Spineward Sectors 03 Admiral's Tribulation

by Luke Sky Wachter

  Akantha made as if to say something but I gently pushed her toward the door, “I should have told you a long time ago,” I said with a sigh, “but right now there’s no time. Now go. Go!” I urged as she continued to hesitate, “you need to hurry if you’re to join Suffic before the battle is all but over,” I finished doing my best to put a supportive grin on my face.

  Akantha scowled at me but I could tell her heart wasn’t in it. Shaking her head, she hurried out through the blast doors on her way to the turbo lift.

  Chapter 21: In Transit and the Long March

  “I was given to understand we’d be taking a shuttle,” Jean Luc said mildly, arching a brow at the full body skin suit offered to him by the Lieutenant Colonel.

  “Oh, they’re sending a shuttle for you,” agreed Riggs, “but even though the Gundeck of this ship has been neutralized for the moment, I’m not willing to take the risk of a stray shot pointed at the only shuttle leaving this ship,” the Colonel said with a scowl. He then offered the skin-suit once again.

  “Neither the Master-at-Arms nor myself are in need of a mass produced, commercially available item such as your garden variety skin suit,” Jean Luc retorted scornfully.

  “I don’t see how…” the Lieutenant Colonel started, only to trail off as the Pirate Lord and his Master-at-Arms proceeded to slap metal studs worked into the dark leather of their uniforms. There was a whining sound as the openings between boots and storm dragon leather sealed themselves shut, followed by the coat and pants doing likewise.

  His eyebrows rose in surprise as the two men pulled out gloves and tapped similar, rounded metal studs which looked to be nothing more than part of the intimidating, custom-made pirate uniform.

  When they also pulled what looked like almost paper thin hoods from the collars of their jackets, complete with some kind of super light and very advanced model head bag, all he could do was shake his head.

  Dressed in black, custom-made pirate armor and with dark-visored head bags, they looked like some kind of evil storm troopers from a bygone era.

  “I won’t insult you by asking if you’ve got enough oxygen capacity to survive the trip or if you’ll freeze to death on the way over,” he said finally before leading them to an airlock.

  Behind their Leader, a battalion of Marines assembled in the open cargo bay.

  When the shuttle indicated its readiness to dock, fifty power-armored marines from the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Regiment marched on board. A full company followed the Lieutenant Colonel out onto the hull, while the remainder awaited the next shuttle back to the ship.

  Once they were mostly assembled, Riggs attached a harpoon line to each of the two men he’d been sent to retrieve and then jumped off the hull of the ship.

  Activating his still very much functional grav-board, the flight between Battleships took a fraction of the time it would have had he just used leg power to span the relatively short distance between the two ships.

  Entering the Lucky Clover through an airlock eerily similar to the one on the pirate ship they’d just left (which wasn’t surprising since they were after all of the exact same design) the Lieutenant Colonel pulled Jean Luc and Connor Tuttle off to the side until a Sergeant and a pair of the Lieutenants had also cycled through the lock.

  “I’m for the nearest lift leading to the bridge, I’ll be taking two fire teams with me,” he instructed the 3rd battalion officers, “I want you to contact Captain Heppner as soon as you reach a communications terminal, after that you are to proceed as he indicates. Until you hear from me again, you are to consider yourself under his orders,” Brian Riggs said flatly.

  “Yes, Sir,” the two lieutenants said crisply.

  “Sar,” grunted the Sergeant in acknowledgment.

  The Lieutenant Colonel suppressed a grimace, another Stonelander, with that atrocious accent of theirs.

  Chapter 22: Updated Instructions

  Tremblay’s fingers flew over the Sensor Operator’s console.

  “That’s how you collate a multi-data stream into a coherent, unified and most importantly, understandable format,” he rebuked, jerking away from the console.

  Leaving the Sensor pit, he turned his hawk like gaze over to the Tactical pit. The royalist over there seemed to have things firmly in hand, he thought with a twist of the lips.

  He was headed over to review the Shields section, when there was a buzz in his back pocket. Freezing in place, he paused for a moment before surreptitiously pulling it out. His official communications device was still clipped to his belt, this device was more than just a back up, it was also completely untraceable.

  Moving to an unused workstation he sat down before activating the pocket comm.

  “This is the Chief of Staff,” he said crisply.

  “Officer Tremblay,” Captain Heppner appeared on his screen.

  “Sir,” the Lieutenant replied with a nod.

  “You have pledged yourself to the cause,” said Heppner before pausing, obviously waiting for a reply.

  “You can count on me, Captain,” Tremblay said in a low voice, so as not to be overheard by those around him. Fortunately they were too busy fighting the ship to worry about the lack of attention from an officer most of the crew on the Flag Bridge would rather avoid having stare over their shoulders in the first place. There were a few advantages to having no one want to catch your eye.

  “Just like I told you he would, the Montagne succeeded placing us in an untenable situation, Sir,” Tremblay said bitterly. “If we don’t kill or capture these pirate battleships, we’re dead men walking. On the other hand, even if we do defeat them, the station will then be free to blast the lot of us to kingdom come!”

  “All of that has been factored into our plans, Junior Lieutenant; there’s no need for such defeatist talk,” the Captain rebuked the former Intelligence Officer with nothing but complete and utter confidence portrayed on his features.

  Tremblay suppressed a frown, “As you say, Captain.”

  There was a pause.

  “You have a mission for me,” the younger officer quietly prompted.

  The Captain shook himself, “Yes,” he said evenly, “this is your moment to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt where your loyalties ultimately lie. Today you either stand with our glorious parliament or with the royalist scum who’ve caused so much trouble on our fair planet, as personified by the very Admiral whom you currently serve.”

  “I understand, Captain. Just tell me what to do,” the Lieutenant said confidently. “Anything to get a Montagne off the Flag Bridge,” Tremblay reiterated.

  “All you must do is step outside the Flag Bridge for a brief moment, retrieve a package I am sending you by way of a crewman loyal to the cause and take it to the Admiral’s ready room. After you place it beneath the seat of the rightmost of the two chairs habitually facing the Admiral’s desk, your work will be done,” Jim Heppner said.

  “I hope it’s not a bomb of some kind,” Tremblay grimaced, “not only is such an action distasteful, but I’d have to leave my electronic signature all over the place when I deactivated the automatic sensors built into the arch of the blast doors.”

  “The cloth it is wrapped in is resistant to standard scanners such as the ones built into your blast doors, but it’s unlikely to set them off even if they were able to accurately scan the device I’m entrusting into your care,” Heppner said, narrowing his eyes.

  Tremblay opened his mouth, but the Captain cut him off.

  “Do you accept your assignment or not, Junior Lieutenant,” he asked firmly.

  Tremblay paused and then nodded stiffly, “I hear and obey,” he said evenly.

  Hearing this, the Captain terminated the connection.

  Even though it felt as if every eye on the bridge was tracking his every movement, the former First Officer let none of his anxiety leak into his facial expression. He was a highly trained Intelligence Officer, he reminded himself, one loyal to Parliament and the Elected cause. Righteousness was his armor a
nd loyalty would be his deliverance.

  Retrieving the package outside the Flag Bridge from a crewman with damage control patches was a nice touch. Damage Control parties were able to move about the entire ship unimpeded by security checkpoints… assuming there were enough Lancers remaining onboard to man such points.

  Placing the wrapped package underneath his arm, he reentered the Flag Bridge.

  With measured and unhurried steps, he walked back to his usual post down in the pits. Under the guise of scanning for trouble spots popping up, it was easy to spot a moment when Jason Montagne was distracted (being kissed by his wife in point of fact) to notice his former First Officer and current Chief of Staff making his way into the Admiral’s Ready room.

  Tremblay’s lip curled; it was just like a member of the royal family to abuse an Admiral’s privilege to the point of mockery by keeping his wife onboard ship and then engaging in public displays of gross marital affections. On the Flag Bridge and during combat no less!

  Attaching the package to the underside of the proper chair took a little doing and necessitated the removal of the sensor-resistant synthetic covering.

  Tremblay’s breath hissed out as the object inside was revealed. It was an ion spike! It seemed that whatever was in the works, it involved neutralizing the Admiral’s archaic suit of power armor. For a moment he hesitated and almost reconsidered exactly what he was doing here, but then a long black hair pinned underneath one of the chair legs caught his attention. It was a three inch long gorilla-man hair.

  His eyes hardened.

  Moving quickly, he found a metal hard point on the underside of the chair and using a magnetic strip thoughtfully placed on one side of the ion spike, no doubt for just this eventuality, he secured the spike to the bottom of the chair. After carefully adjusting it so that it would pass undetected by a casual survey, he carefully placed the chair back in its original position, gorilla-man hair and all.

  Straightening, he adjusted his uniform and expression before marching out of the ready room with his head held high, secure in the rightness of their elected cause.

  Chapter 23: On the Gun Deck

  “It's our turn now, boys,” roared the Chief of the Gundeck, “pour it on and right down their throats!”

  Around him the turbo-laser he was seated at sparked and smoked. The previous gunner had been thrown from his seat, reduced to a burnt and smoking wreck by a close deflection shot from the enemy’s counter battery fire.

  “Aim for their point defense arrays with your unfocused beams! We’ll melt the muzzles of those undersized arrays and clear a path for our Lancer boys to jump over there and ream them a new one,” he screamed.

  Miraculously the blast doors hadn’t lowered, segregating this Turbo from the rest of the gundeck. But seeing the melted remains of the gun chair and fried surface of the fire-control computer, not to mention the still smoking wreck that was its former gunner on the deck behind it, would have been more than enough to put most would-be gunners off of manning the particular weapon.

  Not so for Chief of the Gun Deck Curtis Bogart. Even the live current passing through the rubber glove of his left hand as he aimed the Turbo would not stop the Chief from keeping a working main gun on the firing line.

  Lining up for another shot on an enemy turbo-laser, he skinned his lips back from his teeth.

  “Take this, pirate scum,” he screamed, his voice rising to previously un-reached levels as the weapon fired and enough current to burn his hand. The rubber gloves he wore were not rated for this level of current, yet another ‘gift’ from the departed Imperials, who had taken the good equipment with them.

  Jerking and twitching from the increased current as the weapon fired, he was just glad for the automatic cutoffs which engaged after the weapon started to overheat. The amount of electrical current flowing through the substandard glove and into his own body would have eventually overcome his nervous system.

  As soon as the turbo was done firing, he jumped out of the melted wreck of a chair and danced around, hopping from foot to foot as his muscles initially refused to obey. When the shock of the electrical charge had dissipated, he furiously kicked the still defunct targeting computer before plopping back down.

  As he was minutely adjusting the aim of the gun and eyeballed the enemy ship, a spray of superheated hydraulic fluid started shooting out of the turbo’s alignment mechanism, and molten hot droplets started raining down on his chair. The Imperials had taken the entire complement of heat-resistant gear with them, leaving the gunners vulnerable to fire and heated fluid.

  Diving out of the chair and falling to the deck, he rolled as fast as he could away from the dividing lines marking where the blast doors would fall, isolating the gun pod from the rest of the ship.

  When the tombstones (a term the gunners had given the blast doors centuries earlier when they had first been used on ships of the line) failed to fall, he rolled onto his front and lay there for a moment before getting on his hands and knees.

  “Grease monkey ,” he yelled, struggling to his feet.

  This was the only reason he noticed the power-armored figures stepping onto the gundeck, accompanied by several officers in clean pressed uniforms.

  “Yes, Sir,” exclaimed a Rating with a face so soot-stained and covered with grease it was black all around, except where the pinks of his eyelids shown through.

  The Chief of the Gun Deck fingered his auto-wrench and growled under his breath.

  “Chief Bogart?” the rating asked hesitantly.

  Bogart looked at him blankly or a moment.

  “You want I should fix the leak,” asked the grease monkey , pointing to the Turbo-laser still spraying fluid.

  “Change of plans, lad,” he said grimly, as he started rolling up the sleeves of his utility uniform, “I want you to find Heirophant and Warrant Lesner, in that order and then you’re to tell them it’s all about to go in the pot.”

  “Heirophant, Chief?” the rating said looking uncertain.

  “Hop to it, grease monkey ,” he barked rounding on the rating with a fierce glower.

  Face clearing with understanding of his new orders, the soot-stained grease monkey took off, tearing down the gundeck strewn with broken equipment, superheated fluid and in several cases still smoking bodies the Medics hadn’t gotten around to removing yet, as they had more important things to worry about than dead bodies. For instance, the still living ones that needed immediate attention if they were to stay that way.

  “What you need, Chief,” Lesner said a few moments later, striding down the deck a pipe wrench in his hand.

  Curtis Bogart jerked his chin at the party making their way to his position.

  He spat off to the side, before pulling out a cigar and biting the end off.

  “What you make of that, Lesner,” he said bitingly, then taking his cigar and lighting it off a nearby sparking electrical cord, he took a big puff.

  Lesner stared at the power-suited figures stomping down the deck in the middle of a firefight.

  “Parliament making its move for the ship?” he asked uncertainly.

  Bogart took another big puff, then blew out a pair of smoke rings.

  “That’s what I’d say, Warrant,” he said glaring at the approaching figures, “that’s what I’d say, no other reason for a gaggle of no-good Tactical and Gunnery officers along with a quad of power-armored buffoons to show up at a time like this if’n they wasn’t.”

  “That’s insane, Chief,” Lesner protested, “even those parliamentary boys wouldn’t be crazy enough to start something at a time like this!”

  Bogart just pointed to the rapidly approaching men in battlesuits. “You’ll note those aren’t grandpa’s old power suits like the ones our Lancer boys come equipped with neither,” he said speaking under his breath.

  “Blast,” cursed Lesner, moving off to the side, “what you want I should do, Chief.”

  “Back my play, assistant Deck Chief,” Bogart said with a wink, “we may al
l die but if we do, at least we’ll go out the airlock with some blasted style,” he paused and smoke poured from his nostrils. “Unlike last time,” he spat off to the side of the deck, “this is our day, our Royalist Confederation day, if you take my meaning. No panzified parliamentary boy is going to rain on this old gunner’s last parade.”

  “If you say so,” Lesner said doubtfully, even as if took a practice swing with his pipe wrench, “I just hope you’re right.”

  “Now if only that genetically-engineered attack dog would show up to the party, we’d be all set,” Bogart said glancing around for the giant Tracto-an native. “Just like that one to take his own sweet time following orders,” he cursed.

  Then there was no more time to wonder about disappearing, oversized grease monkey s.

  The parliamentary lick-boots were upon them.

  Chapter 24: A Deadly Game of Finger Pointing

  “Lieutenant Colonel Kyle Riggs is outside the blast doors with the prisoner and seeks entry into the Flag Bridge,” reported the Internal Comm-technician.

  I almost said they should just bring in my piratical Uncle but something inside made me hesitate. Maybe it was the sudden remembrance that most of my Lancer detail had jumped off the ship with Suffic and my wife to try storming the Armor Prince, or perhaps it was simply a desire not to have to deal another set of Caprian interests: the Royal Marines interested in securing my oath of loyalty to our soon to be beloved King James. Either way, I decided to let the Marine Colonel cool his heels outside my Flag Bridge while I debriefed my piratical uncle.

  I would have preferred to have this meeting down in the ship’s brig but there was no way I was leaving the Flag Bridge under current conditions.

  “Thank the Lieutenant Colonel in my name, and then have our Lancer guards take custody of the prisoner from the Marines,” I said decisively. This might cause me no end of trouble with the Royal Marines later on, but I wasn’t going to be taking any chances, not when everything I had was on the line and put to the hazard, as it was right now.