Echoes from Yesterday: Pirates of the Badlands Series Book 4

by Sean Benjamin

  She paused in the entrance. “When he commands his ship, he is a captain. When he commands his squadron, he is a senior captain. When he commands Pirate Flotilla One, he is a flag captain.”

  “Why doesn’t he declare himself an admiral?”

  “As was explained to me: Flot 1 doesn’t have admirals, they kill admirals.”

  Barrett smiled. “Another power they have that I wished I had… starting with some of the admirals in our own Navy.”

  Both officers laughed as Sky departed. She knew he was kidding. Maybe.

  Chapter 19

  Doctor Windsor was just completing his meal in the officer’s mess when Hawkins stopped by his table. He looked down at the doctor. “Doc, I got a medical problem. See you in my day cabin in ten?”

  Doc Windsor nodded. He finished his meal and, ten minutes later, appeared at the open hatch to the day cabin. Rafe waved him to the chair in front of his desk. He reached into the cold storage unit, pulled out two beers, and opened them. He passed one over his desk to his visitor and sank back into his seat. Doc Windsor took a drink and looked at his captain. “What sort of medical problem do you have?”

  Rafe leaned back and studied his medical man. “Well, Doc, it is sitting across the desk from me right now drinking beer.”

  The two men looked at each other for several silent seconds. “How so?” Windsor finally asked.

  Raferty knew this would be a touchy subject and he was always slightly uncomfortable getting into his crew’s personal business. Everyone on board had secrets and complicated pasts. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be here in the first place. He talked in a soft voice. “Ever since our return from Zelenka, you’ve been different. I’m not the only one to notice.”

  Windsor looked at him. Rafe waited and then said. “If you don’t want to talk about it, fine. I need to know you will be good to go because the upcoming battle is going to be tough and there is no way we come out clean. I guarantee we will need your medical expertise. You good to go?”

  Windsor nodded silently and then took a long drink from his beer. Hawkins nodded in response and shrugged. “Then we’re fine. Let’s drink and relax.”

  Both men drank in silence. Hawkins got two more bottles and passed one across the desk. Windsor nodded his thanks and they drank so more. Windsor took a deep breath. “I hate my parents.”

  “No, you don’t,” Rafe countered. “If you did, you wouldn’t care what they thought.”

  Doc frowned. “Well, I sure as hell don’t love them.”

  Raferty replied, “That could be true but the opposite of love isn’t hate. It’s indifference. You don’t hate them and you are not indifferent to them so I don’t know if you can put a label on how you feel about them.” He paused for a moment. “Did the visit go that bad?”

  Doc stared off into his memory for a second. “I really just wanted to see Josephine. I stayed at her place and everything was fine to begin with. She wanted me to see our parents, but I refused and she let it go for a while. Then, after a few days, she started nagging me to go over to their house. I said no but she didn’t let it go. Over the next three days, she kept at it. She said things were different now and they would love to see me.” Windsor held up his hand and rolled it in a small circle. “On and on, she just wouldn’t let it go. I finally said I was going to stay somewhere else and wait for you and Tactical to show up to take me back to Dragon. She seemed to give up on it. Then one night, the parents were there for dinner. Her invitation, of course. Things were just like always. First, they bitched about me coming in and not telling them. Then we moved on to dissecting my many failures and my so-called miserable life. Then it was about serving with pirates. Soon Josie was bitching at them about their bitching at me. Then they started on her about hiding my visit. Then I got into it about them going after Josie and soon we had a nice round robin of non-stop bitching going.” He paused as he stared at the bulkhead behind Raferty. “I’ve been gone for five years, and it was like I had never left. They soon walked out in a huff and the last two days visiting Josie were worthless. I was glad to get out of there.” He sighed now. “Not sure what kind of a relationship I got with my sister now.” He looked off again. “Never should have gone back there.”

  He took a drink and was clearly done with his story. Rafe thought through the tale. Doc Windsor was the most taciturn of men and he rarely spoke of his past. He probably had high hopes for a nice visit with his sister and it had gone bad through no fault of his own.

  Rafe started out slowly. “Your parents can never understand you or your life now. Like most people, they hate and distrust anything they don’t understand. This is especially true of very smart people who think they have the whole universe figured out. They don’t have you figured out so you disrupt their tidy universe. They don’t like that at all.”

  Windsor shrugged and Rafe went on. “Joshua, your parents are bureaucrats in the medical field on a nice, safe planet. They do paperwork and order people around as an ingrained habit. Their biggest challenge in life is rush hour traffic while sitting in the back seat behind a chauffeur driving their air car. You are a doctor who risks his life while treating patients in space battles and on hellhole planets. I’ve been to a lot of places and watched a lot of dedicated medical people working under less than great conditions. You are the best doctor I have ever seen. I don’t know who is in second place but it’s not close. That is not an opinion but a straight up fact. The crew swears by you. You save lives. You teach others your medical knowledge and they save lives also.” He paused now and smiled at his guest. “And if you are thinking of leaving, stop thinking about it because I won’t let you.”

  Windsor gave a small smile. “I won’t leave. I would never do that to Predator. Or myself. This is my home.” He thought for a moment and then added in a wistful voice. “Medical science has made millions of advancements over the centuries. One was the creation of Longevity. Used to be in the old days you could count on your parents dying in a reasonable time span and leaving you in peace with their money. Now they live practically forever.” He shook his head. “Too bad.”

  Raferty smiled at him. “If you like, I’ll send a death squad to Zelenka. Logan has never been there. He could do the job and then get a vacation in. Probably enjoy the new experience.”

  Doc smiled in response. “Not a totally bad idea. I’ll keep it in mind.”

  He stood up and Rafe rose also. They downed their remaining beer. Rafe added one last thought. “You’re much more important than your parents. They are bureaucrats and, if something happened to them, they would be replaced and that would be the end of it. That’s the strength of bureaucracy. Everyone is replaceable and the system goes on without a hitch. You aren’t replaceable, Doc. You’re the only one and you make a difference here. You have since the first day you came onboard.”

  Doc Windsor paused as he mulled that over. He said, “Thank you for that.” He half smiled and added. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. My parents being disappointed in me is an old story. I’ll get over it and go on as always. To spite them if nothing else.” He set down the empty bottle and moved to the hatch. “Thanks for the compliment on my medical skills too.”

  “Just stating the obvious, Doc.” Rafe paused and then added. “Send a comm to your sister. I think you will find she is still on your side. I also suspect she is damn proud she has a brother in the war risking his life for the Empire.”

  Windsor nodded and departed. Raferty sat down. He was satisfied Doc Windsor would be his old petulant self soon enough, probably after several rounds of drugs. His talents wouldn’t be needed soon so why not.

  Chapter 20

  Sky Mallory flipped through the comm messages on her screen. The great majority of messages were work related and she left them unread after perusing the titles. She would get to them all soon enough but wanted to ensure any important messages were answered first. As she had predicted, she hit upon a message from her younger brother, Samuel. The title for the
message, Catching Up, was innocuous enough but Sky had an uneasy feeling as she keyed on it. It was written rather than visual. This was a bad sign, as her brother only wrote when he didn’t want her to be able to read his body language and judge his tone rather than his words. He probably had slaved over this text until he got the wording exactly right. Of course, his version of “exactly right” usually left something to be desired as it often omitted key facts.

  Sky brought up the text. As she suspected, Samuel made an offer to sit in for her at the upcoming Upper House session. It would be easy enough to do if Sky wanted. All peers in military service had an active letter of appointment on file so a family member could carry out the responsibilities of the title while the actual titleholder could continue to focus on his or her military duties. All Sky had to do was send an activation message to the bureaucrats in Government House to activate the letter for a set period of time. Sky had no intention of doing that. One of the discussion items she had covered with Admiral Barrett on her recent visit to his office was her desire to attend the Upper House session. Barrett had heartily concurred with her request and she would be departing in two weeks for Zelenka.

  Sky read the message several times. There was something there that was not quite right. She had no doubt her brother had been promised some sort of reward from those who wanted to defeat Measure 200 if Samuel could deliver the Albithor vote against the bill. Sky’s feeling of unease grew each time she reread her brother’s words. It was not so much the words themselves as the general tone of the message. There was a quiet desperation to it. It was not just a casual request, but almost a keen desire to hold the title for the upcoming session. Sky couldn’t figure out what could have been offered to her brother that would make him this anxious to go to the upcoming session. Her brother had never taken a great interest in politics and was always bored with the minutia of governance. He was morally ambiguous about the slavery issue. Sky suspected his feelings on the subject could be summed up in the phrase “Not my problem.” She had always known he wanted the title for himself but not for the required duties. He wanted the title because of the prestige and the chance to impress his friends and any young ladies within hearing distance. He did not view the title as a great responsibility and trust but as a giant party favor.

  Sky briefly wondered if Samuel was in some kind of trouble, and he had been promised a way out in return for his vote in the Upper House. Sky knew that was ridiculous… or was it? Samuel was a wild young man, but he knew the boundaries. He knew crossing those boundaries would have ramifications with her, and he did not want to face that. Sky frowned. What if Samuel had done something stupid and the bill’s opponents knew about it or had some hold over Samuel because of this idiotic act? Sky didn’t think her brother was that irresponsible.

  Over the last several months, she had spent little time at the ancestral home on Beryl and even less time with her brother. Between her Badlands assignment, her wounding there, recovery time, and her subsequent assignment as Home Fleet Chief of Staff, there had not been much down time. She spent one week at home at the end of her recovery, but that had been it. She had spent even less time in communication with Samuel. As she thought about it, he hadn’t done much communicating either. She sat up straight in her chair and closed her eyes. She took several deep breaths as she considered this line of reasoning. She reluctantly concluded. “Yeah, he could be that stupid.” She bent over her computer and sent a reply to her brother stating she would attend the legislative session. After that message was sent, she sent messages to three trusted family friends and the family lawyer asking about Samuel’s recent activities.

  Chapter 21

  Queen Alexis leaned back in her chair and calmly eyed her two visitors. The Prime Minister and Chairman of the Military Establishment shifted slightly under her gaze. The lengthening silence made it seem as if time had stopped. The men shifted again as the Queen regarded them without a muscle twitch or an eye blink. The Prime Minister had the distinct feeling he was looking at a cobra frozen in position just before striking. Finally, he could take it no longer.

  “Really, Your Majesty, what you ask is quite impossible,” Morgan Strickland said in a tone he hoped sounded reasonable, but came off with just a tinge of desperation. His relationship with the popular monarch had suffered recently with the fallout from two events following the pirate raid on the OrCon secret base codenamed Murmansk. The first event had happened during the pirates’ return to Aurora space. There had been an attempt to destroy their three ships and only the timely intervention of Admiral Barrett and a portion of his Home Fleet had prevented it. An investigation had established the facts, but the motives were not so clear. It was either a deliberate attempted attack on the pirate ships or a case of mistaken identity by conscientious officers guarding the Empire’s borders. The whole affair was attributed to the fog of war, and no action was taken against any of the participants. Strickland didn’t know the truth and, quite frankly, didn’t much care. No ships were destroyed, and nobody had died. He had hoped this small event would fade away with the passage of time and be buried under the continuing barrage of challenges and emergencies that seemed to arrive on a daily basis for the Aurora Government.

  However, the Queen was not impressed by the actions taken. She had read the investigation on the border incident and had briskly thanked the two men for their time and trouble. Her tone left no doubt she wasn’t thankful at all and had arrived at her own conclusions as to who knew what and when they knew it. It was clear her opinion differed greatly from the investigation’s conclusions.

  The second event that had altered their relationship was also tied to the pirates’ return to Empire space. This event was not open to a convenient interpretation of the facts or to a “fog of war” type explanation. Mere words could not be used to rinse out this dirty laundry. The Royal Navy force that had intercepted the pirates had included four Spinnaker class destroyers, the newest destroyers in the Royal Navy. The problem was the shipbuilding reports and operational summaries had not reflected these ships as being in the operating forces. In fact, according to all reports, the lead ship of the class, Spinnaker herself, had just complete sea trials and was about to be accepted into the Fleet. The investigation into that affair had revealed that the Defense Minister, Douglas Cunningham, had diverted several new destroyers to two squadrons held in deep reserve. Both squadron commanders were personal friends of Cunningham and answered directly to him.

  Cunningham had replied to all inquiries with the answer that the two squadrons were test beds for experimental ship systems, equipment, and tactics of a top-secret variety. He immediately sent both squadrons into Orion space on extended raids to get them out of range of any follow-on investigations or any attempts to integrate them into regular Navy organizations. Despite the fact that several ships from each squadron were lost in battle, the raids were very successful and helped dull the anger over Cunningham’s subterfuge. The lives of the squadron sailors lost in these raids had been used to get Cunningham and his two commanders back in the good graces of the establishment. Most of the Empire’s leaders were friends and colleagues of Cunningham and had more pressing matters to concern themselves with than the attempt of a fellow peer to do a little kingdom building. After all, many of them had done the same in their own areas of expertise and influence. It was an accepted way of doing business. No big deal at all.

  Prime Minister Strickland had not liked the whole affair in the least and did have more pressing concerns. He was willing to let bygones be bygones as his days were long enough now without looking for more headaches. However, two other people were not so forgiving of the Defense Minister, and both were in the room with him now. Admiral Noah Wu, Chairman of the Military Establishment (CME) didn’t like receiving false reports for months regarding shipbuilding and vessel completion dates. He also didn’t like a private Navy pulling assets from his stretched Royal Navy. When the facts became clear, Wu had blown through the Naval Ship Systems Organiz
ation and the associated shipbuilding entities like a tornado. In his wake he had left ruined careers, people forced into retirement, and dozens of others reassigned to other duties. Wu now had a profound dislike and distrust for Douglas Cunningham and would be a willing ally of anyone who would want to take on the Defense Minister. Wu also had a target vector on the two admirals who commanded Cunningham’s personal squadrons. Wu couldn’t get them now as they were under Cunningham’s protection, but he would bide his time. He was maintaining a continuous tracking solution on both men, and would be quick to fire on them if the opportunity presented itself. He wouldn’t stop his attack until both men were ruined and forced into retirement.

  The other person not so satisfied with the final results of the shipbuilding fiasco was the Queen. Many of her reasons for this were the same as Admiral Wu’s. She didn’t like receiving shipbuilding reports based on lies. She didn’t like individuals having their own private Navy in the middle of a desperate war. She didn’t like the blood of her sailors being used to redeem the reputation of Cunningham and his two command lackeys. In fact, there was not one damn thing about this entire episode she did like. She had little official power and couldn’t attack Cunningham directly or force his resignation. But, like the CME, she would bide her time. She had known people like Cunningham her whole life. Invariably, they overstep. When Cunningham overstepped, the Queen would be right there to help him fall.

  As a result of the pirate interception and the shipbuilding scheme, Strickland found his relationship with the Queen had taken several steps backward. He had hoped everyone involved would move on as the war had priority over these minor incidents. His hopes were in vain, as this did not happen. This was partly due to the continuing presence of Cunningham at war meetings, in the media, and writing various reports and position papers. The man was merely going about his duties, but his presence served as a reminder to the Queen of the recent, regrettable occurrences. Added to this, the war was not turning in the Empire’s favor. The front had been stabilized, but the Orion Confederation still held all the gains they had taken at the beginning of the war and were now primed for a major raid in the Electra System if reports out of Home Fleet were to be believed. Strickland wished to repair his relationship with the monarch, but she seemed little interested. Denying her request for ships would not help his cause.