She snorted involuntarily, and her brain made the decision to end this line of thought. It did not become her to disparage the man before he had even shown his capabilities. She turned her thoughts back to the mission at hand, and the capabilities of her relatively inexperienced crew.
Fleet Command were right to trust that new recruits would receive exemplary training on her ship, but even so she would give anything to have her old command team back. Her team, from back in the day. When the war against the Viskr had been all that mattered, and the despicable term ‘backfill reinforcement’ had not yet suffered its ugly birth in some planet-side bureaucrat’s comfortable office.
Had she been seriously injured at the Siege of Laeara, for example, she believed that any one of her command team would have stepped up to the mark without a second thought. She would have trusted her ship, her crew, her own life, to any one of them.
But now… well it was less than impressive to see officers who lost their cool after a rough jump. Granted this had been a particularly nasty one; the great distance from the Kosling system to Herros, with no gate at this end to bind their emergence, had made that all but inevitable. However the ship was rated to withstand much worse; none of the damage she had sustained today had been critical, and it remained to be seen whether there actually were any casualties. From the pandemonium that had swept the command deck after the ship dropped out of the wormhole, anybody would have thought the worlds were ending.
Try fighting in a battle when there’s actually a world at stake, Santani thought.
All those years ago, at Laeara, Admiral Betombe had split his battle fleet to defend several priority targets. It had been a real, honest-to-goodness struggle, and the cost of failure would have been measured in millions of lives, not in bulkheads and reactor coils. Back then people had known how to stand firm and get the job done.
The old team. Oh there were a few still serving with her, but it was not the same and never would be again.
Although she was confident there were none serving on the Hammer who were not competent to be there, she was also acutely aware that a good majority of her crew had never met with fire. Their mettle had not been tested. She had little faith in war games or even live-fire drills; for Santani, actual combat performance was the only metric by which a battleship could be judged properly. War was simply a theoretical concept for many of this crew; too many.
And from what little she knew of the purpose of this trip, the jump from theory to practice might well be imminent.
• • •
Wind swept across the dry and tortured rock where nothing ever grew, changing direction quickly and without warning, tirelessly vindictive as it plucked and tore at everything it touched. It carried a fine dust with it, abrasive yet cloying, gradually eroding any surface it contacted, merely burning and stinging to the naked skin yet still capable of reducing great boulders to powder, transforming them after its own kind.
Always the high plateau, close to the cliff edge. Always the same place, the same conditions. Every visit he made to this place was essentially identical.
He pulled his hood forward and down as far as he could, shielding his face from the incessant pain of the dust storm. Bracing his body against the winds, he leaned first one way and then the other, managing to remain upright as the force of the gale shifted direction randomly. It was simple enough, once one learned to anticipate the wind. And he had been here many times before.
He was early. The Emptiness had not yet manifested. As far as the eye could see, there was only the lifeless crust of the plateau; a desolate wasteland of rock, strewn carelessly with boulders, persecuted relentlessly by the powerful exhalation of this nameless planet’s vicious climate system. There were no animals and no plants; not even hardy lichens would colonise this place. It was entirely dead. What could be seen of the sky through the morass of the dust was an ugly brown, blotched with sickly orange where light struggled feebly to penetrate layer upon layer of cloying, odious cloud.
This was not a place that welcomed living things.
Then there was the sound. He was certain it had not been there when he arrived, but he struggled to remember precisely when it had begun. It was at such a high pitch, and descending so slowly, that for all he knew it might have started either seconds or minutes ago. Regardless, it was now well within the limits of his perception, and he remembered precisely what this incongruous signal heralded.
He turned to face the edge of the cliffs, where the horizon touched the gangrenous sky so unwillingly. The sound dropped lower, lower still, descending in pitch until it reached a sonorous rumble that seemed to dissolve into the general chaos of the wind and dust, lending its own strength to theirs. The ground itself trembled.
With an ear-splitting crack, the air tore open some ten metres away, halfway between him and the cliff edge. Blackness boiled out into the world, a vertical spill that towered over him, reflecting nothing. Wispy tendrils lashed and curled at the fringes, the main body tapering to nothing at top and base, wider in the middle, a rip in the world into which light could enter, but never leave.
The pain was immeasurable, and everywhere at once. There was nothing that could be done to abate it, as he had found on so many previous visits, and so he simply clenched whatever he could and stood defiant.
The winds were howling now, as if angered by the intrusion of the void upon the eternal dance they performed. Ever-shifting gales began to fall into order, whipping around the plateau, becoming cyclonic. Pebbles and smaller rocks now skittered and clattered over each other as the force of the raging air bullied them across the indifferent ground.
Yet around the deep blackness was absolute calm. Stretching out from it, and almost reaching him, was a region in which no wind blew. It was only in this protected area where the dust drifted lazily back to the ground, and the tiny pebbles were as still as the boulders. It was a tempting thing indeed; to retreat from the violence of the dust and the air by taking a few simple steps forward.
But he would not. Even as the gales became an arid hurricane, now picking up rocks that tumbled haphazardly through the air, he remained rooted to the spot. Forces that should have torn him to pieces hurled stones spitefully at his body. The familiar sound of bones being snapped and crushed was somehow audible to him over the din, but he remained impossibly intact, impossibly immovable. It was as if his body were being broken from beneath him, from around him… but his presence remained exactly where he wanted it.
He had only one response this time, for that great dark empty rent in reality, the bane that tested him each and every time.
“Why don’t you go and fuck yourself?” He snarled it, angry and frustrated.
As it so often was in these situations, his death was violent and painful.
The waking world pulled him back.
Elm Caden awoke from his violent demise in the same moment that Hammer chose to emerge from the wormhole. He wondered whether the turbulent exit had influenced the end of the dream. Probably not; it usually ended that way. The fatal barrage of rocks, and the visceral assault of the interstellar jump, had simply coincided.
He had seen enough of the galaxy to know that coincidences were sometimes just coincidences. Play out enough events in a big enough space, and you get repeating patterns. It simply happens.
Caden dressed himself under the glare of the emergency lighting, serenaded by the repetitive sounding of incident alarms. He was not concerned with either; he had known before they jumped that the exit would be a bumpy one. He had already run the numbers, and knew the ship could take it. The crew would manage. Besides, barring some unforeseen technical catastrophe, there was little he could contribute towards damage control that they would not be able to achieve themselves. Better to stay out of the way for now.
He scooped up his personal link and clipped it to his collar, pressed once and held. “Throam,” he instructed. Release. The link chirruped agreeably, and a private channel opened.
“Oh
, you’re alive,” said a gruff voice. “I’m so glad. It was such a rough trip, I was afraid you’d die of fright.”
“Very good,” Caden said. “I am — as you point out — quite alive. I anticipate Santani will be summoning me at any moment. Check our kit, and have Eilentes run pre-flight. If the situation is passive, I’ll meet you on the hangar deck.”
“The fun never ends with you.” Throam sounded amused.
“On the hangar deck,” Caden said.
“Did you call me a dick?”
“No, I said deck. Hangar deck.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Just checking,” Throam said.
“Dick.”
Caden smiled thinly to himself as he closed the private channel quietly.
“No, you’re the dick, you dick.”
Throam’s voice was broadcast in the clear over the ship’s comm system. Despite himself, Caden laughed out loud.
— 02 —
Captain’s Prerogative
“This ship, my ship, has taken a severe beating,” Santani said. “I may have lost two crew members. I won’t know for sure until the damaged sections are fully secured.”
Caden stood at ease before the captain’s desk. He scrutinised her as she spoke, without indicating he was doing so. Old habits die hard.
Aker Santani was leaning forward, resting one elbow on the edge of the desk, her right hand propping up her chin. With her other hand she casually held a small holo, suspending it above the desk just off to her left, as if by giving time to Caden she were deferring some important reading. Wearing a pair of half-moon spectacles, presumably some ancient but fortuitously prescribed heirloom, she tipped her nose downward slightly so that she could glare at him over the tops of the lenses.
All non-verbal signals indicative of a dressing-down, he surmised. Irritated, impatient, uncertain precisely what latitude she has for interference in this operation. Wanting to apply a stamp of authority, but not willing to fight for it. Not yet, anyway.
Apologies, Captain, but I am a Shard. Typically hierarchical interactive psychology will not work on me. I stand on ceremony for one alone, and She is not here.
“We knew it would be a difficult jump before we left Kosling,” he said. “I know Fleet worked up the numbers. They got them right too; I checked.”
“I didn’t bring you in here to show off, Caden” she said. “I’m unhappy about the whole situation. Very unhappy. This ship and the people on it are my responsibility. We’ve only just arrived— no, we’re still outside the system, and I’ve already taken damage, possibly casualties.”
“We are all of us in a dangerous occupation,” he said. “I don’t appreciate being made responsible for it.”
“That’s true,” Santani said. “But you are the one who was ordered to come here. I don’t see why my crew should have to share the risk with you.”
“You know as well as I do, Captain, that a transport vessel wouldn’t survive transit to Herros. No destination gate means no wormhole stabilisation. Nor would it have been a suitable vessel for the mission parameters. I required a heavy battleship.”
“And how lucky we were to be stationed at Kosling when you decided to leave.”
“It wasn’t luck. You are stationed there so that you may be of use to the Empire.”
“At your beck and call, you mean.”
“This bickering is pointless. You’ve been given your orders, I expect you to follow them and to show the decorum associated with your rank. She expects it.”
“Rank? Ha!” Santani laughed out loud. “What would a Shard know about having rank?”
“I may be outside the system; that doesn’t mean I don’t understand it.”
“I rather think it does.”
“Then you are mistaken, Captain. Hugely mistaken.”
Santani’s link chirruped, and she clicked it at once. “Go ahead.”
It was her first officer who spoke. “We found them Captain, trapped in a damaged section. Jump casualties are now officially zero.”
“Thank you, Mister Klade.”
Santani clicked her link again, and the channel closed. She returned her attention to Caden, her glare now softening to what looked like mere irritation. The interruption and the welcome news it brought seemed to have broken the tension.
“We can at least be thankful that your crew members are unharmed,” Caden said.
“Yes, I’m sure you’re very relieved. I still have damage to contend with. You should know that even if nothing else is to go wrong, I want assurances that this mission of yours is worth it.”
Worth it? He had not expected that.
“As you know Captain, the missions allocated to Shard operatives come directly from Her Most Radiant Majesty.”
“That doesn’t answer my question at all.”
Caden was again taken aback. “The Empress herself commands it. Therefore assume that it is worth it.”
“I don’t like it. Nor do I like assumptions.”
“She is not concerned with whether or not we like it. She tells us to go, so we go. She tells us to do, so we do. It is the privilege of the Throne.”
“Privilege won’t keep my people safe.”
“Given the right circumstances, nothing will,” Caden said. He did not like the way this conversation was going.
“In fact, in this case, I’d say privilege is going to get my people killed. We don’t even know what we’re being sent into.”
“We’re here exactly because we don’t know, and that’s all I can and will tell you. I suggest, with the greatest respect to you, Captain, that you have some faith in the Throne.”
“Faith in the Throne,” she said. He thought he heard a note of derision in her voice. “You can file that with ‘privilege’.”
There was a quiet pause as each regarded the other. Caden now sensed that the captain was not trying to be obstructive, nor was she trying to assert her own brand of authority. No, it was something else entirely. Despite the cynical approach, this was a commander who needed to be reassured. Blameless really; she had not been briefed. One could hardly expect her to ferry a Shard operative across the galaxy blindly, on a heavy battleship, without developing any misgivings.
Be patient.
“She fully expects us to return, Captain.”
“How do you figure that?”
“She wouldn’t have sent such a resource as a Shard operative if she expected never to see us again. Although I say it myself, we are a rare breed and an important resource.”
“That comes across as fairly arrogant, Caden,” she said, “but I have to agree you are probably correct. And that’s not such a bad thing.”
“I’m sure you have other reservations, and I would imagine you want to minimise any possible risks. So I’ll simplify matters. If Hammer can open a wormhole for us, I’ll enter the system only with Throam and Eilentes.”
“Are you sure that’s wise?”
“If preliminary scans had turned up a hostile force at or near Herros, I’m certain you would have mentioned it by now.”
“Correct, the system interior certainly appears to be passive from here. But even so, bear in mind that at this distance our sensors are telling us what the landscape looked like about seven hours ago. There is a risk of ambush.”
“Minimal I would say; whatever happened here happened days ago. I think it’s better all around if we act as a vanguard: the risk to Hammer is reduced, we’re less visible to sensors if there is a hostile force present, and if the worst comes to the worst, you’ll have time to receive our telemetry before you retreat.”
“And you get to operate without uninitiated observers?”
“That too.”
She considered this carefully. “You wanted Hammer to bring you here, yet you’re leaving us at the periphery while you go in alone?”
“You just agreed that if there were a significant enemy presence at Herros, we’d probably have picked it up,” he said. �
��If it turns out that the situation is hostile, and it’s more than we can handle, we will re-evaluate.”
“Very well. It’s your choice. Make your preparations, and notify me if you require support. Hammer can always jump to Herros after you have made an initial assessment.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
“There is just one more thing, Caden.”
“Go on…?”
“Please advise Mister Throam to exercise some discretion when using the comm system.”
Told off by the captain. Caden could not help but smirk slightly.
“That applies to you as well.”
• • •
Rendir Throam glanced up from his work as Caden strode purposefully toward him and the shuttle. He returned his attention straight back to the arms and equipment laid out before him on the hangar deck, knowing full well that the Shard would want to leave as soon as was possible.
“How are we fixed?”
“Nearly there,” Throam said. “Final checks for my part. Think Euryce had some kind of problem in the cockpit.”
“I’ll check with her,” Caden said. “I think the good Captain Santani is worried we’re going to get her crew killed.”
“Aren’t they always?”
“Just so you know, she also said not to be a dick with the comm system.”
“Did she really? You know I will get you back for that, right?”
“I know you’ll try.”
“I won’t just try; you’re doomed. That’s three I owe you now. Watch your back.”
“You’re actually counting, aren’t you?” Caden said over his shoulder as he disappeared up the access ramp into the rear compartment of the shuttle.
“You’d better believe I’m counting.” The counterpart muttered it, lifting an empty supply crate clear of his working area.
Books One to Three Omnibus (Armada Wars) Page 3
