Imprint of Blood

by Phil Huddleston

  Jake’s face got hard. “Who did this?”

  Kirsten shook her head. “Do I even have to tell you?”

  “President Bolt!” spat Jake. “I’m going to kill that bitch.”

  Kirsten reached out and touched his arm, calming him.

  “Don’t get hasty, Jake. There are bigger stakes here. Wait until you’re back on your feet, and Teresa’s back from Eudora. Then we’ll decide what to do.”

  ***

  Four weeks later, in the main conference room at MarsBase, Teresa and Kirsten waited for Jake, along with their aides and Jake’s flag staff. Kirsten had a new XO, Commander Sara Watkins, a replacement for Commander Patel. Gunner Carlson, Jake’s Chief of Staff, tapped his fingers impatiently as they waited. Finally, the door opened, and Jake limped in, still favoring his right leg. He sat heavily at the end of the conference table and looked around at the group.

  “OK, I’m recovered, I’m over my initial burst of anger, and Teresa’s back among us. What are we going to do about Bolt and her pack of rats?”

  Teresa smiled benignly at Jake. “I vote to drop an asteroid on them,” she said.

  Jake grinned, one of the few he had produced since the bombing. “I’m with you, but I don’t think Gunner is going to let us do that.”

  “You would be correct,” said Gunner. “Let’s talk about realistic scenarios. Think about the long haul, folks. Bolt – and Elias Tobin, her rat pack leader - won’t always be in office. So let’s think this through, nothing hasty or irrevocable.”

  Jake nodded grumpily. “Fine, OK. I get it. But one more – just one more attempt – and the gloves are off. And if I’m not around, then all of you remember that.”

  Jake leaned back. “And speaking of that, I’m glad everyone is here today, because I want to talk about succession plans. If I’m taken out, then Teresa is my designated successor. After that, it’s Gunner, then Captain Mitterrand in G2. After that, simple seniority rules are to be followed. I’ve documented all this in the standing orders.”

  Those around the table signified their agreement. Kirsten said nothing, although she understood why, as a scientist with little military background, she was left out. Still, it rankled a bit. But Jake had talked with her about it beforehand. She was prepared.

  However, she felt compelled to point something out. “According to Pandora, if you don’t survive, then humanity has no chance,” she said.

  Jake shook his head. “Pandora can make mistakes. She’s not omniscient, she’ll be the first to tell you that. If I don’t survive, the RDF goes on, prepping to defend Earth and the rest of humanity. We don’t give up.”

  Everyone around the table nodded. Then Jake pulled his chair back to the table.

  “OK. Now on to Madame President and her minions. What are we going to do about them?”

  ***

  President Margaret Bolt was in the Oval Office when her Chief of Staff, Elias Tobin, rushed in.

  “Jake Hammett’s on the line…wants to talk to you immediately!”

  “Ah,” said Margaret. “Finally. Maybe we’ll get some cooperation now. Tell Vicky to hold him for a couple of minutes and get Frank in here.”

  Elias ran out to find Frank Hale, Margaret’s chief of dirty tricks – and the man responsible for directing the assassination attempts on Jake, Teresa and Kirsten over the last few years. Within a minute, Elias and Frank were back in Margaret’s office.

  “Vicky, put him on,” said Margaret. She heard a click as Jake came on the speaker.

  “Good morning, Admiral Hammett. How are you?” Margaret asked.

  “Alive, Margaret, no thanks to you. You missed again. But the families of the four you killed won’t soon forget, and neither will I.”

  “Jake, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I heard about the incident in Geneva, but we had nothing to do with it.”

  “Cut the crap, Margaret. Let’s talk straight for a minute. We have a little message for you.”

  “Oh, really? And what would that be, Mr. Hammett?”

  Outside, a huge explosion of dirt blew up in the lawn outside the Oval Office, not more than sixty meters from the windows. A crater ten meters in diameter materialized, throwing dirt and grass everywhere. This was followed by a ripping tear like paper being torn in two, then a final double sonic boom as sound caught up to the event. One of the windows in the Oval Office cracked and crashed to the floor; the impact rattled every window for miles around;

  “How was our targeting, Margaret? Was that close enough to get our message across, or do I need to send one a little bit closer to you?”

  Margaret stuttered, unable to speak. Tobin rushed to the window to look at the crater. Frank sat quietly, well aware of what had just happened.

  “That was a railgun dummy round, used for training, Margaret. It’s only one-half the size of the real thing, and we sent it at reduced velocity. From orbit, Margaret. From a ship you didn’t even know was there.”

  Jake paused. Then:

  “I’m sure Frank is there with you. Let him tell you what will happen if we ever need to send a full-size round at normal speed. But the short version is that the U.S. will need a new President. And a new White House.”

  Margaret was still speechless. Her mouth moved, but nothing came out.

  “And finally, Margaret, if there is one more attempt on any of our lives – any member of the RDF, whether at MarsBase or Geneva or any other location – we’ll drop a railgun round on you, Elias and Frank personally.”

  “I strongly suggest you sit down with your staff and have a soul-searching discussion of just how important it is for them not to kill us. Goodbye, Margaret.”

  With a click, Jake was gone.

  ***

  In Gulf Shores, Alabama, two men walked along the beach, quietly talking.

  “I believe we are agreed, then,” said one, by name Bob Bolan.

  The second man, Acton Pierce, nodded. “I’ll put all the resources of the Saints behind you, Bob. We’ll get this done. And once you are elected Senator, we’ll start on the longer-term plan to get you in the White House.”

  Bob Bolan concurred. “Once I’m in, we’ll get this country turned around. We’ll force the RDF to give us control of their technology.”

  Acton grinned. “And then we’ll show them what the Covenant of God can do.”

  They walked along, enjoying the setting sun behind them, content in their plans.

  4 Pete

  “The walls of Sparta are its young men, and its borders the point of their spears.”

  - King Agesilaus of Sparta

  19 July 2132 - 11 Years after Pandora

  Zeta Capricorni - 390 Light Years from Earth

  It was a fluke. The odds that a Bat cruiser would be in the Zeta Capricorni A system at precisely the same time that the RDF Chicago entered, and not more than 3,000 km away, were so large as to be impossible to figure. One moment Captain Pete Franklin was sitting comfortably in his command chair at the back of the bridge, watching his efficient crew make their callouts as the frigate came back into three-space, 20 AU from the G-type star; in the next second, he was holding the arms of his chair in an iron grip as the AI sounded an alert, a red icon flashed in the holo, and his XO yelled orders to turn into the enemy to protect their engines. The Helm officer spun them to face the Bat cruiser and they tracked sideways, still moving at their entry speed of 100kps, nose on to the Bat ship, as the bridge crew looked at the holo incredulously.

  “Fire, fire, fire!” yelled Pete pre-emptively, not waiting for his crew to catch up to events. It was clearly a Bat ship – it had the distinctive triple-lobed hull of a Bat cruiser – and Pete knew he was outgunned. Unless he fired first, he would not likely survive this engagement. Standing orders required that every warship enter any system outside of Earth’s immediate vicinity at Battle Stations – thus the Chicago was locked and loaded, every railgun primed, every missile tube ready.

  With a series of vibrations that resonated through the shi
p, Pete felt eight missiles depart the tubes of the Chicago, four from each side. Almost immediately thereafter, he heard the thud-thud-thud of the loading feeds as the railguns started spitting out slugs.

  The Mark III missiles, recently enhanced to accelerate at 3,000g, crossed the space between the ships in 14 seconds. It was the longest 14 seconds of Pete’s life.

  If the cruiser managed to get off a salvo before Pete’s inbounds hit, he and his ship were surely dead. A Bat cruiser carried 16 missile tubes, eight per side – twice the number of the Chicago. And he was sure they could cycle those tubes just as fast as Pete’s crew. Unless he inflicted some serious damage on the Bats before they opened fire, it would be like fighting two ships at once.

  In the holo, he squinted as the timer ran down on the missiles and then shouted, raising his arms above his head in excitement, as his warheads impacted the Bat cruiser, generating silent explosions that covered the enemy ship from bow to stern. He had caught them napping - probably scratching their heads trying to figure out what the strange, black wedge running parallel to them could be.

  Pete had no sympathy for them. Based on the ELINT brought back from Nest by Lois Vetton years prior, and the continued monitoring of the Bat Empire by scoutships, he knew how bloodthirsty and ruthless the Bats were. They would have destroyed him in a heartbeat as soon as they understood he was not part of their fleet.

  His railgun rounds started impacting the Bat cruiser then, and smaller explosions flared on their hull for several seconds as the railgun slugs punched holes in them. Then the Bats got their grav plates up and most of his railgun rounds started to generate smaller flecks of brilliant light as they were deflected at a tangent to the enemy hull.

  “Incoming,” yelled the Tac Officer, and Pete saw nine missiles come out of the Bat cruiser, headed directly for them. At the same time, the Chicago vibrated again as eight more of his own missiles departed, the second salvo heading out to the cruiser. Then another call from the Tac Officer, ‘Railguns inbound, many many.”

  Pete’s XO, Denny Bright, now on top of things, called out quickly, “Point defense for missiles and railguns, max forward.” The Tac Officer acknowledged, her fingers flying as she tuned the WepsAI to defend the forward part of the ship. The overhead lights flickered as the AI increased the gravity gradient on the front wedge of the Chicago to ward off the incoming missiles and railgun rounds, drawing every bit of power it could.

  The Helm Officer had switched on random walk evasion as soon as he saw the Bat ship. Now the bridge crew were jerked hard in their chairs, back and forth, as the WepsAI recognized the threat of the inbound missiles and overrode the normal maneuver limits, some of the excursions exceeding compensation by 8g. Pete’s five-point harness stretched tight as the ship jerked him around. The six hull-mounted point defense shredders on the top and bottom of the ship opened up, making a muted “phhhhttt” zipping sound as they sprayed shrapnel at the missiles and railgun rounds coming at them.

  “For what we are about to receive…” cried Pete, and that was all the time he had. The world blew up in a bright, hard glow and then it was dark.

  ***

  Pete hurt. He hurt badly. His left arm, mostly. Also both legs and his chest. He smelled smoke and tried to open his eyes. He got one eye open, just barely, and saw it was dark. Or was that the smoke? He managed to open the other eye, and decided it was mostly just darkness. No lights. Turning his head to one side, he saw that he was still strapped in his command chair, but the chair was lying on the deck.

  He reached up with his right hand and twisted the release on the harness, immediately sliding out of the tilted chair onto the deck. As he did so, with a loud pop the emergency battle lamps came on, bathing the bridge in red light. He pushed himself up with his good arm until he was in a sitting position and looked around.

  There was a loud whistling sound from the very front of the bridge, where the wraparound viewscreen was mounted. He looked and saw Denny Bright and one of the Marine guards wrestling a patch over a jagged basketball-sized hole in the wall next to the screen, one that was letting the air escape from the bridge. He looked right, toward the consoles, and saw a clear path of destruction stretching from the hole in the wall across the entire bridge, from the left front to the right rear, with destroyed consoles and dead bodies marking the path of the shrapnel. The Tac Officer was dead; her body was cut almost in half. Near her, the Helm Officer was also dead, his glassy eyes staring up at the ceiling, a look of surprise on his face.

  Pete heard someone crying softly. Looking to his left, he saw Ensign Amy Tan on her hands and knees in the space between him and the observer’s chair. He had forgotten Amy was on the bridge. She had been assigned to them as an Intel trainee and had been sitting quietly in the extra chair when they came into the system. Now tears coursed down her cheeks, and she slowly lifted her head and looked around.

  Pete give her a grim smile. “Amy,” he said. “It’s all right. Pull yourself together.”

  Amy sniffled and wiped her nose on her uniform sleeve, leaving a long streak. Pete reached over with his right hand and patted her hand where it rested on the deck.

  “Amy, I need you to get me a first aid kit and put my left arm in a sling. Do you think you can do that for me?”

  Amy nodded. She got to her feet and looked around for the first aid kit. Pete pointed to the back left of the bridge, and she saw the large red cross on the wall. Moving to the wall, she opened the recessed cabinet and pulled out the emergency first aid kit.

  Pete dragged himself over to the XO’s chair on the right, which was still intact, and pulled himself into it. The pain caused him to grit his teeth, but he made it. Once there, he re-assessed the situation. There appeared to be no power on any of the consoles. The holo was flickering intermittently, as if it were trying to reboot but didn’t have enough power. Denny Bright was coming back over from the front of the bridge toward him, wiping his hands on his uniform. The Marine guard followed him. Stopping in front of Pete, Denny grinned.

  “Well, you once told me you hated the boredom of scouting missions. How about now?”

  Pete managed a tight smile in return. “Not bored right now, Denny. Not at all. How are we?”

  Denny squatted down on his thighs, bringing his eyes level with Pete’s.

  “Probably not as bad as it looks. We patched the hole in the front of the bridge. I can feel air coming out of the vents, so the air handlers are working. The smoke is clearing out. I heard two more salvos of missiles go out, so either the WepsAI is still functioning or the crew are shooting on manual down in the missile bays. I haven’t heard any more impacts on us, so I’m hoping that means the Bats are hurt just as bad, or worse, than we are. If we can get power up, I think we’ve got a chance.”

  “Good stuff,” said Pete. “Any word from Engineering?”

  “I sent the other Marine guard as a runner to Cheng. I’m hoping he’ll be back soon with word.”

  Just at that moment, there was a loud beep and all the undamaged consoles lit up, starting their fast boot sequence. The holo blinked, then expanded into a large orange ball in front of them, typical of a full holo reboot.

  “I think Cheng just answered,” said Pete.

  “Thank God,” said Denny. He stood up as the other Marine guard came back through the hatch, carrying his pulse rifle in one hand. He presented himself at attention to Pete and Denny.

  “Sir! Cheng says reactors are good, she had to re-route power to the bridge, but things should be coming up now, Sir!”

  “Thank you, Marine,” said Pete. “Could you please get some help and carry the bodies out of here to sick bay, please. And please treat them with as much respect as possible, given the conditions.”

  “Sir, yes sir!” said the Marine. Gesturing to his comrade, they began the process of removing the bodies of the two crewmembers lying in front of Pete.

  Pete had almost forgotten about Amy Tan. Now she reached in with a sling from the first aid kit and threaded
it over his head. Then she gently lifted his left arm to place it in the sling, causing him to grimace with pain. He held it in, however, maintaining silence until she finished. She took a morphine injector out of the kit and moved toward Pete, but he waved her away.

  “Sorry, Amy, I have to keep my wits about me right now. But don’t misplace that, I’m pretty sure I’m going to need it later. I think that arm is broken.”

  Amy managed a wan smile. “It is, sir. No doubt about it.”

  With another loud beep, the holo finished rebooting. Sensors started painting, slowly building up a picture of the external environment. Simultaneously, the front viewscreen came on, painting a real-time picture of the space directly in front of the ship.

  In the holo, Pete saw the Bat cruiser, still in position, but now turned slightly sideways to them. That was a good sign; it meant the cruiser was having difficulty keeping its nose to them, required for maximum effectiveness of the defensive plates. There were three large fires burning sporadically on the aft end of the Bat cruiser, and even as Jake watched, a large explosion occurred between two of the fires, joining them into a single, even larger conflagration for a moment until it ran out of air from the ship.

  “We hit her hard, by God!” yelled Pete. “Look at her burn!”

  With another loud beep in his ears, Pete heard the comm system come back online. He saw from Denny’s face that his comm was back too.

  “Cheng?” Pete called. “What’s the status back there?”

  Commander Anna Kim, the Chief Engineer of the Chicago, responded instantly.

  “Good to have you back, sir. We’re OK back here, reactors are up, power is back up to all critical spaces, we’ll have engines in two minutes.”

  “Outstanding,” said Pete. “Thanks, Cheng. Prepare to move in two minutes.”

  “Wilco, sir,” said Cheng.

  Pete looked at Denny. “Do we take it to them, or wait for them to bring it to us?

  Denny grinned. “You know the answer to that. Faint heart ne’er killed fair cruiser.”