On the other side of the yard from the firing squad, two men stood beside a slumped figure tied to the execution post, his orange prison coveralls drenched in blood.
The prison doctor looked up at the young DocSec officer standing impatiently in front of him and shook his head. With a muffled curse, the DocSec officer drew his pistol to put the finishing shot into the head of Jesse Merrick.
“Jesse Arthur Merrick. So die all enemies of the Peoples of the Hammer of Kraa.”
The deed done, the DocSec lieutenant turned away, a sick feeling lying very heavy on his stomach. He knew full well that he might have signed his own death warrant with that single pistol shot. He could only hope that Polk stayed chief councillor long enough for the memory of Merrick to fade and for his part in the man’s death to be forgotten.
Monday, November 23, 2398, UD
City of McNair, Commitment Planet
McNair had simmered for three days, a lethally unstable stew of sullen resentment flaring without warning into vicious brutality.
It had taken a declaration of martial law and the news that Merrick had been executed for crimes against the Peoples of Kraa before a major offensive by DocSec supported by marine light armor had been able to push the mobs roaming the streets back behind shuttered windows and locked doors.
With control reestablished, it was only a matter of hours before DocSec swung back onto the offensive, doing what it did best. Black-uniformed snatch squads fanned out across the riot-wrecked city in an endless stream of trucks. By midday, the city had been swept clean of anyone even remotely connected to Merrick’s political machine. His once-mighty organization was destroyed as thousands of people were dragged out of their houses and thrown into trucks, the first step on the long road to some Kraa-forsaken labor camp if they were lucky or a DocSec firing squad if they were not.
DocSec didn’t worry about just the human elements of the Merrick machine. Their orders were to destroy everything. Before the day was out, every Hammer of Kraa party office in McNair had been stripped down to bare furniture, with every file, every document, and every workstation ripped out and taken away for analysis.
Chief Councillor Polk had watched the progress reports with grim, silent satisfaction. Commitment in general and McNair in particular were the wellspring of Merrick’s political strength, a source so ably exploited by Merrick during his long years at the pinnacle of Hammer political power. Well, Polk thought, not anymore, and this day’s operations in McNair were just the start. The pustulant boil that was Merrick had been lanced, and his power base had been damaged seriously. Over the coming weeks anyone and anything even remotely capable of lending aid and succor to the Merrick/Commitment faction would be dealt with with the same deadly efficiency.
It was Polk’s intention that there would be nothing left to challenge his authority by the time order was fully restored. If it took an ocean of blood and hordes of fatherless families for that goal to be achieved, that was the price that McNair and the planet of Commitment would have to pay.
Chief Councillor Polk was here to stay.
Thursday, November 26, 2398, UD
Space Battle Station 1, in Orbit around Terranova Planet
If Fleet protocol was any guide, it wasn’t supposed to happen, but it did.
Throughout the vast bulk of Space Battle Station 1, work rapidly ground to a halt as word got around, the news spreading like wildfire. In a matter of only minutes, every holovid had been switched over to watch the incoming ship as it decelerated slowly in-system.
Now every living soul on SBS-1, from the commodore in command down to the lowliest spacer, was focused on the tiny flares of ionized driver mass as 387 dropped in toward the station, safely secured fore and aft by the salvage tugs that had rescued her shattered hull after it had dropped, spinning uncontrollably, out of pinchspace.
It seemed to take a lifetime, but finally, the tugs’ main engines shut off and 387 was in position for her final approach.
Slowly, the tugs began to roll 387 to line up her main hangar door for berthing. As they did, a shocked gasp swept through the station as the damage to the ship’s hull became obvious. The white-gray patches of emergency foamsteel repairs stood out starkly against the deep blackness of the scout’s hull; everywhere gashes and gouges had been torn, ripped, and punched into the ceramsteel armor. Then, as 387 made its final approach, the massive foamsteel-filled hole that seemed to take up almost all of the ship’s starboard bow came into view.
“Holy Mother of God,” breathed Commodore Perec, his morning staff meeting in ruins around him, the chairs around the conference room table pushed back as his staff unconsciously moved to stand in front of the holovid. Perec had been through the last war and had seen some pretty badly cut-up ships, but the only time he’d seen them this bad, they’d been complete write-offs.
Perec turned to his senior engineer, a tall gray-haired captain. “I don’t believe it, Marta,” he said. “How did they survive that?”
“By good engineering design, I’d say, Commodore,” she replied, shaking her head in amazement. “She’s been hit right above Weapons Power Charlie. Looks like the blast venting really does work.”
Perec nodded. “Well, after all the ships we lost last time around from poorly contained fusion plants going up, they had to do something, and it’s good to see that it really does work.” He turned to the rest of his staff.
“This meeting’s canceled. I’m going down to meet them.”
As Perec strode from the room, nobody even noticed the fact that he was doing something unheard of. Commodores in command of space battle stations never met ships as small and insignificant as a light scout. They just didn’t.
After a short pause as 387’s cruelly torn lander was off-loaded into the care of the station’s cargobots, the salvage tugs started 387’s slow move in to berth. Her brilliant orange anticollision lights were the only signs that the scout was a operational warship and not just some battered and abandoned hulk.
Michael had received two vidmails that mattered.
One was from Anna, who, miracle of miracles, was already berthed and somehow had wrangled leave from Damishqui from 18:00. The second was from his father, reporting the imminent arrival home of his mother and Sam.
Michael sat in his makeshift combat information center bathed in a wonderfully warm glow of happiness. Surrounded by his scratch command team sitting incongruously on the cheerfully patterned chairs of the wardroom, Michael watched as the bulkhead-mounted holovid showed the meters running off as 387 made her final approach. As instructed by Chief Kemble and in no uncertain terms, Michael had his foot up as he tried hard not to keep thinking about Anna, though with little success.
None of them had much to do except keep an eye on things as the salvage tugs slowly and with infinite care maneuvered 387 alongside and then into one of the station’s berthing stations. Hydraulic locking arms reached out from SBS-1 to hold the ship firmly on the pad that would frame and seal its entire hangar door.
“Command, Mother. Berthed.”
“Command, roger. All stations, this is command. Hands fall out from berthing stations. Revert to harbor stations, ship state 4, airtight integrity condition zulu.”
“Command, Mother.”
“Yes, Mother?”
“Message from the station, Commodore Perec is on his way down.”
Michael went pale. Somehow it had never occurred to him that anyone apart from the station’s engineers would be interested in poor old 387. “What? The commodore? Oh, shit. Tell the XO. We’ll—”
Mother interrupted Michael’s moment of panic at the thought of having to organize the ceremony that normally accompanied a commodore’s visit, the scale of the crisis magnified in Michael’s mind by a complete lack of notice and magnified again by Space Fleet’s enduring love of and abiding commitment to ceremony.
“Command,” Mother said patiently, “the commodore has specifically instructed that there be no ceremony, and he’ll wait until
the medevac teams have gotten all the regen tanks off.”
Michael whistled with relief. “Oh, ah. Right. Okay. Thank God for that. Warn Chief Harris anyway and get him to meet me down in the hangar. Oh, and by the way, enough of the ‘command’ stuff. We’re alongside now, so it’s Michael. Just Michael please.”
“Yes, Michael.”
Michael got painfully to his feet. By Christ, he was sore all over, and his leg was worse today. There was no use comming painkillers, as the drugbots had run out the previous night and he hadn’t gotten around to getting more from Chief Kemble; that probably was the least smart thing he’d done all week. Add that to the list of things to do, he thought ruefully, still amazed at how much the captain of a ship had to stay on top of even with all the help that Mother provided.
Not that the routine things bothered him, not at all.
In fact, he quite enjoyed them. They could be listed, prioritized, and dealt with, each humdrum task a small reminder that there was an ordinary world out there somewhere.
No, it was the painful task of putting together the personal vidmails to the families of 387’s lost crew. Every one had hurt more than he had ever thought possible, and though Michael did his best, working and reworking each one for hours, he never felt that they were right. In the end, sheer exhaustion, the million and one other things he had to attend to, and the stress of running a ship badly shorthanded had forced him to finish the job, well or poorly. With the forlorn hope that they might in fact be at least all right, he had commed them through to the station’s next of kin support team and prayed for the best.
Michael finally made it to the hangar, white-faced and glistening with sweat from the pain of dragging an increasingly aching leg past the shattered wreck that had once been 387’s combat information center and down two sets of ladders into the hangar. Without the lander, the huge space was echoingly empty, its deck a buzz of activity as station work crews carefully maneuvered the heavy and awkward regen tanks through the forward air lock door, down to the hangar deck, and out across the grav interface; the whole process was managed by a spiderweb of AI-controlled winches and lines.
Michael stood back out of the way in the door leading aft out of the hangar and into the power control room, the sight of the regen tanks bringing back to him what he’d lost, what he might lose even now. Despite Kemble’s assurances that Bienefelt was indestructible, she was still worried about her, and it didn’t escape Michael’s notice that Kemble had watched like a hawk as Bienefelt’s regen tank had left the ship. Don’t die now, cyborg woman, Michael prayed, don’t die.
“Michael, Mother.”
“Go ahead, Mother.”
“Warrant Officer Morgan and the casualty-handling team are here. He requests approval to commence transfers.”
“Yes, tell them to go ahead. No, no…Wait.”
Once the shock of having to cope with a visit by the resident commodore had faded, Michael’s happiness at the thought of seeing Anna and knowing that Sam and Mom were safe had come flooding back. Now it disappeared in an instant, replaced by a feeling of dread that hollowed out his stomach. He was left with a sick, empty feeling, part loss and part fear. It didn’t seem right that the people who had been such an important if short part of his life should leave the ship this way, unseen and unacknowledged, like so much cargo to be off-loaded.
“Mother.”
“Yes, Michael?”
“How many more regen tanks to go?”
“The one going off now is the last.”
“Okay. Tell the casualty-handling team this from me, and it’s nonnegotiable. I want to know the name of each person before, and I mean before, they move them from the ship. Understood?”
“Yes, Michael.”
“And I want them to wait. I’ll tell them when to start, and please, ask them if they can arrange it so that Warrant Officer Ng is second to last off and then the captain.”
“Understood. Stand by…The casualty-handling team confirms that’s understood.”
“Good. Okay. I want all of 387’s crew in the hangar, now. No exceptions. There’s nothing that can’t wait, agreed?”
“Agreed, Michael.”
“And get the external cameras to cover the transfers, please. Put the feed up on the hangar holovids.”
“Will do.”
Michael quickly commed the commodore, who had been waiting patiently but grim-faced outboard as the regen tanks came aboard his station in an awful procession.
“Commodore Perec, sir, Junior Lieutenant Helfort, acting captain in command, DLS-387, reporting.”
“Welcome home, Captain. Request permission to come aboard.”
“Please, sir, come aboard. That’s the last of the regen tanks. But sir, I have a request. I’d like to muster my crew. My casualties are about to leave the ship, and I want to acknowledge that fact, so you’ll have to bear with us for a while.”
“My boy, it will be an honor to stand beside you. Coming aboard now.”
Five minutes later Perec watched the pathetic remains of what was left of 387’s crew and Warrant Officer Ng’s covert operations support team, two ranks of gaunt-faced and hollow-eyed men and women, with the rocklike figure of Chief Harris out front fussing over the lines until they were just so.
Once he was satisfied, Harris called the crew to attention before turning to face Michael and, flanking him, Cosmo Reilly and Commodore Perec. Harris stepped smartly forward. His salute was textbook in its precision and timing. “Deepspace Light Scout Three Eight Seven present and correct, sir!”
Michael came to attention and returned the salute, desperately trying to keep the weight off an increasingly painful left leg. The hiss of a sharp intake of breath as a jagged stab of agony shot up into his heavily bruised back and ribs was not unnoticed by Commodore Perec. Michael was beginning to rethink his decision to trust a left leg that was showing every sign of giving up on him. Maybe he should have brought Chief Kemble’s makeshift cane along, after all, he thought, even if it didn’t feature anywhere in the dress code for Space Fleet officers.
“Very good, chief.” He paused to take a deep breath before lifting his head high to look at the tattered remnants of his crew full in the face.
“387s. There is nothing about this in the Manual of Space Fleet Ceremonial. But when I thought about the people we’ll never see again, I just couldn’t let them leave without saying goodbye, and I was sure you’d feel the same. That’s why I wanted you all here. Let’s not forget them.”
Michael took another deep breath. “Mother, the casualty-handling team can start.”
They stood stiffly to attention, Michael calling out the names one by one as the casualty-handling team with infinite care and patience slowly unloaded 387’s awful cargo. To Michael, the terribly slow process as crash bags were extracted from the cargo bays seemed to take hours to complete. Tears ran openly down his face and the faces of every one of his crew as the names of people who had been so much a part of them were read out one by painful one.
Finally, there were only two names left for Michael to call.
“Warrant Officer First Class Jacqueline Pascale Maria Ng, officer in command, Covert Operations Support Team Twelve. Go with God.”
The final, agonizing wait was almost more than Michael could take, the pain in his left leg, now a mass of white-hot agony, nearly impossible to bear. But then it was almost over as the last crash bag was brought slowly out into the harsh glare of xenon floodlights.
“Lieutenant Jean-Paul Gerard Augustine Ribot, captain in command, Deepspace Light Scout Three Eight Seven. Go with God.”
As Ribot left the ship, his anonymous crash bag escorted by the two spacers, the bulky space-suited figure of Warrant Officer Morgan turned to make a stiff-armed but nonetheless regulation salute before silently following the heart-wrenchingly sad train of bright orange crash bags away into the darkness.
With a deep breath, Michael got himself under control. “Chief Petty Officer Harris!”
&nbs
p; “Sir.”
“Dismiss Deepspace Light Scout Three Eight Seven.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
For a man well-known for his no-nonsense approach to life, Commodore Perec had been deeply moved, much more than he ever would have expected. As he’d watched in silence, he’d had to blink away the tears that had welled up in his eyes. The unadorned tragedy spelled out by the terrible procession of crash bags had hit him hard.
But now it was time once more to be Commodore Perec, commodore in command, Space Battle Station 1.
As Michael turned away from his crew, his left leg dragging noticeably, Perec took him by the arm, moving him out of the way of the engineering teams flooding onboard to start the formal damage assessment and take over what remained of 387 from its exhausted crew.
“Michael, I don’t think you are going to like what I am about to say. But at the end of the day, I’m a commodore and you’re not, so pay attention.”
Michael nodded. He was so tired, so emotionally drained, that all of a sudden nothing mattered anymore.
“Captain Baktiar, my principal medical officer, tells me that you are in very bad shape. The delays in getting your leg treated are causing real damage. He wants you in the base hospital for treatment, and he wants you there right now. Now, I can’t order you off your ship. You are the legally appointed captain in command and supreme under God until relieved by proper authority. However, you are doing irreparable harm to yourself, and I’m not prepared to allow you to do that. So even though I can’t order you, I strongly suggest that you do as Captain Baktiar suggests. And unless you don’t particularly want a long and successful career in the Fleet, I can assure you that listening to the requests of commodores is generally considered to be a very good thing.”
Michael had to smile at Perec’s forthright use of carrot and stick. “It’s all right sir, say no more. I’m convinced. To be honest, sir, I actually don’t think I can stand up much longer.”
Helfort's War: Book 1 Page 37
