“That requires me to work with you. You will get what you want, Commodore, but I will never betray the Commonwealth, and most certainly not to service you.”
Coati sighed.
“I figured,” he confessed. “But much as you have aggravated me, Commodore, you are also brave and useful and I need your ship.
“I wanted to see if you were part of the betrayal, to see if you ever had any attachment to my cause, and now I see you never did. I warned you, Commodore, that all who betrayed me would be punished.”
James stared at the pirate.
“What are you talking about?”
“Do you think I’m stupid?” Coati demanded, echoing his earlier question. “Do you think I am blind? That squadrons of Terran starfighters stabbing me in the back would go unnoticed?”
A tiny voice in the back of James’s head wondered how the pirate had got a gun aboard and past the Marines. Another realized that was why Coati had been late, so that the already-perfunctory check the guards would perform on a known, if not entirely trusted, ally would be rushed or skipped.
Now the pirate leveled the small gun he’d produced on James’s head.
“I am familiar with Federation, Imperial, and Terran starfighter design, Commodore,” he continued. “The fighters may have been new, but I recognize Terran designs when I see them. I know when I have been betrayed.”
“You’re insane,” James replied. “Work with the Alliance? The whole point of this operation was to weaken them.”
“You could barely bring yourself to sully your great presence with me,” Coati spat. “I’m hardly surprised to see you turn like a dog at the leash. No, Commodore, I will have your ship—without you!”
“It doesn’t work that way,” the Terran officer replied, staring down the barrel of the gun. “You know that. This ship is full of Marines, soldiers, officers who the ship will look to for authority.
“Shoot me? You gain nothing.”
Coati chuckled as he stepped forward to press the gun against James’s forehead. It was a grating sound, terrifying in its certainty.
“I just pulled a gun, Commodore. Shouldn’t your systems, your Marines, be doing something? Ask your ship. Give it an order.”
James tried to trigger an alert, to call the Marines in from outside his door. Poseidon ignored him, kicking him out of the system as if he had no authorizations at all.
“It’s fascinating,” the pirate told him, “just how little attention everyone pays to the IT department. All of your security measures, all of your overrides and authority and power…Three guys in the tech team can undo almost all of it.”
“What have you done?”
“Well, as we speak, the oxygen level on the entire ship outside certain rooms—including this one—is dropping rapidly and your crew is starting to pass out.
“Your ship’s AI has already marked you and Sherazi as dead and locked out your command codes. The next in line, Captain Petrovsky? He was so much more amenable to the offer of a planet than you were. I think I’ll give him Antioch. There’s so many beautiful women on Antioch; he’ll like it.”
James was frozen in place. He was a naval officer, his training in hand-to-hand combat over forty years in the past. He had neither the skill nor the nerve to resist with a gun to his head.
“And now, my dear Commodore Tecumseh, you will pay for all of the petty power games you have so enjoyed,” the pirate said sweetly.
Before James could say or do anything, Coati lowered the gun and fired, a frangible round smashing into the Terran’s shoulder blade. At this range, James felt his bones fragment and his skin tear, pain ripping through as he crumpled backward, only to find the gun trained on his head again.
“Oh, yes, my dear Commodore, you’ll bleed out from that,” the pirate told him. “Eventually.”
Another gunshot rang out and James’s other shoulder blade shattered.
“I see no reason to kill you quickly,” Coati pointed out. “This ship is mine now, and there’s no one coming to save you.”
“Go fuck yourself,” James managed to hiss, but the pirate only laughed.
“I’m not my type, Tecumseh. Far too much of a sadist. I am, however, going to enjoy killing you slowly while I asphyxiate your entire crew. A horrible accident, Captain Petrovsky will tell Captain Modesitt. Chariot will join us, serving your Commonwealth loyally until the time is right.”
James tried to take advantage of the gloating to crawl into something resembling cover—and another bullet smashed into his right hip, hammering him to the floor and crippling his leg.
“None of that. You and I have some quality time left.”
Coati was raising the gun to cripple James’s other leg when the door exploded inward to reveal a two-meter-tall demon of black ceramic, a massive rifle in its hands. Gunfire echoed in the confined space as the Marine tried to shoot the pirate, but Coati was already moving.
Whoever had decided to give the bastard scales and multicolored hair had done more than just that to his genome. The moment the room had an active threat, the pirate was moving with a speed matched by no human James had ever seen—including combat cyborgs.
He blurred under the combat rifle, knocking it aside as he opened fire on the power-armored soldier with his tiny gun.
There was no way the frangible rounds could penetrate, but that wasn’t the pirate’s intent. The bullets were a distraction, one that allowed him to duck around the soldier and dive into the hallway. By the time the Marine managed to turn around, Coati was long gone.
And James was already starting to have trouble breathing. The bastard really was asphyxiating everyone on the ship, though power armor would help.
“Dammit, sir, this is way outside my contingency plans,” Barbados’s voice rumbled from the suit as he pulled an oxygen mask from the power armor’s emergency med kit. “The ship is running out of air and the shipboard emergency masks are uniformly fucked.”
“He got to Petrovsky,” James gasped. “We have to…get to Stormcloud. Poseidon’s gone.”
Blood loss and oxygen deprivation met somewhere in the middle, and Commodore James Tecumseh passed out.
#
Chapter 34
KDX-6657 System
01:00 November 20, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
Terran Commonwealth Marine Corps Assault Transport Stormcloud
Waking up again hurt.
James Tecumseh’s career had been aboard warships of the Terran Commonwealth Navy, vessels that outclassed the vast majority of their opposition. He’d never been seriously injured, never even so much as broken a limb in sports.
The sensation of his implants and medical nanite suite disabling his nerve receptors was new to him, enough that he tried to look down and see just what was going on with his limbs—only to discover that his head was immobilized.
“Shit, he’s awake,” a voice cursed. “Get Barbados in here; I am not briefing the Commodore.”
“Where am I?” he demanded.
“Trauma Bay Alpha aboard Stormcloud,” the voice told him. “Give me a second.”
There was a faint whir, and James felt his body rise as the bed he was strapped to rotated, allowing him to look out over the largest ship-board medical facility he’d ever seen. Assault transports were equipped to handle major combat casualties or provide support in terms of natural disasters. Their trauma bays were larger and better equipped than most groundside hospitals.
“I’m Dr. MacDougall,” the speaker told him, turning out to be a tall man with carefully cropped red hair and tanned skin, “senior trauma physician for Stormcloud and, if you’ll allow me a moment of non-humility, the reason you’re alive.”
James closed his eyes, leaning back against the bed and breathing slowly. The trauma center was packed, every bed occupied.
“How bad?”
“The Colonel is on his way; he’ll brief you,” MacDougall immediately countered. “It’s not my place; I’m just your doctor.”
> “All right, then, doctor, how bad am I?” James snapped.
MacDougall chuckled.
“Got me. You sure you want to know?”
“Doctor, my head is immobilized and I can’t feel any of my limbs. How bad?”
“You took collateral damage to your upper spine and neck vertebrae,” the doctor said flatly. “You’re immobilized so that can heal; should take about another three hours. That’s the part I can fix today.”
“And the rest?”
“The good news is, you’re a perfect candidate for standard regen,” MacDougall told him.
“Doctor, stop it,” James ordered. “How bad?”
“Under normal circumstances, we might have been able to save an arm,” the doctor said slowly. “With the situation when you came aboard, we had no choice but to treat you as quickly as possible and move on to others in equally desperate need.
“We amputated and cauterized both arms and your left leg. You are a regen candidate, so my normal recommendation would be to ship you back to a fleet base and put you on medical leave for three months while we regrew your limbs.”
“We’re a long way from any fleet bases,” James pointed out. “A long way from home, betrayed, and in serious trouble.”
“And that is why the doctor called me to brief you,” Barbados cut in. “Dr. MacDougall. Privacy screen?”
“Implant-activated. I’m watching the Commodore’s vitals; I’ll let you know if he needs to rest. He will,” the doctor warned.
“I know,” the Marine acknowledged. “Now give us the space.”
James heard more than saw the privacy screen drop down around him and Barbados and coughed delicately.
“I can’t even move my head, Colonel; I’d appreciate it if you’d stand where I can see you.”
The Colonel stepped around to where James could see him, looking utterly exhausted.
“The doctor wouldn’t tell me how bad.”
“Our plans weren’t built around this level of penetration of our security,” Barbados told him bluntly. “We extracted four hundred and seven members of Poseidon’s crew, all of whom required major medical attention, and took over two hundred Marine casualties doing so.
“Less than half of those were fatal, thankfully, but that means MacDougall and his people are handling over five hundred cases of severe trauma.”
“And over forty-five hundred people died on Poseidon,” James half-whispered.
“I doubt Coati murdered the entire crew,” the Marine said gruffly, “but outside of those he coopted…yeah. If we didn’t get them off, they’re either traitors or dead.”
“Where are we right now?”
“Running,” Barbados told him. “We got Stormcloud out of orbit running at Tier Three acceleration, but it cost us. We took several solid hits and it’s going to be at least twelve hours before we have the Stetson stabilizers in sufficient order to warp space.”
If they’d taken enough damage they couldn’t warp space…
“How bad?”
“We’re down over a thousand more casualties aboard Stormcloud,” the Marine said grimly. “We burned ninety percent of our reaction mass getting clear of l’Estación de Muerte. Stormcloud isn’t defenseless and we’ve blown all of Coati’s remaining starfighters to hell, but he’s still got eight corsairs…and, well, Poseidon.”
“Even with Petrovsky, it’ll take time for him to get Poseidon back online,” James pointed out. “But we need to get out of here.”
“Twelve hours for FTL,” the Colonel repeated.
“Have we been in touch with Chariot?”
“I have. Captain Modesitt wants to speak to you.”
“I don’t even have arms,” James snapped. “What the fuck does anyone expect me to do?”
Barbados looked around, as if making sure the privacy screen was working, then met James’s gaze levelly.
“Command,” he hissed. “You dragged us all out on this branch, and now Coati has cut it off behind us. I can’t reassure the Navy personnel and I sure as hell can’t give orders to Modesitt. The only thing I can do is take Stormcloud and head back to Commonwealth space…a trip I’ve already been warned she won’t survive.”
“Fuck.”
“Your call, sir.”
James closed his eyes again, breathing deeply and running through a meditation exercise as he prodded at his implant’s self-check features.
Finally, he exhaled and opened his eyes, meeting Barbados’s gaze.
“We’re falling into the shit, all right,” he conceded. “Start flapping, Colonel, then send Dr. MacDougall back in. It seems he and I need to talk emergency prostheses.”
#
In the era of neural implants, being a triple amputee thankfully didn’t render James completely incapable. Once he’d discussed his needs with MacDougall and sent the doctor on his way, he was able to close the privacy screen again himself and link into the q-com network to reach out to Captain Modesitt.
“Commodore, are you all right?” she asked the instant the channel connected. “Barbados wasn’t willing to give me details of much, only that the situation was bad and I needed to change my emergence locus.”
“That was what you needed to know and the Colonel’s had a bad day,” James told her. “We all have. Did all the problems get wrapped up at Amadeus?”
“Is that relevant right now?” she demanded. “Commodore…”
“Coati shattered my shoulders and one of my hips,” he said flatly. “All three limbs had to be amputated. Commodore Sherazi is dead along with most of his crew. Poseidon is now in Coati’s hands, and he’s managed to buy Petrovsky, which means he’ll have her online inside of forty-eight hours.
“Stormcloud is badly damaged and we’ve lost a huge chunk of the Marines. We need to get her Alcubierre drive online before they get Poseidon online, or Coati is going to finish the job. We need Chariot to make sure the bastard doesn’t send his corsairs out before that.”
Modesitt was silent for several seconds.
“Shit. Shit.” She exhaled. “What do we do?”
“Right now, you come to that emergence locus that Barbados gave you and rendezvous with us,” he ordered. “By then, we should be close to having Stormcloud’s drive online and we can all get the hell out of here.”
“What about you? Even with implants, you can’t do much without hands.”
“I’m being fitted for emergency cybernetics by the Marines’ surgeon,” James admitted. “By the time you’re here, I should at least be walking, if not…well.”
There was a long silence.
“You know that wrecks your ability to take regen later, right?” Modesitt asked.
“I do,” he agreed. Regeneration of nerves was the hardest part, and tying the nerves into the circuits of a cybernetic prosthesis caused even more damage—smaller, more complicated, harder-to-heal damage. By taking emergency cybernetics, he was drastically reducing the chances that he’d get his own legs back.
“I need to be fully functional,” he continued. “I dragged us all into this mess and didn’t see Coati coming. It’s going to be up to me to get us out of it.
“What’s your ETA?”
“We’re still about eight hours out,” Modesitt told him. “Please try to still be there when we arrive.”
“Believe me, Captain Modesitt, it’s high on my priority list.”
#
Chapter 35
KDX-6657 System
07:00 November 20, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
Terran Commonwealth Marine Corps Assault Transport Stormcloud
“I suppose that it was too much to hope for that he’d leave us alone,” Captain Tabitha Colton, the fair-haired Navy commander of the TCMC transport Stormcloud, opined aloud on her bridge.
James swallowed the snippy response that came to mind. Trapped in a wheelchair with only somewhat-useful lumps of metal strapped to his shoulders and hip, his mood was aggravated by both his incapacity and a low level of pain hi
s implants couldn’t squash without preventing the cybernetics from bonding.
“What are we looking at?” he finally asked.
“Four of those modular corsairs are heading our way at two hundred gees,” Colton told him, the officer throwing him a look that only barely concerned a level of worry that James wasn’t entirely sure was appropriate. “Assuming they vector for a zero-velocity intercept somewhere close, their ETA should be somewhere around ninety minutes.”
“Well before Chariot will get here,” he concluded grimly. “How’s Stormcloud doing, Captain?”
If he’d had any illusion that Stormcloud was a warship, her bridge would have wrecked it. It was smaller than a true warship’s, with fewer stations, fewer crew, and fewer systems to control than a warship would have.
The assault transport carried no long-range weapons. Her entire arsenal consisted of light positron lances designed to take down fighters, and the launchers for specialized bombardment munitions designed to support her Marine landing forces.
Stormcloud wasn’t intended to fight space battles. She was designed to enable four thousand Marines to take and hold a planet.
“About two solid hits from being debris and memories,” Colton admitted. “We’re down over sixty percent of our lances and half our missile defense. We killed every one of the bastard’s starfighters, but we can’t fight his corsairs.”
“What about parasites?” James asked. “You have fighters, don’t you?”
The Marine Colonel standing with them chuckled.
“Yeah. Marine Corps Piranhas. They’re atmospheric fighters with a limited deep-space ability,” Barbados pointed out. “Designed to drop from orbit into atmosphere to wreck the day of local defense aircraft. They’re not designed or equipped for deep-space battle.”
“But you can strap Javelins to them,” the Navy Commodore pointed out. “Right? The atmospheric fuel pods are removable and can be replaced with a framework that holds starfighter missiles?”
Rimward Stars (Castle Federation Book 5) Page 25
