Commander

by Richard F. Weyand

  “Make it a big one.”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  The Sintaran picket ship HMS Loba dropped out of hyperspace closer in to the system than a manned ship would have dared. She began spacing in to Garland at a leisurely – for her – two gravities. She was challenged over radio multiple times and ignored them.

  “So what have we got here?” Vice Admiral Espinoza asked.

  “Well, there’s a lot of warships, Ma’am, it being the capital and all.”

  “Well, our orders say ‘Make it a big one,’ so we want a battleship. Can we pick out a flagship?”

  “Yes, Ma’am. They’re all squawking.”

  “Let’s take a flagship under way. With the admiral and his staff aboard. Not down on the planet.”

  “There’s this one, Ma’am. They’re getting under way to intercept us.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Should we change course, Ma’am?”

  “No. Maintain profile. When they fire on us, I want Attack Plan Alpha.”

  “Yes, Ma’am. Updating Attack Plan Alpha as we go. Challenges are continuing.”

  The Garland battleships drew up in squadron formation to coordinate their point-defense, and came out after Loba at 1.5 gravities military acceleration. They challenged Loba, but Espinoza did not respond.

  Eventually, they drew into missile range.

  “Multiple missile separations, Ma’am. We have eight missiles incoming.”

  “Attack Plan Alpha. Execute.”

  Loba pivoted hard with her nose thrusters and went to war emergency power. She accelerated perpendicularly to the missiles’ incoming vector at over ten gravities, then hooked around toward the battleships. The missiles were too slow on the turn to keep Loba targeted as she shot around them.

  “Targeting the flag, Ma’am.”

  Loba was rocked by point-defense hits on its depleted-uranium nose cone as it bored in on GSN Rampart, the battleship issuing the challenges. The closing velocity approached fifteen thousand miles an hour when Loba speared Rampart just forward of the engines and vented her plasma bottle inside the big ship. Rampart’s plasma bottle let go, and the battleship was engulfed in flames as it broke up.

  Vice Admiral Maria della Espinoza, safe in her bunk on Imperial Fleet Base Draco, signaled Imperial Fleet HQ Sintar.

  “Mission accomplished.”

  The rest of her flotilla remained on station a quarter light-year from Garland. They were joined by a converted battleship, crewed by HMS Raptor, the projector ship HMS Simon Magus, and picket ships that continued to pop into the rendezvous.

  “He was not bluffing, Your Highness. About that, at least,” Schmitt-deVries said.

  “God damn it!” King James said. “What is it with those damn picket ships? They poured point-defense fire into it, and it all just bounced off.”

  “I’m surprised they had so many people willing to go on a suicide mission, to be frank, Sire.”

  “I’m not. Sintar is huge, and there’s nutcases everywhere. It’s only a dozen or so people on a picket ship anyway.”

  “Even so.”

  “Maybe they paid big death bonuses to their families. Who knows? The issue is we can’t fight those damn things. If they want to put a couple of them into the space station, there’s nothing we can do to stop them.”

  “That’s certainly true in any case, Sire. They seem unstoppable.”

  “Well, they aren’t. We just don’t know how yet. But since we don’t know yet, we have to appease that bastard or he’ll pin our ears back.”

  “What do you want to do, Sire?”

  “Let his spacers go. Let them unload and load their damn ship, service it properly, and then let them go. I wish I could teach that white-eyed bastard a lesson, but it’s not yet time.”

  “Very well, Sire.”

  The ‘Visiting Warship’

  It took two weeks to unload and reload SCV Wanderlust before she headed back out of the Garland system. While the crew was a little spooked about being on the station while the cargo robots did their job, there were no incidents. Captain Wilhelm did tell them to make sure they minded their manners, though, and didn’t get into any scuffles. They didn’t need much encouragement to comply, which meant it wasn’t a proper shore leave, but you couldn’t have everything.

  Wanderlust headed to the Garland hypergate. She cycled through without any issues, and the crew gave a sigh of relief.

  “The Wanderlust has left Garland, Sire,” Admiral Leicester said.

  “We’re sure she got away clean, Admiral Leicester?” Dunham asked.

  “As sure as we can be until we hear from her again, when she drops out of hyperspace, Sire. We were watching her sensors right into the hypergate. We saw the initial corona as she entered before contact was lost.”

  “All right, Admiral Leicester. Execute Operation Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  Four Imperial Navy picket ships dropped out of hyperspace on the planet side of the debris field from the collision of the HMS Panther with the unidentified ‘visiting warship’ that had been seeking to range Wanderlust. One of the four was, oddly enough, HMS Panther. HMS Loba, HMS Peregrine, And HMS Bald Eagle were also along.

  No one was guarding the debris field, and Loba signaled HMS Raptor. Twenty minutes later, HMS Raptor dropped out of hyperspace behind the debris field.

  “All right, Kowalski. Go!” Chief Fordham said.

  One of the self-propelled HARPER units walked out onto the ramp on its tracks, and launched into space.

  “I’m away,” Kowalski said.

  “They’re trying to nose around the debris field from that collision,” said Rear Admiral Brian Richards, Admiral Vernon Fairchild’s chief of staff. “They have a big ship out there – heavy cruiser or battleship – parked out beyond the debris field.”

  “How many of those damn suicide picket ships do they have along?” Fairchild asked.

  “Four, Sir.”

  “Just four?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Mount a response. Send a squadron of heavy cruisers, then a squadron of battleships several light-seconds behind. If they respond to the first attack, we’ll have follow-up. And if they don’t, eight heavy cruisers is more than enough to deal with one battleship.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Information only, Sir. The flag says they’re getting organized around the planet, and company will be headed this way soon.”

  “Does she have a time estimate, Mr. Olsen?” Captain Oleg Volkov asked.

  “No, Sir. Communication is that it is for information only, and they will take care of it. No deadline on our activity, Captain.”

  “I see. Very well, Mr. Olsen. Keep a close ear on that channel in case we need to get out of here.”

  “Will do, Sir.”

  Kowalski was moving into the slowly expanding debris field. Most of the pieces were pretty small.

  “OK, Kowalski. Warships don’t have recoverable memory modules, so we’re not gonna find one o’ those. We gotta look for other stuff we can use to identify whose ship it is.”

  “There’s not much out here, Chief.”

  “Keep looking, Kowalski. You got time. Loba says we’re covered.”

  “OK, Chief. Lots of small pieces, and most of them are pretty burned.”

  Kowalski moved toward some bigger pieces, and made a grisly discovery.

  “Some of the bigger pieces are bodies, Chief. They’re so burned, I couldn’t make them out.”

  “See if there are anything like uniform buttons, or IDs in pockets, anything like that.”

  “Will do, Chief. Uniforms are mostly gone.”

  “OK. Failing that, you may have to shove the sampling needles into them past the char and get DNA samples.”

  “OK. I just keep telling myself I’m not really out here, you know what I mean?”

  “Yeah, I know. Do the best you can, Kowalski. Remember, it’s important.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

&nb
sp; “Pieces of the ship are less important. Everybody’s running them damn DP warships now, so verifying it’s a DP warship doesn’t buy us anything.”

  “Got it, Chief.”

  Fordham thought about it.

  “Hey, Kowalski. Dial the resolution down, and shift the color frequency off into the blue. Might make it easier.”

  “Thanks, Chief. That helps.”

  “They’re coming out after us, Ma’am.”

  “Warn me when they’re still one hour away from sliding into missile range,” Espinoza said.

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “There are two squadrons of Garland ships on the way, Sir. The first is of heavy cruisers, the second of battleships.”

  “Mr. Olsen, have we received any updates from the flag?” Volkov asked.

  “No, Sir.”

  “Maintain profile.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “They’re just over an hour away from the point of no return, Ma’am.”

  “Flotilla command. All ships at the rendezvous point, form on Loba.”

  “Transmitting, Ma’am.”

  “Admiral? We have multiple hyperspace transitions. I now make the Sintaran formation as forty – four zero – picket ships. Update. Now forty-five picket ships, Sir.”

  “Fleet orders,” said Garland Space Navy Vice Admiral Peter Williams. “Cut acceleration and flip ship. Re-engage on reverse course. Fleet out.”

  “Transmitting, Sir.”

  “Admiral Fairchild won’t be pleased, Sir,” his chief of staff said.

  “If Vern wants to, he can come out here and throw all these ships and men away himself. I’m not going to do it. If we had even a shot, it might be worth it. But they would destroy us all for the price of sixteen of those little bastards.”

  “We would get sixteen of them, though, Sir.”

  “How many of those do you think Sintar has, Frank? They’re probably churning them out like potato chips.”

  Williams considered the tactical display.

  “No, against four is one thing. Against that formation, it’s suicide.”

  “Sir, message from fleet. Message reads, ‘Abort attack and withdraw.’ It’s from Admiral Fairchild, Sir.”

  “So there we go,” Williams said. “We’re all on the same page at least. What we’ll do against those things if it gets down to it in a serious way, I don’t know, Frank. But we’re going to have to figure something out.”

  “All right, Chief. I’ve got a couple dozen DNA samples, and I managed to pick up some personal effects floating around, but it’s pretty slim pickings. The plasma explosion didn’t leave much in the way of soft items.”

  “OK, Kowalski. Head on back.”

  Kowalski turned himself around and tried to head back to the Raptor, but he had no propulsion.

  “Hey, Chief. I got no propulsion. I’m dead stick out here.”

  “All right, Kowalski. Working on it.”

  Fordham switched to his group channel.

  “Hey, everybody. Kowalski just had a failure of his propulsion unit. We need to get the other self-propelled unit out of the stack. Everybody on a HARPER unit.”

  One after another, HARPER units trundled out of one side of the HARPER container and down the ramp until the second self-propelled unit was free. Fordham stopped on the ramp.

  “Hey, Kowalski. Swap units with me. You’re the genius with these things.”

  “Sure, Chief.”

  Fordham swapped to Kowalski’s original unit, and his point of view was suddenly from out in the debris field, looking at the ship three miles away.

  “I’m coming, Chief. I’ll rescue you,” Kowalski said.

  “Hey, I’m in a bunk back on Osaka, remember? What you need to rescue is your sample bag.”

  “Oh, yeah. Well, anyway, I’m coming. Turn your lights on in my direction so I can see ya.”

  Kowalski had had the short range lights off. Little good they would do in a debris field this big. They were for looking at things within a few feet.

  “OK, Kowalski. They’re on.”

  “Yeah, I see you.”

  The other HARPER unit showed up, and Fordham handed over the sample bag to Kowalski.

  “So, do I tow this unit back?” Kowalski asked.

  “No. Get that sample bag back to the ship. We’ll leave it.”

  “Leave it for them to find, Chief?”

  “Nah. I’ll talk to Fitzhugh about it.”

  “OK, Chief. See ya.”

  The other Harper unit headed back to the ship.

  “Hey, Fitz,” Fordham said on another channel.

  “Yeah, Jimmy?”

  “We need to leave this broke HARPER behind, but we don’t want anybody to retrieve it. Answers too many questions, I think. Can you have the point-defense boys pop it from there once Kowalski and the guys are back aboard?”

  “Sure, Jimmy. They can always use practice.”

  “I’ll stay here until they got a bead on it. If they need me to, I can wave my arms or something.”

  “OK, Jimmy.”

  All the other HARPER units had been driven back into the container by the time Kowalski returned. He landed lightly on the deck, motored back into the container, and closed the door.

  “All HARPER units secure,” Kowalski reported.

  “All right, Fitz. They’re all aboard. Can your point-defense boys see me?”

  For answer, half a dozen point-defense lasers along the flanks of Raptor flashed red, and the HARPER unit vaporized. Kowalski saw the flashes for an instant, and then his VR switched to his console on the other channel when the connection died.

  “Holy shit,” Fordham said.

  “What, Chief?”

  “If you’re ever outside the ship, don’t ask the laser-pointer boys to shoot at you. Fuck. I’m gonna have nightmares for a month.”

  HMS Simon Magus appeared, and the other Sintaran ships lined up behind it as they headed out-system from Garland. Simon Magus projected a hypergate, then cut its engines. The Sintaran ships disappeared into hyperspace one after the other, Raptor first. Loba was the last to depart, with Vice Admiral Espinoza keeping an eye on things until the end.

  Then Simon Magus pulled her hypergate over herself and disappeared.

  Three weeks went by before there were final results to discuss. Saaret joined Dunham for the meeting, but Peters was busy elsewhere.

  “All right. So what have we learned, Admiral Leicester?” Dunham asked.

  “Not as much as we might have hoped, Sire.” Admiral Leicester consulted notes in VR and continued. “The DNA results were consistent in all cases with people who were born in the Democracy of Planets. They were not consistent with any native population of any of the independent star nations, or of any planet within the Empire. The personal effects we examined consisted of some melted awards – statuettes and plaques. These were not identifiable. Metallurgy, however, is consistent with origins within the Democracy of Planets, but not with anywhere else.”

  “How is this not definitive, Admiral?” Saaret asked.

  “The issue, Mr. Saaret, is that anyone who immigrated to one of the independent star nations – or Sintar, for that matter – would show the same genetic profile. Maybe even for a generation or two. And the same can be said for the metal objects. Origins in the DP, but not necessarily most recently from there.”

  “So it could be an elaborate ruse, to get us to respond incorrectly,” Dunham said.

  “Yes, Sire. That’s it exactly. It’s unlikely to be random – the odds are fairly astronomical – but it could be a constructed set of evidence, in the selection of the crews and the objects aboard. That said, it probably is the Democracy of Planets, but it’s not sound enough to base policy on, I wouldn’t think.”

  “And how many ships did we get samples from, Admiral Leicester?”

  “A total of five, Sire. In Phalia, Garland, Doria, Midlothia, and Sirdon.”

  “All farside kingdoms.” Saaret said.

  “Yes,
Mr. Saaret. Which may be to throw the scent off the DP, or it may just be that they have a bigger push on to cause trouble for us out there because their presence there is weaker.”

  While Dunham was being briefed on the results of the sample analysis, Peters was meeting with her dresser and fitter.

  “This is getting ridiculous. In just a week. Nothing fits. I am literally busting out all over,” Peters said.

  “Is this your first pregnancy, Milady?” Ms. Lauden asked.

  Peters and Dunham had not yet shared Peters’s status with the staff.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Then you must be about three and a half or four months in, Milady. That’s usually when the titty fairy shows up.”

  “This happens to everybody when they’re pregnant?”

  “Yes, Milady. The first time, anyway. And some more than others. Have you not read up on your condition?”

  “I didn’t think you needed to read a book to get pregnant.”

  “Well, no, that’s not how it happens, Milady. You’re right there. But you should be doing some research. So you don’t get surprised. Like now.”

  Peters had to admit she hadn’t approached pregnancy like everything else she did. She always did her research. She had just thought it was something one did.

  “What books would you recommend?”

  “I’ve pushed a couple of them to you, Milady. But right now, we need to work on getting you fitted for new brassieres. At least for the meantime. The process may not be complete yet.”

  “Really?”

  “Hard to say, Milady. Let’s just get you fitted into something more comfortable for now, and we can check again in a week or two.”

  Peters started reading up on pregnancy. She felt stupid to have been blindsided like that. Clearly this was not something one ‘just did.’ When she read up on breast increase at the beginning of the second trimester, she found that she might be on the high end of the scale. Probably because she was petite to begin with. On her small frame, however, her breasts had gone from petite-to-middling to hey-there-sailor.