[This is a chapter from my latest novel, a sequel to The Fall of Doc Future and Skybreaker’s Call. The start is here, and links to my other work here. It can be read on its own, but contains spoilers for those two books. I post new chapters about every two weeks, and the next chapter is planned for around December 29th.]

Previous: Chapter 15

Marshal Hiri walked down the hallway in the officers quarters of the temporary base and prison camp that Dr. Reinhart and her disturbingly capable AI DASI had built on Earth’s single moon. He had grown used to the buoyancy from the lower gravity.

They had built it remarkably quickly, even given that DASI could run all the construction equipment and every suit of powered armor as robots. It helped that the Crusade fleet had planned for a base here, and had brought prefabricated sections in one of the tug’s cargo pods, which had been captured intact.

He stopped at a door and knocked. He could have commed ahead, but personal interaction was the whole point of this.

“Captain Tengari?”

The door opened. "Here, sir,“ said the captain, and saluted.

She was impeccable in her dress uniform, as usual. There were faint dark circles under her eyes, giving her a haunted look. Also as usual, since the battle and capture of the survivors of the Crusade Fleet. She had taken it particularly hard, as a member of an old military family. She had told him once that seven members of her family had died in battle, three while in command of ships.

She was the only one who had ever been captured.

Hiri’s observation that every member of her crew was still alive hadn’t been much help. At least not yet. But she would talk to him, and she tended to pull rank on anyone else to stay alone. Which was why he was here to escort her to morning service, something he wouldn’t normally do, since they were voluntary, now.

But it got him out of his quarters, too. The others were unused to captivity, but he was perhaps too familiar with it, from his long cycles as a political prisoner back on Xelia. And he had responsibilities here, as the senior-most military prisoner of war. He had old habits that were no longer helpful.

Most of the chaplains and all of the inquisitors from the fleet were currently in isolation detention for misbehavior ranging from attempted sabotage incitement to physical assault for perceived insufficient piety on the part of other prisoners. They hadn’t adjusted well to the fact that they no longer had any authority, and their panoptic captor’s idea of freedom of religion did not extend to allowing them to enforce it on others.

A number of the chaplains, mostly older ones that had been in the military for a long time, had concluded that providing the comfort of familiar ritual was more important to the emotional health of the others in the camp than anything else they could do, and were acting accordingly.

And then there was Corrector Naki.

He’d been fairly junior in the Correctionist hierarchy, but he was a fire-breathing true believer, charismatic and a gifted speaker–though perhaps more creative about doctrine than his elders would have preferred. But they were all gone now.

His sermons in the camp had grown steadily more popular, and by now hundreds attended in person, and thousands more by com.

He was, in a word, dangerous, and if Hiri had been running a prison camp, Naki would have been the very first person he’d have isolated from others. But he’d never quite crossed the line into incitement, and Dr. Reinhart seemed to be leaving him entirely alone.

Which suggested to Hiri that she knew something he didn’t.

Perhaps it was just that he was pulling in prisoners who would have otherwise remained isolated. Tengari certainly liked him. And there were rumors that he had something special planned today, so even a skeptical heretic like Hiri was unlikely to be bored.

*****

"Antimatter storage redundancy check complete. Integrity verified,” came the voice over the com link.

“Thanks, DASI,” said Doc, and drummed his fingers on the control yoke of his grav duo flyer, what everyone called his flying car.

Stella should have been sitting beside him by now. They were due for their all important first face to face meeting with the Grs'thnk aid mission and military leaders in less than twenty minutes. But she was still up in main control, communing with DASI and her own fleet in orbit. They’d already missed the launch window for a standard orbital rendezvous, and the deadline for the backup one was fast approaching.

If they missed that, they’d have to wait until the embassy ship came around in orbit again, almost ninety diplomatic-incident-creating minutes. Unless he got really extravagant. Which was why he’d loaded the antimatter.

He switched channels. "Stella?“

"I’ll be done when I’m done,” she replied, a little more testily than the last time he’d checked. "If we miss the window, they can wait. This is important.“

*****

"And the Shaper was not with us because we were wrong!”

Naki paused for emphasis, looking out over the crowd. His eyes blazed. "The Great Plague was a warning of our sins, not those of the Template world. The Crusade was a sham, pushed by the Council in fear of our ever finding out.“

He continued more softly. "We can do better. It took a selfless champion to show us the way. Not the ones who defeated us, as kind as they have been. The one who talked. Who spoke to us, pleading with soft reason, up to the very instant our fleet blasted him from this universe.”

He closed his hand over the symbol of the Correctionist order that hung from his neck, and pulled it off, over his head.

“It took a Volunteer.” He cast the symbol onto the floor in front of the pulpit. There were gasps.

“I am a Correctionist no longer. I will follow a better example. The only people we have a right to correct are ourselves.”

“I volunteer.” He swept his eyes over the crowd again. "Who is with me?“

The crowd erupted.

*****

"We’re going to be late!” said Doc, as he watched the countdown of estimated seconds to Stella’s arrival and compared it to his now constantly updating flight plan.

Stella had finally disconnected, and was running down the corridor–no, she was parkouring down the stairwell. She managed to shave three seconds off his estimate before diving through the roof hatch, and Doc slammed the grav drive all the way to five g’s from a standing start in the hanger.

The ‘seat belt not fastened’ klaxon howled and the inertial compensator warning light flashed red. They only felt about a g and a half as Doc nearly clipped the hanger bay door frame top, angling upward on the way out. The inertial compensator control system wasn’t going to let anyone get injured because the driver was being reckless, but it was sure going to complain about it.

Ketrik–who had retrofitted it during Zirjack’s last visit–and Jetgirl had also both been right about how disorienting inertial compensation could be for someone used to high-g manual piloting. They’d advised caution.

Too bad. The klaxon cut off as Stella got her harness fastened, and the only careful thing Doc did was making sure the front of the flyer was aimed vertically. They were over his own property and he could bathe his test range in plasma if he wanted.

His first ever drive with Stella he’d pulled ten g’s. That had been about the max his body could handle while still maintaining effective control. But he hadn’t had inertial compensation then, and what good was it if he didn’t use it? He cut in the fusion rocket and pushed both drives to max.

Twenty g’s straight up, with a thunderous roar. Not quite enough to outrun Jetgirl. Not yet. The non-linear response of the compensators let three g’s through to the passengers, the red light stayed on, the vibration damping needed work, and the noise would make conversation difficult, but all in all, not bad.

Ketrik had understood something about Doc as soon as he looked at the specs for his flyer mods. Anyone who would mount a fusion rocket on the back of a perfectly good grav vehicle just to get more than five g’s wasn’t going to be satisfied with 'good enough’. He’d beefed up the compensator as much as he could, and the heck with standard grav engineer practice.

“Noisy,” yelled Stella.

“Twenty g’s, and we can still talk,” Doc yelled back. "Be grateful. What was so damned important, anyway?“

"I was watching the start of the Xelian Reformation, live. I had to be sure it came off without a hitch.”

“Oh. Did it?”

“Yes. And I just checked the position of the embassy ship–we can’t catch up much faster than just waiting until they come around again. I went ahead and warned them. There’s no point in trying a wasteful chase.”

The sky was already darkening, and Doc grinned. He cut the fusion drive–sudden quiet–to point the flyer at the horizon, balancing the turbulence from the last wisps of air. They were nearly high enough. He lived for moments like this.

“I’ve got five thousand grams of antimatter says you’re wrong. That you gave me.”

“But the orbital mechanics will–”

“Watch me.”

He pushed the grav and the rocket to full, then started dumping antimatter into the afterburner. He’d massively overengineered the regenerative force field shielding on the rocket nozzles, all those years ago, and he’d never been more glad of it. The warning light went deep red, three different klaxons were going off, they were up to five g’s and climbing after compensation, and the noise was overwhelming, but everything kept working.

And there was nothing to do but watch the acceleration and velocity numbers climb, and slowly tilt the nose down to match the course.

*****

“The last message from Dr. Reinhart was about a development at the prison camp that may have major implications for diplomatic strategy,” said the aide. "But she couldn’t control the timing. She sends her apologies.“

"Understandable,” said Admiral Ghiralt. He sighed. "Hopefully they’ll be able to make it up next orbit.“

He turned to Emissary Beveda. "In the meantime, perhaps you can tell me your take on this new AI that’s giving your auditors fits.”

She frowned. "Well, Black Swan isn’t really–“

"Sir! Update!” The aide looked like she’d just gotten implant-bombed with something unexpected.

Ghiralt turned back to her. "Yes?“

"Com from Doc Future. He claims they will make the meeting, no more than five minutes late, approaching on a power forced orbit. Sensor relay from over his HQ reports a very high speed launch. And sir… he wants us to raise our shields.”

“Is he worried about a potential collision?” asked Ghiralt, surprised.

“No, sir. Rocket exhaust plume wash from approach deceleration. He’s warning of a water-antimatter mix ratio of less than 500 to 1.”

“That’s almost as bad as a Sunseeker missile on final. All right. Raise shields.”

Emissary Beveda looked puzzled. "Why is he doing this? He has to know we’ll wait.“

Elder Trig cackled. "It’s the first face meeting. They’re opening show for his whole planet, from a position of disadvantage. He doesn’t want them to look like a bunch of limp-tailed skranks.”

“With what his daughter can do?” Ghiralt chuckled. "No danger of that. But I see your point. I just hope his inertial compensator holds.“

*****

The roar was less, making it somewhat easier to be talk.

"Nine g’s straight down,” said Stella. "And our speed isn’t changing a bit. That seems… wasteful.“

Doc snorted. "Our speed isn’t changing, but our velocity is–normal orbits get direction change free, but this isn’t a normal orbit. Nine g’s down is what we need to stay in orbit around Earth at seventy klicks a second. That’s an orbit for a ten g planet, so I have to bring the other nine myself.

"Profligate, I’ll grant. But you gave me the antimatter, and it’s not safe to store on Earth, long-term. What did you expect me to do with it? Build a bomb?”

“Well…”

“There’s very little I can do with an antimatter bomb that Flicker can’t do better with a rock. And I’ve had enough of them, in nightmares and reality.”

Doc scowled and shook his head. "Fuck bombs. Antimatter is for vroom, not boom.“

Stella looked at him for a moment, then leaned over as far as the harness and acceleration would allow. She squeezed his shoulder, then spoke into his ear at normal volume. "I’m sorry, I wasn’t criticizing, just commenting. And I have plenty more.”

Doc half-smiled. "It’s all right. Your remark just made me imagine for a minute how rocket pioneers would see this. And we’re coming up on the deceleration point, in twenty seconds. This will be extravagant. Better get ready.“

More roaring, and klaxons, and deep red light, this time facing backwards, as they decelerated to normal orbital velocity in just over a hundred seconds, prompting reports all over Europe and North Africa of a meteor. The observers had no easy way to tell they were seeing something five times as far away and twenty five times as bright. Though the lack of a followup atmospheric explosion was a welcome clue.

And despite everything, they still arrived three minutes after the original time for the start of the meeting.

"Sorry we’re late,” he said to the welcome party in the hanger bay, deadpan. "I did the best I could.“

"That’s quite all right,” said Emissary Beveda. "It’s an honor to finally meet you in person. Though you didn’t have to hurry quite as much as you did. You must have been quite eager for the meeting.“

"I like to keep my appointments. But I was just the driver–Stella has the important news.”

“Oh?”

Stella smiled. "I have plenty to discuss regarding the aid mission. But I think Admiral Ghiralt will be the most interested in the implications of the event that made us late.“

The Admiral looked at her intently. "I hear and listen,” he said formally.

“I know how to stop the Xelian War, for good this time. Without planetary bombardment or a Grs'thnk invasion.”



Next: Chapter 17

