Admiral's Gambit (A Spineward Sectors Novel:)

by Luke Sky Wachter

  I had just touched the sheets and was feeling the gentle contours of the familiar looking bed rails when my attention was tugged back into reality with a jerk.

  “I’m not surprised you’re still a little blitzed,” said the man I now recognized as the new Doctor in charge of Medical. “The healing agents do tend to have that effect.” He smiled down benignly at me.

  I looked at him sharply. “I’ve been in medical a few times recently, and I’ve never felt blitzed...at least not like this before,” I said with a hint of a demand creeping into my voice. What the Hades was going on here? My mind wanted to instantly leap to finding a plot of some kind. Although for one I was too muggy to really exercise the kind of convoluted logic necessary for such conspiracy theories, plus there was the fact that most of my conspiracy fears in the past had been focused on avoiding Medical in case the officers and crew decided this was the moment, and it was time to make their move and keep me sedated for the duration.

  “What’s going on here,” I said trying for a determined voice, the kind of tone people instantly leap to obey, but instead it came out whiny and annoying. I even sounded that way to myself, and I was the one who was genuinely concerned.

  “Don’t fret yourself,” the doctor said sternly. “Let the professionals take care of your medical needs.”

  “Hey, it's my body Doc,” I exclaimed, “if anyone has the right to fret, I think it’s the guy who just woke up in Medical.”

  “Perhaps you need a sedative,” the Doctor said, obviously thinking aloud.

  I sat bolt upright in bed. Who did he think he was!? I was the Admiral of this ship, for Murphy’s sake! The look in my eye warned him off when he came back with the intent of making me lay down again.

  “That’s right, keep your distance,” I glared at him. “My need for a sedative is directly proportional to your need for a new job. So either you can drop the whole idea, or after you forcibly knock me back into lala land, when I wake up I’ll make sure you’re canned. We’ll drop you off at the next port,” I said harshly. The middle-aged medical professional looked taken aback, which prompted me to try reigning in my emotions. “Now what’s going on," I asked in a more measured voice.

  By now the fog had mostly cleared. Perhaps it was the surge of adrenaline I was feeling, or maybe it was just the natural progression of whatever drug they’d given me. Either way, I didn’t think it was a smart idea to let my subordinates run around thinking they could sedate me at will.

  The doctor narrowed his eyes and locked gazes with me. The force of his personality suddenly blazed through his otherwise professional veneer. However, I wasn’t some powder puff he could just run over and do whatever he wanted with. Not only was I a person, but this person had been through Bug-inspired Hades. I started reaching around for something to use as an improvised weapon.

  “There are certain drugs that can take care of that problem,” he said shortly. “Short term memory, that is,” he clarified.

  I sucked in my breath and went still. Poised on the edge of violence, I asked, “Who did you say you are?”

  “I didn’t,” he said turning away and picking up his data slate. He tapped a few things on the screen. “But I am Dr. Torgeson and the fogginess you feel, which should be abating by now is the result of a liberal application of surgical heal.” He turned back to face me and after a piercing glance, went back to tapping away on his data slate.

  “Bethany stuck me bad enough to require surgical heal,” I asked in surprise.

  “Indeed not,” Dr. Torgeson said glancing back up at me before returning to his screen.

  “Then why did you use it!?” Perhaps I was too like my cousin but being ignored, on my own ship no less, was beginning to torque me off. “It takes hours after the surgery to regain consciousness after an application of Surgical Heal,” I said, trying to contain my wild emotions and failing miserably. I think it's safe to say I was well on the way to working up a good mad.

  Dr. Torgeson gave me an odd look. “The Lady Akantha expressed a desire to me earlier that something be done about the worst of your,” he waved a hand over the top of his head, “cranial scar tissue. Since you’d previously refused any medication that would require a loss of consciousness during the treatment, I thought this was an ideal time for a trip to the tank and a liberal application of Surgical Heal. Since you had blacked out from shock and blood loss already, there was no violation of your stated desires.”

  I could feel my face flushing and my arms started to shake with fury as I clenched my fists. The moment my metaphorical back was turned, they overrode my wishes and did whatever they wanted with me! This was my body, but did that or the many previous refusals I’d made matter? No, it seemed it didn’t.

  I knew I had been putting off a turn in the healing tank, as well as the use of anything more than a minute amount of Surgical Heal. There was also the fact that I’d stated to everyone who could hear that I fully intended to do something about the state of my current ugliness. Just moments ago, at least as far as my stream of consciousness was concerned, I had been self-conscious at the thought of anyone (Bethany for instance) looking at me for more than a moment.

  Now I realized that I hadn’t been ready to be fully healed yet. Not only because it was a handy little bit of psychological warfare to point to my scars and in effect say, 'do you think you can top this?' I also understood now that on some level beyond the tactical plane, I hadn’t wanted to be healed. Maybe I thought I needed to suffer and be seen to suffer like all the men I’d killed or who had died on my orders. Maybe I was still working through the trauma of being betrayed and plasma grenaded on the Scout Marauder where I found Akantha. But whatever it was, the idea of being completely recovered as if nothing traumatic had ever happened to me left me furious.

  “It's time for you to leave, Dr. Torgeson,” I said, my voice quivering with barely contained emotion.

  “If you need something,” he offered, for the first time looking concerned for my well-being. Perhaps he’d mistaken my trembling voice for fear. That would have been a mistake.

  “Pay careful attention to my voice. Leave, and don’t ever come back. If you try to treat me again in the future, I will not be responsible for the results,” I said in a detached voice, which was the only way I could restrain myself.

  Dr. Torgeson opened his mouth and then snapped it shut. He turned on his heel and marched through the curtain.

  I was too on edge to stay in bed like I probably should have. I used the call button built into the rail of the hospital bed to summon an orderly. “Clothes,” I barked, swinging my legs over the side of the bed as soon he stepped in the miniature little room.

  “Admiral-,” he started, sounding surprised to see me up and about already.

  “Snap it,” I instructed firmly, “run and get me something to wear or I’ll soon be trodding the halls of our Battleship in this open-backed hospital gown,” I said with relish.

  It's not so much that I liked the idea of running round with my bare posterior hanging out for the world to see, it's just that I was in a mood for a confrontation of some kind. Anything to take my mind off of the hours I’d lost, thanks to Bethany, Akantha and their mutual desire to carve one another (and myself!) into little pieces of meat. More specifically, I needed my mind off Bethany and her little chop sticks before I went and did anything rash.

  Akantha though, she was just as guilty if not more so… Now there was a thought. I’d been meaning to give the crew, or at least and perhaps most especially that portion of it either from Tracto or with family currently living on it, shore leave.

  My sweet little wife, who stood over half a head taller than myself, had been visibly upset that I hadn’t visited her home world with her since that unpleasantness with her Uncle. A man who had been married to her mother, and perhaps most critically, a man I had killed after he’d challenged me for marrying his niece.

  My experience so far with that planet wasn’t the best. It seemed I had to kill something
every time I went there. It had previously seemed an unlucky place to go visit, but in my current mood the notion seemed surprisingly attractive. I realized in the logical part of my brain that one visit wasn’t the kind of sample size you wanted to use when generalizing an entire planet, but it had been a rather traumatic time for me, and I was willing to stand by my knee-jerk assertion.

  So yes, Akantha, let's go to your planet and visit with the in-laws. I was in just about the perfect mood for it right now. So why not? My previous objections, which had kept me from visiting before, seemed to melt away like a block of ice on a hot summer day.

  Chapter 31: On The Way Back

  Muttering under his breath, Curtis Bogart marched down the corridor, head thrown back and shoulders tight with tension. Being lost in a Caprian-built ship of the line was worse than embarrassing, it was downright humiliating. He couldn’t wait until this whole terrible episode was done and over with.

  Coming to another four way intersection he growled with frustration. All he needed to do was find the nearest lift so he could get out of here.

  Something clanged behind him. Half turning he looked over his shoulder with narrowed eyes.

  There was a flash of movement but it wasn’t right behind him, instead it was off to his right.

  Instinctively rounding back, there was a flash of pain as someone or something slammed into him, smashing his body against the duralloy wall of the corridor, and icy cold fire seared through his side.

  Once, twice, a third time shooting lances of pain erupted throughout his side as someone held him pressed up against the metal wall of the ship.

  “Die, you old Royalist,” came a harsh rasping grunt as the other man… and it was a man, the Chief Gunner knew that much at least, breath coming in hard deep breaths.

  'Oh, Hades no,' the Chief Gunner thought to himself belligerently. There was no way he was going out like this, ambushed in some random corridor by a Parliamentary hit squad, his body spaced or throw into a waste recycler.

  With a grunt he brought up the hand at his side which had been idly playing with his auto wrench as he unwittingly walked into this trap. With as much strength as he could muster he brought it up and around, slamming it into the head of his attacker.

  “Parliamentary scrum,” he gasped, fighting to catch a breath that just didn’t want to be caught. Lurching forward he swiped back and forth at the stumbling figure. His eyes blurred up something fierce and his legs felt like they were made of water, but he’d been on too many benders in his youth to let a little thing like an unsteady gait deter him.

  “A knife in an alley, poison in the soup or a pillow in the dark, such has always been the Parliamentary way of curs like you,” he tried to snarl, but his breath just wouldn’t catch back up with him and it came out as a gurgling wheeze instead.

  He took one last swing but by this point his attacker had regained his footing and Bogart overbalanced trying to extend his reach just that little bit extra needed to catch the other man. He unceremoniously fell to his knees.

  “Stupid Royalists,” grunted the other man, knocking the wrench out of his hand with a roundhouse kick, “always ready to stand tall, just as stupid as any other old bull sent to the slaughter once it's outlived its usefulness,” he growled, grabbing hold of Curtis Bogart’s hair as the older man knelt in the corridor.

  Bogart grabbed the other man’s wrist with one hand and threw a wild swing that connected on the shadowy figure’s midsection, but other than that failed to do much of anything.

  Wrenching back the Chief Gunner’s hair in response, the other man drew back his free hand. Even through his increasingly hazy and blurred vision, Bogart could tell there was a blade of some kind in the other’s hand.

  “Take pride in the knowledge that your blood, like that of so many others before you will water the roots of our glorious elected government, giving birth to a stronger, more vibrant Parliament, one that will never be removed from its rightful place in Capria and Galactic Affairs,” the other man said in a harsh whisper.

  “Get ionized, you bloody…” the Gunner started but several things happened at once to cut him off.

  A stream of foul cursing in that gobble-dy gook language of those overgrown Tracto nincompoops sounded behind him. Realizing he didn’t have time to stand around and posture any longer, the Parliamentarian quickly brought down his blade for a fatal slash. His vision tunneling, the old gunner brought his free hand around trying to block the strike. He wasn’t going out like some old timey pagan sacrifice!

  There was a mighty grunt behind him and in front of him there was a loud thud and a crack, followed by a choked-off scream.

  The hitman stumbled mid-stroke and instead of cutting Bogart’s throat open like he was some kind of goat about to be slaughtered, the knife flayed the Chief Gunner open from his forearm to his shoulder.

  The force of the blow sent the Chief Gunner reeling to the floor, his head cracking against the hard metal grating of the floor. Red lines of fire shot through his vision.

  There was the sound of another battle cry followed by feet pounding against the deck plates.

  “Messene,” screamed the Lancer. Whoever it was, he was louder than a whole herd of elephants as he charged down the corridor.

  “Barbarian oaf,” the Parliamentary man cursed. This was followed by whining sound of a sonic grenade being activated and tossed in past the gunner towards his rescuer, who was still screaming. Before the grenade went off there was a grunt followed by a clang and a ricochet sound.

  Then the grenade went off. The Gunner realized he must be further out of it than he realized when the grenade didn’t go off behind him, but instead to his left down a side corridor.

  The barbarian, still letting out a stream of native gibberish leapt over his body and pounded off down the corridor after the assassin.

  Realizing he was safe for the moment, Bogart grasped at his utility belt and fumbled with weakened fingers. Trembling as if he’d been struck with palsy, the grey haired gunner shoved his hand into a pouch. It was the wrong one, and if he’d had the energy he would have shouted in frustration. Even weaker this time, he moved his hand and reached for the pouch his hands should have unerringly found the first time.

  Rooting around inside he finally found what he was searching for. Exhausted by the effort he paused just a moment to regain his strength. A hand brutally gripping his shoulder and shook him from side to side like an enviro-rat caught in the mouth of a ship’s dog, roused him from an unintended slumber.

  “Wake up, Chief Gunner Bogart,” said a native voice, a very familiar and entirely unwanted Tracto-an voice. However, unlike his earlier suppositions, it didn’t belong to a Lancer. Well, not technically.

  “Come to finish the job,” he rasped, and coughed. From the wet feel on his lips and the inability to catch his breath, that Parliamentary hitman must have nicked a lung… or worse.

  The Lancer punched him in the chest, and again. Raising a hand he tried to ward him off. “You really are trying to kill me,” he tried to growl but only managed to wheeze instead.

  “You just died,” snarled the Lancer.

  The chief shook his head, before remembering his backup wasn’t really a Lancer anymore.

  “Put me down, you infernal grease monkey! All you’ll do is kill me if you keep on like this,” he said faintly as the other man started to pick him up.

  “Have to get you to medical,” grunted the other man, “can’t let you die until I learn everything I can about gunnering, then I kill you myself.”

  The Chief started to laugh but the pain it caused quickly ruined the humor of the situation. "I won’t make it to medical, my man,” he gasped.

  “You want I should let you die then,” demanded the Tracto-an, letting Bogart fall back to the duralloy mesh decking with a thump.

  “I have a stick of Combat Heal in my front pocket, you thickheaded fool,” grunted the old gunner before going limp.

  “Better thickheaded than an old
fool who lets himself gets snuck up on and stabbed,” growled the former Lancer, rifling through the Chief gunner’s pockets. Finding the, tube he jammed it into one of the wounds in the older man’s side, the same one that had been stabbed repeatedly.

  At first nothing happened and despite his own first-hand experience of how Combat Heal worked, the former Lancer and current grease monkey was starting to get worried.

  Suddenly the old gunner’s back arched and he started shaking and coughing out blood. Rolling to his side, Bogart wheezed and hacked before jerking spasmodically, as if he were having a seizure.

  Using his superior strength, the Lancer grabbed the Chief Gunner and forcibly held him still until the fit had passed, all the while looking down grimly at his erstwhile superior.

  Finally Bogart stopped twitching and went limp. A moment later he brought the back of his hand up to his mouth and dragged it across his lips. Looking at the bright red blood that covered it, he grimaced.

  “Help me to my feet,” he said, his voice a rasping echo of its former strength.

  The native shrugged and helped him up before stepping back and letting the older man go.

  Bogart swayed for a second before regaining his balance and glaring at the monster of a man. Seeing the hint of a smile around the edges of the other man’s mouth, he refused to say anything that would give this native whelp the satisfaction.

  “What’re you doing around this part of the ship,” he asked suspicious at the timely intervention of the native so soon after the Chief Gunner, himself had been attacked. “And don’t try to tell me you were taking in the scenery or trying to ‘get a feel’ for the ship."

  The grease monkey grinned. “Warrant Officer Laurent put me to following you around. Can’t have the Chief Gunner launching surprise inspections without the deck boss and warrants knowing about it,” he said.

  If he hadn’t just coughed up half a pint of blood, the old chief knew his face would have turned as red as a beet. “Blasted cocky upstarts,” he all but snarled. He was too weak or he really would have snarled.