Admiral's Challenge (A Spineward Sectors Novel: Book 8)

by Luke Sky Wachter

  Picking up my blaster, I fumbled with by now nearly nerveless fingers and checked the charge.

  With a cry, Akantha fell to her knees, but still kept her sword interposed between herself and the other woman.

  “This is your rightful price for embracing a heretic and rejecting a priority override,” the assassin said scornfully, “so now you’ll share his fate.”

  Calmly doing my best to ignore the byplay—and the potential implications that I had just been betrayed by those most dear to me—I leveled the pistol at the black-clad woman’s back. Even if I couldn’t decipher everything in the few moments left to me, I could at least do one thing: ensure that my children would have the very slight chance to grow up without their father. A leg wound, if treated quickly, might be survivable with amputation and follow up treatment. My more centrally located stab wounds, of course, weren’t.

  Akantha’s eyes cut my way and nodding imperceptibly she focused back fully on the poisoner. “The only fool here is you, Ishtaraaa,” she said coldly, “I’ve already called for help and locked down this room. You’ll never escape before reinforcements arrive.” After saying, this Akantha tossed a miniature data slate onto the floor.

  “Then my purpose is fulfilled,” the assassin said grimly, “and you’ll all die with me.”

  Seeing the assassin crouch down slightly—as if about to explosively move—I pulled the trigger, gallantly shooting her in the back.

  Crying out with pain, the assassin turned to me and I coolly shot her again, and then again, and again. Then I saw that her night black ninja like clothing appeared to be blaster resistant, as the bolts flared in almost the same way they would against duralloy power armor. Unfortunately, my weapon’s charge ran out shortly after she fell to the floor.

  “Witch!” I swore, levering myself up off the floor blood pouring down my front. Then, wobbling on numb and lifeless legs, I staggered over to the black assassin. Not wanting to believe my ears, I kicked the knife out of her hand and then forced off her mask.

  “Crystal?!” I said, cursing myself for a fool. I’d been warned, but had I listened? Once again I’d been nothing but an idiot—I truly did deserve to die by my sister’s hand.

  “Purity and the Rebirth,” my Sister, Crystal, the midnight assassin coughed a small amount of blood coming out of her mouth and a beauteous smile on her face. It was the smile of a fanatic who had been certain in her mission, “At least I succeeded in killing you!”

  In an instant, fanaticism waned and the sort of hate you only saw in family feuds filled her face. I just shook my head numbly, wondering what I’d done to earn such hatred even from the non-Montagne side of the family.

  “Who are you working for?” I demanded when all I really wanted to ask was why she had done it.

  Crystal just laughed expelling more blood.

  “The only fool here is you, Ishtaraaa. You failed,” Akantha said, laboriously getting to her feet and joining me over my fallen sister by the same mother. Briefly, I wondered at the different name she was using for Crystal, and then shook it off; I didn’t want to give any more of my last minutes on earth to my traitorous Sister. “I already received the antidote from your mother.”

  Every muscle on my Sister’s body clenched, and she started to rise before falling back to the floor looking at me hatefully.

  “She is not my mother!” Crystal shouted and, as if her energy was all used up, she collapsed a few inches back to the floor and lay there panting, “just as he is not my brother. Besides,” she continued in a voice more akin to a whisper than a fury-fueled rebuke, “even if you have it from that traitor, the antidote still takes time to build up in your system.”

  I swayed at this admission. If she wasn’t my sister, didn’t that mean that Mother had lied to me? Had I been betrayed by my own mother?

  “My Protector and I have been eating at least one specially prepared ‘native Tracto-an’ meal every day for the past month,” Akantha said savagely. “I assure you: the antidote has had time to accumulate within our bodies.”

  “Curse you. Curse you and the heretic both,” Ishtaraaa gasped, dully turning her head away.

  I was surprised at this particular revelation; did this mean I wasn’t going to die?

  “I hope for your sake that you didn’t kill the guards outside our room, Blood-Traitor,” my Wife continued coldly. “Or I will have you healed only so I can make for you a more fitting end than dying peacefully on the floor.”

  For a brief moment, I wanted to protest; I didn’t want to see my sister hurt like this—or, more accurately, I didn’t want my mother to have to go through the aftermath. But whatever antidote Akantha had secretly snuck into my food didn’t seem to be working too well, and I swayed before falling back onto the bed my legs collapsing under me.

  “If not me…then another,” Ishtaraaa whispered.

  “Akantha, what’s going on?” I said as I continued to lose control over my body.

  “Already we have two of the Keys and the One Bloodline. The Data God will be reborn,” Akantha said furiously, “and I assure you that if Tract Two is the one to succeed in this holy task—despite your treasonous interference—then we will ensure that all traitors are purged from the ranks of the uploaded.”

  My blood ran cold as a loud thumping sounded on the door leading into our stateroom—a thumping which was followed by a loud explosion that rocked the room.

  As my consciousness spiraled down, I realized something profound. If there was one thing I could take away from this assassination attempt—the relative success of which remained to be seen—it seemed I’d married an old style, AI-worshipping fanatic. Worse, the woman I called sister—a person who didn’t even come from the same barbaric planet as my Wife, but rather a high-tech world of the Spine—shared this same belief. The one certainty I’d grown up with—that of Capria’s supposed AI-hating roots—had just been undermined and, as a result, my world was rocked to its core.

  Now, finally, all that genetic engineering in my family line started to make sense. But what else was I missing…

  Chapter Twenty-two: The Sword from the Stone

  Finally, back in the Gambit Star System, and with the perfect excuse—at least within his own mind: the need to help out the Admiral.

  Spalding crept down the dark and empty halls of the Lucky Clover, his eyes darting around suspiciously. He’d been gone for the better part of a year now, and there were any number of untoward things which could have happened on his beloved ship.

  “Don’t worry, girl; you’ll be fixed up before you know it,” he muttered, reaching out to pat the walls of the only Caprian battleship worth the name. Wiping a tear from his eye, he shifted the strap of the portable scanner on his shoulder and hurried onward, “The boy just needs his sword back, is all.”

  Despite his happiness to be back onboard, the oppressive darkness all over the ship was making him—with his naturally suspicious nature—even more wary than usual. Anyone could have snuck on her and, even now, might lay in wait trying to figure out where the ship’s Locker was located. He couldn’t risk letting them follow him to that most holy of holies.

  However, after an hour with a portable hand scanner—while doubling and tripling back through empty corridors, which incidentally let him look around and see how much work had been left undone—the old engineer finally entered the turbo-lift system in the Chief Engineer’s office. After its security checks he was once again headed into the Locker.

  Stomping through the darkness of the Locker wasn’t as bad as marching through the emptiness of the other decks. Something about the Locker made it seem as if too many people down here would have been unnatural, not the other way around like up above.

  Bypassing used, aging—and even some ancient unused material, still inside its factory packaging containers—he finally reached The Heart of the Locker.

  He stopped for a moment and took a deep breath. “Alright; I’m coming on in!” he warned before stepping into the room.
/>   Words started to form on the plasma screen in the ceiling.

  “Yes, yes, I know; I’ve been gone a while,” Spalding replied testily, “couldn’t be helped.”

  More words formed.

  “What am I, your errand boy?” the old Engineer shook his head and headed over toward the two crystals. Looking at them skeptically, he saw that the Minos Sword was still sticking out of the new, second crystal structure.

  “How’s your friend doing?” he asked the original crystal, as he observed that the crystal was even bigger than it had been last time he’d checked. This time it was now up to the hilt of the sword, making the second, newer Core Fragment even larger than the original by several inches.

  Looking up at the screen, he scowled after reading the message. “Of course I realize that!” he snapped and then took a deep, calming breath.

  Pulling out a portable ion wand and setting it aside, he next reached for the pair of heavy work gloves hanging off his tool belt.

  “I’m afraid I’m going to need the sword back,” Spalding informed the crystals, and then looked up at the screen to read the remarks. “Now, look, you; the Admiral’s in a spot of trouble right now, and I think we’d all rest a little easier if he had a decent weapon at his side.”

  Another pause followed as he read the stream of information on the screen.

  “He gave Bandersnatch to the Lady Akantha, that’s why!” he grumped. “Well, alright then,” he started forward, only to be stopped by the crystal’s next stream of digital words, “of course I know it’s gene linked; that’s why I’ve got the gloves.”

  Shaking his head, the old engineer reached forward with both hands, gripped the sword, and then pulled. Slowly, the sword pulled from the crystalized stone with a raspy, grating sound.

  As soon as the weapon was free, the old engineer tore off his gloves and used the ion wand, first on his hands and then on the doffed gloves. After he was sure it was clean, just to make certain—because there was no point in taking any risks—he boxed up the gloves and wand. He propped the surprisingly light sword—considering its absurd dimensions—over his shoulder and resolved to throw the glove and wand into the waste recycler on the way out, just to be certain there were no unwanted complications.

  Chapter Twenty-three: Imperial Entanglements

  “Staff has just completed the report, Admiral,” said the Captain stepping into the Admiral’s office and saluting.

  The Admiral leaned back. “Report,” he ordered.

  “The consolidation is complete, Sir,” the Captain replied, exposing a fierce smile at the culmination of all their hard work up to this point, before adding a qualifying, “or, as complete as it can be with some of the capital ships still needed for helping out supposedly loyal sub-worlds with their home rule issues. The rest have imposed Imperial Governors, with garrison forces securely in control of all major, local, in-system assets. There are a few localized problems here and there but, on a Sector level, this area has been functionally pacified.”

  “Then it is time to start setting up our forward bases of operations for subduing the quarrelsome nation states of Sector 25,” Imperial Rear Admiral Janeski replied with satisfaction. “It’s taken longer than expected to get into this position but, despite some initial setbacks, with the unexpected crippling of the economic and military assets of Sectors 23 and 24 we are finally in a position to make up for the slip in our time schedule and sweep the board.”

  “Although I would never presume to instruct the Admiral,” the Imperial Captain said his face carefully neutral, “a Sector, if properly led and mobilized—even one depleted by internal strife—is still a potent force to be dealt with.”

  “Although it didn’t need to be said, your point is well taken,” Janeski said leaning forward with relish, “which is why instead of just gathering the Fleet and crushing all opposition in a blitz, we’re going to continue to follow standard subjugation protocols: the fleet will be concentrated to its fullest extent, with only those forces necessary for garrison and minimal patrol duties held back. Forward operating bases and fleet supply dumps will be established, and advanced scouting forces deployed to supplement and confirm the information supplied to us via the ComStat network by our embedded intelligence assets. This is an operation that will be done by the numbers, have no fear.”

  “The locals won’t know what hit them, Sir,” Captain Goddard nodded, and then his gaze sharpened. “Are you planning to keep the fleet concentrated and hit each world in turn, or do as we did here in 26?” he asked.

  “We’ll stay concentrated, at least until the first Core World falls—if you can even call any world here in the back of beyond such a thing,” Janeski laughed darkly. “If, by then, they haven’t concentrated their forces against us—or appear to be doing such—then at that time we will break into taskforces and subjugate the top provincial worlds in simultaneous detail.”

  “Are we treating the Local Assembly forces the same as a top provincial nation state?” Goddard inquired. “And what about the Joker in the deck, Sir…if I may be so bold?”

  “Unless they unify their SDFs and give us the chance for a single, crushing blow to their mobile forces—or something else unexpected happens—we’ll deal with their mewling little attempt at a Sector Assembly at the same time,” Janeski said harshly. “But while I pray for them to bring everything together, and thus expedite our conquest of the Sector, I am not counting on it. As for the ‘joker,’ so called…”

  The Admiral’s eyes turned deathly, causing Captain Goddard to take an unconscious step back. “I apologized if I overstepped,” the Imperial Captain said with a healthy sense of self-preservation kicking in.

  Admiral Janeski took a few deep, cleansing breaths. “No, you are only doing your duty as Flag Captain to raise those issues which need to be raised,” he said, his eyes drilling into the Captain’s own. “Rest assured that I haven’t forgotten the Governor or his band of merry militia. Their time will come, but not at the expense of the cause. With their naval forces presumably exhausted after joining in the completely unexpected Anti-Droid Campaign,” the two Imperial shared a look of mutual satisfaction at his duplicitous description of the event, “they are not currently considered a priority threat.”

  “So you intend to deal with them at the same time as the rest of the Core-Worlds and Sector Assembly?” the Imperial Captain clarified.

  “Now you wander perilously close to overstepping your bounds, Captain,” Janeski said, his eyes turning flinty. “I understand, Sir,” Goddard nodded, swallowing the knot in his throat and pressing the issue, “however, some new information has just been received that may clarify—or even give cause to alter—your plans as they regard the Governor and his would-be Confederation forces.”

  “Oh?” Janeski said in a tone of voice that promised, if the Captain’s words weren’t everything promised, it would go extremely poorly for the junior officer.

  Goddard laid a data chip down on the Admiral’s desk, but Janeski made no immediate move to retrieve it. “Yes, Sir,” the Imperial Captain said firmly, “a House Raubach operation has just sent us an update and urgent call for immediate assistance.”

  “Raubach?” Janeski said, his lip curling contemptuously. “What do those hangers on, clinging to the hem of our Patron’s senatorial robes, need that we would possibly be willing to provide?”

  “It seems that, at the same time as the main battle of the Anti-Droid Campaign was being waged, a Raubach operation on the edge of Sector 24 space was interrupted by the Governor’s forces,” Goddard said.

  “Squeak ants fighting squeak ants,” Janeski said, his eyes flaring intensely, “I fail to see how any of it concerns me. You are rapidly losing my attention; get to the point, if there is one, Captain—and do so quickly.”

  “Of course, Sir,” the Captain nodded sharply, feeling the Admiral’s heavy gaze as though it bore the weight of a planetoid down on him, “Raubach was excavating tech from an Ancient world when its forces wer
e attacked and defeated in a three-way battle involving Raubach forces, provincial forces, and a droid fleet. After the aforementioned ships stole an Elder Tech hyper drive of undetermined kind,” at this, Goddard could see the interest quickly squelched on the Admiral’s face, “the principal members of the House-Direct,” by which he meant the actual members, by blood, of House Raubach, “were lost in battle. The remaining retainers did not consider themselves of sufficient status to continue the second half of their operation without Imperial support. With us being the nearest Imperial forces, and having access to the same communications network, they have turned to us for help.”

  “While I will admit it is interesting, I still find nothing worthy of sending even a single ship to help a House that is so overcome and depleted that it can’t handle a simple operation without disaster,” Janeski said coldly.

  “According to the Raubach retainers, the second half of their more than five year operation is a Beta class lead on a potential Core Fragment,” Goddard said evenly. “They’re attempting to invoke an Imperium Level emergency call for our assistance—even though we’re not technically an Imperial force since we are, again, technically a rogue operation only happening to be lead and supplied by Imperial citizens.”

  “And the potential Core Fragment they have a lead on is…?” Janeski asked, hungrily leaning forward in his chair.

  “A MAN fragment, of course,” Goddard replied, exposing his teeth.

  The Admiral’s eyes lit up at that. “It seems that even a broken Raubach clock can tell the time accurately at least twice in a day,” Janeski said intently, “what exactly do they think they need from us, and how likely is it that non-Imperial forces are aware of the prize?” “They want a Squadron of Light Cruisers and one of Destroyers, as well as a battalion of embarked marines in case they have to deal with Droids again or significant resistance when they go to retrieve the Fragment,” relayed the Captain.