Akantha nodded. “My com-tech says they are insistent on speaking to you. We could barely control the ship. We were fortunate to maneuver back to the Phoenix.”
“You mean…we won?” I said feeling shell shocked. I couldn’t believe it; it felt surreal.
“The battle is still far from certain, even just our side of it,” she interrupted me, “and, of course, there is the main army of the Grand Fleet.”
“Of course,” I muttered, and then my brain kicked back into gear.
“We must move, and keep moving, or all could be lost. This ship is a sitting target if Harmony still controls a nearby citadel,” Akantha reminded me.
“You say you didn’t have enough crew to run your prize battleship?” I asked.
Akantha shook her head in negation, and her silence spoke volumes.
I nodded and turned to the crew. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but I need anyone who feels they are still able to do their jobs. The enemy is still out there and we’re a sitting duck in here. The Lancers have captured a battleship and, with our engines down and our bridge shot up, I don’t think we’re going to be able to do too much right here,” I said.
The battered survivors looked at me and while some shakily sat down or leaned up against the wall, some didn’t and started forward.
“There will be no questions asked if you can’t,” I didn’t wait for the reply but, instead, turned and motioned to Akantha and Gants I started towards the door. “Let’s get back to that battleship you captured as quickly as we can,” I said, a hole in my stomach opening back up at the idea of being helpless and on the receiving end of an enemy broadside while trapped inside a drifting ship.
I hated to do it, but after being shot up and boarded the Phoenix was no longer in the fight. I needed to transfer my Flag over to the captured Battleship, and pray it wasn’t too badly damaged by Akantha and her boarding party to still play a part.
Chapter 60: If this is what Victory looks like, please send me home
“How are you able to run the ship with so few Lancers to crew it?” I asked settling down on the new and strangely configured bridge.
“Slaves,” Akantha said so matter-of-factly that it took me several seconds to run through what she’d just said in my mind to find the flaws in it.
At my almost distraught, questioning look, she continued.
“This ship was mostly run by droid slaves, some native and some captured by the Harmony Lords and their Warriors. I first encountered them on the gun deck, and they seemed most amenable to a regime change—especially after I informed them of the Messene policy to free slaves who work hard and loyally. We had no trouble getting them to fire our broadside fast and accurately.”
“What’s this ‘Messene policy’?” I said, feeling my back instinctively going up.
“Most slaves are given freedman or freedwoman status after ten years of non-rebellious service in Argos, but for those who work hard five years is more common. Although, I have heard cases as low as two years, mostly those are cases where the woman who owns the slave is enamored of the captured warrior. I do not think that will be a factor here. Regardless, as a daughter polis of Argos, it is easier to simply adopt the mother law in this case, which I have done,” Akantha informed me as she coolly and calmly laid out her country’s slavery policy. “I have assured these droids that if they give me good and loyal service, there will be a path to citizenship…although I have yet to decide how wide to open the franchise to even the most loyal of these thinking machines. It will take careful thought and more knowledge of their reproductive processes before I can fully decide how to proceed. I may limit the policy only to droid leaders among the slaves—assuming they don’t rebel and find themselves executed, with their bodies placed alongside the road as a warning.”
Insanity. This was insanity, plain and simple, and after fighting for my life, being tortured, healed, and then fighting for my life again, I simply couldn’t deal with it. This slave business was going to have to wait. Killing a droid was one thing, but enslaving them—even if it was only taking the droid slaves of other droids was…
I didn’t have words. I needed to focus back on saving all our lives so I could fight with my wife later about this topic.
I turned my attention back to the plot on the main screen. “Someone put up the latest information we have: both ship positions at the time of last known contact, as well as projected courses if any,” I ordered.
Frustrating minutes passed as the truncated bridge team took their positions and then struggled to access the new controls, pull up the information and put it up as something resembling an understandable format.
“The droid forces aboard the Phoenix are scattered. We broke the back of their main force when we took the bridge,” Akantha reported in a low voice so that the rest of the bridge couldn’t hear. “I will leave Darius and the company under his command to finish sweeping the ship for enemy survivors. Except for a few guards on the bridge and Main Engineering, I am recalling the companies with me and the Sundered. They should all be back over here in another five minutes.”
“That should give us enough time to set up here…I hope,” I said, looking around the bridge. The handful of crew which had survived the attack on the Phoenix, and were physically and mentally prepared to continue the fight over here, were trying to take control of this enemy battleship.
All of the Lancers were onboard before the main screen populated, at which time the bridge crew started to report back with at least a limited degree of control over their departments.
“Propulsion under control, sir,” reported DuPont, looking white as a sheet but doggedly manning his post.
“Good. As soon as Engineering releases the bucking cables get us under way, Helmsman,” I said formally.
“Aye aye, Admiral,” DuPont said, still visibly shaken. But at least his eyes were focusing on the task before him.
For a moment I instinctively looked for the ship’s Navigator before remembering that Shepherd had been shot. I angrily shook my head and turned back to the plot.
To my surprise—and delight—the area around the ship was once again displaying clearly on the main viewer, and showed the last known positions of the battleships within the jammer field, both those belonging to the enemy and those belonging to us.
“Bucking cables away,” reported Damage Control.
“Thank you Ms. Blythe,” I said formally, only realizing after I had done so that I had assumed—correctly—that she had made the trip with us.
“Engines ready, Admiral,” said the Helmsman.
“Take us away, Mr. DuPont,” I instructed.
The new battleship rumbled beneath our feet, and then slowly pulled away from the crippled Phoenix.
“Where to, sir?” asked Mr. DuPont.
“Take us toward the last known position of the Parliamentary Power,” I ordered. Slowly, but steadily, the captured battleship drew away from the Furious Phoenix and came to a course which would bring us where I had commanded.
As I looked around at the echoingly empty battleship’s bridge, I felt very much alone. Despite having Akantha, Gants, and a number of my bridge crew with me—even if the full staff of the Phoenix from before the firefight on the bridge had transferred over—we still wouldn’t have filled all the consoles. But with just the battle-weary remnants of the Phoenix rattling around, trying to do the work of four or five regularly assigned crew—with the only assistance coming from untrained Lancers and Tracto-ans, some of whom had never even seen high technology as recently as a few years ago—it made me realize just thin on the ground we were—and just how alone I was, relatively speaking.
“ETA: three minutes,” reported DuPont in a dull voice.
I gave the thin bridge crew a searching look. “I know we’re all tired, worn down, and close to the end of our ropes after fighting all day and into what should be our night,” I said, speaking loudly to be heard all across the empty bridge, “but let’s step lively for the next few
minutes until we know the fate of the Parliamentary Power and our boarding teams.”
Slumped shoulders temporarily straightened, and weary eyes refocused on their screens for the next few minutes, and I could only hope that a few minutes would be all we’d need. But, if not, I was pretty sure that being attacked and thrust into life and death conflict would sharpen the focus of the majority of these battle-weary survivors, but it could also break a few of the others. That was something I hoped to avoid but, knowing my luck of late, I wasn’t placing any bets.
“Engine signature detected,” reported a Sensor Operator, probably trying to sound excited but coming across as weary and worried instead.
“Send out a hail,” I instructed and, to my surprise, instead of some lowly com-tech it was Lieutenant Steiner who replied.
“Hailing them now,” replied the Lieutenant.
A tense moment passed as the few remaining sensor operators tried to scan the contact to determine its size and class and we waited for a reply.
“It’s Commodore Druid on the Parliamentary Power, Admiral Montagne, and he’s asking to speak with you,” Steiner said, releasing a haggard sigh of relief.
A wave of relief swept the bridge it was so strong it was almost palpable.
“Put the good Commodore up on the screen, if you would, Ms. Steiner,” I said, smiling with genuine emotion. Things were looking up if the Power was not just still in action, but up and moving about.
Moments later, Commodore Druid appeared on the screen—and I had never been happier to see the uniform of another Confederation officer.
“You don’t know how glad we are to see you and the Parliamentary Power is up and about, Commodore, I hope you know that,” I said with a big grin and then straightened to take on a more serious tone. “What do you have to report?”
“It’s good to see you as well, Admiral,” the Commodore said perfunctorily, “there were more than a few times I didn’t think we’d make it.”
“How’s your ship?” I asked intently.
“Other than the expected battlefield casualties from an action of this size, the crew’s fine, thanks for asking,” the Commodore said tightly, and suddenly I knew that all was not well and there was trouble in paradise. “As for the Power, she’s been ridden hard and put away wet. There are holes in the ship that go all the way to the doors of Medical that we are endeavoring to repair. We’ve lost more than two thirds of our combined broadside and I’ve got one engine that functions, but only intermittently. Put any kind of strain on her and she’ll blow. The rest are flat down.”
“I understand,” I said bleakly, the crushing realization of our losses once more threatening to bow me down under the pressure. Then I forced myself straight; I was here for a reason. I had to believe that or I’d go crazy. And that reason was that without us here, things would have been much worse for the helpless citizens of Elysium and the two Sectors around her. “The Phoenix is down. She has power and life support at the moment, but that’s about it. The engines are gone, our shield generators are down or destroyed, and the inside and outsides are riddled with blaster holes—including on the bridge. It got hand to hand in there at several points.”
“We were on our way to see if we could render assistance, despite our slow speed, because we saw the two Heavy Cruisers that attached themselves to your hull,” Druid said a moment later, his face growing ever so slightly less grim.
“Akantha and this battleship knocked out the engines on one and drove away the other, before coming to our rescue,” I said, painfully remembering my one-man fight to clear the decks of boarders, followed by torture, and then the unlikely charge of the Armory Department.
All I could see in my mind’s eye were men and women dropping like flies until we finally reached the bridge, only to see the devastation there. I couldn’t control the pain at those memories—and I didn’t even try.
Commodore Druid nodded. “We’re not going anywhere fast in our condition, but I can report that Marine and Volunteer forces under the command of Marine Colonel Wainwright have seized one enemy Battleship; the battleship you’re in destroyed the Engines of another, so that ship’s dead in the water until they can repair her; and the Droids have secured the third Battleship. Which means that, counting the ship you’re on and the Heavy Cruiser whose engines the prize crew aboard her shot up, that there’s only one Heavy Cruiser still running around out here,” said Druid.
I rubbed my face as I tried to figure out the implications, now that we seemingly had a moment to breath.
“Do you know what’s happening around the Forge?” I asked finally as the first inklings of a plan starting to form. It wasn’t much of one—mainly involving getting more information first and foremost—but since I was on a battleship that, according to every report and the personal experience of the boarding party who’d brought her back to save the Phoenix, still had shields and could fire her lasers, I fully intended to make use of her.
“The jammer field’s still up,” the Commodore shook his head, “but we can bring that down anytime.” He paused, and there was suddenly a flinty look in his eyes I didn’t trust, “I hope you’re not intending to ask us to jump into yet another battle, because I can say with certainty that this ship can’t handle another one.”
“Not at all,” I said neutrally and then, before he could open his mouth and demand some kind of clarification—or orders to recall our ships and withdraw—I changed the subject.
If you don’t want your subordinates to tell you something you definitely don’t want to hear, you can’t give them the chance to talk themselves into a mutinous corner. I’d learned that with my Officer Tremblay and my first command, although why those particular instincts were kicking in I couldn’t quite say, I just knew I had to go with my gut.
“This battleship seems mostly functional at the moment and I’m quite sure she can handle any small difficulties we stumble across until we manage to get at least a skeleton crew aboard. Now, what’s the status of your boarding force? Are they all on the captured Battleship with Wainwright?”
The Commodore stared at me almost mulishly and then let it go, tacitly accepting my chance of subject for the moment.
“The ship the boarders are on was damaged to the point we were able to grapple her and were still needed to help maintain order over there at the time I left,” Commodore Druid said pointedly before getting to my question. “However, there is still a Marine Regiment onboard the Parliamentary Power; I retained them in case we were boarded ourselves, and was intending to use them to relieve the Phoenix as long as she was still there and there was anything to relieve still when we got to her.”
“Excellent news,” I said, working to give every appearance of an Admiral happy to receive the news—which wasn’t that far from the truth, or hard to do seeing as I was genuinely relieved to hear the news. Unfortunately, I was beginning to think that the Commodore and his ship had run their course. Much like my bridge crew, they sounded to be at the end of their rope. The only difference being I was here instead of there.
And that was a big difference. It just remained to be seen if there was anything left to be done, or if the Commodore’s clear preference to gather our strength, lick our wounds, and either get out of here or let someone else handle things.
“The droids have been trying to raise you on the com and speak with you quite urgently for some time now, sir,” Commodore Druid said with the faintest impression of a smile on his face at this little wrinkle, “if you don’t mind my saying.”
“Of course not,” I said, pursing my lips, “I’ll be speaking with them directly. In the meantime, if you could drop the jammer field and proceed to the Heavy Cruiser with the blown engines and secure her, I would be most appreciative. I don’t want to risk the remaining droids crewing her deciding to stop repairs and try a long jump in cold space so they can finish the job they started on the Phoenix. We only left a company behind to protect the Strike Cruiser, and I don’t want her crew to suffer any m
ore desperate battles within her hull today if we can help it.”
Druid pursed his lips and eventually nodded. “We’ll see what we can do,” he said finally, “the Marines still aboard are probably tired of damage control and, knowing them, they’ll leap at the chance—literally, if need be.”
Once again, it wasn’t exactly an acknowledgement of my orders—and had more the feeling of a negotiation of some sort, even though I was still getting everything I asked for.
I stopped and gave the Commodore a penetrating look. “Drop the jammer as soon as you can, and I’m going to personally assess the captured battleships,” I said shortly and then, with a nod to Druid, I had Steiner cut the connection.
First Laurent, and now Druid, had given me pushback today. It was enough to make me wonder how to fix what I was doing wrong. But I couldn’t worry about it for long, because despite my failings there was still a battle going on in the rest of the greater Elysium system and I had to know how things were going before deciding which way the MSP should jump.
“Take us to the captured Battleships, Mr. DuPont,” I ordered.
“We’ll be there shortly, sir,” replied the Helmsman.
Within a minute, the jammer field went down and suddenly our sensors were flooded with information.
“Bring up first the Battleships we’ve captured here in the Jovian sub-system, then I want a look at the Forge. After that, I want a scan of the Grand Fleet Battleships and the rest of the forces within this system. Start around us and move outward,” I instructed, knowing we were shorthanded and would need to prioritize.
“I’m receiving a transmission from the Droids. They’re demanding to speak with you, Admiral Montagne,” Steiner reported.
The first sensor returns were in from the captured ships, so I ignored her for a moment longer.
One ship—presumably the one now blaring an MSP transponder signal—was the battleship which the Parliamentary Power had captured. Looking at the initial damage reports, that vessel wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
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