Valor's Stand

by Kal Spriggs

  “We aren't going to give up our planet that easily, no matter if we were betrayed by Admiral Drien,” Commander Weisfeldt's voice took on a hard edge, “along with many of the surviving Charter Council, and their families, I might add. I've documented their various illegal activities over the past few weeks. It was all I could do, without breaking the secrecy of the project, but I had monitoring systems at Century Station, and your electronic copy in the planetary network has fed me information this whole time. We may not have enough to convict them here, where they have all the power, but it's enough that we can hold a tribunal under the Admiral.”

  I felt an almost manic grin cross my face, “So that's why she didn't answer.”

  Commander Weisfeldt gave me a nod, “We didn't want to risk Admiral Drien noticing her. So she and Doctor Schoeffelk and I worked together. He left a week ago with all the evidence we'd collected already. She's remaining behind on the planet, with a dedicated datalink and server space at the Directorate Thirteen headquarters at Black Mesa. Charterer Champion helped to set that up, just as he gave me access codes for all his off-world accounts, not just for Champion Enterprises, but all his accounts. We're going to use that to help fund our return.”

  I closed my eyes, fighting back tears of relief.

  “Come on,” he seemed discomforted by my emotion. “We should go meet our rescuers.”

  I climbed out of the cockpit. Most of the scientists and engineers from Directorate Thirteen had already cleared out and the remaining ones got out of our way as I pulled myself along in zero gravity.

  There was no gravity on the far side of the airlock, either. It was a cramped cargo bay, where I saw dozens of young-faces, all of them wearing Militia uniforms. It took my brain a long moment to make sense of what I was seeing.

  “Jiden!” Kyle shouted. He slammed into me, his arms wrapping around me in a hug that threatened to crack my ribs. I was too surprised to hug back. “You're alive!”

  “Unless you crush my ribcage,” I groaned.

  He let up a little, but not very much. Then again, I welcomed the chance to bury my face in his chest and I'm not ashamed to admit I let a few tears and maybe a sob of relief out, safely hidden there against his chest. After a moment, I pushed him away a bit, looking around, “This is one of the Academy supply transports, then? Who's in charge?”

  “I am,” Kyle grinned. “The twins each commandeered the other two. I was the only other one who knew what was going on, so I took over this one.”

  “How many?” I asked softly, looking around. There had to be fifty or more people in the docking area here. If the rest of the ship looked like this, I didn't know if we'd survive to get anywhere.

  “Three hundred and fifty aboard this one,” he answered, “plus however many you brought with you on the shuttle. The other two transports have around four hundred, each.”

  I blanched at that. The Academy had around eight hundred cadets per class. Even accounting for casualties, that wasn't even half of the school.

  “Some wouldn't come and we lost a lot of people,” Kyle told me. “The ones left to board the ships are mostly fourth and third class cadets. A lot of the cadets assigned to the school's corvettes and destroyer are missing.”

  “Missing?” I asked.

  “They jumped with Admiral Drien's deserters,” Cadet Second Class Green told us. He clung to a handhold behind Kyle. I hadn't even noticed him, not at first.

  I shot Kyle a look and he gave me a slight nod. “The instructors put Hodges in charge of the destroyer when they shuffled around flight crews. Other cadets like him for the corvettes, and a whole lot of the ones who toe the line in the crews, more than they needed to fill them up. Some of them match up to prominent families, people who were Admiral Drien's allies. Probably a quarter to a third of the school.”

  “Sashi?” I asked softly.

  His expression hardened. “Not her. She landed at the school, but she tried to stop the twins and I from appropriating the supply ships. She tried to order us to put together an attack force of fighters to hit the culmor as they made orbit.”

  “They'd take that as a betrayal of the surrender and they'd gas the planet,” I stared at him. “Tell me you stopped her.”

  “She's in a supply closet,” Kyle grinned. “I kind of got her back for shooting you. I hit her with a training round from my rifle,” he patted his slung weapon. “She'll be sleeping it off for a couple more hours.”

  “She technically shot me twice...” I smiled back at him.

  “Well, I guess I could shoot her again...” He suggested.

  “Let's side that discussion for the moment,” I told him. “Are the twins still with us?”

  “They're waiting at the edge of the system. They didn't want to leave alone, just in case one of the ships suffers any engineering failures.”

  More like when one of the ships suffers engineering failures. The air in the supply transport already smelled of too many people and sweat. If we went to the nearest inhabited system, it would take us ten days, with the older warp drive and limited power.

  That was Erewhon.

  As if he could read my mind, Kyle asked me, “So, Biohazard, where to?”

  I didn't argue with him putting it on me. This whole desertion thing was my idea, after all. Even if we were just trying to save enough of a military force to try and put together a counter-attack somewhere down the road.

  I did glance over at Commander Weisfeldt who held up his hands, “Far be it for me to gainsay an Armstrong,” he smiled. “Besides, I'm technical track. Rank or no, I'm not the type to command any force.”

  I rolled my eyes at that, but I didn't argue. Truth to tell, I felt better being in charge. If we were going to be living on the ragged edge, with people and aliens trying to kill us, with unknown enemies who outgunned us, well, that was where I'd been for the past few years anyway. I don't think I'd know another way to live.

  I thought about where to go. Erewhon was the obvious choice: they were closest and they'd been our allies. All the same, I knew that they might help us or they might turn us away. There was no knowing. I thought I'd made a good impression with them, but Century had just ceased to be a valuable ally to anyone. We had ceased to exist. Our militia had suffered massive casualties. Our planet was soon to be under alien occupation. That wasn't even considering the goodwill they'd get from Drakkus if they turned us away. Then we would have wasted two or even three weeks going there and then having to divert to somewhere else.

  I couldn't wager that Erewhon would give us anything or even let us dock and take on supplies. And Erewhon was further away from Guard Space than Century. The MCA lay on the far side of Erewhon, another thirty light-years.

  The Darwin system lay closer to Guard Space, but they had no military forces to speak of, just a minimal customs and emergency response force who oversaw their system. I figured dozens of civilian ships would be headed there and they'd probably be overwhelmed. It was fifteen days with our warp-drive, by some quick math on my implant.

  It was also off the shortest line route to Harmony, where the Admiral and the Centurions were. Harmony was where Century had made a good impression... after all, we'd helped to save their planet.

  It was a hundred and twenty light years. Doing the math on my implant, it would take us forty-three days. That was a long jump for any ship. “How are we on supplies?”

  “We have a whole lot of emergency rations,” Kyle pointed at the boxes lining the edges of the room, several cadets were sitting on them or using them as bunks. “Just a guess, but I'd say sixty days. We jury-rigged some water recyclers, plus we've got full water tanks. Maybe about the same, if we ration it.”

  “No long showers,” I joked.

  “No showers at all,” Kyle snorted.

  “Harmony,” I told him. “We're going to Harmony. But one thing. I'm relieving you of command.”

  “What?” Kyle asked in shock.

  “Cadet Second Class Green, I'm making you acting capta
in of this ship,” I told him.

  Green stared at me, “Uh, yes, ma'am.”

  “As acting captain, you're assigned a variety of authorities. Including the rights to hold military tribunals, criminal investigations and punishments, and legally binding agreements,” I told him. He nodded at me, still clearly confused. “Today you're going to execute that authority.”

  I looked at Commander Weisfeldt, “Sir, I'd like you to be a witness.”

  “Of course,” he said tranquilly.

  I grabbed Kyle by the arm and spun him around with me to face Green. “You're going to marry us.”

  “I'm going to what?” Green asked in surprise.

  “He's going to what?” Kyle said at the same time.

  “It's easy enough, you ask if we're willing to do the deed, you tell us to kiss one another, and then you announce us married,” I told Green.

  At this point, we had the attention of just about the entire compartment. Green nodded quickly.

  “Uh,” he looked around, “Cadet First Class Armstrong, do you take Cadet First Class Regan to be your husband?”

  “Yes,” I said, looking over at Kyle. His green eyes had gone wide and he'd become very pale, his freckles standing out against his skin.

  “Cadet First Class Regan, do you take Cadet First Class Armstrong to be your wife?”

  “Uh,” He looked at me. “are you sure you want... this?” He asked me in a low voice.

  “Well, my wedding dress was in my wardrobe back at the Academy and I haven't had my hair done... but yeah, it's the end of the world as we know it, this will have to do,” I told him.

  “Oh,” he said, “then yeah, of course I do.”

  “I now pronounce you husband and wife,” Green announced, glad to be done with it.

  “You may kiss the bride,” I prompted.

  “Oh, yeah, go ahead and kiss her,” Green flushed.

  Kyle leaned forward to kiss me. It would have been a chaste thing. We were in uniform, in public, after all. I wasn't having any of that, though. I pulled him to me, wrapping my arms around him in the zero gravity and holding him, making sure he kissed me proper.

  When I let him go, we were both breathless and I had spots dancing behind my eyes. I cleared my throat. “Cadet Second Class Green, sorry, but you're relieved of command.”

  “Oh, thank God,” he breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Kyle, you're promoted back to Captain of this tub,” I told him. “First order of business, get us to the edge of the system, link us up with the twins, and let's get out of here.”

  “Sure,” Kyle said. He led the way out, pulling himself hand over hand and I followed him. I was married. That was an interesting feeling.

  “What's the second order of business?” Kyle paused at the hatch, looking back at me.

  “As to that, well,” I flashed him a predatory smile, “I need to know whether or not this tub has private captain's quarters.”

  ***

  Chapter 26: I Find My Own Way To Harmony

  I was the first one through the airlock and I found the Admiral right away, delivering her a sharp salute. She returned it, her expression solemn. “Welcome aboard, Lieutenant Armstrong.”

  I kept control over my expression as she promoted me, but only barely. “Ma'am.”

  She stepped forward and gave me a hug, even in front of her and my people. I hugged her back, so relieved to see her alive that I didn't care about military bearing and regulations at that moment. If they're not going to prosecute me for desertion, then I might as well assume they're not going to do it for hugging my grandmother while in uniform.

  “We'll oversee your people getting aid and coming aboard, I'd like to speak with you and your senior officers in my office,” she told me.

  We'd just made it to the system, and it hadn't been an easy trip. We'd had two major engineering failures. Tyler Zahler had a full environmental plant collapse on his transport about thirty days into our trip. That had taken three days to fix, with all three ships docked together to provide enough capacity to prevent everyone on that transport from suffocating, but we'd managed.

  Our ship had suffered a drive field failure five days after that. It had taken a full week to cludge together a fix and we'd arrived here another seven days after that. We'd done it on ships rated for fifteen days maximum travel time, for a total trip time of fifty days.

  News had already reached Harmony of the fall of Century by the time we'd got here. The first reports had reached Velica and Hanet around two weeks after the planet had fallen, or so we'd learned on arrival. As far as we knew, we were the last refugees out of the system. As soon as we'd arrived, I'd sent over a full briefing of everything we knew, encrypted for the Admiral's implant only.

  I fell into step behind the Admiral, Kyle, and Commander Weisfeldt falling into a loose formation with me as we went to the flag bridge and then the Admiral's office.

  She went around her desk, waving us to waiting chairs. “First off, the promotion isn't pro-forma. One of Leo Champion's last acts on Century as acting president was to graduate the entire class of First and Second Class Cadets, posthumously in many cases.”

  I had to clench my jaw to prevent from breaking into tears. She looked at me and then Kyle, “Both of you graduated with honors, top tiers of your class. The exact standings are unknown, but you were in the top percentage, so there you are.” She smiled a bit as she said that, but her expression hardened a moment later.

  “Admiral Drien's ships along with a group of refugees, mostly made up of his family and the families of his supporters, arrived at Velica four or five weeks ago and went from there straight to Harlequin Station. I understand he's making a case for the fact that because he has much of the surviving government aboard his ships, he should be awarded any outstanding assets and accounts of Century's government, as well as full ownership of the Centurions.”

  “What?” I demanded.

  “I'd already received your message, delivered via courier thanks to Sashi Drien,” the Admiral went on. “So I'd already lodged a formal complaint against him, on behalf of the people of Century, for his arrest and the seizure of all his assets, to be turned over to Century's government in exile.”

  “We have a government in exile?” Kyle asked in surprise.

  “Three members of the Charter Council fled with the other refugee ships,” she nodded, “they went to Darwin and then made arrangements with the Guard, who diverted them Expo, where they've established refugee camps. They're acting as our government for the meantime.”

  “Can we trust them?” I asked.

  She shrugged, “They don't much like Admiral Drien, seeing as he abandoned them. They all want him arrested, tried, and executed for desertion. So there's that much at least. She hesitated a moment before she went on, “The fact that they ran at all, and that their private vessels brought with them their own families and close followers and could have carried quite a few more people, if they'd wanted, tells me we can only trust them so far.”

  “What about Champion?” I asked.

  “The Guard have heard that he surrendered Century to the culmor, rather than fighting to the last. For now, they've only charged him with crimes against humanity, but they may well expand that to anyone on the planet who doesn't present a case of resisting.”

  “We had no way to fight them, not after Drien retreated!” Kyle protested.

  “They don't care about that,” I growled and my grandmother nodded.

  “It's all about holding things together, especially in the Sepaso Sector. There are dozens of systems under threat. If they start to think that they can surrender without repercussions, then they will. That frees up forces that the Culmor Empire would otherwise need to conduct a ground campaign or gas the planet. For now, there's too much excitement about our victory taking out four driveships for the Guard to spin up any kind of hostility towards Century. They needed the win, because they've suffered very heavy losses, particularly the late Admiral Montaigne at Vag
yr.”

  “Oh, what a shame,” I said with total insincerity.

  The Admiral gave me a look, “I didn't much like him, but he got fifteen thousand personnel and nine vessels killed with him. Commodore Webb hadn't yet left the system and managed to turn things around, but I gather it was a close thing. If he hadn't, they might have rolled right here into Harmony, and given the forces they brought against Vagyr, you'd be explaining to the culmor who you were and why you'd come here.”

  “Sorry, ma'am.”

  “I will say that I've had time to review a lot of footage from that battle and the one at Century. We've got copies of Admiral Drien's sensor footage, which has helped me do a lot of analysis. We've played through both battles on the flag bridge computers a number of times from numerous perspectives. It's given us a lot of data for planning on our return.”

  “We're going back, ma'am?” I sat up straight, ready hop in the cockpit of a Drake.

  “We're not released from our contract here, not yet,” she said with a grimace. “But we're ordering ships from Hanet. They've got a lot of demand at the moment, but we already had most of our orders in before news of the culmor attacks went out to most of human space. So we're at the front of their queues. It's not going to happen overnight. We're going to have to assemble funding, put together a fighting force, and we're going to have to find the people and ships to make it work, but we are going back.”

  “Leo Champion gave us access codes for his off-world accounts,” I noted.

  “That'll be of help, if the Guard haven't already seized them,” she said. “Good luck getting anything if they already have, they'll be drained and gone. But we'll use anything we can. Those cadets you brought, they're going to be the core of this force we're going to build. We're going to recruit heavily from our refugees, as well as refugees from other systems. And we're going to go back and kick those aliens out of our home.”

  I stood up, reaching out a hand to Kyle, who'd reached out as well.