I studiously ignored him. If anyone had earned the right to a little grumbling, it was Commander Spalding. Of course, if it turned out to be more than grumbling I’d shut it down so fast the old man’s head would spin but that was a horse of a different color.
“We can mix and match some of the command team from the Prince to the Phoenix as well as plug any holes and fulfill any transfer requests, now that we have more than just one ship to worry about,” I said, thinking aloud. “The rest of the men, the ones we don’t use to crew the warships that are going with us, we’ll put over on the Power.”
“That’s a lot of hands,” Spalding said judiciously, “but even putting all the new recruits that aren’t fit for yard work on her that battleship will still be short a full crew.”
“I don’t see that there’s anything to be done,” I said making a rolling circular gesture with my hand, “we’ll get more recruits by the by but I doubt or at least I hope that the Power will be ready to go before the recruitment ships have recruited their way to Easy Haven and then back up to Tracto again. If they do get here first of course that will solve the crew shortage problem but leave those of us out on the short end the stick hanging.”
“Might be a way around that, at least part of the crew shortage I mean,” Commander Spalding said looking like he’d bit into something sour, “although I can’t recommend it,” he added hastily.
I cocked an eyebrow questioningly at this conflicted statement from the Engineer.
“The Lady took a great many pirates captive, only pressing the most skilled of them into her service on the Phoenix,” the Chief muttered in a voice almost too low to make out, “we might could press a few bodies into service if it was tight enough of a situation. I don’t recommend it myself, but felt it needed sayin’.”
Now I was the one who felt like he’d just bitten into something sour. “Pirates!” I exclaimed with dismay.
“Off the Omicron,” the old Engineer nodded, “the Lancers and the Marines killed more than they captured, but the lady took a few prisoners along the way. Mostly if it meant they would surrender their ships to her but even so lad, she took a fair bit, er…under her wing.”
“The blasted war-slaves issue,” I said clenching my fists at the same, gnarly problem as before rose like a phoenix from the ashes to bedevil me once again.
“She set some of them free, from what I hear, but the rest have a varying amount of years to work off their sentences. They’re prisoners, boy—working prisoners, like the chain gangs of old—and they’ve got to work off their penance,” said the Commander. “O’ course, I would have just shot most of the lot for war-crimes. But that’s why I’m just a tired old engineer and they don’t pay guys like you and the lady the big bucks.”
I wanted to tear my hair out in frustration.
“I’m not sure if pressing the ‘prisoners’,” I heavily accented that word, as I deliberately skirted around the ‘S’ word, “and putting them among the old Clover hands—to say nothing of the new recruits—is the way to go,” I said sourly.
“Like I said, can’t recommend it me-self; I just wanted to make sure all the options were on the table,” Commander Spalding said with a shrug.
“Pirates,” I muttered yet again, a dark note entering my voice this time and I had to resist the urge to pull out a blaster and start randomly firing. Pirates and slaves were two things that shouldn’t exist in the modern world and yet I was stuck with the both of them. It was enough to drive any man to murder.
“Don’t worry about the Phoenix, Admiral,” Spalding said curtly, “she’ll be right in no time if I have to fix her myself." Looking at him it was clear he was itching to get out of here and back to doing what he did best, fixing up warships.
“Carry on then, Commander,” I said.
The old engineer braced half way to attention but failed to salute before breaking away and then striding back the way we’d just come.
Chapter 19: Operation: Evacuation
“They’re coming right for us!” cried the Tactical Officer.
“Evasive maneuvers, Mrs. Phelps!” the Captain shouted to the woman at the Helm. He silently cursed that the new Tactical Officer was worse than the last one.
“On it, Captain,” the Helmswoman said professionally.
“Over fifteen of the gunboats will pass within firing range of this ship!” the new Senior Lieutenant in charge of Tactical said with an edge of hysteria in his voice.
“Control yourself, Lieutenant,” the Captain barked, “or recommend I bring in the second shift leaders." He was referring to the very Ensign he’d been complaining about not that long ago in point of fact. How things change when you have a battle-tested ensign and a new untested officer who was far too close to the edge of acceptable behavior in the face of the enemy.
The Tactical Officer swallowed and then shook his head.
“Things are under control Captain,” the Lieutenant said in a firmer voice.
Quark eyed him balefully, but then there was no more time since the gunboats were on them. Screaming past the Corvette, their light lasers raked the Invincible Fire’s port shields, or at least it felt like the boats were screaming past. But that was probably more an artifact of the way the Corvette was all but standing still as it stood guard over a trio of evacuation shuttles lumbering up from the surface of the moon to rendezvous with the corvette. A check of the actual speed the boats were moving at was almost pitiful—almost. The sheer numbers of the vessels was the greatest strength of the invading force.
“Status on the evacuation shuttles?” Quark said with relief as the boats continued right past the corvette, as if their attack had simply been one of opportunity. “And somebody tell me where those gunboats are going off to in such a hurry that they ignored a target like our all-but-stopped corvette." A corvette’s main weapon was its speed and maneuverability; take those away—as he’d been forced to do in order to cover for the evacuation of the science station on a moon of Aqua Nova’s Jovian where an influential Select’s daughter was stationed as the assistant director—and you wouldn’t get a better shot at knocking her out.
It was perplexing.
“I’m running the track now,” said the Navigator and then he looked up, “the gunboats are on an intercept course with the Poseidon. Sir, it looks like all the droid ships in the system are focused on the Poseidon.”
For a second, the young Captain’s blood ran cold and he tried to figure out what the droid’s game was. As powerful as their cruiser sized carrier ship was, especially alongside its nearly one hundred gunboats, nothing it had shown put it in the same weight class as the Aqua Novan SDF’s pride and joy, the Battleship Poseidon. What were they hiding? He couldn’t help but wonder and pray that whatever it was it wasn’t enough to cause serious damage to the SDF’s flagship. Even in the silence of his own mind he avoided the thought of that ship’s possible destruction. For, if Poseidon fell, then so would Aqua Nova Prime.
“Thank the Space Gods for small favors,” breathed his First Officer.
“The gunboats and the Carrier are both still heading away from us,” reported the Sensor Officer as the enemy vessels continued moving outside of tactical range.
“Continue to monitor the situation and tell those evacuation shuttles to get the load out,” said Lieutenant Commander Quark.
“The shuttle pilots report that their engines are already burning at 110%; any more and they’re liable to burn out or explode,” reported the Junior Lieutenant at the Comm. console.
Quark gritted his teeth. “Just have them do the best they can,” he said watching on the screen as the Droid Carrier and her parasite craft, the little gunboats, came within range and attacked the Battleship Poseidon.
The battleship finished a last minute maneuver turning her starboard broadside toward the attacking carrier and then her turbo-lasers opened up.
Moments later six beams converged into one unit and the droid carrier fired back, her attack raking the powerful side ar
mor of the ADF Poseidon. However, while it left a long, scorched area where it hit, the attack failed to penetrate.
At first Quark felt some measure of relief before he realized that the battleship’s shields had been at full charge—and the Carrier’s attack had been powerful enough to burn through to the hull!
“Anti-matter discharge!” exclaimed the Sensor Officer.
“What?! Where?” demanded the Corvette’s Captain. Not only were such weapons illegal, banned, and outlawed in all civilized space and ruthlessly hunted down by the Confederated Empire in those few lawless spaces foolish enough to attempt to build them without blowing themselves up, they were extremely powerful.
“I’m getting readings showing it’s some kind of internal action within the Droid Carrier.” Tactical replied. “I think it might be how they power their weapons.”
“Antimatter used within mobiles ships,” the Captain said his blood running cold at the thought of stable antimatter weaponry. Normally any kind of tactical acceleration was enough to cause the antimatter within a containment system to move just enough to come into contact with stray particles of matter and cause an explosion that destroyed the ship carrying it. If the droids had found a way around this problem of the usually non-portable material…
A hail of fire lashed out between the Battleship and her swarm of attackers led by the Droid Carrier vessel.
“Poseidon’s shields are spotting and beginning to waver but they are sweeping those gunboats out of space and that carrier is starting to reel,” reported the Tactical Officer, no longer sounding alarmed now that the battle had moved away from them.
On screen the Carrier began to list to one side and several explosions rocked its main body.
Fire continued to exchange until suddenly the Droid Carrier exploded, taking out a large number of the surviving gunboats with her.
Relatively undamaged—except for a long scorch mark on her hull and the near collapse of her shields—the Poseidon majestically turned until it was now presenting its undamaged side towards the droids.
However, despite the relative ease with which it had handled its smaller, lighter opponent, the Corvette Captain had an uneasy feeling inside him. He wondered what would have happened if, instead of a single carrier sent on what now looked like a probing attack into the system, the droids had sent two carriers—or even an entire battle squadron of the carriers and their accompanying gunboats. He shuddered to think what might have happened if the battleship had been attacked by a large number of these carrier ships.
“Continue with the evacuation,” he ordered looking back up at his bridge crews, “we need to escort these scientists outside of the battle zone.”
“Aye, sir,” replied his First Officer.
Looking at the screen, he hoped and prayed that the leaders of his Star System had some hidden aces up their sleeves because he didn’t see how they could stand off an entire fleet of such vessels. After all, Aqua Nova was an important world in Sector 24 and word was from the fragmentary communications coming to them from Sector 23 that all of their Core Systems had been at the very least strongly tested, if not overrun completely.
He didn’t want to see the test that his beloved home world would have to face if someone didn’t get their heads out of their posteriors, rally the worlds of 24, and form up a genuine Sector wide defensive force.
Because if the droids continued to take them out piecemeal, he was very much afraid for the fate of the human race…or at least, that part of it which was out here in his corner of the Spine.
Chapter 20: Spalding vs. the Voters
“I suppose you’re all wondering why I dragged you all in here,” Chief Engineer Terrance Spalding said pacing back and forth before an entirely different type of crew than the last time he’d given an impassioned speech in Main Engineering. Sure, this was the shot-up Vineyard, and certainly not the Clover, and sure he might be more cyborg than man at this point but he was definitely playing to a tough crowd.
“I never wonder why you Royalists act the way you do,” heckled someone from the back of the crowd of former prisoners, “I don’t wonder because I know: you lot are crazy!”
He heard a few mutinous mutters about how royalists worked with pirates, wreckers and something about slaves but he forcibly ignored it.
The Lady Akantha might be many things but, as of that moment, her prisoner-taking ways had caused a definite headache. And were he to give vent to his spleen—like he was feeling very close to doing—it would only confirm, in their minds, the barbaric nature of all royalist everywhere and, of course, him in particular. Now the Chief Engineer didn’t mind being feared but not when doing so would remove any benefit these men might ever have to the cause.
“Look, you ornery lot of mutinous slackers,” Spalding growled. “You; yes, you,” he snapped, pointing at one scowling older face in the front of the crowd, “I’m calling you that because that’s what you are.”
“Says you!” shouted a strident female voice from the back of the crew.
“Your new King James sent you here to us and you serve a Prince now, so get over it,” Spalding snapped irritably. “It’s time for you to make the best of—”
“He’s not my King!” shouted one man and several more shouted, “I didn’t vote for that Dastard!”
“Forget about the King,” Spalding snapped, “the Little Admiral’s in command of this fleet; you look to him now. Not Parliament, not the Royal House. You’re here and it’s—”
“Boo!” a large portion of the men and women here started to heckle and about the time they started saying, “Time to go home you old Cyborg!" They were followed by cries of, “Down with all Royalist Appointments!" On hearing this latest, something inside the ornery old Chief snapped.
“What a bunch of sorry little refugee Voters you lot turned out to be. And here I thought you all were products of the Caprian SDF,” he shook his head. “Well, listen up, buttercups!” he raged, face purpling as he groped for his plasma torch. “You think you’re the only ones that ever had the raw end of a deal? What bunch of shiftless, gutless, Voters you turned out to be!”
The deck fell into a shocked silence, one that quickly became ominous.
“Who you calling gutless, Engineer?” demanded a tough-looking older man in an old shore patrol uniform.
“You!” Spalding replied immediately. “You…sorry excuse for a Caprian Fleet Master Chief,” Spalding growled, spotting the rank marks on the other man’s uniform.
The well-muscled Master Chief took a step forward and Spalding surged forward to meet him. “No man calls me a coward—I don’t care what the consequences are,” Shore Patrol said.
“This here is no different than your coup,” Spalding said thrusting a finger into the other man’s chest. Since the finger was made of metal and silicone, when the Armsmaster grabbed hold and broke the finger sideways, all he felt was a brief surge of feedback pain before the connection was lost. “The elected man’s beloved little Reconstruction,” he continued, heedless of the way Shore Patrol was grinding his finger in his strong grip.
“Space Gods, you are more metal than man,” the Master Chief growled stepping forward with his fist raised.
“Pucker up, buttercup,” Spalding shouted, using the hand holding the plasma torch to sock the Chief in the face and he followed through with a metal foot to the gut as the other man went down. “I was there when you parliamentary types came rolling in hard, all boots and elbows as you ran roughshod over us simpleminded, wrong-thinking old Royalists. It was forced retirements of Officers and mass firings of the Senior Enlisted, some of whom were never seen from again both officer and enlisted. Meanwhile you had the rest of us saying ‘yes sir, yes sir, three bags full’ or we’d quickly be out of a job. ‘Social Justice’ they called it.”
Shore Patrol growled getting back up to his feet. “You like to whine about the past, Royal?” he said, falling into a fighter’s crouch.
“And they called us close-mined,” Spaldin
g sneered.
“Would you like to take this conversation private?” asked Shore Patrol.
The Chief Engineer looked down his nose at the other man and then pointed off to the side.
No sooner had they removed themselves off into side corridor leading to a supply closet then the other man charged.
He saw from the name tag—in the few moments he had to register such things—that the man’s name was Aubertine. And, as one would except from a man used to rounding up recalcitrant spacers, he was fairly skilled at his job. How he ended up aboard the Furious Phoenix was probably a tale and a half, but the old Engineer didn’t have time to ponder it.
Fortunately for Spalding, his legs made him too heavy for a takedown and when the body blows started landing, being made of more metal than man proved to have its benefits. It was almost a shame the power his new legs gave him…almost, but he was more than willing to use it, slamming a metal leg into the gut of the scrapper to knock the wind out of his sails.
The blighter’s follow up blow to his own chin had him seeing flashing lights, so he bulled forward. He might not be as young as he once was, but Spalding was as strong as a bull once again—and he intended to use it.
So, kicking and punching for all he was worth, the old Engineer laid into the parliamentary Master Chief.
A brief flurry of blows had Spalding shaking his head and the Master Chief bent over holding his ribs.
“Now, as I was sayin’,” the old Engineer gasped, listing to the side before staggering back up straight with the help of one hand—the one with the broken sideways finger—up against the wall. “You don’t have to like it—in fact I wouldn’t think much of you if’n you did—but you do have to lump it. The worm has turned; Parliament’s on the outs and you’ve been seconded into the Confederation Fleet to get you out of someone’s hair back home.”
“That over-large, pirate bint shanghaied us,” glared Aubertine.
Spalding raised a fist. “You can keep a civil tongue in you about the Lady Akantha, or you can have yer face stove in right before you take a long walk, if ye take my meaning,” the Old Engineer said, going wild-eyed.
Spineward Sectors 6: Admiral's Spine Page 19
