by Terry Mixon
“Warriors aren’t cleared for non-Fleet use, even for the Guild.”
“Yes, but you’re a Fleet reserve officer,” she said. “And believe me when I say the Agency will make that enough.”
“Sir!” another voice barked, and Brad looked up to see Jim Shoulter, Oath’s assistant engineer, waving at him. The younger man was helping coordinate the search-and-rescue effort; what did he need Brad for?
“We got a dutchman!” Shoulter told him. “Vectoring a shuttle in now, but we’ve got at least one dutchman off Heart of Vengeance!”
Brad didn’t leave the shuttle bay. Falcone escorted her no-longer-quite-prisoners to new quarters aboard Oath, but the Commodore was going to be waiting in the bay until everything was done, one way or another.
“Boss, it’s Saburo,” his Colonel’s voice echoed in his ear. “We…now control Anchorage Dream. Prisoners are…still being counted, but we’ve got more wounded than upright.”
“What’s your status?” Brad asked.
“Well, I’ve been shot,” Saburo said dryly. “Fortunately, we have some very nice painkillers. We seized Engineering and evacuated the oxygen from the remaining holdouts.”
Brad could hear the ground trooper’s wince.
“I…figured more of them would have made it to vac-suits,” he concluded quietly. “We’ve got a lot of cases of hypoxia. We’re triaging as fast as we can, but we’re going to lose some of the prisoners.”
“Damn. That’s not your fault, Colonel,” Brad told Saburo. “You had a job to do. You did it. Our people?”
“Eight more dead, same wounded, including me.” Saburo exhaled. “I could use Doary’s people. Extra hands for triage and emergency first aid won’t go amiss.”
“The shuttles are currently doing search-and-rescue,” Brad admitted. “How badly do you need them?”
“Not…that badly,” the other man admitted. “We…” He sighed. “We’re going to lose the ones in real bad shape in the next twenty minutes anyway. What about our people?”
“Alan-a-dale is a complete loss,” Brad said levelly. “Heart… We may have a couple of survivors. No promises. Law lost about the same as you did in dead and wounded.”
He shook his head.
“Lotta funerals and medical bills coming up.”
There was silence on the channel.
“Was it worth it?” Saburo asked finally.
“Ask me after the funerals,” Brad told him. “But…we stopped the Cadre tripling their cruiser strength. That’s worth…something.”
“Something,” his subordinate echoed. “Yeah, that’s something.” He paused again. “Kyoko didn’t make it. Took a burst of rifle fire when we stormed Engineering. I’m going to need some new lieutenants.”
“We’re going to need a lot of new people,” Brad agreed. “We’ll talk to the Guild when we get home. I think the Vikings need one hell of a vacation.”
“You can say that again,” Saburo replied.
Before Brad could say anything more, a shuttle tore through the bay doors at what had to be nearly double the recommended safe velocity. Engines flared to halt the small craft with far too much power—but carefully aimed so only hull metal got slagged as the shuttle ground to a halt and the ramp slammed down.
“I’ve got three dutchmen here,” the medic barked as she pulled a wheeled stretcher out of the shuttlecraft. “I need hands, people; every second counts!”
Jason Finley died on the operating table. Luck had brought him through the destruction of his ship and back aboard the shuttle, but he’d taken shrapnel as Heart of Vengeance came apart around him.
The other two survivors from Heart’s bridge had been on reduced oxygen as their suits tried to draw out their survival time, but he’d been short on O2 and bleeding out. It was a miracle he’d survived to pickup.
Heart’s tactical officer, Erasmo Poulos, was luckier. He’d live. He’d need a new leg, but the piece of superheated metal that had sheared off his left leg above the knee had cauterized the wound and melted his vac-suit to his skin.
Shelly Weldon, Jason’s wife, was uninjured. Physically, at least, but Brad was watching her carefully as the medics brought her back to consciousness. She gasped hard and sat bolt upright—only for him to clamp his hand on her shoulder.
“You’re on Oath,” he told her. “You’re alive. You’re okay.”
Shelly breathed rapidly for several seconds, hitting the edge of hyperventilation before slowly calming down as Michelle stepped up to hold her other shoulder.
“Jason?” she asked softly.
“He took shrapnel as the ship came apart,” Brad told her as gently as he could. “He…didn’t make it.”
Shelly closed her eyes.
“Fuck. Why? Why him? Why us?”
He squeezed her shoulder.
“Because we screwed up and assumed that because the man we knew was kept in the dark didn’t know of a coms channel, there wasn’t one,” he said quietly. “Because I screwed up, Shelly. I’m sorry.”
“Bullshit,” Michelle snapped. “This was the job, Shelly. You knew that. Jason knew that. It was the risk—the ships we stopped making it to the Cadre today would have been responsible for hundreds of deaths. Thousands. Jason knew the risks.”
It was funny, Brad reflected. His wife had been the least okay with what they did for a living at one point, but now she was the one pulling the two long-term mercenaries back from the brink.
Brad sat there in silence with Shelly and Michelle for at least a minute, expecting Shelly to break down in tears. Instead, she eventually swallowed and looked up to face him with a forced brave face.
“What happens now?” she asked.
“We go home,” Brad told her. “You rest. Everything’s in hand.”
Which was true enough, as it went. Everything was as in-hand as it was going to get for quite some time.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“Well, either we are about to get utterly screwed…or that’s Task Group Tremendous heading our way,” Bogdanov told Brad as their sensors picked up the incoming Fleet units. “Tremendous herself is the only one of those cruisers Fleet has in commission.”
The sensors were picking up what looked like a standard cruiser task group—a single cruiser, three destroyers, and five corvettes. There were fifteen of those task groups patrolling around the star system, occupying just under half of the Fleet’s cruisers.
And Brad’s tactical officer was correct. The lead ship of the group was definitely a Tremendous-class cruiser, which meant that either it was TG Tremendous on its way to them or the Cadre had a third cruiser they weren’t supposed to.
Forty-eight hours earlier, he would have assumed that it was Fleet arriving to investigate the aftermath of multiple nuclear detonations. Now, however, he wasn’t so certain.
“Well, let’s hope it’s Tremendous,” Brad finally said aloud. “Because if that’s a Cadre task group, we can’t fight it.”
Oath of Vengeance might be undamaged, but she was outmatched by the cruiser. The destroyers could be of any of a half-dozen classes, most of which Oath could take one-on-one, but three of them could take her.
Bound by Law was…intact. Both of her turrets were even online, though having seen Captain Andre’s damage reports, Brad wasn’t entirely sure how.
“Xan, get me a channel,” he instructed his com officer. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”
“You’re on, boss.”
“Fleet cruiser group, this is Commodore Brad Madrid of the Vikings company of the Mercenary Guild, aboard the destroyer Oath of Vengeance,” he said calmly. “We have been engaged in counter-Cadre operations under contract to the Commonwealth Investigative Agency. I presume you are investigating the nuclear detonations that occurred roughly twenty-six hours ago?
“We can provide the sensor readings from our surviving ships, but I assure you, we did not fire those weapons ourselves,” Brad continued. He forced a pained smile. “I know my history, officers, but it
really wasn’t me this time.”
A few seconds’ wait passed, and then the channel linked up and the image of a broad-shouldered heavyset woman with piercing green eyes and black hair appeared on his screens.
“Commodore Madrid,” she said slowly, as if the words were dirty. “I am Commodore Iris Nuremberg. I am investigating a series of nuclear explosions, yes, but I am also investigating an emergency pulse from the Transplanetary Macro Fabrications transport Anchorage Dream. Captain Marley’s pulse stated they were under attack by ships transmitting Guild IFFs…and my scanner crews report that you appear to have Anchorage Dream under tow.
“My current evidence, Commodore, suggests that you are guilty of a pirate attack on an Earth-registry freighter. You will stand down your ships and prepare to be boarded while my people work out the details of what happened here!”
Brad could argue with the woman. He could give in to her demands. He had half a dozen ways to sort this mess out, but he didn’t have the time or patience for her Everdarkened hydroponics fertilizer.
“Commodore, shut up,” he said quietly. “I am overriding your orders. Your group will move into escort formation around the captured convoy and stand by for transfer of prisoners and Commonwealth Agent Kate Falcone. Once complete, you will take the TMF ships under escort to Jupiter under Agent Falcone’s command.
“Authentication for my authority is Kappa Lambda Victory Niner Niner Seven Three Capital Lambda. I can connect you to Agent Falcone for additional authentication if you wish.”
He’d never heard the bridges of two connected starships be quite so silent before. Nuremberg, to her credit, rotated a screen on her command chair and typed in the code.
“That is a valid code,” she said slowly, “but one that requires a secondary authenticate. Commodore?”
“Secondary authenticate is ‘Angel rising,’” Brad told her. “Do you confirm?”
“I confirm,” she said. “Your ‘orders’ are outside your authority, you know,” she pointed out.
Brad snorted. That was arguable. He’d just given her a Commonwealth Intelligence Agency authentication code that her system would tell her meant “provide all possible assistance.”
“Consider them suggestions, then, Commodore,” he said quietly. “But trust me when I say that Anchorage Dream is far from innocent. If you doubt me, scan the debris fields. We were just forced to destroy two Tremendous-class cruisers to prevent them being turned over to the Cadre.”
Nuremberg studied him for a long moment.
“Tremendous is the only ship of her class in commission,” she pointed out. “Awestruck is currently undergoing space trials. There aren’t two other Tremendous-class ships in the star system.”
“How classified is your anti-torpedo laser system?” Brad asked.
She winced.
“Your authentication is valid,” she admitted. “I think I need to see that scan data, though, if you don’t mind, Commodore. Once I have, may I impose on you and Agent Falcone for a videoconference?
“It seems that I have some work to do…and I’d like to make sure I don’t get yanked up short by override codes again, if you don’t mind.”
By the time Tremendous and her escorts reached the collection of mercenary ships and their captives, it was clear that Commodore Nuremberg had made up her mind. The big cruiser positioned herself above and to the side of Anchorage Dream, neatly putting the transport under her guns while not impeding Oath or Law’s line of fire.
“You know, you could have just sent her the data,” Falcone noted as she lounged in one of the chairs in his office. “Between that and my own authority, we would have avoided trouble.”
“How quickly, Kate?” Brad asked, exchanging a look with Michelle who occupied the other chair. “Neither of our ships is ready to fight, even if we were anything resembling a match for Nuremberg’s task group. Anchorage Dream pulled all the right levers to make her suspicious when she showed up; yanking our levers in turn was the only option we had.”
Falcone made a throwaway gesture.
“You’re not wrong,” she admitted. “But even most of your bridge crew didn’t know you were an Agent until today. And now Nuremberg and her staff know too.”
“So, keep an eye on them. That’s what the Agency is for, isn’t it?” Brad asked. “My patience for games is pretty shot right now. There’s too many bodies in my morgue for that, and too many empty coffins we’re going to be mourning to go with them.”
“I know,” she allowed. “We’ll watch the Commodore and her people. She shouldn’t be in command of that task group if she isn’t clean, but…”
“But we just discovered that one of Fleet’s biggest suppliers is dirty,” Michelle noted. “That suggests there’s more games playing than we know of.”
“And there aren’t supposed to be games that the Agency doesn’t know of,” Falcone agreed. “Is our new friend calling in?”
“Xan should be setting up a conference as we speak,” Brad confirmed. “Our new friend is your ride, after all.”
“Do I get a say in this?” the Agent asked.
“Only if you want to go straight back to Io,” Brad told her. “We finished the job, Kate. From here…we’re going right home while I still have people left.”
A chime announced that Xan had connected Nuremberg to them, and they left it there as Brad brought Nuremberg’s image up on his screen.
She was in her own office now, the camera drawn back far enough to show that someone had spent a great deal of effort trying to hide the Commodore’s bulk by modifying the standard Fleet uniform.
They’d failed, but they’d tried. Sitting down did her no favors, but Brad wasn’t enough of a fool to let her weight distract him from the deadly-sharp focus in her eyes.
“I would very much like to have a long conversation with Captain Marley in a dark room,” Nuremberg told them. “Unfortunately, from what your people said, an innocent-seeming Transplanetary freighter captain had a poison tooth and suicided when you took his ship.”
She shook her head.
“Even looking at your data, I find it all hard to believe.” She held up a hand. “I do believe it, to be clear; it’s just terrifying. TMF just nearly delivered enough firepower to take out my entire task group to the Cadre…and we apparently missed them building it.”
“That’s on the Agency,” Falcone admitted.
“Bullshit,” Nuremberg told her. “The Agency is supposed to be watching our enemies, not our suppliers. That’s on Fleet and Commonwealth Internal Audit. And between us, I think we can make damn sure that the IA teams who should have found this get checked out.”
“I’m glad to hear you’re on our side,” Falcone replied. “We had some concerns when you first showed up.”
“Marley set me up,” she said grimly. “What pisses me off is that I knew Donald Marley. His daughter was dating my son. He knew I’d trust him. If you hadn’t had an authentication code I couldn’t argue with, I’d have come in looking for blood.
“And the man was Cadre. Fuck.”
“That’s the problem with all of this,” Falcone told her. “We don’t know who we can trust anymore. People who should be above question are neck-deep in the muck. What data we have suggests the Cadre now has a third of the strength of the entire Commonwealth Fleet—that didn’t come from nowhere, and it sure as hell hasn’t been built in just the last eighteen months since the Terror got shortened by a head.”
“You need to go back to Earth,” Brad told Falcone quietly. “Take the ships, the transport, the data…everything. Get back to your offices on Luna and point the Agency at this whole mess. Safest way for you to do that is aboard Tremendous.”
“We can haul that whole convoy, yeah,” Nuremberg agreed. “This whole mess is out of my scope; I’ll admit that. I’m no innocent—you don’t get the fanciest cruiser in the Fleet as your flagship without kissing ass—but this kind of twisted mess…”
She shook her head.
“I’
m a soldier. Give me an enemy, I’ll kick their head in…but reading between the lines of what you’re saying, that’s exactly what someone wants us to do.”
Brad sighed.
“And that’s why we need Falcone on Earth,” he told the women. “Someone with all of the data and the authority to start turning over rocks. That’s her. It sure as Everdark isn’t me. I have ships to repair, friends to bury, and a mercenary company to rebuild from the wreck this op left it in.”
“You’re right,” Falcone admitted. “Got room for supercargo and a few confiscated spaceships, Commodore?”
“Anywhere you need us to take you, Agent,” she said. “We’ll make it happen.”
“Soon,” Brad told them. “We’ve all got places to be now.”
“I won’t forget what I said, Brad,” Falcone told him. “When we’re done with these ships, you get them. I don’t care what levers we’ve got to pull. You’ve earned them.”
He shook his head.
“Won’t turn them down. I just can’t say I like the price, either.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
“Present arms!”
Saburo’s bellow echoed across Oath of Vengeance’s shuttle bay. Fifteen men and women, the survivors of the destroyer’s landing contingent, presented their carbines in salute over the rows and rows of plain black coffins and the accompanying boxes of personal effects.
“Company, salute!”
The rest of the destroyer’s company stepped up, hands snapping into crisp salutes as they walked by their friends.
Brad himself stood stonily at one end of the bay, watching his people shuffle by the plain boxes that contained the last remains of their colleagues. All of the personal-effects boxes were full, but only about two-thirds of the coffins actually contained bodies.
Mercenaries didn’t wrap their dead in flags or patriotism. Each coffin simply had a name and the armored Viking of the company logo carved into the top. Tradition said that the empty coffin would be delivered to the families, same as the full ones.
