Once they had been able to maneuver into orbit to rejoin the fleet, the second test had begun: acceptance of the narrative. Between the work of the information technology techs, the operations specialists, and the intel and cryptology types—and with the begrudging, reluctant assistance of CDR Ashton—they had crafted a variety of documents. They created nothing from whole cloth. Instead, they spun lies out of re-arranged snippets of the truth, using past documents and log and sensor data to generate situation reports, battle damage assessments, casualty reports, and—most importantly—new operational tasking orders. These fit what they said they had been doing and what they now wanted the displaced defense fleet to do.
And everything had worked out fine…at least until Murphy raised his hand and asked if the squadron commodore could come over and visit the Puller personally.
Commodore Carter looked back at CDR Ashton and Benno. “I can’t believe it. But then to see it…My God. Your ship and your crew are a wonder, Captain Ashton. To lose most of your officers and nearly a fifth of your crew in a single combat action? Well, it would have broken most. That’s the sort of thing you imagine leading to a damned revolt, but instead, you held it all together. You persevered, and not only do you bring us word that we’re finally released from this damn fool system coverage, so we can get back to freeing our poorest citizens, but you take on an enemy along the way and free one of the Lost Six systems by yourselves!”
Benno released his held breath, slowly, and moved his hand away from his hidden pistol.
The commodore pushed himself closer to the two Puller officers and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Now, I can’t fully condone what you did, Skipper. Chief Warrant Officer Sanchez here knows it’s not the best example to make to your crew, going off half-cocked like that. But damn, woman! Nicely done. It was a bold risk. However, just think if we’d never received your copy of fleet command’s new orders? It might have been weeks longer before a cutter or a skip drone got another copy of the orders to us. I shudder to think about even more lost time with Terran Marines subjugating the unfortunate souls of Morgan’s Rock. That’s not a risk I want any of my XOs or COs taking on themselves, trained for the position or not.”
Ashton’s poker face broke and she looked to Commodore Carter with a bleak, pleading expression, a flash of warning in her eyes. She opened her mouth to say—
Benno reached out and took her arm. He squeezed it firmly and her eyes cut over to him. Between them, their expressions and eyes communicated volumes. Benno knew she could end this charade with a single word and have them all either dead or in custody. True, he might carry out his threat to murder her, the commodore, the gathering of staff officers the commodore had brought over with him to assist the crew, and all of those captured members of the Puller crew sequestered in the “radioactive” section of the hull. But nothing was certain. Did she think him capable of such butchery once the secret was out and there was no escape?
Did he think he was capable of that?
For his part, he tried to will his prior arguments to her: whether she agreed with the mutiny or opposed it, if they failed to engage the fleet here and get them to follow, Morgan’s Rock, Adelaide, New Kiev, Putnam, and Trinity would all remain subjugated that much longer. At that point, whatever happened to them would be on her, if only indirectly. Ashton’s eyes flared, then went blank.
Benno had no idea what she was thinking, or if he had conveyed anything of reason over threat, but she smiled at him and turned to Commodore Carter, who seemed to have no reaction to the brief pause between them. “Sir, I understand. A lot of poor decisions and rash reactions have led us to this place, but I hope, in the end, we do more good than harm. And if that’s going to happen, we all need to get moving.”
“Right you are, Captain!” He pushed off from the deck briskly, arrow-straight toward the bridge hatch. They followed in his wake through free-fall, Ashton first, then Benno. As they maneuvered past crew, repair teams, stevedores, and drones reloading stock in compartment after compartment, deck after deck, the commodore chatted up the crew in passing, greeting them and offering words of encouragement. Most of the crew—mutineers all—jumped in shock but managed a hasty return greeting or a mumbled acknowledgment. None of them overreacted, fled, or struck the man.
As they moved through the ship, back to the SSTOD hangar where the single-stage-to-orbit dropship was kept, and where the commodore’s shuttle was moored, Benno saw one of Ortiz’s compatriots in the passageway ahead. Supply and Logistics Specialist Chief Douglas Wan, one of the men who had aided Ortiz and others in the kangaroo court that had nearly spaced the XO, stood to one side of the passageway. His left hand and feet braced him in place, but his right hand stayed hidden behind his back.
What, in the name of Murphy, is this idiot planning to do? wondered Benno, alarmed.
Wan looked at both the commodore and the XO/CO, a broad grin on his face. Ashton saw him, too. She changed her angle as she pushed off on the next handhold, so she opened the gap between them to the opposite side of the passageway as they continued to close on Wan’s spot. Benno pulled harder on the same handhold as he slid past it, maneuvering himself into the position Commander Ashton had just vacated.
The distance narrowed. Benno would be between Ashton and Wan when they reached his position, but he could not get to Wan before he and the commodore met up.
Commodore Carter saw LSC Wan’s welcoming smile and came to a halt beside him. Benno placed the free hand he was not maneuvering with into his pocket. His fingers closed around the cold, knurled grip of the ship-safe pistol.
If he had to shoot Wan, how the hell would they be able to explain it away? How would they remain on track to free Morgan’s Rock? Had Ortiz indeed engendered that much loyalty, that one of his own would just give it all away for a stupid shot at revenge against Benno and the fleet?
The commodore reached out a hand to Wan. Chief Wan pulled his own hand out from behind his back. In it he held…nothing. Their fingers came together in a firm grasp and a hearty shake. The two men smiled at one another.
Commodore Carter looked back at Ashton and Benno, who came to a halt in the passageway as well. “It’s a small fleet, Captain! Never burn bridges, because you never know who you’re going to run into.” He looked back at Wan, who merely nodded his head and smiled, though now that smile had an evil, ironic cast as he looked at Benno.
Carter spoke to the chief. “Where were we together last, Chief? The Decatur?”
Wan nodded. “Yes, sir, during your XO ride. I was just an LS2 at the time.”
Benno shook his head, glaring at his fellow mutineer. He slowly removed his hand from his pocket, leaving the pistol hidden inside.
“Well, it’s good to see you still progressing, and it’s good to see you in this fight. You take care of yourself and best of luck in the coming battle. Keep the faith, Chief!”
“Thank you, Commodore.” Instead of releasing the other man’s grip, however, he pulled the destroyer squadron commander in closer. “I’m glad you’re with us, sir. Sometimes we lose sight of who and what really matters. Sometimes it feels like there’s betrayal around every corner, but we just gotta press on, doing what we think is right, even if we’re uncertain of the folks in charge.”
The commodore’s eyes narrowed as he saw Wan looking at Benno and not him. “Riiiight…”
Wan smiled warmly, his eyes back on his old shipmate. “Not that I’ve got any doubts about the team on the Puller, or you, sir. Nah, this is a good crew. You be safe in Morgana, Commodore.” He released Carter’s hand and braced himself against the passageway again.
The commodore nodded, smiled uncertainly, then pulled himself back down the passageway aft. Wan, Benno, and Ashton exchanged looks, then the latter two pulled themselves away, as well. After they passed, Wan set off in the opposite direction.
Benno heard a muttered, “Bitch…” from the chief, but whether he meant that for him or the XO, Benno had no idea. Either way, Co
mmodore Carter appeared not to have heard it, and they all moved on. It was not worth pursuing at the moment.
Outside the hangar, the commodore paused again. His staff and officers had assembled there. They all appeared relaxed, with no hint of alarm or concern the situation aboard the Puller was anything other than what they had presented. Carter nodded to his people and turned around.
“Captain, we’ve restocked you, gotten you in the best shape we can outside of a yard availability, and took off your injured crew. Are you positive you won’t allow us to augment your crew complement, pull a few from each of the other ships?”
Ashton shook her head. “I’m sure that won’t be necessary, Commodore. We’re down a few slots, but the crew has learned to adapt and overcome. The last thing I want is to draw from other ships and leave them short as we go into this next battle.”
Benno nodded and thought, especially if every single extra crew you put on board is immediately going into isolation as non-mutineers.
“Not even some tactical officers?”
“Especially not tactical officers. Commodore, we’re just going to be providing a rear echelon screen for the main body in Morgan’s Rock. Those officers are needed more on the front-line ships. Besides, it would take too long to qualify them for the workarounds we’ve had to install due to our battle damage. What we have is working. Please allow us to maintain that.” CDR Ashton sounded resolute, firm. Benno strained to hear any warning there, but she seemed to be playing her role well.
Commodore Carter frowned, but he gave her a nod. “Very well. After Morgan’s Rock, we will be augmenting you, however. I’m sending a request for additional crew and officers to Centralis along with our current SITREP and acknowledgment of the new orders. I’ll also be sending a confirmation of your current status as CO.”
“Thank you, sir,” Ashton answered.
His attention shifted to Benno. “Warrant, I’ll be getting a new XO to relieve you as well, so you won’t have that burden on top of everything else. You’ve done right by your former XO, but I’m sure you’d like to get back to managing systems rather than the entire crew.”
“Yes, sir!” Benno said. He smiled, faking relief on the outside, but internally? He dreaded those communiques to Centralis. Adept though their fakery had been, it would never pass muster with Headquarters, especially not if the Operation Executive Amber fleet had reported back that the Puller had vanished after their jump to the next Terran system.
Whatever axe was doomed to fall upon them had already begun to swing. Benno only hoped it would swing slowly enough to let them free Adelaide and Mio first.
Carter looked around again at the vestibule outside the hangar. “You’ve done all right here, Amanda. I knew Evan Palmer well. He had his faults. He could be an arrogant ass, if you’ll allow me to be blunt, but he was also pure Navy through and through. I think he’d be proud of the work you all have done in his name.”
Maybe less proud than you think, Benno considered. Looking over at CDR Ashton, she said nothing. She just gave the commodore a curt, stoic nod, before glancing back at Benno with a significant look.
* * *
Once the group achieved a mutual escape velocity along the appropriate vector, the squadron of Alliance Navy warships departed the Magi system in an orderly globe several light seconds across, with near-zero relative motion between them. Vanishing in a pulse of gravity waves and blue Cerenkov radiation, they coupled to the tenuous, mysterious enormity of dark energy, and traveled near-instantaneously down a light-years-long geodesic path. They re-emerged into normality together as gravity finally sapped them of transition energy, and they were captured by Nu Phoenicis, a bluish-white F-type, metal-rich star in the constellation of the Phoenix, 49 light-years from Earth.
The people of the Alliance of Liberated Systems called it Morgana.
The squadron did not emerge in their large, orderly globe. Mutual gravitational attraction between ships as they zipped over the geodesic conspired to draw them in close to one another, but the shrinking of the formation was not uniform. Minute variations in position, rotation, relative velocity, and mass between each ship caused different degrees of attraction, and thus different exit positions and velocities. None of them closed enough to collide upon emergence—a primary factor in how they had set up the globe formation in the first place—but they did close enough to find themselves within extreme visual range of one another. Their careful formation had near-instantly devolved into a chaotic cloud of ships, all moving at different velocities, with different, near-random facings. It was a confusing mess, as it always was, but their immediate focus was not upon their fellow units.
Instead, they each steadied themselves and searched outward, weapons and active sensors at the ready. Morgana system, though part of the Alliance, was enemy territory now.
Aboard the Puller, the scene was much as it had been when they transitioned into Paradiso. Benno, suited up with helmet on, sat in the captain’s seat on the bridge, with MAC Dufresne to his left in the XO’s position. Aft and below them, OSC Rajput stood as Tactical Action Officer in CIC and FTCS Ludovic stood in as the Chief Engineer in Central Control. The only real difference in the destroyer’s General Quarters manning was in the seat to Benno’s right, the Officer of the Deck’s station.
Rather than not-so-dearly-departed Petty Officer Raoul Ortiz, CDR Amanda Ashton sat in the OOD position, strapped in, her sealed vacuum suit handcuffed to the seat. Her seat controls were locked out, except for one comm channel to the fleet, which remained under Benno’s control.
Benno wondered if it meant anything that the literal right-hand man/person in his last three battles had been someone he had not fully trusted—with Ortiz last time, and poor, lazy Kenny before that. He hoped for CDR Ashton’s sake it was merely coincidence. In the previous two battles, the person to his right had died.
The petty officer at the bridge tactical workstation sat upright and pointed to the central screen at the same moment Chief Rajput spoke up on the net. “Bridge, TAO, fusion plot updated. We have the disposition of our squadron in green, disposition of the Terran Navy in red. Closest Turd is three light-minutes out, will pick us up in approximately 110 seconds. Looks like a frigate on inner system patrol, with low thrust and sensors active. There’s a single reactor heat source at low power over Morgan’s Rock, seven light minutes away, suspected destroyer, same duty as at Paradiso perhaps?”
Benno keyed the net. “TAO, Bridge, understood. What about the yards? And the rest of the squadron intel said was here?”
“Yes, sir. Still trying to parse that out. The orbital shipyard at the Rock’s leading Trojan point is a mess of structures, asteroids, and small vehicles. It appears to be active still, no damage that I can see. Therefore, I’ve got multiple fusion plant heat signatures sufficiently hot enough for a warship on steady state or low power, but nothing thrusting, nothing active, so nothing I can fingerprint. We’re missing four ships, one of them an unidentified capital unit. But they’re only five light minutes out. As soon as they pick up our transition signature, I’m bettin’ they’re going to get a might bit more active.”
As he finished, the external comms spoke up. Commodore Carter, aboard the Libertad, broadcast, “All units in Task Force 757, this is 757 Actual. We hold one unit underway in near space, one unit over the colony, and likely the remainder of enemy units protecting or offering threat to the orbital yards. Assume form Echo, standard spacing, in last assigned positions. Set course at 1.5 gravities continuous to overtake the underway unit, then proceed to the main force at the yards with a zero/zero intercept. Forward elements, you may have the honor of taking the frigate when within range, but you are not to break formation except for defensive maneuver. Over.”
“Uh, OOD, Comms, tactical commands from the squadron commander,” said an uncomfortable bridge watch stander.
CDR Ashton laughed. “Roger, Comms.” She turned to Benno. “You may want to clarify my role here, Warrant. I’ll be your parrot, and I
’ll advise as necessary to save my own bacon and that of the loyalists, but I’ll be damned if I act as your OOD, no matter what chair I occupy. Hell, I qualified you as a deck officer.”
Benno shook his head. “Commander, I’ll act as OOD. No worries.” He addressed the bridge, “All watch standers, I have the deck. Make all OOD reports to me.”
He turned back to Ashton. “Clarified, ma’am?”
“Crystal clear, Warrant.”
He nodded. “Very well, then. Please roger up to the commodore for the tactical orders.”
She did so, without issue or subterfuge. On the screen, thrusting Alliance warship icons altered their random facings and vectors to assume a bird-claw-like formation aligned along the group thrust vector. At the center lay the Libertad, a battlecruiser easily two and a half times the mass of the Puller. Along three branches, 120 degrees apart and radiating forward and out from the battlecruiser’s position, were the “digits,” with a frigate and a destroyer each. The three smaller frigates lay in closer to the more massive combatant vessel at one to one-half light-seconds, screening it from any inbound threats from the forward position. Debate raged whether they were positioned that way because their nimble, mutual, defense batteries were best suited for that role—or they were just there to be missile sponges. The three destroyers formed the sharp ends of the three talons, furthest out from the Libertad at a distance of several light-seconds, the first to hit and the first to screen.
None of these were the Puller, however.
The Puller and a rescue cutter completed the eight-ship Alliance squadron. If the six destroyers and frigates and the Libertad formed an eagle’s talons, these two ships formed spurs, radiating aft by one and a half light seconds to either side, screening the rest of the formation from attack from behind. Publicly, CDR Ashton had groused about the assignment, respectfully disagreeing they were not in the best shape to lead the battle. Privately, Benno thrilled over the rear echelon role. They had places to go, worlds to free, and a near certainty this would be the only engagement for which they could expect backup. He needed to conserve their limited ammunition and crew.
The Mutineer's Daughter (In Revolution Born Book 1) Page 29
