by Chris Hechtl
Sergeant Copper was one of his escorts. She nodded to him and even let a brief smile loose when she was certain no one else was looking his way. He could hear the cheers and hoots from the prisoners as they walked through the corridors. She just shook her head but he held his head high. He saw Doctor Hsiao in passing. Her arms were crossed, but she snuck him a thumbs-up and a wink in passing.
@
Admiral Irons and his escorts arrived at Command One two and a half days after entering the star system. The proceedings turned into something of a parade with a full-court press live broadcast from the media. The talking heads kept chattering about the unprecedented move but how strategically brilliant it was. Politicians and industrialists were wary and skittish about making comments about it on the record.
Everyone considered it Admiral Childress's day of reckoning. “Who would have thought he'd come here?” President K'k'R'll asked.
“Apparently not Childress,” his harried chief of staff said. He was busy trying to coordinate a state visit and dinner with the admiral that seemed like it was ready to spiral out of control, while also fielding hundreds of emails and vid calls from everyone who was anyone. It was insane. “It spiked his guns. He can't say that Admiral Irons doesn't outrank him. Rubbing his face in being here destroys his entire argument that Irons was a fraud.”
“Agreed. What about Omar? Has anyone seen him?”
“He's still in Command One,” Sven reported. “He hasn't left. He has surrounded himself with his supporters, so anyone who wants to arrest him will have to go through them first.”
“So, it's not over yet. Will they shoot at Irons?” the president asked.
“Damn, I hope not!”
@
Admiral Irons marched through Command One to central administration. Initially, he was met with a cheering crowd. That ended when the people saw his stern look and grew quiet and pensive. “As you were. If you'd done your jobs, I wouldn't have to do this,” he said tightly as he marched with a marine delegation led by Captain Burrows through the station.
Admiral Draken saw him coming through the open door in his office and closed his eyes in pain.
Admiral Irons winded his way through the bullpen. No one was stupid enough to throw up any roadblocks this late in the game he noted sourly.
When he got to the main office, he was ushered in by the anxious yeoman. Within, with witnesses, he confronted Admiral Childress.
“Admiral Omar Childress, as your superior officer and convening authority, I hereby relieve you of command pending formal charges,” he snarled as Omar slowly stood and stared at him.
“Just for the record, I heard about your goat frack of a kangaroo court. That stops now. I'm going to try not to have a witch hunt but we are going to be doing a rather thorough housecleaning. You are obviously at the top of my list.”
His senses pointed out the metal fire arm in the admiral's pocket just as the admiral reached for it.
“Gun!” Major Burrows barked as he attempted to step in-between Admiral Irons and Admiral Childress. Protector had already spun up Admiral Irons shields however, and he was brushed aside. The first round hit the shield and flew off into the ceiling. The second and third hit the shields, making them spark and split the rounds. The major ducked instinctively as a round came within centimeters of hitting his nose.
“Are you done?” Admiral Irons demanded coldly, eyeing the other man. He itched to activate his implants and burn the man down.
“What are you?” Admiral Childress demanded, eyes wide in terror. “What … you aren't human!” he said, near hysterical as he fired a fifth shot.
The major turned to see the admiral just standing, there so he moved in to the attacker. Omar turned on him when his motion made the other man turn to the new threat. But the major's implants allowed him to strike like a viper.
“Oh, get serious; what is this, suicide by cop?” Major Burrows snarled as he slapped the weapon away. It clattered to the desk and then fell off to the carpet below. Admiral Childress gasped in pain at the blow, mouth opening to protest, but before he could get a word out, the marine had slammed him onto his desk face first, hard enough to compress his diaphragm and knock the wind out of him.
The marine strong-armed him into an arm bar and then applied zip cuffs to the admiral before he did a thorough search for any additional weapons. None were found.
“You should have used that on yourself,” Admiral Irons said coldly as Admiral Childress was hauled upright. He nodded his head over his shoulder and stepped aside. “Get him out of here. Make sure you brig him on Admiral Butley so no one gets any bright-ass ideas.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
@
Admiral Draken heard the shots but he was too busy to do more than flinch. He and the other Childress’s supporters were in the process of being arrested by joint MP, NCIS, and Marine teams. Since the local MPs couldn't be trusted, MPs from the Admiral Butley, Stormkeeper, and Winterspell were used to lead locals from Fourth Fleet. Admiral Irons went to the Ops officer's quarters personally to oversee the arrest. He found Admiral Draken there as he entered the office; an NCIS agent was already there reading the chimera his rights.
“All clear,” an agent said, cupping his hand to his ear.
“Why did you support him? All this time, all you had to do is arrest him, get him out of power, and all of this could have been avoided,” the agent in front of him asked.
“You have the right to remain silent,” the agent behind him reminded him as he placed the admiral in cuffs.
“Does it matter?” the chimera said with a shake of his head.
“It does to me,” Admiral Irons stated, eyeing the chimera steadily.
Sherman looked at him and then looked away. He inhaled and then exhaled slowly. “I guess it is just how the world worked for me. We are a team, Omar and me. I thought we were a good one. I spent so many years in his shadow, sometimes propping him up, sometimes getting covered by him; I thought that was how the way the world worked. By the time I realized … well, I got in too deep. It was all too ingrained I guess. I don't know. Besides, it doesn't matter,” he said, finally meeting Admiral Irons' eyes fully. “It's done and over with, right? I made my bed right alongside his.”
“Yes. Yes, you did. Get him out of here,” Admiral Irons said, stepping aside to let them pass.
@
The heavy cruiser and two battle cruisers had brought a small JAG, NCIS, MP, ONI team, and a couple Federal Bureau agents with them. Admiral Irons had brought a newly appointed federal prosecutor and a trio of judges with him from Antigua.
The groups were independent of Bekian influence and corruption. The civilians set up shop with the help of Mister Koitz and the Republic's civilian justice system within hours of debarking from the ships.
The JAG team began their investigations but were quickly overwhelmed by the level of corruption found. Horatio was contacted as a matter of course. He informed them that his JA was clean. They tapped Commander Chedwiggen who pointed them in the direction of Captain Ross, also in JAG, and a few other officers he knew they could trust.
The NCIS team also had their own work cut out from them. They had to start at the top and strip out the leadership and then do a top-down examination. Information passed on from former members of Assistant Director's Ahuja's team through Mister Koitz told them he was dirty. He was fired along with his T'clock boss after a cursory examination proved the allegations as true. The Neodog was unsurprised by the firing. His head spun at the speed though. Admiral Irons hadn't even been in the inner system a full day, and the entire system was being shaken to the core.
Mister Koitz gleefully turned over government bureau agents to help with the investigation as guides.
ONI had its hands full with cleaning up the snake pit of their own department. Unfortunately, there was no one in the department they could trust. Commodore Yashido was tasked with trying to make sense of it all.
@
Once the investigations were underway, Admiral Irons ordered all of the former senior staff assembled so he could have a face-to-face chat with them. They had all been meticulously read their rights.
“This isn't a fishing expedition to look for guilt. I'm not your priest. You all dug your own place; you'll deal with it. I'm just here for an explanation. I want to know why,” he snarled at the head of the table. He leaned over, fists on the table, a psychical imposing sight, even to Admiral Hill and General Yetmister.
“Sir?”
“You've all been relieved. All of you. Care to wonder why you are now facing general court-martial right alongside your former boss?” he demanded.
Jean Callisto and Helen Song looked at each other. Finally, Jean cleared her throat. “What should we have done? He was in charge, sir!”
Admiral Irons turned to her. “That's just it. Childress was one man. All it took was for one or more of you with the moral courage to recognize he was wrong and to act. You knew he was wrong; don't lie to me. I can see it in your expressions; hell, I can see your vital signs with my implants!” Irons shook his head as a few heads hung in despair.
“You're saying we should have arrested him?” Admiral Callisto asked softly, “and be damned if we were charge with mutiny, sir?”
“But you didn't,” he replied.
He waited a beat as he glared at them and then continued.
“You didn't. You allowed this to fester by supporting him. I passed on orders to relieve him and you ignored those orders. By saying you were just following orders but ignoring mine, trying to keep things together, you made it worse. You knew my orders were to all of you. You acted in defiance of those lawful orders. That is what I find so disagreeable, so contemptible. For the record, the excuse that you were just following orders is bullshit. I'll let all of you look forward to explaining that and any other excuses you come up with to a formal court-martial of your own. And no, I'm not accepting resignations,” Irons growled, eyes flashing as he left them.
The turning out of the guard was easier said than done in some ways. Admiral Irons appointed officers from Fourth Fleet to take over the departments temporarily to continue the operation of the navy. Some of the officers in those departments protested about rank and time in grade. They expected to rise through the ranks to take over the job. Since he didn't trust them, he initially ignored it. When the protests continued to rise, a single warning was all it took to get them back in line.
All of Admiral Childress's supporters were put on half-pay pending a full investigation. Brigadier General Yetmister tendered his resignation along with others; however, Admiral Irons held off on accepting it pending the outcome of the investigations.
Technically, there would not be any charges since the general was in a different branch and chain of command. He had also not used his marines to support Childress.
After some consideration, Admiral Irons decided to let it slide. He accepted the general's report and had Protector scan it, but he was overwhelmed with everything else going on to look it over immediately.
It would have been nice to have Yorgi on hand but he'd backstopped the admiral in Pyrax. The Federation couldn't afford to lose both of its highest-ranking officers. If he could get away with it, he'd keep Yorgi in the outer Federation. But to do that he needed people, people he could trust, here in Bek to watch over things.
More importantly, they had to watch over Horatio's back. Unless Horatio said anything different, he intended to leave the man to get Bek's industrial complex turned around. John knew he had a week, maybe two before he had to get back underway. That was not much time to oversee the process on top of everything else going on.
They didn't know it, but he was already using his implants to test each officer he encountered. Protector was also processing any files Horatio and others had passed on to him. Any obstruction was hammered with the persons involved getting relieved. Many might face demotion given the questionable state of their promotions before being discharged.
He frowned. He had pulled Admiral Zekowitz up, plus pulled in most of the command team from Third and Fourth Fleet. He had Commander Thistle in charge of Logistics for the moment. Protector was monitoring dark mutters of nepotism on the navy's social media network. He knew they were venting, but that didn't stop him from taking a note of who did.
He sighed softly. There weren't enough hours in the day to get everything done. Three times on their way into Command One he had met President K'k'R'll and part of his government through vidchat. The time delay had been a pain in the ass but had gotten better the closer they had gotten to the inner system. He'd had to do a lot of stroking to assure them of local autonomy, but he had admitted that they needed better military oversight.
He checked his scheduler and grimaced. The ship carrying the ansibles wouldn't arrive for another ten to twelve months. Closer to twelve given their orders to take it in the lowest octaves of the rapids. Once they were in the nexus, they would deploy an ansible core to Bek A and B to tie the two halves of the republic to each other and to the outer Federation, then drop off another core in Nuevo to tie it into the Federation, and then finally, if anything was left over, drop the remaining core off to supplement the crappy core left in B-102c.
With the ansible in place, he could exercise more oversight and greater control. Over time the Republic Navy would become a true part of the Federation as he'd intended.
But first, they had to get here he thought.
@
“Where is your boss?” an NCIS agent asked coldly, eyeing the seemingly shrunken Neochimp.
“I don't know,” Admiral Hill replied quietly. She was broken; she knew it. “I thought …,” she stopped and shook herself.
“We've received word his body was found in his home. Given he's the director of ONI, we're having a bit of a problem believing it,” the agent said. “We're waiting on DNA tests to confirm the identity.”
“As I said, I don't know,” she replied softly.
The agent grimaced. NCIS was a mess. They were tearing it apart while also trying to manage thousands of investigations, on top of a review of every open investigation and every closed one in the past four years. It was a herculean task. Add on top of it the number of mysterious deaths or disappearances of senior officers, and well, they were just a bit testy.
“Do you think he committed suicide? Or was murdered?” Quite a few senior officers who had been arrested would be on suicide watch. Seeing their masks crumble as their worldview was torn apart was both good and bad. He hated to lose any officers.
“He certainly had enough enemies,” Patty replied. A new thought made her pause and cock her head. “Tell me, has there been any information released?”
“Released?” the agent asked.
“His GOTH plan involved releasing everything against everyone. It was his insurance in case anything happened to him. No one dared move against him, not even Admiral Childress.”
“No. There have been data centers that mysteriously went up and tons of data dumped on the net, but not a lot. Most of it is pretty specific.”
“Let me guess, against me, Admiral Childress, Draken, and others?” she asked as she closed her brown eyes.
“Got it in one,” the agent replied with a brief grin.
“Then I don't believe he's dead for a second. But as long as he lays low and is out of the picture, let him go,” she said.
“Oh?”
“You'll never find him. He's good, damn good. Most likely he replaced the DNA in the files so you won't get any other ID than the one he wants you to see.”
“Great. So, we've got you, all the other admirals, and a Commander Onslo to deal with. The commander is seriously pissed at being left out to dry. Any guesses on who he's offering up information on?”
“No,” she sighed. “I know I'm screwed.”
“Ayeup.”
“That's what I thought,” she said tiredly.
@
&nb
sp; The evening of Admiral Irons' arrival, the jury came back with a not guilty verdict, putting a cap on the entire messy proceeding. “Kind of a bit redundant, don't you think?” Benny asked with a shake of his head.
“No, they had to come up with something. I wonder how many changed their votes though?” Commander Chedwiggen asked mildly.
“Of course they voted not guilty. Was there any doubt?” Bullettine asked sarcastically.
“You knew it was rigged. Why did you take a case you knew you couldn't win?”
“Sometimes you have to do the right thing even if it will cost you. Admiral Logan proved that. I just wanted to stand up for what was right. It was my way of putting one right in the eye of that bastard.”
“Good for you.”
Chapter 53
“Now I know how you felt after Pyrax. Hell, during that mess, sir,” Horatio said with a shake of his head when he met with Admiral Irons. He was still decompressing from his long stint in captivity. His implants had finally been checked over by Lieutenant Weiss and Protector. Both had given him a clean bill of health.
It had been a hell of a risk for Admiral Irons to ride to his rescue. He'd heard that the admiral had pulled out all the stops, taking a special antimatter-powered courier with a special helm team of water dwellers to B101a1 in a blistering race. They had traveled in the high octaves of the Epsilon Band for most of the journey, spending a mere forty-three days in hyper to go from Antigua to B101a1. They'd actually beaten the three ships dispatched from Pyrax to meet them and carry them through the rapids by a day.
It wasn't just the personal risk that touched him; it was what Admiral Irons had gambled along the way. He'd thrown caution to the wind and even the fate of the Federation to get there in time. He knew it wasn't completely out of loyalty to him. There were strategic reasons for it, but it still deeply touched him nonetheless. It would forever make a mark on him he knew.
Admiral Irons shook his head, oblivious of Horatio's thoughts. “I know. Sorry it took so long, Horatio. I got here as soon as I could.”
