Admiral Invincible (A Spineward Sectors Novel: Book 7)

by Luke Sky Wachter

“What?!” I exclaimed with disbelief. The hubris of trying to get the Droids to attack your home world with all their forces well before you knew if there was even going to be a Grand Fleet—let alone if it would arrive in Elysium under the command of your chosen Fleet Commander—shook me. “Still…even so, I am not sure that sallying out to attack them is the wisest course in light of one fleet arriving close on the heels of the other,” I continued, but I could hear just how weak it sounded as I said it.

  “I understand your concern and, in truth, it does you credit, Admiral Montagne,” the Grand Admiral said with a consoling expression. “However, far from believing this to be an unhappy coincidence or some kind of unification plot hatched by the droids, Elysium Intelligence has been actively working for just this occurrence. It is my feeling, as well as that of Elysium High Command, that a three-way contest, in a Core System, with our number of fixed defenses and the better part of two Sectors’ worth of mobile human military assets, is our best and only chance to take out these Droids once and for all. My orders stand. We will use Attack Pattern Alpha upon reaching the First Droid Fleet. I hope I can count on your support.”

  Unspoken and unsaid but definitely hanging in the air was the notion that if Manning and the Grand Fleet had to sally forth without the addition of the battleship-less Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet then that would just be too bad, but also something they were imminently prepared to do.

  My lips twisted and I shook my head but in the end really there was no choice. He was the one in the hot seat and I wasn’t. It was his call.

  “We’ll be there,” I said simply and the Grand Admiral nodded.

  “Oh, and get that Corvette of yours out of there; I’ve already issued the recall for all pickets but my staff informs me that yours still hasn’t budged. See to it—Manning out,” he said before cutting his connection.

  Sighing, I shook my head. While he seemed to take my acceptance of his orders either as a given—or something he and the Grand Fleet could live without—from my end of things, I silently vowed that while we would be there, we weren’t going to be following along blindly.

  Laurent’s words of minutes earlier were still ringing in my ears as was my promise of two weeks ago to bring the MSP out of this battle stronger and better off than before.

  Somehow, I was going to have to keep both promises. I was going to need to pull a couple rabbits out of my hat.

  Thankfully I had one big old armored ace, hidden up my sleeve. Thus thinking I turned to Steiner.

  “Contact Swift Drake and tell the Corvette’s Captain that Operation Side Swipe is ‘go.’ Tell her captain to bring me the Parliamentary Power,” I ordered.

  “Aye aye, sir,” replied Lieutenant Steiner.

  And moments after receiving the transmission MSP Corvette Swift Drake jumped out of the system.

  Chapter 24: Message in a Bottle

  Three fleets continued to rush towards a grand meeting in cold space. The outer limits of the Elysium star system in that part closest to the Jovian system containing the Forge, was where the Droids had chosen to transfer into the system. For our part, the Grand Fleet had been waiting far enough within the hyper-limit that we could still turn around if we were wrong and the Droids appeared somewhere else and get between them and the mines.

  But in this singular instance, the Droids had met expectations—not that this made anyone any happier, given the numbers the Droids had showed up in.

  “Admiral, we’re getting a rather irritable message from the Grand Admiral’s staff about the Swift Drake’s hyper jump,” Lieutenant Steiner reported. “Do you want me to respond and, if so, how would you like me to reply?” she asked.

  “Inform them the Swift Drake was sent off to report—keep it short and sweet,” I said, waving off the issue with a flick of the hand. I had more things to worry about than some Lieutenant with a burr up his back about the loss of a single corvette. Especially since the Swift Drake will be returning—with interest, I thought with a smile. ‘Admirals without battleships need not apply,’ indeed. I’ll show them my battleship, all right…right before I shove it up their conceited—

  I cut my train of thought off, reminding myself that what was done was done and it was important to move on.

  “Will do, Admiral,” Steiner said, and then proceeded to relay the message.

  Time passed as all three Fleets—two Droid and one human—continued moving at a majestic pace toward an intercept in space.

  “Does this feel right to you?” I muttered to my Flag Captain.

  Laurent frowned and looked at me curiously.

  “No maneuvering for advantage, no chasing or being chased…just an unspoken, almost gentleman’s agreement, to meet in on the outskirts of this system and clobber each other? Does that feel right to you?” I demanded.

  The Flag Captain pursed his lips. “I haven’t exactly been in a lot of fleet actions,” Laurent said with irony laced through his voice, then he turned serious, “however, I have to point out that the purpose of a battle fleet is to battle, and that’s kind of hard to do if one side or the other is running away.”

  “In all of our ship-to-ship combat, when has doing what the enemy wanted actually benefitted us? I mean, how often have we just rolled into a system and done what they wanted? It just doesn’t make sense,” I protested, giving the Captain a hard look to emphasize my point. “We let the Bugs soften up Jean Luc and then swept the board, and even that was hard—so hard, in fact, that we almost didn’t make it. We appeared to charge the Omicron, but secretly sent Lancers on grav-boards. With Aqua Nova, we—”

  “I’ll give you Second Tracto,” Laurent interrupted, “but just how many of our battles have really involved more than one ship; two, or maybe three? Most of our—and your—experience is on single ship or small squadron engagements.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but he continued evenly.

  “I’m not saying you’re wrong,” Laurent held up a hand to stop me, “what I am saying is that Fleet Actions aren’t exactly our forte and, on top of that, this isn’t the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet. Grand Admiral Manning is running the show and for all we know—the ‘we’ in this case would indicate you and I—he has a few aces still up his sleeve that we know nothing about. This is his home system, after all.”

  I sat for a moments and stewed, my lips rubbing together as I thought. “So what you’re saying is we should trust him,” I shortly.

  Laurent blew out a breath. “No. That’s not what I’m saying…not exactly,” he paused in contemplation.

  “Make up your mind,” I snorted.

  Laurent scowled. “I guess what I’m saying is that the fact we can’t see what all his plans are doesn’t mean he has none,” he retorted.

  I was just about to point out the foolishness of trusting someone else to pull a rabbit out of his hat at the last minute and then froze. I realized that to say so would be almost the same as indicting myself—or at least anyone who had believed all my lies and aura of false confidence along the way to here.

  I frowned and my frown turned into a scowl as I realized that while I might not be able to, in good conscience, blast Manning with both barrels for either being a fool, or even an untrusting man who kept too many secrets—a trait which one could reasonably accuse me of possessing.

  Not being able to call him on it didn’t mean I had to sit idly by while my ships ran into the meat grinder. Besides, I had a few hidden aces of my own.

  Speaking of aces, I thought irritably, where’s my battleship?

  Chapter 25: Questioning Command

  “MSP Corvette Swift Drake has just jumped in system, Commodore!” cried the Sensor Officer.

  “Excellent news, Lieutenant,” Commodore Druid said with satisfaction before turning to the Helm and Navigation. “I assume we’re ready to jump just as soon as the hyper drive is fully charged?”

  “Aye, sir,” said the Navigator with a smile on his face, “we are thirty minutes and counting until the Point of No Return.” />
  “Very well,” the Commodore nodded, “you are to proceed with the plan to jump to Elysium at the pre-designated coordinates, until and unless we hear otherwise from the Swift Drake.

  Around him, the bridge sprang into activity as the ship readied itself for jump. Druid nodded with satisfaction; the ship and its new crew, was doing well…although, just which part of his crew could possibly be considered ‘old hands’ left him feeling rather stumped.

  He finally decided there were a few hundred who had served on the Armor Prince and the Lucky Clover, the same exact class of ship, before her, so they probably qualified.

  “Officers, sound off readiness status by department; we’ll be arriving in a hot zone upon arrival in Elysium and could be attacked at any time. Let’s get our ducks in a row while we can,” Druid instructed.

  One by one, the department heads sounded off their readiness.

  “Helm cleared and ready for action,” reported the Helmsman.

  “Navigation ready, sir,” said the officer manning the Nav-Console.

  “Tactical; let us at ‘em, Commodore,” growled the Ensign manning that station right now.

  “Shields are a go, sir.”

  “Comm. is five by five.”

  “Engineering here, wait one, Commodore,” said the Engineering watch stander.

  “Security here, we have a problem, sir,” said the Security Officer, a former Marine who had been Druid’s head of security back on his Corvette.

  The Commodore scowled. “What’s going on, Dmitri?” he asked, turning to look at the Lieutenant Commander.

  “There’s a delegation outside the bridge here to speak with you, Commodore,” Lieutenant Commander Dmitri said, his face an expressionless mask.

  Druid clenched his fist. “From our recently revived personnel, I presume?” he said, his voice deepening to a growl.

  “All officers—and almost all of them former ship commanders—if I am any judge of things, Commodore,” the Lieutenant Commander said, his hand landing on the butt of the pistol at his waist.

  Druid cocked his head at Dmitri.

  “Just give the word and we’ll give them a bum rush out of here, sir,” the Security Officer said with relish.

  Tapping on his screen, Druid pulled up an image of just outside the blast doors and bit back a curse at the sight of a bakers’ dozen worth of officers milling around outside the bridge.

  “I don’t think that will be necessary just yet,” Druid said, making a snap decision, “make sure they’re disarmed and then have them escorted into the ready room. I’ll speak with them personally.”

  “Very good, sir,” Dmitri said bracing to attention before turning away and sweeping up a pair of Marines with a twirl of his finger as he marched to the blast doors. He looked like a man ready to sort out a wayward shore party.

  Watching the agitated officers—who were wearing a variety of Confederation and SDF uniforms—being escorted into the Parliamentary Power’s ready room, he cursed the bright ideas of Admirals and Flag Officers everywhere. They had a brilliant brainstorm and then left subordinate officers holding the bag while they moved onto other things. Meanwhile, he was the one who had to tell thousands of recently-revived men and women why they had to go directly from having their ships shot out from under them, right into another death ride against a Droid Invasion. He was keenly aware that a goodly fraction of them were still trying to fully shrug off the effects of prolonged cryogenic suspension.

  Steeling himself, he stood up, straightened his uniform and marched into the ready room. His first view of the officers as he entered that room was everything he had expected, with their expressions running the gamut from angry, fearful, disbelieving and resigned.

  Standing forcefully in the middle of the table across from the door, with her fists placed knuckles-down on its surface, an officer in the uniform of a Confederation Commander leaned forward and met his eyes with her steely gaze.

  “I wake up after a hundred and fifty years of cryo-stasis, and find out two days later that this ship is about to jump into battle against a Droid fleet!?” she demanded, her body swaying from side to side from the latent effects of a century and a half of cryo sleep with only two days to recover from the effects. But, while her body might still be weak, the Commodore could tell that her mind was anything but.

  “Yes,” Druid said, drawing himself up to his full height.

  “How bad is this situation, and why should we help you?” she demanded in a steely voice.

  “You have a duty, all of you, and not just to the Confederation but to all of humanity, whether you’re SDF or Confed Fleet,” Druid said, sweeping the table with an iron gaze and silently cursing Admiral Jason Montagne for offloading the problem of these—in many cases, still sick—cryo-survivors into his lap. “The Elysium Star System is being invaded even as we speak; this ship is desperately needed there and we could surely use your help.”

  “Half the survivors are still cryo-sick and the rest have never worked together! I don’t see how we could help you—even if we were so inclined,” the Commander said, matching his gaze with one of her own and not backing down an inch. “I ask again: just how bad is it out there? This is a job for the 5th Fleet and a couple divisions of ships of the line. Is a single battleship really going to make that much a difference and, if so, what exactly has been going on in known space while we’ve been asleep?!”

  “There’s too much to go into at once,” Commodore Druid said flatly, “but, in brief: the Confederation and the Empire of Man joined forces half a century ago and then the Empire pulled out of seven Sectors here in the Spineward region. In short, they left us behind and right now we’re it. We’re all that two Sectors of human space—two Confederation Sectors—have in the way of defense. The Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet, and a Grand Fleet, made up of every ship that could be shook loose from SDF’s across both Sectors, have been brought together for a unified defense of Sectors 23 and 24 at what will almost certainly be the decisive battle of the conflict.”

  For a long moment she glared at him, her eyes locked with his. “If you’re prepared to fill up half a battleship with the shattered remnants of over twenty ships, and take us into battle…then I guess we have no choice but to go with you,” she finally said, to the resulting protest from a number of SDF Officers.

  “We need every man willing,” Druid said evenly.

  “I’m willing to go, and I’ll ask all my former crew to come with me,” the Commander said, “but I want you to agree to offload any objectors who don’t agree to participate before jumping before I agree to anything.”

  “The Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet is an at-will organization,” Druid said after wrestling with the proposition for a moment. “But I can’t afford to waste any time, and the only place we could offload them is right back onto the freighter. That ship’s life support isn’t up to the task of sustaining thousands of people actively around inside her. If we’re going to do this and we have too many objectors, some of you will have to go back into cryo-sleep or you’ll suffocate.”

  As he watched, several of the SDF officers recoiled and the Commander’s face hardened. No one looked happy at the thought of going back to being frozen while the world passed them by—and their fates were in the hands of others.

  He genuinely had no idea how this was going to go.

  Chapter 26: The Droid Surprise!

  “Sweet crying Murphy! The fly is definitely in the ointment this time,” I swore at a screen still blank and empty of the Parliamentary Power—or the Swift Drake.

  “They could have just caught the battleship at the beginning of its charge cycle, sir,” Laurent pointed out, but I was having none of it.

  “First Middleton and his Cruiser hare off to the space-gods-know-where—right when I needed them—and now Druid and my Battleship are missing in action!! Where is that man, and what has he done with my ship?!” I cursed.

  The Flag Captain looked at the main screen stoically, avoiding my gaze before tur
ning to face me as he drew a breath.

  “Have you considered the possibility that the Droids, on their way here, encountered the Commodore and the Parliamentary Power, Admiral?” he asked.

  “Saint Murphy avert,” I snarled and then pounded the arm of my chair with a fist, “don’t even play at that—I don’t want to hear it, Captain. Druid’s late, not destroyed, and I want to know why. And when I find out, it’ll go all the harder for him when I—”

  “Sir! I’m reading a point emergence on the edge of the system, right where the Power is supposed to show,” exclaimed a sensor operator, jumping up and waving her hand. “I’m also reading a number of lighter contacts…it looks like it’s the escorts we left with her!”

  “He made it!” I said pumping, my fist as all thoughts of courts martial and raking certain battleship officers over hot coals fled my brain in an instant. I turned to Steiner, “Maintain radio silence; I don’t want even a hint of encrypted communication between us and the Commodore until we have to. I want to keep those mechanicals guessing for as long as possible.”

  “He arrived with a half hour to spare, but he made it,” Laurent observed, commenting on how long it would be before we, and the Grand Fleet, went head to head with the first of the two Droid Fleets.

  “Yes, yes, he’ll have to burn the engines to make up time but he can do it, The important thing is that he’s here now,” I dismissed, turning my full attention back to the main screen and the upcoming battle, now that I no longer had to worry that the largest tactical asset I possessed might not show to the party.

  “Admiral, I’m receiving a request from the Flag. The Grand Admiral wants to speak with you,” Lieutenant Steiner reported.

  I stared at the screen with narrowed eyes before turning and giving her a nod. “Put him through,” I instructed. It was time to see just what was bothering the Grand Admiral…as if I couldn’t figure it out already.