Chapter 27

Chapter Twenty-Seven
“It was in the First Expansion War.” Gregor’s voice shook at first, the trembling clear with so little else making noise. “This you have heard of?”
Connor clasped his hands together. “I’ve heard about it in history.”
“History.” The older man snorted a gust of alcohol-tinged breath. His outfit hung loose on him, as if he’d shrunk since learning of their destination. It made him look small, just a part of the galley corner.
“It’s all I had.”
“Lies and tales—that is history.”
“I won’t argue that. What’s your memory of it?”
“The Coil, there was a system we wanted. Because we wanted it, the Directorate wanted it. This is how governments think. Before this incursion, nothing. After this incursion, there is crisis and anger.”
“I thought the system we were going to is abandoned.”
“War is never about just the one thing. You say you want my money, I get mad. You say you want to drive your car through my neighborhood, I shoot you. It is not really the car going through my neighborhood I shoot you for. It is the money. But I say it is the car.”
“And your unit got involved?”
“My unit? The entire military! Me, I was sixteen, from a poor family.”
“Drafted?”
“You volunteer! Someone comes to your neighborhood. They say, ‘You, you have volunteered. Congratulations.’ And you go off to learn to kill. But not too much. This training, it is enough to point you at the enemy and say, ‘Go.’”
“You fought? Were you navy or army or—?”
“Navy. Always the navy. The army, you carry them around in ships packed like cigarettes, one on top of another. On my ship, I share quarters with twenty-four men. Forty-eight, really, but we share bunks—hot bunking. You understand?”
“Right. Two shifts.”
“You hope this other man, he does not smell or leave a mess in bunk.”
Connor wouldn’t have lasted in the navy. “So, your ship went to this system?”
“Yes. After training camp. I learned radios, you see? And our ship—the Black Fin—does a mission. We patrol, we listen for Talon activity. Then after a time, the war ends, and I am transferred to another ship. A Behemoth-class ship. Large.”
“Heavy cruisers.”
“Yes. This ship—the Goliath—I am onboard maybe a year. Then we hear, ‘You are patrolling this system.’ But one of the other ships from our squadron has already gone. The Crown of Stars. Why do we need to go if the other ship has already gone?”
“Did they tell you?”
“No. Sometimes, the Coil military can be odd.” Gregor’s hands were clasped in front of him. His thumbs danced around each other. “But we found out. The Crown of Stars, it never came back.”
“A Directorate attack?”
“They quit the war. No attack. We think, this is something no one knows—what happened to this ship.”
“So they sent you to search for it?”
“The ship is lost. The war is a year ago. No one cares about this Crown of Stars. We are on patrol, nothing else.”
“What happened?”
Gregor smoothed the front of his blue-gray coveralls, pausing when his fingertip got stuck in the burst zipper seam. “What happened?” His voice was small.
“To the Goliath.”
“This thing—a freak accident. System failure. Two sailors died.”
“Freak accident in what way?” Connor half expected it to be a cracked coolant pipe.
“Fuel line rupture. This is what someone finally said. For hours, no one knew. It was a big fire. We had to stop to fight the fire and do maintenance.”
“But you survived.”
“I did, yes. The next day, I was on duty in the radio room. The strangest signals come out.”
“Strange how?”
The communications expert stared past Connor, brow knit in concentration. “Like voices. Not human. Almost. But like you hear from bottom of ocean, you know?”
“Far away? Distorted?”
“Both, yes. I did all I could do—find where these signals come from, why they sound so odd. They use Coil frequencies. They use Coil encryption.”
“Another Coil ship on patrol nearby?” Connor knew better.
“By end of shift, I see what this is: the Crown of Stars—the missing ship.”
“After going missing for a year?”
“Yes. This signal—an emergency rescue request.”
“An SOS.”
“Except this was all wrong. Distorted, like you say.”
“They were still alive? Did their communications systems break?”
Gregor shook his head. “Our captain, he requests for guidance. This Crown of Stars, it should not be there. Command from headquarters, they say, ‘Go in search. Rescue them.’ As if a rescue can happen a year later.”
Connor was grinding his teeth. He tried to relax. “You found it, though.”
“The Crown of Stars? No. The signal, it comes from the habitable planet.”
“It crashed on the planet. There were survivors. Right?”
“This is what our captain thinks. There are people on this planet, still alive. They have defective radios. We send a detachment of soldiers down in a shuttle. They will search for this wrong signal using Coil equipment.”
The communications expert cupped his face in his hands, rubbing his eyes with his stubby fingers. A sound like a soft whimper escaped, then he crossed his arms over the tabletop.
He pinched his nose, which was already red. “This shuttle goes down to the planet. We lose contact with it. There is no signal, no trace.”
“Another crash. Radiation. It flew into a canyon that blocked its signals.”
“Maybe that. Twelve hours later, though, the signal shows up again.”
It didn’t sound as crazy as Gregor was making it out to be. Connor had heard of magnetic and other strange signal disruptions on a lot of planets. “Did they find the survivors?”
“Hm?” Gregor squinted.
“This shuttle. When they came back, had they found the survivors?”
“The shuttle.” The older man grunted. “It flew back to the Goliath. There were teams ready in case of rescue. Medical teams. More soldiers. But when they opened the shuttle, it was empty.”
“How’d it fly back?”
“Automated systems. They can do this.”
“What happened to the soliders?”
“Their weapons and armor, their uniforms—” Gregor shrugged. “But their blood? Their insides? Smeared all over the shuttle interior. Bone pieces, too.”
“Oh.” Connor shivered. “An explosion, maybe.”
“No explosion. There was little damage. Like a big hammer hit it.”
“Something got inside the shuttle and killed them. Something big.”
The communications expert nodded. “Maybe. It is a good idea. The captain and the officers—they were too scared to think about it.”
“What’d you do after that?”
“Cleaned the shuttle out.” Gregor squeezed his eyes shut. “The captain, he wanted approval to send two shuttles. But on my next shift, we receive another of these strange signals from the planet. Distorted, like you said.”
“This Goliath signal again?”
“No. From the shuttle. It is the dead soldiers. They are begging us to rescue them.”
“Then they were still alive.”
“They are dead. This blood in the shuttle—it is the soldiers’ blood.”
“You were sure of it?”
“Our doctors, they compared the DNA. These were our people. Dead.” Gregor lifted his face to the ceiling. “Our captain, he orders the ship to full speed away. I left the navy after that.”
Ill Fortune
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