“The Armor—” I realized my mouth had started to drop open and I quickly closed it, returning the salute. “Of course you are,” I said, trying to play it cool, calm and collected, like I had somehow come into magic powers and known all along that the battleship which had appeared alongside us had been one of ours.”
“You look like you’ve had the worst of it since I was put on detached duty to take those tribute ships and our limpers back to Gambit, if may be so bold, Admiral,” acting Captain Rider said.
“Fighting Bugs is a full-time job and hazardous to life, limb and duralloy-plated warships, Acting Captain,” I said, my mouth going on autopilot as I was still taken aback, “if you’re not ready for that kind of adversity, then you’re not ready for the Bugs.”
“Anything we can do to help, Sir,” the Acting Captain said firmly.
Something she had said earlier finally caught my attention. “You said that McCruise assigned you to the battleship?” I asked, keeping the suspicion out of my voice.
The Acting Captain colored, “The Acting Commodore put me on detached duty to shepherd the prizes and limpers to safe harbor,” she clarified, “but it was Commander Spalding who recruited me to Captain the Prince, since none of our damaged warships could be completed first.” She was clearly referring to the Armor Prince when she said ‘Prince.’ “For some reason, all the ship repairs seemed to have concluded simultaneously. What are the odds?”
I hid a smile. “That sounds like our Chief of Engineering,” I said in a serious voice.
Her mouth made a little moue of displeasure, but in the face of my calm acceptance of the state of current affairs, she quickly got rid of the expression and looked into my eyes. “Whatever you need, Sir,” she said with a nod, “we’re here to help.”
My eyes narrowed as I considered this latest development. McCruise’s First Officer had brought out the Armor Prince, and now the main question here was how best to use the Prince and her crew…speaking of which.
“I’m curious, First Off- I mean, Acting Captain,” I quickly corrected myself.
“Fire away, Sir,” she said with a smirk.
“What’s the status of your crew over there,” I asked as courteously as I could, because while that was an important question, the main one as far as I was concerned was the location of a certain aged, space-crazed engineering officer.
“We’re pretty light on the ground,” Rider reported with dissatisfaction, “we don’t even have enough for a skeleton crew, Sir, but Commander Spalding insisted we needed to get out here and into the fight! We have fewer than a thousand souls onboard.”
“Interesting,” I said, and it was. It was interesting because here I was in an almost fully-crewed Heavy Cruiser that had been battered to the point it was now actively dangerous to take it into combat, and an under-crewed battleship had just dropped into my lap.
“Most of our crew are so green you can still smell it; we’ve only a few hands that have ever served on a warship before, Admiral,” Susan Rider continued with her report.
“Not a problem,” I said, slashing my hand through the air and then paused, “may I presume that the Commander is aboard the Prince, or did he decide to stay at Gambit Station?”
“No, Sir, he’s here,” the Acting Captain of the Armor Prince hastened to assure me.
“Well, Captain,” I said, leaning back in my chair and putting a leg over its arm. I was doing my best to present the perfect image of a royal lack of concern with our hasty and dire situation, “You have a powerful, undamaged ship crewed by men better suited to repairing warships than fighting them, and it just so happens I have a fighting crew inside a warship that’s in dire need of some repairs. What say we swap?”
Rider looked flabbergasted and then disbelieving before her face slowly settled into the perfect image of forced acceptance.
“Might I assume that I’ll be able to stay aboard the Armor Prince until arrangements can be made to return me to my home ship?” the woman asked hopefully.
I hesitated, feeling torn. The Little Gift, damaged as it was, would need a steady hand to guide a green, unfamiliar crew that might not even be used to working together back to Gambit.
“Sorry, Captain Rider,” I said regretfully, “but I think we’re going to need you to transfer over here with your crew. Maybe next time?”
“I be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed,” she said, looking frustrated and yet at the same time strangely resigned to her fate, as she finished with a sigh, “but you can count on us to get the Little Gift back to safety.”
“Good woman,” I said, blinking my eyes and leveling a finger at her for emphasis, “don’t think you or your crew’s dedication to duty will be forgotten.” I didn’t add that it wouldn’t be forgotten, assuming I was still alive this same time next week, but I figured I didn’t need to.
“Thank you, Sir,” she said, her face seeming to brighten as she perked up, “I’ll make sure to pass the word along. We’re getting good at running convoys of damaged ships back for repair.”
“That’s the spirit,” I grinned.
“I’ll have my Helmsman and Navigator get with your team and have our ships docked together for the transfer as soon as humanly possible,” she said with a wistful look on her face.
Chapter 53: An Impassioned Plea, part two
“Captain Middleton,” I said, staring at the main screen, my stomach clenched with dread for the second time within the same 24 hour period, “what an unexpectedly pleasant surprise.”
The other man flushed. “I’m sorry we took so long to get back home, Admiral,”’ the other man, Captain Middleton, replied as his face flushed, “but events spiraled out of control and…well, we’re here now.”
“I understand things spiraling outside of one’s control,” I agreed.
“Well, I understand you’ve had some trouble of your own back here in Sector 25, Sir,” Middleton nodded. My ears picked up at the implication that if he was only now returning to this Sector then he must have been outside of it for a significant portion of his patrol.
“You could say that,” I said grimly, recalling my wife, Lancers and crew being abandoned the Omicron, while the rest of us were taken back to Central for torture and imprisonment.
“I know there’s nothing light about your situation here, Sir, but Admiral,” he said, taking a deep breath and clearly plunging forward, “I haven’t just returned from a patrol, Sir,” the Captain said looking tense. “I have critical information—for your eyes only.”
“More critical than following a Bug Armada and Mother-ship into Tracto where they will encounter my traitorous uncle a man who turned pirate, betrayed this fleet and then invaded Tracto—my Wife and most of our Lancer force’s home world?” I asked as mildly as I could.
“Sir—” Middleton started, clearly believing that it was important enough to continue on in the face of this disastrous, looming confrontation and my heart sank. This was exactly what I didn’t need right at this time: another problem. A big problem, if I could read the Captain of the Pride of Prometheus—a man who I had sent out on what was supposed to be a short patrol in the Medium Cruiser.
“Let me clarify,” I said firmly, “is this system about to be invaded before, during, or immediately after the Battle for Tracto? Or Easy Haven, or Capria, the rest of this Sector, or anything else that we hold dear and are currently trying to protect?”
“Under that time frame…no, Admiral,” Middleton said, looking like a man whose dog had just been shot and taken to the vet. “However, I still believe that it’s imperative I speak with you…the fate of this Sector could depend on it,” his eyes bore into mine. “And not just this Sector, either; there are countless innocent lives at stake here, Admiral.”
I felt myself sway and a wave of unexpected rage swirled through me. I couldn’t even deal with one threat before two more popped up, and here I was on the eve of what should have been the titanic, climactic battle of my life, being told ‘oh, by the way, Jason
—I mean, Admiral Montagne, Sir—but even if you win, there’s this new and terrible threat to the sector looming over all our heads.’ It was enough to make a grown man want to scream and start tearing things apart with his bare hands. I mean, honestly, how much more could they ask of me?
I chuckled, realizing that had been a terribly stupid question to have asked myself. Joe Public and his friend, the Plundering Politician, would ask and keep on asking until there was nothing left, and then spit on me for failing to live up to their expectations before tossing me in prison for a failure and possible threat to the future. We can’t have those sorts of people running around and stirring up trouble, after all.
“Sir?” Captain Middleton asked, looking concerned. That’s when I realized that laughing inappropriately in the middle of a life or death conversation probably wasn’t doing too much good for my image as a man and officer in control of not only himself, but his entire fleet.
“I understand,” I said in response to Middleton’s plea for my time and attention, “and we will sit down and take a good, hard look at seeing what we can do to help these people you are talking about. But as of right now, I’m afraid that the most important thing,” I paused and reconsidered, “nay, the only important thing is winning the confrontation before us. Events are in motion that cannot be stopped—if we lose, there is a world full of people who are going to be eaten by the Bugs. So until and unless it becomes more urgent than people being eaten alive, I’m afraid I’m going to have to take a rain check.”
“I understand your position, Sir, and,” Middleton heaved a sigh, “and I can’t fault you for it.”
“I promise,” I started, and then at another wave of irrational anger I decided that I was letting my emotions get the better of me and needed to do some kind of personal penance, “no, I swear: after we’ve dealt with the Bugs and my uncle, win or Lose,” I said, crossing my heart, “I’ll see what I can do for these people—what the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet can do for these people,” I paused for a single heartbeat, “agreed?”
“How can I say ‘no’?” Middleton asked rhetorically.
“I understand,” I said and in that moment all my anger and irritation and rage faded into a small corner of my mind. I could see that the weight of the world seemed to be resting on the other man, a Captain I’d sent out to Patrol our border and help keep our worlds safe, while I was supposed to go deal the death blow to the pirates in this sector. I knew this look of his, because I’d worn it too many times myself. Unlike my superiors, who had sent me out here as something of a joke Admiral and whose response to finding out I’d been forced to deal with world shattering events with no support was to try and kill or imprison me, I recognized that I was responsible to this man. I’d sent him out there into the black, cold space—with just one ship. When a Captain I sent out finally reported back with what looked and sounded like the sort of situation I had railed against facing unsupported and literally begged for help dealing with, could I in turn get mad, throw him under the bus, or simply ignore what he had to say?
If I became like my erstwhile superiors how could I possibly claim any sort of outrage at how I myself had been treated. It was time to practice what I preached: Accountability, support, and a refusal to ignore a problem when it stared me in the face.
“I swear it,” I whispered again. I couldn’t, I simply couldn’t deal with one more crisis right now. If I diverted my attention from saving Tracto and dealing with both the Bugs and my uncle, we could lose everything. I had to stay focused, and I couldn’t do that if I was chewing my mental fingernails over yet another ‘life threatening’ crisis. One thing at a time, I reminded myself.
“I’ll hold you to that, Sir,” Middleton said firmly.
His words were like prison shackles locking me down. Duty was a master more fearsome than sloth or uselessness, and anyone who said otherwise was lying.
Chapter 54: Planning to Offend
“Alright,” I said, sweeping the conference table in the ready room of the Armor Prince, a room that was like, and yet at so very much unlike a similar room on the Lucky Clover, “we are gathered here for war. This is a pre-battle planning session and the only one where we’re all going to be gathered together to plan and discuss our strategy and tactics for defeating the enemy. That said, I’d like to open the table for comments.”
“Sir,” McCruise began cautiously as she leaned forward. She and her Heavy Destroyer had transferred back to the Flagship shortly after my conversation with Middleton, and considering the odds we were facing, I was glad to have her. “On the face of it, we are heavily outnumbered to the point it becomes questionable if we are even really in this fight.”
“That sort of defeatist talk is hardly the sort of attitude I’d hoped to find to start our meeting off on,” I said, taking a deep breath.
“I said ‘on the face of it’,” McCruise repeated without strong emotion, “it’s true we’ve only got one Battleship and a handful of lighter vessels, while both the Bugs and the pirates each heavily outnumber and outgun us. By any objective measure you might care to use, we are at a serious tactical disadvantage.”
“Thanks,” I said, allowing sarcasm to color my voice. I could tell she was aiming for a point in there somewhere, but the way she was going about it was definitely getting my hackles up.
McCruise gave me a nod in reply that sent my blood pressure sky rocketing.
“With the arrival of the Armor Prince,” Laurent interjected before I could say something McCruise would regret, “we have significantly increased our combat power. The Gift was, and is, still combat-capable but I wouldn’t feel confident of her ability to survive a smaller, fresh foe, let alone a heavy target. But the Prince—he changes things.”
“Without the Battleship, all we’d be doing here is whistling in the wind,” McCruise said with a decisive nod at Laurent, “but with her back in service and recently repaired and upgraded, we actually have a chance now. It’s a small one,” she said with certainty in her voice, “but it’s definitely there. This plan of the Admiral’s is crazy, but it just might work.”
“Crazy, is it?” I asked blithely.
“Mad as a hatter,” McCruise replied, and I didn’t like the way the other captains and first officers around the table laughed in response, “but that might be the only reason it will work: because no one in their right mind would want to do such a thing. Following in behind a Bug fleet and waiting until either the Bugs or the pirates get the upper hand before swooping in to pick up the pieces…there’s a certain cold-blooded beauty to it that just might work.”
“Gee, thanks,” I said with a frown before quickly re-mastering my features.
I took a breath when I noticed everyone had looked over at me after my outburst. I’d wanted to regain control of the conversation, but this wasn’t at all the way I would have liked to do it.
“In truth, I learned from the best,” I said in a colder, less emotional voice. I didn’t think it would help my case to mention that the ‘best’ I was referring to were in no small part my own cold-blooded uncle and his ilk, “The plan is to let our two biggest enemies duke it out and, as Synthia put it, swoop in to pick up the pieces,” I swept my gaze around the table. “Unfortunately, no plan survives contact with the enemy,” I paused to allow a few ticks to pass before cracking a smile, “even if the plan is to not make contact with said enemies until after they’re done chewing on each other.”
The laughter that swept around the table at this little non-joke was decidedly absent from the face of my Chief Engineer, who was looking decidedly concerned.
“However,” I said quickly regaining control of the conversation, “if at any time it looks like the Bugs are going to be able to land on Tracto and begin consuming its populace in large numbers, and I think that we still have a good chance of defeating whatever remains of the opposition in-system, I reserve us the right to get up on our white horse and charge off into battle. Besides,” I added contemplatively, “the best ti
me to take action might actually be while the two sides are distracted.”
“But what about gettin’ back the Clover?” Spalding burst out as soon as my mouth closed.
“The Lucky Clover is a high priority,” I temporized, “however, the timing will have to be right or we won’t have any kind of reasonable chance.”
“What kind of chance are you talking about?” Eastwood asked suspiciously. “Even if the Vineyard’s out of the picture, that still leaves us going head to head with a Battleship of the same class. If they’re ready to kill and we’re just trying to make a capture of some kind,” he looked both doubtful and mildly contemptuous at the same time, “then we are sure to lose.” He paused and then added, “All things being equal, of course.”
“Odds are that by the time we enter the battle, the Lucky Clover will have already been damaged,” I said, projecting certainty into my voice, “I don’t know yet exactly how we’re going to manage to storm the ship with as few Lancers as we have available, but—”
“The Commander,” Acting Captain Rider broke in glancing over at the Chief Engineer, “brought along two companies of marines.”
“Even with the marines,” I said shortly, “it’s going to be a tough fight.”
“I still don’t see how we’re going to take that ship if they’re really determined to deny her to us,” Eastwood said flatly. “Even if they don’t stop us with their broadsides, a battleship isn’t like boarding a cruiser; it’s bigger, with over ten thousand crew. If they seal the bulkheads…”
A few chuckles went up around the room.
“Locked doors won’t stop our Lancers so long as they have power suits and vibro-weapons—they’ll go through the walls,” I said with a chuckle at the First Officer’s surprise.
“Well, even so,” Eastwood said looking slightly flustered, “getting in close could cripple this ship,” he jabbed his finger down on the Armor Prince’s conference table. “How are we going to be able to deal with any remaining pirates or Bugs if the Prince is shot-up?”
Admiral's Revenge (A Spineward Sectors Novel:) Page 39
