Revolution: The Ship Series // Book Two (5 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

Pretty
effective, if I do say so myself.

A
slap
to his face dragged Zax back to Engineering Control. He was
initially overwhelmed by a coppery smell so thick he assumed his nose was
bleeding. He opened his eyes and discovered it emanated instead from five dead
Marines piled an arm’s length away and surrounded by a pool of congealing
blood. Only Sergeant Bailee remained alive from the six who had guarded the
entrance to the compartment. The sergeant was bound with his hands behind his
back in the same fashion as Zax. The Marine also wore the same type of black
device around his neck which Zax could feel had been fastened around his own.

Zax looked around and realized all the other Crew who
had been present before the intrusion remained alive and now sat on the deck
with their hands bound and identical black devices around their necks. A dozen
civilians were arrayed around the compartment with blasters pointed at the Crew
and fingers poised on triggers. The only civilian who wasn’t armed with a
blaster carried himself like he was the leader and stood off to the side
focused on a device in his hand. He was shorter and far skinnier than the rest,
with long, greasy black hair that covered his eyes and fell almost to his
shoulders.

In addition to the civilians with their weapons, Zax
noticed a couple dozen crates had also appeared while he was unconscious. They
bore no external markings but seemed to have been intentionally arranged around
the compartment.

The giant, brawny civilian whose slap had stirred Zax
moved on to deliver the same rude awakening first to Aleron and then to another
red-shirted Engineering cadet who were both seated to his left. The last cadet
required three slaps before he was finally conscious, each one progressively
more harsh. Once the boy finally stirred, the civilian remained next to him and
then looked up and nodded his blocky, bald head towards the short man with the
device.

The leader brushed his oily bangs out of his eyes,
cleared his throat, and spoke as he moved towards the engineering cadet.

“Greetings
fine
Crew members. It is a
distinct
pleasure
to make your acquaintance. We’re going to be spending quite a bit
of time together, so I’ll introduce myself. My name is Rege, and my friends and
I have come here for a special visit with the Chief Engineer. You can imagine
our great delight to learn that, completely by chance, we’ll get to chat with
the Flight Boss as well!

“As
brilliant
as all of you Crew are, you’ve no
doubt noticed how each of you has been fitted with a black collar. Don’t try to
remove yours because I guarantee you won’t like what happens if it’s tampered
with. The collars are fun devices we’ve been working on for the past few months
and had a chance to test out on a few of your fellow Crew who we kidnapped
during recent riots. Your collar serves two purposes. First, it disrupts your
Plug in such a way as to render it temporarily useless. We’ll shortly have
control of all communication channels anyways, but we also wanted to be sure
you couldn’t interact with anything around you. Second, it guarantees your
complete and undivided attention and cooperation. By way of demonstration,
please watch the cadet sitting next to my colleague here.”

Rege gestured at the cadet who was sitting to the left
of Aleron—the one who had required three slaps to awaken. When he realized the
man was talking about him, the cadet’s eyes went wide with fear. A moment later
he appeared to be gripped by excruciating pain as blood streamed out of both
nostrils, his face contorted, and his body flailed. He continued to writhe
violently for at least ten secs until his head collapsed to his chest and his
body went still.

Zax observed the reactions of the others in the silence
that followed. Kalare sat with her eyes twisted shut. Aleron looked terrified
and was likely thinking it could just as easily have been him sitting there
dead. The Chief Engineer appeared to waver between fury and despair. Sergeant
Bailee was doing everything he could to kill Rege with nothing available to him
but his glare. Only the Flight Boss seemed unmoved. He must have dropped his
cigar when he was knocked out by the gas and now sat, mouth empty, stoically
staring straight ahead but focused on nothing.

After letting everyone marinate in the cadet’s death for
a min, Rege continued.

“Pretty effective, if I do say so myself. The bad news
is they have a short range, so that’s why we’ll have to keep most of you bound
and jammed in together. The good news is we can choose to hit you with
something less than the full blast which I just gave the cadet. Get out of hand
a little and we can give you a quick jolt as a reminder about the penalty for
non-compliance. Get out of hand a lot and—well—there’s room on the heap for
more.”

Rege laughed as the bald civilian casually tossed the
cadet’s lifeless body onto the pile of dead Marines. He then looked down at his
device before speaking again.

“Everyone sit tight. You’re going to get a full
explanation about what is happening. In 3—2—1—”

Klaxons wailed and the lights switched to the pulsing
amber which indicated the Captain had changed the Ship to Condition 1. Her face
appeared on all of the vidscreens around the compartment.

“This message is being broadcast to everyone on board
the Ship—Crew and civilians alike. We are now at our highest alert level,
Condition 1. This is not because of an external attack by aliens but rather due
to an internal attack by a small number of disaffected civilians. Today’s
actions are slightly larger and more coordinated than the recent isolated
riots, but they will be put down just as quickly and just as easily.

“The civilian disruptions of the past year have led
us to redeploy our Marines so we could be thoroughly prepared for the potential
of a wider attack like this one. They have been relocated from their
centralized barracks and are now widely dispersed in garrisons throughout the
Ship. Fifty thousand Marines in full battle gear are coming on station within
the next ninety secs. For my fellow Crew who may be in danger from this
civilian disruption—hold tight. The cavalry is on the way. Keep your heads down
and before you know it, all of the hostile civilians in your vicinity will be
neutralized.”

As the Captain spoke, her image was replaced by video
footage of Marines engaged in combat with various aliens. As scary as some of
the aliens looked, they paled in comparison to the fearsome appearance of the
Marines wearing their combat load. Zax shuddered at the thought of what a
pissed off Marine in full battle gear would do once unleashed among a
population of civilians. The invisibility offered by their ChamWare would provide
freedom of movement throughout the Ship, and their combat armor would easily
protect them from the lightweight weapons the civilians possessed. The group
who took Engineering hostage overwhelmed five Marines who wore no armor and,
frankly, weren’t paying much attention, but they’d be dead within moments of
encountering even a single alert Marine in full gear. Zax remained worried
about what might happen in the meantime but was relieved to know they would be
rescued soon.

Zax gauged the civilians’ reaction to the news of their
impending demise. He was shocked to see Rege and a couple others laughing among
themselves while they watched the combat footage. He would thoroughly enjoy
watching the man die a gruesome death after witnessing how the Engineering
cadet had suffered.

The Captain reappeared and started to speak, but her
voice cut out even though her lips continued to move. She soon realized her
audio wasn’t being broadcast and turned to someone of view. Her image on the
vidscreen became wavy and then pixelated before it disappeared and she was
replaced by a picture Zax instantly recognized—the cockpit of the human
spacecraft he and Mikedo had discovered. It was a screencap which must have
been taken from the video Zax had broadcast in Flight Ops back when he
confronted the Flight Boss. The human writing and image of Earth were clearly
visible. A voice spoke over the image.

“Greetings, fellow humans.”

CHAPTER NINE

We
know they are out there somewhere.

“Greetings
,
fellow humans. I repeat myself because I must emphasize my words are not
intended solely for the civilians listening. This is an urgent message which is
critical for all of us on the Ship to hear and understand—not only the ten
million civilians but also the one hundred thousand Crew who can hear my voice.

“The image on the screen before you is one which few
of you have seen even though many of you have heard rumors about its existence.
Today I’m going to share with you its full truth. A truth which will explain
why a group of us were compelled to take drastic action over the past year.

“We all learn from an early age the history of our
Ship. Earth was near death and sent forth this vessel as its only lifeboat to
protect the remnants of humanity. Our Mission was to save our species by
seeding the universe with colonies populated by the billion people waiting to
be revived from our cryosleep holds. The scientists who sent us into space
believed we would spend a hundred years exploring nearby galaxies and
eventually find enough new homes that humankind would be guaranteed survival.

“Unfortunately, the universe is a barren and nearly
lifeless place. Even though Earth’s astronomers believed there would be
millions of Earth-equivalent worlds spread among the stars, we’ve since discovered
the planetary conditions necessary to support human life are rare. Even worse,
those isolated rocks where we might be able to eke out even a pathetic
existence are frequently inhabited by violent aliens who seek similar
conditions and will fight tooth and claw to keep what they’ve got for
themselves.

“We are now five thousand years into our one hundred
year Mission. Throughout the generations, our situation has grown more and more
challenging. In recent years, many of us have concluded the Ship is tipping
over into the same death spiral which befell Earth. Too many people barely
survive by slaving away their entire lives for the benefit of too few, while
our meager remaining resources are hoarded by the powerful at the expense of
the weak. Look around and it’s obvious to even the youngest child the Ship will
not last another five thousand years. We’ll be lucky if it manages to last
another hundred. Of course, its ultimate disintegration will impact Crew and
civilian alike.”

Something nagged at Zax after a few mins of listening.
The voice had been modulated to disguise the speaker, but there was something
about the speech pattern that seemed familiar. As for the content of the
message, Zax had no idea where this talk of slavery was coming from and who
exactly might be hoarding what resources, but he agreed with the person’s
assessment of the Ship. As long as he had been alive, it had been clear the
pace of decay among the Ship’s critical systems was accelerating towards a
point where all of their maintenance efforts would no longer keep ahead of the
damage. Hell, it was amazing the FTL drive had lasted so long. It was the most
critical system on board which also had no redundancy. It might not occur in
his lifetime, but Zax was certain the Ship was sliding inexorably towards an
irreparable state. The voice continued.

“Even though all of us who have given this any
significant thought have recognized the Ship’s condition will ultimately prove
fatal and our Mission will fail, we never saw a better alternative than to
press ahead and seek out the next new world in the next new system. What else
could we do? Earth was behind us somewhere, but what would be the sense in
going back to a dead planet. We’ve left plenty of colonies in our wake, but not
a single one of those planets was sufficient to support the ten million of us
who are awake, much less the billion who still wait in cryosleep. If there’s
nothing behind us but death or misery, then why not press forward and hope for
the best.

“This equation changed one year ago, though the
Crew’s leadership has done their utmost to keep this fact hidden. A group of
Marines discovered irrefutable evidence the Ship is not the only representative
of humanity traveling the stars. The image on the screen was taken during a
planetary expedition and shows the wreckage of a fighter craft which is not
associated with the Ship and yet is clearly human in origin. Look at the
writing in the cockpit! Look at that picture of Earth! Even though the Omega
puppets who lead the Crew and the Ship’s Artifical Intelligence which pulls
their strings tried to suppress and discredit this evidence, I’m here today as
emphatic proof it was impossible for them to do so. We are not alone! There are
more humans traveling the stars—humans who have the means and ability to
explore distant planets!”

Zax didn’t need to be told the image of the human
fighter was legitimate since he had seen the craft firsthand. He had never
admitted this fact to anyone other than Kalare in an effort to protect himself
but instead concocted a story where he was only passing along what Mikedo had
sent him in her final message. When Zax first revealed the video, the Omegas
who ran the Ship tried to bully the few people who saw it into forgetting about
it altogether. When that strategy failed and news of the video became too
widespread to ignore, they pursued a different approach. Alpha, the root node
of the Ship’s AI, produced “evidence” showing how Mikedo’s video was a forgery.
This proved sufficient for most Crew to drop their questions about the rumors.
The civilians clearly hadn’t been as willing to accept those lies. Zax looked
over at the Boss. The man seemed to be ignoring how the Omegas’ deception was
being exposed and continued to stare at the wall opposite where he sat.

“We know they’re out there somewhere. Unfortunately,
we have no way of knowing where this new human homeworld might be. Do we ignore
their existence and continue stumbling forward to serve our hopeless Mission,
or do we take decisive action to find these other humans and seek refuge from
our dying Ship? A handful of Omegas tried to decide for us, but I’m here today
to say we reject their authority in this critical matter. We’re going to find
the humans who built the spacecraft you see on your screen!

“Much to the chagrin of the Captain, the Flight Boss,
and all of the other Omegas who run the Ship, I am not stupid enough to believe
that just wishing for these humans to appear will allow us to find them. The
odds of us just stumbling across these other humans are infinitesimal given how
we’ve seen evidence of their existence once in five thousand years. No—what we
need is a strategy to give ourselves the best chance of finding them and we
believe we’ve got just such a plan.

“Starting today we will work our way backwards to
visit the colonies the Ship has established in the last five thousand years.
Each of these outposts represents a shining beacon we hope may have attracted
the attention of these mysterious humans. Our goal is to find additional evidence
along this path which will point us to where these humans are originating from.
Ideally, these humans will have made contact with some of our colonists and may
even be living alongside them.

“What happens if we don’t cross paths with these
humans as we retrace our steps? Well, there’s one last place where we may find
evidence of who they are and where they may be. If all else fails, we will
return to the very beginning of this Ship’s journey—Earth.”

The image of the human fighter was replaced by an image of
Earth. It remained
by far
the most beautiful and hospitable of all the
planets the Ship had ever encountered. Humanity had come of age swimming in its
blue oceans and gazing up at its white wispy clouds, and it seemed fitting to
think the Ship might soon return. Zax knew in his heart the planet was dead and
it was a foolish dream as a final destination, and yet deep in his marrow he
felt a yearning for
home
at the notion he might see that lonely blue
marble with his own two eyes. After letting Earth’s image soak in for a while,
the voice spoke again with increased vehemence.

“The Omegas made their decision to ignore the
existence of other humans and press forward. We do not expect them to easily
accept we have now chosen otherwise. We will help them to do so today. The
Captain wants you to believe this is a ragtag group of civilians who will piss
themselves out of fear when the first Marine in ChamWare appears out of thin
air. We are not. We are half a million strong and we are prepared!”

There was a collective gasp in the compartment as each
member of the Crew envisioned five hundred thousand berserk civilians. There
was no doubt the Marines were well-armed and wildly powerful, but with ten to
one odds in their favor the civilians might stand a chance. And if they already
had 5% of the civilian population engaged, Zax couldn’t help but wonder what
would stop them from enlisting the other 95% and making those odds two hundred
to one. Human history was chock full of insurgents who overcame great
disparities in weaponry to win their cause.

“The past year has not been full of random riots.
Each and every activity has been part of a master plan and prepared us for
today. We don’t want to harm anyone. We’re not trying to take the Ship away
from the Crew. We believe you’re still the best people available to support our
new goal of finding these other humans. We don’t believe your leadership is
working towards the best interests of all the Ship’s inhabitants, however, so
we’re going to help them see the error of their ways. Once they accept our
plans, we’re prepared to return most aspects of life back to what they were
just a short time ago. This is not a mutiny. We’re not going to send all of the
Crew out an airlock. Unless you force us to.”

The voice paused for a long moment to let those final
words sink in.

“That’s all for now. To those civilians not already
involved, go back to your quarters. If we need your help, we’ll call for you.
To the Crew who are not already held captive by my teams, I implore you to put
down your arms and return to your quarters as well. We’ve disabled the Tube
system, so, unfortunately, you’ll have to live like a civilian today and just
walk.

“Captain—please hear me clearly. You’ve already lost
control of the Ship and there’s no need for any additional lives to be lost
proving me right. I’ll report back once we’ve finalized our takeover and gotten
commitment from the Omegas to move forward with our plans.”

The screens did not fade to black as usual after
newsvids but instead displayed the image of the human fightercraft. Zax looked
at the Flight Boss and saw a smirk on his face. Even with his current
situation, the Omega seemed to doubt the notion he had truly lost control of
his Ship. The irony was not lost on Zax that he how sat captive alongside the
man who was a prime target of this revolution—a revolution which Zax himself
instigated a year ago when he revealed the existence of other humans.