The Belt Loop_Book Three_End of an Empire

by Robert B. Jones

  * * *

  The elevator ride to the seventh floor of the Wayfarer’s Inn was swift and silent. Ken Royal leaned against the sturdy rear bulkhead and helped support a wet Lieutenant Commander Max Hansen. She had finally got her due just before they left the party downstairs and her short hair was plastered on her head and dripped salty water down the front of her uniform. She had known what was coming, they told her in advance. Even still, the cold water and wet clothes could not dampen her spirits. A big smile permeated her face and she leaned back against Ken. The boys were intent on punching all of the buttons on the elevator’s control panel and their hands fought for superiority as the buttons lighted. Max said nothing to stop them.

  When the doors opened on seven, they piled out into the hallway and Max’s shoes squished with every step she took. She noticed a big wet spot on the front of Har’s shirt and commented about it as they made their way to the suites Ken had reserved.

  “Oh, that,” Har said, reaching into his breast pocket. “I put my rank thing into one of those glasses of sea water. You know, wetting it down like Mister Royal told us about.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the gold trident insignia, the small glassine envelope still leaking brine.

  Ken laughed out loud and Max just shook her head.

  “Hey, Mister Royal,” Cory said, walking backwards down the hall, “Who is Grant Stevens, anyway?”

  “He was a very brave Navy SEAL. Back on Earth, before the military took to space travel, maybe a thousand years ago. His exploits were pretty well documented and that special SWO award Harold got has only been given out a few times.”

  “Yeah,” Har said, “that makes me part of the elite.”

  Cory playfully slapped him on the shoulder and the two young cadets ran on ahead. Ken looked at the numbers on the doors as they passed them and eventually led Max to two doors that were only a meter apart. “Hey, guys,” he said to Har and Cory, “come on back here. This is it.”

  The boys put on the brakes and ran back to the grownups. Ken used his swipecard and opened the door on his left. “In you go, guys. Twin beds, shower, satvid TV and the works. I had the bellman put your overnight bags in the closet. Your mom will be right next door, Har. You guys get settled in and enjoy your rest, we have a busy day planned for tomorrow.”

  Har and Cory went into the room and picked out their beds by reverse-diving across an unseen high-jump bar set at two meters. “I trust you men will behave and not wreck the place,” Max said. They agreed to be gentlemen and she pulled the door closed.

  Ken swiped open the door on the right and turned on the lights. “Here you go, Max. Your things are in the closet. I’ll be in the next room down the hall. What time shall I call for you in the morning?”

  She swayed on unsteady feet. One glass of beer and forty-five minutes on the dance floor had been enough to knock her equilibrium out of whack. “I’m Navy, Ken. I get up at first nautical twilight.”

  He tried to do the calculations in his head. Twelve degrees below the horizon. He was too wired to come up with an accurate answer so he simply said, “Okay, a half-hour before local dawn. See you about 0530 hours. You want coffee?”

  She looked into her room at the little counter near the restroom. “Got some. Get your rest, Ken, we have a long day ahead of us and I know the boys will be anxious to have a weekend away from school. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  He leaned in to give her a kiss on the cheek but she was in the door and gone before he had the chance. He shrugged as she closed the door softly behind her and headed down to his room. He opened the door and turned on the lights. His overnight bag was hanging in the closet alcove and his toilet kit was on the counter in the head next to a small coffee maker. He plopped down on the king-sized bed, folded his arms behind his head and looked wearily at the ceiling. Somewhere in the distance he thought he could still hear the thumping bass notes coming from the ballroom below. The Navy was still in full swing down there and he thought some of the more inebriated men would have to be swept off the floor when the cleaning crews arrived to set the hall right.

  He looked around his room and stared blankly at the comm center stack and the TV screen, dark and reflective, like an ominous mirror distorting the view of the wall behind him. That was when he saw the dark rectangle reflected in distorted curving lines on the TV screen. What was that?

  Ken flipped over on his side and looked behind him. Next to the headboard on the bed, adjacent to the small nightstand, was a door. A connecting door to Max’s room. Probably locked, he thought. He looked at the latch for a long while and finally decided to undress and take advantage of a few hours’ down time.

  He had just pulled off his shirt when he heard the small tap on the connecting door.

  Then it opened.

  Max Hansen stood there in her skivvies with a small bottle of champagne from the mini-bar in her hand.

  “Want some company?” she said.

  Chapter 33

  In a way, Captain Dryfus was a little disappointed. Four days on station and nothing happening but routine readiness inspections and assorted personnel shifting. His task force had seen no action to speak of. One incursion by two Varson ships in the last 96 hours, and they were just in for a look-see. The two frigates had unfolded twelve hours ago, made a wide high-gee sweep of the area halfway between Bayliss and Proctor-34 and departed for the fold before Dryfus could get a lock on them. The entire encounter had lasted no more than the time it took to come to battle stations and ready the weapons. He ordered his forces to stand ready for an engagement but they did not chase the alien ships.

  The rest of his time was divided between his bridge and his ready room. With eighteen ships under his supervision he had plenty to do. The constant flow of replacement officers from Bayliss to restaff some of the positions vacated by the rash of promotions made for hours and hours of crew shuffling. That situation would only get worse when the newly pinned officers made their way back to the void and assumed their new positions.

  Six hours ago a courier boat arrived with additional orders. He was to shuffle a few more crew members back to Bayliss, more specifically, back to the Port Authority dock. The CNS Corpus Christi was being made ready for action. At 0600 hours Monday morning she was due to set sail for Wilkes with her new captain. He had to fill slots in her bridge crew, her weapons bay, medical, storekeeping, hydroponics, and so forth. He looked at his reader and started to go through the names. In the back of his mind, he figured this was something Captain Yorn should be doing. It was hard to anticipate what the Christi’s new skipper would want in a crew. Evidently he had already filled out most of his bridge crew from those he had previously sailed with. Some of the slots had to be filled with newly unrestricted line officers with little or no command experience. It couldn’t be helped. The war had caused an extreme shortage in qualified sailors to fill key slots. On-the-job training was not the way the Colonial Navy usually did business, but, in this emergency, battlefield promotions looked as if they would become the rule and not the exception. Losing over 200,000 sailors on Canno would leave the ranks further decimated. Recruiting efforts had to be stepped up if the Navy was going to replace even half of those killed in battle so far. The outlook was looking grim.

  Then there was the Wilkes matter. Out of the thirty-six ships he had managed to get safely to Bayliss, a third of those were being reassigned to the space around Wilkes. Such rapid-deployment moves and counter-moves during wartime were not all that unusual but Dryfus thought some of the ship-shuffling was getting the Fleet nowhere. As soon as they massed enough ships around Bayliss the enemy stopped attacking. The ships from the Third, recently returned from the Belt Loop, were actively setting up picket lines around Elber, even though there had been no action anywhere near the colonial home base. He realized the need for a defensive posture around all of the colonial worlds after what happened to Canno. What he questioned most was the direction of the Admiralty’s thinking. They were trying to anticipate t
oo many things at the same time. Had he been in charge, he would have already launched a strike force to the Varson home planet. Had he been the one sitting on the top floor at headquarters, that Varson planet Cannure would already have been destroyed. He would have made every effort to knock out the enemy’s command and control centers. Bring them to their knees. For good.

  Each of his battle cruisers carried nuclear weapons. They could only be used if directed by the Secretary of the Navy himself. Dryfus had been a lieutenant on the CNS Imperial Beach during the first war with the Varson Empire and was aboard when the cruiser had released its nuclear barrage against the fourth planet orbiting a meager yellow dwarf star in the Fringes. The planet the Varson’s had called Nuurhe. The Second Fleet of Elber Prime had fried the planet with three 500-megaton hydrogen bombs. As far as he knew, Nuurhe was still suffering through nuclear winter despite the Varson attempts to clean up its atmosphere with atmospheric processors. At that time they were only a hop, skip and a jump away from the main Varson stronghold, Canuure, and, if the orders had come from Elber, the Imperial Beach had three more nukes to deliver on that target.

  After the Colonial Navy had destroyed three Varson planets, the ruling alien warlords had thrown in the towel; the courier boat with the targeting information orders had been in the fold when the enemy surrendered. Canuure was a two-week fold away from being nuked when the hostilities ended.

  Now the bastards had resurrected their expansion campaign and were striking back at the human worlds. If we had wiped them out entirely, Dryfus figured, none of this would be happening and 700,000 colonists and sailors would still be alive on Canno.

  “Captain, Commander Guardo.”

  The comm stack squawk moved his attention away from his musings and he looked at the screen on the stack. “Yes, Hue, what’s up?”

  “Sir, we’ve just detected two Varson destroyers unfolding 400,000 klicks off our starboard bow. Looks like another sight-seeing tour if you ask me.”

  “Take us to general quarters, Number One. I’m on the way. Alert the group. If they straighten out their inbound trajectory, go to battle stations.”

  “Roger that, captain. Guardo out.”

  Dryfus put his reader in his safe, checked his uniform, and looked at the chronometer.

  The wail of the GQ alarms supplanted the relative quiet aboard the Mississippi River.

  Time to go to work, he surmised.

  * * *

  Bale Phatie made it a point of being on the bridge of the Decimator when she unfolded. His helmsman had cut the drive early, at Phatie’s direct order, when the flotilla was still at least a day away from Wilkes. Phatie had wanted to assemble his ships a safe distance from the objective and spend time checking ship readiness reports and making sure the fleet was refueled and prepared for the final push to the human world. His ultimate plan was to make the last leg of his journey in battle-ready formation with a full store of fuel and weapons.

  “Move a safe distance from the entry point, Mister Yaggaar,” Admiral Ceendi Regiid commanded his helmsman. “Space us out.”

  “Yes, my admiral,” Yaggaar acknowledged.

  “Have the trailing ships report in as soon as they decelerated from the fold, admiral. I want to hear from each ship personally,” Bale Phatie said. He was standing in front of the main blister, with his hands on his hips, watching the aft feeds from his tail cameras. “When all of our ships have assembled, have the oilers begin their refueling runs. Make sure each ship is 100 percent ready for the final push. If you have to, get on a shuttle and inspect each boat in turn. I want no mistakes, Admiral Regiid.”

  “As you wish, my eminence. I will see to it with proper diligence.”

  “Ships reporting in, sir,” Mister Sheerd announced from the comm console.

  “Put it on speaker,” Regiid said.

  The bridge was instantly filled with the noise of radio chatter from the unfolding Malguurian battle group. The tinny chittering dialogue from the various captains was music to Phatie’s ears. Finally, he was beginning to think his men were ready and the upcoming engagement at Wilkes was going to define this campaign against the humans even more spectacularly than the Canno mission. He was convinced the humans were never going to suspect such an attack on another world in so short a time. He made sure he kept the human Navy tied up in silly skirmishes around Bayliss as a means to distract them from his real objective. After this raid on Wilkes, Haines-II was next on his list. Then Elber and Ross. In a matter of two cycles he would be knocking on the door of the human homeworld of Earth and way back in the recesses of his mind he was already preparing the speech to be delivered to the humans when he showed up in their skies with a battle group demanding their complete surrender.

  Lieutenant Manciir walked up to Phatie and showed him the logbook reader he was carrying. Phatie glanced down at the spider-like scrawl on the screen and nodded to his aide. “Fine, Manciir. You may post it as needed. Better yet, wait until all of the ships have reported in. Just in case I have to make some command changes before we proceed to Wilkes.”

  Manciir nodded and moved away. Phatie studied the blister for the twenty minutes it took for all of his battle group to assemble at his six. All of the ships reported nominal conditions and Regiid commenced the refueling and replenishing drills. Phatie watched as the oilers moved among the warships and transferred fuel bottles, swapping full tanks for near-empty ones. The action around Wilkes should not consume very much fuel, Phatie thought, since the raid would be conducted in a similar fashion as the one on Canno. Quick in and out, protection for the flagship, frigates and destroyers on point should they meet any resistance.

  “Sir, the captain of the Deception has reported a magnetic seal disruption on his main engine,” Lieutenant Sheerd called out. “He wants to take time to swap out part of his containment collar.”

  Admiral Regiid looked at the Piru Torgud for a split second before answering his comm officer. “Tell him to stand by.”

  Phatie looked at the admiral first with a quick turn of his head then his body turned slowly. He walked a few steps toward the comm alcove, his chains and decorations filling the bridge with the menacing rattle of his approach. “Put that captain on my command frequency, Mister Sheerd,” he demanded.

  Sheerd swiped his three-fingered hand down the left side of the panel and nodded.

  “This is Piru Torgud Phatie. What is your problem, captain?”

  “My eminence, Captain Geedin here. My engineers have just reported to me a crack in one of the magnetic coils surrounding our main drive engine. I have been told it would be only a matter of hours before the defective part can be replaced. I request that I be allowed to hold fast at my present station so we may affect repairs.”

  Bale Phatie was silent for a few seconds. The Deception was one of his fast-attack boats and would be sorely needed should they encounter any interference from the Colonial Navy. “Yes, captain, hold your position. I will arrive shortly to inspect the damage and assist your enginemen in their duties.”

  A pause from Captain Geedin.

  “Admiral Regiid, notify the hangar deck to prepare my shuttle,” Phatie said. He turned his attention to the comm alcove. “Captain Geedin. Did you receive my last transmission?”

  “Yes, your eminence. I will await your arrival on hangar deck three. Deception out.”

  Phatie snapped his fingers at Manciir and they left the bridge in a flurry of flowing green capes and sounds of breaking crystal.

  Chapter 34

  When the clock struck 0100 hours Monday morning Davi Yorn and Milli Gertz were already on the landing pad at the Weyring Navy Base flight operations hub. Captain Yorn was anxious to get aboard the Corpus Christi in advance of his crew. That way he could avoid a lot of unnecessary hoopla and concentrate on making sure the old lady was shipshape and ready to receive her men and women.

  Gertz had argued against him coming out this early for his first command but Yorn was having none of it. They had spent a lovely weeke
nd together and he’d finally convinced her he was ready to resume his normal duties as a senior officer. He’d assured her that other than some residual soreness in his left shoulder he was as ready as he’d ever been. Since Gertz was to serve as his XO on the Christi, she decided not to push the matter. Might as well get used to taking orders from this headstrong man. When she offered to help him with his seabags he gave her a withering look that pretty much summed up his disdain for her motherly concern. He was well and fit and he would not assume his first true command as a semi-invalid. His crew didn’t deserve that, the Colonial Navy didn’t need it. The role of the captain was to instill a sense of complete control of the various situations extant on daily shipboard life. Protecting his crew, safely operating his boat, handling the administrative duties with swift aplomb, and delegating proper authority within the framework of the operational guidelines set forth by the Colonial Navy: those were his priorities.

  He refused to allow the reality of his budding sexual relationship with his XO to cloud his judgement or hamper his assigned duties. He would make sure Gertz had enough on her plate that she would not have time to play unassigned nursemaid to him. That was his plan and he thought it a good one.

  “Looks like we’ll have a few minutes to wait,” Gertz said as they sat in the departure lounge. The next shuttle isn’t until 0130 hours.”

  “No matter,” he told her. “Just as long as we get there first. You know, the Christi is like a second home for me and I want to check on all of the ‘home improvements’ the shops did to her. I’ve read the repair orders and the drydock techs must have stripped her hull down to at least the inner pressure walls. Seems as though she had a little more internal damage than originally thought. They had to replace a lot of support members and re-weld some of her joins.”

  “Well, if there’s anyone in the universe that knows that ship, I guess I’m sitting next to him.”