The pirate laughed long and loud. "The Empire’s out and you’re in. Harhar har!” He chuckled. “You’ll have to come up with something better than that to make your lies stick, schoolboy.” He stopped laughing and looked at something outside of my view. “Every ship in the squadron, switch your encryption keys, then form up on me and prepare to jump, this Impie Fleet hasn’t heard the last of the Piranha’s. We’ll be back.” The pirate captain said and cut the connection.
“I had to try,” I said out loud and sighed.
Tremblay shook his head, “They were never going to believe you,” he said. “Imperial Fleet policy is to space captured pirates, to deter others from thinking they can join the pirate life and live to enjoy it. A few notorious exceptions have been hanged instead of spaced, but I think you get the point the Empire made: become a pirate and die.”
“Uh, sir,” said one of the Sensor Technicians looking doubtfully at his controls.
“What is it, crewman,” I asked, looking over to the sensor pit.
“I’m picking up miniature transponders behind us,” he said staring at his screen. His look turned to horror. “Those are emergency distress beacons, Admiral.”
“What are you on about, man,” I asked, standing up from the Throne. “We can worry about pirate survivors after everyone else is taken care of first. They don’t seem to give much consideration for settlers blown out into space.”
The Sensor technician looked like he was going to be sick. “I have over fifty transponders now. All scattered and passing us as we slow down. It looks like,” he paused to finish running a search through the DI before forcing the words out, “the numerical codes sent by the distress beacon match those of the hard suits issued to engineering.”
For a moment I didn’t understand. Then I did. As the horror of what I had just done began to register, I felt sick to my stomach.
“Murphy take us,” breathed Officer Tremblay. “The Engineering crews were still out on the hull when we rammed those cutters,” the First Officer turned green and placed his hand on one of the consoles for support.
I was sure the Tremblay was thinking the same thing I was. We had forgotten to warn the men outside the ship to stop reinstalling the weapon systems and get back inside the hull, prior to executing the ramming maneuver.
“I know we had shuttles before the Imperials left,” I said, working hard to keep my voice steady. “Find out if we still have them, and if so tell someone to take as many as they need to get out there as fast as possible to pick up our fellow crewmen.”
A subdued and no longer cheerful bridge crew acknowledged my orders and the necessary instructions were issued.
As the Lucky Clover’s normal space engines struggled to reverse the battleship’s course, all I could do was watch the screen and hope the pirates wouldn’t head back to attack the settlers before we could get there. There was nothing more I could do for the men who had been out on the hull of the ship, irresponsibly left there to die.
Despite themselves, an anxious bridge crew watched the two undamaged pirate cutters turn away from the convoy and blast off together, while the damaged cutter tried to follow but couldn’t keep up, and soon fell behind its faster, undamaged cousins.
“If we destroyed two cutters and there are three running away, what happened to the other two? Where are they hiding?” I asked, trying to focus my attention and that of the bridge crew on the action taking place near the convoy, instead of the horrific scene falling away from the battleship while we braked to get back in the fight.
Tremblay silently pointed to the corvette the pirates had knocked out of the battle before the Clover ever arrived in system.
I kicked myself for not paying more attention to the tactical plot. The question was a stupid one. Everything I needed to know was right in front of me, if only I took the time to look, assuming I could interpret the images.
There was a stir among the sensor operators and the main screen updated. “The corvette guarding the Settler ships is swinging away from the convoy. She’s on a course to intercept the two cutters boarding her sister ship,” said a sensor operator, tension rising in her voice.
“We’re receiving an encrypted transmission from the corvette,” said a crewman from the communications section. There was a pause. “No key in our database matches the encryption, and our DI can’t seem to make heads or tails of it. All we’re getting on our screens is garbage, sir. We can’t unscramble the transmission,” he said sounding flustered.
I winced. It would have been nice to be able to communicate with the Escort ship without the pirates understanding everything we said. Worse, this might make it harder to convince a suspicious skipper that the Lucky Clover was actually a Confederate patrol ship sent out here to help them.
Seeing my expression, the former Intelligence Officer grunted and stepped down into the communications pit. “Scan the database for any old Confederation Fleet encryption algorithms.” With something to focus on, the First Officer no longer looked like he was about to keel over. I hoped this was a good development.
“Sir?” asked the crewman manning the Signals station, where decryption was handled.
“Just scan the database, crewman,” said Officer Tremblay, clapping a hand on the crewman’s shoulder. While the First Officer was working with Signals, the corvette was getting closer and closer to her dead sister.
“I have separation,” announced one of the Sensor Operators. “The Cutter on the port side is breaking free and coming about to face the corvette.”
I snapped my attention back to the main screen.
“Weapons fire,” said the same Senor Operator. “She’s hit. The pirate ship is hit and losing power to her main engines.”
I watched helplessly as the actions were reported by the Sensor operator and mirrored on the main screen. “Can we zoom in closer,” I finally asked, pointing to the main screen where the corvette was taking on the cutter.
The magnification on the main screen increased. I couldn’t see the three pirates trying to make good their escape, but the action near the stricken corvette was quite clear.
There were some raised voices in the Signals section but I was too focused on the scene playing out on the main screen to it give it my time and attention.
I watched the icon representing the Lucky Clover start to inch back in the right direction. The battleship had stopped her forward motion and reversed direction, but we were still a very long ways away from the scene of the action.
The corvette launched a hail of fire at the now damaged Cutter. The Cutter returned fire and shields flared to life. Neither side asked for, nor gave any quarter. With the cutter’s main advantage, its maneuverability, already nullified by an early blow when it was still turning from the stricken ship to face its still very active sister corvette, the battle could only have one outcome.
Shields on the Cutter soon failed as blow after blow slowly knocked the cutter out of the fight. After a few minutes of sustained fire, it was just another disabled ship slowly drifting in cold space.
Curiously, the other cutter failed to respond to the arrival of the still functional corvette, or to the disabling of its piratical cousin and kept pressing the attack on the disabled corvette.
Seeing what he must have taken for a small pause in the action, Officer Tremblay approached the command chair. “Admiral, we found an old Confederation code. It's over seventy years old, but the corvette’s DI system recognized it and exchanged automatic handshake protocols.”
“Handshake automatic protocol,” I said, looking at Officer Tremblay in not realizing until after the words were out of my mouth that I‘d jumbled them up. “What is your conclusion?” I honestly had no idea what he was talking about, but I thought I should play along.
Tremblay took a deep breath and then sighed letting the breath out. “It means we can talk to them over what ‘might’ be a secure communications channel. It's an ancient code as far as modern encryptions go, but for that very reason it's
unlikely these pirates would have it on file and be able to read it. At least not right away,” he said, gesturing toward the main screen. “Nothing transmitted over an open frequency is really secure, no matter how good the encryption. Be it hours, days, or even months, someone will crack the code. Eventually someone, somewhere will find a way, even if it takes them years. But in the meantime, and in situations where every second counts, it allows for unmonitored real time communication.”
I nodded as I absorbed this bit of information. “Very well. Let's open a channel and prepare a data dump with the details of our ship’s provenance as a Confederation Flag-Ship, despite being on loan from the Caprian SDF, as well as our mission orders and any other documents detailing our authority as a the head of a multi-sector patrol fleet.”
Officer Tremblay hesitated. “The data you’re requesting was wiped from the DI when the Imperials took down the new systems and upgrades. In many cases we had to fall back on the original Caprian system backups. I did keep, that is I mean to say Caprian members of the Intelligence Section, of which I was a part, kept copies of some of the pertinent documents on hard copy. This is technically a violation of regulations, but under the circumstances….” he said, glancing around the Flag Bridge.
I snorted. I wasn’t one to talk about not following proper military protocol. Half the time I didn’t have a clue what proper protocol for the military was, and the other half I figured I was almost certainly not following it. If Tremblay had vital documents backed up on a few discs in his quarters and it helped smooth the way with the settler escort, then who was a Prince-Cadet cum Admiral of the Patrol Fleet to complain?
So I said the only thing I could, given the situation. “Get them.”
Tremblay paused before going.
I had been around too many politicians not to catch the sudden gleam of calculation in the eyes of my First Officer. It instantly put me on guard. Parliamentary representatives, and even members of my own extended royal family had looked at me exactly the same way before I was volunteered to ‘command the fleet’.
“Does the Admiral intend to continue to maintain that, despite the intended ceremonial nature of his command and his lack of official military training, he now has the full authority of an Admiral of the Confederation Fleet,” Tremblay inquired cautiously. His eyes strayed briefly from mine to the power armor encasing my body.
My face went blank, “I’m the only Admiral left on this ship and Janeski officially placed me in command before leaving,” I forced myself to keep the growl out of my voice, and to keep my features even. “I even have a nice big scroll in my quarters with ribbons, seals and everything, declaring how I’m now an admiral in the Confederation Fleet, and thus must be physically present for the duration of this patrol.”
“Technically, your commission is as an honorary Admiralty in Capria’s System Defense Force. Not in the Confederation Fleet,” Tremblay pointed out.
“Yes, but that nice big scroll in my room mentions nothing about my Confederation rank being honorary. Only that the ‘Honorary Vice-Admiral Jason Montagne Vekna of the Caprian SDF, with the written consent of Capria’s Parliament, is now formally seconded to the Confederation Navy to act as the Official Commanding Officer of the newly formed Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet,’” I said, reciting it back verbatim to the First Officer.
“To ‘act’ as the Official Commanding Officer,” Tremblay parroted back at him. “You, an Honorary Admiral, have been forwarded to act as the Official Commanding Officer, of our so called mini-fleet,” he paused. “As best I can see it, you have not been officially commissioned as a Confederation Fleet Flag Officer, and thus have no official standing outside this ship and perhaps the members of this patrol fleet, ships voluntarily forwarded by the planetary forces that contributed to its founding. Another concern being, now that the Imperial Navy’s gone, those ships could be withdrawn from this ‘patrol fleet’ anytime their planetary governments wanted them home.”
I had looked as much of this up as I could using the defective distributed intelligence network, when I had time from my other duties onboard the ship. Those duties primarily consisting of watching everyone on the bridge like a hawk.
“It is my understanding that when a member of a System Defense Force, officer or enlisted, joins the Imperial Fleet they take an automatic two step downgrade in rank,” I countered, deciding to ignore the fact that every ship in the patrol fleet (including the one we were on) could technically be recalled home, leaving the multi-sector patrol fleet a fleet without any ships.
“That’s true, but we’re not in the Imperial Fleet, if we ever were. Now we’re technically in the Confederation Fleet… according to you,” Tremblay riposted. He had obviously been working on this for quite some time, and I was going to have to be on my toes as I navigated this political minefield.
“Looking through historical records, when members of the Confederation Fleet merged with the Imperial Navy, the Confederation officers all took an automatic one step down in rank,” I said. “Down two for SDF to Imperial Navy, down one from Confed to Imperial. According to that, I should be one step down to Rear Admiral. And all of this ignores the fact that a granted flag title carries just as much weight and authority as an earned one, in the absence of a duly appointed and recognized officer of comparable rank.”
Tremblay opened his mouth to retort, but I interrupted him.
“What’s your point, First Officer,” I asked abruptly, tiring of whatever game he was playing at. For now, I was the Admiral of this ship and that was how it was going to stay until and unless we got home or something else changed. Like a successful mutiny.
Tremblay frowned and looked hard at the floor, “I’m not sure that an officer of the Rim Fleet, if any stayed behind, or any Retired Confederals brought back into service will recognize your authority to command our multi-sector patrol fleet. Which, I will add, is down to all of one undermanned, under-equipped starship. I am sure that as soon as they review your commission they will not recognize you as having any authority over them or their commands, whatsoever.”
“Find your point quickly, Officer Tremblay. I’m fast losing my patience,” I said as evenly as I could. Hypotheticals and more hypotheticals when there was an Escort corvette to speak with and two rescue operations to plan for. One for the Settler ship that broken in two and countless settlers were drifting in space as the two of them spoke. The second rescue obviously involved our missing engineers floating in space.
“My point is that those two corvettes are old Confederation models. They stood and fought even when the situation looked hopeless and they could have bugged out at anytime up until the one was disabled. Most SDF forces would have retreated if it wasn’t their planetary citizens or home-world on the line. So it might be wisest to have you put back on that outdated Admiral’s uniform you managed to scrounge up. Murphy knows where you got it, and when you have us send over copies of our provenance and orders, we send everything but a copy of your actual commission in the Confederation Fleet,” said Tremblay. “Such as it is.”
I was surprised. Tremblay had been dragging his heels over supporting me every step of the way. Now he was actually advocating that I do everything I could to mask the fact that technically I might not be considered an actual Confederation Admiral by the regular forces, despite officially being in command of one of their fleets.
Of course, the whole plan might be to get me out of the power armor so Tremblay could launch a coup d’état and set the ship on a course that could take this Dreadnaught class battleship straight back home to Capria.
On the other hand, his points were reasonable and when it was all said and done, I was a Montagne. I had made a few contingency plans along the way for just for such a problem. Now was maybe the time to see if any of the plans I had formulated were any good.
“Alright, I’ll go change and meet you back here. Have the channel to the corvette standing by for my return to the Flag Bridge. I want to speak with the captain of that ship
personally,” I said, rising from the chair. I registered the surprise on Tremblay’s face, quickly masked by the former Intelligence Officer, but I chose to ignore it.
As soon as I was back in my quarters, I placed a com call before stripping out of the battle suit. Unless I was completely paranoid, events were about to be set in motion that would determine whether or not I would remain Admiral in command of the ship, or spend the rest of the trip as a prisoner in the brig.
Manhandling Helmsman DuPont had been a desperation move, and while it had paid off for the Settlers, it had killed engineers and might come back to bite me in the hind quarters. The Piranha Squadron was scattered and broken because of it and the settlers were safe sooner rather than later. But engineers were dead or dying, floating away in cold space and on top of that, playing into the bloodthirsty, crazed Montagne stereotype might backfire with a vengeance. I still remembered the look in Tremblay’s eye when he had produced his well-concealed blaster pistol.
Before I knew it, I was dressed and had no more time for pondering. It was time to talk with the corvette’s Captain.
Admiral Who? (A Spineward Sectors Novel:) Page 15
