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

by Luke Sky Wachter

  “What I think of myself is unimportant,” he said steadily as he folded his long, powerful arms across his massive chest. “You are testing me, so what you think is all that matters.”

  Lynch snickered, “Well played. Guess you ain’t a moron after all…but take a look around you, son. Tell me what you see.”

  Nikomedes did not care for the familiarity of the other man’s tone or verbiage, but he grudgingly looked around the compartment. The bulkheads of the ship were all comprised of simple steel which was nearly identical to what he had grown up around—at least, it was similar to the finer quality arms and armor used by the most successful warriors. Rust streaks ran vertically down nearly all of the beams and panels, which suggested the vessel was old and cheaply built by Starborn standards.

  “I see old age…I see simplicity,” Nikomedes said before refocusing on the other man, “and I see poor maintenance.”

  “Simplicity is hardly ever a bad thing,” Lynch leaned back in his chair and drummed his fingers on the desk while letting his own gaze wander across the compartment’s bulkheads, “and when something’s as old as this ship and, it’s true, has been neglected as badly as this ship has been then it means it was built right in the first place—just like a winning battle plan. Simplicity and old age are partners, Nikomedes; it’s youth that insists on messy trysts with complication.”

  Nikomedes was uncertain what Lynch meant by that, but the other man tilted his chin toward the data slate. Nikomedes saw that it was already activated, so he lifted it a few inches until he was able to read its contents. It was a data file—and it was about him. It was far from comprehensive, but the highlights of his life were nearly all there: the Trial of the Deep where he had slain the Kraken; his time with Felix; his life at Blue Fang Pass under the one-eyed warlord Kratos; even much of his life on the Omicron was described in short-hand format on the data slate.

  “Tell me how much of that’s off-base,” Lynch said, and when Nikomedes looked up he had a newfound respect for the enigmatic figure sitting across from him. “I’ll take your silence to mean it all hit the mark,” Lynch said with a nod as Nikomedes read the last entry in the file, which described his second defeat at the hands of Jason Montagne. “I’m gonna put my cards on the table, Nikomedes,” the other man said as Nikomedes felt his blood begin to boil at the thought of having twice failed to defeat Montagne, “I need someone I can trust, and that file paints a picture of a man who’s got more in common with me than anyone else I’ve met in this ‘verse. I think you and me can be allies.”

  Nikomedes had never responded well to flattery. It had always been followed by an attempted knife in the back, so he gave Lynch a dark look—which only seemed to embolden the other man as a broad grin spread across his lips.

  “See, I know what it’s like to lose a name you was born with,” Lynch explained as he pointed at the door through which they had entered a few minutes earlier. “And I know what it’s like to suffer total defeat after puttin’ in years of effort and planning. Like you, I don’t intend to let the past repeat itself—and, like you, I’ve adjusted my sights after realizing I’d been aimin’ at the wrong target all along.”

  That last bit grabbed Nikomedes’ attention, but he kept his expression neutral, “What do you mean?”

  “I read your poem,” Lynch said, gesturing to the data slate where Nikomedes saw a second file was minimized in the corner of the screen, “it was good stuff. A bit amateurish formulaically and the verbiage wasn’t exactly inspired, but the thrust of it spoke to me.” A quick scan confirmed that Lynch had, indeed, read the poem which Nikomedes had penned just before leaving Tracto forever following his second—and final—defeat at Jason Montagne’s hands. “You realized, Nikomedes, that you’d been hoodwinked by ideas like honor, duty and tradition. Even if it came too late to save you from defeat, you saw the system for what it really was. That’s why you’re here,” Lynch jabbed his finger down onto the desk, “and it’s why you asked if I was gonna kill a Data God. You found your new target—and it happens to be the same one I found back before your granddad was a glimmer in his pappy’s eye.”

  Nikomedes’s eyes narrowed in contemplation, “You assume much.”

  “Son,” Lynch chuckled, “I’d never make an ass of myself—at least not in public.”

  “I am not your son,” Nikomedes said flatly.

  “Maybe not,” Lynch shrugged, “but I’ve got a feelin’ you’re gonna take me up on my offer.”

  Nikomedes’ eyebrow arched, but in spite of his feigned curiosity he had known since stepping into the room that Lynch had intended to make some sort of proposal. “I must hear your offer before I choose to accept it.”

  “This ain’t one of those offers,” Lynch said, his visage suddenly turning stony as he reached down and tapped out a series of commands into the sleek-looking link affixed to his forearm. Nikomedes’ acute hearing detected a subtle, nearly inaudible thrum fill the room when Lynch completed tapping out commands into the device. Such a thrum generally accompanied a powerful suppression field—a field which would render any recording devices useless. “This is the type of offer where you got zero choice in the matter, so let’s not sugar coat it any more than we have to. We’re both men and we both know what it’s like to be betrayed by everything we once fought, bled, and even died for. My offer to you,” he said, leaning forward and lowering his voice fractionally, “is to clue you in so we can work together and avoid that particular outcome repeating itself.”

  More than the severity of his words, something in the other man’s voice caused hairs to rise on the back of Nikomedes’ neck. He remained rigidly upright in his chair for several seconds before finally leaning across the table and matching the other man’s tone as he asked one of the simplest questions imaginable, “Who?”

  Lynch’s eyes flashed with approval, “If I knew that, I wouldn’t need you. But don’t worry,” he added confidently, “it ain’t nothin’ I’m unprepared for. Now here’s what I need you to do…”

  Chapter II: Captain on Deck!

  “Captain on deck!” Tiberius Spalding, the ship’s Executive Officer declared, snapping to attention as his Commanding Officer stepped through the door which led onto the archaic vessel’s bridge.

  Lieutenant Commander McKnight’s hard, blue eyes scanned the various stations on the massive bridge in turn. Apparently satisfied that all was as it should be—even though no more than a tenth of the stations were manned—she made brief eye contact with Tiberius and nodded, “Thank you, XO. Report?”

  “The ship’s jump drive is in a cool-down cycle, ma’am,” Tiberius replied promptly, having just pulled a sixteen hour shift on the bridge after spending another eight hours in Engineering. Between the two of them, they had continuously manned the bridge of the improbably ancient vessel for eight days while pulling double duties in support of their still-forming departments. “Estimated time to the next jump is three hours.”

  “I thought the antimatter-driven star drive on this ship allowed for faster jumps than that?” McKnight said, finally broaching the issue after just over a week of letting Tiberius do his best to get a feel for the ship’s laughably outdated systems—laughably outdated, that is, except for its prodigious star drive.

  “It allows for a few jumps in rapid succession,” he explained, shaking his head irritably after having failed to fully nail down all of the operating variables of the dangerous FTL system, “but the hull of this ship is crude steel, ma’am. It’s about as permeable as wet tissue to the subatomic particles we collect during transit; it takes the drive’s hull polarization system a bit of time to get rid of the particles. We’ve already missed a few jumps by several light hours, ma’am,” he said seriously, “and, best I can tell, it’s because we were dragging too many of those things around with us.”

  McKnight nodded, “What is Engineering’s recommendation?”

  Tiberius kept his expression neutral as he fought against the urge to grit his teeth. Penelope was a
great power tech, and a fine engineer in her own right, but putting her in charge of a skeleton Engineering crew as her first department-level command, after transferring to a ship that their eight-times-great grandparents would have laughed at as a derelict of a bygone era, was more than any reasonable person could be asked to deal with.

  He took his CO’s meaning plainly enough: your duty is to the bridge, Lieutenant Spalding; this ship needs its XO rested more than it needs a little pressure relief for her Engineering department.

  “The Chief Engineer recommends a minimum cool-down of four hours between jumps after we’ve cleared the particles from the hull,” he replied professionally, having worked up the numbers with Pen during his last shift in Engineering, “but we should make that interval six hours until we get the particles down to a level the engines are designed to compensate for. By our calculations,” he winced as he realized his verbal slip, which only served to harden his CO’s expression, “we’ll get three or four jumps in rapid succession before the particle build-up becomes dangerous to further jumps. The Chief and I think we should keep the hull as clean as possible to enable quick jumps if we happen to stumble into something we can’t handle, ma’am.”

  McKnight nodded slowly, “So your best estimate is that the hull will be back to optimal levels in another eighteen hours?”

  “That’s our best bet, ma’am,” Tiberius grimaced, knowing there was no way to pin it down until he had a better handle on the system. “But it could be as many as thirty, depending on the particles we pick up in the next few jumps. We still don’t have a firm handle on predicting the build-up.”

  “Good work, XO,” McKnight nodded, her short-cut blond hair hugging her scalp so tightly it failed to move the way her old ponytail had when Tiberius had first met her. Of course, they hadn’t exactly met under optimal circumstances, but McKnight had thankfully looked past the fact that he and his people had been in the process of being clapped in irons on the charge of mutiny at the time. “You’re relieved,” she said, reaching out for the largely symbolic data slate which they had used in lieu of command keys, “get some food and find your bunk for at least four hours of shut-eye—consider that an order,” she added in a steely tone even before his lips had parted to protest.

  He forced himself to relax, knowing that Pen was almost certainly falling further and further behind down in Engineering. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said professionally, snapping off a salute which his CO returned, before doing as he had been ordered.

  He exited the bridge, passing through the laughably flimsy door—which relied on the rotational forces of the ship’s spinning habitat module in order to close—and wincing as he heard what had to be a leak in the pneumatic cylinder which temporarily pushed the door aside.

  Pneumatics on a star ship, he scoffed in muted disbelief, it’s amazing the idiots who built this rusty deathtrap didn’t kill themselves laying the keel up. His lips twisted into a smirk when an unexpected thought flitted through his mind as he made his way down the rust-streaked corridor en route to the galley. In his best impersonation of the old man, he railed, “She’s not old, ye idjit, she’s got character—somethin’ you appear to have as little of as ye have sense rattlin’ around in that malignant waste of flesh and bone atop yer neck!”

  Looking around at the rusty walls and fatigued cross-members which bore the brunt of the rotational forces exerted by the spinning hab module, he shook his head piteously.

  “No, ‘Captain Moonlight’,” he said scathingly, lowering his voice after hearing the sound of approaching footfalls from what must have been bridge crew reporting for the next shift, “some things really are just old.”

  Chapter III: Down in Blue Fang Country

  “Next,” Lu Bu called crisply, dabbing the sheen of sweat on her forehead with a rag before discarding the sopping wet cloth well outside the three meter circle. The Tracto-an who had just submitted his application to the ship’s Lancer force cast her a baleful look as he struggled to maintain a somewhat proud posture while exiting the irregular circle she had drawn on the deck an hour earlier.

  But after suffering fifteen of her particularly brutal leg kicks, it was all he could do to remain upright as he made way for the next applicant. She snorted, clearing her nose of a half-congealed gobbet of blood—which the previous entrant had given her courtesy of a surprisingly quick jab—as the next applicant approached.

  “Name?” she asked as he wisely stripped out of his one-piece, skin-tight jumpsuit. She had successfully subdued three of his fellows in the previous hour by taking advantage of the increased friction the uniforms provided—two of them had submitted to her leg locks rather than suffer catastrophic ligament damage, and the other had woken up in a stupor several minutes after she had choked him unconscious with a deep head-and-arm choke.

  “Glaucus,” he replied after doffing his garment and tossing it outside the circle. Like the rest of the entrants—all but two of whom had been male—his musculature was knotted and, if she was being honest, as near perfection as she had seen. The length of his limbs, the breadth of his shoulders and hips, and the thickness of his torso were in what had to be considered the perfect proportions.

  That wasn’t to say that they were all identical, but there was something so…perfect about all of them, even those whose limbs were shorter than average or those whose torsos were less robust. Somehow, each of them appeared to have put on the perfect amount of muscle—and they had put it on in all of the correct places, unlike many foolish so-called ‘body-builders’ who focused on largely useless muscle groups simply because they looked impressive—for their frames.

  “What is the purpose of your challenge?” she asked almost disinterestedly, having asked the same question of the other twenty applicants which had preceded him. Each of the others had offered some version of ‘I want to take your job,’ which was precisely what she had expected since that had been the challenge she’d issued on the first day of tryouts. Before she inducted any of them into the Lancer corps, she had to establish that she was that unit’s leader and that there was nothing any of them could do to change that.

  She had learned faster than most that the only way a Tracto-an would respect you was if you put him on his knees—involuntarily, and preferably several times over. In a way, she almost felt a kinship with these people. That kinship was based on nothing more than their mutual desire to find their place in the universe by defeating every challenge in front of them until they could no longer emerge victorious.

  But Glaucus’ answer surprised her, though by now she supposed it should not have.

  “I seek to prove myself worthy to become your consort,” he said, flashing a smile with a mouth full of teeth that were perfectly symmetrical and as dazzling as a row of mechanically polished pearls.

  She sighed irritably, having received similar overtures no fewer than a dozen times since boarding Lynch’s massive, ancient ship. But there was something about this one which annoyed her more than most of the others had done, and after a moment’s consideration she realized what it was: his picture-perfect teeth.

  The corner of her mouth quirked up into a smirk, noting that at least he had the decency not to have completely disrobed prior to entering the circle—still, the form-fitting briefs he wore left little to the imagination. “You have seen what happened to the others who said the same,” she snickered, recalling a particularly gratifying uppercut which had lifted her erstwhile suitor completely off the deck—even if just an inch or two—a few days earlier. “Are you certain that is what you seek?”

  He flexed his pectoral muscles, and this gesture only served to sharpen Lu Bu’s focus as she determined to teach this particular specimen a lesson he would never forget. “With all my heart,” he assured her.

  “Very well,” she nodded, “the terms are the same: remove me from the circle however you are able, render me unconscious, or make me surrender. There is no time limit,” she said, rolling her neck around and feeling the familiar sens
ation of pops ripple up and down her cervical spine, “but fail and you must walk the corridors of this ship naked for one week, and you must serve double shifts with the engineers as they patch holes in this ship—also naked unless working in vacuum.” She crouched slightly, her 5’10” frame lowering just a few inches as her would-be consort did likewise. She made a beckoning gesture with her lead, right hand, “Begin.”

  He squared with her and circled left, prompting her to mirror his movements. He was lighter on his feet than most of his fellows had been, but his first lunge proved that he relied entirely too much on physical gifts and not enough on finesse.

  His hands clasped the air where her torso had been an instant earlier, but she had crouched and rocked back on her left leg. His eyes tracked her the whole way, and in an instant she reacted faster than her conscious mind could process. She faked a leg kick, which he wisely moved to check, but she managed to switch her weight over her hips quickly enough to launch her right shin into the side of his head.

  The blow landed flush, but she knew from experience that precious few Tracto-ans went down from just one blow no matter how squarely it had landed. This one was no different, and though his eyes rolled off-target momentarily he launched his own counter kick almost quickly enough to take her in the eyes.

  But he was clearly unused to fighting a foe that was a full head shorter than him, and she ducked the few inches necessary to avoid his counter entirely. His groin was briefly exposed to a swift kick, but much as it pained her to do so she refrained from taking advantage of the obvious opening.

  She had other plans for this one.

  Instead she ducked under his far side and barely brushed against his body before coming to a stop on the opposite side of the circle from where she had started.

  Looking mildly annoyed, but crouching a few inches deeper than he had at the match’s outset, Glaucus lowered his hands slightly and circled the other way.