A thought came to mind that elicited a shark-like grin: just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in!
The End
Continue reading for a sneak peak at Book Five: Admiral’s Revenge
Admiral’s Revenge
by
Luke Sky Wachter
Chapter 1: Tallying Resources, and Counting Costs
I studied the holo-screen in LeGodat’s office at the Wolf-9 Star Base—the office he’d loaned out to me temporarily until I got back on my feet—and raised my eyebrows.
“We’ve got an assembly line able to produce…” I scrolled back down through the information, “just under one new fusion generator a month, a shipyard now capable of repairing vessels as large as the Dreadnaught class—up to and including full-blown refit jobs. And to cap it all off, thanks to Akantha we’ve got a new Dreadnaught class Battleship in the yard right this moment, back on Gambit,” I finished, completely blown away.
“About ten fusion reactors a year, Sir,” Spalding corrected, looking insufferably pleased with himself. Even the Lucky Clover only had the capacity to carry five fusion reactors, and a ship like a Corvette or Destroyer, just one or two. “But don’t forget the Duralloy II smelter. Had to ram that project down the Space Committee’s throats I did,” he capped it off with a derisive snort, to express his true feelings about space committees or just plain committees in general.
“Yes, that,” I replied agreeably, still out to sea a bit. I wasn’t fully up on the differences between Duralloy II and the regular old Mark I stuff, but Spalding looked fit to burst with pride over the stuff. Everyone else was looking at him with awe regarding the stuff, so I figured our more than slightly insane Chief Engineer had done it again. “Another miracle of engineering, Mr. Spalding; you are to be commended. Well done!”
“Thank you, Sir,” Spalding smiled, and I had to suppress a wince at the way his right eye auto-adjusted for focus, first pushing the lens forward with a whining sound and then back again. Cameras were meant to move like that to achieve focus, but not something stuck inside a person’s eye socket!
“All we need, Admiral, are a few more trained personnel to run things—that, and the time to set up a dedicated Factory complex. Then the Constructer’ll be mobile again,” Spalding continued, returning to the exact same subject he had been harping on the entire trip from Central back to Easy Haven.
“I understand, Chief Engineer,” I sighed, shaking my head from side to side.
“No, I don’t think ye do, Sir,” Spalding said sternly, and then held up a thumb and forefinger, holding them less than a centimeter apart, “we’re the width of a witch’s secret hair away from a fully-functional, self-supporting, top-of-the-line shipyard! By the time we have those ships the Lady Akantha delivered in working order, the only thing holding us back will be a tragic dearth of warm bodies!!!”
I was already shaking my head in negation. “We don’t have the men…I don’t have the men to give you,” I said sharply, “have you looked around here, I mean…at all? LeGodat’s running everything in Easy Haven at half staff, and that’s just with the warships and critical systems they’ve brought back online. Anything non-essential’s lucky if it has a handful of watch standers. Where am I supposed to get these men for you?” I demanded hotly, more than a bit tired of this particular argument.
“That’s not the kind of can-do attitude I expected from you, Admiral,” Spalding scowled, the weight of his look causing me to want to sink deep into my seat or run away and leave this Admiraling job to the professionals.
“What do you want me to do,” I snapped, “wave my magic wand and make trained engineers appear out of thin air? There’s no one to send, Lieutenant Spalding!” I finished, breathing hot and heavily. I was glad to have finally got that off my chest. Up until now, I’d been humoring the old man because of his previous sacrifices, but it was time for a dose of hard reality.
“There are ways and then there are ‘other’ ways, Sir,” Spalding retorted, an almost maniacal look stealing over his face.
“What are you talking about?” I demanded wearily, leaning back in my chair. The way he was looking, I almost wasn’t sure if we were still on the subject of personnel. “There’s no magic wand to fix a lack of manpower,” my eyes widened as I once again took in his almost cyborg like appearance.
Clearing my throat, I continued, “Besides, cloning has been illegal for a century and a half, and it takes entirely too long to raise and train one for such a thing to be practical, even if I was willing to countenance such an option. Which I wouldn’t,” I finished in a hard tone, desperately hoping my old Chief Engineer wasn’t about to propose we create some kind of Engineering Droid. I might have to send him in for psychological counseling and not only would that be a blow to morale but I’d lose one of my most trained officers all in one fell swoop.
“Oh no, Sir, nothing like that kind of malarkey ever crossed my mind. Why, I wouldn’t trust a sick dog to the care of that medical staff,” he sneered, and the tension in my shoulders instantly lessened.
“I’m glad we have that cleared up, Lieutenant,” I said pointedly, before glancing over at the holo-screen again.
Spalding looked completely disgusted by this response. “For a leader of men, and a high and mighty Admiral, you can be thick as a board sometimes,” he shook his head and then belatedly added, “no disrespect intended, Sir.”
“None taken, Junior Lieutenant,” I lied, but let it slip, given the circumstances. This man—more than any other—had been responsible for actually busting me out of prison, mere hours before I was scheduled to be executed. I was willing to let a few jabs slip by. Then, deciding to extend an olive branch, I sighed, “I take it you have a few thoughts on the subject?”
“Yer blasted well right I do!” he exclaimed, looking as excited as only an old, half mechanical engineer—who was none to stable ‘before’ he walked into an over-active power core—could be, “You said it yerself!”
“And just what, pray tell, was it that I already said that will shed light on how to fix our current personnel shortages?” I grunted. “Central and the Core Worlds have poisoned the well. As far as every single one of their citizens is concerned, I’m not Jason Montagne, Confederation Vice Admiral. Instead, I’m the dreaded Tyrant of Cold Space.” I knew I should have been filled with a righteous anger after saying this, the way they’d trailed my good name through the mud—Sir Isaac, in particular. But all I could manage was a kind of hollow despair. I knew that I was never the fire-eating, genius, hot-headed Admiral my men seemed to believe in…I was even starting to wonder if I’d somehow lost my nerve.
“Those Core Worlders are a bunch of namby pamby bilge mice,” Spalding scoffed, “you said it yerself: the Border Alliance is the only place to get the kind of tough as nails recruits we’re going to need.”
I blinked, as I replayed what he said in my mind. “I’m afraid you don’t understand, Chief,” I replied evenly, “as I already mentioned, the Border Worlds Alliance is nothing more than a myth—a creation of the moment, and one I used to good effect,” I said proudly, “but its existence is nothing more than a rumor ‘I’ created. There is zero substance to it,” I finished glumly. More’s the pity, I thought. If there had been even a shred of truth to it, I wouldn’t be sitting here taking up LeGodat’s desk and trying to figure out my—our, next step. I had to periodically remind myself that I was an Admiral again. I had come to learn that a couple of months under the executioners axe will do strange things to a person’s attitude.
“All’s the better!” Spalding exploded with such force I was left gaping, “So long as there’s no actual Alliance to be undermined, it’s impossible for Central to destroy it before we can begin recruiting!”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, closing my previously gaping mouth.
Spalding got a sly look on his face. “The Core Worlds may have been convinced that Admiral Montagne was really the burgeoning, and would-be ineffectual, Tyrant o
f Cold space, but remember this,” he said, and his right eye began to glow with an unholy light, “there’s no Com-Stat network left for them to listen to.”
My brow furled as I tried to figure out his point. Like a dog suddenly catching a whiff of a scent, I knew something real was lurking out there in the bushes, but I just couldn’t see it yet.
Stamping a foot loud enough to cause metal to clang, and the floor underneath him to vibrate slightly, the ornery old Engineer shook his head sadly. Clearly, to his engineering mind, I was too dumb to wait on any further.
“Meaning, Sir,” he said the last word with a snort, “that a slow civilian freighter, carrying any record of your hearing—and the accusations of the politicians, pundits and talking heads of Central that you failed to stop those pirates—is going to arrive right on the heels of word that your forces took the Omicron and handed the pirates a defeat such as this Sector hasn’t seen in two generations. In some cases, our version of events will have already have been playing on their local planetary networks for weeks!”
My eyes widened. “How the blazes would they know anything about…” I trailed off at the sight of the Chief Engineer’s smug grin. “You didn’t,” I breathed.
“When the blighters took our Clover,” the old Engineers face darkened thunderously, “I knew it was time to get out the word of all our good deeds. The court o’ public opinion is a fickle beast, and I figured it could help us maul our enemies. If I was aiming more at the politicians of Capria and the Assembly, but me arrow struck home in the Border Worlds instead…” a dire smile crossed his face and an insanely murderous look glinted in his eye, “you can still use it, Sir.”
“Interesting,” I muttered as my mind raced with the implications.
“Who cares if we can’t recruit in the Core,” Spalding growled stomping from one end of the room to the other before throwing up his hands. He leveled a finger at me, the tip of which popped off and a plasma torch ignited, “forget them bloomin’ idjits! As Murphy is my witness, we’ll sort them out later. After we’ve run a recruiting drive all the way from one end of the border to the other, and filled both my shipyard and every ship in this fleet with hard-hitting, Core World-despising, Fleet Recruits. Wiley old veterans like we got off those settlement ships at AZT, as well as greenhorns like as we’ve trained before. We’ll keep sending out ships until this organization’s practically bursting at the seam with warm bodies!”
My eyebrows climbed for the rafters. When he put it like that, it almost sounded like a recruiting drive might actually work. “But when the news finally does get out there…” I muttered deep in thought.
“Outrun the news,” Spalding said flatly, “get us the boys and girls, first and foremost. We can set them straight on Central’s lies,” he finished, clearly indicating himself and the other ‘veteran’ hands in the fleet when he mentioned setting them straight.
“Still,” I said starting to feel my wishy-washy lethargy slipping away, as excitement began rising to replace it. However, along with my excitement came a darker, harder feeling—one I wasn’t very familiar with: a cold-blooded desire for revenge. Revenge on Jean Luc, first and foremost; the man who shot me down in my own ready room had to die. Period. End of discussion. Then all those lying, blasted, politicians at Central, and everyone who had knowingly supported their lies over the truth.
“Sweet Cryin’ Murphy, boy,” Spalding urged, “I see you’re feeling a mite gun shy.”
I looked at him and nodded tightly, expecting some kind of it’s not your fault pep speech.
“Look, you got a lot of good boys killed on your watch, and that’s on you,” he said sternly. Not being at all what I had expected, I simultaneously felt the urge to deny the charge, and curl up into a ball so I could hide in the corner, “but everyone who made it out the other side—including me—are expecting you to get out front and lead. And you can’t do that from sitting in this office, worryin’ about what’ll go wrong.”
“But what if I get everyone else killed?” I asked, the words almost jerked out of my body.
“Then we’re all going to die, and it may be a slow death for the less lucky amongst us,” Spalding replied grimly, “however, it’s time to buckle up, bear down, and stop the slacking; it’s time to lead, boy!”
“What if I become like my Uncle?” I demanded, voicing one of my greatest fears. “What if the only way to win is to become like him? I won’t be a bloodthirsty, treasonous murderer!”
“Not going to happen, lad,” he assured me with a roll of his single eye.
“How can you know for sure?” I snapped.
“Don’t you worry your little head about that, Admiral,” he assured me in a consolatory tone, “if’n the boys and me see you stray, we’ll put you down before you can do too much damage.”
Flabbergasted, I stared at my wily old Engineer. The man had basically put me in charge of my own ship—the ship I’d lost more than two months ago, the Lucky Clover. For his part, he met my eyes with a grim determination.
My fear-filled inner self, that had been worried about becoming like an old style Montagne of old, seemed to reach across the aisle to grab hands with the more than slightly suicidal part of me that had survived the Dungeon ship. The latter part desired one thing, and one thing only: revenge. Feeling as if they suddenly shook hands, it was as though a weight I hadn’t even known I had been carrying sloughed off, and I came to a decision.
Win or lose, at least I could now be sure I wouldn’t become the very thing I had fought against for so long. The old reputation of my family as corrupt, bloodthirsty killers would not become my legacy. Spalding, a man who had walked into a reactor core to save our ship, who had worked more than one miracle to keep us going—and almost literally came back from the dead to help us in our hour of need, not to mention save me from the hangman’s noose—had just personally assured me he wouldn’t let it happen.
I bowed my head, and I was glad that I was looking down at the desk in that moment, for I could feel the barely-suppressed rage burning in my eyes. I thirsted for revenge with every fiber of my being. Shooting me down, I might have been able to forgive; taking my ship was more difficult, but I could probably have swallowed that also.
But what I could never stomach, was the way those mutineers started killing my loyal crew in cold blood. That was what sent me over the edge. I could never forget, nor would I ever forgive, being forced to watch as a man my Uncle could have stopped with a wave of his hand, tortured and killed innocent people—my people; boys and girls who’d placed their trust in me—on video.
“Alright,” I said, when I felt like I’d finally mastered my emotions, “I don’t know how successful it’ll be,” I continued, raising a hand to cut off any protestations, “but we’ll do it your way. I’ll get with LeGodat, and together we’ll send out a recruiting drive. I’m not sure what ships we’ll use, but whatever it is, will go out with an escort,” I finished, my rage at my rapid series of near death experiences at the hands of my pirate uncle and Sir Isaac the Ambassador, slowly tempering from a raging furnace of emotion, into a hardened resolve.
“Gambit Station’s a right sight to see, and that’s a fact,” Spalding said, practically dancing up and down with enthusiasm, now that I had essentially agreed to his plan. “Give her the men and women she needs to keep growing, and she won’t let you down, Sir.”
“I hope not, Chief,” I said evenly, “right now, we need every ship we’ve got, if we’re going to get back the Lucky Clover and pay my Uncle back for his treason.”
I could see him fight the urge to vent his bile at my traitorous Montagne Uncle, but instead all he did was snort and declare instead. “Give Gambit six months and a full crew to train in on their jobs, Admiral, and fifty credits says she’ll surprise you. I gauran-blasted-tee that within six months the last of those pirate clunkers Lady Akantha brought will be out in Confederation service or waitin’ for crew. More, if ye let me have my head with her—after we finish getting back the Cl
over—then, with Murphy as my Witness, I can promise that she’ll be ready to start producing ships of the line!”
“Real warships?” I inquired, leaning back in my chair at this new information.
“May the evil gods of cold space strike me down if I lie,” Spalding snapped.
“I almost can’t believe it,” I muttered under my breath.
“To the tune of one to two a year, if we don’t just keep expanding,” Spalding said triumphantly, “put a proper Engineer in charge of a project—and not some blasted space committee—and we can work wonders.”
I silently started to factor this new information into my calculations. According to the information Spalding had brought with him, they still had a pair of Dreadnaught Class, Caprian-built Battleships out at Gambit station. The rest of the small fry had either come out here to rescue me, or gone with Akantha to Capria.
At the thought of Akantha going to Capria I wanted to cringe, or be dismayed, or feel some kind of negative emotional reaction, because that’s what the old me would have felt. As it was, all I felt was a faint, nagging concern for the well-being of my wife. That, and a feeling of thwarted satisfaction that it was going to be her, and not me, that got to put a bit of a scare into them. I didn’t think one Imperial Cruiser, no matter how hot, was going to be able to deal with a full squadron of the Wall, along with supporting elements.
So all they were likely to get was a big surprise and shock to their system. But then again, I’d been wrong about a lot of things in the past, not the least of which was my beloved wife. Let them deal with the pit viper for awhile; it would probably do them—and her—a world of good.
In the meantime, I had some revenge to plan, and as they say: the best revenge is always served cold. It’s very cold in space, I reminded myself with a savage grin.
Admiral's Trial (A Spineward Sectors Novel:) Page 41
