Homeward: The Ship Series // Book Three Read online

  Homeward

  The Ship Series // Book Three

  Jerry Aubin

  Lekanyane Publishing

  Contents

  The Story So Far

  1. This is the rock!

  2. You totally deserve this.

  3. You led a Revolution, you won, and now you're in charge.

  4. This doesn't feel right, Boss.

  5. Half.

  6. We are heading back the way we came.

  7. You're right, Alpha.

  8. Sir, you already answered the question.

  9. Can you hear me?

  10. One last thing.

  11. Take it or leave it.

  12. To get us ready for the real thing.

  13. Today you will fly.

  14. Maverick is go for launch.

  15. Kalare's your friend, right?

  16. I understand your predicament.

  17. I'll think about it.

  18. Well played, Adan.

  19. Why are they firing at us, Z?

  20. How cool is that?

  21. You're correct, Boss.

  22. We all have our little hobbies.

  23. I don't see a reason to stick around here any longer.

  24. Forget it.

  25. Any other questions?

  26. That sounds like a great plan, Boss.

  27. You got to wear ChamWare?

  28. Sounds about right for civilians.

  29. Wow.

  30. I agree you shouldn't trust me.

  31. She's practically gone!

  32. I just received a message from the Ship.

  33. We're too far away and there's not enough time.

  34. Would you like to speak with him?

  35. What's the information worth to you, Boss?

  36. Well, that certainly changes things.

  37. None of this is getting us anywhere.

  38. You were right.

  39. Let's set the course and start tomorrow.

  40. I can take care of what's needed next.

  41. It must be a mistake.

  42. You've always seemed ageless.

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Jerry Aubin

  If you purchased this book without a cover it would be pretty surprising. You’re missing a cool cover! Go out and buy a copy that actually has a cover.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2016 Jerry Aubin

  Illustrations copyright © 2016 Jerry Aubin

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  For any information, please contact [email protected].

  Lekanyane Publishing

  Austin // Amsterdam // Cape Town // Sydney // Christchurch

  ISBN 978-0-9970708-5-9 (pbk)

  ISBN 978-0-9970708-4-2 (ebk)

  ISBN: 978-0-9970708-4-2

  For K, P, W, and Q

  The Story So Far

  LANDFALL introduces us to Zax and Kalare, two cadets approaching their sixteenth birthdays, as they work to establish their careers in the Ship’s Crew. The two catch the eye of the Flight Boss, the second most powerful member of the Omegas running the Ship, and he offers to mentor the one who comes out on top after a series of training competitions. Mikedo, a Flight Lieutenant, leads their instruction and quickly forms deep bonds with the two cadets. The training culminates with a mission to explore a planet prior to colonization where Zax makes a startling discovery—what appears to be a spacecraft built by unknown humans. Mikedo convinces Zax that his discovery is a danger to the Ship’s fragile society, and her fears gain credence when she dies under mysterious circumstances shortly thereafter. Zax identifies sufficient circumstantial evidence to suspect the Flight Boss of conspiring to kill Mikedo and hide the discovery of unknown humans, and he publicly confronts the man with it. The Boss laughs off the accusations and punishes Zax by banishing him to the bottom of the Ship’s hierarchy.

  REVOLUTION picks up one year later with Zax and Kalare moving in two different directions. She has thrived under the Boss’s mentorship and loves the Pilot Academy, while he toils in the literal bowels of the Ship serving under the most clueless of its officers. The civilian uprising triggered by Zax’s discovery of the human fighter boils over into full revolution. The two cadets, along with Zax’s longtime nemesis Aleron, become enmeshed in a mission to help Sergeant Bailee, a fierce Marine, keep the Boss out of the civilians’ hands in order to protect the Ship. Along the way, Zax runs afoul of Rege, a leader of the revolutionaries, and shockingly discovers their movement is led by no other than Imair—a civilian woman he had worked side-by-side with for a year. Zax accepts a mission to kill the Boss rather than allow the civilian revolution to succeed, but he fails when the man appears to betray the Crew in order to save himself and remain in power. The Boss rewards Zax and restores him to his position atop the Crew’s hierarchy with an appointment to the Pilot Academy, but it is an uneasy truce as Zax continues to believe the man is a murderous traitor.

  HOMEWARD opens with a trip back in time…

  1

  This is the rock!

  Markev’s elbow accidentally poked his ribcage for the fifth time in the last thirty minutes. Adan responded by intentionally jamming his own into the giant man’s beefy side.

  “Why can’t you manage to keep your body to yourself, you big oaf!”

  “Sorry, sir. I think you should get your money back from whoever advertised this survey craft as fitting two people. Maybe you should’ve brought one of those puny engineers along for the ride instead of your bodyguard.”

  Adan grinned. “I thought about it, but unfortunately you’re more intelligent than all of them combined. Still nowhere near as a smart as me, of course, but bright enough to be marginally useful.”

  “Thank you, sir. I guess.” The man paused. “If I may—why is either one of us wasting time on this trip in the first place? You’ve got more money than most governments. Shouldn’t you have just paid some prospector from the East to do all of this rock collecting for you?”

  The frustration in Markev’s voice was clear, and its source was understandable. They, along with a dozen engineers, had just completed their sixteenth month crammed into a spacecraft. Even though their main vessel was far larger than the tiny survey craft, the vast majority of its space was dedicated to supplies and fuel with very little volume remaining for living quarters. The human body wasn’t designed to spend that amount of time crammed into impossibly small spaces. More importantly, the human mind wasn’t designed to share those small spaces with other humans. This was especially true of Adan’s own mind since he barely tolerated the existence of most other people under the best circumstances.

  Markev was also correct about the ready availability of others to do the work. Miners from the East had traveled to the belt for decades and had made the journey itself routine, though primarily because they Uploaded all of their crews and passengers. For them, lengthy space travel experiences would be customized to whatever best suited the individual. More than one best-selling book had been written by people from the East who constructed a virtual desert island and then didn’t interact with another living soul for the entirety of their voyage to the belt. As deeply as Adan believed Uploading one’s mind and forfeiting one’s physical body to be an abomination, sixteen months of breathing his own and other people’s recycled farts had almost convinced him to rethink his position. Almost, but not quite. He repl
ied.

  “You really think I would outsource this particular project and then try to manage it from half a billion kilometers away? Haven’t I made it abundantly clear how critical this effort is? Have you not been paying attention to how hands-on I’ve been with my most critically important projects?”

  Adan had an even stronger justification, but he had to keep it hidden from everyone. He had accomplished something truly astounding with all of the isolated time during their journey, and his discovery would forever remove the vastness of space as a reason for people to abandon their bodies and Upload. He wasn’t prepared to discuss it with anyone yet, not even Markev, but he was confident his results would stand up to scrutiny. Home was still at least a year away, and the return voyage would provide adequate time to re-validate his findings.

  Markev still appeared dubious, but he nodded his head and then pointed to the viewscreen. “Here’s our next candidate asteroid, sir. I can’t believe we’ve been out here for four months, and this is only the seventh rock that’s fit your search parameters. I always knew the belt was mostly empty space, but I never realized how much distance there was between its asteroids. This one measures one hundred kilometers long by fifty wide and ten thick, so it’s smack in the sweet spot of your preferred dimensions. I’ve run the numbers and concluded we can also deorbit and redirect it toward home easily enough given the extra engines and fuel we’re carrying.”

  Adan was excited the rock met their first two requirements regarding size and orbital plane. This wasn’t the first time that had happened, though, and it was the final requirement where every other candidate asteroid had failed over the last few months—mineral composition. The East had spent a generation in the belt prospecting for those rare minerals that had the greatest value when shipped home. Adan wasn’t searching for anything rare, however. Titanium wasn’t valuable at home given its prevalence, but it was priceless when available as a building material in orbit. That was where his project would need an incomprehensible amount of it. There was only one way to find out whether this rock would meet their needs.

  “Thanks, Markev. I’ll deploy the core survey laser.”

  The device was his own brilliant design. It was responsible for the majority of his tremendous fortune thanks to all of the prospecting the East had done in the belt. Adan didn’t like the East one bit and certainly didn’t share their values, but he never let that get in the way of doing business with them. His laser had allowed them to harvest untold wealth from the belt, and Adan’s contracts with them had astutely called for ongoing mineral royalties rather than one-time payments.

  The first pulse of the laser drilled the width of a human hair ten kilometers in the span of seconds. A second pulse performed laser spectroscopy along the entirety of the minuscule shaft to identify the mineral profile throughout the stratum. A couple of hours of work could create a detailed profile of any area being sampled, and Adan took the time necessary to evaluate the full width and length of the asteroid. His excitement level steadily increased until he eventually exclaimed his conclusion.

  “This mineral profile couldn’t be a better match. This is the rock!”

  Markev had been staring at him worriedly, but the bodyguard’s brow unfurrowed at Adan’s words. “Finally. Shall I inform the rest of the crew?”

  Adan shook his head. “Hold on. I need you to do something for me first. Vector us five kilometers above the surface.”

  Markev did as requested and Adan stared out the viewscreen with a widening grin. The asteroid below him had traveled the cold depths of space for billions of years. In a few short weeks it would have engines installed. It would cease to be a lifeless rock driven only by Newton’s laws and instead be transformed into the most massive spacecraft ever envisioned. The engines were just the beginning, of course, and only temporary ones that would be used to manipulate the rock out of the belt and into orbit back home. That was when the real fun would start.

  Hundreds of thousands of workers would swarm upon the asteroid once it arrived. The first phase would hollow out much of its interior to create massive agricultural and storage holds. The largest mining operation ever attempted in space would not only create those underground structures, it would also generate the building materials needed for phase two. Thousands of towering structures would next rise from the asteroid’s surface. Adan’s plans called for constructing what would be one of their world’s largest metropolises but with an asteroid as its foundation. Rather than grow and evolve slowly over centuries, all of his city’s structures would emerge simultaneously during a few frantic years.

  A city traveling through the universe with millions of inhabitants—what a magnificent spaceship Adan was creating! This ship of his would need a name. An inspiring name would be the first critical step in the marketing campaign necessary to recruit a crew for its journey. Markev interrupted his reverie.

  “What are you smiling about, sir?”

  Adan pointed to his right and thirty degrees above the asteroid’s surface. The faint blue dot with its ten billion inhabitants was exactly where he knew it would be.

  “I can’t wait to see what everyone back home on Earth thinks about our amazing new mission to save our species.”

  2

  You totally deserve this.

  Kalare finished telling Zax her story about getting shot and being rescued by the Marines. She expected him to be happy to see her, but he appeared confused instead. He was an odd boy sometimes, and she never knew what was knocking around inside that skull of his. She was debating asking him to explain himself when the screens lit up around the mess hall to show the morning newsvid. She squealed in excitement.

  “Ooohhh, we’ve got to watch this! There haven’t been any broadcasts since everything happened, but I heard last night that we’d see a full report this morning about what ended the Revolution and how things are going to work around here now with the civilians in charge.”

  Kalare grabbed a chair and set it down next to Zax. She accidentally placed it too close to his but was too interested in what the announcer had to say to bother moving.

  “We’ve got a special report for you today with the full details of what happened recently along with initial information about what you should expect to see moving forward.

  “A group of brave civilians took decisive action three days ago based on concerns that have simmered this past year regarding the viability of our Mission. After evidence surfaced that additional humans are traveling the stars, these selfless individuals concluded they must influence a change in our Mission.”

  Kalare almost guffawed at the notion of civilians who had been “brave” enough to shoot a couple of unarmed cadets in the belly, but she remained silent.

  “Their goal was to avoid as much bloodshed as possible while ensuring their message was heard and acted upon by the Captain and Omegas. They only took this action after repeated attempts at peaceful discussion through normal channels had been rebuffed. Thankfully, through the calm thinking of their leaders and the eventual cooperation of a senior member of the Crew, they were able to achieve their objectives.”

  A picture of the Boss popped up on the screen. He was bloodied and disheveled. Kalare marveled at how much torture the poor man must have endured in the name of protecting the Ship.

  “The final resolution became possible when the Flight Boss determined he needed to step in to do what was best for everyone on the Ship—Crew and civilian alike. He was initially resistant to the requests of the civilians, as can be seen here with the physical evidence of how he withstood their augmented interrogation techniques. In an exclusive interview this morning, we learned the thought process behind how his conclusions shifted, and we will air that footage later. Suffice it to say, you’ll want to hear it straight from his mouth.

  “What I can tell you now is that the Boss realized the Captain’s intent to vent the Ship and murder ten million humans was unjust and unlawful. He halted his resistance to the civilians’ requests and ul
timately brokered a deal between them and the Captain. This deal included the Captain’s agreement to step down, temporarily, pending a full review of her actions. The Flight Boss is now in charge of all Crew matters, albeit within a new command structure that includes much needed civilian oversight. It is this new leadership structure that we are going to discuss first, starting with this footage from an announcement that was made earlier this morning.”

  Zax bolted upright. “That’s entirely a lie! None of that happened like what they’re saying! The Boss wasn’t tortured, he didn’t broker any deal, he just gave in to the civilians plain and simple and sold out the Captain in the process. All to save his own skin and stay in charge!”

  Zax’s sudden movement surprised Kalare, and she sat up straight with momentary alarm. She listened to his outburst, paused for a moment, then leaned back and slowly shook her head and sighed. “Not this all over again. Didn’t you learn your lesson the last time you went looking for imaginary conspiracies involving the Boss?”

  Zax stared at her with fire in his eyes. Kalare met his gaze and didn’t flinch. Thirty secs later, he finally broke eye contact. “You’re right. I’m an idiot. I think the pain meds have me feeling wonky. I’m sorry.”

  Kalare didn’t believe he was being genuine, but he had been through a lot over the past few days and she didn’t want to add to his stress. She was dying to learn what happened with Zax and the Boss right before the civilians took over that had him so worked up, but everything about his tone and body language suggested this wasn’t the time. She changed the topic instead.

  “Do you have any clue what your duty assignment is going to be? They wouldn’t send you back to Waste Systems after all you’ve done, would they? No way they would. At least, I wouldn’t if I was in charge. Imagine what things would be like if I were in charge? I hope I wouldn’t have made some of the same choices the Captain just made that got us into this whole mess in the first place. Imagine that…Captain Kalare. It has a pretty nice ring to it, don’t you think?”