Deathstalker 04 - Deathstalker Honor

Every man on this ship is a volunteer, prepared to give their lives if necessary, that Humanity might be warned.
    We have to be here. You don’t. We’ll debrief you, search your ship, and then send you home. Unless you give me any trouble, in which case you can spend the next few months sitting in my brig, waiting for our tour of duty to be over so you can go home to face trial.”
    “Understood, Captain.” Daniel frowned, thinking hard. There had to be some way past this last obstacle. But he seemed to have run out of options. He couldn’t fight, or run, or hope to talk his way past a Captain like Gideon. Daniel had encountered his sort before. Married to the job, sworn to duty, death before dishonor. Daniel had never really understood such people, but he did know they couldn’t be bargained with, or bribed, which had been his only other thoughts. And then he heard alarms sounding, and looked frantically around for a moment before realizing the sound was coming from the bridge viewscreen. Captain Gideon had turned away and was barking orders offscreen. “What is it, Captain?” said Daniel.
    “I don’t have any more time for you, Wolfe. My sensors indicate something really large heading out from Shub. I have to go check it out. Don’t be here when I get back.” And then the screen went blank, and the sound of alarms was cut off sharply.
    “You heard the nice Captain,” said Moses. “At last, someone with the right number of brain cells in his head. I’ll plot a course out of here.” “No,” said Daniel. “We go on.”
    “But… didn’t you hear the Captain?”
    “Yes. He’s been distracted, called away, so he couldn’t interfere with my mission anymore. This is my father’s doing, I’m sure of it. He knows I’m coming. Full speed ahead, Moses. You heard the good Captain. He doesn’t want to find us here when he gets back.”
    “If he gets back,” said Moses darkly.
    “Shut up and set the course, Moses. We can’t be far from Shub now. And I don’t want to keep my father waiting…” Shub turned up on the Heaven’s Tears’ forward sensors some six hours later. There was no visual image, only indications of a vast energy field, but it was the right size, and the mass and power levels were off the scales. It had to be Shub. Daniel prepared himself as best he could. He had his clothes laundered one more time and strapped on his sword belt. The gun on his left hip might or might not be more useful than the sword on his right, or they might be no damn use at all, but either way he found their familiar weights reassuring. He studied himself in his cabin’s full-length mirror, and was struck for the first time how different he looked. Thanks to his regular time-killing workouts, he was in the best shape he’d ever been, but even apart from that, there was something about his face… He wasn’t sure, but he thought it might be signs of new character. He hoped so. Jacob Wolfe had always been big on building character. Daniel hoped his father would approve of the new him.
    He hurried back to the bridge, running through all the things he meant to say to his father one more time.
    There was so much he’d always meant to say to Jacob while he was still alive, but somehow the time had never seemed right. And then suddenly his father had been taken from him, and it was too late. Daniel had come to Shub for many reasons, but deep down, if he was honest, there was only one thing he really wanted to say.
    He’d never told his father that he loved him.
    He strode onto the bridge and powered up the viewscreen. There was still nothing to see, just a vague swirling to mark the boundaries of the energy fields. Daniel sank into his command chair and wondered what to do next. “Before you ask, yes, I have been broadcasting who we are on all frequencies,” said the AI. “And no, I don’t know what those energy fields are. They’re like nothing I’ve ever encountered before. But they’re certainly big enough to conceal a whole planet and protect it from anything I can think of. Just as well, when you consider how close they are to their sun.” “I wonder what Shub will look like,”
    said Daniel. “You’ve come all this way, and you’re only wondering that now? Daniel, how much do you
    actually know about Shub’s history, and the AIs that built it?” “Only what’s in your data banks, and most of that was classified, remember?” “Damn,” said Moses. “I was sort of hoping that as an