Laurent now looked concerned. I frowned, knowing the man was trying to play me or handle me, one of the two. He needed to learn that I was not about to be played or handled, and just because I’d made him the Captain of this ship didn’t give him any special right to intrude.
“Are you sure you are in any condition to be issuing orders right now, Sir?” Laurent said cautiously. He must have seen something in my expression to give him pause, so I quickly blanked my features. “Perhaps it would be wi—” he paused and visibly changed the word he’d been intending to use, “I mean, prudent to wait until you’re cleared from Medical before taking back command of the fleet?”
“My command of this fleet was never interrupted, Captain,” I said coolly.
“Yes, of course, Admiral, what I meant was—” he started but I cut him off.
“I know what you mean,” I said sharply and then I altered my voice into a more reasonable modulation, “however, time sits still for no man—Admiral or otherwise. Besides, I’ve been planning to send reconnaissance out to the Tracto system ever since we point transferred here. Being injured battling Bugs changes nothing of those plans, as far as I’m concerned.”
“I’ve always understood the need to jump outside the bounds of the Tracto System, Admiral, and even agreed with you when you presented it if you’ll recall…although I never quite understood the need to jump ‘this’ far out,” Laurent said stiffly. “I also have no disagreement with sending a scout Cutter to scan the system prior to point transferring in with the Fleet.”
“Then I don’t see the problem,” I said evenly, suppressing the surge of irritability I felt for an affable smile instead, “I mean, so long as we are both in agreement.” I took a deep breath and waited for his response. Despite the fact he was trying to obstruct my orders once again, his words were actually quite comforting to hear. There was a reason I’d decided to transfer several weeks’ travel at normal space drive speed ‘outside’ the outer bounds of the Tracto System, and if an experienced Tactical Officer like Mr. Laurent couldn’t see it, then I still had a chance to pull my plan off.
“Both Caprian and Confederation regulations clearly state that when the Senior Officer is medically unable to discharge his duties, that his or her command temporarily,” he said, stressing that last word, “devolve on the second most senior officer in the ‘fleet,’ or ship.”
“And you feel I am medically unable to perform my duties, is that it, Captain?” I asked in a deceptively mild voice.
Laurent’s eyes cut to the side briefly before shaking his head. “Of course not, Sir; this is just a courtesy call. In any case, I’m not the Chief Medical Officer aboard this ship—nor am I the second most senior officer in this fleet.”
I had already opened my mouth for an angry retort when I paused, mouth open. Closing my mouth, I lifted a single eyebrow.
“Indeed,” I said my mind racing furiously my face a blank royal mask. Was this a play by the Easy Haven contingent against my power base? Or was it just a friendly reminder of how the succession of command could go if things ever got in earnest? More importantly than that…where exactly did my newly minted Captain stand in all this? “You are a Captain,” I finally reminded, shamelessly fishing for information.
“A courtesy title,” Laurent said dismissively, his brow furrowing tightly before smoothing over, “I’m just a newly minted Lieutenant Commander for the purposes of seniority, even though I currently have command of the Flagship.”
“Then,” I said deliberately putting on a facade of false bonhomie to hide the glint of calculation in my eye, “I thank you for the call. I’m certain that if you checked my desk you’d find written orders for just such an event,” I lied without a qualm, “both now and in the future.” And by ‘written,’ I meant exactly that; they might not exist now, but it looked like I was going to have to put pen to paper and give my loyalists all the written support they were likely to need if I became…incapacitated, and Easy Haven decided to cause a problem.
“Of course, Sir,” Laurent said smoothly, “on behalf of all of us up here, please accept my wishes for a speedy recovery.”
In retrospect heading out onto the hull had been foolish in the extreme, to do so without an escort nearly criminal. It looked like I needed to remind myself that things were not as simple as they used to be when I ran around in just the Clover. Thanks to the Easy Haven officers, I was going to have to alter my schedule and to take precautions—different ones, perhaps, than with out and out mutineers.
After severing the connection to the bridge, I pulled up a list of officers currently in the Fleet. Right beneath my name in progression of seniority was that of Captain Synthia McCruise, who was listed as a full blown, out and out Captain, not a lesser rank like Commander or Lieutenant Commander. I smiled faintly at this bit of news.
Commodore LeGodat had just proven himself sneakier than I’d originally thought when slipping Captain McCruise into my order of battle. I wondered how many other knives in the dark he had planted throughout my fleet. Eastwood, as I recalled, was both an Easy Havener and Laurent’s second in command.
Leaning back in my sickbay bed, I rubbed my hands together as I let my mind race through the possibilities. When the slate chimed, indicating an outside connection, I almost jumped out of bed in alarm before gathering myself and activating the screen.
“Yes?” I said, calling upon all my royal training to assume my patented, pleasantly distant, princely expression.
“They said you wanted to speak with me, Admiral?” the young man on the screen said looking slightly confused.
“And you are?” I asked arching an eyebrow.
“Acting Junior Lieutenant Archibald,” the other man said unhelpfully, I allowed a slightly confused irritation to show and he stiffened before adding, “uh, I’m a Captain in the Herring Squadron, Admiral.”
“Ah,” my eyes lit with sudden pleasure, it looked like Laurent wasn’t going to be an obstruction after all. I made a mental note to have a sit down with the Captain of my Flag Ship at the soonest opportunity before refocusing on the Herring Captain, “you’re just the man I was hoping to speak with, Captain Archibald.”
“I am, Sir?” the Acting Junior Lieutenant said with surprise.
“How would you and your ship feel about a little reconnaissance operation?” I asked with a knowing expression. The Herring Captain stiffened and looked at me eagerly.
“Anything you need, Admiral, just give the word,” he exclaimed.
“Here’s what I want you to do,” I said, leaning forward as if to include him in a great secret, and then walked him through the mission—and, more importantly, what I wanted him to do in case of trouble. Jean Luc was twistier than a sidewinder snake, and while Gambit was hidden and Easy Haven a tough nut to crack, Tracto had both immense resources and little in the way of a defense force. Just a little, self-defense squadron of Cutters and Corvettes stood guard over my wife’s home world, and they would be entirely unable to contest the system with two Battleships.
No, Jean Luc would be able to see the immense potential this System contained just as easily as I had. Twitting me by taking Tracto out from under my nose would be just an added benefit as far as he was concerned. The only question, really, was whether he had anything better in the way of easy prospects for a little empire building as he reestablished his little pirate kingdom?
So while I prayed with all my might that he did, I wasn’t counting on it. That’s why we were so far out here from Tracto. Assuming our Lancer’s home system was clear, we could jump back there easily, no muss, no fuss, but if it wasn’t…well, that’s exactly why I was so far out here.
“Thank you for this opportunity, Sir,” Archibald said with a fierce salute, “we won’t let you down!”
“I have every confidence,” I said with a nod before severing the connection.
Now all I had to do was sit back and wait. It was too bad that waiting was one of the worst parts of this job.
Cha
pter 17: Fix’ing the Game
He was the very model of a recently upgraded space engineer
The Chief Engineer was dug into the guts of the main engine, and happily working away repairing substandard power relays when the sound of a throat clearing came from directly behind him. His droid legs, seeming to have a mind of their own, gave a sudden jerk and his head smacked into the normal space drive with the sound of a metallic clang.
“Sorry, Chief,” Parkiny said from behind him, sounding concerned.
“Blast these legs,” Spalding cursed, wiggling out from under the engine to bestow a withering look on the Engineering rating, “what’s the meaning of sneaking up on a person like this? Don’t you know this is a restricted area?!”
“Of course, Sir, sorry,” Parkiny said, glancing around the cramped engine space with a critical eye.
Spalding colored; he knew what the other man was seeing, but couldn’t help himself from defending his latest project.
“I know she looks a little run-down at the moment, but by the time I’m done with her she’ll change the course of this war,” he said, puffing his chest up proudly.
“Of course, Commander,” Parkiny said doubtfully, “I’m sure she’ll be the finest lander in the sector.”
“This ship’ll be the turning point of the entire battle,” the old Engineer said, purpling at this sort of namby-pamby, nay-thinking, and out and out doubt-mongering!
“I’m sure it will, Chief Engineer,” Parkiny soothed, “just as soon as we get in a war, this series will make the difference.”
Spalding’s excessively young heart rolled over in his chest and he glared at the rating with bulging eyes. “We’re already at war, lad!” he yelled, “a war for the Clover, and as all the evil gods of cold space are my witness, if I have to pry it out of their cold, dead hands, she’ll be ours again!” His voice had risen to a scream by the finish, and Spalding wondered who this rating thought he was to condescend to an engineer with more decades of experience under his belt than Parkiny’d even been alive.
Parkiny opened his mouth and then closed it, speedily backing away when the Chief Engineer’s droid hands almost seemed to activate of their own accord.
“Whatever you say, Commander Spalding,” the rating said still backing away.
Spalding stood there breathing hard and glaring, his hands opening and closing, and each time they closed the mini-plasma torches extinguished. Go ahead and run, you coward, he thought furiously. A real engineer doesn’t run, a real engineer stays and finishes until the job is done! No wonder this one never made crew chief, he sneered derisively, no stick-to-it-v’ness. It was a sad state the engineering department had been reduced to, a very sad and sorry state indeed!
Shaking his head derisively, he turned to crawl back under the lander’s thruster assembly, still having a few more modifications to make before moving on to the next system.
Behind him, Parkiny cleared his throat. “Pass me the auto-wrench,” Spalding said absently as he assessed a pair of stan-bolts that looked like they’d never been taken out and cleaned.
After a pause, the tool was slapped into his hand. Humming under his breath, the old Engineer attached the wrench to the stan-bolt and watched with growing frustration as the auto-function in the head of the wrench started to whine and make unnatural noises instead of removing the bolt.
“Blasted thing,” Spalding muttered under his breath as his face tightened with disapproval. Adjusting the wrench to manual, he twisted around until he had the leverage he was going to need and then gave a good, hard pull. The bolt resisted until the old engineer put his back into it so he could bring all his strength to bear.
With a torturous squeal, the stan-bolt finally broke free. Adjusting the wrench back to auto, he hummed to himself until the bolt finally came free. Bringing the resistant piece up to his eyes after knocking it free of the auto-wrench, he pursed his lips in disappointment. The stress fractures on that particular bolt meant it was a loss. Now he was going to have to run and get a new one.
He sighed with frustration as he started to wriggled back out of the thruster assembly. With more than a little surprise, he looked up to see Parkiny still standing there. Almost like a fool, he would have thought, except that for all his nearly slacking avoidance of higher authority, like running a work crew, Spalding thought, giving the other engineer the gimlet eye. Other than that, the rating was a top notch engineer, so Spalding was willing to reluctantly give him the benefit of the doubt…for now.
“Well, what are you doing, just standing there—and in a restricted area, I might add,” Spalding frowned at the other man critically.
“Captain wanted me to tell you that we’ve arrived at Gambit and will be docking with the Station within the hour,” Parkiny said carefully.
Spalding’s eyebrows rose in response to the news. “Faster than I thought,” he said gruffly, his eyebrows lowering thunderously as he realized he might have looked surprised for half a second. A Chief Engineer can, and of a right ought to be many things, but ‘surprised’ is not one of them, he thought direly. Then a smile tugged on the corners of his mouth. Well, not unless it was in reaction to some fool of a Captain’s even more idiotic ideas—or an Admiral’s, he allowed.
The other man must have seen the smile and misattributed, because the rating’s shoulder’s un-tensed and he took a firm step forward.
“The yard’s been without a senior Chief Engineer for a while now, Sir; I was sure you wanted to be informed and maybe take a look at the progress on the Armor Prince,” Parkiny urged, and only someone who was deaf, blind and stupid would have missed a blatant attempt to manipulate an old engineer like this. Still, Spalding was torn. The Armor Prince was a Dreadnaught class, after all, and he’d issued firm instructions before he left about what was to be done.
“I was sure you’d want to come over and take a look, personally,” Parkiny said with a sly smile.
“That’s why we brought Glenda—to handle the yard,” Spalding grumbled, feeling genuinely torn. Then he steeled himself and started to turn away in disgust; a real engineer refused to be manipulated.
“Of course, Sir,” Parkiny said his eyebrows rising in surprise at this bit of information, “I just meant to make sure no one had taken our absence to start slacking or ignore orders, I mean.”
Spalding froze mid-turn and whirled around to pin Parkiny with a frosty gaze. “Don’t think I don’t know when I’m being manipulated, you bloomin’ idjit,” he warned the other man thunderously.
“So…you’ll go,” Parkiny said with a cocky grin. Spalding started to feel his ears steam and then barked out a laugh, feeling the urge for anger dying down.
“Yes, yes,” the old Engineer laughed, “let’s go take a look at the backup plan. The lander project can wait for a few hours.”
“Backup plan?” Parkiny blurted, his eyes bulging in surprise.
“You didn’t think one Dreadnaught class could take on two others of the same spec…” the old engineer paused hesitantly, “I mean, unless that one was the Clover.” He rounded on the other man, shoving a finger in his face, “Which the Prince isn’t!”
“Of course, Sir,” Parkiny said, his eyes crossing as he stared at the finger. His eyes then uncrossed and he looked around the decrepit version of an ancient Lancer Lander model doubtfully. “If you say so,” he allowed, then sounding as if he were just being polite, the younger engineer asked, “does she have a name? The lander I mean.”
“All she had was a series of numbers before,” the old engineer said dismissively, “that’s why I’ve gone and renamed her the Horse.”
“Horse,” Parkiny said, his face so blank it practically spoke all on its own.
“After a famous war back on old Earth,” Spalding said eagerly, ignoring the other rating’s lack of belief in favor of bragging about his latest project, “we’ll take them by surprise with this one, lad!”
Together, the two men walked over to the airlock and then clumped into the cram
ped confines of the courier vessel.
“Of course, we’re going to need to put it in a hard dock when we get back,” Spalding said thoughtfully.
“In a hard dock,” Parkiny exclaimed, “I don’t think we have anything big enough for the Prince, Sir!”
Spalding looked at him in confusion until he silently replayed and realized the other man had thought he was talking about the Armor Prince.
“Not the Dreadnaught—that’s naught but plum foolishness,” the old engineer scoffed. “I meant,” he quickly lowered his voice and looked around to make sure no one was listening to the two of them, “the Horse!” he hissed.
Parkiny looked at him like he’d just lost his mind.
Spalding threw his hands in the air. Why is it everyone and their brother, sister, and toothless mother keeps looking at me like I’m crazy, he wondered in silent exasperation. Name one time I haven’t delivered since becoming the Chief Engineer and got half a chance to do things right!
“Just one!” he shouted out loud. When the courier’s crew and the junior engineer both looked at him strangely, he growled and stomped his way back to his quarters. He took a quick sonic shower and changed into his second best work utilities. There was a lot of work to be done before he could get back to the secret project. He probably wasn’t going to get a lot of sleep but the Clover needed him; he couldn’t start slacking now.
“We’ll get you back lass, even if I have to design an entirely new weapon’s system, build a ship around it and outfit it with the new armor everyone thought was mythical,” Spalding said, slamming his cyborg fist against the wall of the shower hard enough to dent the solid metal wall.
Still, Parkiny was probably right to demand he head out there and make sure everything was still going in the right direction. The Secret Project and the Armor Prince as a backup plan just wasn’t enough; it wasn’t worthy of the Clover, even if not one of Spalding’s plans had failed…well, not when it really mattered!
Admiral's Revenge (A Spineward Sectors Novel:) Page 16
