The Representative turned and raised a hand before the blast doors closed, cutting him off from the bridge. “Thank you,” his words drifted into the bridge.
There was a stir on the bridge, but Middleton ignored it in favor of slumping back into his chair in relief as a hand landed on his shoulder.
“You’ve done a great job, Sir,” said his First Officer, a former Petty Officer from back before they left the Lucky Clover for their extended patrol. “I’m sure the Admiral will recognize what the rest of us have seen.”
“Six months of Hades when we were supposed to be gone for less than two,” Captain Middleton said with a sigh. “I’m not so sure the Admiral won’t tear off a strip of me and fry it on the grill the first time he sees us.”
“He attacked those Pirates at AZT with nothing—not so much as a single weapon installed on the ship, nothing except heart and the determination to save those people. Then he went head to head with Cornwallis and a top of the line Imperial Cruiser at the drop of a hat and a pair of cross words. Captain, he sent us out to stop piracy wherever we found it and report back. That’s exactly what we are and have been doing, Sir—he can’t fault us for that!”
“We haven’t exactly been dealing with pirates though, now have we, XO,” Middleton said heavily. “Sweet Murphy, but it will be good to get back to home space and be able to report back. You don’t know the weight of command until everything’s on your shoulders, Sarkozi.”
“You’ve done fine, Sir,” First Officer Sarkozi said, giving his shoulder a squeeze before letting go and taking a step back.
Middleton closed his eyes and when he opened them again, the tired Officer of a few moments prior was replaced by the seasoned warrior that had slowly replaced him over the duration of their cruise. He noticed the buzz on the bridge, which had sprung up at the Representative’s exit, had only grown.
“Something I need to know?” he asked, looking over at his First Officer.
Sarkozi nodded with an unhappy expression. “Yes, Sir,” she reported, motioning toward the Comm. operator. “We just got a report from the roving Lancer patrol, Sir.”
“What do our Lancers have to say?” Middleton asked sourly. “Did War Leader Atticus find a liquor-still, or another pair of illicit lovers in an airlock?”
“Nothing so benign, Sir,” the First Officer said heavily. “Captain, the War Leader reports they picked up a small power surge on their scanners, and when they went to investigate they discovered a recently opened pod.”
Middleton jerked in his chair.
“Another one,” he yelled, jumping to his feet, “is he sure? I thought we dealt with the last of those things two weeks ago—that’s why we’ve been running continuous patrols ever since we left Hedonist IV!”
“Looks like this pod was stealthed,” Sarkozi reported, “there was no way to pick it up with this Promethean junk they left on board, Captain. The Lancers report they wouldn’t have even found it if it wasn’t open; they’re standing right in front of it now and they can’t scan through the exterior.”
“These things are dug into us worse than ticks on a boar hog,” Middleton cursed. “Call out the Lancer Company and get ship’s Security down to the Armory to start suiting up. You know the drill: I want constant internal scans and roving patrols, and no one moves in teams of fewer than four.” The Captain paused to take a deep breath, “Good thing we didn’t have the crew turn in their side arms, isn’t it?”
“They would have rioted if we’d tried, Sir,” Sarkozi replied, tapping her own side arm for emphasis, “not after the last two pods assaulted the ship and tried to destroy main engineering in a frontal assault via the crew’s own quarters.”
“Space Gods take them; if I don’t see another blasted Droid for the rest of my life, it’ll be too soon, XO,” Middleton fumed.
“Man, not Machine, Sir,” First Officer Sarkozi said with solidarity. “We’ll beat these AI slaves before you know it! Just you wait and see, the Admiral will have the answer.”
“Just having the trillium to run their ships will help the other sectors right away,” Middleton agreed as he rubbed his chin, “besides, Droids trying to take over two whole sectors? I never thought I’d live to see the day. This trumps whatever troubles they have back home—there’s simply no way that anything the MSP has been dealing with even compares to this threat.”
Chapter 47: More Bugs and Mutinous Murmurs
“We’ve got a Heavy Harvester, Admiral,” screamed a Sensor Operator, bypassing her Warrant Officer and jumping out of her chair.
“Sensors, confirm that reading,” First Officer Eastwood demanded, hurrying over to the Sensor section.
“How did that one get back on the Bridge?” I asked, turning back to Captain Laurent with a sigh. “I realize that running the Bridge crew is your bailiwick, but isn’t this the same one that fell out of her chair a few engagements ago, is it?”
Laurent turned from looking over at the Sensor section to frown at me. Meanwhile, the sensor operator who had discovered the initial contact started doing what I could only describe as the chicken dance: hopping around her chair and stabbing buttons on her console.
“Admiral, we can’t take on another Harvester in our Condition,” Laurent said in a low, urgent voice, “and a Heavy, at that! Those things are as big as a battleship.”
“I mean it, Captain,” I said unable to tear my eyes away from the spectacle in Sensors. “I want that woman off my bridge.”
“Forget about Sensors and listen to me!” Laurent hissed in my ear. “We’ve got half our original weaponry, and our starboard hull has a gaping hole in it where hydroponics used to be. We have to withdraw, Sir.”
“No,” I replied evenly, leaning over to stare him in the eye with a hard look before turning back to try and look at the main screen. But once again, the crazy sensor operator caught my gaze. This time, her Warrant Officer had her by the arm and was telling her something in an urgent voice, “How you can focus when something like this is going on is entirely beyond me,” I muttered, waving at the section.
“Blast it, Admiral,” Laurent growled, snapping around to yell at Sensors. “Someone get that operator off my bridge and confine her to quarters—the Admiral can’t think with all this racket.”
“I didn’t say that,” I objected mildly.
“Sir,” Laurent said, placing a hand on my shoulder and squeezing, and I noted that he was now speaking loud enough for the entire bridge to hear.
I looked down at his hand pointedly until he removed it.
Laurent must not have liked whatever it was he saw in my eyes at that exact moment, because he flinched back before regaining control of himself. “Look,” the Captain continued in a much lower, controlled voice, “I know you plan to hold off the Bugs until their Main Fleet arrives and then let them do the heavy work while we just follow them into Tracto and try to clean up the pieces afterwards.”
I started as my eyes went wide. Then my brow crashed and I glared at him. “How could you know that,” I demanded, “did you tap my quarters?”
“I’m a trained Tactical Officer, Sir,” the Captain scoffed, “it wasn’t that hard to figure out.”
I suppressed a flash of irritation. I knew that if I let it consume me, the next thing I’d knew I’d be full of anger and seeing nothing but red.
“Well, now that you’re all updated on the grand plan,” I said tightly, “you understand why we can’t let any Bug ships through until we see the Mother-ship.”
“No, Sir,” Laurent said shaking his head sharply, “I do not understand that. What I do understand is that this ship cannot handle a Heavy Harvester in her condition, and,” he added quickly when he saw I was about to shoot him down, “that even if she could, the Little Gift would be in no condition to do anything afterwards.”
“We have to stop that Harvester, Captain. I don’t know how much clearer I can be,” I glared at him and hissed, “if we give my Uncle too much warning, he’s liable to do anything—up to
, and including leaving Tracto to the Bugs and posting scouts to inform him when they’re done. This way, either he deals with them himself or he heads off for a bit, giving us the chance to deal with the Bugs, make repairs, and then prepare for his return.”
“The crew believes in the Little Admiral,” Laurent said flatly, “they believe in him to get them into a fight and get them right back out of it again, but no one will be around to believe in anything if we go head to head with a Heavy Harvester in our condition. That ship has us by two hundred and thirty meters, and we’ve already been shot to pieces!”
“I, for one, would rather die than—” I was about to say ‘than leave Tracto and the Belters under my Uncle’s tyrannical rule,’ but I didn’t get the chance.
“That’s just it,” flared Laurent, “you’ve asked for my trust and this is the reason you seem to think I’m so hesitant to support you—this, right here! It’s because this isn’t all about you and what you want. I don’t care if you’d rather die than turn away from a fight, or endanger your master plan; you have a duty to this crew!”
“That’s not what I meant,” I snapped, “don’t put words in my mouth. Show me a way to win that doesn’t involve a sacrifice like this and I’m game. But if there’s even a chance, then we have to take it! If it looks impossible, I’ll turn us around and get us out of there—all I ask is a little faith! Not all this questioning and second-guessing I thought we’d put behind us!”
“Admiral, for the love of Murphy, we can’t do this in our condition. There’s no point in getting any more people killed,” Laurent begged. “McCruise’s been gone for three weeks, and for all we know her squadron’s lost and this is all we have left. Don’t throw us away because you’re too stubborn to change course, Admiral. I urge you to reconsider.”
“Throw away my people…that’s what you think of me?” I could feel myself turning purple. “Everything I do is for ‘my people’. I’m the Admiral of this fleet, but I’m also the Protector of Messene and I owe it to the people of this System to save them.”
“Defeating your Uncle and saving the people of Tracto is important,” Laurent said stiffly, “but don’t forget that before Tracto, the Bugs, or your Uncle, there was this crew—the same crew that’s bled and died for you, both back on the Clover and right here on the Gift. Please don’t forget us in your desire to seek some kind of revenge.”
“I’ve thrown myself on the grenade for this crew before, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat,” I said, fighting the urge to pull out my blaster and start shooting. “When Sir Isaac offered me the chance at luxury accommodations and life in prison versus death by torture, did I sign their papers and watch you all hang in my place as he wanted? No! I signed their full confession instead and readied myself for execution on the promise that you’d all be returned to Capria to live out your lives without a pogrom,” by now my voice had risen to an angry shout, “So, no; I haven’t forgotten a single one of you!”
“Contain yourself, Admiral,” Laurent said with concern as he looked around the bridge.
“What am I supposed to do, just to give up on the Belters, the Tracto-ans and the families of so many people in this fleet living in Messene?!” I shouted, feeling so enraged I was liable to have a stroke, “when we don’t even know if we can or can’t defeat this Harvester yet? Is that what you’d have me do, Captain,” I practically spat out the words, “leave them to die? I thought the military was here to help and protect people, and that if its officers didn’t have the stones to help others that they’d at least try to save their own families.”
“I have a wife on Messene, Montagne. So watch your implications,” the captain roared, before taking a deep breath and visibly relaxing himself. “Listen, Admiral,” he said, returning to a more professional sounding voice, “any chance there is of defeating your uncle and liberating this system and ‘saving our families’—those of us that have families on Tracto anyway—is more likely to die with us here if we’re destroyed than it is if we let this Harvester through and your Uncle runs for it.”
“You can’t say that with certainty,” I said coldly, my rage of earlier turning glacier like determination. “I won’t have it said that I stood by while your families were eaten and did nothing when I could have stopped it. I’ll roll those dice and throw myself on the grenade every time. Why can’t you seem to understand that we need to do this?”
“We don’t know if letting this ship through will or will not affect your plan,” Laurent ground out, “but I’m telling you, both as your Captain and your former Tactical Officer, that if we go up against a Heavy Harvester in our condition we won’t be rolling any dice—we’ll be destroyed, and before we can try to get away our engines will be crippled. Then, after that—assuming our reactors don’t go critical on us—we will be consumed and our bodies used to fuel the very attack upon the world my wife resides.”
I squeezed my fists until I felt like my hand was about to explode. The man believed this with all his heart and soul, and in the face of such certainty I found it almost impossible to disagree with him. In my heart I knew we could take this lone Harvester just like we’d taken entire groups of Bugs before, but it seemed my heart was wrong. Was this because I was still a naval ignoramus, or had I truly been blinded by the desire to save our people and stick it to my uncle?
“I have a contact,” the Communication’s Officer exclaimed, cutting through the tension-filled bridge, where I now realized every single one of the crew had stopped whatever they’d been doing to turn around and watch the spectacle of their Captain and Admiral go at it nail and tong with eyes wide and mouths agape.
“What do you have, Comm.?” Captain Laurent asked grimly.
“Sir, it’s the Heavy Destroyer,” the other Officer said looking surprised, “I have Captain McCruise on the line.”
“Put her through to the main screen,” I said, bolting upright in my chair. “And Sensors,” I turned to spear the wide-eyed Sensor Officer with my gaze, “find out how far away her Squadron is and exactly where they’re located. We can stop this Harvester yet!”
“Contact!” exclaimed a Sensor Operator. “I’ve got three of them, Sir.”
“Blast, it looks like McCruise lost a ship,” I said, shaking my head over the loss of the men and equipment. The next news out of the Sensor section really rocked me, though.
“We can confirm three more Heavy Harvester’s, Admiral,” called out the Sensor Warrant, his voice shaking.
My eyes bulged and I almost lunged out of my seat with the urge to go and see with my own eyes, when Captain Synthia McCruise blotted out the tactical picture up on the main screen with the image of her seated in the command chair of her own bridge.
“Greetings, Admiral, it looks like we showed up right before the action,” the hatchet-faced woman said, pursing her lips.
I fought the urge to scream. The Heavy Cruiser plus the entire detached group couldn’t handle four Heavy Harvesters, not after the damage we’d taken and probably not even if we were up to full strength.
“McCruise,” I said evenly, “it’s good to have you and your ships back with the fleet.”
For half a second, the Confederation Captain looked confused and then realization dawned.
“You must not have us on your sensor picture yet, Admiral,” she said, not realizing that as far as I was concerned I couldn’t even see the tactical representation with her taking up the entire screen. I was going to have to talk with the Comm. section later about split screens when we had enemy ships to keep an eye on.
“I’m afraid we’ve been a tad mono-focused on the Bugs bearing down on us,” I said, trying to laugh off the dig against my sensor team, “please enlighten us.”
“Our mission was a success, Admiral,” McCruise said with satisfaction. “We monitored and then intercepted two tribute ships full of trillium.”
“Tribute ships?” I said sharply.
“Yes,” she replied crisply, “two armed freighters that rolled over quick e
nough, once we’d defeated their escort.” She looked up and met my gaze solidly, “An escort composed of two Light Destroyers.”
“Losses?” I asked, feeling my gut tighten.
“One Cutter destroyed,” she replied, and I closed my eyes in reverence, “another Corvette and Cutter were damaged. All told, two armed freighters successfully interdicted and captured, along with one Light Destroyer. The other was too damaged to repair, and it was scuttled at the scene.”
“Murphy blast them,” I growled, “well, we’ve got a Cutter that could use some time in the yard and another Corvette that’s missing its fusion reactor, along with a destroyed Cutter whose crew we already picked up.” I rolled my lower lip between my teeth for second before I reluctantly decided we couldn’t risk losing one of our larger ships—the Heavy Destroyer and the Heavy Cruiser—to a tow. “Oh well. We’ll have to leave the Corvette out here in deep space and have your two damaged ships and the damaged Cutter here escort the freighters back to Gambit.”
McCruise’s face tightened. “I already sent the tribute freighters to Gambit under escort of the damaged warships attached to the short squadron,” she reported.
I froze and then forced a smile I absolutely wasn’t feeling.
“I see,” I said as evenly as possible, then I popped out a patented royal smile, the meaningless kind that displayed for politicians and the masses. “Well, it would have been nice to have those ships here to help escort our own battle-damaged vessels, but since it seems you’ve already taken the initiative in that arena, I suppose there’s nothing to be done other than to send our own damaged ship back to Gambit on its own.”
“I did what I felt was best at the time, Sir,” McCruise said, sitting stiffly in her chair.
“Of course you did, Captain,” I allowed, flashing another false smile, “initiative in the field and all that. It was a touch outside of your mandate to send the captured ships off like that, but I won’t quibble with the woman on the spot.” Although, I silently determined that the next time I sent her out, I was going to cut a set of orders that were like a straitjacket, but for once they’d completed their mission. I saw no reason to hamstring ‘how’ a person accomplished that mission, even though it was giving me heartburn.
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