by Mel Keegan
The workstation monitoring onboard security was well back from the navtank, flanked by the life support and tech displays. Travers laid his palm on the screen and keyed in his ID code, and the AI recognized him at once. Marin stood back now, letting Neil take this – nobody was more familiar with a super-carrier’s belly decks than one who had come up through the ranks and served years as a master sergeant, though Marin knew what Travers was doing.
Memories of Holdfast, Malteppe were so pungent in his mind, he could literally smell the reek of the mud again as he watched Travers configuring the biggest of the simulation tanks to accommodate a large body of people in a degree of comfort. Temperature, pressure, humidity, air quality, all were set to the carrier’s normal, and every reserve autochef would be rolled in from the storage bunkers. Handling drones had already come online in the forward hold, but as they went to work Travers began to break the gundrones out of the bays where they were housed until flocks of them were activated for some battlefield sim.
These drones fired live ammunition, and they were as deadly as the machines fielded against the Zunshu insurgents at Fridjof Prime. Marin recalled them all too clearly, and frowned at the vidfeed from the simulation tank. The lights were bright, the deck was dry, servitor drones trundled to and fro with enough ’chefs to keep detainees reasonably at ease, but forty gundrones hovered up by the ceiling bulkheads, and no one in the tank would be under any illusion.
“They’re going to assume they’re prisoners,” Hubler growled.
“They’ll be right.” Travers was done, and stepped back. “Until we know who they are, and where they stand … you want Confederate loyalists free to assault the Sark from the inside?”
In a running battle from deck to deck? Marin dismissed the idea. “We know we’re bound to have a handful of loyalists who’ll say anything to hang onto their liberty. Leave the colonials to deal with them, if or when they make a move. If they’re stupid enough to incite violence, they’ll pay the price.”
“Sabotage can hurt us,” Rodman said bitterly.
“Which is why everyone leaving that tank will be chipped and AI monitored.” Rusch sighed. “And I fully realize we’ll be chipping fifty innocents in order to control the potential saboteur.”
“But that’s the way it is, and every colonial knows it,” Vidal said harshly. He paused only for a moment, and then, “Commander Circe, Commander Arke, power down your weapons and return to Bahrain.” He repeated the command twice, and Marin was unsurprised to hear no response. Vidal stood back from the tank. “Do it, Roark.”
The tractor power was so comparable to the Wastrel’s, the frigates’ commanders must have known they had little chance to slip away. Hubler seized them both and, fully expecting both ships to open fire, he ramped up the Arago fields protecting the bow and belly of the Sark. Sure enough, guns began to blaze, but he had them like puppets now. With the tractors he rolled the frigates over to put the Circe between the Sark and the Arke, like a shield.
The Arke stopped firing, but the Circe continued to pump everything its guns could produce into the Arago fields meshed over the Sark’s forward belly section. Vidal swore beneath his breath as he configured the chain guns. Marin was watching the vidfeed, and his eyes narrowed against the glare as several thousand rounds cut steadily through the frigate’s modest Arago fields and tore open the engine deck of the Circe as if she were a can. Engines and reactors scrammed immediately; blastdoors would surely have slammed, locked, to save the rest of this vessel before the Arago fields yielded, and the tech crew –
Now Marin held his breath until he saw three escape pods blow out of the flanks of the engine deck. “They’re out.”
“They had the sense to head for the pods as soon as the Aragos started to overcook.” Travers pulled both hands over his face. “If they’d followed orders –”
“They’d be dead,” Vidal said bitterly. “The only people crazy enough to invite a super-carrier to cut them to rags are the kind of Confederate officers who’ll probably be doing life in Jackson for war crimes in any case!” The side of his fist hammered into the workstation. “Commander Circe! Who the hell is that – is it Norman Hollows? What’s the matter with you, Hollows, are you insane?”
The comm sheeted out with the interference from ruptured machinery, and several seconds passed before a light young voice called, “Kiev, cease fire – just stop firing. We’re finished.”
“That’s not Hollows,” Rusch said sharply.
Vidal rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. “Major Hollows, respond.”
A hiss through the comm distortion: “He’s dead, sir.”
“Who is this?” Vidal demanded as he and Rusch shared a dark look.
“I’m Lieutenant Yu – I’m just the comm officer. The major pulled a freakin’ gun right here in the Ops room … there was a fight, sir. He, uh, he’s dead.”
“Any other casualties?” Vidal wanted to know.
“Just the escape pods from the engine deck, and they’re answering … at least, they were before we lost power. Shit, sir, everything went down – I’m calling out on a handy.”
For a moment Vidal glared at the displays, and then he rasped, “Organize your techs, Yu – get your power back online. Stay right where you are. A salvage tug is on its way to you.” He touched the bug in his right ear. “Wastrel, are you hearing any of this?”
The voice answering belonged to Jazinsky. “We’re hearing all of it, Mick. It’s going to take an hour, absolute minimum, before we can get to them – could be closer to two. It’s a mess out here.”
“Do what you can, Wastrel,” Shapiro said grimly. “Alexis?”
The defection deal had been broadcast five minutes before, and Marin could well imagine the furore exploding across the battle group. Seven ships were merely disabled. With the services of the Fleet dock, tech gangs and drones could have them viable in a few days, and most of those vessels had suffered few casualties, if any. Vidal’s targeting had been too accurate, too fast and much too sudden to permit real resistance. As reliable data came in, Marin saw that only the ships where a reckless Confederate commander had used a frigate to assault the super-carrier were badly damaged. Two were beyond repair, but for the officers and crew aboard the remainder, the resentment and anger that had been simmering for years among draftees on the lower decks had surged up to flashpoint.
The comm crackled and a woman’s voice called anxiously from the second runaway. “Kiev, Kiev, this is Arke standing down. Is anyone hearing this? Guns are powered down, engines are going cold. Kiev, stop firing – just stop your goddamn’ firing.”
In fact, Vidal’s guns had not fired in minutes, since he did enough damage to the Circe to disable her pending dock work. “All right, Arke,” he said tiredly. “You heard the deal – you’ve had the same offer as every other ship on the blockade.”
“We heard.” The woman skipped a beat, then: “This is Major Deborah Caddy. Gods help me, I’m the bloody CMO of this poor bucket of bolts – the command corps is locked in the forward drone bunker and I’ve got two wounded, including that prize bloody idiot, Major Hushovt, who’s supposed to be in command. He’ll live … if I can keep this crew away from him. The last I heard, they were drawing lots for who was going to wring his damn’ fool neck.” She paused. “No chance of talking to your CO, I suppose? Whose side are we on after this little mutiny? Is the Kiev going privateer, are we headed for Freespace, did we just hoist the flag of Omaru, or – what in the festerin’ hell is going on here?”
“Do we know her?” Travers asked quietly.
“Very senior Fleet surgeon, close to retirement,” Shapiro told him. “From Lithgow, originally – got on the wrong side of Fleet Quadrant Command back in the Middle Heavens over a case not unlike Robert Chandra Liang’s son, and was assigned here for her sins.”
Vidal was fading now, and Marin was not surprised. Mick sagged into a chair and beckoned Rusch, and she was glad to take the comm from him. “Let me negotiate, Mi
chael. I’ve known her for years … Deborah, this is Alexis Rusch. I’m very glad to hear your voice. The flag you just hoisted belongs to the Nine Worlds Commonwealth.”
“Alexis?” Caddy’s voice rose sharply. “My information was, you’re dead or dying in a sanatorium or a hospice somewhere on Velcastra. Not that I’m not glad to hear you, Lex, because I am, damn’ glad.”
“Reports of my death,” Rusch said with arid humor, “will turn out to have been just slightly exaggerated. Welcome to the Nine Worlds Commonwealth – unless you prefer internment and a shuttle back to the DeepSky Fleet, and assignment to another warship.”
“I thought it’d be something like this.” Caddy sounded ruefully amused. “We’ve been hearing about this Commonwealth of yours since the battles at Ulrand and Velcastra. We get the news, even here. We’ve been wondering who’d be next. Is this it?”
“Not quite,” Rusch said carefully. “This is just the end of the blockade. The Battle of Omaru will be fought when the DeepSky Fleet sends another battle group here.”
“Fought by us?” Caddy snorted. “I don’t think so, Lex. I’m looking at a lot of scared faces. This is not a crew that’ll do a one-eighty and go up against the London or the Avenger for you. Not after what happened to the Shanghai, the Chicago, the Intrepid – trust me, I’m a doctor.”
“You’re feeling a little insecure?” Rusch paused to take a coffee from one of her officers. “And no, Deborah, throwing the Arke in against a Fleet battle group was never part of any deal. The question is, will you, can you, trust me?”
Caddy did not answer for several moments. “You just disabled the whole goddamn’ battle group. If we don’t trust you, what’s the alternative?”
“We’ll disable you too, and hold your crew in custody till you see the reality of the Nine Worlds Commonwealth and decide where you want to stand,” Rusch said with bald honesty. “But the Arke is still mobile, viable, and you could be useful. You can assist the Circe and several others. Let’s get this mess cleared up, then we’ll negotiate terms … surrender, defection, affiliation, repatriation.”
“We could do that. Hold on.” Caddy paused again and the open comm carried a murmur of many voices, too far from the audio pickup to be distinct. She was back only a moment later. “Seems we’re in business, Colonel.”
“Very good.” Rusch looked up at Hubler. “Release tractors.”
His hand hovered over the control surface. “You sure? Be sure.”
“I’m quite certain.” She gave him a gesture to proceed. “You’re free to maneuver, Arke. You have a civilian salvage tug working the region, coordinate with Captain Richard Vaurien. He’s wrangling the clean up, and I’m about to launch our gunships to assist.”
“Copy that, and thank you, Kiev,” Caddy said crisply.
“Sark,” Rusch corrected.
“What, now?” Caddy stopped, just short of breaking comm.
“This ship,” Rusch told her with obvious satisfaction, “is the Sark.”
“Well, now.” Caddy actually chuckled. “I suppose that means we’ll get to rename this bucket of bolts too. Arke. Now, there’s a dumb name. What in the world is Arke supposed to mean anyway?”
It was Mick Vidal who said tiredly, “In Greek mythology, Arke was the winged goddess who betrayed the Olympians and became the messenger for the Titans.”
“True?” Caddy was surprised.
“True,” Vidal assured her. “You have a lot to do, Major.” The CMO had signed off when he looked over at Travers and added, “I just didn’t tell her how after the Olympians won that particular war, they sent Arke to hell with the rest of the Titans, with her wings cut off.”
“Keep that part to yourself,” Shapiro said aridly. “Not that we’ll be losing this war.”
The comm was a blizzard of callsigns now, and Marin had stopped trying to follow any of them. Crews and individual units from the blockade ships were defecting en masse, with reports of Confederate loyalists being arrested, unless they fought. Some were foolish enough to draw weapons; most of those were injured and a few were killed. Even the dockyard was on the air with a garbled story about shooting in the maintenance bays, a minor depressurization, two officers duct-taped to the furniture.
The action was over but the talking would go on for days. Marin was happy to take the combug out of his ear. When Travers steered Vidal to the shadowed corner of the Ops room with the autochef and several vacant seats, he retired with them.
The energy that had propelled Vidal through the engagement was spent now. He sank into a chair and his eyes closed. His face was colorless save for his lips and eyelids, which were an unhealthy shade close to mauve. Marin laid a hand on his forehead and found him cold, waxen. “He needs a medic, Neil,” he whispered.
“He needs a double tequila, coffee, a blanket, and sleep,” Vidal argued, though his eyes remained closed. “I’ll settle for the coffee.”
“Infirmary,” Travers argued.
“Sod that.” But Vidal’s voice was almost soundless with exhaustion and he did not have the strength to fend Travers off.
“Neil, tell Shapiro we’re out of here.” Marin slid the combug back into his ear. “Wastrel Ops. Wastrel Ops, do you read?” Only Etienne answered, testimony to the work the tug was doing. “Etienne, get me Bill Grant,” Marin said shortly, and waited for the AI to comply as Travers spoke briefly with Shapiro. Returning from the tank, he fetched a mug from the ’chef and deliberately searched for Vidal’s radial pulse.
“Infirmary,” Grant said tersely. “Jesus bloody Christ, I’ve been afraid of this – it’s Mick, isn’t it? It has to be. The freakin’ maniac’s knocked himself flat on his ass, hasn’t he?”
“Yeah,” Travers said softly, “I think he has. He doesn’t look good, Bill. Weak, pale, blue about the lips, pulse is faint, rapid, irregular, and I don’t like his breathing.”
“Shit,” Grant swore passionately. “Get him back here, Neil, asap.”
“Will do.” Travers straightened. “Perlman, you there?”
The pilot responded at once, as Marin had expected. “I heard everything. We’re on ignition procedures, Neil.”
“Wastrel Ops is expecting you,” Grant added. “Bring him straight to the Infirmary, Neil – I’ll send a couple of meddrones to the Trofeo hangar, and I’m setting up to receive you.”
“Thanks. On our way.” Travers was frowning into Vidal’s face. “Mick? Mick, can you walk as far as the hangar? Mick!”
But Marin had already seen the truth. Vidal was unconscious.
Chapter Six
Salvage tug Wastrel,
Omaru system
He was lily pale and not a muscle twitched as Grant fed him through a full-body scanner. Travers and Marin stood back to watch, and when Ernst Rabelais appeared, looking for news, Travers could only shrug. “I told him,” Rabelais muttered. “I told him. Design the whole thing in simulation, I said, and then let some other silly bugger go out and do it.”
“You knew he’d never go for that.” Travers was watching the steady flow of data to one of Grant’s monitors, but it was so much gibberish.
“I … knew he’d never go for it,” Rabelais sighed. “I watched the whole show. Neat and tidy. They’re talking about maybe twenty, thirty wounded and seven or eight dead. Which is as close to bloodless as any coup’s likely to get.”
And all the fatalities barring one were Terran Confederacy people down to their bone marrow. An engine tech had been killed in a fireball when gas ignited on the Horme, but Travers was fatalistic about it. Soldiers had always believed that when a trooper’s number was called, one’s life was forfeit – and not one moment before. The Daku in Vidal would see it the same way.
The scanner chugged into silence and Grant grumbled over the display. Travers thrust both hands into his pockets and shared a glance with Marin, but Grant took his time with the analysis. At last he turned back from the machine, and his face was not so bleak as it had been.
“Stress hormones are
in orbit. His adrenal glands are like lace curtains and the nano holding his kidneys together failed, about four hours ahead of the routine maintenance shots. He’s toxic, and he’s exhausted.”
“But he’ll mend,” Marin said quietly.
“No thanks to him!” But Grant was already heading for the lab, where he kept a steady resupply of Vidal’s medical nano, custom designed for him and ‘cooked’ by the batch. He grumbled as he prepared the shot; he grumbled again as he fired it into the thin pad of flesh on Vidal’s shoulder. “I’ll keep him here overnight. Again. Damnit, you’d think he was trying to put himself in a hole in the ground!”
“Trying to do his job,” Travers protested.
“His job? He ought to be invalided right out of the service!” Grant tossed the hypogun onto a tray with a clatter. “Lights – dim.” Obediently, the Infirmary plunged into semi-dimness, and Grant drew a blanket over Vidal’s still form. “Well, he’ll sleep now. When he wakes I’ll get some food into him, and we’ll start again.”
He was angry. Perhaps in an attempt to mollify, Travers said, “He did very good work. There’s a lot of conscripts right across the blockade who’ll live to see tomorrow because he and Hubler and Rodman were so fast, so accurate.”
“And I suppose nobody else could have done the job?” Grant demanded brashly.
“They could.” Vidal’s voice was a mere croak. “But it was my job, Bill.” He was awake by a slender thread, one eye open a crack, dark with dilation as he watched Grant lean over him.
“And you were going to do this job, supposing it killed you.” The Australian accent was thick as Grant’s temper peaked.
“But it didn’t.” Vidal’s eyes cracked open. “Coffee.”
“No.” Grant was adamant. “No stimulants. Not for two or three days at least. You thirsty? I’ll get you some water. Just water, till the nano in your kidneys get their act into gear.”
The chrono over the door showed 19:45 as he went to fetch a glass from the ’chef, and Travers found himself somewhere between tired and wired. His body was fatigued by stress while his mind was racing. Grant held the glass to Vidal’s parched lips, and Mick drank a little.
