Admiral's Trial (A Spineward Sectors Novel:)

by Wachter, Luke Sky

  Turning for the blast doors, he headed for the lift.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Brence shouted after him.

  “We came here to free the Admiral, and that’s what I intend to do. Besides, that fumble-fingered Flag Officer’s earned himself a piece of my mind, and if you’d know anything about Chief Engineer Spalding, then know this: I more than intend to give it to him,” Spalding growled. The thought of his lost Clover was still able to cause fresh steam to come pouring out of his ears, even after everything that had happened today.

  Chapter 53: It’s The Revolution, Baby!

  I awoke to the hiss, and the pop of molten metal hitting the floor of my cell. For a moment, I wondered what was happening, but I could hardly complete the thought before a wave of lethargy swept over me.

  Then something acrid—and not at all nice-smelling—permeated the room, and my blood started pumping like it hadn’t since my last visit with Sir Isaac.

  I quickly rolled out of bed and stared with horror at the small cloud of smoke filling the tiny room. Are they trying to smoke me out, I thought wildly. For a moment, I didn’t know where I was or what was happening, and then metal screeched on metal and my eyes turned to face the door.

  A man-shaped hole was being cut in my door, and it was almost finished. I cursed myself for a complacent fool, as I grabbed up my blanket and wrapped it around one arm. On one side, a plasma torch was being used to cut its way in; on the other, I could see a vibro blade had broken off half way through the heavily reinforced door.

  Staring at the sword sticking through the door, my mind stutter stepped, and it was almost like I was inside my Flag Lieutenant quarters again.

  It was the revolution! They were coming for me again!

  I started to hyperventilate; no one in their right mind would be breaking through that door, especially not if they controlled the ship. But then, how could they get to me, if they didn’t control the ship?

  I eventually settled on the possibility of an uprising among my fellow prisoners. I had seen occasional glimpses as I walked through the halls of Imperial Prisoners, and the Bailiffs had threatened to leave me alone in a dark room with the last of the crew from the Invictus Rising; men their Empire were in no hurry to liberate, after the way they’d lost their state of the art ship.

  Lost their ship to ‘me,’ of all people.

  It might not be the Revolution, but an uprising of prisoners determined to lynch out of a sense of revenge—or justice, take your pick—was just as bad.

  Then the plasma torch cut out abruptly, and all my preconceptions were blasted out the window with a resounding clang as a droid foot knocked the door several feet into my room, where it struck the far wall with a resounding clang.

  What in the world were Droids doing here, in the same system as the Sector Assembly!? I mean, I’d heard rumors about the Droid Liberation Movement back home, but nothing that didn’t inspire laughter. There hadn’t even been a hint of wild droids out beyond the Rim of Known space, during my entire patrol thus far.

  Still, I was determined not to go down without a fight. Man, not machine, I thought to myself grimly, angrily dropping my blanket down from my forearm to cover my fist instead. Meat and bone against metal wasn’t destined to end well—unless I put some padding in there, first.

  The foot was just starting to lower, when I saw my chance. I rushed forward, and with an incoherent cry, I grabbed the leg and heaved with all my might, trying to knock the droid over onto its back.

  Servos whined in response, and all I received for my effort was an angry grunt in return, as the leg drew back slightly before kicking forward. The next thing I knew, I had slammed back-first into the wall.

  Staggering back to my feet, I cocked my fist, knowing it was all over but the crying. Yet, I was strangely determined to hold the attention of this Droid creature for as long as I could manage, in order to give the rest of the humans on board this ship a fighting chance to get to the Armory. Then the duralloy foot lowered, and a metal legged monstrosity that was half man, half machine stormed into the room.

  “What have you done with the ship, lad?!” cried a once familiar voice.

  My mouth dropped open. From the waist down, he was solid metal, but in profile from his chin down to his waist, he looked like a slightly younger—and much more vigorous—version of the same old, ornery individual I used to know. It was only when he turned, that my gaze snagged on the glowing red metal eye, and the skull-shaped chrome metal plate that covered much of his skull, that I realized the true scope of the changes. That eye, and the complete lack of wild hair that used to erupt from either side of his head, were the main reason I didn’t recognize him immediately.

  “Chief Engineer?” I asked hesitantly, unable to completely reconcile the old engineer of my previous acquaintance with this much taller, more mechanical version. Sweet Murphy, I’d said to save the man however they could, not turn him into an out and out Cyborg!

  The Engineer’s face turned toward me with its jutting jaw, saying as sure as anything that whatever else this new person was, he wasn’t some emotionless creature. He jabbed a finger into my chest, knocking me back against the wall with the force of his fury.

  “How in the blue blazes do you misplace my bloomin’ battleship, lad?” he cried, jabbing me in the chest with each word, starting with ‘misplaced’.

  “Err,” I began, shaking my head. This sounded entirely too much like the Terrence Spalding I’d used to know.

  “Err!” he screamed, and the fingertips of his right hand fell over grotesquely, and small plasma torches built into each finger of his hand ignited, “that’s all you have to say for yourself, is ‘Err!’”

  That’s when I knew for sure that this was really my old Chief Engineer, and not some imposter, or Cyborg implant slave.

  My mind snapped back into focus as the new mechanical Engineer waved his burning fingers in my face, and my mouth engaged almost without conscious control.

  “It’s that pirate dog of a Montagne, Jean Luc,” I rasped, dragging back my collar and tilting my neck to expose the massive amount of twisted scar tissue all over the right side of my neck, “the treasonous cur’s been working for Parliament all along! He shot me in the neck, and the next thing I knew, I woke up in the Brig,” I roared—or, at least, I roared as much as a man with a raspy throat could manage.

  Spalding stumbled back, as if my words had physically assaulted him. “The Captain…a Parliamentarian,” he whispered with horror.

  “He retired to a Vineyard, all right, just like you told me,” I explained with growing anger. “Only his Vineyard’s a Dreadnaught Class Battleship, and he’s been assassinating royalist members of the opposition in Parliament whenever they leave the planet. Of course, it was hard for him to fit in to his busy schedule of raiding commercial shipping, which was itself done merely to balance the budget of the elected murderers back in Capria’s Parliament.” I sneered contemptuously as I added, “Apparently, an elected body extracting blood money from its citizenry is preferable to a Monarchy!”

  “A Parliamentarian,” Spalding repeated, sounding utterly befuddled.

  “A true blue servant of the Elected Order these past fifty years and more,” I spat, as if tasting something foul.

  Spalding clutched his chest before straightening; the shock and horror I’d seen in his face visibly shaken off, and righteous anger taking its place.

  “Well, enough of that traitor, how’re you going to get her back?” he demanded.

  For a moment, I was the one unable to follow this sudden twist in the conversation, and then it struck me: he was asking how I, Admiral Jason Montagne, was going to get back his beloved Battleship. I stared at him in genuine horror, before my eyes tracked the custom—raging—plasma torch that was his hand. All I could manage, was what I’m sure was a sickly smile.

  “You don’t understand; the Clover, she needs us,” Spalding yelled, with more than a note of pleading in his voice. “She can’t h
old out for long with that traitor at the Helm—she’ll go insane!”

  In that moment, I understood as clear as clear could be that it wasn’t the Lucky Clover that would go insane with the loss, but my very own Chief Engineer. The man had returned from the grave, to haunt me for my failings and drag me back to the slaughter I had almost escaped (the only sure way a person could escape: the escape of the grave).

  It seemed I was going to be an Admiral, in spite of myself. Nobody asked if I actually wanted the responsibility—especially not the irate Chief Engineer, who had determined that I was going to help him get his ship back, no matter what. And I admit that, in that particular moment, looking at his plasma torch-fingers, I really didn’t want the job. I had failed so spectacularly the last time around that I could barely stand the thought of facing those I had led to the slaughter.

  Then a memory came to me that made every hair stand across my body: Jean Luc mimicking firing a pistol at me with his bare hand, only moments later to actually use his concealed blaster finger to blow a hole in my neck. I balled my hands into fists, and clenched my jaw shut tightly enough that I felt a chip of my tooth grind off.

  It was in that precise moment that I knew I had no choice. I had been given a gift from the universe (and the universe is rarely so benevolent, at least in my experience) and I needed to take advantage of my newfound good fortune - if for no other reason than good old-fashioned revenge. I would take vengeance on that man, and anyone else I could find along the way who had supported him. I had to live long enough to make them pay for what they did to me—to us.

  So, despite the fact that I’d been locked up in a Brig of some sort for over two months, and had literally no idea what was going on in the world outside my cell, I straightened my posture and delivered one of my patented royal smiles.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Spalding; I’ve got a plan,” I said as confidently as could be, as if I had not a doubt in the world; either in my plan, or our ability to carry it out.

  Chapter 54: He’s baaack!

  “Good,” said Mr. Spalding, “because our Cruiser’s been shot to pieces, and we’ve more holes in it than we have enemy cruisers on our trail—but only just.”

  My eyebrows rose alarmingly. Had I been freed from my cell, only to find my escape vessel shot out from under me? An immediate return to my—I looked at my cell doubtfully, and decided it would most definitely be a new cell.

  Then I gave myself a shake. If that was the case, there was nothing I could do about it. We had to make do with what we had, and I supposed the first order of business was to figure out exactly what that was.

  Stepping around the old engineer and out of my room, I received another surprise. Captain Synthia McCruise, of the Easy Haven Light Squadron, was a Confederation Officer I had met before. I had saved her—and a lot of settlers—from pirates, and swapped my one extremely run-down Heavy Cruiser for her pair of battered corvettes. She looked just as hatchet-faced as ever, but beside her was a Tracto-an I knew and a pair of crew off the Lucky Clover.

  “Heirophant…I’m surprised,” I blinked, and then offered him my hand.

  “Heirophant Bogart, Warlord Montagne,” he corrected me gravely, and then clasped my forearm in the manner of his people.

  “Ms. Steiner, my enterprising Com-Tech who found the secret transmissions,” I said, my face darkening as I remembered what those transmissions had been.

  “We never gave up, Admiral,” she said, her face shining with a belief that was so clearly misplaced, it took my breath away. Because despite all the proof to the contrary—about just exactly why no one should have placed their faith in me to begin with—this petite little woman with the pixie face trusted me to set things right. Trust was too light a word; she knew with absolute conviction, that since I was free, I would set things right and—if necessary—reorder the Galaxy itself to make that happen. I was simultaneously humbled and humiliated.

  “And who is this?” I asked on autopilot. I had to do something, anything to escape the crushing weight of responsibility that those eyes sought to unconsciously burden me with.

  “It’s okay, Lisa,” the man mumbled, backing away from me.

  Ah, that was her name: Lisa Steiner. In all the crush of being shot and then put on trial, I had actually forgotten. Some leader I had turned out to be.

  “This is Mike, the System Analyst I told you about,” she said, all but glowing. She reached out to snag his arm and drag him closer to her, “without him, we would have never managed to get a ComStat message to the Chief Engineer here. We all thought he’d been lost along with that Constructor and the Imperial Strike Cruiser, until I heard his voice on Captain McCruise’s bridge,” she said, her eyes twinkling with excitement.

  I winced as she reminded me of yet another in a series of impossible things I had managed to do to inspire people. That inspiration had begotten a loyalty, which had been nearly as responsible for the death and destruction we had experienced, as the actions of our enemies.

  “Then I must thank him,” I said, stepping forward and shaking his hand. It was always important to press the flesh—even when under fire—but most especially when someone has done something so big that it deserves your recognition, even if you’re all doomed to die tragically a few minutes later.

  “Lisa Steiner is the leader,” Heirophant said.

  I glanced at him quizzically.

  The little technician reddened, and still holding onto Mike, she snagged the sleeve of the Tracto-an’s shirt.

  “It was a team effort,” she said firmly, “we couldn’t have done it without everyone.”

  Something about what she’d just said caused Heirophant’s face to darken momentarily, but he shrugged it off and nodded. There was a story here…several, in fact, but I didn’t have time for a full debrief; I had anxious senior officers to deal with, and a ship to save—or abandon, depending on whether alternate transportation could be arranged.

  “Captain McCruise, would I be correct in assuming you have neither a great deal of weaponry, nor speed available with this ship?” I asked politely.

  She straightened herself slightly. “Our hull’s tough, and we carry lots of prisoners. We can stand off the occasional raider, but squadrons of warships…?” she shook her head, “I’m sorry Admiral, no can do.”

  “I had to inquire,” I said heavily.

  “So, is it off to the Bridge of the Dungeon Ship, or back to your Cruiser, Mr. Spalding?” I asked. Frankly, I was torn: did I willingly stay on this literal floating death trap (for me, anyway), or go over to what was admittedly an already shot up warship?

  Spalding blinked at me curiously. “Me and the boys were chased from one side of the system to the other, just so we could bust you out. It’d be a right shame to tell them ‘thanks, but no thanks; I’ve got a better ride,’ Admiral,” he said with such censure in his voice, that I felt my face flame.

  Right-o then, the Medium Cruiser it was. Despite the sudden sinking sensation in my stomach, I was actually pleased to be getting off this ship under my own power, with the decision wholly mine to make.

  “Admiral, before you leave us,” McCruise quirked a smile that did more than you would expect to soften her face. “I don’t know where, or how many, but we’ve been in…sporadic contact with a force from Easy Haven. We were instructed to come this way for help, which is why we took off as soon as the Chief Engineer started making enough noise on the other side of the system,” she explained.

  I paused to absorb this latest tidbit. “All right,” I said doubtfully, “hopefully they brought enough to the party to tip things in our favor.”

  I didn’t ask the question of what exactly they would have done if Mr. Spalding hadn’t ridden halfway across the system to spring me, as I was very much afraid I wouldn’t have cared to hear her answer. It was far better to accept the good will all around and hurry off, before things became uncomfortable with too many inconvenient truths.

  “Right this way, Admiral,” Spalding said, ru
shing me down the hall. I shook my head, and the Cyborg Chief Engineer shot me a look.

  I quickly raised my hands. “I just had a thought; a memory from my time stuck in that cell,” I explained, which was true enough in its own way.

  We made our way through the labyrinth of corridors that comprised the Dungeon Ship, using a few familiar passages, and a few which were decidedly unfamiliar, until we came to the shuttle bay. When we reached the shuttle, I turned to thank Captain McCruise.

  “I don’t know how you convinced Central to let you keep your command of this old Dungeon Ship,” I said appreciatively. “However you did it, I’m glad you’re on our side.”

  Synthia McCruise snapped a crisp salute. “Commodore LeGodat’s with you; that’s good enough for me, Admiral. We all have our parts to play in what’s to come.”

  I nodded grimly as Spalding settled in to the pilot’s seat, casting an impatient look over his shoulder at me.

  “You have my thanks, Captain McCruise,” I said with a salute of my own, after which I offered my hand. We shook, and turned to board the shuttle.

  The ride over to our Cruiser was bumpy in the extreme. “I’m sorry, Sir, but she lost her port side stabilizer when the shuttle bay was hulled,” Spalding explained.

  He then proceeded to fill me in on our current disposition of forces—and the recent hi-gee death ride across the system to rescue me.

  I was once again simultaneously taken aback and humbled, that so many men and women would risk their lives for me. Any illusions I might have maintained before had been swept away: the old Admiral Montagne might just have convinced himself that he had in some small way earned that regard, but the new, more realistic Admiral, was certain he never had. Quite the opposite: I knew I deserved to have been left to die.