Admiral's War Part Two (A Spineward Sectors Novel: Book 10)

by Luke Sky Wachter

  Susan stared at him. “I’m in command again?”

  “Yes,” the First Space Lord said. “Under the circumstances, it was either confirm you as Vanguard’s commanding officer or try to court martial you. The former allows us to bury as much as possible of the affair before the media starts asking too many questions. As far as anyone is concerned - and I suggest you stick with it - you spent the last month in a top-secret military base, assisting the analysts in studying the records from the battle.”

  “Understood, sir,” Susan said. She was in command? She hadn't dared to hope she’d be allowed to return to Vanguard - or anything bigger than an asteroid mining base. “Sir ... what is the ship’s condition?”

  “Your presumptive XO has also been promoted and will brief you, upon your return to command,” the First Space Lord said. “For now, suffice it to say that we will be sending a major task force to assist the Tadpoles.”

  He rose. “The guards will assist you in packing up before you leave this place,” he added, dryly. Clearly, he knew as well as she did that she had nothing to pack. “And one other thing?”

  Susan rose, too. “Yes, sir?”

  “I understand that you were trapped in a hellish situation,” the First Space Lord said. “And that it had political implications that were not immediately obvious to you. And I do not blame you for the decisions you took.”

  “Yes, sir,” Susan said.

  “But ... the decisions you took could easily have been seen in a worse light,” the First Space Lord added. “I suggest - very strongly - that you don’t do anything to blot your copybook over the next few years. You’ve made a number of political enemies, Captain, and those enemies will stop at nothing to see your scalp being pinned to their walls.”

  “I understand, sir,” Susan said, tiredly. She understood more of the political and naval realities than she cared to admit. She had no patrons of her own, no friends in high places. If someone with a title wanted her gone, it wouldn't be long before they found a suitable excuse to dismiss her from the navy. “It won’t happen again.”

  “I should hope not,” the First Space Lord said. “And remember, as far as anyone is concerned, this month never happened. The records are sealed and will remain so until everyone involved is safely dead.”

  “Of course, sir,” Susan said. Behind her, the hatch hissed open. “I won’t say a word.”

  Read more of Fear God and Dread Naught at Amazon.com!

  Continue to the next page for a sneak peek of Lynch’s Legacy, Book 6 in the Spineward Sectors: Middleton’s Pride series!

  The following is a preview of Lynch’s Legacy, Book 6 in the Spineward Sectors: Middleton’s Pride series.

  Prologue: A Matter of Priority

  Commander Lucius Minervini looked out the viewing portal on the seemingly serene, sunless world below. His hands were clasped rigidly behind his back as he stood there, appearing for all intents and purposes to be a statue on the bridge of the latest-generation Special Operations Cutter, the Constans Vigilantia, of which it was both Minervini’s sworn duty and privilege to serve as inaugural commander.

  His eyes required the benefit of the viewing portal’s light enhancing features just to see the rocky world over which his ship had taken up residence for the past two days. He imagined the molten magma which his computer analysis confirmed had surged through the planet’s sundered crust just a few short days earlier. The planet’s crust had been fractured by a standard set of subterranean charges not unlike those which Minervini himself had deployed on more than a few occasions as last-ditch control measures for securing sensitive locations from the enemies of humanity.

  But the magma was no longer flowing, and even if it had been it would not have been visible even with the assistance of the viewing portal before which he now stood. The molten rock, much like the trail of those who perpetrated the attack against the so-called Beta Site, had cooled far too much for any further clues to be gleaned from such a remove. Though, like the magma had done two days earlier, Minervini’s temper seethed through the micro-fractures in his previously polished veneer.

  It cannot end like this, he thought darkly. It must not end like this!

  He had reviewed the after-action reports for the disastrous event which had taken place merely a week earlier, and had brought his sleek vessel into orbit before any other Imperial forces had arrived. He had known that Senator Raubach aimed to lift his House far above any station it deserved to occupy, but never in his wildest dreams had he believed the man would be capable of such a monumental failure as actually losing a Core Fragment of MAN.

  “Commander,” reported one of the com-techs assigned to the Constans Vigilantia and, by extension, to Commander Minervini’s embedded operation within the so-called Reclamation Fleet commanded by Rear Admiral Arnold Janeski.

  “What is it?” the Commander asked over his shoulder, his eyes remaining fixed on the surface of the dark, barren world below.

  “A soft-coded message sent in the open, Commander,” the tech replied promptly as Minervini moved to stand over him and his station. “It fails to satisfy security requirements for such a transmission, but…” he hesitated.

  “But?” the Commander repeated icily, hoping for the sake of the young man’s career—and his psychological safety—that he had not unduly interrupted him from his ruminations. It was so difficult to train in com-techs on this generation of equipment, and Minervini had little desire to indulge in petty torments which his fellow officers would call ‘enforcing discipline’ when there was serious work to be done.

  “Project Archie was clearly referenced, Commander,” the tech finished, steeling his voice. Without a word, the Commander leaned down and accessed the file describing the message. The file contained all connected data, including the route the message had taken, the ident of the operative who had made it, the timestamps for the various p2p transfers required to bring it to him and, naturally, the message itself—which was alarmingly brief.

  Project Archie was the codename for a program which had been authorized over a century earlier—and, it should be noted, that program had been the brainchild of House Raubach. The program had, ostensibly, attempted to discover the location of one of the hallowed MAN Core Fragments. ‘Archie’ had become synonymous among the Imperial Intelligence community with this particular Core Fragment.

  That Core Fragment, just like its counterparts, was unique in all of the universe. It was the only hope for humanity to reinstate its one, true god. It was, put simply, humanity’s only hope to survive. Without the Data God’s eventual revival and reinstatement at the center of all human affairs, the primitive human species would fall asunder to tribalism—and other, even more repugnant social forces better left to the confines of a zoo than the galactic community—within a few short centuries. As a member of that species, Commander Minervini felt it was his duty—no, it was his life’s purpose—to assist in the recovery and resurrection of their data god however he was able.

  In his mind, the window for the human race to return to what it should be was fast closing, and House Raubach might have just slammed it shut forever with their unforgivably negligent stupidity.

  But this lead was precisely what Minervini had ordered his team to scour the local data nets for ever since learning of the disastrous loss of the Core Fragment.

  Without asking the tech, he confirmed the itinerary of the message himself with a quick examination of the file’s contents. The transmission had originally been picked up by a freighter which unwittingly served as a data gathering unit: a small transceiver which had been surreptitiously installed nine months earlier. The name of the freighter, its crew manifest, cargo, and present location were only a tiny fraction of the information available to Minervini as he perused the transmission.

  After being picked up by the freighter, it was forwarded to the first available Imperial vessel. But that been three days since the freighter had first received the transmission, which meant that he was already four d
ays behind. Normally such a delay would have angered him to no end, but the truth was that this was good news; before receiving this message he had been well over a week behind his quarry, and with that interval nearly cut in half he now had an idea where his quarry was headed.

  “The Overton Expanse,” he mused, pulling up star charts and transposing his present position—mostly out of habit—while doing the same for the transmission of the message he had just processed.

  There really was just one possible destination that made any kind of sense, given the available data, and it had been his intention to go there even before receiving this particular piece of evidence. He would have already done so if Rear Admiral Arnold Janeski had not held such longstanding ties to House Raubach. Ostensibly, House Raubach and House Cornwallis had been at odds for several decades; according to rumor, the last time those Houses had been fully united in purpose had been fifty years earlier.

  But Minervini hadn’t lived a century and a half, most of which had been spent in some variation of his current capacity, by taking the bait on such thin rumor and innuendo. More often than not, such rumblings were nothing more than clever attempts by the Great Houses to mislead their rivals into exposing their secrets to their supposed ‘allies.’ And Minervini’s loyalties were most certainly not with either of those Houses.

  No, there was the distinct possibility that Arnold Janeski himself had been involved in this travesty. But even if that was the case, the task of bringing him to justice for his complicity would have to fall to another member of the Imperial Intelligence Agency—Minervini had just picked up the scent, and like any tracker he was keen to commence with the hunt.

  “Helm,” he turned to his command chair on the minimalistic bridge of his Pulsar class Cutter, which was the epitome of Imperial technology as far as he was concerned, “enable silent running protocols.”

  “Silent running engaged, Commander,” his helmsman acknowledged just before Minervini had taken his seat. The lights on the bridge dimmed and several status icons flanking the main viewer were replaced as the ship’s systems shifted over to their second-most stealthy settings.

  His mouth quirked, slightly at first, before his leathery lips peeled back in a feral grin, “Take us to the hyper limit…and plot a least-time course for the Conduit.”

  He could feel the thrill of anticipation course around the small bridge, causing shoulders to straighten and visages to sharpen as the impact of his order sank in. “Yes, Commander,” his helmsman acknowledged a tick later than was preferable.

  His sleek craft easily pulled away from the planet, invisible to all but active sensors as it did so, but it only took six seconds for his com-tech to report, “The Commodore is ordering that we maintain position in the formation, Commander.”

  “Let him eat static,” Minervini said coolly, steepling his fingers before his eyes as the least-time jump itinerary appeared on the main viewer. An icon began to flash on the left arm in his command chair, but he ignored it as a series of contingency plans flitted through his mind in a blur.

  A moment later his com-tech said, “The Commodore is demanding that you receive his connection, sir.”

  “Is it a p2p?” Minervini asked without breaking his focus, knowing full-well that it was not.

  “Negative, Commander,” the tech replied, the barest hint of amusement in his voice.

  The Commander briefly considered a reprimand, but he and his people had been at the beck and call of these low-brow thugs for far too long. So in a rare display of mercy—one punctuated by the ominous delay in his reply—he allowed the tech to go unpunished this time. “A Special Operations vessel operating under the auspices of the Imperial Intelligence Agency does not respond to broadcasts or unsecured hails while carrying out a Zeta Priority package. Ignore it.”

  “Yes, Commander,” the tech replied, his ears turning a pleasant shade of red as he took the unspoken rebuke precisely as Minervini had hoped he would.

  He and his people had been compelled to comply with Janeski’s orders, or those of his subordinates, only because until this very moment he had lacked actionable evidence which would permit him to pursue a task more worthy of he and his peoples’ talents.

  Within minutes, the sleek craft had successfully cleared the rogue planet’s hyper limit. The hum of the point transfer drives was short-lived as they surrounded the ship with strange particles—particles which permitted the ship to briefly ignore several supposed ‘laws’ of physics, including those governing the movement of matter across the fabric of space-time. With a barely-perceptible flash, the Constans Vigilantia transitioned from the hyper limit of the so-called Beta Site to a point twenty light years closer to the Conduit, which lay on the far side of the Overton Expanse.

  It would be a dangerous journey, primarily because there was zero trillium to be found in the Expanse. The Vigilantia’s crew would therefore be required to ‘improvise’ in acquiring a sufficient supply of the precious material prior to undertaking his ultra-secretive mission. Otherwise, assuming their quarry had already laid in a large enough supply of the material, the Vigilantia would not only find itself adrift in the least hospitable portion of this galactic arm, but the thieves who had stolen the Core Fragment might return to the Empire before they could be intercepted.

  With luck on their side, the buffoons under Janeski would eventually piece the data together and send a detachment of their own to pursue the vessel. But, for reasons both official and political, Minervini was determined to reach the precious Core Fragment first.

  It was time that he and his crew did what they had trained to do, what they yearned to do, and what the far-too-fragile race of humanity demanded them to do—and nothing in the universe could hope to stop them from pursuing their MAN-given purpose.

  Not even death.

  Chapter I: I Ain’t Your Lord

  “Take a load off, Nikomedes,” the enigmatic Lynch instructed, gesturing to the chair opposite his own as he sat himself down on the far side of the metal desk. “Looks like we’ve got some palaverin’ to do.”

  Nikomedes deliberately moved to the indicated seat before slowly lowering himself into it. His eyes scanned the room for any warning signs just as he always did when entering a potentially dangerous area. After seeing the Starborn prince do battle with Senator Raubach, Nikomedes knew it would take very little in the way of advantage for the heavily-augmented Lynch to overcome even the mightiest warrior Tracto had to offer.

  And it took no pride or vanity on his part to know that’s precisely what Nikomedes was: the mightiest warrior from his planet, at least among the current generation.

  He had accomplished things that he suspected would impress even the most legendary heroes of antiquity. From his slaying of the kraken as a stripling of a man, to earning his place as Felix’ second a few short years later, to surviving—and indeed thriving—among the Ice Raiders of Blue Fang Pass, he had accomplished more before the age of twenty than most warriors could claim to have done by fifty.

  And all of that was before he had been tasked with a ‘holy quest’ by the god of his people. That quest had taken him to the so-called River of Stars, where he had slowly, quietly, and patiently laid the groundwork for what would have been the greatest victory ever achieved by his countrymen.

  “Why’d you lie about your name?” Lynch asked, snapping Nikomedes back to the present.

  “I did not lie—“ Nikomedes began, only to be cut off by the dark-skinned Lynch.

  “Is that really how you wanna play this?” the other man asked harshly. “Because if it is, I ain’t gonna space you; I’ve got plenty of use for brainless thugs if that’s all you are. But before we begin this little relationship of ours, it’s important you understand something,” he said, leaning across the desk and fixing Nikomedes with the weighty gaze of a man who rarely knew defeat. “Even if you think I’m as stupid as you are, you’d do well to keep it to yourself. I haven’t survived this long by wasting my time with thick-thewed morons who t
ry to play word games. When that’s what’s playin’, I change the channel—and I usually do it with prejudice. Feel me?”

  Nikomedes’ eyes narrowed. Lynch had correctly deduced the nature of his protest, and that pleased the Tracto-an. No man who could be so easily manipulated was worth serving. This Lynch was clearly a capable warlord in his own right, but Nikomedes still had much to learn about him.

  “My apologies, Lord,” Nikomedes bowed his head fractionally, eliciting a derisive snort from the other man.

  “I ain’t your ‘Lord,’ son,” Lynch quipped. “Truth be told, I ain’t never been one to hold peoples’ leashes. It’s too tiresome tryin’ to make people do what they don’t really wanna do,” he made a dismissive gesture before producing a data slate and sliding it across the desk. “I’ve always found allies to be more useful than servants. Of course, that means I only deal with a cut above what most would consider the ‘rank and file.’ Are you?”

  Nikomedes briefly looked at the data slate, knowing this was also a test. In the court at Argos, and even on the Omicron station in the River of Stars, he had met with fork-tongued diplomats and negotiators who had insisted on playing word games they had smugly thought would be lost on him. This particular one was familiar to him: Lynch was gauging his mindset by asking an open question. He could either respond to the query ‘are you rank and file?’ or he could respond to the query, ‘are you a cut above the rank and file?’

  But, like any opening he saw in a contest, Nikomedes took it without hesitation.