Admiral's Gambit (A Spineward Sectors Novel:)

by Luke Sky Wachter

  In the end, I decided to put it to them simply.

  “Anyone who wants to return to the Empire, Imperial Citizen or not, is welcome to do so at this time. Transportation will be arranged," I said in that tight, rhythmic way one is taught to speak when in front of a bank of cameras. "If you decide to stay and not go to the Empire, be advised you may be consolidated with the technical staff and crew of the other Constructor from the 28th Provisional.”

  I paused before continuing, not wanting to appear as though I was rushing things. “I want to be clear, this ship along with yourselves will all be returned to your home sector. However, because of the current instability in the region, it could be months or even years before a safe route of passage can be established. So weigh your decision closely.”

  “Anyone who stays here will be expected to take orders and work for the betterment of the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet. If you feel you can’t do that, then simply say so. It won’t be held against you in any way, and you can choose to stay in Easy Haven until this ship can be safely returned to the 28th Sector of the Confederation, or until you find independent passage home through Imperial space. Because of the recent hostilities between elements of the Imperial and Confederation Fleets, and for your own protection, we simply cannot transport you home through Imperial controlled space at this time,” I finished.

  Then I had a recording of that same message pumped over to the other Constructor from the 28th Provisional.

  Ultimately, I lost a little over a full Constructor crew worth of Imperial Citizens, sympathizers and others who simply didn’t want to take their chances assisting some jumped-up, rump Confederation Fleet out on the Rim.

  I made sure to leave a handful of men in every department on the Constructor I was transferring so many of the medical cases to. With them as a cadre, they should be able to train the Engineering staff I’d had Brence assemble. I’d tried to pick anti-Imperial men from the Constructor crew whenever possible, but I only had scant information to go on.

  The remainder of the two crews I consolidated on the other Constructor from the 28th Provisional Sector. At least one of the two ships would have a fully trained technical staff and a crew to run it.

  Perhaps this way I could even try to train some of my own people in advanced technologies and construction techniques.

  Work parties were scurrying around the system. From the Lucky Clover to the Imperial ship. From the Imperial ship to the Lictor-B class Dungeon ship. From the Constructors to the Easy Haven Star Base.

  The two captured Hammerhead Medium Cruisers were also slowly towing the captured pirate cruiser back to the Star Base as well.

  The worst damaged, of the two in system Corvettes, was also slowly making its way back to the main base for repairs.

  Akantha tried to contact me several times, but I was too busy with the Constructor project to break free long enough to talk with her. This was likely to upset her, but what could I do? Any mistakes at this stage could be deadly.

  As the Engineering staff from the Lucky Clover slowly assembled and the last of the Constructor staff were shipped over to the other Constructor or the Wolf-9 Star Base, I assembled the men in one of the massive bays in the ship.

  I explained the mission to each of them. To a man, excepting the training cadre from the Constructor who’d already made their choice as far as I was concerned, they all agreed to the mission.

  Then after a rousing speech about saving the Chief Engineer, the Fleet, and even the Spine as a whole, I instructed them to disperse throughout the ship.

  Calling together the assembled Officers, I put the dilemma of the Imperial Strike Cruiser to them and asked for suggestions.

  Surprisingly, they had one.

  “We can get rid of the Medium Cruiser right easily, Admiral,” said one, a grey haired Caprian engineer. “Just set the star drive to cycle up and dump all the Imperial missiles on the Victorious Solar Flare out into cold space, in close proximity of course. Between the two of them, that ship’s as good as destroyed. The missiles will make an explosion any idiot can see with his own naked eyes, and we can say we used the star drive to get rid of any navigation hazards that might remain from a broken up ship, when the cruiser is sucked into hyperspace,” he said confidently.

  “Is that even possible,” I asked incredulously.

  “Have to time it just right so everything goes off as planned. But we can do a proper job of destroying that Imperial Cruiser for you,” he said with a grin. “Spalding’s shown us the way when it comes to hyperspace bubbles. We’ll just install the proper strange particle generators from this Constructor, to replace the damaged ones from the Empire,” he snapped his fingers, “and voila!”

  “Alright, let's do it,” I said with an answering grin. I fought to keep the smile confident and carefree. Inside, my guts were twisting. There was no going back from this step. Getting rid of the Imperial Cruiser might be the best way to keep the Empire from sending a punitive expedition into the Spine to keep its technology out of provincial hands, that was true. But there was no handing the ship back and saying 'sorry about that, my mistake. You non-pirates are free to go home in your slightly roughed-up warship.' The consequences would be dire, under any circumstances.

  I kept that smile on all the way back to the shuttle. Inside the shuttle, I let the smile disappear and replaced it with a grim look of determination. We’d been busy jumping from one fire to another. Reacting instead of acting in some kind of pre-planned, concerted manner. It was time for that to change. Hopefully these two Constructor ships, even if I only managed to hold onto them for a short while before they fell into the hands of others, would change that.

  Back on the ship, I went to my quarters for a short nap, one that turned into a four hour long siesta. I was exhausted from everything, and the mounting stress wasn't even enough to keep my brain from shutting down for a few hours.

  With a yawn, I woke up feeling only marginally better than when I had closed my eyes. I returned to the Flag Bridge wearing my old style Admiral’s uniform and my even older style helmet.

  I knew the helmet made me look like a fool out of a cheap holo-vid, but it was the only thing that covered my ugly head. I had lost all the hair and most of the skin above my shoulders to a plasma grenade on the Bug ship rescuing the natives of Tracto VI. I had only survived because I'd been so buried under Bugs at the time that no one knew I was in there. The Bug carcasses absorbed the bulk of the blast, but I was still damaged by acidic Bug juices that poured down onto my exposed head.

  Marching into the Flag Bridge, I missed half a step at the sight of the Lady Akantha, my wife.

  Adonia Akantha Zosime was her full name and, as best I could tell, her appropriate title was Land Bride or Hold Mistress. I wasn’t quite sure if she was still a Land Bride or had become a Hold Mistress, or if she could be both at the same time. Her native culture was pretty confusing as far as I was concerned. During an incident where I went to rescue the Native prisoners on a Bug ship, I had given her a vibro-blade to cut herself and the others free with. Meanwhile, I had tried to hold off the swarm of Bugs coming to eat them all alive.

  In her culture, apparently giving a sword to a girl of status was the same thing as proposing marriage. Under the circumstances, she’d taken me for the most vile of rogues, thinking I had offered her the equivalent of a shotgun marriage whereby if she refused, they’d all be eaten alive.

  Of course, I had never even heard of her world, so who knew? To me it had looked like she was spitting on my noble gesture and was willing to let others die.

  For her part, she’d wanted me dead, while she agonized over the decision. I didn’t know this at the time, but apparently she was some kind of local cheese when it came to native power structure down on the Tracto VI. To her, there was more to consider than the lives of a couple dozen Bug captives. She had a responsibility to thousands down on the surface.

  As I said before, it was hate on first sight.

  Since then, we’d co
me to understand some of the cultural differences and as far as I could tell she no longer wanted me dead. Still, I hadn’t tried to get out of this strange marriage arrangement, because of a small technical matter involving planetary piracy. If I landed the homeless Promethean settlers on her world without local permission, it was one of the highest forms of space piracy, for which there is only one possible punishment.

  By now, however, she was determined I ‘must survive to fulfill your obligations,’ or in other words stop the impending Bug invasion from stripping her world of everything edible, including the human population.

  For a while, I’d thought we were coming to some kind of understanding, but ever since she’d decided to stay on the ship with around eighteen hundred natives she’d recruited to be my ‘Lancers,’ she’d been distant and upset. I assumed it was being in a strange environment and so far from her home, so I had thought that a little space would actually be a good thing.

  “Protector,” she said with an icy nod in my direction. “I have been trying to reach you for many hours.”

  “Lady Akantha,” I said with a cough, then straightened and continued over to my Admiral’s Throne. It was really a command chair, but my Caprian predecessors had installed one so big and imposing it could hold me even when I was in my power armor. So I mentally thought of it as a Throne.

  “I understand you’ve been busy defeating the Imperial Cruiser,” she said using Confederation Standard for the last two words instead of her mechanical translator. She was picking up more and more Standard all the time. It was really quite impressive.

  “Both Citadel to Citadel and warrior to warrior, you bested them at every turn,” she said coolly.

  At that moment with her Nordic white features, sharp nose and long blond hair, she looked like the ice maiden I tended to think of her as. At least, I thought of her that way when I wasn’t thinking worse things about her.

  “It's small wonder you have no time for your Sword Bearer and her urgent reports of victory,” said my lethal Ice Maiden. I’d say ' little' instead of 'lethal,' but in reality she was nearly a foot taller than myself. I was on the shorter end of average, but still, I was from a civilized world with proper nutrition.

  I knew there was no way to get out of this without getting in trouble, but I figured maybe I could butter her up a bit to soften the blow. Since she never seemed to listen to anything I said, I figured I might as well take some credit for not stopping her. Like I could have stopped her if I’d really wanted to.

  “I am sorry if I’ve been remiss towards you,” I said in my most stiff and courtly voice, “if I have, it is only because I trusted you to handle the Mutinous Hammerhead Cruisers,” then not wanting to give her too many ideas I added, “in conjunction with the Lancer Colonel and his Company Captains of course.”

  She seemed to soften slightly but her icy mask was still in place. I continued smoothly, trying to get some momentum, “First Officer Tremblay should have been able to handle anything that came up while I was seeing to the Prisoners and later securing the Constructors,” there, I’d managed to compliment both Akantha and Tremblay, my two most ardent critics, and both were present!

  “Still,” she started after a moment’s consideration. Clearly she wasn’t going to let me off the hook for not getting back to her until she physically returned to the Lucky Clover.

  I tried to think of something to put her off with. I needed to think like a native, yet make sure my explanation was consistent with leading her to understand proper civilized thinking.

  “Honestly, Lady Akantha, as I tried to explain before you came here. The warfare and the battlefield with Battleships like the Lucky Clover are different from manning the city walls of Argos.” Judging her expression, this wasn’t getting through, so I decided to shamelessly play the sympathy card. “Besides which, I’ve been beside myself with grief over the loss of our Chief Engineer,” I finished.

  The reaction was more than I’d been expecting.

  Akantha turned pale and her lip began to quiver. “You’ve lost your Miracle Worker. You’ve lost Engineer Spalding,” she asked in a shaky voice. For the first time since I’d met her, she appeared next to tears. But, true to form, she kept the moisture as a glaze over her eyes, not allowing a single tear to roll down her cheek. “He was a good man, loyal and true. Even if he tried to deny his true nature as a Wizard,” she said sadly, reigning in her emotions somewhat.

  Now I felt like the worst kind of heel. Both for this, and for what she was about to go through.

  “The medical staff…our healers, haven’t yet given up hope. But they think they’ll need much more, ahh…powerful facilities, to have any chance of saving his life. Right now, they’ve put him in cryogenic suspension,” I said, and at her look of incomprehension continued from a different angle. “He’s been frozen to keep him from dying. This way there’s a chance to thaw him out and heal him when the right tools have been created.”

  She looked so hopeful I could barely meet her eyes. The first time she looked to me for any kind of comfort, and it had to be over this. I'm a member of the Royal Family, so I learned how to lie before I learned how to talk, but this deception actually caused me a measure of distress with which I was unfamiliar.

  “Then if you, with your familiarity of the healing magics of your people, have not given up hope, I cannot,” she declared. “I will continue to think of him as sick and ailing but not yet lost. I must admit, the idea of the Wizard Spalding frozen into a block of ice to later return is like something out of a childhood tale.”

  “Right, well, now that you are here perhaps you could debrief me- that is, tell me how things went on the rebellious Promethean Cruisers,” I said, trying hard to move past that unfortunate exchange.

  She looked quite willing to do so, but I then thought it might be best to have this conversation in the Admiral’s ready room.

  “In here, perhaps,” I gestured to the room.

  She hesitated and glanced at her pair of guards stationed with the usual two inside the blast doors of the Flag Bridge.

  She seemed to reach some sort of internal decision and made a small gesture with her hand. I don’t know what she communicated, but the guards stayed put when she followed me into the ready room.

  She sat stiff as a board in one of the visitor's chairs in front of the desk while I made my way around the desk and into the Admiral’s chair. It was hard to think of it as my chair. Admiral Janeski had sat in this chair and to my mind, even though this was a Caprian ship, that chair would always represent his Imperial Authority in some manner. I never felt really comfortable sitting in this chair. Which was probably why I didn’t use the ready room as much as perhaps I should.

  “So,” I said into the growing silence, “About the Promethean Cruisers you captured.” She seemed to like my giving her credit for the capture of the two ships.

  “The one commanded by Captain Costel Iorghu,” she said, pronouncing the man’s name awkwardly, “surrendered without more than token resistance. It fell easily to our Inspection Team,” she said with the satisfaction of a job well done, both with her performance and with her mastery of our language, I assumed.

  I wasn’t sure from her demeanor if she really understood what an inspection team was for, but decided not to interrupt her.

  “Emilian Stood, on the other hand,” she said with clear distaste, “shot at our shuttles and killed many before we closed to grips with him,” she said fiercely.

  “Yes, we saw as much before the shuttles successfully landed on the hull,” I commented.

  She looked startled and then irritated. “I made it over from Fire of Prometheus in time to take part in the storming of the Bridge. From what I heard and saw, the Marines on his ship were ill armed and unprepared for a foe as strong as my war-...pardon me,” she said sincerely, “I meant your war-band.”

  “Not a problem,” I said waving away the issue. “I assume Captain Stood surrendered,” I asked, getting to the part I figured to enj
oy most. The thought of that odious fat man with the jiggling jowls getting what he had coming to him filled me with satisfaction.

  “Oh, he tried,” she said, coloring as she continued, “But he spoke in such an insulting manner that several of your war-band took exception and removed his head from his body, that he might speak such filth no more.”

  My eyes felt like they popped out of my head. My prior satisfaction was eradicated utterly, like a man stepping into cleaning stall, expecting a hot shower only to receive an icy cold blast of water instead.

  “What did he say that insulted the men so much,” I asked, then had a horrible suspicion. My Caprian and Promethean men weren’t likely to cut off someone’s head just because they were rude. The Tracto natives on the other hand…and if Akantha was present during the insulting.

  She wouldn’t quite meet my eyes.

  “He was rude and insulting to you, I presume,” I said finally.

  She gave a nod and met my eyes again, not that I understood the situation.

  I opened my mouth to say something about punishing the men and teaching them better, but slowly closed it again. This was obviously a delicate situation, so I needed to try on the kid gloves.

  “Well, hopefully such matters can be handled more delicately next time,” I said slowly. “I’ll not have anyone insulting my wife and getting away with it.” What else could I do?

  Her brows furrowed, so I quickly added, “Or Sword-Bearer, rather,” I used the native title for her part of our relationship. Our relationship was oddly feudal, and I wasn’t entirely sure what all these different titles implied.

  Her brow cleared and she smiled. Seeing her genuinely happy for maybe the first time since I’d met her, I couldn’t help but smile back in return. For a moment, she seemed like a regular person.

  Then she appeared to remember she was supposed to be mad at me and her face closed back to its usual icy mask.