“Admiral?” a female voice asked tentatively from a small knot of seamen passing by the corridor he had stopped in.
“Petty Officer Judge,” he grumbled at the young engineer who had been reassigned from his last flagship to the bigger carrier he now commanded. Reassigned and advanced on his direct say so, as if strings that couldn’t be pulled by a fleet commanding admiral weren’t even strings at all. “How are you?”
“Fine, Sir,” she said as she waved on the others, who were hovering uncertainly, “good actually. I just wanted to thank you again.” She brushed an imaginary speck of dust from the new rank insignia on the right side of her chest as she spoke.
“Thank me?” Dassiova said with a ghost of a chuckle at the proud attention she drew to her promotion, “You want to thank me for forcing more responsibility on you and assigning you to a dangerous mission?”
“Yes, Sir, I do,” she replied, completely missing the point that he had addressed her by rank as the corners of her mouth twitched upwards and made dimples appear in her cheeks as though they had been camouflaged until she smiled, “the team I have are good, and getting better every day. They’ll keep your shields up and running, Sir, don’t you worry.”
“I’m not worried, Judge,” he said formally, “that’s why I put you in charge of them. Carry on.” She seemed almost disappointed, deflated somehow for the conversation to end, but she drew herself up and nodded; a gesture that passed for a salute to the senior rank when at sea.
She walked off, tools jangling in her utility belt as she hurried to catch up with her engineers. Dassiova sucked in a breath through his nose, held it for a moment, then let it out.
If I’d stayed on Earth, done something different with my life, she could be my daughter, he thought to himself wistfully. As his eyes caught the shape of her flight suit below the tool belt, he pushed that thought away quickly and shook his head to clear his mind before resuming his brisk walk back towards the bridge.
As he had done on Earth and while held at Mars before they came back out beyond the gravitational reach of their own sun, the admiral liked to take his meals whenever possible on the main mess deck among the crew. He felt it was important for them to see him, and for him to see them. They had to know that he was human, that he had to do mortal things like eat, and somehow that both perpetuated and undermined the myth that he was infallible. He needed them to know that he was mortal, that he could be wrong and could make mistakes. That way when he pulled them out of the fire as he had done time and time again during his career, they would idolize him all the more for it.
The bridge doors, activated by the chip in his left forearm, hissed aside to allow him access. Unlike the bridges of the frigates, which were dark and tightly confined, the bridge of the Indomitable was like a busy office with lots of different departments crammed into one room and the big boss sat on a raised dais like a throne, looking down on them all. He didn’t like the grandiose feel of the command chair, not that it wasn’t extremely comfortable, with a heated massage function for when he had been sitting for too long, but because it unintentionally gave off the impression that he felt superior to everyone else in the room. The only thing that set him apart was his rank and position, but for the admiral of the fleet to walk around saying, ‘Hey, I’m just one of you guys,’ would be toxic. They had to see him as being the man. The one in charge, the big cheese, especially on the bridge, and the raised chair was just part of that necessary illusion.
“Good morning, everyone. Report?” He enquired politely to Massey, his flight officer, who ran most of the administrative issues onboard their ship without him having to dilute his concentration with the little things. She stood and smiled a corporate smile at the admiral, one where her eyes didn’t match her facial expression, and rattled off the facts.
“Admiral,” she bobbed her head in greeting, “Hammer and Vengeance are still searching the nearest planet and surrounding space for sign of the Tanto.” Dassiova nodded his acknowledgement of that fact, trusting the two tenacious frigate captains to do their best. He accepted a cup of coffee from a young enlisted rank who had clearly been delegated the task based on their utter lack of seniority. He took it and sipped, feeling the hot liquid connect to his senses like a weak stim shot.
“Our gun-buckets are holding position fifty thousand kilometers ahead in a defensive screen and the Ichi is still out in front, shrouded and scanning. Skies are clear, Sir.”
“Good,” Dassiova said as he paused to take another sip of coffee and tried to ignore his irrational flicker of anger at her derogatory description of the undocked gun barges, “Give Captain Torres my compliments and remind him that we have the best ships looking for his people. Scratch that; for our people. Tell the Ichi that their job is to be our eyes and ears and our first line of defense.” The comm officer, a woman with shoulder-length hair braided tightly back against her skull to show stripes of her olive skin between the lines, nodded and turned back to her terminal to tap out the message that she guessed was intended to keep captain Torres and his crew from getting anxious that they’d been sidelined when their own people were missing. She knew she’d be feeling pretty bad if it was her ship, her crew, and because it was a small vessel, it occurred to her that those onboard the Ichi would be feeling it pretty sharply. With that in mind, she softened the tone of the message and added some more reassuring words on behalf of their fleet commander.
Dassiova sipped the coffee again and sat in the big chair, hitting the console beside him for the pre-programmed comfort settings to return to his preferred arrangement. He used two fingers of his right hand to zoom in on the display of their sector of space, pausing as he looked how skeletal their vessel appeared when the eight destroyers that formed the bulk of the midsection of the Indomitable were deployed. To his mind, their ship now looked like a mostly-eaten pear, leaving just a spine with a fore and aft section untouched. He scanned further out, seeing how the line of gun barges rippled as comm traffic fed between them like they were a small organic network controlled by some central mind. Further out still and he saw the planned flightpath of the Ichi, but as they were shrouded, their precise location couldn’t be pinpointed. Further back towards the red sun, the three large support ships were in close proximity to them, and all four ships encircled the space where the station was slowly forming.
“Okay, Massey,” Dassiova said to his flight officer, “what else you got for me?” He sipped his coffee as the regular daily problems were laid at his feet for judgement like some medieval lord.
~
One light year away and closer to the rocky, forested moon where the Tanto had gone down with nobody to see it happen, the crew of the Ichi went through a similar morning routine.
“Slight power surges detected in the number two propulsion engine,” Sarvanto informed Torres, being careful as he always was to provide problem and solution in one sentence, “and I have Harris ready to shut it down and run a diagnostic if you require it.”
“Do that,” Torres said, knowing that if Sarvanto had suggested it, then it was highly irregular for there to be a better way of doing it. As usual though, the flight officer always left off some key detail which would either be picked up by the captain, who would be reminded why he was in charge, or else would serve as a last minute suggestion to make the tall Finn seem even less expendable than he was.
“Make sure he’s ready to kick it back up to full power if we need to make a move,” Torres instructed, “other than that, give him what and who he needs to get it checked out.”
“Already done, Captain,” Sarvanto allowed himself a small smile. “Other than that, all ship’s systems are running at optimal.” Torres thanked him, hearing from the comm and tactical officers in turn and swallowing a lump in his throat when the admiral’s message was relayed. His inability to sit still or sleep was an obvious side effect of his people, his friends, being out in the cold who knew where. If they were even still alive. Practicality kicked in and he temporarily re
placed Brandt’s position with the woman now sitting beside him for the morning bridge briefing. Her dark skin shone with an impossible smoothness and just sitting so close to her gave him the same feeling he got when he was about to do a tactical insertion and jump from the open tail ramp of a dropship. He cleared his throat to clear his thoughts and asked for the projected flight path to be sent to his console, before taking his time studying it and pretending he wasn’t daydreaming.
Daydreaming about what others were doing when they should be on his ship.
Chapter Nine – Unnamed Moon. Underground.
“Rogers? You still with me?” Brandt asked softly as she shook his shoulder.
“Huh?” The pilot managed back, luckily not out loud like he was sleeping in and would be late for school. “Where...?”
“Still in the caves,” Brandt said, “still goddamned freezing, and still lost.”
“Temporarily geographically misplaced, Commander,” Zero corrected her, “You always said we’re always where we’re supposed to be; just not always relative to where others want us to be.”
“Life is nothing without context,” Paterson said weakly. She turned to look at him. He was sitting with his legs out straight and his back against the rough rock wall of the cave in what had been McMarrow’ armor. Hours before, after the last time they saw daylight, they had paused in the cavern to take stock of themselves. Paterson had been told to use the armor and to his credit had done so without question, treating the body of the dead trooper with reverence as Turner had helped him lay the man down on the smooth rock floor of the natural cavern. The long, eerie shadows cast by their powerful LED beams made the darkness somehow more complete when not directly illuminated, and those deeper, darker patches of black held more promise of things from nightmares than they had before.
“It ain’t natural, being underground this long,” Horne complained. He was back on his own two armored feet, having been ordered from the cockpit of the mech the second they stopped. She stared hard at him for the three seconds he took deciding whether to obey her or not, then hit the canopy release and stepped down to abandon the mech where he left it. She expected another confrontation with the company man then, steeled herself for it, but another voice removed Horne as one of her problems.
“With me,” Specter told him as he stepped close to look down at the much shorter man, “help guard the tunnel.” Specter glanced up at Zero, who nodded and turned to Payne. The slimmer armored figure said nothing, simply hefted the big gun that had belonged to McMarrow and walked to secure the opposite end.
“Flare out,” Specter warned as he tossed one of the tiny tubes far ahead in the pitch-black direction they had come from.
“Flare out,” Payne echoed as she did the same in the direction they had yet to travel in.
“Turner?” Brandt asked over the channel, looking around until her HUD flashed on the outline of the man kneeling down over the supine form of Perez.
“He’ll be alright,” the medic said in anticipation of her question, “I need to give him more oxygen and some steroid injections, but he’ll make it.” Brandt paused a beat before asking the next question that made her feel like a grade-A shit.
“Can he be effective?” she asked simply, meaning to find out if the man was an asset or a burden. Turner’s helmeted head dropped slightly before he responded.
“He can man a position but with reduced lung function he won’t be runnin’ and gunnin’ any time soon.” The visor of the medic turned to face her, and a private channel request popped up on the bottom of her HUD. She activated it.
“He’s still probably going to develop pneumonia, which could kill him if I don’t get him back to a ship with proper medical facilities,” he said in a flat tone.
“Understood,” Brandt replied, “just patch him up as best you can.” She cut the channel to minimize the time spent in obviously private discussion.
“You hear that, Perez?” she said in a lighter tone, “restricted duties for you.”
“Yes, Com…” he broke off into a racking cough that sounded like it had wet rocks in it. His mic muted for a few seconds until he had finished coughing and composed himself. “Yes, Commander.” She patted a gauntlet on his shoulder before walking away and addressing her entire team.
“Everyone stay closed down,” she told them, using the ancient tank terminology for staying shut up inside their armor, “we know the air is breathable up top, but I don’t much like it down here. Plus, the temperature is too low so stay inside and stay warm.”
“Temperature is dropping, actually,” Paterson’s voice drifted to her ears, “I’m guessing it’s sundown outside.”
“Yeah,” Horne added, “and let’s hope no creepy crawlies come out at night down here.”
“Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut,” came the unexpected reproof from Zero, who usually kept his thoughts inside his head. “And Commander? Are we gonna talk about what we saw out there?”
“You mean the huge flying dinosaur thing?” Brandt answered lightly, trying to hide the concern she felt for what had driven them underground like rats in the first place.
“It’s not so hard to comprehend, is it?” Paterson asked in a voice marred by grogginess. “I mean, the environment exists here and on the main planet for life like ours to grow and evolve, right? So why aren’t they dinosaurs?”
Nobody answered him, which he seemed to take as permission to carry on with his explanation.
“If there hadn’t been an asteroid impact on Earth way back when, then who’s to know that the dominant species on our planet would be us hairless monkeys? Why wouldn’t huge reptiles still be rocking the top of the food chain?” Again, nobody answered him, so he carried on. “What I’m saying is, those things that we think looked like dinosaurs? Like flying dinosaurs? They were. They must be a kind of pterosaur that is unique to the environment it exists in.”
“Wait a minute,” Rogers cut in. Brandt looked over to him to see both gauntleted hands help up like he was trying to calm the situation. “You’re saying we just got chased off the rocks by a bunch of pissed pterodactyls?”
“Yes,” Paterson said. Other noises filled the team channel at the answer. Noises of disbelief and at least one scoff.
“So, we’ve crash-landed on the surface of a moon that’s what? Seventy or eighty million years behind Earth’s evolutionary cycle?” The pilot asked incredulously.
Paterson made a high-pitched noise of pensiveness. “I’d say more crashed than crash-landed…”
“Whatever,” Rogers snapped, “you’re following the logic, right? So, we’re expecting a T-Rex or something next?”
“No idea,” Paterson told him, “it isn’t like this place would necessarily have the same kind of species as we had on Earth, but yes; logic dictates that there would be large apex predators around.”
“Well,” Horne huffed to silence everyone, “that’s just great. That’s just… peachy!”
“Anyway,” Brandt said to her friend who had once fought beside her before he became more academic than soldier, “I thought you did space science and shields and wormholes and stuff?”
“I’m no paleontologist,” he responded drily, “but if you can’t accept what we’ve already seen, then it falls to me to point out the obvious. Plus,” he added with a smirk in his words, “I’m not a dumb grunt and I actually read books. I don’t eat them.”
“One problem at a time,” Brandt said a little too harshly as she tried to mask her fear of the rock they’d landed on and head off any quippy comeback from anyone. “Rogers, Paterson; help me bury McMarrow.”
~
They settled on piling rocks over his body as there wasn’t a single bit of dirt that far below ground to dig into. They reasoned that the temperature there would preserve his body and that they should mark their location to return for it when they were picked up, but they all privately knew his body wouldn’t be there when, if, they did. They held the cavern for a few hours so that Paterson
and Perez could rest. The guards at either end of the winding tunnel were rotated and everyone took a turn at resting their eyes for a time. Brandt tried to decline, tried to stay awake and in charge the entire time but her stoically calm second in command quietly insisted.
The only one of them not to need rest was Specter, who maintained a ceaseless watch on the direction they had come from without faltering. Brandt tried to close her eyes, tried to find just a little sleep to recharge her own batteries, but sleep stubbornly refused to come to her. She kept very still, as if she was sleeping, and used the visual interface to access the stats on the armor of her team. All of them were running at around sixty percent power, as was the mech, with the exception of Specter, who never dipped below ninety-eight percent before the charge topped up to full. She knew what was contained inside his abdomen where his intestines used to be, but seeing as how he no longer needed them, the space was put to better use with the inclusion of a small singularity power source and a shield unit.
Shields, she thought, we need to get top-side and retrieve the kit pack. She opened her mouth to call Rogers’ name over the channel but recalled that she was supposed to be sleeping. Staying still, she used her eyes to link to his suit on a private channel.
“What’s up, Grip?” he answered eagerly. Brandt sighed.
“First up,” she said, not unkindly, “only us weird CP types call each other by the callsigns we were given. Unless you’re Zero. Nobody knows his real name and I think he likes it that way. Secondly, any hit on the emergency kit you ejected?”
“Not under this much rock,” he answered, sounding crestfallen by either the gentle admonishment or else the depressing fact that they had no idea where their emergency bug-out kit had landed. Without him linking to it to guide it towards them, and the fact that it had ejected high up into a storm, chances were that it was miles away if they could even find it.
Conflict: The Expansion Series Book 3 Page 10
