Moral High Ground: Crew of the Ninja #1

by Joseph Bradshire

  Moral High Ground – Crew of the Ninja #1

  by Joseph Bradshire

  Copyright Joseph Bradshire 2016

  With special thanks to the Ninja Team. You know who you are.

  And very extra special thanks to the real Weston Becker for his fame-glorious proofreading.

  Cover art courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech

  Chapter One

  “Homian vessel, this is the TPS Minorca, Captain Jonathan Aichele in command. You’ve made an unauthorized launch. Explain yourselves.”

  “Go to hell Protectorate lap dog. You and your blockade. We do not recognize your authority. We are leaving this world and you cannot stop us.”

  “On the contrary. I have a targeting solution on you now. I can carve you apart at my leisure, but I don’t need to. Check your trajectory, you’ve not made orbital velocity. By my calculations you’ll be hitting dirt again in about 20 minutes. Go ahead and check the figures. I’ll wait.”

  Jon wouldn’t have to wait long. It was possible, maybe, that the Homians could goose a little more power out of their thrusters, but unlikely. Jon could see them clearly on his scopes. They’d somehow managed to cobble together a set of three mismatched shuttle thrusters and weld them to the rear of an old space cargo container. Sloppy. Desperate. How it even got off the ground was anyone’s guess.

  One of the thrusters was misfiring. Probably ready to quit altogether.

  The Homian captain responded over the com, “Captain Aichele, this is Captain Blake of the Homian ship Resurgence. We have confirmed your warning about our trajectory and request your assistance.”

  Now there was the correct attitude. Swallowing one’s pride was difficult, but the Homian captain was doing the right thing. Proud but practical. Saving his ship and crew. And himself.

  “Request granted. Stay on your current vector, keep your engines firing as steady as you can. We’ll be using our pressers to assist with a controlled re-entry. Captain Aichele out.”

  Captain Aichele nodded to his pilot, who brought the ship underneath the Homian vessel. Dipping down into the planet’s upper atmosphere.

  Once in position Jon addressed his gunner. “Set the forward particle cannon wide to presser configuration and target the Homian vessel. Mid mass.”

  “Aye Captain,” the gunner said.

  “Calculate presser output to stabilize the Homian’s perpendicular to our vector. Fire when ready.”

  As the presser beam fired Jon could see the shuttle’s course change, the battle computer gave real time updates on the Homian’s projected course. Their vector line no longer crashed back into the grav well.

  “Okay, lets pull ahead of them and slow ‘em down a bit.”

  The pilot responded, the Minorca moved forward, the pressor beam still trained on the Homians. The shuttle slowed to a safer re-entry velocity.

  “Good. Now, let’s ease them to a landing. Nice and slow. Excellent.”

  It took another hour to help the limping shuttle to a safe landing. Afterward there were no thank yous or farewells. Without another word Captain Jon Aichele ordered his ship to return to station in orbit around Heart’s Home, scanning for the next idiot trying to break atmo.

  Jon’s monitor pinged with an incoming message, private, from the system Commodore.

  Ah geez. What now?

  The Commodore requested an in person audience with him at his earliest convenience. Which meant immediately. Jon handed off command to his second and headed to the shuttle pod.

  * * *

  Captain Jon Aichele took his seat in the pod, the pilot’s seat. The Minorca was a corvette class vessel, too small to carry a full sized shuttle. Instead they had converted the two single use escape pods into reusable travel pods. Each pod could carry four people safely. The Minorca had a crew of six. Together the two pods could handle an emergency evac with room to spare.

  With Jon taking one pod that left five crew on the ship and only enough escape pod space for four. In an emergency someone would be left behind. Jon hated that, but over the past year in command of the Minorca he’d learned to accept certain realities. He didn’t have a top of the line ship, and danger was part of the job.

  He boosted out of the pod slot and traveled under the belly of his ship. The nav computer estimated 90 minutes to rendezvous with the Commodore’s vessel, the cruiser Neardowan.

  Jon had no clue why he’d been summoned, but it wasn’t uncommon for Commodore Barlow to request a face to face meeting. The Commodore was a Humanist, member of the Great Church of Humanity. They tended to do things their own way.

  Jon took the opportunity to nap.

  * * *

  The proximity alarmed pinged on Jon’s board, waking him up. The autopilot was handling the docking process with the Neardowan with the usual precision. Jon took the time to admire the cruiser up close. Whereas Jon’s own ship had only the nose cannon, the Neardowan was bristling with dozens of turrets, launch tubes and a main cannon built along the spine.

  The cruiser’s armament, given time, could wipe out the entire Homian population without expending any of its warheads. With warheads, life on the planet below could be devastated in minutes. For simple blockade duty the ship was wasteful overkill.

  Jon was envious.

  The pod finished docking and Jon could feel the Neardowan’s gravity field take hold. He was momentarily disoriented but by the time he exited the pod into the main docking bay he was walking fine. He looked up and froze.

  There were three guards waiting. Two had their sidearms drawn and pointed at him, the third spoke.

  “Captain Aichele. Are you armed?”

  “Of course. I’m Captain of a warship.” Jon raised his arms, keeping them away from the cutlass and pistol on his belt.

  “What’s this all about Chief?”

  “You’ll have to ask the Commodore.” The Security Chief advanced and took possession of Jon’s pistol and sword.

  “Captain Aichele if you would follow me, the Commodore is waiting.”

  Great. Disarmed and under guard. Under arrest in everything but name.

  I wonder what I did this time?

  They escorted Jon directly to the Commodore’s briefing room. Jon didn’t see any other crew on the way there, meaning they had cleared the passages. He was thankful for that, at least there wouldn’t be any embarrassing rumors about him being frog marched under guard to face the Commodore.

  When he arrived the Security Chief knocked on the door. A moment later it slid open. Jon stepped in and the security detail waited outside, posted on both sides of the door. The door closed and Jon was alone with Commodore Barlow.

  He looked furious, sitting behind his desk with his face bunched up while he looked Jon up and down. Tapping his fingers nervously, or angrily, on the desk. Jon wasn’t sure who should speak first. To be on the safe side he kept his mouth shut. He’d learned that trick early on at Battlefleet Academy. When in doubt shut the hell up.

  The seconds slipped by as the tension in the room grew. At some point Jon was going to break and say something. Probably the wrong thing. Maybe that’s what the Commodore wanted? For Jon to dig his hole deeper with an insubordinate remark?

  Jon summoned his will and reminded himself over and over to say nothing. Just stand at attention and wait to be acknowledged.

  Finally, to Jon’s infinite relief, the Commodore spoke, “So, what in the heavens did you think you were doing?”

  Not exactly a specific question. Jon thought back over his week. He’d gotten a little loose one night on some Valhallan Break Gin his friend Sam had sent him for his birthday, but he was pretty sure he’d gotten away with that. Plus, he was off duty. Tech
nically it was still a violation of regs though.

  There was also the Slanzian dancing girl his brother, Jeff, had paid for a while back. But that wasn’t against the regs. Technically. There was no way the Commodore could know about that anyway. Or could he?

  Jon started sweating. He could feel it running down the back of his neck, down the inside of his legs. Damn Cornhaul genetics, an overabundance of sweat glands in the legs. Sweating down the inner legs while wearing fleet regulation pants was a recipe for embarrassment.

  All these thoughts flew through Jon’s head in the moment it took the Commodore to get to the point.

  “Your little ‘rescue’ today, Captain. Completely reckless and contrary to standing orders.”

  “Sir?” Jon was truly and thoroughly confused. He’d helped down a stricken civilian shuttle, it was either that or let the people die.

  “Tell me, do you know the purpose of this blockade, Captain?”

  Now the bastard is quizzing me like a zero in training?

  “Yes Commodore, the blockade is to prevent the Homians from leaving their world.”

  There, that was the most basic order.

  “And can you tell me why we would blockade these subhumans?”

  Oh. Now Jon got it. He kicked himself. The Commodore was Humanist. Their entire belief structure revolved around the prosperity of humanity. Humanity as defined by the pure genes of Earth, whatever those were. Any threat to that purity of genome was a threat to humanity.

  “Sir. The Homian shuttle did not have the capacity to reach orbit. There was no danger to the galaxy at large.”

  The Commodore took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, trying to calm himself. That wasn’t good.

  “Captain. The level of danger to the galaxy is not your concern. Your concern is to follow orders. You are ordered to shoot down any vessel breaching atmo. No deviation. No variation. No personal bias or initiative. Lock on particle cannons and fire until the threat is vaporized. Period.”

  Another deep breath.

  “Further, you took your ship dangerously out of position. There was a gap left by your maneuver that a battlecruiser could have slipped through. I understand your adopted brother is subhuman, but that’s no reason to be shortsighted. You risked contamination of a thousand worlds. It was pure sentimentality. Weak.”

  That was a little melodramatic. There were plenty of genetically modified humans running around the galaxy, Jon’s brother included. Some could breed with alpha strain homo sapiens, some couldn’t. Nothing bad had ever really happened because of it. Well, almost nothing.

  There had a been a plague or two that originated in altered populations. There was also the Gene War that nearly destroyed Sol, but that had been over a century ago. Apparently the Commodore wasn’t one to let facts get in the way of hysteria.

  Jon was hoping this dressing down was about over when the Commodore dropped the nuke on him.

  “Captain. You are relieved of duty. I am sending you back to Earth to face a formal inquiry. Until then consider yourself confined to guest quarters here on the Neardowan. You are dismissed.”

  The door opened again and the trio of security officers entered. They grabbed Jon and hustled him out before he had a chance to object. Not that anything he said would have helped. It was probably best he didn’t say anything.

  As the doors were closing behind him the Commodore said, “I expected better from the Admiral’s son.”

  Chapter Two

  Two weeks later Jon was back dirtside, Earth. Old Chicago. Battlefleet Command Central. The Commodore had crammed him into the first available supply ship traveling in Earth’s direction. Humiliating. Going from ship captain to disgrace.

  Not that he was fully disgraced. Not yet. There was still the inquiry. Jon had spent the time in transit studying the regulations, standing orders and general attitude regarding the enforcement of blockades. What he found wasn’t promising, but neither was it damning. As he’d suspected all along, local commanders and ship captains were given a great deal of leeway in blockage situations.

  With the communications lag between central command and the ships out on the pointy end of the stick, the general rule was to allow captains to make the split second decisions. To second guess them too harshly would cause them to hesitate when seconds mattered. To play conservative when action was required.

  At least that was the attitude Jon hoped the tribunal would take.

  Jon hopped a ground bus from the shuttle port to Central Personnel. They’d likely give him orders to stay in officer housing, don’t cause trouble, and above all don’t go anywhere while the inquiry agent finished investigating and a tribunal could be called to decide his fate.

  Jon stepped through the sliding doors and bumped into, or rather bounced off of, the biggest person he’d ever seen. A massive red wall of a man, a Valhallan, born and shaped by the most intense gravity and pressure environment humanity had been able to colonize. His name tag called him Sam Walchli.

  “Outta the way tough guy,” Jon said, joking.

  “My dear Captain, one’d not thought to meet a man of such high status here.” Sam’s Valhallan accent was nearly impenetrable, but Jon had known him for years. Sam had signed up for Battlefleet at about the same time as Jon’s father. He was like an uncle.

  “I was going to call you after I got my grounding orders, what are you doing here?” Jon asked.

  “Pulling some strings. Been in the game for as long as me, you have some pull. Here are your orders.” Sam handed a sheet over to Jon, hardcopy.

  “I see. I’m to be your assistant at the academy for the duration of my inquiry?”

  “I tried to get them to include the term ‘Sam’s bitch’ but my pull only goes so far. I did convince them to let you keep wearing your captain’s squares. To impress the cadets.”

  That was a huge relief. Jon had been in Battlefleet since he was 17 years old, 12 years. Ranks were hard to come by in Battlefleet, not being able to wear his hard earned rank insignia would have been devastating. A man with no insignia but wearing a uniform stands out, is subject to mockery.

  “Thanks Chief Walchli. This day is already looking up.” Jon put out his hand out of habit, offering Sam a handshake. It was a mistake, and he knew better. Jon wasn’t quick enough to bring his hand back before Sam seized it in a crusher grip, smiling while Jon’s knuckles popped. It was Sam’s favorite party trick and Jon walked right into it.

  After that he smacked Jon on the back, a brotherly gesture that knocked the wind out of him, and they walked out of Central Personnel together.

  * * *

  The following day Jon showed up early, the crack of dawn, at the academy training field. Ready to train. Sam was the athletics coach there, how he’d secured that position was anyone’s guess. Last Jon heard he’d been Senior Gun Chief on a dreadnaught.

  Battlefleet athletics were practical. Based around three events. The saber, the pistol and wrestling. Sam was warming up on a couple of cadets for the wrestling portion. Jon stood off to the side, waiting to assist, not knowing what his role really was.

  Sam was easily as strong as any three cadets combined, there weren’t any other Valhallans in this class. None from Cornhaul either, Jon’s own homeworld. Cornhaul was a heavy world as well, nothing like Valhalla, but a big Cornhauler might at least last a round with the Chief.

  Sam tossed another cadet out of the ring, motioning for another. No cadet volunteered. Sam grinned. He was about to order the next cadet to step into the circle when Jon interceded.

  “I think I’m next, Chief Walchli.” Jon stepped into the circle.

  “So you are, Captain.” Sam turned to the dozen cadets in the class. “Watch now, kids, how it’s really…”

  Before Sam could finish Jon had launched himself, pushing Sam out of the circle. Point for Jon.

  Battlefleet wrestling was a simple affair. Push the other guy out or put him down. Best of three. Easy.

  Sam stepped back into the circle with a
serious look on his face. Jon smiled, antagonizing his older friend. Sam charged and Jon stepped to the side, hoping to use the momentum to fling Sam out of the circle, but Sam was much too nimble. He wasn’t only huge and strong, he was fast. Faster than any normal man. Even a Cornhauler.

  Jon was on his back in the dirt, half out of the ring. Not quite sure of what happened. Jon got up for round three. The tie breaker.

  Jon clinched up with Sam in the center of the circle. Sam held his ground and slowly pushed Jon to the ground. Laughing. At the last moment Jon made a desperate attempt to hook Sam’s leg and spin him around. They both went down at the same time.

  Sam stood up and addressed his class. “Okay class, who went down first? Who is the winner?”

  No one spoke. Sam had them all scared. No one dared vote against him.

  “Sam I think we can agree that I won. They are just too scared to vote against you.”

  “Nonsense. These are the brave men and women of Battlefleet, in training. They fear nothing.” Sam looked at his students, one by one, all 20 of them, none said anything.

  “How about we settle the tie with pistols?” Sam asked.

  Sam was great with pistols, a gunnery specialist. Anything that flung death was Sam’s domain.

  Jon countered. “How about sabers instead. Unless you are afraid to be embarrassed in front of the class. Again.”

  That did it. Sam was fired up. Fired up enough to forget that Captain Aichele had won all academy in the saber competition. For all three years.

  The saber competition was also simple. The sabers were the Battlefleet standard boarding cutlass. Blunted. Killing and disabling blows won the round. Winner is the best of three rounds.

  A cadet handed Sam his blade, it looked small in his hand. Jon drew his. They circled, and circled some more. Jon had to be patient. Sam was far too powerful to get in close, but if he stayed out of range Sam’s patience would falter.

  Which was exactly what happened. Sam grew frustrated with the circling and lunged. Fast, but not fast enough. Jon struck a downward blow to Sam’s sword arm, knocking the arm away and exposing the body. Then he jabbed him in the ribs. A winning blow.