“No! I’m going up there. Just give me a few minutes,” said Jake through heavy breathing.
“Don’t be such a dumbass. Come on, let’s get this over with.” Doc Nichols reached down to Jake’s arm.
“No, Doc, I said no!”
The doctor stood back up and swore again. “Fine. Just shut the hell up—I’m getting sick of listening to you moan.” He took a puff of the cigar and blew a misshapen ring up into the air, which drifted lazily up to the ventilation shaft in the ceiling.
Ben coughed, and waved a hand at the smoke. “Doctor, you do realize you’re breaking Imperial fleet regulation forty-two section two paragraph one, right? No smoking anywhere on any starship, except by express permission of the Captain, and only then in a designated smoking area?”
“Oh, shove it with your regulations. I didn’t get dragged out of a luxurious beachfront retirement only to get regulations quoted at me. And besides, the Captain did give me permission.”
Ben shook his head. “Actually, I was talking to him on the bridge the other day, and he told me how much he hates the smoke and that he’s asked you to stop while on the Phoenix.”
Doc Nichols puffed another drag and let it out with a laugh. “Ha! Well go tell old Dick that he can suck it. Look, kid, Dick and I go way back. Known each other for years. I owed him one for something he did for me awhile back, and that’s the only reason I’m here. But I sure as hell ain’t going to let him take away my cubans.”
Ben pressed on. “Fine. At least obey regulation forty-two section two paragraph three,” he said, continuing when the doctor only stared at him blankly. “Designated smoking areas? Sickbay and the bridge are both off-limits.”
“You know what? You actually sound just like him. Old Dick. He was just like you at your age. Spouting off regulations and rules and nonsense. I thought he would lighten up with age, and he has, but not when it comes to rules. He’s still a stickler. Still a persnickety tight-ass.”
“So are you going to abide by regulation, or not, sir?” Ben stood his ground.
A single puff of smoke blown in Ben’s face was his answer. “Eat shit,” said Doc Nichols, and pointed his thumb at the younger man, looking down at Po and Jake, whose moans had subsided. “Nice robot you guys brought on board with you.” He laughed, pleased at his own joke. “Look, I overheard a little something about keeping something from the Captain. Anything I should know about?”
Ben smirked and looked down at Jake with a glance that said, ‘I told you it was a bad idea.’
Jake said, in a croaking voice, “Just some new fighter tactics we came up with using the new tech we’ve got on board. Thought we’d surprise the Captain with some good news before the big day.”
“Let me guess. This guy thinks it’s a bad idea?” the doctor said, motioning his head back to Ben.
“Hey now, doc, you leave Ben alone. His bark is worse than his bite. Unless you’re fighting him in the bar, in which case he says nothing and just sweeps your feet out from under you. Isn’t that right, Ben?” Jake was breathing steadier now, and started to prop himself up.
Jake knew he had defused Ben’s rising ire when his friend huffed and muttered something under his breath, with the barest crack of a smile gracing his lips.
“Let me teach you fellas a lesson. You too, Commander,” he said, patting Po’s shoulder. “The Resistance fleet is—was—full of good men and good women who dedicated their lives to freeing our people. It was the sort of people like Admiral Pritchard that kept us together. That inspired us. That kept us together when everything seemed lost all those years before D-day. Dick is my friend, and your commanding officer. But he’ll never be—” he paused, as if considering his words. “Look. What I’m telling you is aim for the best. Pritchard was the best. And he didn’t always stick to the manual,” he said with a sidelong glance at Ben, who stared straight back, his face inscrutable.
Jake put his hands on his knees and started to stand up. “Well thanks, Doc. We’ll keep that in mind. While I’m here, any pills you can give me for another problem? I’ve got a pain in the ass. She’s a fighter pilot. Unruly, disobedient, crass. Questions my every command. I have no idea what to do with her. She walks around my flight deck like she owns the place. Got anything?”
Doc Nichols dragged on his cigar and rolled the smoke around in his mouth thoughtfully. “Unruly, disobedient, and crass? My word, she sounds like a fighter pilot. Looks like you’ve got a case of misogynitis. The only cure I can offer you is to surgically remove that thumb up your ass and for you to start treating her like a person. Got it?” He puffed on the cigar and walked away.
Jake’s mouth hung open, and Po held her head in her hands, apparently trying to hide her laughter.
Ben slapped the Doc on the shoulder as he left, a grin covering his face that said to Jake ‘how do you like it, you bastard?’
“Man,” Jake said, getting to his feet and rubbing his newly healed forearm. “That hurt.”
***
Captain Titus entered the ready room, ready for yet another blast of god-awful music, when he blinked in pleasant surprise.
“Do you like it, Captain?” It was a question the Admiral had a habit of asking him whenever Titus entered the room while something new was playing.
“Why, yes. Yes, of course, Admiral, Verdi is one of my favorites. A true Corsican if there ever was one.” As he said it, he noticed something familiar in the lap of the Admiral. He glanced up at the wall, and sure enough, one of the two Panreh pipes were missing, the other held in the Admiral’s hands. Instantly, he felt a little on edge, wondering why he was holding the instrument, wondering if someone was about to get a dart to the neck.
“Parma, actually, but yes, I know what you mean. A man after our hearts.” He paused, closed his eyes, and looked as if he were letting the music flow through him. “A masterpiece. One of his many. Do you know, Titus, how he wrote the requiem? Under what circumstances?”
Titus hemmed. “Uh, no sir, I don’t believe I do.” He didn’t take his eyes off the Panreh pipe cradled in the Admiral’s lap.
“When Gioachino Rossini died … you know Rossini, right?” Titus nodded—how could he not know the composer of the William Tell Overture? “When he died, Verdi submitted a proposal to the greatest Italian composers of his day to collaborate on a Requiem Mass to honor him. The others agreed, and Verdi quickly busied himself with his contribution. But it soon became apparent that the effort was becoming mired in bureaucracy and politics, and rather than see his contribution languish, he wrote the entire mass himself. He then rededicated it to the also-recently-deceased poet Alessandro Manzoni. Now, Manzoni wrote many things, yes, but perhaps his most important work was the novel The Betrothed, which later became a symbol for the Italian Risorgimento—the political movement that sought to establish one unified Italian kingdom over the petty states that made up the peninsula at the time. When Manzoni died, the Kingdom of Italy had been made fact, and Verdi wanted to honor him, and by extension, Italy. Captain, am I boring you?”
“Not at all sir. Most fascinating.” Titus lied, trying to sound genuinely interested. Apparently, Trajan noticed his lack of interest, or at least his preoccupation with the Panreh pipe, and changed the subject.
“Did you inform Chief Engineer Lombardi of my desire to thank him?”
“Yes, sir. He is on his way now.”
“Good.” The Admiral closed his eyes again, letting the words of the tenor voice sound the Ingemisco movement throughout the cabin, and he held the Panreh pipe up to his lips. A warm, yet strangely exotic and primal sound joined the tenor’s voice, and the Admiral played counterpoint against it, dueling with the voice as if with an old friend. For a moment, Titus almost felt relaxed in the Admiral’s presence.
“Do you have any inkling of why I am listening to this now?”
Titus opened his eyes with a start. He’d been hardly aware that he’d closed them, not out of fatigue, but with concentration on the music. “No, sir. I’d supp
osed because you like it?” He instantly felt foolish—he’d known the Admiral for long enough to have caught his mistake—the Admiral never did things on whim. Everything was strategically planned out. Every move, every word. Every subject he studied was a means to understanding his enemy, and conquering them.
“That, yes—I genuinely do. But I find the story of its composition a remarkable parallel for our own day, don’t you? A man, making his contribution to an effort greater than himself, only to be met with nay-sayers and hand-wringers and bureaucrats, until finally he tosses his hands in the air and says, ‘no more,’ and proceeds to take the entire task on himself. Do you realize, Captain, how much the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has cost the empire? Not just in treasure, but in lost time, lost prestige?”
The change of subject left Titus’s head spinning. “I agree, sir. The requirements they placed on all our dealings with Old Earth are quite a nuisance. We won the war fair and square—we should have been able to do as we pleased.”
“Quite right, Captain. And so, like Verdi, we have a task set before us, his by his god and ours by our Emperor, but both by our love of country. We will circumvent the hand-wringers, Captain. We will set their regime at folly, and show them what a true patriot is capable of. And soon, Captain, we will finally, at long last, defeat our enemy.” He glanced at Titus. “The Havoc freighter found its way to the Geneseo Shipyards at Earth, I presume?”
“Yes, sir. Their ship has even shifted back to Havoc—we just received word this mor—”
The door sounded the presence of a visitor, and Trajan waved it open with a motion of his hand. A nervous, giant of a man stood waiting, and, seeing the Admiral beckon, he stepped tentatively into the ready room.
“Welcome, sir, welcome. Please, shut the door. Come sit down.”
Lombardi complied, and stepped forward to a waiting chair on the other side of the ready room desk from the Admiral, who faced him, his eye-crater gaping out of his face, seeming to leer at the man. He lowered the pipe down into his lap, as if to hide it, but the bell peered up over the edge, looking for all the world like an eye, and for a moment, Titus considered that there were now two of Admiral Trajan’s eyes staring at the squirming man seated before him.
“Chief Engineer Lombardi. I want to thank you, on behalf of Captain Titus and myself, the NPQR Caligula, and the Emperor himself. Truly, you will never know the role you have played today. What you have done marks the beginning of the end of the rebellion. Rather, what you have done is the nail we will drive through the lid on its coffin.” The Admiral smiled and opened the drawer of his desk.
He reached a hand inside.
“Here, Mr. Lombardi. On behalf of a grateful empire.” Admiral Trajan produced a framed certificate from the desk drawer, and handed it to the man, whose trembling had ceased, replaced with a tight, genuine smile, and a furrowed brow.
“Thank you, sir. It was hard work, but I think we did it just how you ordered.” He stared down at the frame, beaming. “Wow. The wife will like this, for sure.”
“Wonderful. Thank you again. You should be proud of the sacrifice you have made.” He smiled again at the man. Then, pointing up to the music, he asked, “And what do you think of the music, Mr. Lombardi? As I was just explaining to the Captain here, the task I gave you seems to have put me in the mood for some Verdi.”
Lombardi glanced up, gazing at the wall as if looking off into the distance. “I like it, sir. Not really my style, but … nice. Intense.” The orchestra had just underlined the bass’s declaration with a dramatic descent of notes.
“Verdi’s Requiem, my man. Confutatis movement.” The Admiral paused, then continued, as if chanting. His tone sent a shiver up Captain Titus’s spine that he couldn’t quite explain. “Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis, voca me cum benedictis …”
Lombardi cocked his head. “Sorry sir, I don’t know Latin. My parents weren’t exactly in the upper class on Corsica.”
Trajan’s face was inscrutable, his solitary eye drilling into Lombardi’s. A knot formed in Captain Titus’s stomach. “Neither were mine, Mr. Lombardi. But that is not important. When the wicked are cursed, sent to the fiery, acrid flames, call thou me with the blessed.” He raised the Panreh pipe up to his lips and took a breath. Titus noticed the bell aimed squarely at the poor man’s head.
Trajan blew, and the warm tone greeted the bass’s boisterous solo, though now sounding a bit out of place in the swelling pace of the music. He played for about twenty seconds as the chief engineer looked on with a face that Titus interpreted as wonder.
Admiral Trajan lowered the pipe from his lips and placed it on the desk. Titus let out a sigh of relief, straining not to be heard. He’d wondered if the Admiral were truly going to use the pipe for its other purpose, though the thought seemed silly to him now. What had the man done?
Admiral Trajan stood up straight and smiled. “Truly, Chief Engineer, you are with the blessed. The Empire will remember you.”
Trajan’s hand reached into his desk again, this time extracting his sidearm. He aimed at Lombardi’s forehead and fired without hesitation.
Blood, bone, and pieces of light gray flesh splattered the floor and wall behind the man, who now slumped sideways out of his chair, spilling onto the floor. Blood gushed from the hole in the back of his head, staining the steel deckplate with a spreading pool of red and gore.
Titus stood against the wall, fixed, unmoving, not daring to speak, or even to breathe. Trajan calmly placed the sidearm back in the drawer and shut it, wiping a speck of blood that had recoiled and splashed onto his cheek.
“I’m sorry, Captain, I did not mean to startle you. Please sit. You look like you are about to pass out.”
He tried to speak, but no words passed his lips. Somehow, a chair appeared next to him and he sat. “There you are, Captain, that’s right, sit down for awhile.”
“But sir …” he stammered, gulping several times. The cold, unmoving eyes of the dead man seemed to be locked onto Captain Titus, and Titus couldn’t look away. “Why?”
“Because absolutely none must know. Absolutely none. Only then will the plan work. If the Truth and Reconciliation Commission were to find out, the plan would fail. If the senate were to get word, then even worse—the Empire would be shaken to its core. Lombardi made his sacrifice, and it will be remembered with reverence. And I made mine, for his blood is on my hands. It is a heavy burden, Captain, one I do not take on lightly.”
Titus tried to breathe, but couldn’t take his eyes from the crumpled corpse on the deck, and the red pool that now stretched from its broken head. He’d seen death before—too much of it. No Corsican fleet captain goes through a life of military service without seeing it everywhere. But it was always from a distance, and it was usually the enemy’s, or his own men whom he had ordered, always reluctantly, into battle for a greater cause.
Never like this.
This was senseless.
“Better, Captain?” The Admiral still stood next to him, arms at his side. Slowly, reluctantly, Titus nodded, and got to his feet, breathing deep, silent breaths. “Good. I will clean up here a bit while you go compose yourself. You look horrible.” He walked back to his desk and opened a drawer, making Titus startle, his heart nearly jumping into his throat. The Admiral extracted several rags, and closed the drawer. He began wiping the desk.
Titus needed to leave, and marched towards the door before he became sick.
“Oh, and Captain?”
“Yes, sir?”
Trajan picked up the framed certificate he had given Lombardi and tucked it back into the drawer. “When you get a chance, send in the two technicians. Rossi and Chang. I need to thank them as well.”
He’s a madman.
Dear lord. What have we done?
Chapter Six
Lieutenant Commander Jacob Mercer’s bridge rotation began rather uneventfully: he was assigned to merely check over the crew rotations Ben Jemez had scheduled and figure out how
to insert the names of another few dozen people who arrived on the last passenger carrier that morning. The old, cranky XO would occasionally come peer over his shoulder to check on his progress before grumbling something about careless officers who couldn’t pay attention to detail and wandered off to prowl around some of the other stations, to the chagrin of the bridge officers.
Jake glanced around at them all—the blonde haired, blue eyed young navigator, Ensign Tate, and his short, even younger pilot, Ensign Roshenko—a woman who didn’t look to be over twenty. Was the academy lowering the age requirements? He took it as a sign of the gamble the Resistance High Council was taking on this incredibly risky operation. Nine Freedom-class heavy cruisers, all to be launched at once, with some of the most important officers in the Imperial High Command looking on from their ship. The hope was the Resistance could not only take the Nine, but also wipe out a generous helping of the Imperial warships in attendance at the ship launch. Far more economical that way.
His gaze continued around the bridge. At tactical stood another woman, older and more experienced-looking than Ensign Roshenko. Lieutenant Pierce, he believed. She had an entire section of tactical staff under her, huddled around an octagonal workstation, which made for easy coordination with each other. Staffed almost entirely by men, with one noteworthy exception, the octagon handled everything from weapons targeting to tactical sensors to coordinating communications and tactics between different departments on the ship, including the railgun turrets, the ion beam cannons, the defensive screen gunners, and the fighter squadron.
The exception to the all-male tactics department, in addition to their commander Lieutenant Pierce, was a woman unlike any he’d ever seen. Bleached-white short hair, colorful tattoos covering her arms, neck, and part of her face, about fifteen piercings per ear, several more spanning her eyebrows, and if he had to guess, the tongue as well. A single medallion on a rough string dangled around her neck.
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