Days of Burning, Days of Wrath

by Tom Kratman

  “But Carrera . . . her corpse?”

  She’s too lost to remember we’re going to take a colonization ship if we can reach one. But the empress’s corpse doesn’t belong there, either.

  “He won’t do anything to her corpse except give it back to the Zhong,” Khan insisted. “She never hurt him personally. She was a political and military enemy, but not a personal one.”

  “All right,” Marguerite said, weakly. “Let’s go, then. But wait; what about my Esma, my child?”

  Khan couldn’t bring herself to say what she’d been able to piece together about the admiral’s treacherous aide de camp. Instead she said, “She’ll be all right. She’s on the bridge and already their prisoner.”

  Bridge, UEPF Spirit of Peace

  “I’ve seen you before, miss,” said Centurion Martin. “Well, after a fashion I have.”

  “How’s that?” asked Esma, in an accent that fairly reeked of Balboan Spanish. Her pistol was out of sight in its holster now, what with having twenty-two armed men on the bridge with her.

  “Well . . . see . . . we have this aircraft carrier; the Dos Lindas. I served aboard it when we were dealing with the Xamari pirates, oh, a long time ago. Anyway, the ship has a figurehead; looks exactly like you. Weird, really.”

  Martin didn’t bother to tell Esma that the ship’s figurehead was topless. This was probably just as well. She didn’t bother to tell him why she thought the figurehead resembled her.

  She was about to ask about the figurehead when she caught on screen two familiar images leaving the high admiral’s quarters. “Excuse me,” she said, before twisting one dial and hitting another button, which shifted the image on screen to an empty passageway on the other side of the ship completely.

  Rather, the passageway was almost empty. There was one apparently badly shot-up crewwoman crawling in the direction of the hangar deck.

  “Do you mind,” she asked Aguilar, “if I order some medical personnel to retrieve the wounded you left behind?”

  Aguilar had good reason to trust her commitment, perfect evidence of which still sat strapped to the captain’s chair. “Is there any way for someone to take control of the ship from anywhere but here?”

  “No,” she replied, “I locked out the alternate bridge.”

  “Okay, do it, then. Where is your sickbay?”

  Esma took control of the view screen again to bring up a large, three-D diagram of the ship. She directed Aguilar’s attention to that.

  “How good are the medical facilities aboard ship?” Aguilar asked.

  Esma shrugged; young and healthy, with no basis of comparison, she really didn’t know.

  Aguilar looked for someone more experienced on the bridge. His eyes came to rest on someone he took to be a senior noncom or warrant officer equivalent.

  “They’re very good,” the Earther admitted. “Much better than anything below, outside of Atlantis Base, which has better.”

  “Centurion?”

  “Sir?”

  “Take second squad and Estevez and take control of the medical facilities. Let their medicos retrieve and treat their personnel, too, but our man comes first. And if they fuck it up, kill them.”

  Leaving the diagram of the ship up, Esma pushed off to Richard’s body, unbuckled him, and asked if Martin would take him to sick bay. Seeing he would, she took Richard’s place, despite the blood she’d shed there. From there, she was able to pull up a much smaller image, one where she could see Marguerite and Khan, the wife, approaching the hangar. She followed their progress until they disappeared inside. In a few minutes, not more than ten, she saw the crew leaving but not going far.

  Hangar Deck, UEPF Spirit of Peace

  Khan, husband, met his wife and Marguerite on the hangar deck. Already, virtually the entire crew was assembled there, per the invaders’ orders. They stood or sat on the deck, intermingled with the four cargo barges and the high admiral’s barge.

  Damn, thought Marguerite, looking at the cargo shuttles. If I knew their codes by heart the way I know my own I might be better off taking one of those. They could, conceivably, make it to the transition point and then Earth on their own in greater safety and comfort.

  “We’re ready to flee,” Khan, husband, said, “but . . .” He swept his hand about the hangar deck, taking in the hundreds of demoralized crew present.

  “I’m not going to open the hangar to space and kill my crew to make good my own escape,” Wallenstein said. “I’ve done bad things, things I wish I hadn’t, things I will go to my grave wishing I hadn’t, but that’s too much.”

  Turning to the crew, Khan, male, announced, “We have to get the high admiral someplace safe. You, they won’t harm. My wife and I they might. Her, they will. So I need you all to assemble in the passageways outside, because we are going to open the hangar to space.”

  So that’s what a human wave actually looks like, thought Khan, as he watched the crew bolt en masse from the hangar. More than once it locked up at the entrance in a flesh-filled traffic jam, until pressure from behind forced the jam through, usually to the sound of screaming.

  At what cost in broken bones, I cannot imagine.

  When the crowd had cleared away, leaving the hangar almost unoccupied, a couple of dozen—no, thirty-two, thought Khan, after a quick head count—still remained.

  Raising one quizzical eyebrow, Khan fixed his gaze on a young woman—well, yes, despite anti-agathics, this one really looks young—who strode forth from the others.

  “We talked it out among ourselves,” the woman, an ensign, said. “None of us have any connection to down below. No families. No real friends. We’re from Earth and we want to go back there. So we’re going, too. Besides, you’ll be making for one of the colonization ships and you’ll need crew to run it.”

  Khan shot a questioning glance at Wallenstein, who drew herself up to full height and said, “It’s going to be tight on my barge, but climb aboard and fit yourselves in as best you can.”

  Bridge, UEPF Spirit of Peace (under new management)

  Esma kept her face very calm, watching the high admiral and a few dozen others board the barge. She even managed to keep calm when Robinson, possibly the new high admiral, demanded of Aguilar, “Well, where is that bitch Wallenstein? I demand she be found!”

  “You’re in no position,” answered Aguilar, “to demand anything. You’ve done decent service and probably bought your own life and just possibly the life of that evil twat, the marchioness of Amnesty.

  “I have no instructions to put you out of an airlock, High Admiral, but equally I have no instructions not to. We in the legions’ officer and centurion corps are selected and trained for initiative. We are also trusted to use it. Don’t make me use mine to decide that you would look good flopping around in vacuum like those two poor bastards who were blown out of the hole we made to get inside the ship.

  “Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Robinson. If a tone could have groveled, that tone would have been his face and belly down on the deck.

  “That said,” Aguilar continued, before asking of the bridge crew, “does anyone know where the high admiral, or the ex − high admiral, is?”

  The rest of the crew said nothing, though the senior noncom, or warrant, who had pronounced that sick bay could give fine care, shot an inquisitive glance at Esma.

  “I haven’t seen her in some time,” the girl said. “But I was the one who kept her schedule. She was supposed to be visiting three or four of the ships today, two inspections and two morale-building visits. Which of those she might be on . . . well, some things cannot be predicted or finely scheduled for.”

  “Ain’t that the goddamned truth?” Aguilar said. “I suppose there’s a fair chance that, if she’s on one of the other ships, she’s been torn limb from limb by the . . . hmmm . . . how many ships have mutinied, so far, and surrendered?”

  “Let me check,” Esma said . . .   “Okay . . .   Harmony. . .   Brotherhood. . .  
Annan. . . it seems every ship of the line has. They’re all sending shuttles down, too, to pick up their occupation force.”

  “Ensign . . . ?”

  “Miranda.” Esma offered.

  “Thank you. Ensign Miranda, please put out to all ships that the former high admiral is wanted. Oh . . . and that failure to turn her over by whichever ship she’s on will see that crew decimated. The old-fashioned way.”

  “The old-fashioned way?” she inquired, quite sure she wasn’t going to like it.

  “Yes. That means we’ll break the crew into tens, those tens will draw lots, and the loser will be beaten to death by the remaining nine, who will be killed if they refuse.”

  Esma gulped. “We’ll just pass that on, then, won’t we? Communications?”

  “Yes, Ensign.”

  “Pass that on to the other ships, would you?”

  Hangar Deck, Spirit of Peace (under new management)

  Marguerite was likely the best pilot present, even though between the Khans and her thirty-two, for lack of a better term, “loyalists,” there were at least seven qualified pilots. Thus, she took the pilot’s station on the left and had Khan, husband, seated to her right. Most of the passengers were sitting ass down on the deck, there not being enough seats for them. No one complained. Indeed, no one complained even knowing that there were not enough—not nearly enough—EVA suits for them in the event of an accident or taking fire from the ship they were escaping.

  She wanted to minimize the time between launch and discovery. Thus, she ran through the steps in preflight she didn’t really trust anyone to handle on her behalf. That was quick, though, I’m not that rusty.

  When the barge was ready, she lifted it slightly off the deck and at the same time began sucking the atmosphere out of the hangar. There was an emergency procedure for blowing the shuttle doors, and she considered using it, but decided against because, In the first place, it’s very noticeable and I don’t want to be noticed, but in the second, about every third time someone has tried that the shuttle ended up getting wrecked.

  The fleet had come a long way, maintenance-wise, since she’d taken over. Nonetheless, she still spared a glance at the balloon warning system some clever prole had come up with when it hadn’t been possible to trust the installed pressure warning system.

  “And that’s it,” she announced, “Khan, open the doors.”

  Khan had already taken control of them. At her word he clicked an icon on her screen. The hangar began to open into space.

  Bridge, Spirit of Peace (under new management)

  I wonder if I’d be so brave, Esma wondered, if I wasn’t pretty sure that I—or the way I look, anyway—matters enough to Patricio to keep me from being beaten to death by nine crewmen chosen at random.

  She risked a brief glance into the small screen on Richard’s former command chair. The hangar was open to space with Marguerite’s barge moving slowly outward. Once it was gone, she saw that they hadn’t bothered to close the hangar off.

  Close it myself, if I can figure out how? I’d better get it closed or they might figure out just who left and just who covered for her. I don’t know that they will. I don’t even know how they might. But they still might. But, then, if the crew that were on the deck report she was there, and they might, my cousins here might figure out I let her go.

  No, wait. As is, Marguerite takes all the blame herself. They have no idea I’ve been covering for her and probably no idea of how. So let it ride. They’ll see the crew gathered outside the hangar, but no time soon. By then  .  .  .  well, by then I may be on my way to Balboa.

  Admiral’s Barge, Spirit of Peace (under new management)

  Marguerite’s heart didn’t begin to slow until she knew that the tail of her barge was past the hangar doors. Until then, they could have overridden my command and slammed the things shut on me, with us only partway through. The lucky ones would be the ones crushed by the doors and, since I’m forward, I wouldn’t be among them.

  The next problem  .  .  .

  The next problem, in fact, were the five antimeteor cannon, three mounted amidships, equilaterally, and two toward the bow. The two toward the bow really didn’t concern her. By the time they can bear we’ll be out of range in a race between the barge and the pellets.

  One of the central cannon, on the other hand, would be able to bear once she was a few hundred meters from the stern. And if I keep a course to delay that for the maximum time, it only means that three of them, rather than one, will be able to bear.

  The cannon were semiautomatically directed. They could read direction, speed, and mass, with UEPF shuttles normally being out of their engagement parameters. On the other hand, for certain things, not just inbound meteorites, meteors, and asteroids but also presumptively nuclear warheads launched from below or satellites that might have been in orbit but steerable, the cannon were set for: “Forgiveness is easier to obtain than permission; blast it.”

  For other things, they needed express permission.

  “Thank all the gods,” Khan said, “that the cannon need express permission to engage something with our profile. If they’d been set on complete automatic . . . oh . . . oh, shit.”

  “What?” Wallenstein asked.

  “Set on automatic . . . oh, shit . . .”

  “’Oh, shit?’” Wallenstein asked. “What’s this ‘oh, shit’ about?”

  Bridge, Spirit of Peace (under new management)

  “High Admiral’s barge leaving the hangar deck,” the computer intoned all over the ship. “High Admiral’s barge leaving the hangar deck.”

  “What?” demanded Robinson. “That bitch is getting away? I’ll not stand for it!”

  “What the fuck is going on?” Aguilar in turn demanded to know. He picked a member of the bridge crew at random, pointed his twenty gauge, and said, “Start talking fast or you’re dead.”

  The crewman blanched, then said, “I don’t know any of the hows, but the ship will notify the crew when the high admiral’s barge or the captain’s pinnace leave or arrive. It did that. So apparently she got to the hangar deck and bugged out. Or somebody did.”

  “She can control the hangar from her own barge,” said another.

  Aguilar shot an accusing glance at Esma.

  “I don’t know, Tribune,” the girl lied. “She was supposed to be visiting other ships. Maybe she was delayed and didn’t bother to let me know. Maybe she was having a little fling on the side. It happens.”

  Aguilar narrowed eyes and lips. He didn’t believe her but couldn’t prove it and didn’t want to risk Carrera’s or—worse—Fernandez’s wrath by throttling their prime agent.

  “Fine,” he said, in a voice that left no doubt he didn’t believe her. He turned his attention back to the sailor he’d threatened. “You people have cannon of sorts for defense from meteorites and such. How do I make them work?”

  The terrified crewman’s eyes went automatically to gunnery.

  “I see,” said Aguilar, shifting his shotgun. “Engage that boat,” he said. “Now.”

  “It’s not that easy,” gunnery answered. “There are protocols that have to be followed.”

  “Then follow them and shoot that thing out of space.”

  “I can help there,” Esma said, as if trying to redeem a mistake she’d made.

  Admiral’s Barge

  “There’s no help for it now,” Marguerite said. “If I’ve never said so, and I probably didn’t, you and your wife have been among my most cherished subordinates. I hope we’ll meet in the great beyo—”

  “Peace is firing,” Khan announced.

  Bridge, Spirit of Peace (under new management)

  “Gunnery,” Esma commanded, “turn target acquisition over to me.”

  “Aye, Ensign.”

  Esma looked in her small screen. She could see what she presumed was a barge carrying Wallenstein, heading straight away to sternward. On a chance, she looked for whatever ship had brought the boarders. It wasn
’t still on the hull, she found, so she did an automated search until she found it. Looking closely, she saw nothing that would distinguish it from the current high admiral’s barge, at least from this angle. After making a few adjustments, she then sent the image she’d found to the main screen, where it replaced the diagram of the ship. She increased the size, which seemed to have the effect of reducing the resolution.

  “That’s it,” she ordered. “Gunnery, engage with everything that will bear.”

  “Aye . . . ma’am.” Hesitantly, gunnery’s finger pressed a firing button.

  Instantly, four streams of incandescent slugs shot away from the Spirit of Peace. Two of the streams were close enough together that they could be mistaken for a single stream—at least they could be mistaken by someone who didn’t know any better. A few seconds passed. The streams of slugs lost some of their incandescence, almost disappearing in space. And then the shuttle began to spark as pieces of it started to fly off at random. On the view screen, it rapidly disintegrated before blooming into a great burning flower.

  The bridge crew gasped as one, except for one crewwoman who began softly to weep, her head on her arms over her console.

  “Capture would have been better,” Aguilar said, “but this will do.”

  “No, it won’t,” corrected Robinson. Even so, he smiled at the image on the screen and said, “Die, bitch!”

  Admiral’s Barge

  “What the . . . ?”

  “Peace fired at the shuttle, Robinson’s old barge, I’d presume, that brought those pirates to the ship. I wonder if it was because it somehow fit the targeting parameters—though I can’t imagine how—or the ship made a mistake as to which barge was which . . . or maybe it was a delayed fire command being acted on.”