by Blaze Ward
Siobhan grinned as that tidbit wormed its way into Phil’s mind, lighting up his eyes in interesting ways. He obviously hadn’t considered that they might build a wolfpack out here, stealing all this junk. Or have enough crew to do something with it. But they were his plans, originally. She and Heather were just seeing them to fruition.
Phil Kosnett, commander of the smallest warship in RAN service, might become Admiral Kosnett of Second Expeditionary Fleet.
And butter still wouldn’t melt in Heather’s mouth right now.
Siobhan couldn’t wait.
Portals (October 11, 402)
It still felt weird to proudly wear the uniform that had been that of his worst enemy a decade ago. But it also felt right.
Granville knew that he would never willingly return to Imperial Service. Would never even set foot in Imperial space one minute longer than absolutely necessary to fill out paperwork forever separating him from the places he had known as a child and the family that would never accept him as an adult.
Not while he was with Deni. And that was not negotiable.
They would find a new place to exist. Aquitaine didn’t care about his personal affairs, unless they proved detrimental to the Good Conduct Of The Navy. A navy that allowed women to serve as equals.
But to go to the Republic would take Deni a quarter of the galaxy from his home, although nobody knew if NovLao had managed to survive the patient onslaught of Buran.
Deni had been a soldier, not a sailor. A squad commander roughly equivalent to a sergeant, captured during the invasion of Douangdeuane and shipped off to serve The Holding as a manual laborer on a planet so far from home that his home stars weren’t even visible from here.
NovLao would not care any more than Aquitaine about love.
Their cabin was dim. Deni was asleep on the bed while Granville sat in a reclining chair and familiarized himself with everything the Republic of Aquitaine Navy knew about every variant of C- and D-type vessels that Fribourg had ever launched.
He thought he was being quiet, but Deni stirred and rolled over. Probably the light.
“Will there be a test later?” Deni asked with sly humor as he noted the tablet in Granville’s hands. “Will it be necessary to strip an engine while blindfolded?”
Granville grinned. Deni was one of the few people who could pierce the barriers Granville kept about himself. Usually by puncturing the pomposity that tended to build up. Always, Imperial Officer and Gentleman, fierce and militant.
Except when he wasn’t.
“There will not,” Granville allowed. “They’ll even allow me to take my notes with me.”
“Then why are you staying up all night studying?” Deni asked.
It wasn’t a question he could answer easily.
Well, it was, but that would require admitting things about himself. Which he could do, here in this cabin, with nobody but his beloved around.
“Fear,” Granville said in a tiny voice.
It was perhaps the most honest answer he could give.
“Of?” Deni pressed.
“Losing you,” Granville admitted finally. “I could die in battle happily. Or I could become a hero. But I don’t know what comes after this war. After we get back to friendly territory.”
“Having second thoughts?” Deni asked. His voice was teasing, but his eyes were serious.
“The only second thoughts I have are trying to guess where we might be happiest, Deni,” Granville replied. “Do we return to Aquitaine? NovLao? Should we just stay on Lighthouse Station for the rest of our lives, where nobody can find us? Hell, Keller’s apparently a queen of someplace called Corynthe, clear out on the very edge of the galaxy itself. Should we go there?”
Deni shrugged and sat up, sliding back against the wall.
“What would make you happy, Granvie?” he asked.
“You,” Granville said simply. It really was as easy as that, when you cut away all the other details.
He just had to have the courage to admit that to himself.
“And do you care where we go, as long as we’re together?” Deni probed.
“No.”
It really was that easy. Granville smiled.
“Then you should come to bed,” Deni said, sliding over. “I’m cold and you need the sleep, if you’re going to go off and be a hero tomorrow.”
“You’ll be with me,” Granville pointed out, powering off the machine and sliding out of his shoes.
“Ah, but I’m just a strong back accustomed to taking orders, Flight Centurion,” Deni’s tease was back. “I have no inclination to become a hero.”
“You’re my hero,” Granville said as he pulled off his tunic and slid under the warm covers.
“That just goes to show how foolish we can all be.”
Granville grinned and kissed him.
Where would he be without Deni? Granville knew he would have never survived captivity long, but for this man.
Tomorrow, they might be heroes. Or dead.
But they would be together. That was the only important part.
Three (October 12, 402)
Heather forced herself to relax as she watched the board on the pilot’s station. Andre was going to be in charge as soon as she left, so she had made him sit in the Director’s chair from the moment he had come aft from his cabin.
The muttering under his breath was mostly just Andre talking to himself, rather than true grumbling. Mundane stuff like the unfairness of life, and what had he done to anger the gods.
Andre being Andre.
Siobhan had gone ahead of them on the raid in Anna, once 405 had confirmed that nothing appeared to have changed about the system. Still no other ships transmitting signals. Just the eight sentinels in orbit of Mansi-B.
The trick with doing something like this, with JumpDrives instead of sails, was to turn off every single external system that might emit a signal, including shields and sensors. And then to jump from the far edge of the system to a spot that should be behind Mansi-D, when seen from the surface of the prison planet.
Then pause and pray while the engines recharged and you sat with passive sensors hoping to not see anything suddenly looming out of the fog.
CS-405 had a distinct advantage here, since it could just ride the JumpSails, however primitive and underpowered the secondaries were, and drop out of space exactly where they wanted to be, without much risk of scattering.
A signal on Heather’s board cut through the tension.
Siobhan had dropped into her spot in the shadow of Three. Queen Anne’s Revenge, sending a laser signal in the right direction acknowledging.
CS-405 and Packmule were twenty light-hours out, hiding in the darkness, talking with their own laser communications rather than radio. Two ugly hunks of rock among all the iceballs and asteroids.
“Packmule, this is Phil,” his voice came over the line. “Begin your approach now. CS-405 will take the direct line and be there first. See you on the far side.”
Heather turned an expectant eye on Andre.
“It’s your mission,” he huffed, still unwilling to relax and run with it.
“And you’re in command of Packmule, Commander,” she fired back sweetly.
“Fine,” Andre said with just a touch of juvenile whine. “Pilot, execute your jump.”
“Executing,” Heather laughed. “Remember, this will look good on your resume, one of these days, if you decide you want to command a hospital ship.”
“What?” he was shocked.
“Yes,” Heather grinned. “Those command centurions are medical personnel with command experience. Like you now.”
More grumbling about the unfairness of things. But he didn’t have to do or say much at this point. She would plot a course for Packmule to escape if something went wrong. She and Veitengruber were likely to be off-ship if that happened, so Andre would be on his own, without a good astrogator.
And he didn’t need accuracy. If something went wrong, Andre needed to be gon
e quickly, so she would throw him as far as the JumpDrives could calculate with any certainty. After that, he could either rendezvous with CS-405, or make his own way back to Lighthouse Station.
If everything went completely to hell, at least Andre and Bok could make it home.
Hopefully.
“I’m going to go get some coffee,” Andre announced with flamboyant sulkiness. “You have the bridge.”
Which probably meant that he was going down to the wardroom, where he would get something to eat and remain there for as long as he could get away with, which would be about the time they needed to drop into an orbital slot above Three, in such a place that the various gravity wells of all the planets in the neighborhood didn’t prevent them from jumping away in a hurry.
And this first jump wouldn’t take long. Probably about sixteen minutes, if she read the solar wind and hydrogen density correctly. Piloting inside a system was far slower than deep space, from all the gravity wells you had to maneuver around.
Andre hadn’t returned when they dropped into RealSpace, but Heather wasn’t surprised or offended. He was a nurse who had been dragooned into doing things far beyond his expertise as a result of possessing a commission. Officer and a Gentleman.
Heather plotted the next jump, smiled, and triggered it as fast as the engines recalibrated.
Bullseye. She smiled at Andre as he wandered back onto the bridge with a mug of coffee and a danish in one hand.
She had intentionally come in a touch high, compared to normal. Packmule maneuvered like an iceberg at the best of times, so she wanted the maximum amount of space. It made hiding more difficult, since they had so much less planetary umbra, but that was the cost of doing something this insane.
Anna was supposedly already on the surface, landing at Zone B on Evan’s charts. CS-405 was in an escort position overhead but still below Packmule. They would occasionally broach just long enough to listen and peek, to make sure nobody had crashed the party over on B.
Heather had both qualified small-craft pilots with her, because of the insertion shuttles, and even then could only really fly two of her three at once. The administrative shuttle on 405 was in the hands of a First-Rate-Spacer busting her ass to get fully certified. The woman almost had enough hours in the trainer and the craft, but she was staying behind.
If something went wrong, CS-405 was the only one of them with enough shields to escape a hostile warship. Phil risked losing twenty percent of his crew today, down on the surface, so some things were done more carefully than normal.
The rest of them were on their own.
“You have the bridge,” Heather announced.
More grumbles.
“And you’ll have Dedra, if anything happens,” Heather smiled. “I’ve programmed the big red PANIC button if you need it, along with an estimated course to Lighthouse Station.”
“Yes, mother,” Andre replied, stumping into the Director’s chair and looking for a cupholder.
There wasn’t one, but she wasn’t going to mention that right now.
Instead, Heather made her way down to the bottom deck, and then forward to the flight bay. Everybody was already suited up for deep space, even though there technically was an atmosphere below them. Nothing they could breathe, and not enough pressure to matter.
She was the last one there, when she emerged in her spacesuit and joined Yamaguchi aboard Saddlebags.
“Bridge, this is the flight deck,” Veitengruber called over the internal systems. “Saddlebags and Caravan are ready to launch.”
“Clear skies,” Andre called back.
Yamaguchi turned to look at her with a question, but Heather just shrugged. No idea what Andre was up to.
Saddlebags was in front, and launched first, a leisurely pass until the other craft joined them, and then a hard, spiraling burn in, centered on the estimated landing zone for Queen Anne’s Revenge.
Now was when things got sticky.
Zeus Above (October 12, 402)
“Status?” Phil called. He was watching his boards locally, but wanting to hear from Evan and anybody else that needed to have an opinion today.
“Short range laser communications net established and working, sir,” Evan said, “We can talk to Andre, both insertion shuttles, and Queen Anne. Depending on time and location, they may or may not be able to respond.”
“And the ground forces?” Phil continued.
“Confirm three ships on the ground at Zone B,” Evan’s smile was a little more stern now. “Waiting to hear from them on status.”
“Very good,” Phil said.
Not much he could do at this point. Except watch and pray. Counting from the moment Mansi-B would come above the horizon, they had about a day and a half to work before the two vessels above would have to slide beyond the horizon. The ships and crew on the ground would be exposed, if anyone happened to be looking at this moon with good enough optics to spot three new dots on the ground.
And enough paranoia to be looking.
If that happened, all hell would break loose, and he would probably end up losing twenty percent of his crew in one go. That Court Martial would end his career, regardless of the circumstances.
But if it worked…
“Science Officer, you have Tactical,” Phil ordered. “Let’s broach and take a look around.”
Archaeologists (October 12, 402)
Heather looked up at a sky that was the wrong color, and a horizon that was too close. Plus that monster of a planet overhead, a banded marble that dominated the sky like an evil eye.
Three was tidally-locked with its Primary, so the same face was always pointed at the gas giant. That meant that forever, there would be a gigantic moon in the sky, blotting out most of the stars until only a few were visible through the tenuous atmosphere, even as the sun rose and set on a three-day cycle.
She found it easier to keep her head focused on the ground in front of her as she walked, careful not to bounce into the air in the light gravity and go flying away accidentally. Again. Welcome to adventures.
The planet had no magnetic field, so radios were tuned down to the lowest possible broadcast power, in the hopes that nobody would hear them over on the prison world. It was paranoia, but the alternative was worse.
Here, it just meant that anybody inside one of the dead ships was probably out of contact, just because the radios couldn’t punch a signal through even that little steel. As a result, she was leading her team over to Queen Anne’s Revenge on foot, to see what everyone was up to. That team had been on the ground for a day already, and had the ability to drop back down to T-shirts inside the ship.
Sure, the insertion shuttles had airlocks, and heads. And that was about it, unless you wanted to sleep on the hard deck. Anna had hammocks that could be slung, and hot showers if you were fast enough. Plus a kitchen.
Heather took a tally of everyone with her. Veitengruber and Yamaguchi, the pilots. Galin and Zubaida as engineers. Vlad and Deni as strong backs. Anna had been packed to the gills with folks, so hopefully they had managed to get some work done while they waited for the trucks to arrive. Folks had been working, but she had seen them drifting in this direction as the shuttles came in to land, so this was probably an impromptu afternoon tea, or something.
She went through the airlock with the first group, and found signs on the wall directing her aft and down. With Granville and Ryouichi at her heels, Heather went down to the cargo deck to find helmets arrayed on hooks with names taped on the front. Everyone was still wearing the rest of their space suits, so they expected more work today.
No rest for the wicked.
She joined Siobhan and Kam at the front end of the mob. At least the big repulsor truck was parked outside, so fitting nearly forty people in here was cozy, rather than irritating.
“You last?” Siobhan asked as she got close.
The crowd noise dropped to murmurs.
“One more batch through the airlock and then we’re set,” Heather said.
Deni led the rest in a few minutes later, and things settled.
“Good news, bad news,” Siobhan started off. “None of the ships around here are flight-worthy, right now. Many of them are badly damaged as well, so the amount of effort needed to make them salvageable probably is greater than we want to expend. On the brighter side, all of them were landed, rather than just dumped, so we can get inside them and poke around.”
“How about detaching on frames and hauling them off in pieces?” Veitengruber piped up. “The C-type is generally built in three, distinct pieces: bow, body, stern. The insertion shuttles are normally too small to lift something like that, but we’re in one-seventh gravity here, so it could be possible.”
“Then what?” Kam asked, her engineering sense picking up all sorts of danger signs from the way her nose twitched.
“Then assemble them in orbit,” the pilot replied. “At least enough to make it to JumpSpace and go somewhere else where we can fix them.”
“Without life support?” Kam asked.
Heather watched the man shrug and remembered he was a pilot, not a line officer. You had to be crazy and semi-suicidal to want to fly snubfighters. That was why she liked the big ships with lots of armor and shielding.
“Life support is contained in the middle section,” Granville observed. “Plug engines on the stern and a bridge on the bow, but leave the two ends open to space for now, and a crew could work in both environments for the two weeks it probably takes to sail back to the Lighthouse.”
Heather nearly laughed out loud when Galin Tuason turned to the pilot with a smile on his face.
“You’re nuts, Granvie,” he said. “I like you.”
The rest of the crew did laugh, so Heather joined in. It was no more insane than any of the other risks they were taking here.
“Heather, since he’s yours, I propose leaving you and him here with about half the team,” Siobhan continued when the noise had died down. “I’ll take Anna and the rest to the spot where the D-hulls are marooned, to see if they’re in any better shape. Yamaguchi will come with me in Saddlebags, and we’ll also hope to find any missiles left lying around. Thoughts?”
