“True. I’ve gotten a bit gun-shy, that’s all.”
“What do you mean?”
“My last two experiences with ships haven’t been good. Morrigan tried to kill me. I was almost killed.”
“It was nothing personal.”
“Right. Nothing personal. Unless it’s your own, one-of-a-kind, don’t get another, life. Then it’s very personal.”
“Touché.”
“Yes. So Cordelia, she sort of tried to kill me too. Not really, but she did hold me captive until she decided to let me go. I felt helpless. She promised to let me leave before she got herself wrecked, but my life started flashing before my eyes. In between watching Cordelia pound the snot out of Armada battleships, that is. She let me observe her handiwork. Very thoughtful of her. Once I was back here on Halifax, I fell back into my civilian ways. I’ve gotten used to not being in immediate danger of dying, though I’m bored out of my mind. I don’t dare go back to the Navy. Something terrible will happen. It does when I’m out there in the dark. It’s me. Bad luck in space.”
“You can’t be serious. Is that what’s holding you back?”
“Pretty much.”
“I thought you were a rational person.”
“I am. Except where my own luck is concerned. It should have run out already. Maybe it has. If I go back into space my ship may accidentally displace into a moonlet. Or get caught in a runaway acceleration to lightspeed time dilation mishap that won’t be corrected until four hundred years have passed and everybody I once knew is dead and gone. It all makes perfect sense to me.”
“I think you’re flat wrong,” Gates said. “I do admire your willingness to admit your fears. You’ve never been one for false bravado.”
“It wasn’t so bad when I was out there. Being aboard Cordelia took the edge off my anxieties. She was so advanced, I thought she’d survive anything. She probably would have too if she hadn’t wanted to take an immediate exit ramp from this universe. Other ships won’t be as comforting. I get queasy thinking about going back out.”
“You don’t belong here,” Gates said. “You ought to give it another try. You may feel that you are too tightly-wound for space service, but you’ve performed well under pressure. It was your care for Cordelia’s systems that enabled her to short-jump with half of the AT fleet and slam it into Victory Base. That should count for something.”
“You’re right, Silas, I am pretty damn special. Humble too.”
“Okay. Don’t get carried away with yourself. Give it some more thought. You’re the first person I want with me here building these ships, but your skills are not finding their proper outlet. The Navy needs competent people in a big way. I can manage without you.”
*****
The visit from Howell’s cousin came a day later. Admiral Andrew More arrived in person at Cardiff Yard, having taken the shuttle up from Hamilton that morning. Howell guessed what he had come for. These days, no one came in person to Cardiff unless he wanted something big. He did.
“Chief of engineering aboard the Albacore. Let me think. Not quite as old and excellent as Cordelia. On the other hand, the shipbrain - what’s her name?”
“Allison. Ally for short,” More answered.
“On the other hand, Ally won’t be berating me every thirty seconds.”
“Don’t forget, Julius, that you oversaw Albacore’s construction, so you can be confident she’s well-made.”
“Oh, she’s been properly constructed alright. I’ll vouch for that. Unfortunately, she’s been slapped together using the fastest means we have. Only the simplest methods were used.”
“Will she hold together?”
“Yes, of course she will. We didn’t use spit. Not much, at any rate.”
“The Navy has accepted the Albacore. It needs hulls in the void, pronto. She’s one of them and I have put my flag on her.”
“Who is going to be the captain?”
“Ariana Kim. She’s the executive officer over on the Skate, a minesweeper. She’s been hating every minute of it, or so she’s told me. It’s time that she had the captain’s chair.”
“It won’t be the same with an admiral aboard, will it?”
“No, but I promised her I’d stay out of the way of her handling of the ship. I’ll be focusing on countering Ajaxian movements in the system. I’ll have my hands full and I’d prefer not to have to worry about dealing with a ship and its crew if I can. She’s okay with me asking you. In fact, she requested you herself.”
“Really? I’m touched.”
“Yes. You seem to have an ability to impress people. You might be surprised to learn that you’re on the short list of just about every captain’s wish list for a chief of engineering. Word in the RHN is that you are a wizard of some sort. I tell them that’s nonsense, and that your abilities rise only slightly above the average.”
“Cousin, you keep me grounded.”
“I have done so since we were little and you were the mathematical genius and I had to keep your head from swelling bigger than a star.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I don’t want to go. I won’t go.”
More wore a disappointed look. “I have asked politely. I can order you. You are still a naval officer in the reserves and liable for call-up at any time.”
“I’ve become a pacifist.”
“Don’t be an idiot.”
“I mean it.”
“No you don’t. Gates has told me what’s bugging you.”
“He did! That’s the last time I confide in that old man.”
“Another thing you don’t mean. Listen. Every one of us goes out there not knowing what his deployment will bring. It’s part of the job. Maybe since you never chose this life, and you’ve never had genuine naval training, it’s hard to come to terms with your own mortality. Cold Bay prepared me for that. It’s different when you are a civilian and you get used to waking up alive every morning. It’s a hard habit to break.”
“And how.”
“You’re not a coward.”
“No. But I feel like I could be one, given the right push.”
“You handled yourself very well on Morrigan.”
“I almost soiled myself several times.”
“You and nearly every other crewmember who was aboard her.”
“I also didn’t like being on Cordelia when she was being nuked. That was unpleasant.”
More’s expression softened. “No one does.” He was silent for a time. “I didn’t think I’d have to play the patriotism card, but you leave me no choice. Here goes. The war is a lot tougher than the government is letting on. It is reporting various small scale victories here and there, but we have been stretched to the breaking point. There aren’t enough ships to go around. The Navy is barely able to scrape together a few ships to send to Aquitaine and it is doing so mainly because it wants us to fight a holding action against the DN while we’re there. Halifax needs you. I need you. I’d prefer to have a chief of engineering whom I can trust. Give it some thought, will you?”
Howell nodded. “I will.”
“Let me know soon, one way or the other. I have to talk to others if you won’t be coming along.” The two men shook hands and More took the next shuttle back down to the surface.
That evening, Howell was on the shuttle heading for his home in Hamilton, the capital city of the Republic. A report came in from Aquitaine. A battered freighter, the SS Mercier, had displaced into the Aramis system carrying hundreds of refugees from Pessac. There had been four ships with her when they had attempted to jump out of the system, but the others had been destroyed by an Ajaxian warship before they could make good on their escape. Like the Mercier, each had been carrying around five hundred refugees who preferred freedom to slavery. Two thousand men, women, and children had been immolated. There were nightly reports of loss of life in the news, but this one stood out for its pointless savagery. Murderous violence seemed to be second nature to the Ajaxians. Howell sh
ut off the holovid news and went to bed.
*****
The next morning, More took one of the early shuttles up to the Albacore, which drifted in orbit above Halifax. His cousin was waiting to greet him in the landing bay, his bags at his feet, when he stepped off the shuttle.
“I take it you’ll be wanting a cabin,” More said.
Howell nodded. “One with a nice view and as close to the gym as possible.”
Chapter Five
Arles Station vicinity, Aquitaine system
“Eight bogies, Witch,” Lieutenant Thomas Percy reported over the tightbeam comm. “I’m feeding the data to you now.”
“Got it, Hammer,” replied Lieutenant Commander Callisto Imagawa, commanding officer of the embarked fighter squadron aboard the Republic of Halifax Navy heavy cruiser, RHS Steadfast. Imagawa, call sign ‘Witch,’ quickly scanned the targeting data tightbeam loaded to her F-243B Wildcat by her wingman, call sign ‘Hammer.’
“All K-75 Serpents. Second-line machines. I’ve dunked these before. I’ll do so again,” Imagawa promised.
“That the Witch I know,” Percy said. “For a while, I was worried that you were going soft on the Jaxers.”
“Going soft! Are you purposely trying to get me riled up?”
“Yeah, a little bit. You’ve been too quiet lately and I wanted to reawaken your fighting spirit.”
“My ‘fighting spirit’ is fully awake, don’t you worry, Hammer.”
“Good. You’ve been too quiet, as I said. Ever since we displaced into Aquitaine. I’ve been worried. Salad and Coffee are too.”
“You can tell them I’m doing very well, thank you, and that they should worry about their own business more, and less about their CO,” she snapped.
“Roger that, Witch. Loud and clear.”
Imagawa detected a note of triumph in Percy’s voice. “What?” she asked.
“What is what, Witch?”
“You sound so satisfied.”
“I’ve aroused your fighting spirit. Mission accomplished.”
“Jerk.”
Percy laughed. “When I have to be.”
Imagawa admitted to herself that Percy, as well as Lieutenants Daniel ‘Salad’ Yee and Hideki ‘Coffee’ Collins, had, at least a little bit, some basis to be worried about her, but not for the reason they thought. She had been distant these last two weeks, but not because she had lost a desire to fight. Just the opposite. She had been brooding ever since she’d been deployed to Aquitaine to fight the Jaxers. She was a fierce warrior, not out of nature, but by choice. Her childhood had been filled with fear of the attacks of Ajaxian raiding craft, much like the ones she pursued, jumping into the Aramis system, striking isolated settlements such as hers on one of the outer planets, and then fleeing before the local RHN assets could arrive. It was a problem that every system faced. No Navy could be everywhere, not even the mighty RHN, and outer worlds distant from the system’s core were the most vulnerable of all. They often had protection of a sort, usually automated defenses and perhaps some very old starfighters flown by naval reservists. They were rarely enough.
Imagawa had come to hate the Ajaxians with a passion that came perilously close to madness. She dreamed of tearing Jaxer pilots to pieces with her bare hands. If it was not actual madness that plagued her mind, then it was certainly obsession. She had become worried about it when the Steadfast, now under the command of Captain Matt Heyward, had jumped into Aquitaine to fight the Ajax Domain’s invasion. This was what she lived for. This is why she had joined the Navy. All of her studies at Cold Bay had been directed toward splashing Jaxer fighters. Every one of them was a stand-in for those that had ripped apart her colony when she was young. She was here for revenge. Sometimes the depth of her passion scared her.
She realized that her personal desire for vengeance might conflict with her responsibility to her squadron. She would lead them aggressively, as she had been taught, but she could never run unwarranted risks with their lives to satisfy her own needs. She’d taken up meditation to calm her roiling emotions so that she could center her mind on her duties, and not let her hatred of the enemy overwhelm her, and possibly cloud her judgment. So she had become quieter, and more detached than usual. What Percy and the others had sensed was not a loss of fighting spirit, but Imagawa’s desire to restrain her impulses and direct them so that they could be used more effectively.
“I’ll be okay,” Imagawa whispered.
“What was that?”
“Nothing. As I said, these are old machines. K-75’s. They must be holding back their K-81 Wyverns with the bigger fleet units.”
“There are still eight of them and only two of us. If this were a bar fight, I’d back off.”
“Not if we have surprise. We sucker punch them with guns. Simple.”
“I’d feel more confident if we’d come with a full loadout of Iron Lances, just in case.” Each of their Wildcats was armed with only four Iron Lance space interception missiles, instead of the eight that it could carry.
“Won’t be happening. Everything is in short supply, especially out here. We’re lucky to have what we’ve got and the captain has to parcel them out carefully.”
“I think he’s being stingy.”
“No. Heyward understands that pilots will use the biggest and baddest weapons they have since they will almost always be the safest for them. Then they won’t have them around when a difficult or high value target that genuinely calls for their use floats by.”
“Economics. It’s always about economics.”
“You understand the dismal science better than I do, Hammer. We’re not going to be resupplied very frequently in Aquitaine, so we’re going to have to expend our warshots only when absolutely necessary.”
“Okay. Lining up for my attack run,” Percy said, shifting his Wildcat via gravitic maneuvering vanes so that it came up above and behind that of Imagawa’s own machine.
“Hold on, Witch. I’m getting new returns.”
“More Jaxers?”
“No. Maybe. Not all. Passive sensor returns are confused. I’m getting them from whatever the Serpents are illuminating with their radars. They’re bouncing back all the way to my receiver.”
“I’m picking them up now too. Can you identify them?” Imagawa herself was directing her Wildcat’s onboard computer to run an analysis of the sensor signatures, with no luck. “Anything?”
“Sorry, Witch. No. They are too far away. Must be civilian, I think. The Jaxers have certainly got an interest in whatever is up ahead. They’ve been tracking them for close to a minute.”
“Let’s follow them until we can get a look for ourselves. We’ll need to use electrooptics and infrared instead of radar. I don’t want to give away our position.”
“Roger that, Witch. We pursue.”
Imagawa and Percy followed the Ajaxian Serpents for almost twenty minutes before the objects of their attention could be spotted with passive sensors, thereby avoiding alerting the Ajaxians to their presence. A tubby Aquitainian hospital ship and two civilian freighters were being followed by four additional Ajaxian fighters. These were the slightly more advanced K-76 Drakes, which were much like the Serpents but with a couple of extra gauss cannons tucked into each of their fuselages. They were small, simple, maneuverable, packed a heavy punch, and were dirt cheap. The Domain’s factories had pumped out these machines, Serpents and Drakes, in the thousands before they’d switched in recent years to the more modern Wyverns. Despite their age, both of the older models were still in widespread use with the DN, lesser system forces, and were in licensed production on some of the more backward worlds of the Great Sphere.
“The Drakes must have shown up recently,” Hammer guessed. “We weren’t getting a read on them until now. Our fellows here tracked the Aquitainian ships and vectored in reinforcements.”
“Do they really need a dozen fighters to take out three civilian ships?” asked Imagawa. “I think not. They’ve got something else planned.”
“The Aquitainians don’t know that they’re being followed,” Hammer said.
“You’ve got to be kidding. They’re being painted by radar!”
“Right you are. Hmm. And none of them are taking evasive action.”
Imagawa checked her scope. Percy was correct. More surprising, the Ajaxian fighters, Drakes and Serpents, were forming up directly behind and to the sides of the chugging Aquitainian ships in a markedly unhostile manner.
“This isn’t an attack on civilian ships like we thought, Hammer. This is a rendezvous. Look where they are all headed.”
“Arles Station,” Percy noted. “That orbital is still held by the Aquitainians. Those are trojan horses?”
“Right. They must be captured ships. Look at the identification codes that the hospital ship and its companions are broadcasting.”
“Aquitainian codes. They’re okay.”
“But look how old they are.”
Percy was quiet. “Ah. Computer’s showing them as legitimate, but pre-invasion.”
“Weeks old. The Ajaxians haven’t figured out yet that the Aquitainians are using new codes. Or maybe they do know and they’re hoping that Arles will hold its fire for civilian ships anyway.”
“A clever method to get close to Arles.”
“The fighters are going to follow behind and hide in their drive exhaust plumes. Arles will only pick up the sensor returns of what they think are their own ships.”
“Bastards! No one would think to turn away a hospital ship or open fire on it. Not until it is too late. Do we attack now before they get close?”
“We’ll have too. First we alert Arles and tell Heyward to get here yesterday. Then we’ll make an attack run.”
Imagawa composed the briefest of messages. One she tightbeamed to Arles, warning of the approaching danger. The other she sent to Steadfast, with her coordinates, politely requesting that it make an appearance sooner rather than later.
“Up for a fight?” she asked Percy when she finished.
The Ajax Incursion Page 6
