by David Weber
So just remember we're watchin' you, Admiral O'Cleary. And it's perfectly all right with me for you t' go right on sweatin' all those missile pods. Because th' first time one of those superdreadnoughts even twitches, we are goin' t' blow the son-of-a-bitch straight t' hell.
* * *
This, Major Evgeny Markiewicz reflected sourly, is the kind of story you really like to kick back over a good beer and bullshit about later. Preferably, much later. It's not the kind of story you enjoy while the damned thing is happening.
He'd collected quite a few stories like that over the eighteen-T-years since he'd enlisted in Her Manitocran Manjesty's Marine Corps, and he'd just as soon have avoided adding this one to his collection.
Well, if I can't take a joke, I shouldn't have joined, he told himself, and turned his attention to the task at hand.
The good news was that a Nike-class battlecruiser carried a three hundred-man Marine detachment, twice the size of a Saganami-C's. The bad news was that that still gave HMS Rigel only two companies. And the even worse news, as far as he was concerned, was that he'd been tasked to provide Marine support for two separate naval boarding parties.
Which wouldn't be all that bad, I suppose, if we weren't going to be outnumbered ten-to-one by the Sollies still aboard the damned ships.
He glanced at lieutenant Sebastián Fariñas, Admiral Oversteegen's San Martin-born flag lieutenant, standing at his shoulder, then across the pinnace's troop compartment at Captain Luciana Ingebrigtsen, the commander of his Alpha Company. He'd more or less flipped a coin to decide whether he should accompany her or Motoyuki MacDerment, Bravo Company's CO. Since he was going with Ingebrigtsen, he'd sent Gunny Danko (otherwise known as Sergeant Major Evelyn Danko) along with MacDerment to keep an eye on him. Both Ingebrigtsen and MacDerment were good, solid officers, but they were undeniably still a bit young for their rank. There was a lot of that going around, and while he was confident in their competence, there was no harm providing a little adult supervision. By the same token, he was equally confident that whichever one of them he chose to accompany, it was the other one Murphy would choose to drop straight into the crapper. (Both of those beliefs, he supposed, might owe a little something to his eleven years' enlisted experienced before the Corps sent him off to OTC.)
Of course, the fact that he'd assigned himself to Alpha Company also meant that Alpha Company had been assigned to board SLNS Anton von Leeuwenhoek, which happened to be the flagship of one Admiral Keeley O'Cleary. Which also explained Fariñas' presence.
At the moment, Ingebrigtsen was involved in a quiet conversation with Master Sergeant Clifton Palmarocchi, Alpha Company's senior noncom. Palmarocchi had been around the block and back again, and the chunky, muscular master sergeant, with his thinning fair hair and pronounced Gryphon accent would have made an admirable illustration for the term "grizzled veteran." That was just fine with Markiewicz, especially when he contemplated the absurd youthfulness of the junior officer standing at Ingebrigtsen's elbow and nodding sagely at whatever she was saying. The captain might be young, but Lieutenant Hector Lindsay looked like he ought to be playing mumblety-peg in a schoolyard somewhere. Well, maybe it wasn't quite that bad, but it was bad enough. In fact, Lindsay was still a few months shy of his twentieth birthday, standard, fresh out of OCS, which made him even younger than Lieutenant Fariñas ( no ancient graybeard himself), and he'd had "his" platoon for just under two months, having come aboard literally as Rigel was pulling out for Talbott.
There was a reason, the major suspected, Ingebrigtsen and Palmarocchi had both ended up accompanying First Platoon instead of either of her other platoons. And, he admitted to himself, if he'd thought about it, he would have picked this pinnace to help keep an eye on Lindsay. The boy was smart enough, and motivated as hell, but he was so shiny and new that it hurt.
Well, Markiewicz decided, glancing at his armor's HUD, where the pinnace's flight engineer was feeding him a duplicate of the pilot's HUD, we'll be finding out shortly how well this is all going to work.
* * *
"Good seal, Ma'am," Petty Officer 2/c John Pettigrew announced as a green light indicated a solid mating with Charles Babbage's Emergency Airlock Number 117. "According to the diagnostic ping, the lock's operable, but it looks like it's running on emergency local power."
"Thank you, PO," Abigail acknowledged, then glanced at Gutierrez.
"Let's get them moving, Lieutenant," she said far more formally than she normally spoke to him.
"Yes, Ma'am."
Gutierrez took time to salute before sealing his helmet, which, Abigail knew, was his equivalent, under the circumstances, of pitching a tantrum. He hadn't liked the decision to place him in tactical command of the boarding party instead of staying where he was supposed to be, watching her back, one little bit. Unfortunately the fact that Tristram carried no Marine detachment made ex-Sergeant Gutierrez the closest thing to a Marine CO Naomi Kaplan had available. That, coupled with the fact that Abigail was the only one of her Navy officers with any experience in ground combat was what had determined who would command Tristram's boarding party.
Everyone, including (perhaps even especially) Lieutenant Abigail Hearns hoped combat experience would be completely irrelevant to their present mission. The entire reason Tristram had been assigned responsibility for Charles Babbage was the sheer extent of the superdreadnought's devastating damage. Although Abigail's little command was technically a boarding party, their real function was search and rescue, and any Solly with a functional brain was going to be simply delighted to see them.
Unfortunately, as she'd pointed out to Corbett, they couldn't rely on the functionality of any survivors' brains. In fact, it was entirely possible that what they'd been through could have thoroughly unhinged some of them, in which case all bets were off and all of Matteo Gutierrez's experience might be required, after all.
He understood that as well as she did, but he also understood that it meant he was going to be concentrating on running the boarding party's entire security element instead of solely watching over one Abigail Hearns. And while he was far too professional to object, it was obvious he didn't see any reason to pretend—with Abigail, at least—that he was at all amused.
Well, you're just going to have to deal with it, Matteo, she thought, smiling affectionately at his broad back.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Evgeny Markiewicz had never thought much of officers who fretted over details which should have been left in the hands of their noncoms. He'd seen entirely too many examples of that from the noncom's perspective, which meant he knew exactly how much it pissed off the noncoms in question. What was worse, it represented a misuse of the officer's time and attention. He was supposed to be in charge of managing his command, however big or small it might be, not allowing himself to become absorbed in the sorts of details which could all too easily distract him from that management function.
At the moment, he found that somewhat more difficult than usual to remember.
The boat bay aboard SLNS Anton von Leeuwenhoek, Admiral Keeley O'Cleary's flagship, was larger than it would have been the aboard a Manticoran superdreadnought. Partly that was because Solarian ships carried greater numbers of small craft. That had been true even before Manticoran crews had been downsized, although the difference was even more marked these days. For another thing, Solarian small craft tended to be larger than their Manticoran counterparts. According to his briefing, they didn't carry any more personnel or cargo—in fact, they carried slightly less—but they had a longer designed operating radius, and their basic designs were much older and hadn't profited from the RMN's wartime emphasis on greater operational efficiency and component reduction.
At the moment, all those small craft, aside from two purely reaction-drive cutters, were absent, however. By this time, they were sitting obediently in orbit around Flax, under the watchful eyes—and weapons—of Commodore Terekhov's cruisers, and the boat bay was a huge, gaping cavern in their absence. A
cavern which looked even larger with only a trio of Manticoran pinnaces docked in it like lonely interlopers.
Captain Ingebrigtsen had lt Lieutenant Lindsay and Platoon Sergeant Francine Harper handle First Platoon's debarkation, and Markiewicz had been pleased by the way Ingebrigtsen managed not to hover. For that matter, he'd been pleased by the way Lindsay had let Harper get on with it. But now, as the platoon's forty-four men and women formed up in Leeuwenhoek's boat bay gallery, he recognized Ingebrigtsen's itchy expression. He ought to, given that he shared the same ignoble temptation to start fooling around with those details he was supposed to stay clear of.
Fortunately, young Lindsay seemed unaware of the pair of incipient backseat drivers somehow managing to restrain themselves. The lieutenant glanced around, then looked at Sergeant Harper.
"Let's get a squad on each of the lift banks, Frankie," he said.
"Aye, Sir!" Harper replied, and barked a few, crisp commands. The platoon quickly and smoothly unraveled into its constituent squads, and Markiewicz gave a mental nod of approval. It was a simple evolution, but the confidence in Lindsay's voice and the briskness with which he'd acted were both good signs.
And, unlike one Major Markiewicz, Lindsay appeared completely immune to the temptation to micromanage his platoon sergeant.
"Bay secure, Ma'am," Lindsay reported a moment later to Ingebrigtsen.
"Thank you, Hector," the captain replied gravely, and keyed her battle armor's com. "Bay secure," she announced. "Second Platoon, come ahead."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am," Lieutenant Sylvester Jackson, responded almost instantly. "On our way."
The second pinnace's hatch cycled open, and Jackson's platoon swam briskly down the personnel tube. They fell in just inside the gallery, and Jackson—four years older than Lindsay, with sandy hair and a pronounced Sphinxian accent—reported to Ingebrigtsen.
"You know what to do, Sly," Ingebrigtsen told him.
"Aye, aye, Ma'am." Jackson saluted her and Markiewicz, then turned to his own platoon sergeant and passed through Lindsay's people into the central shaft of each bank of lifts. They did not enter the lift cars, however. Instead, they sent the cars upward, overriding the automatic command to close the shaft doors behind them, and, as per their pre-mission orders, followed the cars up the shaft in their armor. Markiewicz didn't really expect anyone aboard Leeuwenhoek to be stupid enough to try anything, but if anyone was so suicidally inclined, he had no intention of offering his people up in neatly packaged, easily bushwhacked lots.
"All right, Aldonza," Ingebrigtsen said over her com. "Your turn."
"Understood, Ma'am."
Lieutenant Aldonza Navarro, Third Platoon's CO, had a more pronounced San Martin accent than Fariñas'. At a hundred and seventy-two centimeters, she was on the short side for most of the San Martinos Markiewicz had met, but there was nothing wrong with her efficiency, and Third Platoon quickly assembled in the boat bay.
Markiewicz, meanwhile, was monitoring his HUD, watching the icons of Jackson's Marines as they ascended the lift shafts. Jackson's second squad left its shaft at the 03 Deck lift doors. The lieutenant himself stayed with his first squad, leaving the shaft at the 02 Deck level. His second squad continued to the 01 Deck, and Markiewicz gave another mental nod as all three squads settled into position.
"Take the banks, Aldonza," Ingebrigtsen instructed, and Third Platoon relieved Lindsay's people as the anchoring security element on the lift banks here in the boat bay. At the same time, First Platoon fell back in, and Ingebrigtsen nodded—in her case, physically—in approval.
"Ready to proceed, Sir," she said formally, turning to Markiewicz.
"Very good, Captain." Markiewicz smiled. "Let's get this show on the road, then."
"Aye, aye, Sir. Head them up-shaft, Hector."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am!" Lindsay acknowledged, and First Platoon started climbing into the shaft Jackson had used, with Ingebrigtsen, Fariñas, and Markiewicz trailing along behind.
This time, Markiewicz noted, Lieutenant Lindsay hadn't quite managed to keep his excitement out of his voice, but the major was inclined to cut the youngster a little slack. After all, his platoon had been chosen to accompany Markiewicz to Leeuwenhoek's flag bridge to formally accept Admiral O'Cleary's personal surrender before the rest of his Marines began moving through the rest of the core hull to secure it. Which meant young Hector Lindsay was about to go into the Corps' history books as the first junior officer—very junior officer, in his case—of any star nation to command the squad which took a Solarian League Navy's flag officer's surrender on the flag deck of an SLN superdreadnought. Markiewicz wasn't exactly immune to the same awareness, which was one reason he couldn't justify taking Lindsay to task for it. At the same time, though, he wondered if Lindsay had figured out he'd drawn this particular assignment because he was the least experienced of Ingebrigtsen's platoon commanders? Navarro, with the most combat experience of all, had taken over the boat bay detachment because it constituted Markiewicz's reserve. If something went wrong and dropped them all into the crapper after all, he wanted somebody who'd been there and done that in charge of the force assigned to pull them all back out again.
I wonder if Luciana had the heart to explain that to Lindsay? he wondered. I know I didn't!
* * *
Abigail Hearns took one more look around. The passageway immediately inboard from the emergency airlock was longer and a bit wider than it would have been in a Manticoran or Grayson-designed warship, but it looked rather cramped at the moment, with her entire boarding party and six counter-grav sleds of salvage and rescue gear packed into it. Other than that, about the best she could say was that it was still atmosphere tight. Only the emergency lighting was up, and close to a third of the lighting elements were dead. One of her engineering ratings had already determined that the backup hardwired emergency com system was down, but from the looks of things, that could just as easily have been due to lack of maintenance as to the damage Charles Babbage had suffered at Manticoran hands.
The ship—or, rather, the battered hulk which had once been a ship—was under an apparent gravity of about 1.2 g. The wreckage had been rotated perpendicular to its line of flight, putting the decks and deckheads back where they ought to be, and Tristram was playing tugboat to slow what was left of the Babbage down. In many ways, Abigail would have preferred to remain in microgravity. It would have made getting about faster and simpler, not to mention avoiding the stress the deceleration was putting on damaged structural members. And she was well aware that the deceleration might actually be life-threatening for survivors under some circumstances. Unfortunately, the wreck's velocity of almost eighteen thousand kilometers per second had already carried it past Flax. It was now hurtling across the inner system at roughly six percent of light-speed, bound for a fatal encounter with the gas giant Everest in just under twenty hours. It was extraordinarily unlikely, given Tenth Fleet's limited manpower, that the SAR parties would be able to completely search ships as mangled and torn as Babbage and her consorts in that time. Which meant they had to be slowed down somehow.
Tristram looked like a guppy tethered to a whale as she worked to decelerate Babbage's wreckage, but there wouldn't have been any point using a larger, more powerful vessel. Tristram was could brake them at the current rate indefinitely, and they dared not apply any greater deceleration, for a lot of reasons. At this rate, it would take over fifteen T-days (and the next best thing to twelve light-hours) to actually stop them relative to the system primary, but it would also divert them well clear of any collisions with odds and ends of system real estate, which would be a very good thing from the SAR perspective.
Assuming anyone who maintained their internal systems as poorly as these people appeared to have had managed to survive to be rescued in the first place, of course.
Don't rush to conclusions, Abby, she reminded herself. This is strictly an emergency access way, and the lock's the only thing it leads to. Let's not decide all of their maintenance is as ha
lf-assed as it looks right here until we've actually seen it.
She told herself that rather firmly, and she knew she had a point. But she couldn't help reflecting on how any Manticoran or Grayson executive officer would react to something like this, even if it was "only" an emergency access way. In fact, especially if it was "only" an emergency access way. There was a reason things like that were provided when a ship was designed, after all, and when an emergency finally came along and bit your posterior, it was a little late to think about catching up on that overdue maintenance you'd really been meaning to get to sometime real soon now.
At least we're in, we're in one piece, and we're in solid com contact with the pinnace. Which means—
"All right, Matteo, let's go," she said.
"Yes, Ma'am," Lieutenant Gutierrez replied, then nodded to PO 1/c William MacFarlane, one of the noncoms to whom he'd issued another flechette gun. "Lead 'em out, Bill."
"Yes, Sir," MacFarlane acknowledged in turn, and started cautiously down the poorly lit passage.
Three more ratings with flechette guns followed him, with Gutierrez behind them. The lieutenant and Bosun Musgrave had spent the better part of half an hour deciding which naval personnel should be trusted with things that went bang. MacFarlane and the other flechette-armed ratings—there were three more bringing up the rear—were the ones with actual combat experience or who had most recently qualified with the weapons. Everyone else carried at least a sidearm as regulations required, but Gutierrez had been bloodthirstily explicit when he explained what would happen to anyone other than his designated flechette gunners who dared to switch any weapon from "safe" to "fire" without his specific instructions to do so. Given the profoundly stupid things Abigail had seen people do with firearms, she heartily approved of her armsman's attitude.
Now the rest of the party followed MacFarlane to the airtight door at the end of the airlock access way, and Selma Wilkie, one of Lieutenant Fonzarelli's engineering techs, examined the controls.
