Spalding closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the Little Admiral’s Battleship was still on course—only it had pulled even further ahead of the rest of its supporting fleet. It looked like the Admiral was intending to charge right into the guns of the largest concentration of Droid mother ships still in the system. But instead of slowing down, if anything, the Battleship’s speed increased!
Absently, the Chief Engineer started to calculate which Battleship would have the better top-end speed: this newly-captured ship, or his beloved Dreadnaught-class? But he quickly gave up in disgust. What did it matter, now that he was in the afterlife and apparently cursed to watch the death and destruction of all he held dear over, and over, and over again—because that’s what the images had to be: some kind of continuing loop of his worst failures. He cringed as his mind filled with the other imagery he could expect to see as he trudged through the bowels of the accursed ship for time immemorial.
“Take a good look, old man: there goes your precious Admiral. There’s no way he survives this one,” Bethany chortled, clearly finding the role of his personal tormentor-for-eternity quite to her liking.
Spalding wet his lips and cleared his throat before he was finally able to rasp, “We’re all doomed!” He knew it had to be true—otherwise he wouldn’t be here in the Demon’s house of horrors with this lot!
“No, we’re safely out of range of anyone who could do us harm,” the Princess-Cadet said speaking clinically.
“I’ve been cursed to spend an eternity with you lot—traitors and mutineers and assassins, all of you,” he whispered hoarsely, wondering why his throat hurt when he was already dead. He then remembered that he was probably here in the Demon’s workshop to be tortured, so it really wasn’t surprising that his body was less than shipshape.
Tremblay stiffened and glared at him.
“I think there’s a stronger case to be made that you, and your precious Little Admiral, are the traitors and mutineers in this story of yours,” Bethany said coolly. “But any way you slice it, you will not be spending an eternity with us.”
Spalding perked up with interest, wondering if he just needed to be tormented for a while in the afterlife before moving on to a better place…but then even that puff of wind went out of his sails. If anything the Princess said was true then, instead of a better place, he was probably destined to clean the Demon’s fusion reactors—from the inside—after being appropriately tormented by the realization that everything had been lost because he wasn’t strong enough.
“It’s my heart,” he sighed, “those quacks must have grown it in the same tank as a natural born coward. It was a weak heart, and I just wasn’t strong enough…it’s all my fault,” he finished, bowing his head. His shame and disgrace were now well-and-truly complete.
“And there we go with the crazy talk, right on cue,” Bethany sneered. “Just like I predicted.”
“Hush; the man just had all his implants knocked out, and almost froze to death before being retrieved and revived,” Tremblay said.
Retrieved by some terrible Imp of the Demon, no doubt, Spalding swore silently, one determined to drag every little bit of my suffering out for as long as possible before takin’ me down to this accursed workshop.
He watched half-interestedly as, on the screen, the first of the Droid mother ships started to fire. Despite himself—and likely owing to the leftovers from that wretched, second-rate heart—the old engineer’s eyes were dragged to the woeful sight of the MSP’s last charge.
Then he couldn’t look any longer, and he squeezed his eyes shut tight. However, a second later his eye popped back open in a squint and his mouth immediately fell open. From one moment to the next, a hailstorm of fire lashed out of the damaged Battleship, striking so fast and furiously that it was almost over in the blink of an eye.
As he’d feared, though, the Battleship lost all power and instantly went dark and dead to the world. All her engines and emissions stopped as surely as if a plug had been pulled from her mains, and nothing but atmosphere pumped out into the void from rents in her hull—but, behind her, explosions rocked the droid mother ships. Two of the droid ships literally exploded outright as their fusion reactors went critical, blowing off their entire sterns while others rolled uncontrollably with massive, gaping rents in their hulls as they ejected their drive cores.
The old engineer tried to pump his fist, but his limb stubbornly refused to comply. Nothing responded in his demon-plagued spirit body but his voice, which issued a hoarse cheer that even the Demon couldn’t stop. The Little Admiral and his captured ship had sold themselves dear, but they’d struck a blow the enemy wouldn’t soon forget!
“Impossible,” Bethany said, her jaw dropping.
“That’s why he’s still an Admiral,” Tremblay commented, earning the glares of both Bethany and Spalding for his words.
A Droid approached the old Engineer. “Do not continue attempting to access your extremities. The hardening on your cybernetics was insufficient and will take time to repair, replace, and restore to adequate functionality.
For a moment, the old Engineer was half interested in the squawking of the mechanical demon, and then he scowled thunderously.
“What are you blathering about, ma-machine?!” he swore. “Can’t you hold back your after-worldly tortures long enough for me to see the battle?”
On the screen, all but three of the Conformity mother ships had taken crippling engine damage. The rest of those mother ships were fully functional, except for their engines—meaning they were just as deadly in every way, especially including their antimatter-fueled spinal lasers.
But Spalding knew the battle was doomed to be lost; after all, why else would the Demon let him see it unless it would heighten his soon-to-be-eternal torment? But, for all of that, like an addict in need of a fix he couldn’t help but root for his comrades.
Forgetting for a moment that all was lost, the old engineer started to think that there was no way for all but three of the surviving mother ships to turn except by way of maneuvering thrusters.
“Avenge him, lads,” Spalding shouted hoarsely.
The surviving Droid heavies were soon swarmed by the rest of the relief Fleet—an organization previously commanded by one Admiral Jason Montagne.
Bethany shot him an enigmatic look but held her tongue.
When the Sentient Assembly’s damaged Battleship moved in on the three still-mobile mother ships, the old Engineer cheered in spite of his desire to grant the Demon’s Imps as little satisfaction as possible. And, as the rest of the Fleet’s lighter warships, fighters, and gunboats followed suit and tore into the damaged mother ships with a vengeance, he once again lost his voice from his continued shouting.
Even the traitor, Tremblay, couldn’t hold back his enthusiasm—unlike the silent Princess-cadet. Spalding wanted to upbraid him but he decided that if men couldn’t at least temporarily put aside their differences during a struggle of man against machine, there was little hope for the human race and he begrudgingly held his peace.
Those differences were completely forgotten—temporarily—when the Harmony warships remaining in the area around the Grand Fleet’s boarded Battleships counterattacked suddenly. They were clearly doing their best to drive the humans off the mother ships, and an additional fifty gunboats launched themselves off the Grand Fleet Battleships in a major attempt to support the surviving droid heavies.
This was the moment the entire battle for the Elysium Star System—and two whole Sectors—hung on and the old engineer couldn’t stop from holding his breath.
Allied fighters and gunboats moved to intercept the Conformity gunboats and, with superior numbers and combat power, they slowly began blowing the slower, lighter-armed Conformity boats out of cold space.
At this point, even the Princess-cadet cheered, and the entire human contingent of this infernal chamber of Murphy’s hellhole stood, sat, or lay prostrate with their eyes glued to the screen as the Allied Forces slowly demolished
the Droids one by one.
This continued until every mother ship had been knocked out or destroyed, every gunboat that left the Battleships had been annihilated, and the few surviving Harmony warships were in desperate retreat. Even in flight, however, they inflicted heavy losses upon humanity’s lighter warships.
“We didn’t lose,” Spalding said bewilderedly, before looking around suspiciously for the surprise reinforcements, or crushing betrayal that would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
When the lights of the Admiral’s captured Battleship started to sluggishly come back on, he immediately suspected trickery of the worst kind.
“According to our calculations, the odds of the surviving Harmony-Conformity forces achieving victory conditions at this point are less than 20%,” reported the spindly Droid Chairman.
“What does that mean, Chairman Bottletop?” Bethany asked, sounding more composed than the old Engineer was at this point.
“If they process information at a capacity remotely similar to our own War Department, this means that—after rechecking with their Sensors to ensure they are not in error—in all likelihood Conformity and Harmony will attempt to retreat with their surviving forces,” explained the Chairman.
“We’ve won,” Tremblay said with abject shock in his voice. “Jason Montagne did it…he really did it.”
“Our forces have not won, yet,” the Chairman temporized, “however that seems to be the way the situation is trending—statistically speaking, of course.”
Through all the doublespeak and droid temporizing, one thing became suddenly and shockingly clear: they’d won! That meant the screen-feed wasn’t some kind of Demon’s trick…which meant he wasn’t in Hades. And since neither the traitor, nor the would-be assassin, could ever possibly in a million lifetimes join him in Saint Murphy’s Workshop—he still didn’t know how the droids fit into all this, so he ignored that particular variable for the moment—but all of that combined meant…
“What the blazes…you mean I’m not dead?!” Spalding bellowed hoarsely. “And there we go with the crazy again. But at least you’re starting to come back to reality,” Bethany snorted. “No, old man, you’re not dead. A droid small craft picked you up during the battle for the jammer field and hauled you—and the Lancer you were floating with—back to this ship. They’re still working to repair your cybernetics, but the rest of you should be fine—or at least as fine as your still addled brain can facilitate,” she finished with a sniff.
“Argh!” he shouted, realizing he was right back to square one: doomed to suffer in this cruel and uncaring world no matter what he tried to do. He shook his head in bitter defeat; the Demon had played him like a fiddle, giving him hope and then snatching it away, all while forcing him to suffer with a second-rate ticker squishing away in his chest.
Clearly, he was doomed to keep on living as only half the man he used to be. This is actually worse than being confined to the Demon’s Workshop, he decided as he laid back down in total despair.
Oh, the Demon sure knew how to torture a man.
Chapter 64: The Clean Up
“Give him more medicine,” ordered DuPont.
“I’m still not sure it’s safe to wake him up at this point,” said a worried voice. “The Admiral just had a grand mal seizure and my portable scanner is showing he’s suffered some kind of neural damage. He might not even wake up or, if he does, he could be a vegetable—I’m just a medic, not a doctor.”
“If he wakes up confused, he could still think we’re all mutineers who need to be shot,” said the Assistant Tactical Officer hesitantly.
“He had a seizure; of course he was talking funny. Seizures are known to cause changes in mental status,” DuPont valiantly defended me.
“Seizures can also cause permanent changes in personality—that’s what I’m afraid of,” the Assistant Tactical Officer said coolly. “And since the last time he thought I was not just a well-known, traitorous officer, but a man as well, excuse me for being concerned!”
“What I would be most concerned about is that even when the Admiral was out of his head, his plan worked,” DuPont said pointedly. “Who knows where we’d be if we’d listened to you.”
There was the sound of heavy breathing over me, but it all just didn’t seem concerning enough to get up for. I knew I should be alarmed at all this talk of mutiny and my being out of my head, but right then I just felt like I was floating and it was too nice a sensation to ignore.
The pause extended pointedly, until it was broken after what seemed like an eternity. “Wake him up,” said the clear, alto voice of Lieutenant Steiner, “the Grand Admiral’s starting to get irritated and no one here has the rank to deal with him. He’s asking us to come over and hard dock with his Flagship, even though we don’t have enough personnel to provide basic medical relief, and this ship is heavily damaged in everything but its engines. We need the Admiral for this.”
There was a sting in my arm, and then my eyes shot open. All the colors seemed more vivid than usual, but I felt oddly tired. Not the usual kind of tired, either, but as if I was whipped out mentally and physically. It was hard to focus, but I remembered the words Steiner had just spoken and I knew I had to.
No one was going to take away my Battleship—especially not Grand Admiral Archibald Manning!
“Belay that hard docking nonsense,” I groaned, sitting up but I was too weak and the medic pushed me back down before I could get more than halfway.
“How many fingers am I holding up, Admiral?” asked the medic, shoving his grubby paws in my face.
I batted his hands away. “Get out of my face with those things,” I grumped.
“You just had a major neurological event, sir; I’m afraid I need to perform a basic check,” the medic said regretfully.
For a moment I wanted to tell the man off, and get on with business, but a combination of weariness and the conversation they’d just had about me while my consciousness was still floating somewhere outside my body stayed my hand.
It really felt like too much work to argue, and besides, the memories were fuzzy and seemed distant. But I did recall being somewhat confused right before the lights went out both figuratively and literally.
So instead of getting surly and potentially proving that I was holding a grudge, I sat there and calmly answered questions about how many fingers he had up, and then I tracked the stylus he held with my eyes. I moved all my arms and legs when commanded, then sat still while they ran a scanner over me and pronounced me fit for human consumption—erm, make that ‘fit for human interaction.’
“What’s our status?” I asked as soon as the medic reluctantly backed away.
The officers exchanged uneasy looks.
“No, I’m not about to go on a rampage,” I said with a sigh. “But you were saying something about the Grand Admiral?” I prompted, silently deciding that while he might have been elected Grand Admiral, if he tried to take my Battleship then he would always be a mere High Captain to me.
Again with the looks, and then Steiner cleared her throat. “Admiral Manning would like us to dock with his ship,” she said, finally stepping up to the plate, “and the rest of our fleet is waiting for orders.”
“How long was I out?” I asked calmly.
“Half an hour, sir,” she said meeting my gaze levelly, “you weren’t in the best condition and we’ve only just rebooted our computers. However, a lot of code and programs were chewed up by the sub-AI and the Elder Protocols. Since we don’t have original data cubes available for a complete reboot, we’re working with pretty minimal computer support at the moment.”
“We couldn’t fight off a Destroyer right now with what we’ve got working,” cut in the Assistant Tactical Officer, looking like she was caught between being subdued and challenging me.
My memory was hazy, but if I’d really thought she was Officer Tremblay then she probably had a right to be upset. Although, in fairness to me, if we hadn’t followed my plan to destroy the e
nemy fleet we would probably all be dead. Just because you made the wrong call in the heat of the battle didn’t mean that you didn’t have the right to be upset when someone held a weapon on you. I had to give her that, because if I didn’t, then how could I condone being mad at people who got up in arms about me?
We all make mistakes in combat after all and it was our gods given right to get indignant about people shoving guns in our faces and taking shots at us for getting it wrong. When I looked at it that way it was probably best if I just let the matter drop, at least from my end of things.
“And the status of the Fleet?” I asked, realizing I still wasn’t functioning on all cylinders. Time felt elastic and I was forced to wonder if I was still mentally impaired, despite whatever the medic had concluded. Of course, the fact that I was asking myself questions was probably a good sign, since when I was charging into battle to defeat the droids I hadn’t been.
“After we took out their engines and then got knocked out of the fight from linking our computers, the Harmony Squadrons moved in to defend the Conformity heavies. The Sundered lost a Corvette, and the United Sentients lost their Cruiser and another Destroyer in the fight. The Grand Fleet units only have five remaining effectives as of right now, but after the USA Battleship finished off the three still-functioning Motherships, the Harmony squadrons retreated, leaving the Conformity to finish the fight.” reported the Assistant Tactical Officer. “There were a lot of gunboats, but they came out piecemeal and the USA fighters and gunboats were able to keep them under control until some of the larger ships were free to help.”
“Where are the survivors now?” I asked.
“We’ll show you,” said the former com-tech.
Steiner and DuPont reached down to lift me up off the floor. Looking up, it took real effort to focus on the main screen. Our warships were parked around the beleaguered warships and, as I watched, one of them picked off a pair of gunboats that had just launched off a Battleship.
Admiral Invincible (A Spineward Sectors Novel: Book 7) Page 45
