re chasing ghosts,” Celesta scoffed. “Have you even been back to The Ark recently?” She was referring to a once-ultra secret planet that had recently been renamed ‘Arcadia,’ in some sort of not-so-subtle tribute to the lost planet of Haven. Personally she thought the name was ridiculous as well as being just a lazy phonetic extrapolation.

“I just returned,” Pike said. “And you’re probably right, but just the name
Prometheus
leads me to believe that someone involved is likely from Earth. That’s just not a name that crops up in the enclaves and those who have heard of it are clueless about the reference.”

“So what do you need from me that requires this sort of cloak and dagger routine?”

“I just wanted to know if you’ve heard of this program from Marcum. Even if you won’t tell me the specifics I just need some direction to begin digging,” Pike said. “I also wanted to know if the communications you had with your old CO were at all … odd.”

“I can tell you with complete transparency that I have not heard that name before you uttered it, and I’ve had no strange interactions with Captain Wolfe,” she said. “In fact, we haven’t spoken since his retirement was official. I’d heard that he and Jillian had married and had twins, but they were on Earth and the
Icarus
was on the Confederacy-ESA border patrolling.”

“I see,” Pike said. “I suppose it was too much to hope for that you had heard of the program and would willingly divulge classified information to me. Well … now that business is out of the way, it seems a shame to waste this private closet since we’re both here—”

“You never change.” Celesta tried to inject a tone of disgust into her voice but failed, breaking into a laugh at the end. “As much fun as your offer sounds, Agent Pike, I have to be going. The tugs will have the
New York
on her final approach as we speak and I’d like to at least lay eyes on her before I tell Marcum whether I accept or not.”

“Make your choice carefully, Captain,” Pike said seriously. “While it’s within your right to refuse a transfer, if you piss off Marcum too badly you may find yourself in command of nothing.”

“Thank you for the concern,” Celesta said coldly as she opened the door and walked out. She was irritated not at Pike, but at herself for not realizing that command of the
Icarus
was not a given. If she turned down Marcum it might not be too much longer before he pulled her off the destroyer’s bridge and put her in one of the infamous billets saved for officers who needed to be warehoused until they either served out their time and retired or simply resigned. With the prospect of a new fight on the horizon with another unknown alien species she couldn’t afford to be so selfish, Fleet needed as many commanders with combat experience as it could get.

As she left the lower administrative decks she thought back to Pike’s suspicions that Wolfe had something to do with this hypothetical “Prometheus” project. The agent was many things, but being prone to flights of fancy was not one of them. She knew that if he was fishing for information she might have then he had already put many of the pieces together himself, even if he wasn’t sharing. If Wolfe was involved in it, why? Pike had made it sound like it was more of a research initiative and Wolfe, for as good as he was at operations and tactics, didn’t have much experience or ambition in that arena.

With great effort, she pushed the entire mess from the front of her mind. She had no way to get in touch with her former captain, and even if she did she wasn’t about to approach him about a project that was so clandestine the new President didn’t even know about it. There was nothing to do about it and she had much more pressing matters to concentrate on. The last thought that flitted through her mind on the subject was how it was strange that after nearly half a decade of no news or contact the legacy of Jackson Wolfe was once again thrust into the limelight. From the final destruction of the
Ares
to his name being associated with a black project that sounded like it could also be illegal, and with the prospect of a new war looming in the background … Celesta rarely ignored her instincts and at that moment they were telling her that her mentor was not going to be able to enjoy the quiet life of a retired Fleet officer that much longer.

****

Meeting the
New York
at the dock had been a disaster. Celesta had been given priority when she’d been spotted and, under mild protest, had been moved from the gallery to near the gangway. She spotted Captain Lee, the officer she recognized as having commanded the heavy missile cruiser,
Brooklands
, during the Phage War and gave him a friendly wave. The cold, almost hostile look she received in return shocked her as Lee gave her a perfunctory nod before pressing past her and into the waiting delegation from New America that had been standing ready to welcome the ship home.

“Don’t take it personally, Captain,” the
New York
’s XO said as she approached. Celesta remembered her face but couldn’t recall her name or place where they’d met before. “Captain Lee is a good CO and I think he was under the assumption he was going to be named as the permanent replacement for NY’s big chair.”

“And he resents some politically connected usurper stealing his seat,” Celesta finished. “Well, Commander, you may inform Lee he can rest a bit easier knowing that I won’t be the one replacing him … but someone will be.” And with that she made her decision. She would do whatever she had to do to remain on the bridge of the
Icarus
even if someone else was brought in to take overall command of Ninth Squadron.

With the numbered fleets organizing back to their original states, mostly, she had no desire to leave Black Fleet and be assigned to Fourth Fleet, especially given the fragile political state the newly minted Federation found itself in while, against all odds, finding itself immediately on the brink of war. Now the real trick would be to find a way to get Admiral Marcum to see things her way. Deciding that sooner would be better than later, she pulled out her comlink and tried contacting Marcum’s office to make an appointment for a face-to-face.

Surprisingly, she was told that the admiral would not have time to see her in the foreseeable future and that all planned briefings for the next few days had been cancelled. She checked her messages and saw that she had received no new orders either telling her to remain aboard the New Sierra Platform or to report to the
New York
for orientation. She’d always enjoyed a direct line to the top levels of CENTCOM given her status after the Phage War, so she had to assume that she wasn’t the only one being given the runaround.

Her suspicions were somewhat confirmed when Admiral Pitt’s staff also informed her that the flag officer would be unavailable for the next few days. Just as she was about to try and see if one of the multiple comlink codes she had for Pike would go through, she had an incoming request from Accari.