Spineward Sectors 03 Admiral's Tribulation

by Luke Sky Wachter

  Not even knowing what he was saying, the infernal woman in charge of his protective detail glared at him, causing Wainwright to turn away.

  “I’ve just he man for the job, Colonel,” the Major replied with such relief in his voice, that Wainwright wondered if someone had been speaking out of turn. He deliberately did not look at the Sergeant again this time.

  Chapter 67: Trouble on the Armor Prince

  “I keep getting an error in the environmental systems, My Lady,” said the Lancer woman at the controls.

  “Is that so,” Akantha asked, cocking an imperious eyebrow.

  “The error only appeared after she accidentally activated the controls, Mistress,” another Tracto woman explained, as she shot her fellow lancer a withering glance.

  “The error is there now,” flared the woman at the environmental control panel.

  “If it isn’t critical to the ship, then ignore it,” Akantha ordered irritably.

  “It’s something to do with the sewage tanks,” the woman said, “there’s some kind of blockage. Somehow, I activated the emergency evacuation controls, but something is stuck in the tanks. It won’t eject.”

  “The septic tank, Hecate… Really?” drawled Isis, her nominal lancer superior, due to her slightly better grasp on technology. “That is what has you hot and bothered?”

  “Listen Isis,” snarled Hecate.

  “Stop,” Akantha stood, forcing compliance with her physical presence. When the silence she sought was attained, she stepped up to the console for a look, but the numbers, dials and gauges made little sense to her.

  “On the possibility it could be someone attempting to sneak into our citadel through the sewers, I want a team on the hull, and another to physically inspect the tanks. I don’t want to hear anything more about it until we receive their report,” Akantha said stiffly, upset at her continued inability to understand the functions of all these Starborn created consoles at a look. She really needed to adjust her focus from learning the language, as she had already become proficient in their tongue.

  Jason had always handled those details so well, but with him gone, it looked like she would be forced to dive head-first into the sorts of boring details that her Protector had always seemed to enjoy.

  She slapped her hands together, causing her impromptu little bridge crew to jump.

  “How many of the crew has been put into battle suits,” she demanded, changing the subject.

  “Four hundred working suits have been patched together, Mistress,” reported Isis.

  “That still leaves too many crewmembers without the ability to fight back,” Akantha declared.

  “We’re holding the pirates at the main gates of this ship — the loading gantries — with these reinforcements,” Isis said with a frown.

  “Not good enough,” Akantha stated imperiously, having already considered her next course, “we need to instruct our men at the gates to let the next wave inside the perimeter. They are then to annihilate them, where supporting crew can retrieve their equipment. We can then use their suits to put more of our men into the fight.” Once again, she ignored the fact that other than the untrained crew in suits, most of her ‘men’ were actually women.

  Traditionally in her culture, the woman would be called up to man the gates when the men sortie out en masse to crush the enemy. The semi-spiteful interaction between Hecate and Isis made her wonder if she had made an error by instinctively falling back on Tracto tradition in this situation.

  She pushed that uncertainty to the side. The other women were both trained lancers, and she would treat them as such. If they could not learn to work together, she would break them; just as she would do to anyone else who attempted to stall her victory.

  Chapter 68: Assignment: Tanks… the Septic Tanks

  “Murphy weeps, but it reeks in here; I didn’t believe anything could smell worst than the tanks on the Clover,” exclaimed the environmental technician.

  “Just thank your lucky stars you’re inside this tank, and not out there getting shot at with the rest of the crew,” his partner reminded him with a long-suffering sigh.

  “You don’t know what it’s like, cleaning tanks like these day in and day out,” whined the enviro-tech.

  “I don’t care,” exclaimed the assistant gunner, “I’m here to do a job and so are you.”

  “If it’s not the tanks, it’s the filters; if it’s not the filters, it’s the pipes. Mold, mold, mold, and if it’s not space mold, it’s green creepers and space rats,” moaned the enviro-tech. “And let me tell you, they come the size of small dogs in some of those pipes!”

  “What, the rats?” the gunner asked politely.

  “What? No, the green creepers and—” the Tech gasped as he scrambled backward, “Sweet Murphy, we’ve got to get out of here!”

  The assistant gunner grabbed him by the shoulder and forcibly stopped him, pulling out a hand stunner to emphasize his mood. “We’ve got a job to do, and we’re going to do it; green creepers or no green creepers. They can’t be that bad,” he said the ring of command entering his voice. This had gone on long enough; it was time to insert some control over this tech, even if he did know his job ten times better than any gunner that was ever born.

  “That’s not a creeper; it’s a bomb! We need to get out of here, and call in the hazmat team,” shouted the Tech, still trying to back away.

  “There may not be a hazmat team any more,” the assistant gunner said, with a slow-burning hatred laced throughout his voice, “I heard the Armory went Parliament.”

  Pulling the enviro-tech forward with him, the assistant gunner shone a light on the large metallic object lodged sideways in the tank, where the welds holding it in place had broken loose.

  “You’re right; it’s definitely a bomb,” he said dryly.

  “I told you,” squealed the Tech.

  The gunner stared at the flashing lights on the side of the bomb, which he realized with a sinking sensation was some kind of modified missile.

  “This is Assistant Gunner Tobias Pierre, and we’ve got a problem… a big problem,” he reported over his com-link. “Someone’s rigged this ship to explode.”

  Maintaining his grip on the squirming tech, he escorted the smaller man out of the tank. Someone higher up the chain of command than him was going to have to deal with this, before they were all blown to pieces.

  Chapter 69: The Scramble

  “How did we miss this,” Akantha snapped, turning slightly pale.

  “We never bothered to sweep the ship with scanners for bomb emissions,” Hecate replied.

  “What kind of person blows up their own citadel,” Isis boggled.

  Akantha closed her eyes briefly and scowled. “The kind of person determined to deny this battleship to anyone strong enough to defeat him,” she glared around the room.

  “Yes, Mistress,” the bridge crew said in response to her silent rebuke.

  “We need to get it off this ship, and scan the rest of the vessel for others of its kind,” Akantha concluded.

  “Yes, Mistress,” Isis said faintly.

  “Well, what are we waiting for,” Akantha demanded.

  “I don’t know how to defuse a bomb,” Isis said, glancing around the bridge.

  “Neither do I, Mistress,” agreed Hecate, and the rest of the crew followed suit.

  “I think anyone who knew how to defuse a bomb went with Suffic’s lancers,” Isis suggested.

  Akantha slammed her fist into the side of the Captain’s Chair.

  “Maybe one of the Gunners knows something useful,” she accused her bridge staff.

  There was another silent pause as her crew accepted her latest chastisement. “Who should I contact, Hold Mistress,” Isis asked hesitantly.

  “The new Chief Gunner is Lesner; I don’t remember his first name,” Akantha waved away the details. “Find him,” she ordered.

  They turned to start the task, when the woman manning the communication console jerked in her chair.r />
  “The Gate Guard reports they are picking up an unusually large amount of blaster fire at the edge of their sensor range. It seems the pirates are coming in force,” she reported.

  Akantha grabbed the hilt of her sword for comfort.

  “Pirates have poor discipline, worse than our people when we first got our hands on advanced weaponry,” Akantha said firmly. “They often begin firing before they come into contact with our Lancers. Call up extra militia forces from the crew for reinforcements.”

  “My Lady,” exclaimed Lancer at communications jumping out of her chair.

  Akantha suppressed a groan. What now? she wondered.

  “It’s Colonel Suffic! He says he’s bringing back a convoy of wounded, and that all the firing was them tearing another wave of pirates to pieces,” she said excitedly.

  “Stop my last order,” Akantha exclaimed excitedly. Suffic would know how to disarm that bomb, if anyone did!

  “Which one, My Lady,” asked Isis looking perplexed.

  Akantha reseated herself on the Captain’s Chair imperiously before continuing.

  “The one for Chief Gunner Lesner,” she replied confidently. “Suffic will know how to deal with this bomb. Continue searching the ship for active transmissions that might indicate another bomb. We will bedevil our foes and crush the enemy yet! Wreck and ruin to the enemy,” she exclaimed.

  The bridge crew gave a cheer.

  Chapter 70: Suffic in a Bind

  “I need you, Colonel,” Akantha’s voice came over his link.

  “I’m yours, My Lady,” Suffic said straightening. A groan escaped his lips as the movement pulled on his barely patched together side. The synth-flesh and liberal application of quick heal were barely up to the task of holding his insides where they belonged, after the running battle to get the wounded back to the Armor Prince.

  “Are you fit for duty, Hansel,” Akantha sounded concerned for his well-being.

  “’Tis but a scratch, Lady Akantha,” he assured her, dismissing his pain and injuries as unimportant. She would not be calling to say she needed him unless it was urgent.

  “You and all of your Men have fought with honor this day,” Akantha commended, then continued on speak in her usual bloodthirsty, glory-bound vein, praising their Lancers and then railing against the enemies and foes arrayed against them.

  For a moment, everything whited out, and his ears started ringing.

  “That is why I need you to go down and defuse the bomb in the sewage tank before it destroys the Ship,” she finished in that authoritative voice of hers. At times like this, she sounded even more like a Princess, or a bona fide Royal, than the Little Admiral Jason Montagne. Of course, she also had less care for those that got in her way…

  Everything suddenly snapped back into focus. There was a bomb? And it was about to blow up the ship!?

  “I’ll take care of it, My Lady,” he reassured her, using a voice he had learned as a Lieutenant in command of a fresh platoon of trainees: calm and soothing, yet at the same time conveying the absolute iron-clad assurance that everything was under control.

  Akantha sighed, and he could sense that tight, angry energy she so often carried around inside herself release ever so slightly.

  “I can always rely on you, Hansel,” she said gratefully, sounding as close to happy as she ever did.

  “How fare our forces inside the Omicron,” she asked, sounding eager instead of hard-pressed for the first time since his return.

  “The enemy has more battlesuits than we had hoped, and we have been hard-pressed every step of the way into the station,” he reported, refusing to sugar-coat it.

  “World of Men,” Akantha swore.

  “I left Wainwright in Command of the drive, while I brought the wounded here for relief,” he continued.

  “You left one of those Marines in command our Lancers,” she cried, sounding outraged.

  “He seems a good enough man, if with a few rough edges,” he assured her, “besides, I left the Captains with strict instructions to press on, no matter if he gave them orders to retreat. They are only to pull back if Master Force Sergeant Louis Burgundy concurs with the order.”

  “Force Sergeant Burgundy is an evil, little, rule-bound toad of a man,” Akantha muttered with distaste.

  “That’s his job, Lady,” he rebuked her. No one liked a drill sergeant, and without separate training facilities, Sergeant Burgundy had been forced to hold down two hats: one as head Training Instructor, and the other as top sergeant for the Contingent. He was steady, if uninspired, which was why he was still a sergeant instead of one of Suffic’s captains.

  There was an angry silence on the other end of the line.

  “Hopefully he turns his beady gaze little gaze as closely upon this other Colonel as he has upon our native Warriors,” she said finally.

  “I’m sure he will,” he soothed, pushing down his own worry at not being out there with his men.

  “I mis-like this. I mis-like this extremely,” Akantha said sounding distressed. “It was Marines who broke the charge of our loyalist gunners and captured the Clover for that wretched Parliament; the very same Parliament which seeks to thwart our designs at every turn!”

  “You said his own men were trying to kill him down in Engineering. Wainwright should be reliable,” he said heavily.

  “Let us hope,” she said flatly.

  “I will check on that bomb,” he said, realizing how much time had been wasted while there was a bomb still ticking away, “and perhaps My Lady might check to make sure the self-destruct system hasn’t been activated. I’d hate for the scuttling charges to go off after we disable the bomb.”

  “I will do so at once,” Akantha agreed, before signing off.

  Chapter 71: Suffic on The Rocks

  The Lancer Colonel stared down at the so-called bomb with dismay.

  “It’s an old anti-mutiny device,” he concluded with a sinking sensation.

  “How do we disarm it, Colonel,” asked former Warrant Lesner. The new Chief Gunner had followed him down into environmental as soon as he’d spotted him. Suffic still could not believe that Curtis Bogart was dead.

  “Parliament’s killing us off one by one, all of the old royalists,” he mumbled absent-mindedly.

  “Did you say something, Colonel,” Lesner asked, sounding concerned.

  Realizing he had spoken his thoughts out loud, Hansel Suffic shook his head.

  “Just talking to myself, Chief,” he replied shortly, more upset with himself than anything.

  “I get it,” said Lesner.

  Suffic looked at him and then slowly nodded. The other man certainly had his own fair share of ghosts.

  “It’s a people killer, Chief,” he explained, glaring down at the device.

  “And?” the other man pressed.

  “It must be linked into the ship through the environmental systems,” Suffic mused aloud, “we knew they put them in some of these ships, just not where they went.”

  “I can see you’re wounded, but we need to stay on task,” Lesner insisted, putting a hand on his shoulder.

  Suffic shook it off angrily and when a Lancer in power armor gets angry, lesser men (like gunners) jumped out of the way.

  “Sorry,” he said gruffly.

  “It's alright,” Lesner said this time keeping his distance.

  Suffic grimaced. “It was intended to cause maximum human casualties, but by design is supposed to leave the vast majority of the ship’s electrical and mechanical systems unharmed,” he explained.

  “Sweet, Crying Murphy,” Lesner said under his breath.

  “It’s rather elegant, in its own terrible way; it was built to gut the ship of its crew, but leave the systems intact for later recovery,” he continued heavily.

  “It’s a man killer, I hear you. Now let’s get it off our ship,” urged the new Chief Gunner.

  “There’s only one way to move it,” Suffic said, for some reason feeling the urge to cringe. But he didn’t cri
nge because that’s not what a real man did when staring death in the face. Did Spalding cringe when he jumped in that reactor? he asked himself.

  The only answer he came up with, was that the crazy engineer was probably too out of his gourd most of the time to have such a reaction.

  “Once activated, it can’t be stopped,” Suffic said simply.

  “You said it could be moved though, so let’s do that,” Lesner prompted with a sharp nod. “I’ll get a crew together, and we’ll move her out to a safe distance from the ship.”

  Suffic shook his head slowly, the possibilities rapidly flitting through a mind he knew was exhausted with trauma and blood loss.

  “Due to its nature, it’s designed to only allow someone to move it deeper into the ship for greater effect, if the area it was in sustained battle damage,” he said simply. “If you try moving it in an outward direction, it goes off,”

  “Huh,” Lesner grunted, his face working nervously. “We’ll just get our crew outside the ship, let it go off and then storm right back inside. It’ll be a race, but any of the pirates that get inside between the time we exit, and the time it goes off, should be fried.”

  Suffic blinked. He knew he really was blitzed, since he had never even considered that possibility. The only question was if that would be enough to give his boys stuck inside the Omicron a fighting chance. On the whole, he had to reluctantly decide that it did not. There simply was not enough time to fool around, hoping enough battle-suited pirates flooded the ship to tip the balance in their favor.

  “That’s a good plan, Chief,” he agreed unhappily.

  “Then why all the doom and gloom?” asked Lesner.

  “Because I can’t let you go through with it, man,” Suffic explained, leveling his blaster rifle at Lesner.

  “Why not,” Lesner asked, ignoring the rifle, “just leave it in here and let’s go.”

  “That won’t solve the problem,” the Colonel said, thinking out loud.