She shook her head, “All accounted for.”
“Thank goodness for that.” He pulled his rumpled dress uniform, making a vain attempt to smooth out the crease, then shrugged. “Mr. Quinn…”
“I’ll have a full report with you as soon as I can.”
“Good. Do a full check of the other key areas of the ship.”
“I already did, sir,” Quinn replied, quietly. “I don’t see how it can have been battle damage.”
Marshall’s face dropped, “You know what you are saying, I presume.”
“It has to have been sabotage, sir. There’s no other possibility that makes sense.”
Chapter 2
There was something forlorn about a long-deserted bar. Quinn’s wife – during the time she was stationed on Alamo – had managed to convert a cubby-hole in the maintenance levels into a squadron rec room; with no fighter pilots stationed on the ship any more, it had fallen into disuse. As far as Marshall knew, the only people who knew about the place were dead, light-years away, or on their way here for a quiet meeting.
He glanced around the pin-up posters on the wall, shaking his head. Normally he’d be talking to his officers in a formal briefing room, all high-tech and holodisplays. Not in a dingy corner of a sparsely-occupied deck. Sometimes he forgot how big Alamo really was, spoiled by the elevators that whisked him from compartment to compartment. Half a mile of tangling corridors and compartments added up to a lot of room.
Lance-Corporal Cooper was the first to arrive, frowning as he crawled into the compartment. Technically, Lieutenant-Major Diego should be representing the espatiers, but this was decidedly not a normal meeting. This one was invitation only, and Marshall was being exceptionally cautious with the guest list.
“What’s this all about, sir?” he asked, looking around.
“I’ll tell you when the rest get here. How’s your new officer working out?”
“Seems fine so far, sir,” Cooper replied, puzzled.
“Getting him broken in, then,” Marshall said with a grin. “Having a new commanding officer is always fun for a while.” The young trooper began to blush, and he decided to let him off the leash a little, “Just keep doing what you’ve been doing, and I’m sure everything will be fine.”
“Yes, sir,” Cooper said, gratefully.
Lieutenant Caine, his Tactical Officer and one of his oldest friends was next to arrive, sliding in from behind him to land on a pile of scattered seat cushions. She peered around in the gloom, then looked up at him.
“Should I get the drinks in?”
“Not today, Deadeye. This is business.”
“Spoilsport.”
Quinn, for once in a fresh uniform, crawled in from another shaft, looking around quizzically, nodding at Caine. He tossed a datapad over the Marshall, who snatched it out of the air and started to scan it.
“Report on the hangar bay. It was sabotage. A microscopic shaped charge. Really good work, it took quite a lot of digging to find it.”
“Who else knows about this?”
“Just you. I haven’t briefed Lieutenant, ah, Bailey yet. She’s still working on the software.”
“Good.” He tapped a couple of buttons, encrypting the contents of the datapad. “This is excellent work. Unfortunately, Quinn, you found evidence that it was a malfunction in the hull sensors that caused your team to miss a microfracture after the last battle.”
“What?” Shaking his head, he continued, “Sir, I checked the maintenance records twice. There is no way that a fracture of this sort would have been missed, and I found traces of the chemical used on the bulkhead. This was deliberate, Captain.”
“I accept your word that this is sabotage, Lieutenant, but if we have someone on board, I’d rather they not be aware that we are onto them. That could easily lead them to try something desperate, and I don’t want to have to clean up the subsequent mess.”
“I won’t reprimand any of my people…”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“Not asking what?” Zebrova asked as she scrambled in. “What’s all this about, Captain?”
“Trust, Lieutenant,” Marshall said. “Specifically, I trust everyone in this room with two critical pieces of information. The first is that we have a spy, a saboteur, on board. Undoubtedly transferred from Hercules before the loss of that ship.”
“May I then suggest, sir, that all Hercules crewmen should be placed in immediate close confinement pending interrogation?” Zebrova said, matter-of-factly.
“We can’t do that,” Caine said. “Not only would we be totally reliant on circumstantial evidence, but they’ve been on board for long enough that all manner of mayhem could result from a sweep.”
Marshall nodded, “Lieutenant Caine is quite correct.”
“Some of them are in key positions…”
“My presumption is that we are looking at a single saboteur. All the pieces fit together for that.”
“Someone senior, more than likely,” Quinn added. “They’d need a lot of key access.”
“Not necessarily, sir,” Cooper replied. “Not if they were a good hacker.”
“Corporal, I’m putting you in charge of finding the saboteur.”
“Sir?” Zebrova said, frowning, “With all respect to Corporal Cooper, he is not trained for such a task, nor…”
“I know, but he’s the best we’ve got. Cooper, this is a request, not an order. I can’t give you any orders, not officially, and I can’t tell anyone what you are doing. You’ll be working undercover for the purposes of this operation, without the knowledge of the bulk of the chain of command. I am aware that there are risks involved, but…”
“I’ll do it, sir. I know how important this might be. And if there’s a saboteur on board, they might well have been involved with the attack on the asteroid.”
“This is not personal, Cooper. We can’t afford that.”
He nodded, “I know, sir.”
“Good.” Marshall looked around at the rest of the officers. “I’ve come to a decision regarding our flight home. There’s a bottleneck coming up, albeit one with several potential egress points to exploit.”
“Odds are the Cabal will have ships on picket duty. It’ll be chancy, but we’ll probably have an even-odds fight and a mad scramble to jump out of the system,” Caine said. “I’m working on my recommendations for which point we use. Are you in a hurry?”
“No.” Marshall took a deep breath, then continued, “We have a task force at our backs, and a traitor on board. I say we use both to their best advantage. They’re going to be one jump behind us all the way home, and they have a lot more options to refuel than we do.”
Zebrova nodded, “Ultimately, they are likely to catch us. I had considered this. If we still had Hercules, I’d be advocating that the two ships split up and find separate ways home.”
“You both might be right, but what can we do about it?” Caine asked. “Other than do our damnedest to stay ahead of the game.”
Shaking his head, Marshall said, “I’m going to attack.”
“What?” Quinn yelled. “Four battlecruisers and a carrier, assuming they haven’t got reinforcements.”
“Four battlecruisers and a carrier,” Marshall repeated. “But if we can fight them at a time and place of our choosing, we can catch them by surprise. We’ve dealt with their fleet commander enough now to get a read on him, and I know what he will think when we – very quietly – feed him the destination of our jump.”
“He’ll think that it’s a trick, and will plan accordingly,” Caine said. “He’ll mass his fleet because he really has no choice, but he won’t be expecting a battle.”
“So we give him one, blast through his ships, and leave them in our wake. Do enough damage that we can buy ourselves some breathing room.”
“Against odds of five, six to
one,” Zebrova said, shaking her head.
“We’ve got the Cabal database, though. Not full access, but a lot of new information. Not to mention our analysis of their ships from our prior encounters. Your job, the three of you, is to come up with some dirty tricks. Anything you can think of to shorten those odds.”
Caine nodded, “Presuming that we jump in, prepared for battle, ready to face that fleet, and through everything at them.”
Quinn mused, “We could probably mount some additional missiles on the outer hull. Batches in the elevator airlocks, for that matter. Not really design spec, and it’ll just about run down our parts...we’re really going to only have one shot at this, sir. And even then, the odds won’t be promising.”
“Right now the odds aren’t good either,” Marshall replied. “The deeper we get into Cabal territory, the greater the risks we face. If we knock out this fleet now, take it off the table, then we give ourselves breathing room.”
“Besides,” Caine mused, “If they are planning a strike against the Confederation, that’s the fleet they are most likely to use. Blunt that sword now, and they can’t use it against us.”
“Which gives the boys back home more time to get their forces ready for action.”
“We’re not officially at war,” Zebrova said, frowning, but Cooper broke in.
“Tell that to my mates. But you’ll have to shout very loud, ma’am.”
“Cooper,” Marshall said, sharply. “No-one questions that. The Cabal have launched attacks against us, intelligence operations against us...there isn’t any formal declaration of war, but they aren’t exactly in a position to make demands against the Confederation if they want to complain.”
“We came out here to gather intelligence…”
“And have found ourselves with somewhat more significant opportunities. The information the Admiralty wanted was intended to help us fight a war more effectively, should it come. Far better to prevent that war from taking place at all.”
“Have we completely written off Hercules, then?” Caine said. “We still don’t know what happened back there.”
“Orlova would have followed us if she could. Hercules was badly damaged, and surrounded. I’m acting on the assumption that she,” he said, sighing, “surrendered when Alamo left the system. If this goes wrong, we’ll probably all end up getting dumped on Discovery together.”
“Would you do that?” Zebrova asked. “If all hope truly was lost?”
“The crew comes first, Lieutenant. Always.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“It’s as much of an answer as you are going to get. Now, I need the three of you to start your preparations for this, but do it quietly. Cost no object, use of ordinance no object, and feel free to throw the safety regulations out of the nearest airlock. I’m counting on your devious minds to come up with something good for us. Don’t let me down.”
The three officers looked at each other, and Quinn nodded, “Alamo will be ready for anything you need her to do, sir. I think I have some ideas.”
“I don’t need to tell you not to let anyone else on board know about this until it is too late to matter. Cooper, while I want that saboteur identified…”
“You don’t what our traitor caught until he’s had a chance to send his last message.” The finality of Cooper’s tone chilled Marshall. “Got it, sir.”
“Any more questions?” he asked.
Zebrova looked at him, then said, “I think this is a mistake, sir. If I may speak freely.”
“By all means.”
“Sir, we’re going to charge headlong into an enemy fleet. The odds of Alamo surviving are not promising. Our best course is to try and sneak past the bottleneck, then attempt to break out into open space.”
Caine shook her head, “Eight jumps home from here. That could mean twelve. Or twenty. This is already going to set some records for the longest ever deep-space patrol.”
“Perhaps, but it is more likely to succeed.”
“We’d be trading a problem today for a bigger problem tomorrow. We don’t know what is out there, and even the Cabal records don’t seem very enlightening on the subject. In Cabal space at least we know where to find fuel, supplies…”
“And enemy forces everywhere we go.”
“They have a finite fleet, Lieutenant. Once we get past the bottleneck, especially without an enemy at our back, then we have a lot more options to play with. We’re going to fight this battle sooner or later, so we fight it now – while we can choose the time, at our best fighting strength, and all our resources marshaled for the attack.”
“Very well, sir.”
“What are you going to tell the rest of the crew?” Caine asked.
Glancing up at a battered old clock on the wall, Marshall said, “Briefing for all department heads in ten hours, five hours before we return to normal space. I’ll outline my official plans then. Try and look surprised.”
“Why not bring some of the others into the loop?” Quinn said. “Mulenga, for example. Or Tyler.”
“This is a need-to-know operation. I will bring them in...after we’ve made our final jump towards the site of the battle, and no-one can tell any tall tales.”
Shaking her head, Caine said, “So basically, our plan is to tell the enemy where they are going, and hope that they don’t believe us.”
“Information that comes too easily is rarely trusted. I’m counting that the Commandant won’t see through this one, will think that I am cleverer…”
“...than you are,” Caine finished with a smile.
“I think you’d better make your way out separately, try and avoid any suspicion. We don’t know who might be watching us.”
“I presume this place isn’t bugged,” Zebrova said; Marshall waved a detector in the air.
“Swept it myself before we started. You all should check your offices when you get back, but if you find any, don’t destroy them. Just do anything important elsewhere. Remember, we need the saboteur to think they are getting away with it. Though feel free to make sure nothing important gets damaged, Quinn.”
“I’ve already got everyone on double-time checking systems. It should be easy enough to arrange that all critical areas have someone from Alamo present at all times – and don’t worry, sir, I’ll make sure to keep my tracks covered.”
“Right. We’ll meet again in two weeks, and I look forward to hearing what you’ve come up with. Dismissed.”
Zebrova left first, crawling away with a scowl on her face; this plan had not satisfied her in the slightest, but she was loyal enough to accept it. Quinn was a lot happier, already plotting and scheming the devices he was going to cobble together. Cooper paused at the threshold, and turned back for a minute.
“Sir…”
“I’ll cover you, Cooper. After the fact, if necessary, but I’ll make sure your career isn’t damaged by anything you have to do.”
“That wasn’t what I was going to ask, sir.”
“Well?”
“You do know that your father is a suspect.”
Marshall nodded, “I don’t for one moment think that he is involved, but there is a reason he isn’t at this meeting. Just find out what’s at the other end of the rabbit hole.”
“Rabbit hole?”
“Never mind. Good luck, Corporal.” As the trooper crawled away, he turned back to Caine, “What are they teaching them at school these days?”
“Probably not ancient literature,” she said. Glancing after Cooper, she said, “You’re putting him in a hell of a position, you know. He isn’t a trained investigator, and he’ll have to keep this secret from everyone while putting him at risk.”
“I know,” he replied, sighing. “All of those things could be an advantage, though. Think about it. Our saboteur would be expecting someone like Bailey to be on the case, o
r you, for that matter. Sending in Corporal Cooper will catch them by surprise. Besides, he had the usual combat hacking course.”
“Where he came in the middle of his class. I checked.”
“And got the best score of any of the espatiers we have left.”
“True.” She looked around the room, lounging back towards the wall, “This is a hell of a risky plan. As risky as the one…”
“That got us out here in the first place? Maybe. I still stand by it, though. We’re going to get hunted down piecemeal, battered down a piece at a time until we can't run any more. Hell, they could have ships strung out half-way home, get us one battle at a time with hit and run attacks. This way we get the battle out of the way.”
“And…”
“Damn it, Deadeye, I don’t like retreating. That task force sent us running with our tails between our legs, and cost us a ship and more than two dozen people. My people. We’ve got to redeem that.”
“No, we don’t.”
He shook his head, “Yes, we do. The crew need it, for one thing. Morale’s low.”
“Being stranded light-years from home on the wrong side of a hostile frontier will do that.”
“And a good victory will restore it. Hell, my instincts are telling me that this is the thing to do. Then we can push through Cabal space, and…”
Caine looked at him, cold in the eyes, and said, “You don’t expect to win.”
He glanced up, and said, “What?”
“This isn’t about getting home. You don’t think we can do it, cross the Cabal.”
“The odds are against us…”
“Damn it, Danny. You can be honest with me, even if you aren’t honest to yourself.”
Rising to his feet, he looked down at her, saying, “Yes, then, damn it. We’re one ship, trying to cross thirty, forty light-years of hostile territory, with a fleet at our backs and others up ahead. No resupply without a battle, no espatier force, no fighter squadron. At some point they are going to catch us.”
“You’re giving up.”
“Not yet, I’m not. We came out here to prevent a war, one way or another, and if we can give them a bloody enough nose, we might just manage to do that. I’ll do as much damage as I can, and then…”
Battlecruiser Alamo - 7 - Battlecruiser Alamo: Sacred Honor Page 2
