The False Admiral

by Sean Danker

  “Do what?” Deilani snapped. “The ship is dead. The planet is dead.”

  “Not completely,” Nils shot back. He had the console in his lap now. “But, Admiral, there’s no navigational information for this planet, nothing for me to link the ping to.” He gestured. “There’s no map, and no way to orient ourselves. All I can do is set an arbitrary north and say the ping was received by something that way.” He waved his arm and gave me a helpless look.

  “How far?”

  He stared at me in disbelief, realized I wasn’t kidding, and looked down at his screen. He chewed his lip. “I might actually be able to calculate that.”

  “I’d get on it.”

  “This is insane,” Deilani said.

  “You’d rather stay here?”

  “What’s the alternative?”

  “If this thing goes, that fall isn’t survivable. We could strap in, find a way to preserve ourselves, maybe—but not the equipment and supplies we’ll need. What if the ship ended up upside down? What if we’re buried?”

  “The fleet could get us out,” Deilani said, rubbing at her temples.

  “Exhume us, more like. Lieutenant, think about it. Just think about what would happen if there was another quake, and this ship fell into that chasm.”

  “Then let’s secure it.”

  “To what? One of the spires? There’s nothing on this planet solid enough to anchor a ship this size. Even the ground can’t support us. If we were going to try to ride it out here, we’d have preparations to make and no guarantee of time. It could happen any second.”

  “All right! Let’s hear your plan.” She was still off balance from what had just happened. I couldn’t blame her for being frayed. Just looking down at the chasm had been enough to make me feel ill.

  “Nils?” I said. The ensign was gazing at the screen, looking dazed. “Nils!”

  “I’ve run it four times,” he said.

  “What? What have you got?”

  “Whatever picked up the signal is . . . a ways off.”

  “How far?”

  “Ninety . . . ninety-eight hundred kilometers. Give or take.” He continued to gaze at the screen. “Give or take,” he repeated. “I don’t know how big the planet is, so I just have to guess when I’m trying to compensate for curvature.”

  That quieted everyone down. I had pictured us strolling across the surface of the planet, trailing a caravan of gravity carts laden with oxygen.

  But that was a little farther than walking distance.

  “Right,” Deilani said, squaring herself. “We get ready to ride this out. We’ll need electromagnetic binders to secure our equipment and supplies, and a way to protect ourselves.”

  She was right. It was the very definition of a long shot, but it was the only shot. The air and the water were in the freighter, so the freighter was where we had to stay. It would certainly be a shift in lifestyle for me, but it wouldn’t be the first time.

  “Then we just strap in and wait to fall?” Nils asked.

  “No,” Deilani said. “We instigate it ourselves. The tremors only started after the shuttle blew; that means the shock conductors work fine, even without power. We set off our own charge. Maybe we can even place it so we go down facing the right way. We can’t just take our chances—we have to try to get ahead of this.”

  That was a thought. This was all madness, of course—the odds of any of it working were exceedingly slim, but it was something like a plan. My plan, to hold out until rescue, sounded sensible and conservative in comparison, but it was still a reach. I had to keep an open mind.

  Our lack of power would make us difficult to find, and without knowing how misdirected the imperials were in regard to our location, it could be a long time before we were found. And being found by imperials wasn’t necessarily the best outcome. In fact, I wasn’t really sure if it was preferable to just punching out here on this spiky rock.

  I groaned. This—this—was what I had waiting for me? I’d come a long way to be stuck in a fix like this. I’d gotten so close; it didn’t seem fair. The ship was huge; there had to be something we could use, something to give us an advantage. We probably had enough illegal weapons on the ship for a small war, but there was no one here to fight.

  Still, it gave me an idea.

  “Guys,” I said. “We’re forgetting something.”

  “What?” They all looked at me hopefully; it wasn’t lost on Nils and Salmagard that Deilani’s plan was thin at best. Even Deilani didn’t like it, but she’d been trained to take charge, and that was what she was trying to do.

  “We’ve forgotten that we’re sitting in a freighter full of ordnance.”

  “Weapons?” Nils looked puzzled.

  Deilani shut him up with a look and turned to me. “How can that help us?”

  “Some of those containers were pretty big. There might be something we can use. Nils, call up the manifest.”

  “Uh—yes, Admiral. But I’m not reading any weapons here. These are imperial trade commodities, and according to the log, it’s all meant for Free Trade space. It looks like after Payne Station the next stop was the Bazaar.”

  “That’s just for show. There might be some Evagardian goods on this ship, but not what’s listed there. The real manifest is there—it’s just encrypted or hidden or something. I know you can get at it. Don’t,” I said, cutting him off. “Don’t waste your breath. Nobody gets as good as you are from school, even an imperial school. And besides, you’re a maintenance tech, not a systems tech. You’re too good to be all legit.”

  He gazed at me, face pale. “Reformed,” he said after a moment.

  “Nobody’s judging you.” I jerked a thumb at Deilani. “Except her. But you get used to it.”

  Nils took a deep breath and looked back at the screen. “I don’t have any tools for this. The best I can do is . . . tricking it. It’s risky. This is the only reader we’ve got.”

  “We could be dead in five minutes, Ensign. Throw the damn dice.”

  “Yes, Admiral. Just let me think.” He was sweating.

  Salmagard bowed her head again. Deilani had gone back to pacing.

  “Don’t take too long.” I had a feeling the decisions we made here and now were going to be significant with regard to our collective futures. It was a lot of pressure, knowing that it might be possible for us to get through this, but only if we did everything right, and in time.

  I was used to that kind of pressure. They weren’t.

  Salmagard was still and calm, but now her eyes were fixed on Nils. Even the Empire couldn’t breed out nerves.

  “I’ll be damned,” Nils said. “I seriously didn’t expect that to work. This guy needs to update his systems.” Just as I’d had a glimpse of the real Salmagard before, now I saw the real Nils. He spoke mildly, but there was triumph in his eyes. It was easy to picture him in his life before the Service, sitting in sustenance housing somewhere, wreaking havoc deep in the nets.

  “Tremma’s old-fashioned, obviously. Or he was, at any rate. Have you got it?”

  “Looks that way. But these are mostly weapons from Commonwealth systems. A lot of Isakan stuff.”

  “Why don’t you let me?” I asked, holding out my hand. He gave me a look, then glanced at Deilani, who had gone stony. He gave me the console, and I looked at the manifest.

  Small arms, missiles, explosives, weapon systems to be mounted on every type of ship. Armor. Lots of armor. Indeed, only a little of it was imperial.

  There was a crawler, but it was short range. It would never take us ten thousand kilometers . . . Gravity shields, EMP shields, EMP warheads . . . Like 14-14, some of this stuff wasn’t meant to be transported without proper military procedure. The implications of Tremma’s cargo would probably be lost on Nils. The graduates didn’t have the context or the perspective to make sense of this, but I had a
pretty good idea about the sorts of false-flag operations that Tremma had probably been up to before the cease-fire. I stayed on task. Deilani was hovering at my shoulder, and I leaned to let her see as well. The input of an officer couldn’t hurt.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “What?” Nils looked up sharply.

  I pointed at the readout. “There’s a personnel carrier. It’s a flyer.”

  “What kind?”

  “It says Avenger. Do you know it?”

  “That’s a Luna series.”

  “That’s pretty much one of ours. It shouldn’t be too different from imperial carriers,” I said, thinking quickly.

  “But it’s still a flyer; we need a pilot,” Nils pointed out.

  “I can fly it,” I said absently. “As long as it’s ready to go. But it probably will be. Guys, if we have a chance, this is it.”

  “Will its propulsion even work on this surface?” Deilani asked, but she wasn’t being contrary. There was hope in her voice.

  “It’s got a gravity drive. Why wouldn’t it? This can work.”

  “Just because it’s here doesn’t mean it’s ready to fly,” Nils said. “It could be in pieces.”

  He still didn’t quite grasp the realities of this freighter. This equipment was useless if it wasn’t ready for action. That was all right. “It won’t be,” I told him. “We’ll need to fuel it and get it online, but it’ll be ready to go. The weapons systems won’t be installed, but that won’t keep us out of the air.”

  “What do we do?”

  “Start by finding it. It shouldn’t be hard. There can’t be many containers down there big enough to hold it. Let’s go.” I was already on my feet and moving; without a second to spare, everything we did from this point forward had to be at top speed.

  The dark, narrow Ganraen corridors felt tighter and more stifling now. With the clock ticking, they seemed longer as we raced down to the main cargo bay. There was always another panel hanging from the ceiling, or loose grate to trip on. I was sick of climbing ladders, and everything had been knocked askew when the ship tilted.

  The crate for the flyer was the size of a building, and it had survived the blast from the shuttle. I had no idea how to open it, but there was a human-sized hatch in the side, which we were able to unseal.

  Inside, our hand-lights showed us the personnel carrier. Just the sight of it gave me a spark of hope. It wasn’t some featherweight combat craft—it was an air shuttle. It would have some range. Not much, but maybe enough. Ten thousand kilometers? I wasn’t sure—but its effective range would be doubled because we weren’t coming back. It was a chance, which was more than we had waiting for us if we stayed here.

  The loading ramp at the rear of the flyer was already down, and the interior passenger area was lit with soft blue emergency lights. It was spacious, even comfortable. There was combat seating, impact padding, and carbon viewports. It smelled new. Luna engineering was an enormous step up from most of what you’d find in the Commonwealth. Compared to Tremma’s freighter, the Avenger’s interior was like a palace. I made my way to the cockpit to check the systems.

  Sure enough, there were no fuel cells, but we could take care of that with the leftovers from the deceased shuttle. The computer didn’t need anything but pilot officer codes, which I could provide from Tremma, or failing that, probably override. I’d never flown something like this, but I could wing it.

  “We’re in business,” I said.

  “What’s the plan?” Deilani asked.

  I thought about it. “We’re at the wrong end of the bay. We need to get this thing over there in the open, where it can face the doors.”

  “There’s no way to clear the shuttle wreckage from the launch zone.”

  “We don’t need a launch zone. It doesn’t matter what the thrusters do to what’s behind us—we aren’t coming back. We need the arm loader. You’ll need a good power source for that, Nils.”

  He held up the reader. “It’ll be sloppy, but I can do it. There are a lot of energy cells in these crates. There’ll be something big enough to get the cargo system running.”

  “Are you up to operating it? It can’t be as easy as the AI makes it look.”

  The cargo system was little more than an arm that ran on a series of rails on the ceiling, with claws that would latch onto crates and move them around. It was meant to be run by a computer.

  “Only one way to find out, Admiral.” Nils had that wild look again. I wasn’t sure I liked that.

  “Get on it. Go.” I pointed meaningfully. Off he went, back through the passenger space and down the ramp.

  I looked at Deilani and Salmagard. “We’ve got work to do too. Lieutenant, use this computer to find our range. Find out if it’ll get us there.”

  “And if it won’t?”

  “You’re an officer,” I said. “Act like it.”

  She gave me a funny look, then sat down and keyed up the systems.

  “My orders, Admiral?” Salmagard asked as we descended the ramp.

  I panned my light around the inside of the Avenger’s container. There was nothing here but the flyer itself, and two large crates that didn’t look like what we needed. “Fuel cells,” I said. “We can’t go anywhere without fuel. We’ll use the shuttle’s reserves—they should still be around. Find a grav cart and meet me at the launch zone. We should be able to move a cell between the two of us.”

  Salmagard jogged off down the row of containers while I headed for the nearest bay wall before remembering that no power meant I couldn’t use a console to locate the reserve cells for the freighter’s shuttle. I’d have to find them the old-fashioned way, but they couldn’t be far.

  Deilani’s voice came over the com. “This FPC isn’t intended for long-range operations. It’s a stealth model, meant for ground insertion, launched from a mobile platform. It won’t take us far.”

  “Take a look at the fuel economy supposing we disable the stealth functions.”

  “That would buy us some flight time, I suppose . . .” A brief pause. “We’ll need to keep the recyclers online, won’t we?”

  “Too early to say.”

  “I can disable weapons systems?”

  “Of course. It doesn’t even have weapons mounted.”

  The channel shifted; Deilani had just made the conversation private. “Admiral, you do realize that if we do this, we’ll be walking right into the hands of the Ganraens.”

  “We’ve been over this. They’re colonists, not soldiers. With a little luck, they’ll treat us like the wayfarers we are.”

  “But hadn’t we better have some kind of plan? They might be your people, but do they know that? You should be as worried as we are.”

  The propaganda had really gotten to her. She really thought these people might go straight to hostilities, when in truth the Ganraen colonists would just be curious and puzzled. They’d be wary. They might even detain us. They wouldn’t hurt us, but Deilani could see them only as the enemy.

  The graduates had been in training during the war. They had been heavily exposed to the Evagardian wartime views of the Commonwealth, which were less than flattering. The Empire liked to paint the Commonwealth as mad and corrupt, which, to be fair, was partially true. They also liked to point out that the royals would hire private military to fight their war for them, which Evagardians considered impolite.

  None of that meant that these colonists were rabid animals that would murder us the moment we showed our faces.

  “We couldn’t fight an entire colony even if we wanted to,” I said. “We’ve got a cease-fire. They’re people just like you. Instead of an Empress, they have their Royals. Their ships are ugly and they aren’t as excited about their DNA as imperials, but they’re just as civilized as you or me. It’ll be fine. Now, how far can that thing take us?”

  “Normal operational range is
about twenty-five hundred kilometers,” Deilani sighed. “So make that five thousand.”

  “That’s not much.” But it made sense—this flyer was supposed to deploy from a strategic carrier.

  “If we cut the stealth systems, that will give us more. If we fly at the most energy-efficient speed, we can get even more,” Deilani told me. “But there’s no atmosphere, so when we’re out, we’re out. There’s no glide, no controlled descent. We have to land it before we go dry.”

  “The AI will force us to. It won’t let us just drop out of the sky. So with everything you can do to max our range, how much does that buy?”

  “I think—if you can fly this thing—if we went about it the right way, we’ll still be five or six hundred short. And that would be a forced landing.”

  “Damn it, that’s almost there.”

  “It’s still a long way,” she reminded me. “Maybe it doesn’t sound like much, but it would take more than a week on foot.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not so far that we can’t try to figure something out.”

  “Even in this gravity, making that kind of hike isn’t realistic. We don’t even know the terrain,” she scoffed. I couldn’t blame her for putting up this resistance. On top of being a long shot, a trek like that wasn’t likely to be much fun.

  “We have the stamina,” I said, hoping it was true.

  “Maybe. But not the oxygen,” Deilani countered.

  Now I was the one pacing. “Are you sure? There is a lot of air on this ship—more than enough to get us there. What if we could find a way to take some with us?”

  Deilani groaned over the com. “I know, but the problem is the EV suits. There might be a way to fill EV cartridges, but that’s a specialized process—it’s just like EV suit maintenance. It’s got to be done by techs who know what they’re doing and have specialized equipment. EV maintenance isn’t its own career field because it’s so easy, Admiral. It’s not something we can do ourselves. If we try to jury-rig something, it’s going to be extremely inefficient, and we’ll lose as much air as we get to breathe. We can’t carry enough and get it from standard tanks into these suits.”