Admiral's Gambit (A Spineward Sectors Novel:)

by Luke Sky Wachter

  “The ones that were original ship’s issue are still doing fine,” allowed Lenzer, “but these came from that pirate cruiser,” he said sounding disgusted.

  “Ah,” said the Chief running his fingers through his beard for a moment. “Jerk them out and either slot in replacements or, if we don’t have enough extra arrays, get them reground and worked before reinstalling them. We can’t pull all our teeth.”

  The Warrant Officer look dissatisfied but nodded his agreement. “Yes, Chief,” he said.

  “Anything else,” asked Gunnery Chief Curtis Bogart, his tone making it clear he was ready to move on to new business.

  Warrant Lenzer hesitated before squaring up his shoulders. “Now that you mention it there is,” he said making a covert gesture towards a small group of gunnery trainees moving out of the way of a small repair team from engineering.

  Turning his gaze the Chief Gunner observed the way the Engineers strutted around his gun deck like they owned it while his men all but bowed and got out of the way.

  He frowned. “I’ve noticed,” he allowed, his lips skinning back to reveal his teeth. The expression was about as far from a smile as you could get and still lie about it later on.

  “Something’s got to be done,” Lenzer said dourly, “it's all well and good to show some respect for the Chief Engineers sacrifice and give those snipes down in Engineering a break for a few days, but…” he ground to a halt.

  “But it’s been a few days and then some,” the Chief Gunner gave a decisive nod. “It’s probably time to do something about that.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Warrant Officer Lenzer before shaking his head, “but how do you top walking into a fusion core and stopping it from blowing up, along with everyone on the ship?”

  “Hard thing to do,” agreed Bogart, chewing on his beard for a second. His eyes moved back and forth taking in both compliments of the ship’s crew, “Still, it's not always about topping one of the grandest gestures ever heard of in the SDF.”

  “It’s not?” Lenzer blurted in surprise.

  The Chief Gunner shrugged, “Sometimes the most important thing is turning up at the game.”

  “I guess,” Lenzer said sounding unconvinced.

  “A little pluck can go a long ways,” the Chief Gunner said reflectively.

  Lenzer nodded in agreement with this point. “Well, so long as you have a plan to deal with the biggest hill to climb I’ve ever seen, that’s the main thing,” he said.

  “A plan,” muttered the Chief Bogart striding down the banks of gun turrets. Upon passing a battery of turbolasers, he overheard a group of gun crews talking about going out for drink later on.

  A speculative gleam entered his eye. Sometimes in order to get your pride back, a man needed to go and pick a fight with the biggest guy around. The same thing went double for ship departments. Spalding had always been easy to get a rise out of but he was gone now, more’s the pity. However, when it came to fighting, Engineering wasn’t the first department to come to mind.

  A slow grin crossed his face. Then he winced, this was going to hurt. He shook his head. He was getting a little old for the kind of activities he had in mind, but the day he was too old to go and pick a fight was the day he needed to hand over control of the gun deck to a younger buck with more fire in his belly.

  The honor of the gun deck be blasted. It was its fighting spirit he was most concerned with.

  Chapter 13: Trouble in Paradise

  Later, I was out on the hull with a detail from Engineering. It was a risk, in case any crewmates of those who died due to the ramming event decided to enact some sort of revenge.

  On the other hand, it was work that needed to be done, but I was under no illusions that I was the best man for the job. I would actually venture to say that I was clearly the worst man on the ship for this particular job. Actually, I was probably a better pick than some of the native Lancers, now that I thought about it.

  Anyway, it was something I needed to see and learn about so that I didn’t keep making the same mistakes over and over again. Since one of the best ways to learn was to do it yourself, here I was, doing my fumble-fingered best to help fix a section of hull armor, one that had been ripped apart by Imperial gunners.

  It was also preferable to following Akantha back down to the surface. I needed another meeting with her family like I needed another hole in the head. Wouldn’t it just make for a nifty little holiday if the rest of the extended family decided now was a great time to come out of the woodwork and start trying to carve chunks off me?

  No thanks. I had sent a long a team of top-rate Lancers. Well, as top-rate as they came around here. Including enough Promethean and Caprians that even if the native Lancers started to get funny ideas while down on the surface, my Sword Bearer should be more than safe.

  She was dressed in bulletproof and blade-resistant clothing, that looked and felt like regular clothing to the unaided eye. She was also sporting a blaster pistol. I had made sure of that while avoiding the reproach in her eyes for refusing to put my head back in the lion's mouth.

  As of right now, I had decided this Protector business meant minding my own business, and that extended from the Lucky Clover, into orbit with the Belters and down to the surface at the small off-worlder colony on Messene. Anything else would involve a strike team recovering my young bride, followed by continuous orbital and high altitude strikes until any native resistors got the message that I was through messing around with them.

  I wasn’t sure how long this new resolve would last in the face of continued disappointment, but I planned to stick it out for the duration. I'd almost been killed, twice, on my first and only trip to the surface. I didn’t intend to give the natives a second chance because of some other 'cultural misunderstanding.'

  With plasma torches, arc-welders, and heavy load suits, the workers on the hull slowly peeled away the damaged sections and put down newly produced hull plating.

  I got my first shock of the day when a work party from the Multiplex showed up to assist.

  The ‘work party’ consisted of a pair of human controllers and two identical groups of droids. At least, I mistook them for droids at first. They seemed far more capable of independent action than any robot I had ever seen before.

  I noticed they also caused a stir among the men, but no alarm. So I did my best to play it cool. Droids were autonomous machines, and ever since the AI wars, were strictly outlawed. Robots, on the other hand, were built specifically to require constant human attention and programming so that they never started to get ideas of their own.

  Eventually, I couldn’t take it anymore and went over to speak with one of the human operators.

  “What’s with all the droids,” I asked, once I’d found the proper frequency.

  The man inside his newer, sleeker form-fitting spacesuit looked down his nose at me.

  “I assure you these are not droids, crewman,” said the man as condescendingly as he could, believing he was speaking to some jumped-up provincial rube working on an ancient Battleship.

  “Then what are they,” I asked in irritation.

  “They are robots, crewman. The latest in a series of high-end robot repair models to be approved for production by the Imperial Senate Robotic Oversight Committee,” the man said proudly.

  “Why use robots when there are humans who could be trained for the same job, if as you say these are robots and not droids,” I demanded, getting into the character of an outraged, potentially displaced worker.

  “It takes a minimum of four years to train a man to do the same job, and it only takes two years for a high end programming team to build the program and design a model like these. After that, a single factory can produce a thousand robots like this every month, on a properly set up production line,” the other man said, sounding superior.

  “Automation is an amazing thing to behold, but I still don’t understand how even the Empire can think that having so many robots running around in charge of critica
l equipment is a good idea,” I said suspiciously, only half in-character. The idea of being able to produce twelve thousand automated workers in less than a year was certainly appealing, especially to someone like me, who was constantly short of skilled manpower. Maybe it was my provincial upbringing showing through here, but for some reason, I didn’t think it was a very good idea to start marching back down the very same steps our ancestors had taken when they produced the very first AI’s.

  “What I find amazing is that we’re still stuck using robots when the templates exist for self-learning droids with the ability for independent thought and action. The AI wars were a long time ago, and it's time to get over our superstitious fears and embrace technology, despite all of its flaws and our ancestors' past mistakes,” the robot tech said with fervor.

  “A man does what he has to,” I allowed. “However,” I continued, “I, for one, would rather go down in flames than be the man who enslaved humanity to AI’s for a second time,” I finished flatly.

  “And thus, we in the Spine see once again why the Empire makes all the cutting-edge advances in science and application, meanwhile the old Confederation lags behind in almost every conceivable area,” the other man spat.

  It was true enough that the Imperial Senate was willing to sponsor things the Confederation Assembly would dig its heels in against before even considering. So I decided to let the matter drop.

  “Couldn’t men be trained to take the place of your automated robots,” I asked again.

  “Oh, certainly. However, the lack of trained manpower willing to work in space can be crippling. Especially with the war on, the Empire simply offers the sort of incentives that make it hard for private industry to compete,” said the robot operator.

  “Somehow, I don’t think the Empire is going to be draining the Spine’s local brain trust for the next little while,” I said wryly.

  “True. Still, where there’s a will there’s a way. I don’t think the sentiment among scientists to push the envelope will just dissipate now that the Empire isn’t around to drain away the agitators into the Imperial Science Directorate,” said the robot operator confidently.

  I raised my eyebrows at this tidbit. "I would hope that people would be able to keep their long-term interests in mind and reject the notion of walking down the primrose path yet again," I said with a shrug.

  “Well then I'm glad it's not up to you to set Sector and Galactic Policy,” said the robot operator with a sneer.

  “Yeah...thank Murphy for that,” I said, shaking my head and moving away.

  I finished up on the hull, and while I was working, I watched as the robotic workers easily outstripped the humans in removing and replacing damaged sections.

  It was in that moment that I finally understood the term 'robotic efficiency,' as the mechanical workers didn’t stop or hesitate for more than a second or two while they coordinated amongst themselves.

  Watching them was like watching a little bit of the far off past reaching out into the future. I shuddered to think what a droid or AI dominated universe would be like.

  Eventually, after I thought I had learned enough about that aspect of maintaining the ship, I returned to the command deck. I breezed through the Flag Bridge and parked myself in the ready room.

  Looking up the crew complement of the Multiplex and comparing it to that of the Constructors we had left back in the Easy Haven system (a factor that had been overlooked, due to my unfamiliarity), something now stood out in sharp contrast.

  The 28th Provisional Constructors, what I was now starting to think of as the Imperial Design Constructors, had only eight hundred crew and two thousand technical operators in its standard compliment. What I was now thinking of as the Confederation Style Constructors listed a crew of twelve hundred and a technical staff of almost twenty thousand.

  The difference was staggering, and it made me wonder how this great difference was possible, until I looked up the Multiplex’s inventory and discovered ten thousand robotic repair workers listed as equipment. Along with a whole host of spare parts for said workers, this helped explain the massive differences in technical staff. If there were ten robots for every robot operator, then there were still over a thousand men free to work on design and internal production.

  Things start to become clearer to my less discerning eye.

  In addition to working on the hull alongside the engineers, I tried to tour every department on the ship and get a general feel for how it worked and operated, since we would be parked in Tracto for awhile.

  In my free time, I decided to throw myself back into my aborted midshipman studies. I had been taking several mandatory midshipman courses, because it was required in order to be able to take the courses I was really interested in, like Colonial Administration. Unfortunately, when I sat down to pick up where I’d left off, I discovered that when the Imperials had wiped their database on the ship and removed a bunch of their computer hardware, that they’d also destroyed nine months worth of my schoolwork.

  There was now no record that I had ever taken any Imperial-accredited courses while on this ship for the better part of a year.

  I reached to grab my hair and my hands skittered over my bald, overly-sensitive skull instead. I growled in frustration. I couldn’t even vent my fury in the manner I so desired.

  That nixed my first idea. Angrily, I pounded away on the keyboard until I pulled up the old Caprian database’s midshipman’s program.

  Scanning through the old system, it became clear that the courses were much less user-friendly and, I suspected, more outdated than what I had seen in the Imperial database.

  With a grunt, I pulled up the native Caprian studies program and started digging in. I still needed to learn more about being an Admiral, and the fact that my chosen course of study was gone didn’t negate that fact.

  Silently however, I cursed Rear Admiral Janeski and his Imperial ways for managing to do yet another bad turn on the way out.

  **********************

  No one was happier than I was during the two weeks of mediating squabbles between the Belters and the Constructor. The bridge staff and the Constructor. The planet and the Constructor. The system patrol force and the...I think the picture is fairly clear. Everyone wanted a piece of the Constructor’s incredible production and repair capability, and they wanted it yesterday.

  Anyway, two weeks in and the worst of the Lucky Clover’s damage had been repaired. Already, the Corvettes and little Cutters were skittering around the system, running protection for the miners in case the Bugs decided to show up.

  The Hammerhead was already repaired and in dire need of a crew to man her, and not just a small skeleton compliment.

  There was still some work to do, but now that the gross battle damage had been fixed and the rest could be handled by the onboard engineering department, I was itching for a chance to clear out of the system.

  I had pulled rank to get the ships fixed first, but now that it was time for the actual system industry to start being produced, I wanted no part of dealing with all the special interests. Better to give them some general guidelines and come back later to see how they did on their own.

  The Acting Squadron Commander wasn’t happy with my final decision to take the Hammerhead Cruiser with, but after looking at the data, a general consensus seemed to emerge that the Bug mother ship was still months away at sub-light speed.

  To placate the Acting Commander, I instructed the Constructor to bump the local mining industry from their place in line, and build an automated defense turret in orbit above Tracto VI's primary continent, before starting in on general industry upgrades to the system.

  No one was happy, least of all Akantha who’d spent most of her time down on the planet, but what could I do? I had the entire Rim of known space to patrol. Or at least, that part of it belonging to the Spineward Sectors.

  All I could do was my best, and one thing was certain; unless I could drum up some support, sooner or later the rump-as
sembly in the Spine and the full assembly in the old Confederation were going to get their acts together and cut us off at the knees.

  I needed to get out there, ahead of any recall orders from Capria or the Assembly, and drum up some goodwill out along the Rim.

  Chapter 14: Into the Great Unknown

  We departed Tracto as a fleet of two ships, and I reflected that some might consider the choice to take along the Hammerhead to be a decision made purely out of self interest.

  However, upon further reflection, I had arrived at the conclusion that if authorities from Prometheus or the rump-assembly showed up and demanded its return, I didn’t know of anyone I was certain would fight to keep the cruiser. Better by far to keep it with me and make sure it was in my hands and usable for the maximum possible duration.

  Keeping company with the Hammerhead slowed our movement to a crawl, but on the whole that was preferable to the alternative. For the moment, while I was training up a small crew under the night shift tactical officer, it was important to keep the two ships together. Once I was confident the other cruiser could handle herself on her own, I would be able to double our patrol area.

  I once again offered the job, and even rank of Captain of the Hammerhead to Lieutenant Tremblay, but the man turned me down flat. Tremblay had no desire to become even more entangled in what he considered potential piracy of a warship belonging to a sovereign planetary government.

  The night shift tactical officer, on the other hand, was the closest thing to a command officer I had on the Lucky Clover, and there was the side benefit that most of the new Captain’s immediate family was currently living on Tracto VI. This made him a man much less likely to simply hand over the ship to anyone who came calling, since it might be the difference between saving his family from the Bug menace.