Know what? We surrender. Why not? They Grow So Fast, Part 18
Yeah, Jeb's Give-a-Damn's busted.
The bridge of the Warriors of Justice was pretty. Beautiful murals of different landscapes, all pristine and full of life living in harmony, decorated the walls and consoles. The crew wore street clothes rather than uniforms, with ball caps that said, “Fighting for a better universe—one cause at a time.” (Which really is a lot of words for a ballcap, but they do it for Justice!) The cap on the kitack was crunched narrow to fit between its antenna stalks, while the horse-headed centauran held his on with an elastic strap. They were all paying attention to their consoles as if their lives depended on it. Perhaps they remembered their sister ship. A few were visibly sweating.
The captain sat center stage, dressed in an oyster-mushroom beige sweatshirt with the logo of the WoJ—hands of different species cradling a nondescript planet. She sat back, posture straight, arms crossed, chin jutted. She may have practiced before a mirror in anticipation of this day. She didn’t notice her hail had been answered—or maybe she was caught in the moment, because she continued reciting her script.
“…cargo of—”
“This is Captain Jebediah Tiberius of the HMB Impulsive—that’s HuFleet, not Union, in case you were interested. Are you the ones who broke my ship?”
“We…” The speaker stopped, confused for a moment. Then she laughed in a superior tone. “That’s right, Captain! We have crippled your ability to make war, as you well know, and we will do worse unless you surrender to us—”
“The viruses. Okay.”
“Grandstanding will do you no good, Captain! We have the upper hand here! We…” Her voice trailed off in confusion and her arms dropped. She squinted toward the screen. “Did you say, ‘okay’?”
Jeb spread his hands placatingly. “I don’t want these things on my ship any more than you want them anywhere. ’Course, here’s my conundrum. You know who we are, but other than a lot of high-falutin’ words and the logo on your shirt, I don’t know who you are. How do I know you don’t want to steal the viruses to weaponize them yerself?”
The captain reared back, insulted. “How dare you question our motives? At any rate, it doesn’t matter. You have no choice.”
Jeb shrugged. “There’s always a choice. Refusing you is a choice, even if it’s a bad’un. However, I happen to have an alternative. Cruz, where’s the nearest uninhabited star system?”
“Three light years, sir,” the helmsman answered in short order. “Type B star, no planetary systems.”
“Perfect. Here’s what I propose, ma’am: We’ve got the virus storage device loaded in a shuttle. That was our safety net in case something tried to break containment. If’n that happened, we were going to remotely fly it into a star and to hell with what the Union wanted. We can fly the shuttle out toward your ship and open the doors, and you can tractor the device out. No sense wasting a good shuttle. Then together, we’ll take it to the star and dump it there.”
“You’d…you’d do that?”
It was right satisfying when he could make an opponent stutter. “Look at the hull of my ship. We just went toe-to-toe with the Cybers. We should be at a spacedoc getting refurbished, and instead we’re hauling Armageddon germs. Then you done crippled my ship. And to top that off, one of my officers was in a family way, and this mission delayed us getting her to proper medical facilities—and the baby came early.”
“There’s an infant on your ship?” A couple of her people shrieked as well.
Jeb let his frustration show. “Yeah, and I don’t want to have to explain to her that it died of some horrible disease or got hurt in a space battle because I didn’t know when to quit. So, we got a deal?”
The captain, nonplussed, looked to her crew. After a few confused looks and shrugs were traded, she looked back at the screen. “We have a deal. I’m surprised at how reasonable you are, Captain…?”
“Jebediah Tiberius, ma’am. I’m guessing you don’t want to give away your identity, being a warrior for justice and all. You probably know you’ve wrecked our internal comms. I’m going to need a few minutes to get someone down to the shuttle bay to let them know what’s going on and have them evacuate. The point is to not kill anybody, right?”
The captain spread her arms magnanimously. “Of course. We are all about saving lives. And we’d never endanger a child! This is all about creating a better universe for future generations.”
“Glad to hear it. Now just one more thing.”
Jeb leaned forward in his seat, and the camera knew to tighten on his face. His expression went from Southern Charm to Don’t Mess With Texas. “Just ’cause I don’t want a fight doesn’t mean we’re not up for one. We rigged the device with explosives. That’s Plan C. You try to take that device into your ship; you try to run off—we will detonate it. That’ll spread those viruses all over the area.”
“Not to mention the space debris,” Smythe added.
Jeb glared seriously at the other captain. “A helluva lot of space debris. And that will be on you. We have an understanding?”
The Warrior captain gulped but responded with dignity. “My only mission is to destroy these viruses.”
Jeb leaned back, the intensity of the moment gone. “Then we’re going to get along right fine. I’ll contact you as soon as we’re ready to launch. Impulsive out.”
As soon as the frequency closed, the bridge burst into admiring snickers.
“Sure you didn’t major in theater, Captain?” asked LaFuentes, who did major in musical theater at HuFleet.
“Pa always said it’s easiest to lie when it’s based on truth. Lieutenant, why don’t you get a shuttle bay replicator to replicate an appropriate explosive to stick in the device. And Smirnov? As soon as those sensors are online, I want to know who they’re talking to.”
He pulled the baby monitor from where he’d hidden it behind his back and turned the volume back on. “Ensign Gel, are you there?”
Aye, he’s here, and we heard it all, came the exasperated voice of Commander Deary. Do ye know how much time it took to make all those wee containment cells? And we’re going to give the whole kit and kaboodle to some Moaning Maggie after what her people did to our ship?
“Easier to rebuild the device than repair Pulsie, Angus. We’re a ship divided, barely able to communicate, and don’t have sensors. We have weapons, but we’d be firing blind. Speaking of, I want you to set the shuttle to relay sensor data—just in case it comes to a fight.”
“Ach, I’ll do you one better than that. I think I can make a wee tracking device that can get caught in their tractor beam without them noticing.”
“Beer me!” Jeb turned down the baby monitor. Then he snorted, bemused.
Phin raised an eyebrow at him.
Jeb shrugged, “Not a day out of the womb, and that baby’s already helped save the ship.”
Phin nodded. “That is a Doall.”