War Without Honor (Halloran's War Series Book 1)

by J. R. Geoghan

  Renno said, “Sir, they’re Prax. I don’t think we need much—.”

  Heres cut her off. “I know, I know. But it’s all so irregular. Out here, within shuttle range of a major jump waypoint, by itself? It’s like it’s lost or something.”

  Kendra entered the bridge, and Heres turned to her. “Where’s your sidekick?”

  “Lieutenant Travers is awaiting further instructions, Captain. What are your instructions?” She had her hands on her hips and everyone on the bridge was suddenly feeling awkward.

  “We have an unidentified warship out around that moon.” Heres pointed at the grayish orb that half-filled the viewscreen. We know very little about it except that the drive is pegged as Prax in origin and that we are pretty sure that your mottled uniform people—at least some of them—took a shuttle from Agra out to the ship not long ago.”

  “That’s interesting.” Kendra’s mind called up an image of the tall human ‘captain.’ Where was he at the moment?

  Heres seemed to read her mind. “I’m thinking that your friend Captain Halloran is somehow involved. As are the Haulers.”

  “Pirates. I knew it.”

  “I want you to go over and verify their intentions.”

  “What?” Kendra looked as though struck.

  “I’m not taking Valor into range of whatever weaponry they possess. You’re the perfect tip of my spear.” The smirk was back. Heres never changed.

  “I’m not—.”

  Heres smiled menacingly. “What you are is a person aboard my ship with a military background, excellent credentials and a naturally suspicious personality. In other words, you’re perfect.” Smirk.

  Kendra frowned but said nothing. Here, he was in charge.

  “And besides,” Heres leaned on his chair back, crossing his arms. “I can just order you. You’re still on the Fleet payroll. So consider yourself ordered, Captain. And take your sidekick with you. Put your rank insignia back on, by the way.” He waved at her unadorned uniform.

  Kendra was defeated. It seemed that Coloran was getting further and further away. But, the thought of the action filled her with eagerness. “Yes, sir.” She took some comfort in the knowledge that Heres was actually a senior Captain to herself. “Instructions?”

  “We’re going to hail them now. Let’s see what happens.” Heres nodded to Renno.

  After a minute she looked back. “No response, sir.”

  Heres waved at Kendra. “Off you go. Report back once you’ve made contact.”

  Aboard Trellixan

  “They’ve stopped moving. Keeping the range steady beyond the protection of the moon.” Axxa looked up from the console he was sitting at.

  “Probably won’t hold for long. They will definitely know this is a Prax ship?”

  Axxa nodded. “Almost certainly. The ship is identified as a newer-model Fleet cruiser. Similar weaponry to the Trellixan.”

  Halloran remembered a name. “Valor.”

  “The one mentioned by Admiral Kendall.”

  Halloran nodded. “I’ll wager a day’s pay on it. That Captain would be charged with recovering you.”

  “It would be possible.”

  “Unless you’re now gone over to the other side.” Halloran tapped the chair arm. “Or gone back, depending on how you’re looking at it. Then he might have orders to destroy you instead.”

  Chief Reyes was leaning on a console nearby with PO Carruthers in the operator’s chair. “I sure wish we had a Prax dictionary.”

  “That is the sensor & communications station,” Axxa commented.

  “Could’ve fooled me,” muttered Carruthers. Halloran suppressed a grin. They were all going to need to learn—and quick.

  He stared at his own command station. “Can we move at all?”

  Axxa replied, “Of course. I see the ship as fully capable of any form of propulsion. Reactor is functioning nominally. It is a newer model I have yet to encounter. And, there’s something else.”

  “Okay. Explain?”

  Axxa looked up again. “This vessel’s outer hull is composed of Tavarran steel.”

  “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

  “It means that my people have somehow found a source of this rare element of Tavarran origin, which is technically impossible since the planet Tavar is heavily guarded by the humans. Up until this ship, our warship hulls were composed of a synthesized variant of this metal.” He shook his head. “We were unable to ‘reverse engineer’ the true material.”

  “You remembered the phrase,” Halloran noted. “Tell me later how this information is important.”

  The bridge door opened to admit Machinists Mate Bruce Brown. Halloran realized that the man was still standing in the opening, unsure and looking around. “”Brown, what’ve you got? Find the engines?”

  “Um, sort of, sir. We need some help down there, sir. Figuring out what things say and do.”

  “Who do you have with you?” Halloran stood tall and stretched, hands on hips.

  “Captain Antonov left PO Wyatt, Nunez, Kaufmann and myself with LT Hummel in the reactor spaces to look it over, sir.”

  “Hmm. What does Hummel think?” Mark had done some time in engineering before moving out of the reactor spaces. Senior Petty Officer Trigg Wyatt had been the rising star in Engineering aboard Bonhomme Richard behind Chief Drew, who hadn’t made it.

  “He’s the one who sent me to update you, sir.”

  “Okay. Axxa, you head down with Brown and give the crew down there a tutorial on the main controls and things to keep an eye on. No more than fifteen minutes.”

  Axxa hesitated, then nodded and strode across the bridge to the door. Brown, who was a kid from the Midwest as Halloran remembered him, looked terrified of the alien for a moment before stepping aside to let Axxa go first. Halloran gave him an encouraging wave and turned to Reyes and Carruthers. “We’ve got quite a task ahead of us.”

  Reyes straightened, laying a hand on Carruthers’ shoulder. “Carruthers seems to be picking up the layout of these boards well, sir.”

  Carruthers didn’t spare them a glance as her fingers danced over the flat glasslike surface. “They used the same configuration for all their subsystem displays. Plus, each display has a double-touch feature—probably to avoid accidental inputs.” She pointed at a series of raised bumps across the top of the station. “Not sure what these are yet, but they look like small cameras. What I do notice is that the bumps seem to correspond to the layout of the subsystem panels.” She glanced up at Halloran. “I’m betting they’re some kind of heads-up display. Now that would be cool. Sir.” Her grin was infectious and cut through Halloran’s doubt, which he appreciated.

  “Keep at it, Gail. Chief.” He shook Reyes’ hand. “I’m going to do a quick turn through the ship.”

  Carruthers was back to her console. “If you come up with any masking tape and markers, bring ‘em back, sir.”

  “This whole ship will need to be plastered with labels.”

  At the back of the bridge was a short passage that ran right and left, with a wide elevator doorway directly across from the bridge entrance. Halloran took the left passage—the way he’d come aboard originally. After ten meters or so that passage opened into a longer passage which snaked its way toward the aft of the ship. To his left—the bow—was a doorway. He opened it, noting the way the latches operated on all the doors he’d seen so far, and stepped into the space. It was a large cabin with a sort-of bed—looked like queen size—and a viewport that faced out of the side of the chip, partially towards the bow. The floor was the same carpet-like matting that he suspected had absorbent properties. The bulkheads were a dark red color with gray-black piping running between all the corners, several banded together most of the time. He wrapped a hand around one strapped to the wall next to the entrance. Cold to the touch. “Water service?” He wondered aloud.

  Halloran walked around the room, suddenly realizing that it was furnished. A uniform jacket similar to the ones he saw P
rax wearing on Earth hung on a hook on the wall. He fingered the insignia on lapels. This must be the Captain’s cabin, close to the bridge for easy access. I’ll deal with this room later, he said to himself, and left. They would have to gather the dead crew’s personal effects and clear cabins at some point.

  The passage meandered aft from there, not quite straight and true as it seemed to be offset at symmetrical points—perhaps structural components getting in the way? He saw the room doors were labeled with what appeared to be numeric digits, unreadable of course. Words were stenciled above and below protrusions in the bulkheads that must signify points of access or interest to the crew. The piping ran the length of the passage, covering the overhead and held in place with clamps and strapping. Really not much different than a sub, he mused. Actually, this ship had much more elbow room to move through the passages than he was used to.

  He ignored the doors and walked the length of the passage. About a hundred meters down, the airlock staging area presented itself, where they and the crew had entered. There were crates made of some sort of metal strapped down on both sides of the space, clearly some kind of cargo or extra supplies. He had the urge to pry them open but realized that he didn’t have any tools to try it. Shrugging, he continued aft in the passageway.

  Another twenty meters and the passage turned right, across the ship. He heard voices ahead and followed the passage the thirty meters back to where two crew were arguing and pointing at something.

  “What are you doing?” He asked as he approached.

  “Sir.” The one man nodded back. He was Electricians Mate Monahan. Alex, Halloran seemed to recall. The other was Seaman Petrey. “We’re trying to follow these conduits to the electrical room.”

  Halloran studied the maze. Many pipes seemed to converge at the end of this passage. “Any luck?”

  “Not yet, sir. We can tell that they ran much of their sensitive stuff inside of the inner hull rather than outside. That’s one thing I noticed on the human ships, sir—that they ran their electrical outside of the inner hull. Probably to make it look cleaner.” He tapped a conduit. “Especially that fancy transport we were on.”

  Halloran was impressed. “You noticed all of that?”

  Monahan reddened slightly. “Of course, sir. That’s my job.”

  Petrey added, “We’re just trying to make ourselves useful, sir. Lord knows we’ve had a bad run of luck.”

  “Lord knows, gentlemen.”

  “You out for a stroll, sir? Taking her in?” Monahan asked.

  “Yep.”

  “She’s a beauty, sir.”

  Halloran smiled at them. “Glad to hear it. As you were.” As he walked back toward the bow, he came across an exact mirror of the airlock on the opposite side. Here, though, no cargo was stowed, the strap lugs set into the decking unused. Another stretch and he was back at the transverse passage that led to the bridge, now on his left. So this upper deck didn’t run the length of the ship…made sense. Back at the elevator, he pressed the large red button and waited.

  Almost immediately the door slid open. The car was big enough for six or ten humans—really tall ones. He liked the way the height left him feeling less cramped than aboard subs. As a tall man, he’d always gone around with a permanent hunch in those cramped quarters. There were three similar buttons on the inside of the door, vertically arranged. He pressed the bottom one.

  The door closed and the car dropped rapidly—he guessed about twenty meters. Two decks. It moved quick. “Wow,” Halloran mumbled. He preferred the stairwells and ladder drops of submarines; he could we imagine the lift being disabled in a critical moment.

  He found himself face-to-face with Petty Officer Wilson. “Gerry, where’s Antonov putting you?”

  The thick-shouldered man beamed. “He sees my potential and got me running security.”

  Halloran saw the pistol sticking out of the man’s trouser pocket and nodded. “You see the pirates off?”

  Wilson nodded. “Spent a few minutes playing with the airlock settings. It’s actually pretty intuitive.”

  Intuitive. That was a good description of what he’d seen aboard ship so far. “Good job, Wilson.”

  Wilson thumbed upward. “You been all over yet?”

  “No, just doing a quick walk around now.”

  “Well, medical bay, science lab and crew quarters are on B deck.”

  Halloran cocked his head. “B deck, Wilson?”

  The man shrugged. “Made sense; there are three main decks.”

  “I like it.”

  The man pointed. “You’re on the Engineering level, sir. C Deck. That way about a hundred meters. Watch your head—it gets tight back that way.”

  “Okay.”

  “Down here’s life support, the main computer, weapons and engineering.”

  Halloran was interested. “You get a look at the weapons?”

  Wilson nodded. “The red guy—”

  “—Axxa.”

  “Axxa, got it sir. Well, Axxa came by and took Captain Antonov, Mr. Hummel and me on a whirlwind tour of the deck.”

  “Interesting, I imagine?”

  He smiled. “You bet. Well, he poked into every space down here and called out stuff to us based on what he saw.”

  “Good.”

  “You know, sir, we owe him a lot. I can’t even imagine figuring it all out without him.”

  Halloran knew what Wilson was talking about. He would need to get over his lingering doubts somehow if they were going to get back.

  Get back…

  Just then a hidden speaker blared out above their heads. “Captain to the bridge!” It was Reyes’ voice. “Captain to the conn!”

  Wilson joined him for the ride back up. The two bounded across the passage and into the bridge.

  Halloran stood next to the Chief. “I see you got the public address working.”

  Reyes nodded. “You’ll want to see this, sir.”

  A small ship was clearly visible—the viewscreen was on some sort of magnification—coming up behind them.

  “What is it?”

  Reyes muttered a curse that sounded Spanish, which the translator couldn’t process. “No idea, sir. Where’s Axxa?”

  “Down in Engineering,” answered Wilson from behind them. “I left him lecturing Trigg Wyatt on the finer points of something called a “jump drive.”

  “Call him, Chief.”

  Reyes leaned into a panel near him and tapped a control. “Axxa to the bridge. Axxa to the bridge. All hands, look sharp!”

  An icon began blinking in the corner of the screen, bright green and pulsing. Halloran sat in the command chair and pointed at it. “Chief?”

  Carruthers noticed. “That’s…yep…hmm, I saw that icon here…” She touched several spots on her display.

  The overhead speaker crackled to life. “—vessel. Repeat, do no fire upon this shuttle, we are an unarmed vessel. Request permission to speak to your Captain.”

  Carruthers looked back. “I’m sure there’s some kind of sonar-radar device here but can’t find it yet, sir.”

  Halloran watched the oncoming ship. “Keep at it.”

  The male voice continued. “To unidentified warship, repeat, do not fire upon this shuttle, we are an unarmed vessel. Request permission to speak with your Captain.”

  Reyes frowned at a panel. “I seem to remember that Axxa showed me something here…” His hand lit up a section and he tried a few taps. “Thought there was some kind of map.”

  Halloran felt the rising frustration.

  The Prax came through the door at that moment. Halloran noticed that Deacon was with him, and Djembe. He caught the pilot’s attention and pointed to the empty station across from Carruthers. “Please.”

  The other man nodded reluctantly.

  Axxa was there, looking. “It’s a shuttle.”

  “Yes. It’s talking to us.”

  Chapter 51

  Prax Sol Center - Earth

  Elexxan was satisfied.

>   After several false starts, they had successfully uninstalled the human weapons system from the warship and transferred it to the science center. The missile warheads had been carefully stored in a weapons storage bay, locked away from accidents. After some trial and error, his team had rebooted the system in the lab and sorted through the software, isolating the code and running it through their own programs to reverse engineer something they they could replicate. All was proceeding smoothly, and he fully expected to be able test-fire one of the warheads shortly. In fact, he had already found a isolated location beneath the Earth ocean to detonate it.

  But for some reason, the Prime was distracted when he’d relayed the good news. His superior had seemed almost annoyed at the interruption. What had happened that could so distract his Prime at their moment of glory?

  He watched Alexa and two others wrestling with a stubborn bit of the code—some key pieces were locked out by an antiquated but not-ineffective password array—and wondered if the Prime were considering replacing him for some reason. Elexxan could think of no reason why he would have failed Talxen or his clan, but his concerns were beginning to rise. As well as his suspicions… He would have to address this soon, certainly before he completed the pure fusion weapon project.

  I will not allow Talxen to steal my glory, he resolved to himself.

  The Prime reviewed progress reports with an air of contemplation, asking the group arrayed around him questions and seeming at ease, in control. His underlings—officers placed around the planet to keep the remaining human population in check and manage the mining and extraction projects underway—seemed to get the impression he was supremely pleased with their efforts. He allowed them to have that impression.

  Inside, however, he was a mass of seething frustration and anger. The recorded message received that morning from the Premier on Prax had left no room for equivocation; have Axxa record a message back to me immediately, give full status update. The Premier’s tone of voice had made it obvious that he suspected something was amiss on Earth. The Prime needed to formulate a response that would keep the leader at bay until…