Rogue Messiah: Fleetfoot Interstellar Series, Book 2 Read online

  Rogue Messiah

  Fleetfoot Interstellar, Book 2

  P. Joseph Cherubino

  © Copyright 2016 P. Joseph Cherubino

  All rights reserved.

  Cherubino Press

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  Table of Contents

  Thank You

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  1

  Captain Drexler Fleetfoot leaned far back in his ancient, Old Earth office chair. He propped one boot heel on the edge of the desk and let the other heel cross his ankle. A crude spring creaked against an equally crude, stamped-steel frame. Drexler let his fingers find the places on the metal armrest where gray enamel paint chipped away. His fingertips met the cold steel that protected itself with a thin coat of oxidation. The fingers came away red with rust as if he lingered on the bloody scab of an insect bite.

  As backward as the manufacture of the thousand-year-old furniture was, the chair and matching gray metal desk were built to last. In fact, the objects lasted long enough that they belonged in a museum, and not in the Captain's quarters of an interstellar cargo ship heading ill-prepared into war.

  When Drexler’s father owned the ship and ran the Fleetfoot Interstellar Freight Company, he rejected many lucrative offers for these rare pieces. Drexler never understood why the old man would not take the offers, even as he struggled for credits to keep the company going and his family fed. Drexler wondered why he did not sell the furniture himself, considering how many desperate years intervened between his taking over the company and now. He’d always found one reason or another to keep the antiques, no matter how weak. Perhaps his father did as well.

  Marshall Fleetfoot disappeared with Drexler’s middle brother more than a decade ago. His sister and oldest brother left the company shortly after that. Drexler vowed he would never abandon the ship on which he was born, came of age and made his career. Life in space was all he knew, and he would not have it any other way. He never questioned his decision, even on days like today. To Drex, the new war was just another set of problems to solve. It was no different than finding contracts, fixing a fusion reactor or dealing with travel at near light speed through an uncharted ion cloud.

  “And here we all are,” Drexler said aloud to no one in particular. He knew the ship’s AI heard him, but it had enough sense not to respond. Drexler was in a mood. “Just me, a six-hundred-year-old ship, some furniture from 1950s Earth and a sweet little newborn war.”

  His square-toe flight boots made a broken, lopsided ‘v’ of a picture frame for the scene unfolding out in space past the transparent bulkhead. A few thousand kilometers away, the Federated Americas city ship New Detroit shimmered as its particle fields formed in preparation for blinkpoint translation. Drexler could almost make out the towering structures that protruded from the seventy-five-mile-long asteroid that created the body of New Detroit. The refugee ships that surrounded it like a cloud of flies now moved to a safe distance. Those ships too damaged to follow were evacuated and left behind for the target practice Drexler planned for his new armada that did not yet exist.

  The plan was for New Detroit to blink to a secret location close enough for ready access to Kerala 2, yet far enough to escape the notice of the Reptilian battle fleet. There, they would all hide until it was safe to come out. It was a tall order. To eliminate information leaks and increase the chances of success, the Governmental Hive-Mind decided not to inform anyone of the escape location. In fact, the Hive demanded that the refugee ship captains themselves should not know the blinkpoint destination until they arrived there. A secondary war nearly started when New Detroit sent its pilots to take command of the ships.

  To defuse the situation, Drexler engaged in a tiring, frustrating campaign of shuttle diplomacy, racing back and forth between the city ship and the objecting captains. The job was made harder by the fact that the Hive Mind refused to communicate directly. Drexler tried for days to reach his old friend in the New Detroit Government. Harvard Yalu never responded. Instead, everyone had to deal with the lower Hive Daemons―bureaucrats who could only relay information and stage-manage the results. In the end, everyone reached an understanding, but the effort taxed Drexler beyond his margins. Diplomacy was a far different business than the freight contract negotiations to which he was accustomed.

  Drexler managed to convince all parties that mutual benefit was a sure promise of any cooperation in these dire times. His winning argument was that compliance with onerous security demands is far better than being turned into plasma clouds by a Reptilian Battle Cruiser or captured for cheap meat by a Reptilian raiding sortie. His fellow captains found that position difficult to counter. The Hive Mind agreed. Drexler supposed that the Trade Union came down to a choice between the lesser of two evils.

  As he sat at the desk he’d once hid beneath as a child, it occurred to Drex that perhaps the Union was always simply that choice. After the Silicoid Wars that forced Humanity into space and wreaked havoc on nearly every known Sentient homeworld, the Union added stability to a wounded galaxy.

  Trade in goods and services allowed devastated worlds to sustain themselves and populations to thrive again. The Union lasted for more than six hundred years as a collection of reliable institutions governing life in space. It was the thing that made life as a commercial astronaut possible.

  In the span of a few short months, the Reptilians changed all that with their sudden attack. The Union stumbled, paralyzed, but it was not quite dead. It still had a chance, if Drexler guessed correctly. The odds were far from good. Drexler sought to work the margins for advantage. You couldn’t get more marginal than the refugee cloud and New Detroit, far off the Trades and cut off from support.

  The next task the Captain wanted to complete was the biggest, least probable, and most important business deal
he had ever schemed. The Trade Union as a whole had no force capable of stopping the Reptilian invasion. Six hundred years of interspecies cooperation provided no precedent for violent conflict. Now that the refugee cloud was working together, Drexler aimed to find a core of group leaders from which to assemble a resistance force. He intended to start with the captains of the ships who took charge within the cloud. Then, he would head back to New Detroit to seek out old friends suitable for the work he had in mind.

  For some unfathomable reason, Reggie decided to intrude on Drexler’s brooding. “I’m sorry to interrupt your moment of self-pity and doubt, captain,” the AI said in his usual sardonic tone, “but I have reports coming in from the refugee cloud that require your attention.”

  Drexler gritted his teeth and removed his boots from the desk. He swept aside the flexible display scroll that showed the green columns of his company balance sheet and pulled the reports from the chaotic pile. He hated to look away from a spreadsheet that showed a profit for the first time in more than seven years.

  Thanks to a deal with the Insectoid General, he had more credits than he’d ever seen. He was a wealthy man for the first time in his life. He could afford back pay and well-deserved bonuses for his crew, ship maintenance, upgrades, and, possibly, retirement. So what if this Insectoid, in command of her private army, believed Drexler was some kind of religious figure who would lead her people to salvation? Her beliefs padded his bottom line, so he was all right with that.

  The problem was that there was no place for anyone to spend credits now that the Trade Union was at war. He could not get to a shipyard without being attacked, and there was no safe world on which to retire. The chaotic border worlds were even worse. Commerce stopped dead in its tracks. There was no Trade Union without trade. If Drexler let the Reptiles win, all his work added up to nothing. He would not have that.

  “Go ahead and pipe them to this scroll, Reggie. And dial back your jackassery a few notches. I am not in the mood.”

  Reggie played the dutiful computer and sent the information to the indicated scroll. He couldn’t resist a poke at the Captain, who he knew as a boy that was entertained by movies from 20th-century Earth. Drexler loved that period of Earth history, and Reggie ever hesitated to indulge that interest. “Your expressions are so quaint,” Reggie remarked. “The jackass went extinct with the fall of Earth, more than eight hundred years ago.”

  “Shows how much you know,” Drexler replied. “The Caliphate worlds are cloning new mules from genetic remnants and the last remaining horses. They plan to make a gift of the first one to the Judeo-Christian worlds. Project’s been in the works for years. Scientific diplomacy, and all that jazz.”

  “I don’t follow the news that closely,” Reggie replied.

  “Yeah, because you’re too busy being a pain in my ass.”

  “Clever,” Reggie replied. “I see what you did with the wordplay there.”

  Drexler rolled his eyes and groaned, rubbing his face with both hands.

  “Mess hall,” Drexler spoke aloud. The comm system picked up his call and sent it to the mess duty staff.

  “Nuva here, Captain,” came the purring voice belonging to a feline crew member.

  “Please bring a pot of strong coffee to my quarters with some cream and sugar.”

  “Yes, Captain. My records show you’ve not taken a meal for fifteen hours. That is well outside the normal human feeding cycle. I will also bring you a meal.”

  Drexler’s immediate impulse was to snap at her. He didn’t ask for a meal because he had no time for it, nor did he have an appetite. Drexler hated being told what he needed. Harsh words filled his mouth and almost spilled out before Drexler realized that he was hungry after all. Nuva was right. He needed to eat.

  “Captain?” Nuva asked after a long pause.

  Drexler took a deep breath and replied, “That sounds excellent, Nuva.”

  “I’ll be there in twenty minutes!” Came Nuva’s excited response.

  Food service on a ship the size of Fleetfoot I required a full-time staff. It wasn’t easy providing nutrition for the eight different species aboard. When they weren’t busy keeping track of daily crew food requirements, mess staff were hard at work maintaining the protein cloning vats, fish tanks, and hydroponic bays that took up an entire cargo hold module.

  “And Nuva,” Drexler said.

  “Yes, Captain?”

  “I am grateful for your attention to detail. Keep up the good work,” Drexler said.

  “My, how you’ve grown,” Reggie exclaimed, using the cabin sound system instead of Drexler’s ear implants. “Giving praise to your crew. The Drexler I knew just a few months ago wouldn’t have replied to her at all.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess now that I’m a space pirate and aspiring military leader I need to adjust my management style a little bit.”

  “I’m not sure that capturing one belligerent Reptilian spacecraft qualifies you as a ‘space pirate,’” Reggie replied. “According to the rules of conflict, you were within your right to take control of that Reptilian ship and imprison its crew. Of course, that requires a flexible interpretation of the charter, but we might win in court.”

  Drexler sat up in his chair. Reggie did not sound sarcastic. “You sound serious. Are you referring to actual rules?”

  “Yes. In the event of open hostilities between Trade Union Members, those parties initiating hostilities forfeit their rights to operate spacecraft within the trade lanes. Normally, Trade Union officials would seize the craft, but since nobody was around during the hostilities, one could argue that you had the right to seize the ship.”

  “Where the hell did you find that?”

  “Oh, it was very deep in the charter, around section five-thousand,” Reggie replied.

  “And you looked it up?”

  “Oh, yes,” Reggie replied, “I started researching the legalities of this situation ever since the Reptilians tried to murder you and other members of my crew back on Keglar 7 planet. It is paramount for me to understand the rules and laws that I actively break.”

  Drexler couldn’t help himself from laughter. Life with an ungoverned AI with compromised ethical coding was always a rich experience. Sometimes, it was even terrifying.

  “So, how many laws did we break,” Drexler asked.

  “Surprisingly and regretfully, not many. Luckily, the Reptilian aggression changes a lot regarding behavioral context. I was hoping for some high-echelon felonies. I think we’re in the misdemeanor range. Probably some fines and restrictions are involved, nothing more.”

  “You are assuming that the Trade Union comes down on our side,” Drexler countered. “Outside of New Detroit and the refugee cloud, my sources tell me that most Trade Union worlds blame me for this conflict.”

  “Yes, the Reptilian propaganda machine is trying desperately to spin this war as a response to your tobacco smuggling and your alleged attack on Kelgar 7 station.”

  “And Kerala 2 once believed I was in league with the Reptiles,” Drexler said.

  “Officially, the BJP government still does assert that you are, or were, working for the Lizards,” Reggie replied. “They claim it started with your father.”

  “That’s a tough position to support, seeing as I’m the damn leader of the only force doing anything to stop the Reptiles,” Drexler replied, color rising to his cheeks.

  “Yes, they are having a hard time supporting that position to the grand total of four world governments that are on our side. It does help somewhat that you leaked word of your command of a resistance force that does not exist,” Reggie said.

  “Yet!” Drexler replied, raising an index finger to the ceiling. “It does not exist, yet! And anyway, the BJP is just hedging its bets. I’d wager they’ll be fine with my little guerrilla campaign, if it works. What a mess.” Drexler said, surprising himself with the understatement. The task at hand kept him from worrying too much about what might happen afterward. The possibility of significant prison time
was in the offing, assuming he did not get himself and the ship turned into a ball of plasma first.

  Drexler was deep into the reports when the door chime sounded. “Enter,” the Captain said.

  Nuva swept into the room wheeling a cart with coffee and a meal. Her slender, graceful, feline form exercised a flourish of motion as she presented dinner. Removing a polished metal dome that covered a plate, Nuva announced with a bow, “A patty of beef on a whole-wheat bread roll, with a layer of cheese, fresh tomato, lettuce and raw onion. On the side, we have julienned potatoes which are deep fried in rendered beef oil, then lightly salted.”

  Drexler smirked at the elaborate description. “Cheeseburger and fries,” he said. “My favorite. How did you know?”

  “I ran a statistical analysis of your choices that revealed this is your most common meal during periods of high work demand,” Nuva said, straightening to her full height of four feet, ten inches. She licked her wrist and ran it proudly across the tortoise-patterned fur of her ears and forehead.

  “Well, you’ve outdone yourself,” Drexler replied. “This looks perfect. I had no idea how hungry I was until you showed up.”

  “Thank you, Captain!” Nuva exclaimed. She wheeled the cart around and left the cabin, as if any more time might spoil her moment in the sun.

  Drexler ate slowly in spite of his hunger as he consumed the information of more than a hundred reports. The process took him nearly two hours, after which his burger was long gone and the coffee pot nearly drained.

  “It looks like our most pressing concern is the condition of fifty-million refugees crowded into less than eight thousand ships that were never designed to hold that many people.”

  “Oh, really?” Reggie replied. “I would think your most pressing concern would be how to recapture the trade lanes between Kerala 2 and Medina 3, using nothing more than freighters, transports, and angry meat units.”

  “And I’m surprised that your quantum processors can’t suss out the bigger picture,” Drexler replied idly, directing the greater portion of his attention to the last report. His mind cultivated the seed of a plan.