Chapter 30: Ten Years Earlier, Aboard the Alecto

Far from Cassandre’s adventures, ten years ago, two admirals were conducting a routine inspection aboard an isolated, disarmed vessel. Though this interlude may appear unrelated to our main narrative, the fates of these past and future figures will soon intertwine.

The Admiralty Council had five members, of whom three, in the opinion of the other two, were doing absolutely nothing, and that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Ravzan wore his blue and gold uniform crisply; his white hair was slicked back, his movements economical, always seeming about to say something without ever murmuring it. Legend had it that he had never undergone any genetic enhancement, and that he still occasionally fell ill, even displaying the marks of aging as early as sixty.

Ravzan regarded his counterpart, well, his superior, as he presided over the council, with the mindset one reserves for a necessary evil. This superior was Tohil, who since his appointment had grown plump and ruddy like a peasant from ancient times, and whose collar, adorned with five stars, seemed to beg to be undone so he could breathe. In a way, Tohil was the worst kind of admiral: he had a dual reputation for charging in headfirst and flying into rages when criticized for itrages he would forget the very next second.

Yet if there were such a thing as a judge of character, he would be absolved: Tohil was a war hero, the kind who charged the front lines with his soldiers screaming that rest would come in the After, and who knew how to make the right call. He was also not fundamentally xenophobic, even if he never held back from ranting crudely about the Xenos’ inability to understand our world, which, in a society where an entire stiff-lipped administration praised our non-human allies while secretly thinking the worst of them, was actually refreshing. In many ways, Tohil was the opposite of Ravzan, and liked to imagine that together they formed a wise and balanced two-headed being.

A war was raging in a section of space on the border between the HS and the League of Antioch, more precisely around Caliban-1, a grim and insignificant rock shrouded in clouds as opaque as they were suffocating. The reason for the war never really interested the military, the entire army operates on how, not why. The Stellar Fleet maintained minor skirmishes along this border. Military command had politely stated that this conflict was far too anecdotal for the Admiralty Council, and Tohil, after shouting his head off and hurling a table down a hallway, failing to break a window with it, had abruptly accepted the matter and moved on. He had swallowed the fact that, in the eyes of the HS Council, the Admiralty Council was merely a pre-After retirement home for old glories whose opinions would always matter less than those of the AIs.

On the agenda that day, the admiral duo was reviewing a decommissioned ship: the Alecto, so old it belonged to classes no longer taught in military school. In this case, an “Anicroche”a stellar corvette with no shields, designed to jump into battlefields unexpectedly, strike a weak point with a missile volley, then vanish just as fast. The Alecto bore the clean lines of a bygone era, a wide, fearsome prow that struck fear before it struck hulls, a steel coloring that spoke to mass production, and sleek curves along its flanks for better movement through thin atmospheres. It was the kind of ship found in adventure novels.

Tohil was especially thrilled by the visit, having once served as the Alecto’s captain, now repurposed as both a museum and a scientific lab. “Thrilled” wasn’t even enough: he was awestruck. As they moved through corridors lined with walls aglow from bioluminescent plants, he couldn’t stop gushing:

“Tell me, Rav, who’s the captain? Did he make all these changes? Damn, I was on the Endymion Ananké ten days ago, and I swear, this good old Alecto, even if I barely recognize her, looks straight out of drydock.” (He rapped on the wall.) “Everything looks brand new.”

Ravzan inhaled to respond, but as usual, Tohil turned his head like a pointer dog. A Xenoa creature resembling a wingless wasp the size of a large dog, was advancing down the corridor, reading something on a portable terminal with its large single eye. The Xeno paused, stood upright, and saluted the admirals with dignified composure.

“ ... Uh,” Tohil murmured. “Are you a sailor?”

A smooth, pleasant voice echoed in their minds: “I am a seconded personnel. My name here is Gamma. At your service.”

With an irritated wave, Tohil dismissed it. Once out of earshot, he grumbled to Ravzan ... a Xeno, a telepath ... what if it’s drilled into our minds and extracted everything confidential? A point down for our brilliant captain. Whose name is?

“Andreï.”

“Andreï what?”

“Just Andreï.”

“I expected a name-name, if you know what I mean. One of those intellectuals who plant flowers on battlefields and turn Anicroches into museums.”

A sailor appeared and saluted the Admirals. Due to a grim accident during his early years, Ravzan’s body had been reinforced with circuits, and protocol required ships to deactivate any devices emitting certain magnetic fields that could interfere with his internal mechanics. He was assured that this order had been carried out, and Tohil dismissed the sailor again with an inelegant wave.

“Any major element in his career? The Captain’s?”

“A significant one: he was enrolled in the Lodovico program.”

“Oh hell,” said Tohil, squinting, “I only remember the trial, with the Transient. Never been so glad not to be in the loop. Oh.”

The doors opened silently onto a large rooma hangar where once devastating missiles had been stored. Now, in three-dimensional cubicles of white and blue hues, rather young crew members, perhaps scientists, were busy with aquariums and terrariums.

The admirals approached two women in officer uniforms, separated by a considerable age gap. The younger was barely an adult, with short hair and radiant energy. The older had sharp cheekbones, penetrating eyes, and most notably, a gleaming brooch shaped like the letter Psi, unmistakable: a graduate of Psi University, able to read minds, though bound not to.

They introduced themselves with a salute: the shorter, younger one was Geneva; the tall and relaxed one, Pallas.

“How many telepaths on board?” asked Tohil without introducing himself.

“Three, including the Xenos,” replied Pallas calmly, hands clasped behind her back.

Tohil glanced at Ravzan, a look meaning three too many.

“Why three?”

“You’d best ask the Captain.”

“Is he a good captain?” Tohil interrupted.

“The best!” Geneva replied with enthusiasm.

“Yes, I imagine you haven’t known that many. What’s your role here, Petty Officer Geneva?”

“Botany.”

“So, as a botany specialist, you consider Andreï an excellent captain?” “And an excellent biologist.”

Silence fell at the incongruity of the statement. Pallas kept her gaze steady.

“Captain Andreï ensures everyone stays very motivated,” she said. “People see me as a telepath, but the basis of Psi training is empathy. We assess crew morale to bring out the best.” “Sounds like a cult to me,” concluded Tohil.

Ravzan thought, and Tohil probably did too, that a good military crew, unfortunately, operated ideally like a cult. The admirals asked Pallas to take them to the famous Andreï, and she did so while discreetly extending the route through the ship’s recently completed, remarkable renovations: the panoramic command and piloting post, the gleaming reactor hulls, the map room where the oldest and most beautiful ones were paper-based and framed on the wall. A vessel out of an adventure novel.

At the end of a hallway, Pallas let a door open and slipped away.

Behind the door was a vast, nearly empty room, a sort of office; behind the desk, a bay window overlooking the research lab. On the desk, pages scribbled with archaic equations. And, pencil in hand, collar unbuttoned, stood a man whose nose was too long and slightly too hooked to be a hero from an adventure novel, but was probably the Captain.