Outworld Asylum

"You mean witchcraft?" Cutter said, causing Leda to smile at how powerful men could be so ignorant at times, she conceded that women were not immune to that same phenomenon. "Don't even start with that smleck. I'd be laughed out of the boardroom if I brought that up."

"I hear that the CEO checks his horoscope every day," Leda said and turned to him, satisfied that his plant was healthy and well-tended. "But something occulted is a thing hidden. Magic has nothing to do with it. It's just that if we've lost contact, the communications systems are redundant, and there's no evidence saying the ship was destroyed, then the next simplest answer is probably the most correct: that the Amber-Rivet is being hidden from us somehow."

"And now Admiral Kinkaid, in all his wisdom, has pulled the naval presence from the control zone where we need it most," Cutter said with a snort. "I guess even legends occasionally make stupid choices."

"It might've been a very wise choice," Leda said quietly, her mind sifting through everything her intuition and her connections on the Lands-Connect network could piece together. A picture was emerging… at least small sections of it. "I think the fewer military ships there are in that zone, the better we'll be."

"Why's that?" Cutter said and leaned back in his black leather chair.

"What if… and this is just a hypothetical situation… the asteroids in the fields weren't asteroids at all," Leda said and found Cutter's eyes locked on hers. "What if they were spaceships but not… not human… and what if that field was actually a fleet?"

"I've never known you to deal in hypothetical situations," Cutter said as he crossed his arms over his chest. "You know something."

"Just things that I've heard and felt," Leda said and took in the lights and towers of the urban core again. "Nothing I can prove. Take it as you may."

"How many people like you are aware of this?" Cutter demanded in a soft but firm voice. "The government? Our compeditors?"

"People have been entertained by the notion of alien encounters since eighteen-sixty-seven… even before then," Leda said, most of her type-3 friends had employment with the entities that Cutter mentioned and she knew that he knew it. "I'd say people have known about it for quite some time, only thought they were just being entertained, never guessing that they were being prepared as well."

"First contact." Cutter said and let out a troubled breath.

"I might be wrong," Leda said and shrugged dismissively. "After all, a race would have to develop the technology to bridge massive interstellar distances. It would be prohibitive to say the least."

Cutter, visibly concerned, looked at her and said, "We did."

***

SOL-4/Mars

Kinkaid lifted his eyes to the door when Jena knocked. She entered with a data-pad full of shipping incidents that had occurred over the long Martian night… nothing she estimated worth troubling the commander of the naval forces protecting Sol but orders were orders. Kinkaid had bags under his eyes and a look of ill disposition.

"Are you all right, sir?" Jena said, her voice tinged with real concern, she felt an odd connection to the old. "It's none of my business, sir… but you seem… out of sorts."

"It's your job to be concerned with my welfare, commander, and the answer to your question is yes and no. Physically, I'm as healthy as one could expect to be, particularly after so many years in cold sleep… but there are other ways I feel decidedly unwell," Kinkaid said and met her eyes with his again. "I'm nearly a hundred… I feel like a dinosaur… a Methuselah. Every friend I've ever known has passed on. I never see my family, and even if I did, the only ones left are my great-grandchildren. I love my country and my people, which is the only reason I agree to be frozen like a Christmas turkey over and over again, but every time I wake up, I like the world I see less and less."

"What about your son, sir?" Jena said when the old Admiral paused. The eyes that had stared through her only moments earlier softened. Kinkaid seemed to be on the verge of tears.

"I have no son," He said quietly, his voice as hard as his eyes had been, the dim light in the room seemed to grow darker. "My son would not have such flagrant disrespect for our laws. My son would not be a convict. My son would not turn his back on every value I ever tried to instill in him. If only… if only I'd been awake… if I'd been awake I could've brought him around."

"It's not your fault, sir," Jena said, afraid that she'd opened a wound too large to close, all she could do now was damage control. "Children spend all their lives trying to escape from the shadow of their parents. I still am… and it's not something you can effect no matter how much you try. That's the nature of things."

"Just like growing old," Kinkaid said and gave a resigned sigh. After a minute of thoughtful silence, he looked at Jena and the edges of his mouth curled slightly. "You are surely your father's daughter."

"I never knew him, sir," Jena said and laid the data-pad on his desk. "Only pictures of him… sometimes pictures of him and me. I heard his voice on videos made before I was born, learned about his heart by my mother's stories."

Adm. Kinkaid smiled wistfully and said, "I asked him once why it was that he fought with such ferocity. He said nothing but removed a photo of your mother. Nothing else was needed for me to understand his passion."

"What was he like, sir?"

"Nathan Mitchell was a ball-breaking, son-of-a-bitch who worked his crew to the verge of mutiny on more than one occasion," Kinkaid said as he leaned back in his chair. "He was hated by far more people than he was loved by, but he was tough… extremely capable, and he made sure everyone knew it. His crew knew it… and that when it came to battle he would bring them back alive… if anyone could. They didn't love him… but they respected and obeyed him, and that was the most important thing of all."

"And you and he were friends, sir?" Jena said, disturbed that the fantasy she'd held of her father as a perfect man was shattered so quickly, but it was a thing she'd wondered about since the family's notification of his death.

"Our relationship was one of equals," Kinkaid said and laboriously stood, clasped his hands behind his back, and walked to the window overlooking the dusty red plains beyond Elysium. "We shared the same watches on Saratoga, ate the same food, dripped the same sweat. During battle we muttered the same prayers. He was given command of the Saratoga before the Neo-colonial War had run its course. I was given the Columbia."

"Were you there when," Jena started but nearly choked on the words. "When Saratoga was lost?"

"I was indeed," Kinkaid said solemnly and turned to face her. "The bloodiest day in NorCom naval history. Are you… sure… you want to hear this?"

"Yes, sir." Jena said and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her uniform.

"The objective was Avalon," Kinkaid said and moved to the small service bar built into the room and removed a pitcher of water and a glass. "The Eurocons knew we were massing at Sixty-one Virginis… half a million troops, over a hundred ships. A blind fool could've seen that there were only two possible targets… Fifty-one Pegasai or Forty-Seven Ursae Majoris… New Haven or Avalon."

"Why Avalon, sir?" Jena said as Kinkaid filled the glass and put it to his lips. He drained it in a single draught and replaced pitcher and glass in the recesses of the service bar.

"New Haven was within our range but judged as too expensive," Kinkaid said as he took his seat again. He spun to face her. "Avalon was the jewel in the EuroCon colonial crown. Even better, the orbital defenses there were still under construction, so the choice for our attack was plain. Propaganda and disinformation threw the EuroCon into confusion. Rather than dividing their fleet, and risking its loss, they kept it under garrison at New Haven… so we were convinced anyway."

"What do you mean, sir?" Jena said and sat on the edge of Kinkaid's desk.

"We sent a battle group to harass the New Haven garrison and reinforce the illusion of an impending attack there," Kinkaid said and shook his head. "Never once did we think that we could be taken by a deception of EuroCon making… but with every report of Seven Kreigsmarine waiting at Fifty-one Pegasai for us, we more and more fell into the trap being laid for us."

"At Avalon, sir?" Jena said as a stream of ships and transports moving away from Pax Oceanus appeared in her mind's eye. Kinkaid shook his head.

"The EuroCons correctly guessed that we would need to refuel before hitting Avalon," Kinkaid said grimly. "They were waiting for us at Phi Beta Canatorum."

"The next system in line down the Virginis Run," Jena said and Kinkaid nodded again. "I thought systems hosting a SolCorp platform were considered neutral?"

"There was not a SolCorp station then," Kinkaid said. "Just a few dozen of our tankers waiting for our invasion force. The troop transports were the first to fuel… then our ships-of-the-line. That's when the EuroCons hit us from all sides… with our fuel tanks half empty and a fleet of fat tankers for the taking."

"Christ and Allah." Jena said quietly.

"We'd just finished topping off our tanks when the battle began," Kinkaid said and his eyes shone with a wetness not there before. "I wish you could've seen it… how defiantly Saratoga turned to meet them, her engines burning bright, escorts falling into position around her as if… as if they were fingers on the same hand," Kinkaid held out his hands for emphasis then collapsed back against his seat. "Those of us with fuel were ordered away… to follow the troop transports to Avalon. The rest of the fleet fought a delaying action… holding open the jaws of death long enough for us to make the jump."

"Did you talk to him before…" Jena said and let the thought trail off, not wanting to think about what he would inevitably tell her.

"I begged him to turn the Saratoga around and make for the Virginis system," Kinkaid said quietly. "But Nathan laughed at the worry in my voice and said we would meet again when there were no more battles left to fight."

"Did he… did he die well, sir?" Jena said and suddenly recalled holding a hardcopy fax from the NorCom-Office of Fleet Affairs that began, 'We regret to inform you…'

"Nathan Mitchell and the USS Saratoga were names much feared and hated by the EuroCon naval command," Kinkaid said and dabbed at his own eyes though tears were beyond his pride. "Where other ships drew two attackers, Saratoga drew five… the EuroCon paid a heavy price to collect him, I promise you… three ships-of-the-line destroyed, at least, with others heavily damaged. I could see that he was still in action when we reached the jump point but was surrounded. The last transmission we picked up was that he was losing reactor containment… then Saratoga was gone… exploded."

Jena and Kinkaid turned simultaneously as someone came through the door into his office, an ensign from the Communications office with a sheet of hardcopy in hand, he stopped just inside the door and saluted.

"What is it?" Kinkaid said as Jena composed herself. The aide walked around to the front of his desk and laid down the hardcopy. He wore an American flag on his left shoulder.

"We've picked up a message from inside the asteroid field migrating Omega control zone, sir," The ensign said and went to attention. "It's an Old Earth signal called Morse Code we've been receiving for the last thirty minutes."

"Dammit, son, get to the point," Kinkaid said and glowered at the younger man as he picked up the hardcopy and scanned over the lines of data. "Have you decoded it yet?"

"It's a single word on a repeating string, sir… sanctuary… over and over… just sanctuary. One ship has been reported missing in the field, sir… but I hardly think they would be in such dire condition as to forego more modern ways of communication in favor of something not used since the early twentieth century."

"Commander," The admiral said and spun to face Jena as the ensign saluted again and made for the door. "Your thoughts on the matter?"

Jena thought quietly for several moments and said, "Customs Authority has probably picked up the same signal. They'll have ships in a position to investigate sooner than we can. It would be wise to coordinate through them. I'll contact them directly."

"Good thinking," Kinkaid said. "And issue the order for Home Fleet to increase its readiness status. I'm not going to be caught unprepared if they try anything we don't like."