“Quite sure, Helm,” I assured him.
“Admiral, you can’t possibly mean to do this,” the Assistant Tactical Officer sounded shocked.
“I can, and I do,” I said fervently.
“But, Admiral…” the Tactical Officer sounded strangled.
“Full speed ahead, Mr. DuPont,” I ordered, my mind’s eye envisioning what was about to happen, “this is our chance to show the world what the Lucky Clover can do!”
“Admiral, are you okay? This isn’t the Clover, sir,” said that pest of an Officer over at the Tactical station, “this is a captured battleship.”
“I’m well aware of that,” I shouted, “a mere slip of the forked tongue.” I started chuckling by now both hands were shaking but I didn’t care anymore. They’d never take me alive again!
“Sir, after a few minutes at most, we’ll be entirely helpless; I have to protest in the strongest terms possible. This is crazy, Admiral—a move of pure desperation. Are you sure you’re feeling well?” said the Assistant Tactical Officer.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” I said implacably. I could belt out platitudes all day long, if this headache would just go away instead of growing stronger, “But it is our duty to do Capria proud, and I aim to do so. I will aim this fleet like an arrow at the heart of this beast. Every bug, pirate, Sector Guard, and other enemy in this system will feel our wrath before we’re done with these droids.” The faces and images of all my greatest foes flickered through my mind’s eye as I spoke, clearly bringing to life the knowledge of who we ultimately had to defeat.
“I think the Admiral’s been injured,” the Assistant Tactical Officer sounded concerned. “Are you sure you’re feeling alright, sir? I’m afraid we need a medic up here.”
“There’ll be no more mutinies on my watch, Mr. Tremblay,” I roared, pulling out my hidden blaster pistol and waving it around the bridge before pointing it at the traitorous officer trying to undermine me in front of the rest of the crew and medical me out of command, “I should have killed you when I had the chance!”
“Sir?” DuPont started to stand up while the mutinous officer over in tactical froze.
“Sit back at your post, DuPont,” I barked, “you’re one of the few men I can count on; don’t make me change my mind on that matter.”
The traitor started to make a move, while the helmsman sat back down and I fired a shot into the ceiling over his head.
“One more twitch and I’ll drill you through the head,” I threatened, “now, someone obey my orders and prepare to fire-link every gun on this Battleship, or so help me you’ll find out what the word ‘Montagne’ really means!”
There was silence on the bridge, and since most of our Lancers had left with Akantha back at the Jovian, I had no one to back me up. The rest of our Lancers were down guarding the gun deck.
“Contact in one minute, sir,” the Sensor Officer said, sounding strangled.
“We are being contacted by the Sentient Assembly Droids, Q wants to make sure you’ve sent over the proper movement orders,” Steiner said, looking at me with visible concern.
“Tell him there’s been no mistake,” I assured her, “they are to break away from us and skirt the enemy formation.”
“They acknowledge the order, but say we’re moving too fast for a conventional firing pass at this speed,” she reported.
“I knew the cowards would follow orders to avoid combat; they wouldn’t want to risk their ship,” I sneered. I was surrounded by traitors, mutineers, and sycophants who would plant a dagger in my back at the first opportunity. This whole fleet was threaded through with Officers like Eastwood and the like, men and women from Wolf-9 and others who had left me for dead at the hands of the Sector Assembly. I briefly remembered hearing that First Officer Eastwood was dead, but I shook it off; the headache was growing so powerful that it was becoming genuinely difficult to think.
“Are you sure you don’t need to lay down, Admiral?” asked Steiner and I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye.
I whirled around and put a blast into the feet of a pair of damage control watch standers and a medic. The trio stopped and held up their hands with wide eyes.
“I thought I could trust you, Warrant,” I growled, rounding back on the com-tech.
“You can, sir. It’s just clear that you’re getting things like names and ranks wrong, even which ship we’re on,” she told me with forced calm.
“Back from around the console—slowly, com-tech,” I ordered, scanning all around me for traitors and mutineers. I didn’t want to kill the beautiful little com-tech, but her looks and former loyalty wouldn’t stop me, “I know exactly who you are and what ship we’re on. We’re on the Phoenix—” I blinked, realizing the bridge was wrong. We were on a Battleship, but it wasn’t the Clover. It was…I suddenly recalled we’d captured a Battleship. “I mean, a captured Battleship; now move out slowly. I can’t risk you giving away any information to our enemies.”
“Entering attack range; we’re being fired upon,” a Tactical Operator reported.
“Evasive maneuver, Helm,” I shouted right before the ship was hit by what felt like the universe’s largest hammer. I fell to the ground but kept a hold on my pistol, “Fire-link those guns to the tactical computer and set it to automatically acquire and fire upon the designated targets! Do it now!” I screamed when the operator hesitated.
Again and again the ship was pummeled.
“Port shields down to 35% and spotting; starboard shields at 15% and about to collapse,” reported Longbottom.
“Multiple hull penetrations on the starboard side; damage to environmental, life support, secondary trunk lines severed,” Blythe at Damage Control calmly called out the growing list of damage.
I jumped to my feet and charged the tactical station between hammer blows. I didn’t—couldn’t!—that treacherous Officer at the Tactical station undo me yet again.
“Main Engineering reports a hit to Fusion 3. They are engaging automatic core-ejection sequence,” reported Blythe.
We were the only ship, the lone Battleship charging right into the face of the entire remaining droid fleet while the rest of our warships diverted to the side. But we were a Battleship, and that’s what Battleships did. I knew we could make it…or, at least I hoped we could. For a moment I felt fear, thinking we were in the Furious Phoenix and I’d once again taken us head-to-head with an enemy fleet, stupidly thinking she could take the same kind of punishment as a Battleship. Then I remembered we were back on the Clover, and everything would be okay.
Reaching the Tactical Station, I socked Tremblay in the jaw and shoved the Tactical operator out of the way. Just like I’d thought, they had the program which I had ordered made ready, but hadn’t yet activated it. Fortunately they had pulled it up, and I hit the button to link everything together and activated the firing program.
For a moment I was confused; I remember looking up that this Battleship had a way to temporarily link up all the lasers on the ship, but that was impossible. The Clover couldn’t link up weapons—it didn’t have the capability!
Then we were hurtling past the droid Motherships. The console green-lit, showing the program I’d activated had worked and every laser on the ship opened fire, raking the sterns of fourteen Motherships at what amounted to point blank range. No human could make that kind of shot, but the DI and Tactical computer weren’t human, and at these ranges it was just a simple speed calculation. To my glee, every single laser on both sides of the Battleships reached out to strike an enemy engine.
The Motherships had shields, but they weren’t very strong to begin with, and most of that strength was forward-facing like the Hammerhead-class Medium Cruiser. That meant they were very weak and, after a turbo-laser led the way and weakened the shields over the engines, the lighter weaponry of the Battleship’s broadside punched through. They were weaker and did far less damage, but there were a lot of them—and only fourteen engines to target.
“If they can’t move, the rest of the fleet will pick them off from the rear,” I said gleefully before I began laughing. Once I started, I couldn’t seem to stop despite the continued toll of damage we were hearing from Damage Control.
The tactical computer reported that the gun mounts’ various focusing arrays were overheating, and automatic shutdowns had been initiated.
I hit the override, still howling with laughter as droids continued to take stern fire while we passed further and further away. But, following my orders—despite the rest of the mutineers—DuPont was pivoting the ship just enough from side to side to still fire on the increasingly distant Motherships.
Thanks to my override, the lasers continued to fire until their focusing arrays exploded one by one. Despite knowing better, it was almost as if I could smell the scent of the burning focusing arrays wafting up through the tactical console.
Then the lights flickered and the computer screen started going fuzzy. “Excessive computer linking has occurred,” reported the ship’s DI computer, “per protocol, all computers will perform an automatic shutdown procedure in three…two…one. To avoid a complete system overwrite and crash dump by Elder Protocooolllsss—” The smell of burning crystal arrays grew even more powerful, until it was practically all I could smell.
Then we lost power to the bridge and everything linked to the ship shut down, throwing the bridge into darkness. The sudden darkness caused the pain in my head to explode beyond my ability to withstand, and just like that I passed out.
Chapter 63: An Unjust Reward
A man floated without weight, without sight, and without movement of any kind—all that existed was a vague sense of weightlessness.
All was as it should be.
A series of beeps, boops, and the whine of mechanical devices whirred around him.
And it was good.
He was a man without burdens of the body or the mind; his was a soul truly free, and unburdened by the weight of—
“Subject is coming around,” a mechanical voice interrupted.
Free and unburdened because he was dead, nag-blast it! The man roused enough to silently swear before another wave of blessed oneness with the universe swept over him and, once again, everything was right and good. Precisely as it should be…
There was the sensation of movement, and unwanted light returned to bathe the drifting soul of a man without the burdens or purposes which had so plagued him from the day he became a man, until the very day he had finally died.
Bone-weary, he was, even unto death—which wasn’t strange in itself, seeing as that was what he had just passed through and left behind—but even advanced in years as he was, he was eager to see what his reward for years of faithful service would be.
At first, everything was a blur. His head lolled to the side and then his sight cleared, causing him to gaze upon the most blessed sight an engineer could have ever dreamed of.
The extendable structural support beams arranged in near-perfect geometry; giant, heavy machinery floating this way and that; and the inner light of the soul within the unit blazed forth with a holy, white, light through the porthole he was looking at said it all far better than words ever could.
Silently, the lost soul which had been grappling with an agony of fear and indecision—trepidations he hadn’t even been aware of—knew peace. Tears filled the engineer’s eye and dripped down his face.
He was finally ensconced within the bowels of Saint Murphy’s Blessed Workshop, and he was about to receive that which he had always dreamed and longed for: a place on Murphy’s engineering crew. He was on a starship, and not just any starship: he found himself drifting within a massive, most blessed Constructor! It was a ship that put all other Constructors to shame—as was only right and proper for the sanctified builder ship of the most blessed Saint himself.
Despite all his doubts and fears, long harbored through a life of diligent toil, he was saved.
Relaxing back into the weightless cocoon that surrounded him, like a larva waiting until it finished transitioning from one state of being into another, he waited for his chance to make his mark and sign on to the Holy Saint’s blessed work crew. He might have to start all over at the bottom of the ladder once again, but he was ready, willing, and eager to spend the coming centuries working his way up from a spiritual deck sweeper—or even grease monkey—back to the lofty heights of a right and proper Engineer. As he contemplated this, he found that he could not wait for the chance to swab Murphy’s decks and grease the holy bearings of his all-important spirit ship.
Everything was as it was supposed to be, and he drifted back into a long, eternal sleep, certain that when he awoke he would at last be ready to receive his final reward from the Saint himself.
The sound of voices—voices raised in argument—filled his ears when the old Engineer finally awoke, still floating within his holy cocoon but ready and eager to receive his final reward.
“What is he doing here?!” demanded a familiar voice and, with a furrowed brow, he opened his eye.
“It’s not so bad, Beth,” said a voice that the aged Engineer definitely knew, and his eyes bulged—he both recognized and despised the owner of the second voice.
“There was no need to turn the observatory into a home for the aged,” sneered the haughty one.
Unable or unwilling to accept the horror of his situation, the ghost of the man that used to be Terrence Spalding, during his time in the mortal realm, craned his head from side to side.
He found that, impossibly, his ears had not failed him. Wild-eyed at the possible implications, he stared at the spitting image of former-First-Officer Raphael Tremblay.
“What are you doing here in my afterlife?” he tried to yell at the mutinous officer, but his ire came out as more of an protracted, raspy sound, followed by a weak croak. His mind reeled; there was no way he could share an afterlife with a Traitor like this—he wouldn’t stand for it!
What’s more, there was no way that a traitorous dog like Tremblay could have possibly earned so much as a visitor’s pass to Saint Murphy’s blessed afterlife. In fact…his mental gears ground to a screeching halt as a realization—so terrible that it crushed his previous sense of elation at arriving in the afterlife for which he had pined during his life—fell upon the aged engineer. If there was no way an officer like Tremblay could find his way into the Holy Saint’s afterlife, then that could only mean one thing…
“I think he’s trying to say something,” Tremblay commented, leaning over to peer at him.
“I don’t really care what that old fool has to say; he’s more than half insane most of the time. At this point I’d think even his usual rambling would be nothing more than the babbling of an idiot,” the Princess sniffed and turned away.
There was the sound of servos whining and metal clanging, as something mechanical shifted its weight nearby.
Lifting his head and turning toward the source of the noise, a single glance confirmed it all—but it was simply too terrible to believe. The room was filled-to-bursting with Droids of all shapes and sizes, along with the murderous Caprian Princess-cadet.
“If you would like to see the final battle for the Elysium Star System, we have the stream,” a tall, spindly droid that shook and clanked when it moved offered in a mockingly jovial tone. “Allied forces are heavily outnumbered and—”
“I can’t wait to see Flat Nose get pummeled,” Bethany said spitefully. “Put it on the screen.”
The ghost of Spalding-that-was collapsed in despair. There was only one explanation that fit all the facts: he was not in Saint Murphy’s blessed afterlife after all, a place reserved for hardworking engineers. No, instead of the glorious afterlife he was…
The old engineer moaned with horror. He was in the Demon’s Workshop, the place where everything that could go wrong would. He’d been shanghaied straight down into Hades, the very place he’d feared worse than death itself—and sweet demons if it wasn’t just as bad as he’d always fear
ed and remembered from his time in that fusion reactor.
“I can’t believe you want the Droid forces to win,” Tremblay said with censure and disbelief in his voice, but Spalding knew it for nothing other than the ruse it truly was. He felt certain that if he looked closely enough, Tremblay’s tongue would be forked and his pupils would be vertical slits, like a serpent’s rather than a warm-blooded mammal.
“I don’t want our side to lose,” the Princess-cadet quickly disavowed, “I just want to see the little snot finally get what’s coming to him. If we could win with his death, I’d happily pay that price.”
“I’m sure you would,” Tremblay shook his head, but stopped doing so when the screen descended from the ceiling and lit up the room.
Spalding tried to say something to rebuke him—well, to rebuke the both of them—but once again his voice failed him. But instead of a croak, this time he managed something more like a rasp. It was progress anyway—if he was to be stuck in the Demon’s Workshop for eternity, toiling alongside Droids and Tremblay, the least he could ask for is his voice so he could issue proper rebukes.
Then, like the others, he was caught up in the action portrayed by the screen.
“This is a direct feed from our captured Battleship,” the spindly Droid with the smashball-shaped head said.
“Thank you, Chairman,” said Bethany, and for a moment Spalding wondered what it was the chairman of…putting the flies into Murphy’s ointment, perhaps? Or could it be the Chief Monkey of the Demon’s Workshop, come to welcome him personally as legend warned?
On the screen, a Battleship separated itself from the rest of the combined MSP, Droid Sentient Assembly, and Grand Fleet stragglers, accelerating for all it was worth.
Heavily outnumbered, it looked like a simple suicide attack to the old engineer.
“That’s the Battleship with Admiral Montagne, correct?” asked Tremblay.
“Damfino,” Bethany said with glee, exalting in the possibility, “welcome to the slash-lizard, Cousin.”
Admiral Invincible (A Spineward Sectors Novel: Book 7) Page 44
