Valor's Stand

by Kal Spriggs

  “If the skimmer was firing on them, it's an easily justifiable self-defense,” the Admiral waved a hand. “No, find out where that downed skimmer came from.”

  “The one the Tenacity killed?” Captain Montoya asked.

  “Negative, the one that Captain Amiss was doing a rescue operation on. If it was a Guard Army skimmer, then the other Guard Army skimmer should have had no reason to open up on it. Give me sensor data on the crash, info on where it came from, everything.” I jerked as I recognized the pseudonym of my cousin. At least we know she's alive.

  The officers on the flag bridge got to work. “Thank you, Captain,” the Admiral said. “Order your flight crews to ready themselves.” She looked at her communications officer. “Message to all Centurions: Battlestations.”

  “Ma'am?” the officer asked in surprise.

  Commodore Creed nodded, “The Guard Army and Fleet elements are going to be acting out, ready to engage anyone they perceive as a threat... unless we totally cow them into submission. Put me through to all mercenary elements. We're going to do a show of force, lock down the system... and save the surviving Guard personnel from doing something stupid. If they're too scared to act, maybe they'll talk to us.”

  I tapped into the ship's systems, unable to get through to systems that were locked down, but still able to watch on sensors. A number of Guard Fleet ships were in the system. Most of them had gone to active systems, their drives and weapons online. But as I watched, the entire mercenary task force went active as well. Twenty, thirty, forty, sixty ships. Everything from squadrons of corvettes to the battlecruiser. Targeting sensors lashed out in all directions, locking in on installations on the planet, Guard Fleet ships in space, military transports... if it moved, it was locked in as a target.

  And just like that, Guard Fleet ships started powering down their weapons.

  Almost like someone had flipped a switch, dozens of ships powered down their systems, messages started coming in, requesting information, a few of the Guard Fleet commanders were pleading for a cessation of hostilities.

  “Admiral, Commodore,” the communications officer spoke up, “we have a priority message from the planet, a Colonel Steyn, Guard Army. He says he's the senior surviving Guard Peacekeeper officer and claims to be in charge.”

  “I'm sure he does,” Commodore Creed sneered. He looked over at the Admiral, who was consulting her displays. “Should we talk to him?”

  “Not just yet, I think,” my grandmother told him. “You know, this is interesting. That crashed skimmer came from Karkhouli Maximum Security Prison, where they were keeping Admiral Rao.”

  “What?” Commodore Creed asked in surprise.

  “And apparently, the pilot got off a mayday just before it crashed... something about the prisoner getting loose.”

  Commodore Creed snarled, “You don't think...”

  “It's a Guard Army Special Service marked skimmer... or it was, anyway,” the Admiral went on. “From a unit attached to Colonel Steyn.”

  Commodore Creed began to swear.

  “Captain Amiss pulled one survivor out of it, before the other skimmer blasted the wreckage,” the Admiral went on, “not much detail we can get from imagery from orbit, but it looks as if the survivor was in cuffs.”

  “That could be very important,” Creed said. He stroked his beard, and only then seemed to notice the dust and ash coating it. He looked at his dirty hands, making a face. “It's been decades since I saw ground combat. You forget how... dirty it gets.” He shook his head. “I think we need to talk with this Colonel Steyn, don't you?”

  The Admiral gave him a cold smile and even at the back of the compartment, I shivered a bit at her expression. I would not want to be Colonel Steyn. Not at all.

  ***

  “...demand that the escaped prisoner be turned over immediately!” Colonel Steyn sputtered for what had to be the seventh or eighth time. I really wondered why he kept it up. It wasn't like Commodore Creed or the Admiral showed any sign of giving in. If anything, I thought the pair of him were toying with him.

  “How exactly is it that he escaped?” Commodore Creed asked, his deep voice deceptively gentle.

  “Yes, I believe that Major General Tibault assured me that he was comfortable and secure. A full company of military police providing his guard detail,” The Admiral said, her voice icy. “Why, exactly, if his treatment has been exemplary, would he feel the need to escape and how would he manage to overwhelm so many personnel in order to seize a shuttle?”

  “That's...” Colonel Steyn paused, licking his lips. I could see the gears start turning behind his eyes. He must realize that he was being recorded, that what he said might well go into an official investigation. “There was a miss-communication and his guard force were pulled away. A platoon of Guard Army Special Service personnel took over his security. I'm not sure how he escaped them, only that he did.”

  “I see,” Commodore Creed smiled. “Well, since you are unaware of how he escaped, perhaps it is best that we safeguard him. Especially since his escape comes only a couple weeks before the referendum on the Harmony Protectorate's new leadership... which he is currently ahead in the polls to win.” That part made me blink. Hadn't this Admiral Rao fellow led a coup? How could he even be a potential candidate?

  “I think that it would be best...”

  “Thank you, Colonel, I've got to go,” Commodore Creed cut the transmission. He looked over at the Admiral. “Just as dirty as Major General Tibault, and not half as smart.”

  The Admiral gave him a nod. “If Rao dies, odds are the election would go heavy against the Guard.”

  “You're telling me,” Commodore Creed muttered. He gave a sigh, “Please put me in contact with the Tenacity. We need to see if Rao survived.”

  The Admiral seemed to hesitate for a moment, then she nodded at her comms officer. I wondered at that hesitation. Perhaps she hadn't wanted to get her other granddaughter deeper in this mess.

  A moment later, my cousin appeared on the display that Commodore Creed had been using.

  “Good to see you, sir,” Mel began.

  “The man that you rescued,” Commodore Creed said in a flat tone, “is Admiral Nashim Rao, the leader of the coup that discharged the Harmony Protectorate's previous civilian government. I sincerely hope that he is still alive and relatively uninjured.”

  I saw her swallow nervously, “Yes, sir, he'd been shot, presumably in his escape attempt.”

  “That wasn't his escape attempt,” Commodore Creed snarled. I really hoped that he found some appropriate target for that anger. “The Special Service team that took charge of him were going to shoot him, dump the body in the ocean, and then plant evidence that he'd escaped. At least, that's what my contacts in the Guard Army have confirmed.” I blinked as he said that. He must have been pulling information up on his terminal while talking with Colonel Steyn. I shot a look at Ashiri, whose eyes looked about as big as saucers. This was way outside anything a pair of cadets wanted to be hearing. This was interplanetary conspiracies and corruption at levels way beyond anything either of us wanted to know about. This is as bad as Charterer Beckman, only it's the Guard. The Star Guard were supposed to be neutral. They were supposed to enforce the law and protect the peace. Only now it seemed like they were behind assassination attempts and political maneuvering. I felt sick to my stomach.

  Here I am, caught in the middle, I thought to myself.

  Mel seemed to take it better than me, “What should I do, sir?”

  “For now, hold on to him. Your arrival disrupted their plan. I don't trust them not to shoot down a shuttle, now that they know where he is. After things have settled a bit, we'll transfer him over to my ship and then we'll see about a more permanent solution.” Commodore Creed told her.

  “Why would they try to kill him?” Mel asked. It was one of many questions I had, so I listened, even as my head spun.

  “Corruption, mostly. When Major General Tibault died in the attack on her headquar
ters... well, I think some of her cronies saw a chance to use the confusion to their advantage. They pulled out Admiral Rao's security detail and then sent a team to extract and kill him.”

  Mel clearly hadn't heard the news, “So the Task Force commander is dead?”

  “Yes... and Guard Free Now has taken credit for the bombing,” Commodore Creed shook his head. “And their candidate just jumped ten points at the polls, too. If these idiots had managed to kill Rao, there's a good chance that Argun and her damned Hippies would win this election...”

  “Argun and the Hippies?” Mel asked. I was just as confused

  “Garina Argun. She's the leader of the Harmony Initiative People's Party for Independence and Equality, HIPPIE, candidate,” Commodore Creed said. “She's officially decried the bombing, but it's almost a certainty that she knew about it ahead of time and that she has close ties to Guard Free Now. Lousy HIPPIE's, can't trust any of them.”

  I didn't know anything about Guard Free Now besides that Lieutenant Dutson had said they were terrorists, and if the Commodore said they'd blown up the headquarters, then I wasn't all that much of a fan of them, seeing as they'd nearly killed me.

  “Alright,” Commodore Creed said after a moment. “At least he's alive and in our custody... and I expect him to stay that way until I have the opportunity to transfer him aboard my ship, am I understood?”

  Mel answered pretty much as I would have, “Of course, sir.”

  “Good, because right now I'm saving the Guard from themselves by keeping him alive,” Creed grumbled. “Stupid, corrupt, idiots that they are, in this case they're better than the alternative...” He cut the transmission and then looked over at my grandmother. “Admiral Armstrong, thank you to you and your personnel. I'm not certain I would have made it out of that... mess down there without your help.”

  “Any time, Commodore Creed,” she gave him a warm smile. “Shall I have a shuttle prep to take you back to your ship?”

  “Probably wise,” He put his hand back up to the bandage over his eye. “Hell of a business, this. It may be partially settled now, but this isn't the end of it. Colonel Steyn and Major General Tibault's former backers aren't going to give up.”

  “I know,” the Admiral nodded.

  “And there's this business with Admiral Rao,” he sighed. “This was supposed to be an easy peacekeeping mission, high reward, low risk...” He gave her a look. “You didn't even argue when they appointed me as the commander of the mercenary forces.”

  “Odd, that,” my grandmother noted. “Oh, your shuttle is ready, Commodore. We should get you back to your ship.” She said it in a friendly, neutral tone that ended that line of conversation. I envied her the confidence and poise she possessed.

  Commodore Creed shot her a look and then stomped off the bridge, grumbling under his breath.

  ***

  Chapter 14: I Get To Play With All The Toys

  Ashiri and I reported to our squadron leader at the end of what had been a very long day.

  Lieutenant Commander Woods was a big, heavyset man. He was tall and broad enough that I had to wonder how he fit into a fighter cockpit. He smiled as we stepped into his office and saluted, returning the salute. “Ah, here's our two lost little ducks.”

  “Sir,” I began to explain where we'd been, “we were assigned--”

  He held up a hand, “It's fine, Biohazard, Captain Montoya already let me know you'd be pulling double detail with the ground teams.” I flushed as I heard him use my callsign. I shouldn’t have been surprised that the story had gone far and wide through not just the Militia, but also to our mercenary contingent.

  “I know you'll both be pulled from the squadron on occasion to help out with some of our security teams. I've already talked it out with Lieutenant Dutson, he'll try to give me a heads up when he's got to pull you for training or missions and I'll do the same for him.” He shrugged his big shoulders, “We'll work around it.”

  Ashiri and I both relaxed slightly at that. The only thing worse than having to serve under two different bosses at the same time would be if those two bosses were working against one another.

  “Now, then, you're assigned to my squadron of Drakes, and I'm sure one of the first things you're wondering is what the hock is a Drake?” He smiled at our expressions. “It's perfectly understandable to wonder that, Cadets. We don't train our Militia on most of the equipment in use by the Centurions. You aren't expected to know everything about them or the other ships and equipment we use.” He pursed his lips and tapped at his terminal. “I've just transferred you specs on all of that, and I expect you to familiarize yourself with it over the next week.” His friendly expression hadn't changed, but there was a finality to his deep voice that brokered no argument. He expected us to read that material and he wasn't going to suffer any excuses on our parts.

  “But I'm also going to tell you the basic functions of the Drake and how we fight them,” Lieutenant Commander Woods looked between us, his teeth pulling back in a predatory smile. “These aren't your great-grandfather's surplus fighters, they're next-gen equipment, and the Centurions had them built at Hanet to a specific design.”

  I blinked as I considered that. Most nations used Guard Fleet surplus fighters because they were mass produced on a scale that the mind could barely comprehend. The UN Star Guard produced billions of fighter craft and every time they upgraded to a newer model, hundreds of millions of those craft were sold to planetary militias and system defense forces across human space. Some richer nations like the Drakkus Empire or the Preserve built their own fighter craft, but they did so because they needed enough of them that it made financial sense. There was a huge expenditure in design and production of a fighter craft. The more of them you built, the less the overall expense was per craft.

  As far as I knew, we only had two squadrons of these Drakes. I didn't want to know what they cost on an individual basis.

  “They're armed with smart-launch bomb racks, and the design is modular so it can be swapped out and upgraded as new armaments come along,” Woods went on. I wasn't sure what he meant by that latter part. Bomb systems were fairly standard among warp fighters. It was the easiest way to put the hardest hit on an enemy ship from a small craft. Firebolts carried four bombs, each bomb having a hundred megaton matter-antimatter warhead, which was about the maximum yield for anyone's current tech. Anything bigger than that and trying to get the matter-antimatter particles to all unite simultaneously for a full-yield detonation was pretty much impossible and the detonation of some of the two opposing particles would scatter the rest, meaning a smaller explosion.

  “Now,” he tapped a command on his desk terminal and a display appeared above his desk. “While that's pretty standard, the capacity we have is not. Drakes mount sixteen matter-antimatter bombs. With our smart-launch racks, each Drake can cover the effective area of a squadron of normal fighters, but we can sustain combat better than most fighter-bombers.”

  “Sir?” I asked in shock. “An entire squadron?” Part of warp-fighter tactics was overlaying enough bombs across enough space to both saturate enemy defenses and to hit an enemy ship no matter how they tried to evade. “But they only carry sixteen bombs, that's a huge capacity, but it's still only what four Firebolts can carry.”

  “Note I said they cover the effective area of an entire squadron. Normal squadron tactics, they’re dropping their bombs out the back, which means a lot of them don’t get where they’re needed and they get wasted. A Drake gets most of its bombs on target. It's the combination of our maneuverability and the smart-launch racks,” Lieutenant Commander Woods didn't seem put off by my question. In fact, he leaned back, a satisfied smile on his face. “And I said we can sustain combat better than normal fighter-bombers, you'll note. I didn't say warp-fighters.”

  I considered that, glancing at Ashiri, not a hundred percent certain about the distinction.

  “Aren't the latest Guard Fleet models called fighter-bombers, sir?” Ashiri asked.


  “They are,” Woods nodded, “and that's an important distinction here in Guard Space. Up until recently, everyone has classified the older generations of warp envelope craft as fighters. The term 'bomber' normally gets used for some of the slow-moving warp-drive vessels armed with warp missiles, the classes smaller than corvettes and set up for small crews and short duration missions.”

  I nodded. “Bombers” had mostly gone out of use with the rise of warp envelope craft, who could deliver their munitions from much closer with a human behind the controls.

  “The last generation of Guard Fleet fighters was the Prima. It's about three generations more advanced than the Firebolt, and until about five or ten years ago, it was the best design available to just about anyone,” Woods said.

  “But they've started fielding Spider fighter-bombers. They're armed similarly to the Drake, except from everything we've seen, the Spider type A's field a smart-launch bomb rack with thirty-two matter-antimatter bombs.”

  “Thirty-two on each fighter?” I asked in shock. “Sir, that's...”

  “Utterly terrifying, yeah,” he grinned, “Believe me, it's not something any sane ship commander wants to face. The Guard have started downsizing their squadrons. I think it's partly because a squadron of twelve of those is massive overkill, but expense is probably a part of it as well. The Spider is cutting edge, word among the mercenary guild is that each of them comes in at three hundred and fifty million Guard Dollars a pop.”

  “Three hundred....” I shook my head dumbly. “Per fighter?”

  Lieutenant Commander Woods grinned, “Yeah, not including the ordinance, which at thirty-two antimatter bombs, is pretty significant. But a squadron of six of them can deploy a hundred and ninety-two matter-antimatter bombs. Enough to glass a planet, by the way, a total of nineteen gigatons, in case you're wondering how powerful that is.”