Zero-Option | Page 6

join Fleet…" He
shrugged. "The admiral is not someone you argue with, sir?"
She rose slowly from her seat. And though she was not tall, she had a
commanding presence. He was reminded again of his father. Her lips
twitched in a quirky little grin—almost a smirk. "So now you
understand," she said.
"Understand?"
"That sometimes our choices are really not choices at all, are they?"
With that she turned from him and left the room.
Imbrahim sat alone in the eerie silence, staring out the floor-to-ceiling
viewports that lined the aft wall of the room. He could see Earth in the
distance, an enormous shining sphere whose glow blocked out the
feebler light of a myriad stars. For some reason it was a more stirring
and poignant sight than it had ever been before. He wished he were
back there instead of here; he had the feeling he'd perhaps seen it for
the last time.

4.
The same ensign who had conducted him through the maze of corridors
to Jhordel's office later showed Imbrahim to his cabin in officers'
country on the accommodations deck. The Confederation, being a
frigate of recent vintage, offered considerably better living quarters
than the 'spook' he'd last traveled on. The cabin was spacious and
well-appointed, not at all like the Spartan and cramped cubbyhole that
had been his on the Aurora for three hellish weeks. Of course, large
ships like the Connie were intended to spend months in space without
visiting a port; the 'spooks' were purposely designed to be small and
elusive, their missions seldom lasting beyond two or three weeks.
More than half the mass of a ship like the Aurora was engine; and it
carried few weapons other than those necessary to safely navigate
through the errant debris of space. Shields and sensing equipment on
such vessels were the primary arsenal, given that those ships were
designed for spying well behind enemy lines. The same properties that
made them suitable to this task made them ideal as couriers for Naval
Intelligence field operatives like him—which was why many of his
shipboard days had been spent in the bowels of such craft.
The Confederation, by contrast, was a fortress with engines. As such it
was less maneuverable, less agile than the Aurora, but with the power
to raze the surface of a planet. And even though space on any ship was
at a premium, the Connie was closer to the luxury of one of the
commercial interstellar passenger liners than it was to the likes of the
Aurora.
Under different circumstances he might have reveled in the good
fortune that had won him an assignment on board the Connie. But this
was no ordinary mission Admiralty had given him; and he suspected
there was nothing fortuitous in being handed it.
He dropped his kit into a nearby chair and strode easily to the large
viewport that filled a good portion of the cabin's bow-facing wall. From

where he stood he could see along the spine of the ship, forward,
towards the prow of the frigate. Between him and the bridge there was
an array of weapons, some of them tucked away, others, like the laser
cannons, jutting forth threateningly—the sharp, deadly spines of a
quiescent beast. They were muted now, but they had not so long ago
spat their fury into the eerie silences of space. He felt some reassurance
in seeing them—though secretly he wondered whether even these
formidable armaments would be sufficient to the task they were about
to undertake.
He moved to the desk in the corner, sat down and activated the
com-link. The cube formed above the projector rods, a faintly blue field
that rotated to orient itself towards him.
"Personnel information," he said.
"Concerning?" the AI requested.
"Jhordel, Lhara."
"Clearance?" the machine queried.
He gave his security code, grateful his position in Intelligence provided
him such easy access to information that would otherwise have been off
limits. Admiralty might not have thought it necessary he know the truth
about Jhordel, but he was damned if he was going to go on this mission
in the dark. He liked to know as much as possible about the people he
might be called upon to trust with his life.
"Jhordel, Lhara Annyselia," the AI intoned at length. It rattled off
information he already knew: her birth on Tartarus, the ships she had
served on, the missions of which she'd been a part. So many missions,
in fact, that there could have been two of her and it would still have
seemed a remarkable career. But it was the first that caught his
attention. She'd been part of the mission that had started it all. The one
that had started the war.
"Obsidian," he murmured to himself.

Obsidian, where Grenier had made her