“Childish,” he huffed in outrage.
“Talk,” she repeated.
“It’s all there for any to see on the data slate sitting on his console,” he declared.
Baldwin stalked over to the console, her flyaway grey hair following in her wake. She scanned the document. “So,” she said tossing it back on the table.
“So! Am I the only one with the intelligence to realize that this ship’s Long Distance Array has been trying to connect to a very much not-defunct portion of the Interstellar FTL Communication System?” he cried.
Glenda snatched up the slate and scanned it again quickly. “You fool,” she hissed, rounding on the Communications Technician, “you’ve been giving away our position twice a day for the last three months!”
“What?” said the startled tech, snatching up the slate and staring at the results with growing alarm. “No,” he shook his head in negation, then turned a pleading look their way, “it was an automated process left over by the Imperials, we just haven’t gotten around to swapping out the hardware yet! And I already told you, I’ve only been assigned here for two months!”
“This isn’t coded space rot, Crewman,” Glenda said severely, “this is people’s lives; we could all be killed because you didn’t do your job!”
Spalding opened his mouth to interject, but then he closed it since he knew the lass was finally on the right trail. He leaned back to take measure of her work.
“Only the first couple transmissions connected with the remains of the hyper-net, Ma’am,” he pleaded and then turned to Spalding, “Sir,” he added.
Spalding harrumphed and reached up to tug on his hair, but his hand skittered over his balding chrome dome and, realizing this, he glared at the crewman.
Glenda picked up the slate again and then started beating the crewman around the shoulders with it.
“Only because we’re in the middle of a hot system, throwing out so much radiation that a simple low-powered connection request can’t cut through the interference,” she flared. “And you’ve been assigned to this duty station for two whole months!”
“Now-now, Glenda,” Spalding raised his hands placatingly, and took a step over, causing her to pause and listen, “it was probably just some kind of Imperial failsafe, in case the ship was taken.”
“Imperials!” she exclaimed, and then turned back on the Tech, whipping him with the slate again, “Your incompetence could have killed us all!”
“A clerical error, I’m sure,” Spalding said, plucking the slate out of her hand and giving the hapless lad at the Communications console a penetrating look.
Taking the old engineer’s meaning, the Tech scrambled out of his chair and ran for the lift.
“Don’t worry, lass, we’ll work him so hard he won’t know up from down or day from night, and he’ll be the better off for it. He’ll know better than to let his slacking ways take hold in his head ever again,” he said calmingly.
Glenda Baldwin threw the slate onto the floor and glared around the bridge.
“We need a new tech on the Comm’s,” he said mildly. The crew immediately snapped to it.
“And somebody get that automatic search protocol shut down,” Glenda barked, “the last thing we need to do is draw even more attention to us than the current pack of fools manning the comm’s have succeeded in doing.”
Someone at sensors gave a yelp.
“I think it may be too late for that, Ma’am,” she said, her shoulders slumping in despair.
“What is it,” Spalding barked, “put it on the main screen!”
A hyper wake appeared, and the others working on disassembling or reassembling the sensor consoles either activated their consoles or hurried to reassemble them.
“I’m receiving the proper code Mr. Gants gave us, for if the Admiral ever sent someone with an update,” reported the new Operator at Comm’s.
“We can’t trust it,” declared Spalding.
“But, Sir! It’s on the exact channel, and carries the right encryption. Everything matches perfectly!” said the new Tech.
“We just got a coded warning of treachery minutes before this,” Spalding paused, looking at the screen.
“I’m reading something massing roughly the size of an Imperial Command Carrier,” said one Tech in the background.
“It’s too short for a Command Carrier,” exclaimed another.
“Multiple new point transfers arriving in system,” said one of the Technicians, “it’s not just one ship, Sir. It’s a whole Fleet!”
“Battle stations,” roared the Chief Engineer, “batten down the hatches, and stow the bucking cables. I want this ship ready to fight in five minutes time!”
“Five minutes! But everything’s been taken apart, Chief; there’s no way we can put it all back together in that kind of time frame,” Gants protested, staring around the Bridge in dismay. Spalding knew that the Bridge was not the only part of the ship that was still in pieces.
“If we can’t get her back into fighting trim before those ships get here, we’re all dead men,” Spalding said grimly.
“I’ll be jiggered,” Glenda said quietly beside him, clearly recognizing when to stand back and let those professionals with Fleet training take over.
“We’ll all be, Glenda, if we don’t get this ship back together in time,” he said, trying to be consoling.
The look she gave him said he had just failed miserably. He shrugged his shoulders indifferently. An ornery old space goat like him was probably too old to learn new tricks anyway, and besides, it did not look like this Imperial Fleet was about to give him time to try.
“Keep it together, men, and we’ll send them straight to Hades, yet! Or my name isn’t Terrence Spalding the First, Lieutenant and Engineer in this man’s fighting space navy,” he roared.
The men gave a half-hearted cheer, which was better than the full-blown terror many had been displaying just moments earlier.
Maybe he should have let the lass beside him have her head, and just buttoned up the ship, without putting the duralloy girdle around her first.
“I guess we’ll never know,” he muttered under his breath.
Chapter 18: Jason on the Rocks, otherwise known as a Rejection of the Minds
Still half-asleep, I sat up with a gasp, my fist cocked and swinging into thin air. I finally realized I wasn’t under attack and that there was a buzz emanating from the door to my cell, which I merely stared at quizzically. The noise sounded just like the chime that normally sounded when someone was requesting entry into your quarters.
Why would anyone be requesting entrance into my cell? I was in the Brig, for Murphy’s Sake! The buzz came a third time, and this time it went on slightly longer, as someone stayed on the request sensor an extra fraction of a second. “Just a second,” I yelled. What kind of sick game was this? My face hardened as I considered the possibilities. Well, whoever it was, had given me time to get my bearings. Fools, I wasn’t going to waste another moment.
Jumping out of my bed, I hurried over to the little foldout sink that my jailers popped out whenever they wanted me to freshen up. It was out, just like I had suspected. Slapping water on my face and drying my hands was all I likely had time for.
Whoever it was, he/she or it was just going to have to live with the smell of a man who had worn the same clothes he had been captured it. Then my eyes snagged on the toilet, which also recessed into the wall. It also retracted into the wall, except at designated times, so that I didn’t have time to try fool with it in some futile hope of escape. Not that I entertained any thoughts of escape; I’m not that much of an egotist.
Sitting on the toilet, folded neat as could be, was an orange-colored jumpsuit. It was the same color that low-level detainees had worn since time immemorial…detainees, like those normally found on board this ship; misbehaving crewmen and the like.
With a wry smile, I admitted to the effectiveness of the tactic. My captors were almost as tired of smelling me as I was, and wha
t was worse, I just didn’t have it in me to continue stinking up my own nostrils for however long they left me to rot in my own body odor, just to prove a point.
Jerking out of my stink-ridden clothes, I slapped water all over by body, paying special attention to my armpits to rid myself of the worst of the stink, and slid into my new clothes. I was just sealing up the last magnetic link in the suit, when the door buzzed again, and dare I think the tone this time the tone was slightly more ominous? I shook my head at such paranoid thoughts and went over to stand beside my bed, which also let me face the door.
I cleared my throat, suddenly wishing for some water. “Come in,” I rasped, in a voice that still wasn’t fully healed, and I feared never would be. I mean really, who was going to waste time and money on healthcare for a prisoner whose next stop was likely straight out an airlock?
The door swished openly as silently as ever, unlike most other doors installed into quarters around the ship. I had to admit it was an effective fear tactic. Not only did I not control the door to my own room, but worse, it could be silently opened and the first thing I would know about it was when the jackboots started raining down. It made for more than a few sleepless nights.
Then my mind registered there was a figure standing in my doorway as polite as could be. I skipped over the Caprian Officer’s Uniform with Commodore’s rockets on his neck folds, and went straight to his face.
For a moment, I had an overwhelming urge to lunge forward and strangle the life out of this detestable beast of man before anyone could pull me off. Then I registered the single figure standing behind him, and my blood ran cold. I had seen a lot of dangerous men in my time, but something about this one said he wouldn’t just kill me; he’d enjoy it, and take as much time as he was allowed.
Knowing better than to lock eyes with either the hired help, or stone cold killers I was currently incapable of harming, I let my eyes skitter off to the side. As I did so, the shape of his jaw caught my attention, and almost against my will my gaze jerked back to the man.
My eyes narrowed as I recognized something in those features and then, between that and the sudden realization that this man was in a Caprian Royal Armsman uniform, I had it.
“You’ve got a Tuttle,” I said, my brain kicking out of ‘murderous rage’ mode, and slotting right into palace paranoia without missing a beat.
“Yes Nephew, and may I take this moment to say I’m so glad we seem able to forgo an emotionally driven—yet ultimately futile—attempt at physical revenge. Not only that, but the tiresome threats, as well, which we both know would be just as completely impotent as their speaker,” Jean Luc Montagne, Prince of the Blood Royal and Commodore officer in the Parliamentary SDF, said with a smile.
I glowered at him for a moment, just to see if he was going to force his way in. I was proving a social point: that this visitor was not welcome. When nothing happened—not even the smallest change in my attempted murderer’s practiced, benign features—I gave an internal sigh that thankfully failed to reach my lips.
“I make no promises, especially to pirates, Uncle,” I returned his smile as best I could, before standing aside and gesturing into my room, “however you are welcome to what small comfort may be had within this room.”
“Don’t mind if I do, Nephew,” he agreed, strutting into the cell. He gave the room a cursory sweep, which was only to be expected, I’m sure he had seen this room in every detail—just like I would have—on the monitoring screens before setting a single toe inside.
Jean Luc snapped his fingers and I barely suppressed the urge to jump. “Table and chairs, if you would be so good, Connor,” he instructed, as if it were an everyday occurrence to utilize a highly trained (and even more highly lethal) Armsman, as little more than a furniture mover.
The sense of entitlement rolling off this man was almost completely at odds with the stone-cold, whimsical killer who had gunned me down in my own office. As Jean Luc stood there on the other side of the room from me, I once again had to suppress the urge to leap across the room and throttle him. When you realize just how small my cell was, and how very possible it was to reach him before his Armsman could intervene, you will probably realize just how hard it was to suppress that particular urge.
He waited until the tiny table was in place, and the chairs on opposite sides, before breaking his princely pose by gesturing to the chairs.
It seemed I was to be cast in the role of genial host. I gritted my teeth behind closed lips, and firmly reminded myself there were almost a thousand other prisoners on board this ship, and while their fates weren’t fully in my hands anymore, the ability to mess everything up and get them all killed still very much was.
The thought of this Pirate Space Scum killing even more of my men, simply because I was rude, danced through my head and I forced a geniality I wasn’t feeling into my face, and waved toward the chair nearest the door.
“Won’t you sit down and take your ease, Uncle,” I said, as if we were back in the palace, and instead of a prison this was the finest of private sitting rooms. I imagined it to be the kind of chamber another of my Uncles, Heironeous Montagne, who even now ruled the rest of the Montagne Clan back on Capria with an iron fist, used for private little power meetings.
Jean Luc glided into the chair and took a seat, gesturing for me to take the one opposite. With a little careful maneuvering, I moved around the room without coming into physical contact with my Uncle. There was no room to sit anywhere else in the cell, except possibly the bed.
“Your family does well back on Capria, Armsman Tuttle,” I said, releasing a smile with a slight edge to it. I knew this because Duncan, my former fencing instructor, had always seemed to have a thing for my mother (or at least her cooking), even though he never seemed to care that much for me.
The Armsman turned to look at me, and it was like looking into the eyes of a pair of black holes. “In the end, there can be only one, and it will not be he,” the Armsman, Connor, said dismissively. “I don’t care to hear the condition of fools who have already betrayed themselves, as well as their Oaths.”
I stiffened a little, but let the barb pass; I wasn’t here to bandy words with the man’s Armsman, but with the man himself.
“So, Uncle, to what do I owe this dubious pleasure?” I spread my hands to encompass my two visitors, and what little else there was within my prison cell. It was an unusually muted gesture, considering the size of my surroundings.
My Uncle narrowed his eye and leaned forward, putting his weight on the table. Placing the thumb of one hand and first three fingers of the other on the edge, he pressed down, slightly levering himself out of the chair and held himself in that somewhat odd position, giving me a searching look.
I looked at him quizzically. “Is that supposed to be a threat, or some royal code I’m not familiar with?” I scoffed, leaning back in my chair.
Jean Luc also leaned back in his chair with a superior smile, and pulled out a cigar. Lighting it, he took a few puffs before continuing.
“What has your Mother told you about your Father,” the Pirate Lord asked instead, pausing to rub a bit of ash from his cigar off his nose.
“My father, Precious Montagne, died several decades before I was born,” I replied tightly.
“Ah, good old Precious,” Jean Luc agreed, taking a few good puffs of smoke.
The stench of his stogie was already starting to stink up the room, and I had to suppress the urge to cough. It was a disgusting habit if ever I’d seen (or smelled) one. Why anyone would try to poison their lungs with that filth was beyond me. Even after medical advances that removed the potentially terminal side effects of using such stink-makers, I failed to see the allure. It was yet another way in which I wasn’t considered a real royal—or a real Montagne, for that matter.
Jean Luc chose that moment to break my quiet reflection of the distastefulness of cigars, and my usual place in the universe.
“The man was like a brother to me,” he blew a smoke r
ing, “it really is too bad he was lost, along with so many others when the Summer Palace was destroyed,” he blew a second smoke ring, contemplatively.
I had to suppress an angry flush of rage. “So—” I began hotly and paused, taking a silent breath to steady myself. When I had once again mastered myself and was able to present a calm front, I repeated myself for emphasis, “So says the man whose actions led directly to the destruction of said palace, and the downfall of the Monarchy.”
“It’s almost enough to make a person regret his actions,” the old style Prince dropped the faintly regretful mask he had put on and smiled, “but you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.”
“I hope you choked on it,” I hissed, “you killed my father, and hundreds—if not thousands—of other people, when you allowed the Imperials to bombard our world!”
“I betrayed and murdered you father; let’s not mince words here,” Jean Luc said severely, “but always remember mine was not the finger on the trigger. The man who gave the order, and the one who actually pulled the trigger, are now Senator Cornwallis and a certain Rear Admiral with whom you are already acquainted.”
“Thus you rationalize your actions, while the bodies are piled knee deep in the streets like cordwood,” I glared.
My one-eyed uncle tisked. “Again with the hyperbolic inaccuracies,” he admonished. “If a man is going to accuse me to my face, he should at least get his facts straight beforehand,” he paused, his eye drilling into mine with lethal intent before adding emphatically, “I insist on it.”
Then he leaned back, as if nothing had happened, and blew a third and final smoke ring before stubbing out the rest of his cigar on the table.
“An orbital bombardment means there is a huge, smoking crater and maybe some glass; the bodies have been atomized, ergo, no cord wood piled anywhere. As for my part in the bombardment, all I did was stand aside, refusing to let my officers and crew be slaughtered at the hands of the Imperials. To what purpose would I do that, you may ask? To what end? Preserving the life of a Tyrant? That is not what I signed on with the SDF to do,” he said dismissively.
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