Admiral's Revenge (A Spineward Sectors Novel:)

by Luke Sky Wachter

  “Yes, Sir,” Brence replied after a moment.

  “Good to see you’re still with us,” Spalding said, concealing his own relief. For a while there it hadn’t sounded too good from the pilot’s seat.

  “Thanks you, Sir,” the younger man said and then with trepidation added, “was there something you wanted to tell me Commander.”

  “Oh yes,” Spalding said clearing his throat at his own absentmindedness, “of course. I was going to tell you that the Little Admiral’s just started tearing into the Clover’s shields now. They should be spotting at any time.”

  “Okaaay,” Brence said drawing out the word.

  “Now, just as soon as I see a hole in the shields, we’re going in!” Spalding said with real enthusiasm.

  “Uh, Sir,” Brence said sounding very concerned, “if I understand how our propulsion system works, then I think I’m a little stumped.”

  “Oh?” Spalding asked, his glee turning to curiosity. “How so?”

  “How are we going to slow down in time to board the Lucky Clover, without crashing into the hull fast enough to crumple this Lander like a tin can, or lighting up a sensor profile so loud they couldn’t miss us with their point defense lasers if they wanted to?”

  “Oh, that,” Spalding said fighting the urge to scratch a sudden itch on his head.

  “Please tell me you didn’t forget a way to slow us down,” Brence pleaded.

  “Of course not,” Spalding snapped, “what kind of shoddy sort of engineer do you take me for?!”

  “Then you’ve found a way?” Brence asked with hope in his voice.

  “Well, my first thought was to use a modified form of the full-stop maneuver and then hit the Clover with bucking cables,” Spalding said bitterly, not liking to admit to failure, “but I couldn’t figure out a way to miniaturize the system in time.”

  “What do you mean, ‘you couldn’t figure it out’?” Brence asked with a hint of panic that was quickly suppressed, “you’re the great Spalding—the Chief Engineer—you can do anything!”

  “I’ll figure that out for the 2.0 version,” Spalding shot back more than a little defensively, “but we’ll still need the bucking cables, of course.”

  There was stunned silence from the younger man. “Sir, I don’t understand,” Brence said carefully, “bucking cables are just that: cables. They pull you towards a thing; it’s impossible to use them to push something away and slow us down!”

  “Eh? Oh, that,” Spalding said, relieved that it wasn’t something actually important that had the younger man worried. “Don’t worry,” he told the younger man, “I’ve got that part covered.”

  “What do you mean ‘covered’?” Brence sounded like he was about to have an aneurism.

  “The bucking cables are just optional…more to help guide us in.” Spalding explained.

  “Please, Sir,” Brence begged, “just tell me how we’re not going to crash into the Clover without irradiating ourselves or being blown out of space.”

  “Like all great plans, it’s simple,” Spalding declared, “we match speeds as closely as possible with the Clover and coast through the shields, using our thrusters to guide us in. Then, after we eject our drive system with a preprogrammed, ‘bug-out-now’ program to distract the Clover with a giant sensor profile, we-”

  “We lose the drive without slowing down?!” Brence said, unable to believe what he was hearing.

  “Well, of course,” Spalding said shortly, “just before we penetrate the shields—or slightly after, perhaps—we lose the engine. If the Clover starts to speed up, we use the bucking cables on the nose of the Fix to pull us in, but we can also use the thrusters—those things are nearly undetectable,” he added confidently.

  “But what if we’re going in too fast for thrusters, Chief?!” Brence demanded.

  Spalding hesitated. “Well, we’ve got an eject system and Caprian full body grav-boards attached to the chairs, which’ll work just fine so long as you’re wearing your skin suit. The chair has a CPU programmed to slow down and make an emergency landing.”

  “This plan isn’t going to work,” Brence said despairingly.

  “What? Of course it’ll work,” Spalding cried exasperatedly, feeling genuinely offended.

  “We’ll be killed for sure if we’re going too fast,” Brence said in negation.

  Spalding sighed. “I suppose we could always go with Plan B,” he grumbled.

  “Which is, Sir?” Brence demanded irritably.

  “Coast in through the shields with our ass-end pointed at the hull of the Clover, then light off our drive to slow us down in time to avoid goin’ ‘splat’,” he said morosely. “The main problem with most lander operations was the inability to both: come in fast, and slow down fast. With this new drive, neither one is really a factor at these speeds.”

  “Which might work if we had multiple Landers,” Brence lamented. “One of them might get through, but with it being just us we’ll be targeted and shot for sure! Are you really trying to tell me you don’t have a functional plan?”

  “Oh, Plan B will work; we come in fast and slow down faster, but just think of the potential damage to the hull of our ship!” Spalding countered.

  “Sir, I’m not sure—” Brence started respectfully.

  “Fine,” Spalding snapped, “we’ll go with plan B and blast our way to a stop—but if the Clover’s so much as scraped, it’s goin’ to be yer job to fix her!” he rebuked, swinging his finger slowly through the ballistics jelly until it was pointed at the other man. Even if Brence couldn’t turn his head to see him do so, it made the old engineer feel better, “I’ll preprogram the computer and activate the hardwired friend or foe signal into the transmitter just as soon as we clear the shields. If they haven’t replaced too many of their weapon mounts with newer systems, we should be fine.”

  There was a pause. “Friend or foe signal…don’t you think they’ll have changed that by now?” Brence asked with surprise in his voice. “Besides, it doesn’t matter what signal Tactical sends them; the gunners on the gun deck can always go to manual control.”

  “It’s a hardwired signal put into each gun mount directly,” Spalding explained casually, “bein’ too AI-paranoid, we figured the only way to get around that was to upload a patch into each Gunner’s individual fire control. They can still override it by putting in the right code, but not in the time it takes us to clear the shields, slow down, and land. At least…that’s the plan.”

  “How did you know to put such a thing in…just in case you’d lose the ship?” Brence exclaimed in rising excitement.

  “It’s just an old royalist plot,” Spalding said, casually downplaying his part in the whole sordid affair. He didn’t add that he’d only allowed it so long as the program could be ordered to purge from a simple code command from Tactical or the individual gunner. “It was put in place in case Parliament ever took the ship and we needed to reclaim her.”

  There was another pause. “Why didn’t you tell the Admiral about this? He could have used it!” Brence argued.

  “Won’t work,” Spalding disagreed, “the Captain knows the code.” He paused, feeling slightly embarrassed, “I mean, the new minted Commodore: Jean Luc the Traitor. The software was occasionally upgraded, but the access code never changed. And besides,” he added gruffly, “the Admiral was a little too gung-ho. You can’t trust a Captain or an Admiral with that sort of power unless there’s no choice! For all we know the Little Admiral might have decided that getting back at Jean Luc was worth crippling, or-or-or, even destroying the Lucky Clover!”

  “We couldn’t let that happen, now could we,” Brence said, and if Spalding didn’t know better he would have said the other man had a slightly sarcastic tone in his voice, but he let it slide.

  “Nope,” he agreed happily.

  A companionable silence filled the cockpit for several minutes before Brence finally chimed back in.

  “I wish you’d led off with the friend or foe signal,” the
young engineer finally said.

  What was left of Spalding’s brow wrinkled, “Where’d be the fun in that?”

  Brence gave a frustrated sigh in response.

  Chapter 78: Hanging Tough

  “Roll the ship!” Laurent shouted over the hubbub of cascading damage reports and rapidly falling Shield numbers.

  “Tactical, if energy becomes an issue, focus your weight of fire on the Vineyard at the expense of the Lucky Clover,” I ordered, pounding the arm of my command chair. “And Shields, keep our facing on the Clover as strong as possible!”

  The Armor Prince shuddered and the ship lurched to the side. I was forced to stop pounding on them and hold onto the arms of the chair for dear life, or risk being thrown.

  “Decompression on decks five through nine, Captain,” Crewwoman Blythe reported, continuing to be a voice or reason and calm in the sea of chaos that had become the bridge of the Prince.

  “Admiral,” Laurent yelled into my ear, “we can’t keep taking this kind of punishment, they’ve got it timed so that they’ve got one of them on us at all times and the other one is free to swing around and regenerate her shields slightly before reentering the battle, whereupon they both hit us at once. When one gets damaged, the other covers while they use their superior speed to get away. We have to bring in reinforcements or withdraw, Sir!”

  “No!” I shouted. “We have to keep the pressure up, and our support squadron is still dealing with the final Heavy Harvester; I can’t risk a Harvester being thrown into the mix.”

  “There’s always the Lady Akantha’s ship,” Laurent urged, “if we tell her we need a spoiling attack, she might be able to distract one of the Battleships long enough for us to close and put the hurt on the other one.”

  I hesitated, feeling torn. Being in the big chair of Fleet Command had never been more excruciating. The last thing I wanted to do was throw my wife and her crew against Dreadnaught class Battleship in their already damaged Cruiser. Then my face hardened. Steeling myself, I straightened my posture and adjusted my uniform.

  “Send a message to the Furious Phoenix with my compliments on their conduct thus far, and tell Akantha we need them to make a diversionary attack on the Lucky Clover,” I said, doing my best to keep my voice detached and emotionless.

  “Right away, Sir!” Laurent said, jumping over to the communication’s console and almost ripping the headset off the Technician’s head in his eagerness to send the message himself.

  “Shields down to less than 15% on both facings, with severe spotting,” Longbottom reported, his fingers flying over his console without pause as sweat ran down his face, “if we were still back in the Little Gift, they’d have collapsed by now, Sir! I don’t know how much longer I can go before we have a cascade failure and have to perform a full system reboot without some kind of break.”

  “Just do the best you can, Ensign,” I told the young Officer, “you’re the best Shield Operator we’ve ever had—if you can’t do it, then I have absolute confidence that no one can.”

  “Aye, Admiral,” the young Ensign replied, not even bothering to look up, so engrossed was he in his job.

  Watching the main screen like a hawk I saw the Lucky Clover was almost on us for a little tag team action, and seconds later their turbo-lasers were digging into our hull, only occasionally deflected by our perforated shields.

  The deck shuddered with a pair of riotous impacts.

  “We just lost a pair of turbo-lasers to counter battery fire, Sir!” Eastwood reported.

  “Rerouting communications through the secondary array,” Comm.’s reported. Laurent was still speaking urgently into the headset, which was now on his head.

  “They’re just as damaged as we are, bridge,” I felt the urge to say in order to keep morale up, “the vultures may try circling us, but they don’t have any idea what this crew can do and we’ll send them to the Demon’s pit if they don’t wise up—the MSP is more than they ever counted on!”

  The cheer that followed this little speech was much more lackluster than the previous ones. But I wasn’t surprised, since everyone was busy and not to put too fine a point on it, we were one Battleship against two and it was showing. Hopefully Akantha could do something to distract the Clover long enough for Spalding to try and pull of whatever it was he was trying to pull.

  “Blast,” the com-tech exclaimed, throwing his headset down onto his console in disgust. I blinked in surprise, I hadn’t even noticed when Captain Laurent finished relaying his message and handing the com-equipment back to the tech, “they just took out both our secondary and tertiary arrays. All we’ve got are the short range antennae left.”

  “A couple of lucky shots,” Laurent said, just before we lost a pair of heavy lasers to counter battery fire.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, as important parts of my ship were being taken out one by one. “They deliberately targeted our com’s and took out our arrays for some reason,” I disagreed. I turned snapping my head over to look at Eastwood, “Mr. Eastwood, inform the gun deck there is a thousand credit bounty for both the deck and gunner who knocks me out a communications array on either one of the Pirate ships! They want to try and stop me from speaking with my fleet, then let’s just see how they like to trying to coordinate their attacks when the shoe is on the other foot!”

  “Relaying the message, Admiral,” Eastwood said with clear disapproval of my plan in his voice. No doubt he would have liked me to focus on turbo or heavy lasers if I was going to interject myself into the running of the Tactical Department at all. Well, too bad for him; this was the exact opposite of the time to be tiptoeing around the sensibilities of the Easy Haveners. We were in the middle of a battle and it was time they learned to cater to me, not the other way around.

  Chapter 79: Rising from the Ashes

  Akantha turned away from the main screen and swept the bridge with her steely, cold gaze.

  “You heard Captain Laurent,” she said, a harsh smile crossing her face, “it is well past time we rejoined this battle.”

  “Plotting a course, Hold Mistress,” the Promethean Helmsman said.

  “How are our engines?” Akantha demanded, turning to Damage Control.

  “The repairs are going well, but I don’t know if and when they’ll be operational,” the woman said.

  Akantha shook her head. “I should have known better,” she said shortly, “when you need to know something, it is best to go to the source.” She turned to the Communications Stander, “Get me a long talker link to the wizard down in Main Engineering.”

  “Yes, Mistress,” replied the Tech.

  “Yes,” growled the young man on the screen, “time is money, but then since you’re not paying me anything I guess I’ve got all the time in the world. So what do you need?”

  Akantha looked at him severely. “What is the status of our engines, Wizard,” she demanded. “We are about to reenter the battle; I cannot help it if you refuse remuneration for your services.”

  “I have a name: it’s TJ,” the man snapped, “and it’s not service if a man refuses to work of his own free will—it’s slavery! And another thing, this whole ‘Wizard’ business is nothing but a bunch of hokum; I’m an engineer, not a miracle worker.”

  “How are our engines…TJ,” she asked impatiently, holding onto her temper with both hands. The wizard started to open his mouth but she raised a hand to silence him, “Keeping in mind that you were captured on the battlefield, and as such are mine to do with as I please for the next five years. If personal parole, family loyalty, or the word of your King are not enough to secure your honorable service, then perhaps the thought of dying on this ship as nothing but a shiftless oath-breaker will succor you into doing your best?”

  “You’re more batty than a mad hatter, Lady, if you actually trust me to run your engines and fix your ship,” TJ the Engineer said slightly more guardedly. “But in answer to your question, the repairs on the Main Engine proceed apace. If you intend to use them then
I can only guarantee them working for fifteen minutes before they burn out again—maybe for good this time, if you press them.”

  “Now, was that so difficult, Wizard…TJ?” she asked with only the slightest pause in using his preferred method of address. “And we both know the quality of your lineage; I seriously doubt you would betray your parole and bring the vengeance upon your family which is betrayal’s reward.”

  “You wouldn’t…” TJ said, wide-eyed.

  “Of course I would,” Akantha said seriously. It always surprised her how hard it was for these Starborn to understand how serious she was about certain things.

  The young Wizard gulped. “Well…then I guess I’d better get back to keeping your ship and engines running as well as possible.”

  Akantha gave him the nod of a Hold Mistress and turned back to her bridge crew after severing the connection.

  “The Main Engine will work for fifteen minutes,” she said imperiously, “so make those minutes count!”

  “Yes, Lady Akantha,” Gants said fervently.

  Chapter 80: Complications

  “Is that the Phoenix?” Brence said in disbelief.

  “Looks like,” Spalding replied, rolling his eyes and muttering, “idjit,” under his breath. It was as clear as moonshine that the modified, Duralloy II-girdled Imperial Strike Cruiser was in the final stages of making an attack run on the Lucky Clover.

  As the two engineers watched, the Phoenix came charging in at speed, its long range turbo-lasers firing and weakening the Clover’s shields before it came into range of the old Battleship’s own weaponry.

  “Yes,” Brence hissed, grinning as the Phoenix lived up to its namesake and unleashed its fury on the aged Battleship, opening up several rents in the Clover’s hull and causing air and men to vent out into space, “die, you Parliamentary backstabbers.”

  Spalding scowled. As far as he was concerned, every attack both on the Clover was a blow to his own body. He couldn’t take pleasure in damaging his ship, even as he strove with all his power to take it out of the hands of the cretins who had stolen her.