“It’s all your fault,” his aide told him, his bright blue eyes meeting his Admiral’s gaze. “Look at it.”
Somehow, the half of a man in Dimitri’s arms gestured widely, and Tobin realized that the entire side of the ship was gone. Outside, he could see the blue-green skies of the planet below. He didn’t recognize it for a moment, then the ugly splotches of immense mushroom clouds erupted from the surface.
“You’re doomed, Dimitri,” a softly accented voice told him. “Everything you try to protect will die. Like me.”
Flight Lieutenant Karl Michaels-Tobin was dressed exactly as he had been the last fateful day Dimitri had seen him. The lanky blond man looked sad, with no sign whatsoever of the antimatter blast that had ended his life with no chance for his family to even see a body.
“You failed me,” Karl snarled. “You failed Amaranthe. You fail everyone you try to protect – why do you keep trying?! Others would do better.”
“Your arrogance killed me,” Brown joined in the chorus. “It killed Kematian. Why, Admiral, why?!”
Behind him, more explosions marched across Kematian, a world he’d been supposed to save dying in fire as his lover and his friend repeated the same question:
“Why?”
#
Dimitri finally awoke with a start to his darkened cabin, sweating and cursing aloud as he fumbled for light. It was several seconds before he managed to marshal his brain into a coherent enough shape to issue an implant order.
Finally, the room lit up with a bright stark light that chased away nightmares. The Admiral sighed, stumbling from his bed to desk and pulling a bottle from the bottom drawer.
There were no real memories to play to shield against this kind of nightmare, he knew that from long ago. He poured himself a shot of vodka and considered the dream.
“Happy fucking New Year, Dimitri,” he whispered to himself.
Downing the shot, and then a second one, he tried to steady his nerves. It had been years since his subconscious had dragged Karl’s memory up as part of its attacks on his sanity. His husband was long dead. Karl’s parents were god-parents to his and Sasha’s children – they’d helped him move on and find Sasha after Karl’s death.
The nightmares had been getting worse after Midori though. With Kematian… he shivered. He was afraid sleep was going to be hard to come by until he brought Triumphant to justice. He needed to avenge Kematian – he doubted anything less would let him sleep at night.
There was a quiet knock on his door and his implant informed him Commander Sanchez was outside.
“Enter!” he snapped. “What is it?”
His young blond aide saluted crisply, her precise uniform a sharp contrast to his own rumpled shipsuit.
“I had an alert set for when you woke up, sir,” she told him. “Are you all right? You didn’t sleep very long.”
“I’m fine,” he said shortly, slamming back a third shot of vodka. “I’ll be back asleep in a few minutes. What do you need?”
“New dispatches came in from Alliance High Command, sir,” she told him. “Not urgent enough to wake you, but they are your eyes only and require your authentication code so they may be important.”
“Give them here,” he ordered. He yanked the pad out of her hand, downloading his implant code.
“That’s the wrong pad, sir,” Sanchez said quickly, snatching back the datapad and replacing it with another. “That’s my report on the Kematians’ long-term logistical needs. It’s not ready yet.”
Blinking blearily against the alcohol and incipient exhaustion, Dimitri grabbed the new pad and unlocked it. This one did open up the list of dispatches, and he exhaled as if struck.
Kematian had held, though the price was beyond imagination or acceptance.
Two other systems hadn’t. Battle Group Seventeen and the Kematian Navy had destroyed five Commonwealth capital ships without starship losses of their own.
The Toledo and Arsenault systems had bled the Commonwealth, but had fallen. Seven more Commonwealth capital ships had been destroyed, but so had nine Alliance ships.
His pursuit of Triumphant was authorized, but with a very strict time limit – if they hadn’t caught up to the battleship in two weeks, they were ordered to return to Kematian and reassemble Battle Group Seventeen.
Alliance High Command couldn’t let more systems fall without trying to retrieve them. It appeared that Battle Group Seventeen was to be part of that operation.
Regardless of the cost to Dimitri Tobin’s soul if he had to let Triumphant go.
Chapter 22
Deep Space, En route to KG-779
11:00 January 2, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
DSC-078 Avalon, Executive Officer’s Office
It was a depressed group of senior officers and NCOs that gathered in Solace’s office the day after entering FTL. Michael had brought Kalers along to help speak for the Space Force personnel aboard the ship, and was pleased to see that Solace had invited Belmonte – and that Major Caleb Norup had brought Peng Wa.
Michael hadn’t interacted much with the commander of the short battalion – four companies with no heavy weapons element – of Marines embarked aboard Avalon but the broad-shouldered man seemed solid enough. Master Sergeant Wa seemed to think so, anyway, which was enough for the CAG.
The seventh person in the room was Ship’s Marshal Barsamian, and she looked at the collection of more senior officers and more experienced non-commissioned officers with a calm Michael wasn’t sure he’d possess in her place.
“We have completed the process of taking the ship to Counter Intelligence Level Three,” she said calmly. “Per the Code of Military Justice, we are required to inform all personnel inside a full communication review zone within twenty-four hours of the review commencing. Delivering that notice falls to the senior officers and NCOs of each service branch.”
“I downloaded the message template before everything came apart at Kematian,” Michael told the others. “This isn’t my first go around with potential spies.”
“It is mine,” Solace replied grimly. “I’ll take a copy of that template if you will, CAG.”
“Of course.”
The XO turned back to the Marines.
“For some reason,” she continued calmly, “second-rate carriers and Home Fleet cruisers don’t see many spies. I haven’t been involved with any sort of counter intelligence sweep. What do we do next?”
“First, we monitor all communications and watch for anything suspicious,” Barsamian explained. “This is honestly the part most likely to turn up something useful. Even knowing that messages are being monitored, conspirators have to communicate home somehow.”
“What if they have a Q-Com linked to the Commonwealth network?” Solace asked. “That would bypass any attempt on our part to intercept, wouldn’t it?”
“In theory,” the Marshal allowed. “In practice, the containment fields necessary to maintain an entangled particle have a distinct energy signature that can be detected at distances of up to five or six hundred meters. Shipboard sensors automatically scan for them – and private Q-Coms are not permitted aboard warships.”
“What else?”
“There are some smart programs we will run in the ship’s surveillance systems to check for suspicious behavior,” Barsamian told them. “They’re notorious for false positives and not likely to turn out anything incredibly useful, but they may point us to something we might have missed.”
“All of this is very vague and circumstantial at best,” Solace noted. “Is there… something more active we should be doing?”
“Counterintelligence work is almost never active,” Michael pointed out quietly. “Last time I went through this, we never caught the spy. It was peacetime, so we don’t even know who they might have been working for. Void knows, there might have not even been a spy.”
“This time, we are quite certain some form of enemy agent is aboard,” Barsamian replied. “But the CAG is right, Commande
r. At this point, there is very little we can do to bring this agent into the open. All we can do is wait for them to act and be ready.”
Peng Wa shook her head, the senior Marine NCO looking frustrated.
“Is there anything I can shoot in all of this?” she demanded, only half-joking from her tone of voice. “For that matter, are we sure this isn’t tied into those rumors we were hearing about Sanchez?”
The office was silent for a very long moment, and then Michael finally spoke, very quietly.
“I don’t think anyone in this room likes Sanchez,” he said bluntly. “And I definitely think she is stirring up trouble in ways that are at the least… questionable.
“But her record and her history speak for themselves. Senior Fleet Commander Sanchez is a decorated officer with twelve years in Navy Intelligence. I don’t like her,” he repeated, “but I don’t think her loyalty to the Federation can be questioned.”
“Nonetheless, we need to keep an eye on that situation as well,” Solace pointed out. “Sanchez speaks for Vice Admiral Tobin. It’s possible that what we’re hearing is exaggerated, a cynic’s view of an attempt to get a feel for the officers under his command.
“But with one thing and another, my shoulderblades are feeling itchy,” the XO told them all. “Worse, I don’t think I’m the one being measured for the knife. We need to keep poking, people. If Sanchez is trying to put together some kind of fifth column of our crew and Marines, we need proof we can take to the Captain.”
“Tobin’s the Admiral,” Norup objected. “Even if we can prove something, what can the Captain do?”
“This is Kyle’s ship, not Tobin’s, Major,” the XO replied harshly, to a sharp nod of agreement from Michael. “Even Admirals have things they cannot do.”
“If what rumor suggests is correct,” Marshal Barsamian explained, “it would be within Captain Roberts’ rights to arrest and detain both Sanchez and Vice Admiral Tobin for mutiny.”
The room was silent again as everyone considered the firestorm that would ensue from that action.
“Mostly, I think that worry falls on you, Marshal,” Michael said quietly. “The rest of us, well,” he shrugged. “We need to worry about catching a battleship.”
22:00 January 2, 2736 ESMDT
DSC-078 Avalon, Captain’s Office
Technically, Kyle was holding down the FTL dark watch, back-stopping Commander James Anderson.
Since, like many of Avalon’s crew, Commander Anderson was an experienced and competent officer, Kyle had ordered the younger man to advise him if anything came up, setup a video link to the bridge, and settled down in his office to do paperwork.
While no one was going to question anything that had been dropped off on Kematian, or the starfighter transfers, or any of the activities of the scant hours they’d been in the system, all of it still needed to recorded, tracked, and approved.
When Solace stepped into his office without bothering to buzz for admittance, he was glad for the interruption. He closed his files with a thought and an unnecessary gesture and regarded his executive officer as she closed the door behind her and took a seat in silence.
The shock in Kematian which had awoken his awareness of her attractiveness had faded, but the awareness hadn’t. Tonight, though, she looked utterly drained. Her hair was uneven, looking in need of either being recropped or a very good stylist to make growing it out look good. She hadn’t bothered with a uniform jacket, though her shipsuit had the distinctively perfect creases of one pulled directly from the refresher.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked gently. His own dreams were starting to feature the destruction of Kematian alongside the memory of flying the old Avalon through a battleship and the wreckage inside Ansem Gulf after his old crew had retaken her from pirates. He couldn’t imagine that Solace, for whom this had only been her second ever combat, was dealing any better.
“We just watched a world die, Captain,” she replied, her voice soft and sad. “How… how could I even begin to sleep?”
“Your implant is perfectly capable of forcing you into dreamless sleep,” he pointed out. “It isn’t great in the long-term, but trust me, it’s better than not sleeping at all.”
Solace blinked, it clearly taking a minute for what he was saying to sink in.
“You too?”
“After Gulf,” he agreed. “Then again after Tranquility. And now Kematian added in. Have you talked to Cunningham yet?”
She shook her head.
“Feels… weak,” she confessed.
“There’s a reason every Doctor on this ship is as rated for counseling as they are for trauma surgery,” Kyle told her. “There’s a lot, even ignoring counseling, that the Surgeon-Commander can do for you. Our implants have some useful functions for this – functions that are even better than we had in the last war.”
He hadn’t realized his bitterness over that had leaked into his voice until he saw her eyes narrow.
“That sounds personal, sir,” she replied.
“Mira,” he said gently, “it’s the middle of a dark watch and we’re in my office. You can call me Kyle.”
“Very well… Kyle,” she accepted. “But… what happened in the last war?”
He sighed and stood. The wallscreen behind him was blank, but he faced it and brought up an image of Amaranthe as he turned to face it.
“My father was in command of the Marine garrison assigned to the Federation Embassy on Amaranthe,” he said quietly. “As the Terrans were landing, he was evacuating the Embassy personnel and anyone who’d come with him.
“He was leading from the front, with a company of Marines and almost two thousand civilians behind him, when the nano-weapon went off.”
Kyle stared at the splotchy planet for a long moment.
“He escaped,” he said finally, the memories rushing back of the official inquest after the suicide, and the recordings and reports he’d desperately watched and read as a teenager to try to find some kind of answer. “Most of his company, and almost all of the civilians they were escorting, didn’t.
“Somehow, he held it together for years. Came home. Had me.” He wasn’t sure how Solace was taking this. She was silent behind him, and he was focused on the world that killed his father.
“Then, on the day the war ended, Major James Roberts blew his brains out with a service pistol, leaving behind a wife and an eight year old son. One of seven post-traumatic suicides from the Federal forces in the war.”
“I’m sorry, Kyle,” Solace said behind him. “I really didn’t know.”
“It’s very specifically not in my service file, Mira,” he replied. “We are shaped by what we survive, but I don’t need or want pity for it. I do my job.”
“How?” Solace’s voice was torn. He turned to see her face was in her hands, but she looked back up at him. “We just watched a world die,” she repeated. “Somewhere on this god-damn ship is a spy. The Admiral’s staff is playing political games, and I’m not sure who I can even trust. How do we do the job like this?!”
“Because we swore an oath, and we put on the uniform,” Kyle said gently as he crossed over to her. “We can’t control the politics. We can’t magically find the spy. So we go on. We factor them into our decisions, we remember who we can trust, and we do our job.”
“I don’t even know who I can trust,” she admitted. “I’ve never dealt with a spy, or this kind of political bullshit!”
The shouted curse echoed in the office, and Kyle turned his best shit-eating grin on his executive officer. Apparently, there was definitely a human being in the statue. He stepped over to his fridge and dragged a pair of cups of tea from the dispenser.
“We can trust the crew to do their jobs,” he told her. “Beyond that? I trust Michael, I trust Belmonte and Kalers – because Hammond recommended her, if no other reason – and I trust you. Everything else is chain of command – I can’t not trust my crew because there’s one bad apple. I need them – and they need me to trust them.”
“I haven’t exactly been giving you excuses to trust me,” she pointed out, taking the cup gratefully.
“You’ve given me no reason not to, Mira,” Kyle said softly. “So you haven’t been the friendliest or warmest officer I’ve ever worked with – so what? You’ve being doing your job, and you’ve been doing it well.
“You were dumped on this ship with no warning, told you were expected to fill an inexperienced Captain’s holes, and then handed your third male Captain in a row. When the previous list includes one of the most flamboyantly homosexual Captains in the Navy and a man who tried to use his position to rape you, a little distance was inevitable.”
“That isn’t in my file either,” Solace replied, looking down at her tea.
“I read between the lines,” Kyle said. “And I’ve heard stories about Captain Haliburt. Any Captain who has JD-Personnel marking his reports as of questionable worth should be drummed out of the Navy.”
“He’s always on the right side of the line,” his exec said quietly. “Just barely. He knows just where it sits.”
“It won’t save him in wartime,” Kyle promised. “Mira, I understood why you needed distance. I needed you to work with me – and you did. So I trusted you. Anything else…” he made a throwaway gesture and spilled tea on himself.
“Crap.”
That seemed to work. Senior Fleet Commander Mira Solace disintegrated into schoolgirl giggles as he dabbed desperately at his uniform with a napkin.
Once he’d finished cleaning himself up, and she’d regained composure, she leveled the same smile that was causing him issues at him again.
“Thank you for understanding, Kyle. It shouldn’t have been necessary, and it is very appreciated.”
She offered her hand across the desk and he took it, feeling the firmness of her grip and the warmth of her skin.
“Partners, then?” he asked aloud, remembering Pendez’s words.
“Partners,” she agreed. “Gives me a starting point for who to trust.”
Stellar Fox (Castle Federation Book 2) Page 16
