by Kal Spriggs
“You still thinking about that kiss?” Ashiri asked, her voice a little bitter.
“Not really,” I elbowed her in the ribs. “Come on, what happened?”
“My mom,” Ashiri said in a soft voice. “He came with me to visit my family those few days between spring semester and the summer indoctrination. My mom was just pecking at me the whole time. She kept saying I should marry a 'proper' man who would stay home and raise the kids, that sort of thing. A lot of it right in front of him. He didn't say anything, mostly, just, one time when she was on me about not scoring better, he told her that I'd finished out better than just about everyone else.”
I remembered, then, the conversation I overheard on the train, back when we'd been plebes. “That wasn't good enough for her?”
Ashiri shook her head, stopping to look at me. “She told him that he was using me to score better. He stood up and walked out. I couldn't blame him.”
“You didn't want him to have to put up with her?”
Ashiri shot me a look, “Are you kidding? I bet he would have destroyed her. My mom's got such a chip on her shoulder...” she shook her head. “No, I just didn't want to have to listen to her, you know? And I realized that while I liked Alexander, that if he wasn't enough for me to want to fight my mom, then maybe the two of us weren't enough to last anyway.”
“Huh,” I thought about that for a moment. “Sort of a pick your battles, thing?”
“Sort of,” she shrugged. “Anyway, I kind of want to leave the whole fighting my parents thing alone until after I graduate and have a steady job. You know, so I'm not shouting that I'm a strong independent woman while living in my parent's basement.”
I snorted with laughter at that. “Make's sense. How did they take your setback?”
Ashiri's smile faded. “Not well. I actually think they'd have taken it better if I'd failed out entirely. My mom kept going on about how the system was rigged, that surely it wasn't my fault.” She made a face. “I tried to explain to her what I could... but yeah, then she just yelled at me for not standing up for myself.”
“Hock,” I said, “Look, I'm really sorry--”
“It's fine, water under the bridge,” Ashiri told me. “And I'm back, so it's not like it lasted an eternity, no matter what it felt like.”
“I'm sorry that I've been so caught up in... everything. I should have been there for you more,” I told her.
“I should ask for help more often,” Ashiri told me. She stepped forward and gave me a hug. I squeezed her back. We were both sweaty and gross, but it was good to know she was there for me.
We both sniffed a bit and I fought back a laugh. “Pair of idiots, aren't we?”
“Yep,” Ashiri let go and we both laughed a bit at how we were both crying, wiping at our noses. “Let's get back to it, right?”
“Yeah,” I told her. “No more secrets?”
“Sure,” Ashiri sighed. “Just so you know, I grew out the hair again so my mother would stop whining about the short hair. She'd always tell me how back at Ten Sisters, everyone who was important had long hair and she had the longest, most glossy hair.”
“It looks good,” I told her. “I've actually been a little jealous. My hair seems to go crazy when I grow it out long. Especially here with that rain and moisture. I have to keep hacking it off.”
“My mom swears by this special hair stuff, it smells like...” Ashiri made a face. “Well, you don't want to know what it smells like, but we can try it.”
I gave a laugh and we walked back to our quarters. It was good to have my friend back.
***
We'd done another six or seven of the missions with Admiral Rao or his decoy, or occasionally both. The first few times, Rao had come over on a shuttle from the Tenacity, but he hadn't gone back. Instead we'd sent the decoy. Admiral Rao had stayed aboard the Pentacane, with a group of the security platoon as guards on his quarters.
I'd sort of settled into that routine until the Tenacity broke orbit and departed. My assumption was that this was part of the shell game the Admiral had told me about. Still, I didn't know what was going on, especially since the media announcements still went out about Admiral Rao's departures. I didn't have much time to really read them. Well, occasionally I'd split off some of my focus on my implant and read through everything that was out there, trying to figure out when someone would try to kill him again and how many people under my command they'd get. But there wasn't anything all that important. There were interviews that they released, and he'd show up and wave at a few functions. Most of it was pretty boring, actually.
Things were a lot more interesting in orbit. Not long after Mel and the Tenacity broke orbit, so did the Guard Fleet special detachment. The same night, some assassin got Colonel Steyn. That pretty much eliminated any senior Guard officers in the system. I heard that they sent for someone, but I somehow doubted that any senior Guard officers would want to rush out here, seeing as a lot of them had been killed in the whole 'Peacekeeping' operation.
In fact, we were down to about two weeks before the election and I somehow doubted any Guard Fleet or Army officers would be back before that. After all, their rep was going to lose, and it probably wouldn't look good on their records to hand over the planet to the same guy they'd arrested a few months ago.
Our drills picked up, even as the Admiral cut back on appearances by Admiral Rao. It was just as well, since that occupied me a lot more. The complexity of engagements increased. The Admiral and Commodore Creed got increasingly creative with our deployments. Sometimes we launched off modified freighters while the carriers moved out of orbit. Other times we moved out-system and waited, our fighters powered down.
Some of those engagements went better than others, but every time we were taking heavy losses. Fighting through those two dreadnoughts was just a losing proposition. We lost dozens of fighters trying to get through the escorts even when things went well. The dreadnoughts had moderate fighter and missile defense, but it was the escorts that continued to rip us up.
Commodore Creed had started working the other mercenaries, even the single ship units, into our formations as we rehearsed more and more. I had sort of expected their training and quality to be similar to ours, but I was sort of aghast at how badly some of them maneuvered and followed orders. A few of them, maybe even half, were almost as good, but the rest were sloppy and surly. A few of them were downright mutinous, complaining over the open net about the exercises and the futility of trying to fight dreadnoughts.
Part of me wondered why we didn't just cut those ones loose, but again, I didn't know enough about the situation to even guess.
As we came up on the last few days of the election, I kept finding myself running through numbers. If Admiral Mizra had accepted the Drakkus Empire's offer of sanctuary, then he would have arrived almost two months earlier. If someone had seen him there, then they should be arriving in the next few days, if they came straight back here to Harmony. I had no reason to assume that someone would do that, but it functioned as something of a countdown. I felt somehow certain that as soon as we heard he'd arrived there, we could all breathe a sigh of relief.
Each time we drilled, we shifted the positions of our ships to match the new plan. The deployment had begun more and more to resemble some kind of bizarre work of modern art, with various ships spread out across a perimeter and several clumps of ships with combined firepower. It was weird to look at it, and try and pick out identities of individual ships and officers.
Oddly enough, the less predictable mercenaries were the ones assigned to the perimeter. They were the ones who'd all complained, along with a few others who had been amongst the slowest to react to orders and changes. Normally the perimeter was where you wanted your fastest, most capable ships.
I had the feeling that Commodore Creed and the Admiral had decided that if they couldn't rely on them in battle, then they could use them as decoys.
It was a grim thought, but I couldn't say I blamed them. Eith
er Admiral Mizra had gone to the Drakkus Empire, in which case, he didn't attack and the less reliable mercenaries would still get their pay. Or else he hadn't gone to Drakkus, and he would attack, in which case, those unreliable mercenaries would have a chance to fight and earn their pay.
And seeing as my life was among those that were on the line, if it was a choice between me being on the perimeter or a mercenary that could barely maneuver his ship or didn't listen to orders, well, I knew which one I would prefer.
***
“Welp,” Ashiri said in a dry tone, “there's your problem.”
We were staring up at a gaping hole where a fabricator had supposed to be.
One of her squad snickered, but the Admiral and our guest did not seem amused. “This is horrific,” Admiral Rao shook his head. “The Guard were supposed to protect the shipyards, instead...” He trailed off, unable or unwilling to go on.
Not that I could blame him. Harmony possessed a fairly advanced space-based shipbuilding industry. They'd focused mostly on freighters for use inside their borders as well as reproductions of Guard military vessels for use in their defense force. It orbited the planet's largest moon, which they'd mined for raw materials for construction.
Well, they'd had a shipyard. The Admiral had heard reports of Guard Fleet and other ships frequenting the yards, despite them being closed over the past few months. Initial inspections had been rather grim, so she'd asked Admiral Rao and Commodore Creed to do a joint inspection.
Most of the valuable components of the shipyards had been ripped out. Stolen or salvaged for parts, by the looks of things. Rare metal stockpiles for use in construction had been taken as well. In the process, there'd been a ton of secondary damage to systems and even structural damage to sections of the yards. Two wings of the main shipyard were depressurized from where thieves had cut their way in, rather than bothering with the airlocks. The long-term damage that would do to the equipment, computers, and structure would probably mean a lot of equipment that hadn't been stolen would still need to be replaced.
It was all the worse, because back on Century, I knew that we would have killed to have a modern shipyard like this one. Champion Enterprises had a small yard, nothing nearly this impressive. We had assembled a makeshift yard for the Alexandria-class ships in secret, but I knew that it had was limited in size and scale. Here they could assemble power plants for dreadnoughts and battleships. Not just one or two vessels, either, but work on dozens of ships at the same time... or they could have, if idiots hadn't torn it all apart for salvage.
“It's going to take months, maybe years to rebuild this,” Admiral Rao shook his head.
“It can be rebuilt, though,” Commodore Creed told him.
He gave a single nod, his expression hard. “And you are certain of the sensor data you showed me?”
Commodore Creed looked at the Admiral, who met his gaze while she answered, “I am certain. The only ships that came out here have been Guard Fleet vessels, or vessels labeled as theirs. I'm reasonably certain that Commander Renard, who had control for the picket stationed here, was selling out transponders to just about anyone to use, though.”
“But it's a good bet that he wasn't alone in this. This isn't the work of weeks, this would have taken months... which means Major General Tibault was a part of this, too.” His lips formed a flat, hard line. “I wish I had never stood down, maybe if I had fought them...”
“They'd have come in full force, then,” Commodore Creed shook his head. “That is what they planned to do, anyway.”
“I could have defeated their invasion force,” Admiral Rao sneered. “I should have done just that, and then issued them an ultimatum to stay out. But I was tired of bloodshed.” He looked around at the wrecked station. “If only I'd known what they would do.”
The three of them continued talking and I stepped back and left them to it. They were talking about things that I didn't want to think about: like taking on the entirety of Guard Fleet.
I was increasingly disliking the UN Star Guard, but I was painfully aware that Century was one tiny, little planet. We had no business trying to fight off the Drakkus Empire, much less thinking about taking on Guard Fleet.
Let Harmony worry about that, we've got enough on our plate. This expedition was just the first of many more to the station. This one had been unannounced, but the Admiral had already put out to the media that Admiral Rao would be visiting the shipyard in the days before the elections. There was already talk about getting repair crews up to the shipyards as soon as the election was done, about getting the populace of Harmony back to work, restarting the economy.
There had already been shuttles back and forth from the planet, bringing up survey crews to look at what it would take to get the yards online. A lot of those shuttles had also been going to the parked ships, too, so I guess they planned to get their ships online as soon as they could. Since the word was that most of those ships had been left without putting them in storage status, all of them were going to need some serious maintenance after even six months without attention. More than maintenance, too, if the Guard have been stealing parts off them, as well...
Whatever the survey crews were saying and despite what we'd seen here, the planet's media talked about rebuilding and getting people's jobs back. It was a lot of enthusiastic talk. I didn't know how well it would work out, but I could recognize a bit of optimism when I saw it. Standing in the all-but-wrecked station, I figured repairs would be a lot harder than people might think.
Still, I thought, if it gave people hope, then all the better. Let them dream about building a bright new future. We could all use more of that in our lives.
***
I let out a tense breath, as I stared into my tablet's camera, “Hey, Kyle. I just wanted to say that I really miss you, and I'm really sorry for how our last meeting went. I wanted to say that I've really thought about things. And I'm sorry it's taken me so long to message you.” I was rambling. I needed to get to the point. “And if you still want to, and I totally understand if you don't, but if you still do want to, well, you know...”
I trailed of feeling miserable. I cleared my throat. I couldn't force words out. Try again.
I started over, “Kyle, sorry it's been so long since I messaged. I've just been really, really busy... things have kind of been crazy here, actually. Which, I know, things are always crazy around me...”
I'd kind of lost the point. I started over again. “Hey Kyle, I miss you. A lot. And I know it was crappy of me to just run away after you totally blindsided me asking me to marry you. I mean, not that I wouldn't or don't want to, you just caught me by surprise, and I thought for a moment you were breaking up with me...”
I stared at my tablet, fighting the irrational urge to throw it against the wall. You can do this...
I opened my mouth, feeling like forcing words out was worse than torture. I found myself absently wishing for another random drill. Or maybe a combat mission escorting Admiral Rao against a company of attackers, again. Or a sparring session with Commander Pannja not holding back.
“Kyle,” I croaked, feeling like I could barely breathe, “look, the courier leaves in...” I pulled up the chrono on my implant, “five minutes. This is my last chance to get you a message until, well, until I get back to Century to see you. I'm sorry I didn't message you. I'm sorry I didn't give you an answer. I'm sorry I left you there on the dock. I love you a lot. It's kind of crazy how much I love you.” I swallowed. “You haven't messaged me either, and that scares me a lot. So I just want you to know, that--”
Alarm klaxons began to ring. “Are you freaking kidding me!?” I snarled up at the the overhead.
“All hands, battlestations, battlestations, this is not a drill,” Captain Montoya's voice snapped over the intercom. “I repeat, this is not a drill.”
“Hock,” I snapped. I hit send on the recording and then started scrambling to get in my flight gear. If nothing else, Kyle would know I loved him.
&n
bsp; ***
Chapter 18: It's A Lot Worse Than We Thought
I slid into my Drake's cockpit even as I merged with the fighter's computer system, bringing it online with my implant and pulling data on its systems. The normal start-up for one was thirty seconds, I managed to cut that down to fifteen.
“All fighters,” Lieutenant Commander Woods snapped, “you are clear to launch as soon as your systems are online.”
I didn't need to hear him repeat that order. I signaled I was ready to launch and my display went green a moment later. Alarm klaxons sounded in the bay around my Drake and then the outer doors slid open. It was a hard launch, the launch deck's magnetic grapples flung the ship into space, propelled along with a blast of atmosphere from inside the bay. I really hoped there hadn't been any ground crew still in the bay. There shouldn't have been, but if there had...
The acceleration flung me away from the Pentacane and I poured on speed with my reaction thrusters, getting as much distance between me and the carrier as I could, as fast as I could.
As I hit the minimum safe distance from the carrier, I checked for other vessels, including any other Drakes that might have launched, and then I brought up the ship's warp envelope.
Only then did I scan the sensors for the enemy.
I had to split of my focus, using my implant, to process what I was seeing without flying my Drake into another ship. I picked out the powerful drives of two dreadnoughts first thing. But there were dozens of smaller ships. Many were cruisers or destroyers In fact, there were only a relative handful of corvettes and frigates. It was far more powerful than the force estimates. Three full squadrons of cruisers and another four squadrons of destroyers. I didn't even bother to start counting the smaller ships.
The entire force had emerged from strategic warp near Harmony's largest moon. Almost right on top of the station, I realized. The announcements... they wanted to capture Admiral Rao.
I picked up a transmission coming across all frequencies. “Attention, my people, citizens of the Harmony Protectorate!” A man's face appeared. I filtered that out of the transmission. I had enough to look at as it was. “You have been betrayed! Admiral Rao has worked with Guard Fleet and their mercenaries to defraud you, to steal your jobs, to ruin your way of life! He has killed your rightful leaders and dismantled your military heritage! No more. Today we--”
