by Terry Mixon
“Normally, refusing to be activated in time of war is a felony,” Barnes said gently. “On the other hand, normally a reserve officer gets paid and you never did—not by Fleet, anyway. If you want to walk away, Brad, I’m the President of the Everdarkened Commonwealth. I can make it happen.
“But I’ll be blunt, old friend: if you walk away, neither the Agency nor the Fleet will be able to trust you again…and we need you.”
“Nasty choice,” Brad muttered…but he picked up the insignia. “Can I at least call my wife before I get to work?”
The uniform wasn’t a particularly good fit. Unlike his Vikings uniform, it had clearly been pulled out of a storage rack somewhere. Modern technology and fabrics allowed it to be adjusted in several places to fit better, but Brad could still tell the difference.
Once he was showered, shaved and dressed, however, he certainly looked the part of the rank. He’d carried the title of Commodore as a mercenary for years. How different could being a Fleet Commodore be?
Barnes had even extracted his wrist-comp from the Agency and he linked it into the planetary network to place a call to Michelle.
“Captain Hunt,” she answered crisply, then saw his face on the screen. “Brad! Did they let you go? Are you out?”
“Yes, yes…and no,” he told her. “I assume you know about President Barnes?”
“Yes, that’s why I was hoping you’d get free,” she admitted. “I’ve been bending his ear as our Senator for a while on getting you out!” Michelle paused. “What do you mean, ‘and no’?”
“They activated my reserve Fleet commission, love,” he told her. “Technically, I can’t say no, though Barnes would cover for me if I did. But…they need me, love. Or someone like me, anyway.
“More importantly, Jupiter is going to need me here, in this uniform,” he said quietly. “Our planet. Our people. I owe them, more than anything.”
“If you’re in the Fleet, though, what happens to…us?” Michelle asked. “What happens to the Vikings?”
There was another question in there, too, and Brad thought it was far more important.
“I’m pretty sure Fleet officers get leave to visit their spouses,” he told her. “We won’t be in each other’s back pockets as much, which sucks, but I’m not letting you go, my love. Not now, not ever. Hear me?”
Stress that he didn’t think Michelle had realized she was holding released from her face, and she smiled at him.
“Good man,” she allowed. “And the company?”
He waved a finger in her direction.
“Boom. You’re now a Commodore, too,” he said with a grin. “I’d like you to hang out in Earth orbit until I know what they need me to do and, well, I’ve had a chance to visit, but you’re now in charge of the Vikings.”
He paused.
“I’m looking forward to my first dividend payment that I didn’t have to work for,” he concluded with a grin. “But I’ll visit as soon as I can. I suspect I’m about to get tossed on a shuttle with Admiral Orcho, however, so I don’t know when that will be.”
She exhaled a long sigh and nodded.
“I’ll take care of our people,” Michelle promised. “Our nest egg, too. I have one big requirement in return, though.”
“Anything, Michelle,” Brad said quietly.
“You protect my husband’s ass,” she ordered. “Clear? I’ll let you get away with this for now, but you’re coming home, you hear me?”
“Loud and clear, Commodore Hunt!”
Chapter Five
With one final handshake, President Barnes was whisked away by his escort onto his shuttle. That left Brad standing next to Admiral Orcho, wondering just what in Everdark he’d signed on for.
“Fleet shuttle is already on its way,” the Admiral told him. “My apologies, Commodore, but you’re not going to get much time to enjoy your liberty. We’re heading straight for orbit.”
“I’m aware I traded a prison of one type for a prison of another,” Brad noted. “But the President knows exactly which of my buttons to push. We go back a long way.”
“So do you and Fleet,” the Admiral said. “My inbox exploded for a few days once the rumor of your detainment hit Mars and Jupiter.”
“Is anyone left at Jupiter?” Brad asked, listening for the sound of an incoming shuttle.
“Unavoidably, but we’re doing our best to honor the Jovian Council’s request,” Orcho told him. “We’ve got personnel on the various gun platforms in the planetary system, but we’ve pulled our fleet back.”
“How far back?” Jupiter had various guard and militia forces that were more powerful than many suspected and was home to multiple mercenary companies. They were still utterly outclassed by the kind of strength Brad knew the Independence Militia had possessed.
He didn’t know what kind of firepower the Outer Worlds Navy had, but it seemed likely they’d absorbed both the Militia and the spaceborne elements of the Cadre.
“We can only play so many games,” Orcho admitted. “We’ve got a force in the leading Trojan cluster, at the invitation of the Board that runs Serenade, but that’s it. Most of the ships have been pulled back to Mars or are even on their way here.”
“I don’t think anything in Earth orbit is going to matter much,” Brad pointed out. “Or Mars, for that matter.”
“I agree,” she said, raising her voice slightly to speak over the engines of the descending shuttle. “However, we need to reorganize, assess the loyalties of our remaining captains and officers, and prepare for the coming storm.
“Earth and Mars are secure. There’s nowhere better to do this.”
“Remaining captains?” Brad asked. “I didn’t think there’d been any fighting yet.”
The shuttle’s engines grew louder and Orcho shook her head.
“You’ll be briefed at Orbital Command,” she shouted. “We’re still waiting on some final pieces.”
The shuttle swooped in for a landing and Brad looked at the swept-wing spacecraft with undisguised longing. He’d put up with a lot of bullshit to get out of Earth’s gravity well.
“All right, sir,” he told the Admiral. “I look forward to seeing what you want me to do.”
She snorted.
“I’ll remind you of that in a few weeks,” she told him. “We’re the military, Madrid, not mercenaries. Hurry up and wait is a legendary phrase for a reason.”
As the shuttle passed out of Earth’s gravity well, it switched over to artificial gravity. At the standard seventy percent of a g, Brad felt his muscles truly relax for the first time in weeks.
“I am not going to miss Earth’s gravity,” he admitted aloud. “The beach was nice, but I wasn’t enjoying weighing half again what I was used to.”
“It shouldn’t have taken you much longer to adjust,” Orcho told him. “Our bodies evolved for it and we can tell, even if you spent your entire life off of Earth.”
Brad shook his head.
“Intellectually, I get that,” he admitted. “But it’s not a theory I’d choose to test.”
Orcho chuckled as the shuttle slowed to dock with Orbital Command.
“Fair enough, Commodore. We’re not going to insist you spend any time on the surface, that’s for sure.”
Brad followed her out onto the main boarding area and she waved a noncom over. The man had clearly been waiting for them, as he had a datapad he handed the Admiral as soon as he’d saluted.
“Chief Hespeler, can you see Commodore Madrid to visiting officers’ quarters and get his gear settled?” Orcho asked, her voice distracted as she scanned through the datapad.
“Can do, sir. Do you need him anywhere after that?”
“Do we have a flag officers’ briefing scheduled today?” the Admiral asked as she read the report.
“Not booked yet.”
“I’ll get in touch with Captain Hardy and get one booked. Keep in the loop,” Orcho ordered. She checked the time. “Forty-five minutes, if I can pull it off. Make sure Madrid m
akes it.”
She turned to Brad.
“Looks like we’re throwing you in the deep end, Commodore. Welcome to the Commonwealth Fleet. I’ll be briefing everyone shortly.”
They traded salutes and she disappeared at a brisk pace as Brad watched her go.
“You get used to her,” Chief Hespeler told him from over his shoulder.
“I’m used to being the one in charge,” Brad admitted. “It’s more than Admiral Orcho I need to get used to.”
“You’re the merc they drafted, right?” the Chief asked.
“Roughly. Where are these quarters?”
“This way, sir,” Hespeler said. “You took Andre on after the idiots fired her, right?”
“Captain Brenda Andre?” Brad asked.
“Yes, sir,” the Chief said as he led the way.
“Yeah. She’s a damn fine officer, saved my life both in Fleet and working for me.”
“I served under her,” Hespeler replied. “I doubt the news of your activation has made it out yet, but I suspect I’ll be getting a note from her shortly. If my old skipper went to work for you, the least I can do is make sure you land on your feet.”
“It’s appreciated, Chief,” Brad told him. “Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?”
“Attention!”
The single word barked by the Marine standing by the entrance to the briefing room brought the officers to their feet.
Brad was half a second or so behind the rest. He hadn’t expected quite so much formality out of a briefing where he was, so far as he could tell, the most junior officer present.
There were three full Admirals, six Vice Admirals and five Rear Admirals in the room, representing at least two-thirds of the Admirals the Commonwealth had.
Possibly more. Brad was only aware of three Admirals of any rank positioned away from Earth.
The other missing Admiral was Violet Orcho, and she entered through the door to face the standing crowd.
“Cut the mickey mouse,” she snapped. “You should know better.”
Several people chuckled and Brad realized that the level of formality wasn’t required. It was more on the order of a running joke between Admiral Orcho, the current Chief of Space Operations, and her senior subordinates.
“If any of you didn’t know who Brad Madrid was before the last two months, you were falling short on your job,” Orcho told them all, gesturing at Brad. “If any of you don’t know who he is now, you’re damned incompetent and can turn your stars in right now. Anyone?”
There were no chuckles this time, but no one took Orcho up on her statement, either. It sent a chill down Brad’s spine to realize that even before he’d walked into the Senate and helped accuse President Mills of treason, his Vikings had been a big-enough deal that the Admirals should know who he was.
“The reason I called this meeting on this short notice is because we got final confirmation seventy minutes ago of our worst-case scenario,” the Admiral continued after a moment. “Task Group Immortal left Ceres on schedule, headed to Earth; however, they detoured approximately thirty-four hours later.”
Brad swallowed. He’d seen Task Group Immortal heading to Ceres after his own engagement there. It had been an impressive force. Three cruisers, twelve destroyers, thirty frigates…and Immortal herself, one of only three battleships ever built by the Commonwealth Fleet.
The battleships were far larger and more powerful than required by any task the Fleet had expected to take on. All three were almost fifty years old, though his understanding was that they’d been kept well upgraded over those years.
The fact that the Fleet had three battleships and no potential enemy had any was one of the things underlying the assumption that the Commonwealth’s core worlds were secure.
But if Immortal had detoured…
“We have no confirmation of just what happened,” Orcho noted. “I’d like to think that Vice Admiral Wu remained loyal, but that would mean he is now dead.
“Task Group Immortal has defected to the Outer Worlds.”
The room was silent.
“That…quadruples their cruiser strength?” someone asked quietly.
“We know that three cruisers would have ended up in Independence Militia hands without Commodore Madrid’s intervention,” Orcho pointed out. “We have no data to suggest that any others did end up in those hands, but I was uninclined to assume that we had a monopoly on heavy warships.
“Nonetheless, I would guess that Task Group Immortal doubles their cruiser strength. A much-lower impact on their destroyer and frigate strength, simply because they had more of them to begin with.
“The key, however, is Immortal herself. While we continue to outnumber the OWN in every class of heavy warship, they now possess a battleship—a class of ships we assumed to be our monopoly.”
“Wait,” Brad interrupted. “You mean the OWN actually outnumbers the Fleet in some types of warship?”
Orcho sighed and tapped a command. A display of icons appeared on the wall, laying out the estimates of the OWN’s fleet strength.
“We still have two battleships to their one and thirty-plus cruisers to their four-to-six,” she explained. “We have eight carriers, but we have no idea how many the Alliance has. At least one, probably more. Both we and the OWN field around a hundred destroyers; but the OWN is believed to field over three hundred corvettes and frigates. To our two hundred and ten.”
And since most of the OWN’s destroyers and lighter warships had been built by the Fleet’s own suppliers, their ships were newer and more advanced on average.
“We have the advantage of superior fixed defenses in most locations and the fact that we can be relatively sure that both the Mercenary Guild and the Jovian Militias will eventually come in on our side,” Orcho noted. “That will even the odds, but until the OWN makes their move, we are at a disadvantage.”
“I can’t believe Jupiter betrayed us like this,” one of the Vice Admirals groused.
“Why not?” Brad asked. “What has the Commonwealth done recently to suggest that Jupiter gains from backing us?”
“Are you serious?” the woman demanded.
“Deathly,” he told her. “Over the last few years, the Commonwealth has pulled back fleets and resources, leaving the Jovian planets to their own devices. They’ve only ever been given one Senator on Earth and have generally felt forced to go their own way.
“They don’t think of themselves as part of the Commonwealth, not truly,” Brad explained. “So, they see the OWA as a threat to the Commonwealth, not to themselves.”
He held up a hand before anyone started shouting.
“They’re wrong,” he said calmly. “The OWA is simply the final form of the threat we’ve faced all along. The Phoenix—this Lord Protector—has been leading the Cadre for years now. The Cadre, the Independence Militia, the Outer Worlds Alliance…it’s all one thing. Funded by President Mills, organized by the Phoenix, supported by piracy and slavery.
“They’re going to come for Jupiter. They’re not going to just settle in the outer system and live their quiet lives. The Lord Protector wants to be emperor of all mankind.”
“I should note, if anyone is feeling questionable, that no one, in this entire Solar System, has spent as much time fighting the Cadre as Brad Madrid and his people,” Orcho reminded the other admirals. “There’s a reason we activated his reserve commission. He knows this enemy.”
“So, what would you suggest, then?” the same Admiral demanded.
“Saturn is the key,” Brad said quietly. “The Cadre developed methods of small-scale fuel refining, but those won’t suffice for fleet movements. Raids, even with carriers or cruisers? Yeah.
“Not fleets. Not assault operations. Not a battleship. They need fuel and they need vast amounts of it—which means either massive distributed operations…or Saturn or Jupiter.
“Jupiter is badly positioned for them to hit without holding Saturn; plus, Jupiter is far better defended. Saturn,
on the other hand, is probably the most lightly populated place in the Solar System.
“We need to reinforce Saturn’s defenses as soon as possible.”
One of the full Admirals chuckled.
“You were right, Orcho,” he noted. “All right, Madrid. If we send that kind of force, will you command it?”
“Yes,” Brad confirmed without hesitation. “I have friends out there. I owe them.”
Chapter Six
From the speed of events, Admiral Orcho had figured she wasn’t keeping Brad as a Commodore for long. She’d given him the insignia, but he was barely out of the flag officers’ briefing before she handed him new insignia.
“Here, you’re a Rear Admiral,” she told him. “With me, Madrid.”
“You had these on you already?” he asked.
“Tradition says I can’t bring you in at higher than your Guild rank, and Guild regs only make you a Commodore,” she said crisply as she led the way into the labyrinthine administrative sections of Orbital Command. “But I need you as a task force commander, not a squadron leader.”
“I see.” Brad was feeling more than a bit lost in the rush, but he was willing to see how things shook out.
Orcho led him through a door marked with her name into an office that was doing its best to pretend it was floating on an ocean on Earth. All four walls and the ceiling had been configured to show what looked like a live feed from a sunny day on the surface.
The Admiral’s desk and other office paraphernalia were in the middle of that illusory ocean. She took a seat and gestured him to an available chair.
The apparent open space was enough to make Brad’s hindbrain shiver. Stepping from the corridors of a space station into an open area of this size usually meant you’d done something very wrong.
“We’ve been assembling a task force to send out as a show of strength,” she told him as he carefully sat down. “It wasn’t expected to fight Immortal, but nothing in space was. I was leaning towards Saturn as the destination, but there were other options in play. Both of the main Trojan clusters of Jupiter, for example.”
