Desperate Fire (Angel in the Whirlwind Book 4)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “It isn’t proper,” Father Larry said.

  “I suppose the culture shock will be quite significant,” William agreed. Discovering that men and women bunked together had been a shock, back when he’d joined the navy. He had needed months to get used to sharing his living space with a woman. “But if she wishes to apply to join the navy . . .”

  He paused. “How old is she?”

  “Twenty-one,” Morag said.

  “More than old enough to make up her own mind,” William said. He was surprised Gayle wasn’t married yet. Girls rarely remained unmarried past the age of twenty. “If she wishes to apply, I will certainly forward her request to the proper authorities.”

  Father Larry glared at him. “It’s not the only problem,” he growled. “The cooks are refusing to serve food in here. We have to eat in the mess.”

  William allowed his irritation to show on his face. “So what?”

  “So our girls are eating with men,” Father Larry snapped. “Don’t you know it?”

  “It isn’t a problem,” William said.

  “They cannot eat with unrelated men,” Father Larry insisted. “I demand—”

  William cut him off sharply. “You demand?”

  Father Larry met his eyes. “Yes. I—”

  “You are in no position to demand anything,” William said, keeping his voice icy cold. “We are doing our level best to get you to McCaughey alive and well. Right now, the ship is crammed to the gunwales. We do not have the space to isolate you from everyone else. I suggest you get used to it.”

  He paused. “And you will not punish anyone for talking to the crew,” he added. “If you do, you’ll spend the remainder of the trip in the brig.”

  “You can’t do that,” Father Larry protested.

  “I can put you in the brig at any moment, if I wish,” William said. “I won’t even have to come up with an excuse for the logbook. Now . . . do you have any reasonable complaints?”

  He shook his head when Father Larry remained silent. He couldn’t blame the crew for looking at the young women, perhaps even flirting. He wouldn’t care, as long as the interaction was consensual. Who knew? Perhaps Gayle wouldn’t be the only one interested in a naval career. Hundreds of young men had already signed up for the groundpounders, according to the last report before departure. They wanted to continue their war against the Theocracy.

  “I know this isn’t going to be easy for any of you,” he added, gentling his voice. “But it’s better than remaining behind to die.”

  “If our home is truly dying,” Father Larry said.

  Morag put a hand on his arm. “Father, William wouldn’t lie to us,” she said. “He’s a good man.”

  William blinked in surprise. A woman seeking physical contact with an unrelated man? That was a shock. Morag shouldn’t have touched Father Larry, any more than he should have touched her. But she had.

  He dismissed the thought. “Morag, walk with me a moment,” he said. “Please.”

  Father Larry didn’t say a word as Morag rose. William hoped, silently, that he wouldn’t try to take his feelings out on the rest of his flock. He’d met too many people like Father Larry in his life, men who believed they had the right to issue orders and expect them to be obeyed, men who reacted badly when told they had to put up and shut up as though they didn’t matter. But then, he had a great deal of faith in his people. If Father Larry started to throw his weight around too much, he’d get a fist in the face soon enough.

  “This is an odd place,” Morag said as they stepped through the hatch. “I know it’s a ship, but I don’t quite believe it.”

  “My home,” William said. He smiled, rather tiredly. “You should see one of the mobile repair yards. They’re truly immense.”

  “I believe you,” Morag said. She looked down at the scruffy deck for a long moment. “It isn’t easy, being here.”

  “I know,” William said.

  He tried to see Thunderchild as Morag saw her. A strange environment—metal floors, glowing lights, an ever-present hum echoing through the air—a place so alien there was no way to know what would happen if you touched one of the buttons. The warnings the evacuees had been given when they’d been herded onto the shuttlecraft would have intimidated men and women who rarely used anything more advanced than a tractor. They’d known how their tractors worked. A starship was so far beyond them that it might as well have come from a whole different world.

  Which it did, he supposed. There aren’t many boats on Hebrides, let alone starships.

  “The children are talking to your crew,” Morag added after a moment. “Can’t you stop them?”

  “Not easily,” William said. “And why would I want to?”

  Morag gave him a sidelong look. “Do you have any respect for the values of your family?”

  “I chose to leave,” William said. The remembered insult, Morag’s father refusing to consider him as a potential son-in-law, suddenly hurt. “Does that answer your question?” He shrugged. “The crew knows the rules,” he said. “But talking to guests isn’t actually forbidden.”

  “I’m sorry about Father Larry,” Morag said. “He’s . . .”

  “Feeling helpless and adrift,” William said. “I do understand. I just don’t have any sympathy. And it’s not going to get any easier.”

  “I thought it wouldn’t,” Morag said. “Here we are, cast out . . . we didn’t even get to bring most of our belongings.”

  “There isn’t room,” William pointed out stiffly. “This isn’t a very big ship.”

  “We understand,” Morag said. “But it still isn’t easy.”

  William was tempted to ask if she wanted some cheese with that whine, but he resisted the nasty impulse. Morag and the other refugees had little beyond the clothes on their backs. Everything else, unless it could be carried by hand, had been abandoned back on their former homeworld. Thunderchild could supply enough food and clean water for the refugees but almost nothing else. By the time they reached their destination, their clothes would probably be rags. And their replacements would come from the fleet base’s stores, stripping away another part of their identities. A long time would pass before their lives returned to something like normal, if they ever did.

  “You’ll just have to cope,” he said. “It shouldn’t take more than ten days to reach our destination. There’ll be more room there.”

  “Good,” Morag said. “Have you thought about my offer?”

  William shook his head. “I’m not interested,” he said. Something clicked in his head. “But if Gayle wants to be sponsored for the naval academy, I’ll be happy to do it.”

  “Her father would object,” Morag pointed out.

  “I don’t think it matters at her age,” William said. He stopped and turned to face Morag. “I think it would be better to allow dissidents to leave peacefully, the way the Commonwealth does, rather than try to keep them trapped. They’ll resent it for the rest of their lives.”

  Morag met his eyes. “Does that make you a dissident?”

  “Perhaps,” William said. There was, in truth, no perhaps about it. “But I like to think, in the end, that I am as ruthlessly practical as the rest of my people.”

  He escorted Morag back to the hold, then nodded to Roach. “There’s nothing we can do about their problems,” he said. “Not without a much bigger ship.”

  “I’ll get the engineer to work on inflating the hull,” Roach said cheerfully. “Pity we don’t have any balloons left.”

  “They were needed back at Hebrides,” William said. Dragging an inflatable habitat into hyperspace was asking for trouble, but they could serve as emergency housing for evacuees as long as they were carefully monitored. “And if we did have a bigger ship, we’d have to take on more evacuees.”

  He felt a flicker of sympathy for Fran and the other superdreadnought captains. Their ships would be absolutely heaving with evacuees, even though they might be called upon to fight at any moment. Their evacuees would includ
e countless families, thousands of people who weren’t related to one another. But there was no helping it.

  His terminal bleeped. “The doctor wants to see me,” he said. “Keep an eye on the situation here. Don’t hesitate to send in the marines to intervene if all hell breaks loose.”

  “I won’t,” Roach promised.

  William nodded, then hurried down the corridor and into Sickbay. The area was crammed with wounded, all with relatively minor injuries. A handful of medical staff moved among them, tending to their wounds. Nearly all the ship’s supplies had been stripped out, save for the bare essentials. The bean counters would have a fit, he was sure, when they found out, unless someone pointed out that regulations had been superseded by necessity. But was there anyone who might say that on Tyre?

  Kat’s father will, he told himself. He’s not stupid.

  “Doctor,” he said as Sarah Prosser appeared and beckoned him into her office. “You called me?”

  “I just completed the basic medical checks,” she said. “Most of the evacuees have all kinds of minor problems. They don’t even have the broad-spectrum vaccinations they’ll need before landing on a Commonwealth world.”

  “They’ll have to be injected when we reach the fleet base,” William said. “What other problems do they have?”

  “Quite a few,” Sarah said. She picked up a datapad from her desk and held it out. “The most common problem is malnutrition, but there are a number of hereditary issues that need attention. I think seven or eight of the girls are going to have problems bearing children in later life.”

  She paused. “One of the girls begged me, on her knees, not to tell her parents that she wasn’t a virgin,” she added. “Is that a problem there?”

  “It can be,” William said. “If a relationship broke up, the girl might be disgraced if it turned out she had sex with her former boyfriend.”

  “Barbaric,” Sarah said. “I can restore her maidenhead, easily, but—”

  “If you can, do it,” William said.

  “These people don’t even know what’s available,” Sarah said. “Captain, there’s a man with a scar I could remove in twenty minutes. And a woman with cancer . . . I could cure that with a pill!”

  “Do it,” William said. He recalled a man he’d known, back when he’d been a child, who’d lost an arm in a freak accident. Growing a new arm for him would have been simple with modern medical technology. “And then start telling them what other services can be offered.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Sarah said. “It’s going to be a long voyage, isn’t it?”

  “And it won’t end when we reach our destination,” William agreed. “Not for any of us.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Kat hadn’t been to McCaughey Naval Base since 2416, when she’d been XO on HMS Thunderous. Then, the military buildup had barely begun and the naval base had been relatively small. Now, dozens of heavily armed fortresses protected a planet surrounded by mobile repair yards, industrial nodes, and everything else 6th Fleet needed for its grand offensive. Ten whole squadrons of superdreadnoughts, flanked by over two hundred smaller warships, held station above the defense network, while thousands of freighters and interplanetary transports powered their way in and out of the system. The whole sight awed her beyond words.

  The Theocracy wouldn’t dare attack us here, she thought as the task force reentered realspace and headed towards the planet. They’d be obliterated with ease.

  “Signal from Admiral Christian,” Lieutenant Darren Cobb reported. “He welcomes you to McCaughey and invites you to report onboard HMS Hammerhead at your earliest opportunity.”

  “As soon as possible, he means,” Kat translated. “Lock us into the planetary defense network, then ready my shuttle.”

  “Aye, Commodore,” Wheeler said. “What about the evacuees?”

  “Check with Fleet HQ to see about holding camps, then start offloading them,” Kat ordered briskly. Her crews had been lucky to avoid a life support failure on one or more of the ships, but she knew that had been a very close-run thing. “Make sure they take all their possessions with them.”

  And pray the Inspectorate General doesn’t decide to inspect my ship, she added as she rose and headed for the hatch. She’d have to change into her dress uniform before shuttling over to Hammerhead. Admiral Christian wasn’t the sort to care if she wore it or not, but she knew from experience that he probably wouldn’t be the only one in the compartment. We might be talking directly to Tyre.

  She changed rapidly, said her good-byes to Pat, then hurried down to the shuttlebay. Lines of evacuees were already forming outside the hatch as marines struggled to keep them under control, but they parted for her as she walked through and headed to her shuttle. She couldn’t help feeling a stab of guilt as she boarded the craft, even though she was heading to a superdreadnought rather than the planet’s surface. Outside, more shuttles were already closing in on her task force. System Command, it seemed, was equally determined to ensure that the ships were unloaded as quickly as possible.

  “Commodore, we’re being invited to dock at the captain’s hatch,” the pilot said. “Is that suitable?”

  “It will do,” Kat said. Inwardly, she was relieved. Landing in the main shuttlebay would probably have meant a formal reception, a ceremony she had grown to dislike. “Just get us there as quickly as possible.

  HMS Hammerhead was two years older than Queen Elizabeth, but she was practically identical to Kat’s flagship, a blocky hull crammed with missile tubes, energy weapons, and point defense systems. Kat couldn’t help noticing that her engineers had added extra point defenses, based on eighteen months of lessons learned from actual combat. Queen Elizabeth and her sisters had enhanced point defenses themselves, but Hammerhead hadn’t had time to return to the yards for a full refit. But her crews would definitely be able to keep her in fighting trim themselves.

  As long as she doesn’t take heavy damage, Kat thought as the shuttle docked with the superdreadnought. They’d have to send her back to the yards then.

  Her gaze fell on the orbital display as the hatch hissed open. Seven mobile repair yards orbited the planet, the largest starships built by mankind. They dwarfed even the giant colonist-carriers, although much of their bulk was taken up by docking slips rather than endless rows of stasis pods. Maybe Admiral Christian wouldn’t have to send his flagship back to Tyre if she needed repairs, not with so many mobile shipyards attached to his fleet. The Commonwealth not only built starships faster than the Theocracy, but they also could repair them more quickly. And so the Commonwealth’s fighting power waxed even as the Theocracy’s waned.

  Kat rose and stepped through the hatch, saluting the flag as she boarded the giant superdreadnought. An auburn-haired young woman, wearing a lieutenant’s uniform, waited for her.

  “Welcome aboard,” she said. “I’m Lieutenant Elena Pettigrew, Admiral Christian’s aide.”

  “Thank you,” Kat said. She didn’t recognize the name, but Elena certainly sounded as though she’d grown up in high society. “Please take me to the admiral at once.”

  Elena bowed her head, then led Kat through a maze of corridors until they reached a sealed hatch. The lieutenant keyed the console to open it, then motioned for Kat to step through into Admiral Christian’s office. The space was huge, larger than Kat’s office on Queen Elizabeth. A giant star chart hovered in the center of the room, glittering with tactical icons representing starships, fleet bases, StarComs, and ONI’s best guesses about enemy dispositions. Admiral Christian himself was standing in front of the display, studying the latest reports from the front. He turned and smiled when he saw Kat.

  “It’s nice to see you again, Commodore,” he said. “Congratulations on your promotion.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Kat said. She might not be entirely pleased with it, but she knew better than to say that out loud. “And congratulations on your last set of victories.”

  “It’s the gunboat pilots who deserve credit for the last one,�
� Admiral Christian said. He looked at Elena. “Please bring tea and biscuits for my guest, and then that will be all.”

  “Yes, sir,” Elena said.

  Kat settled down on the sofa, allowing her eyes to drift over the display. The front lines—the seven worlds deemed to be under threat—were all heavily defended, surrounded by fortresses, automated weapons platforms, swarms of gunboats, and several squadrons of frontline starships. Taking even one of them would cost Theocratic forces dearly, while trying to bypass the planets and stabbing deeper into the Commonwealth would expose the enemy’s rear and give the Commonwealth an opportunity to cut their supply lines. There were enough fixed defenses, now, for the Commonwealth to start reassembling the fleets and taking the offensive into enemy territory.

  Assuming we decide what to do about the Theocracy’s new willingness to kill entire worlds, she thought. She hadn’t heard much before they’d departed Hebrides, but she was fairly sure the news would have caused absolute chaos. There’s no hope of bringing the war to an end without risking massive devastation.

  “I read your report carefully,” Admiral Christian said once Elena had brought the snacks and departed again. “A number of your political enemies tried to blame you for the disaster, but it is my belief that you cannot be held responsible. The Admiralty and His Majesty appear to agree.”

  Kat nodded, relieved. She hadn’t thought the attack would be a serious threat to her career, not when she’d had no warning at all before the first nuclear detonations, but she knew she had enemies who wouldn’t hesitate to try to take advantage of the disaster. There hadn’t been anything quite so horrific in human history since Earth had been turned to a bed of ashes. Perhaps even her enemies figured that trying to use the disaster to score political points would cause them problems in the future.

  “Overall, though, it is a serious problem,” Admiral Christian continued. “I’ve stripped the fleet base of personnel transports and medical supplies, but that’s still only a drop in the ocean compared to what they need. Other bases will be sending their own supplies, yet . . .”