Admiral's Fall

by Luke Sky Wachter

  “Better a farmer or a farmer’s wife than dead, Sword Bearer,” I said pointedly.

  “I think you mean it the other way around,” she said with a lifted brow, “but either which way, I am the Matriarch here and my decision is final. You will respect the wishes of your sworn Hold Mistress.”

  “I don’t recall swearing anything but to love, honor and cherish you, but even if you insist on coming don’t bring the kids. We can leave them with my mother. At least that way they’ll grow up to be something more than just farmers if they want,” I said.

  Akantha paused.

  “Your mother is an acceptable compromise,” she said finally.

  It was agreed then. We bearded the New Assembly in its lair—and the Empire and Old Confederation at the same time, while we were at it.

  After all, we had nothing to lose.

  How we had gone from a victorious campaign in Sector 26 to the total surrender of our government and defeat at the peace table still left my head spinning.

  It was time to shake things up and, if possible, set things right. Or as right as they could be with a Spineward Sectors Government as determined to give up and surrender as ours seemed to be.

  I refused to believe we’d won the war only to lose the peace!

  I waited until Akantha had left the room before I activated my com-console and placed some calls. One was to the Yard asking for every available shuttle, and another was to the Droids. The third and final one I pondered over for a long time before activating the long ranged array.

  I might not have a lot have a lot of warships I could scrounge up—I mean, sure, I had the ships but not the crews to man them and they were all battle damaged to one degree or another too boot. On the other hand, there was more than one way to skin a cat.

  Pulling up Manning’s contact info I carefully dictated the blandest most uninteresting greeting I could think of and attached a junk fill made up of spam ads to the message. The Spineward Sectors Fleet and Grand Admiral Manning where unreliable at the best of times and the next best thing to useless in our current situation, more likely to join forces with the empire if I qued them as to my next move. Since they were all certain to refuse and/or betray me at the same time if I called on them for help I simply wasn’t going to ask. On the other hand sending the Imperial into a counter-intelligence tail spin as they tried and failed to decode the ‘secret’ message I’d just sent Manning’s way couldn’t hurt.

  I refused to accept certain defeat as a prognosis. It was time to take a page from the early days of my career. I was going to fill those shuttles full of Lancers, Marines, Droids and ground forces in skin-suits if I had to.

  Next I called Spalding to ask what he had in the way of a stealth coating. I wasn’t going down without a fight.

  ******************************************************************************

  The message winged its way across the sector as fast as the Com-Stat FTL buoys could activate and relay their message until eventually Manning’s Flagship received its latest FTL download.

  Originally posted near Aegis to stop a Confederation Fleet breakout Grand Admiral Manning and the First Fleet of the Spineward Sectors had been caught flat footed and out of position when not one but two different fleets tracked down the Government Monitor and took the Spineward Sectors Assembly hostage.

  Now heavily outnumbered with two fleets behind them and another one still based out of Aegis, Manning had rapidly run out of options. He could have gone down fighting but it would change nothing except get a lot of good men and women killed. As such when new orders arrived from the Spineward Sectors Assembly telling his fleet to stand down the most he could do was obstinate hold in place.

  Its not that he didn’t want to take action it’s that every path open to him and First Fleet lead to suicide.

  “Something just off the long com’s for you, Grand Admiral,” said his com-officer.

  Manning nodded in acknowledgement and seeing who the message as from his brows rose.

  He opened it with a sigh expecting some kind of high handed demand or grand exortion to duty. Instead he found himself reading a message containing nothing but bland platitudes.

  His brow wrinkled. Opening the attachment in the file to find nothing more than a junk file copy containing spam he stilled.

  Clearly the message he had received may have been sent to him but it was intended for another recipient entirely. It was entirely useless. Or was it.

  The Little Admiral may not have said anything of substance but that didn’t mean Manning wasn’t able to glean something from the non-message.

  Jason Montagne was many things but a man of inaction he was not. What were the odds he was sending out spam messages simply to irritate the imperial monitors no doubt intercepting and reading First Fleet’s messages?

  That was the moment Manning decided to make a move. The government had been taken hostage on his watch. The Little Admiral was making a move and Admiral Manning didn’t want to be the man who stood by and did nothing. If Montagne was making a move it was because the man thought he had a more than even chance at victory.

  If experience had taught him one thing it was never to bet against the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet’s Little Admiral. In his opinion Isaak Newton had made the biggest mistake of his political career when he drummed Montagne out of the service. Worst case and he was wrong and Montagne was playing games, he’d formally surrender as soon as his fleet encountered superior forces. Best case... Maybe with his forces thrown into the mix they could turn things around!

  Chapter 59: Going to the Assembly?

  With a flash, the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet arrived. We were in the same unnamed star system as the mobile governmental headquarters of the Spineward Sectors Assembly. As a political body it was effectively being held hostage until the rest of the Spine recognized the dissolution of their government and I surrendered.

  “If anyone thinks I’m here to surrender in order save that self-appointed gaggle of ingrates, they’ve got another think coming,” I said, already considering my fallback plan. With their elected representatives in the New Confederation Assembly literally held hostage, the SDF ground forces of two separate Border Alliance worlds had been willing to donate several hundred thousand troops—and with surprisingly little arm-twisting required.

  It might not have been much of an ace, but at least I had one.

  “Sir?” asked Steiner.

  “Nothing, Lisa,” I said confidently, straightening my shoulders, “as long as I have my staff and the crew behind me, I believe we can win the day…at least enough to claim a nominal victory.”

  It was always important to manage expectations, but even more so now.

  “Of course, Sir. The boys and girls of the Fleet are behind you one hundred percent,” Steiner assured me, “there was more than a little grumbling early on about how everyone’s promised leave blew up when we were kicked out of the New Confederation Fleet. People are tired and some of us haven’t seen our families back home in almost six years. But with this new threat everyone knows that if we fail it’s all over.”

  “The fact we’re no longer in a Confederation Fleet has to be a big part of it, yes?” I asked, pursing my lips. I hadn’t been paying that angle of things as much quite as much attention as I probably should have.

  “A lot of our old hands miss their families. It’s not as bad with the Border Alliance people but not all of our initial recruiting drives pulled from strictly border worlds and of course not every border world is part of the alliance,” Lisa sighed wearily, “it’s not that hard to arrange leave for spacers from the Alliance wanting to go home. But for the Clover’s original Caprians? It's Tracto or bust, Sir.”

  “I should take it that this is becoming an issue for a number of our people?” I asked carefully.

  “Not right now, Sir. No one’s going to leave you in the lurch when another foreign invader’s here knocking. But if this new deal goes through and we’re not Confederati
on and we’re no longer protecting the Spine? People are going to want to eventually go home. Not immediately, not for most maybe, but more than a few would like to go home. The fact they might not be welcome any longer is an issue,” she said, worrying her lip between her teeth.

  “And something I should probably address if I find the time,” I said wearily. I relied on my spacers, not just to run my ships but for a sense of community. We were all exiles out here doing our best for the entire Spine. Yes, we were setting down roots in Tracto and the old Gambit Star System, but still I could understand that for many home was still home, be it on Capria or another one of the worlds of Sector 25.

  She nodded uneasily.

  “How many people are we talking about, percentage wise?” I asked.

  “I think more than half of the crew would like a visit home for some extended leave,” Steiner said, not noticing the impact the words ‘more than half’ had on me then she tapped a stylus against her data-pad, “but I think we’re looking at maybe 5% discontented with the situation with another maybe 20% that would just like to go home once the job is done.”

  “You’re saying a quarter of the fleet wants to leave,” I said calmly.

  “People are tired. More so the longer they’ve been in the fleet. The ones who stayed with the Clover were new recruits, not lifelong spacers,” she reminded me. “I’m not contesting that many have become lifelong spacers, but not everyone feels easy with how rapidly we’ve swung back and forth from Old Confederation to new and then to…well, whatever we are,” she finished awkwardly.

  “I see and I do understand. I really do. And thank you for bringing this to my attention,” I said with a sigh.

  “Sir,” she acknowledged, retreating to her workstation on the bridge.

  I kept one ear tuned to the Comm. station while continuing to observe the situation throughout the rest of the star system...and it didn’t look good.

  Just as advertised, there were two other fleets out here and neither of them belonged to the New Confederation or any other group in the Spine I’d heard of before. Considering that one of the fleets was made of straight up mono-locsium crystal, it was a sure bet that was the Imperial 5th Fleet.

  As for the other one…it was mainly a patchwork of older hulls, a mix of Battleships, Cruisers and a lot of Corvettes. Not that their age or relatively lighter hulls was going to help any, considering the numbers involved.

  “I’m reading 212 warships in the Imperial fleet and 189 in the Old Confederation forces, Sir,” reported Sensors.

  “The Imps would wipe the floor with those old Confed models, Admiral Montagne,” advised Lieutenant Hart.

  I made a non-committal noise. Considering it would likely take the two fleets falling out before my own force of 88 warships would stand a chance of taking and holding this system—as if anyone would be foolish enough to do so for an empty system like this in the first place—there wasn’t much I could say without sounding defeatist.

  To be honest, we had more ships with us than I’d expected and that was saying something. The Droids and the Sundered had mostly recovered from 4th Easy Haven. Adding in the Patrol Fleet’s own sixty warships, we’d come out fairly decently in my estimation.

  I could have hoped for more, blazes I could have ‘asked’ for more. But considering the likely outcome for both the Sundered and the Droids if the MSP fell and Tracto was laid wide open for the taking, I just hadn’t had the heart for it. It’s not like another dozen warships was going to make or break this endeavor.

  No, we were going to sit out here in our own little patch of the star system’s hyper limit, charging out engines and waiting while our initial message winged its way across system.

  Hopefully that, and the file I’d attached to it, would accomplish something I feared the Patrol Fleet couldn’t accomplish on its own.

  As the minutes passed the time it should have taken for our message to have been read and a return message sent, the other two fleets started deploying in our direction.

  It was looking more and more like a fight.

  The first sign of something different was when the other two fleets stopped moving toward us directly, even if they were still moving the majority of their ships toward the hyper limit, and then we received a hail.

  My request for parley had been accepted.

  Within minutes the Furious Phoenix, my latest in a series of flagships, was winging its way across the star system toward the Governmental Monitor.

  “Is this it, Sir?” Lisa Steiner asked, pale-faced but determined as we left the dubious protection of the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet.

  “This is it, Lieutenant Commander,” I said heavily.

  She nodded jerkily and turned away to issue a few probably needless orders, but if that’s what she needed to help keep her cool then that was just alright and more power to her. Lisa Steiner had been here through thick and thin.

  “Once more into the breach, fine sir,” I whispered, careful to keep my voice below the hearing levels of anyone around me.

  Hopefully this all worked out the way I hoped. If not and this turned out to be a trap of some kind, at least I was taking this ship out to do it.

  The Furious Phoenix was fast enough to outrun anything too tough to take on directly, and it was too tough for anything fast enough to keep up with her to handle.

  In a straight up battle, 107 against 401 weren’t odds I would even consider. Originally it was going to be 88 but the addition of Archibald’s forces and another Battleship, the Leviathan class Cimmerian recently back from patrol into Sector 23 had helped beef up our numbers. Better to just retreat home to Tracto and try to hold the fort. But if words could solve this situation, I was determined to try.

  The new government may have thrown me over the side, and my former comrades in the New Confederation fleet could clearly not care less, but there were still a lot of lives relying on me. Starting with the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet’s officers and crew and continuing to the millions of people on Tracto.

  “Can we confirm that our message was sent and received by Grand Admiral Manning?” I asked.

  “Yes, Sir,” replied Lisa Steiner, “not that I expect it will do much good,” she added dubiously, having been one of the few people to actually see the message I had sent.

  I nodded with appreciation and shrugged in answer to her skepticism. The important thing wasn’t what had been said but rather the message itself. Manning himself was useless.

  “Let’s do this,” I said.

  It was time to go to the Assembly.

  There were a few tense minutes but we eventually received permission to send a shuttle to the New Confederation’s Monitor after making a close approach with the Phoenix.

  Unsurprisingly, the Spineward Sectors Regime formerly known as the New Confederation Government and its new Imperial masters were unwilling for a modified Medium Cruiser such as ours to dock with the Monitor. Probably for very different reasons on both counts, but it all resulted in the same thing.

  I was going over there via shuttle.

  The shuttle ride was uneventful, and eventually we entered the Monitor’s shuttle bay.

  A quad of Lancers in battle armor stepped past me and then I was on the hangar deck, the sound of music piping in my ears.

  An Imperial side party had assembled to greet me.

  I inwardly tensed, but other than a few cold looks I was spared a direct confrontation. Apparently I was to be escorted to the floor of the Grand Assembly—or, more lately, the New Regime’s—meeting hall.

  Surrounded by two quads of Lancers and accompanied by Lieutenant Harpsinger, my fleet’s legal counsel, we followed the Imperial escort to the Assembly Hall.

  The two platoons of Marine Jacks, one ahead and one behind, made a statement of their own.

  Stepping into the Grand Assembly/New Regime Hall, I was escorted to a small table set in the middle of the room.

  I was unsurprised to see the Imperial Admiral present, but I was surprised to
see Speaker Isaak Newton sitting between the Imperial and what I took to be his Confederation fleet counterpart.

  After a hesitant look from side to side, Isaak stood up. Running a hand through his graying hair to settle it, he crossed his arms and gave me an implacable look.

  “Jason Montagne Vekna, so-called Admiral of the rogue and illegal Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet, you have been summoned before this assembly to answer for crimes,” he intoned in a low but rising voice.

  I snorted. “Trotting out the old planetary piracy charges again are we, Sir Isaak? Or perhaps you’re still upset that those who do most of the fighting reap most of the hulls after the action clears?” I mocked.

  The Confederation Admiral gave the Speaker a sharp look, which I noted before looking back at me with an assessing gaze while the Imperial Admiral merely looked amused at the byplay.

  Isaak, on the other hand, purpled. “I am the Speaker for this assembly, and you will show this body some respect,” he warned.

  “My apologies, Mr. Speaker. I thought the Empire had ordered this assembly disbanded and you were to use your regular civilian title,” I then frowned, “but if that’s the case it still fails to explain your blatant failure to use my own title.”

  “You’re no longer an Admiral, Montagne. Its time you got used to it,” spat Isaak.

  “What our local colleague here failed to explain is that the New Regime’s government will officially disband as soon as the last of its fleets and constituent signatory worlds, or at least a super majority of them, acknowledge its dissolution,” interjected the Confederation Admiral.