Relics of Utopia (Starship Gilead Book 1) Read online

  “I’d like that,” Windham said. “I think—I think she would like that too.”

  “You don’t have to be such a stranger,” said Charlie. “You’re still family. You know that, right? It wasn’t your fault, what happened to my sister.”

  “I know.” But in his heart, Windham wasn’t sure about that. He wasn’t really sure about anything anymore except the fact that he was weary, but there was no place where he could rest his head.

  The commander of the gunship Chamberlain had a choice to make, and it wasn’t a good one. A or B. The terrorists or the pirates. The lesser of two evils.

  The Chamberlain was operating under cloak, scouting the Reinbolt system intel reports suggested was a hotbed of black-market activity. Apparently, those reports were correct.

  “What am I looking at?” asked Commander Harrison Ward. He was sitting in the captain’s chair onboard the Chamberlain, his brown eyes fixed on the gunship’s main view screen where two starships were floating on a sea of black.

  “The port starship is the Saladin,” said Lieutenant Anson Haley. “She’s a known pirate vessel wanted in at least thirteen systems.”

  Harrison’s mouth twisted into a sneer. The Barony of Gilead had been plagued by pirates for years now, and the Saladin was the worst of the worst. The bastards were like rats—every time you thought you had them flushed out, they vanished into some dark hole only to turn up again on the other side of the quadrant.

  “What about the other one?” he asked.

  Anson tapped his controls for a moment and then turned back to his commanding officer. “She’s the Azazel, a Leviathan-class destroyer known to be affiliated with the Brethren cult. Both ships’ shields are raised. Whatever they’re doing, they don’t trust each other.”

  “Son-of-a-bitch.” Harrison stared at the two starships, knowing full well that they were up to no good. He wondered if there was any chance he could take on both ships but quickly ruled out the possibility. The Saladin was a Warhawk-class starship, one of the deadliest ships ever constructed in the years since the fall of the old Planetary Union. The Chamberlain could face her one-on-one, maybe, and the Azazel was an equally formidable starship. It would be foolhardy to challenge both ships at once, and even one-on-one this would be a dangerous fight. Gilead could do it, she could take on an entire fleet, but not the Chamberlain. Harrison had to make a choice, and that meant the other ship would have ample opportunity for escape… or retaliation.

  “What are you orders?” Anson asked.

  Harrison thought about a parley, but he loathed the idea of giving up whatever meager advantage of surprise he had in this situation. His best hope—his only hope—was to disable the Saladin and then turn his attention to the Azazel. He knew this course was unlikely to lead to success, but he had no better options.

  “Raise shields and lock disruptors on the Saladin. Let’s see if we can take her out of this fight before it begins.”

  “Yes, sai. Torpedoes are locked.”

  Harrison leaned forward in his chair. “Fire!”

  The Chamberlain’s cloak vanished as she opened fire on the Saladin. Bursts of orange fire ripped across the void and crashed against the Saladin’s shields.

  “Direct hit,” Anson reported.

  “Any damage?”

  The lieutenant shook his head. “Not enough. The Saladin’s shields are holding at ninety-eight—” Anson’s attention shifted suddenly as the scene on the Chamberlain’s view screen changed, “—sai, the Azazel… she’s gone to warp.”

  “Damn!” Harrison was frustrated, but he had to admit that a part of him was relieved as well. If the pirates and the Brethren joined forces here, even if only for a couple of minutes, they could blow the Chamberlain right out of the sky. But, thankfully, they were both looking out solely for their own self-interests, and the Azazel got the hell out of there while they had the chance.

  “Maintain fire on the Saladin,” Harrison ordered. “Don’t let up for a second.”

  “Yes, sai.”

  The Saladin and her captain, Brogan Wyatt, had been a plague on this sector for decades. How many innocent lives could be spared if they were somehow able to bring down this son-of-a-bitch right here and now?

  “She’s coming about,” Anson said. “She’s returning fire.”

  Arcs of orange disruptor energy bombarded the Chamberlain, but the crew felt nothing as their shields protected them from the deadly barrage. If those shields failed, however, there would be nothing but ablative armor protecting the ship from certain destruction. Torpedoes tipped with nuclear warheads would make quick work of ablative armor.

  “Hold steady,” Harrison said. “We can do this if…”

  The view screen emptied as the Saladin went to warp.

  “She’s gone,” said Anson, stating the obvious. “I’m tracking her on sensors. Should I lay in a pursuit course?”

  “Do it.”

  The stars seemed to stretch as the Chamberlain went to warp. They followed in the Saladin’s wake for less than a minute before Anson spoke up with the frustrating, yet not unexpected, news.

  “Sai, the Saladin has cloaked. She’s gone.”

  Harrison sighed bitterly. They had lost their quarry once again and would have to return to Gilead with nothing but a close encounter to report. The Saladin was a notoriously slippery opponent, and Harrison wondered for a moment if he should have, perhaps, pursued the Azazel instead. Later, he would remember this moment and regret it for the rest of his life.

  Back in Avalon, the line of cargo haulers was finally starting to slow down. Two boys in their late teens watched as yet another empty hover truck emerged from the portal.

  “How big is the Gilead?” marveled Henry Bowen. “That cargo hold looks humongous.”

  The portal allowed them to temporarily see right into Gilead’s cavernous hold. That room alone was big enough for the hauler to turn around in, trailer and all.

  “She’s bigger than this entire city,” said Jeremy Manthus, the taller of the boys. He spoke with pride about his father’s ship… the ship he would someday command. “And we don’t call her the Gilead like she’s just some ordinary starship. You don’t call this shithole town the Avalon, do you?”

  “No.” Henry looked like a scolded dog. He was a big, stupid hillbilly, and Jeremy sort of enjoyed taunting the boy. The two teens were second cousins, though they looked little alike other than sharing the same blond hair, and even there, Henry’s was shaggy and in need of a trim, whereas Jeremy’s was buzzed into a neat military cut. Henry was a head shorter than Jeremy, but he made up for it in girth. He was a farm boy—easy to tell just by looking at his thick arms—but he would make a hell of a soldier if he ever decided to enlist. It was another year before he was eligible.

  Jeremy thought about what it would be like to have his cousin with him on Gilead. The boys had known each other since childhood, but they weren’t exactly friends. Henry might very well choose to join Gilead’s military, but he didn’t have the royal blood of a Manthus and would never know the burden that came with it.

  Jeremy’s own service in the rangers of Gilead was set to begin in just a few days, and the very thought filled him with dread. He hated being around the lower classes, but his father insisted that Gilead’s crew had to see him as a warrior if he ever hoped to earn their respect. As far as Jeremy was concerned, his name alone should be sufficient to command that respect. But it wasn’t up to him. He was eighteen, and for now, his job was to shut up and do what he was told.

  “So,” said Henry. “Are we gonna go up there or just stare through the portal all day?”

  “The foreman won’t like it if we get in the way of his workers,” Jeremy said.

  “You’re the prince of Gilead,” said Henry. “Don’t all the people who work on the ship have to do whatever you say?”

  “We don’t use that word. Prince. I’m the heir of Gilead.”

  Henry shrugged. “Whatever.”

  Jeremy sighed. “Come
on,” he said, “let’s go.”

  His father had specifically warned him not to do this very thing, but it wasn’t like the old man was going to turn him over his knee or anything. He was the heir, and if he wanted to walk through the portal and show his cousin the holosimulator or the armory, no one on the crew was going to stop him.

  They marched across the street to the plasticrete island supporting the portal. A guard in black combat armor stood in front of the opening with a holstered disruptor on his hip like a gunslinger of old.

  “Hail, Jeremy,” said the soldier.

  Jeremy looked at him coldly before answering. “Hail.”

  “Your father ordered me not to let anyone through this way.”

  “I’m sure he didn’t mean me.” Jeremy glanced at Henry, then back at the soldier. “My cousin wants a tour. We won’t get in anyone’s way.”

  The soldier hesitated before stepping aside. “Go on,” he said. “Be safe.”

  Jeremy felt the air pressure change as they crossed through the portal and stepped onto a starship three hundred kilometers above the planet. Jeremy’s ears immediately got stuffy as usual. He had to swallow to make them pop and informed his cousin to do the same after recognizing his discomfort.

  The ceiling of the cargo hold was a good twenty meters above their heads. Crates of food, equipment, and medical supplies were stacked neatly all along the walls, and forklifts were busy moving pallets of grain and vegetables into the appropriate areas. As Jeremy looked around the familiar space, a memory sprang to mind.

  He had enjoyed playing down here when he was a kid, and usually he was respectfully ignored by the workers. But one time he knocked over a container of apples, sending them rolling across the deck. The foreman yelled at him, storming and blustering. Jeremy was so mad at this treatment that he went to his father and demanded he send the foreman out the nearest airlock.

  His father, of course, refused. “You’re the heir of Gilead,” he said. “But that doesn’t give you special permission to behave like an asshole. On the contrary, it means you need to be on your best behavior at all times.”

  “But, sai, I was just playing . . .”

  His father had glared at him with cold, dark eyes. “Someday you’ll be in command of this vessel,” he said, “and you’re going to give that foreman an order. What do you suppose he’s going to think about while you sit in the captain’s chair barking commands? He’s going to see a petulant little boy standing in a pile of bruised apples. Did you ever think of that?”

  Henry snapped Jeremy from his memories. “Come on,” he said, urging his cousin forward. “I want to see the holosimulator.”

  Under normal circumstances, Jeremy would have used the network of portals that interconnected the different parts of the starship—after all, the holosimulator was nine decks above them and half a kilometer away—but Henry wanted to see Gilead, so they walked. A pair of doors on the far side of the hold swished open at their approach, and they stepped through.

  The floors in this part of the ship were covered with stained carpet that was probably seventy or eighty years old, and the walls were scuffed and dented. Jeremy felt a little embarrassed when his cousin commented on the condition of the ship.

  “Looks kind of… shabby.”

  Coming from a resident of Avalon, a town that smelled like a barnyard, the remark was particularly sharp. But Jeremy held his tongue.

  When they reached the holosimulator on Deck 30, the screen mounted outside the door revealed that the room was unoccupied. “What do you want to do?” Jeremy asked. “We could fight the Battle of Thermopylae, or I have this great simulation of Captain Lightoller. . .”

  “You got anything with girls?”

  Jeremy felt both a little surprised and a little embarrassed.

  “I hear that you can program these things to simulate women with up to ninety-nine percent accuracy,” Henry continued. “I’d like to find out if that’s true.” He puffed up his chest with no sense of shame whatsoever.

  It was true that people sometimes ran romantic simulations. In all honesty, Jeremy did it himself whenever he could get away with it. But it wasn’t the kind of thing you talked about with others. It was private. Space grew lonely, after all. The openness made his skin crawl.

  “Come on,” Henry said, nudging him in the side. “Program us up a couple of pretty girls.”

  Jeremy paused, knowing full well that his father would disapprove. And then he started entering the specifications into the computer. Why not? It was about time he had someone on board he could consider his peer.

  Adrienne Manthus was down by the river with her cousin, Jehane. They had a couple of lines in the water and were hoping to pull out some fish, but mostly they were there to catch up with each other. Six months had gone by since the last time the girls were together, and a lot can happen in half a year when you’re seventeen.

  “I met him at the dance hall last spring,” said Jehane, “not long after you left.”

  “Is he cute?”

  “He’s gorgeous. Long, dark hair, tall. . . and his eyes are just. . . I don’t know how to say it. I feel like I’m floating whenever I look in his eyes.”

  Adrienne had little doubt the boy had felt the same way about Jehane. She was gorgeous, far too pretty for a backwater like Avalon. She could have been a model or something if not for the fact that she was born on a farm planet at the edge of the galaxy.

  Whenever Adrienne looked at her friend, she felt small and plain and way too pale. Because that’s what she was: plain. No boy had ever called her pretty. No one at all had called her that since her mother died. Jehane could make any boy she wanted melt at her feet, but not Adrienne. Her cousin had curly golden hair while Adrienne’s was brown and straight. It would have been unbearable if Jehane was stuck up, but thankfully her cousin was as kind as she was beautiful.

  The girls’ fathers were up at the Governor’s Palace, hopefully mending whatever rift had grown between the two since Adrienne’s mother passed away five years earlier. Adrienne missed her mother every day, and that was bad enough, but she also missed her father. As she got older, she had come to realize that she simply didn’t know him very well. They shared meals several times a week, but they hardly spoke as they ate together in the starship’s Great Hall or in one of the restaurants on the Promenade, and they spoke even less in their quarters, where the ghost of Adrienne’s mother still lingered like a hint of perfume on a dress you haven’t worn in a good long while. Windham Manthus was the captain of Gilead, and that didn’t leave him much time to raise his only daughter.

  “What’s his name?” she asked Jehane.

  “Jon. He’s a bard.”

  “A what?”

  Jehane shrugged. “More like a country singer who also tells stories. He refers to himself as a bard though. Isn’t that adorable?”

  That piqued Adrienne’s curiosity. She’d heard tales of entertainers traveling through the night, singing songs and telling tales at every stop along the way, but there hadn’t been one on board Gilead for years. Not since her mother passed away.

  “I stayed and listened to him all night,” said Jehane, “until it was so late that I was the only one left in the building. Just me and him.”

  “Did he just keep right on singing?”

  Jehane smiled, retracing the steps to a memory that gave her pleasure. “He sang one last song, real slow and sad, about two lovers breaking up. It made me want to cry.”

  Adrienne thought that was strange, but it wasn’t her place to judge.

  “He could see that I was upset,” Jehane continued, “so he put down his guitar and walked over to me. I just stood there, trembling all over, while he put his hands on my shoulders and smiled at me.”

  “Then what happened? Did he kiss you?”

  Jehane blushed pink and nodded shyly.

  “Oh my God!” Adrienne exclaimed, covering her mouth. “Did you kiss him back? What was it like?”

  “It was wonderful.
He walked me home after that. Held my hand in the moonlight and told me all about his travels. He’s been all across known space, even seen Earth.”

  Adrienne doubted that. Earth was a long way from Cheron-4. Even her own father had never seen it, and he was the captain of the most important starship in this sector.

  “We’ve been seeing each other ever since,” Jehane said. “Usually at night, you know, since he sleeps during the day.”

  “Is he a vampire?” Adrienne said with a laugh.

  Jehane gave her friend a playful smack on the arm. “Of course not, silly. He works at night.”

  “Does your father know?”

  “No, and you mustn’t say anything. He’d kill Jon, and then he’d kill me.”

  “Of course, I won’t say anything.” Adrienne smiled at her oldest friend. Her only friend, to be exact. At times it seemed like Jehane was the only girl her age in the entire vastness of space. She knew that wasn’t true, but there was no one for her to even talk to up on Gilead.

  She thought about her mother and missed her terribly.

  “That’s not all of it,” Jehane continued. “We, um. . .”

  Adrienne stared wide-eyed at her friend when she didn’t continue. Jehane’s face was as pink as a sunrise, and she somehow looked both ashamed and proud at the same time.

  “Did you and him. . .”

  Jehane nodded.

  “Oh my God! You have to tell me all about it.”

  “We came here for a moonlight swim, and, you know. . .”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We were kissing, and. . . one thing led to another.” Jehane’s eyes shifted to a flat place beneath a gnarled old tree. “He took me right over there and laid me down in the grass.”

  “And?”

  She opened her mouth, blushed, then exhaled for a long while before finally answering. “And then he made love to me while the stars were twinkling overhead.”

  The girls sat in silence for several minutes. Adrienne wondered what her own father would do if he found out she was letting some backwater country singer take her down by the river. She didn’t think it would end well for the bard.