by Terry Mixon
“I’m explicitly authorized to recruit the Vikings, so I plan on bringing Oath with us,” Brad replied. “I figure we can sort out some time together along the way.”
Michelle laughed.
“We’re probably smart enough for that. Go rest, my love. We’ll talk once you’ve slept.”
“All right,” Brad conceded. “Take care of my people, hey? I trust you—that’s why you’re Commodore—but you’ll allow me some worrying, right?”
“Go sleep,” she repeated with another laugh. “I’ve got the Vikings in hand. You worry about Fleet.”
Chapter Eight
Incredible’s flag deck was unlike anything Brad had ever seen. He’d been aboard Fleet cruisers before. He’d even been on their regular bridges, but he’d never set foot on the flag deck of a Fleet warship.
He commanded the Vikings from a glorified observer seat on Oath of Vengeance’s bridge, using the destroyer’s regular command systems to control the small squadron.
That wouldn’t work for Task Force Seventeen, and he now sat in the midst of the most advanced command-and-control systems ever devised by human minds. His chair was surrounded by screens, allowing him to check in on any ship of his command or any function he wanted at any point.
A dozen technicians and analysts worked at consoles around him. He had the access and the power to check every detail of every ship of his command, and he could already see how that could get tempting.
It was awe-inspiring enough just to look at the status reports.
Three cruisers. Twelve destroyers—four each of the Bound and Warrior classes he’d hoped for, plus four older ships. Twenty corvettes and frigates.
None of the corvettes or frigates were new ships, but he had six of the most modern warships the Commonwealth Fleet possessed. They’d done fairly by him and his mission.
And as for adding to those forces, that was what the old man on his communications screen was about.
“We both know you’re playing games with the Guild’s restriction,” Factor Davis Anderson said bluntly. “We are not allowed to get involved between the Commonwealth and the Outer Worlds.”
“I’m not asking you to,” Brad said patiently. “I’m trying to hire several companies, including one I own, to assist in providing security for the Saturnian extraction operations. My own mission is the security of the Saturn System, nothing more.
“I have no authorization or intention of waging offensive operations.” He shook his head. “I’m not going to pretend the Commonwealth doesn’t regard itself as being at war, but we have recognized the Guild’s decision to remain neutral.”
“And if the Outer Worlds were to attack, would you expect your mercenaries to stand aside?” Anderson asked.
“Would the Guild truly want that of its people?” Brad asked gently. “I’m not asking anyone to fight a war for the Commonwealth, Factor. I’m just trying to contract additional security for Saturn.
“If the OWN attacks Saturn…do you really think the Guild is going to stay neutral?”
The Factor chuckled bitterly.
“You’re not wrong and your contract is not in violation of the new restrictions,” he admitted. “My records say that Commodore Michelle Hunt now commands the Vikings? I presume you’ve spoken to her already?”
“I have,” Brad confirmed.
“I’ll forward contract details to her. I’ll touch base with home office to see what else I can find you. I’m assuming you want primarily spaceborne units, destroyers and the like?”
“If I thought there was a mercenary company out there with a cruiser, I’d offer them more money than I think exists,” the newly fledged Admiral said with a grin. “I’ll take anyone you can get with destroyers. If the Guild can pull together a dozen destroyers and some lighter ships, we’ll pay Platinum rates for all of them.”
“I understand that Oath of Protection and Oath of Vigilance should be online by the time you reach Saturn,” Anderson noted. “The Vikings alone make up half that number.”
“And are a Platinum company,” Brad agreed. “The other restriction is that they need to be able to meet me at Mars in twelve days.”
“Mars, Admiral?”
“It’s closer to on the way than Jupiter is,” Brad pointed out. The “geography” of the star system was predictable, at least, if not consistent. “I know the Vikings can make it. I’ll take whatever the Guild can get there by that timeline.”
“They won’t be able to engage the OWN, Admiral,” Anderson reminded him.
“If the OWN doesn’t attack Saturn, I won’t even want them to,” Brad replied. “If the OWN actually decides to open this war, well, then a lot of things change.”
“The Guild officially has no position on the conflict between the Outer Worlds Alliance and the Commonwealth,” the Factor said formally. “For myself, however…good luck, Admiral. May the Everlit guide your way.”
“Commodore Nuremberg,” Brad greeted his cruiser commander. “It’s a pleasure to meet you again.”
Tremendous had shown up to perform “cleanup” after one of the more noticeable clashes between Brad and the Independence Militia. He’d destroyed three cruisers with a handful of destroyers and a stolen drone carrier, and Commodore Iris Nuremberg had come in with fire in her eyes.
He’d talked her down then, and now the heavyset older woman reported to him. The world moved in mysterious ways.
“Likewise, Admiral Madrid,” she told him. “It’s a small Solar System, isn’t it?”
Brad nodded and gestured to the other two women on the videoconference.
“I believe you know Commodore Bailey and Commodore Hunt?” he asked Nuremberg.
“I met Commodore Hunt when I met you,” she confirmed. “Bailey and I know each other.”
From the way the two women regarded each other, she was as fond of Angel Bailey as anyone was. No one would begrudge Bailey’s competence, but she didn’t seem to make very many friends.
“Currently, Commodore Hunt is only directly commanding one ship,” Brad noted. “We will be rendezvousing with the rest of the Vikings at Mars and hopefully several more mercenary companies’ worth of ships.
“Given the Guild’s position on the current situation, Commodore Hunt’s command will be entirely defensive. The mercenaries’ role will be to provide security for the Saturnian stations while we scout the area and watch for OWN incursions.
“If the Outer Worlds is as peaceful as they have promised, then we’re going to be very bored and the mercenaries are going to make a great deal of money for nothing,” he concluded. “If anyone on this call thinks that’s actually going to happen, let me shatter your illusions.”
He tapped a command, bringing up the image of Jack Mantruso.
“This is Lord Protector Jack Mantruso,” he said, unnecessarily. “Today, at least. In the past, he went by the name Jack Mader as he worked as a Cadre deep-cover operative on Jupiter. After that, he was better known to most as the Phoenix.
“While the Outer Worlds Alliance talks a good game, they are simply the latest iteration of the Cadre,” Brad concluded. “Mantruso told me himself that his goal was to conquer the Solar System, to make himself emperor of mankind.
“We won’t let that happen.”
“Why in Everdark was Mantruso telling you that?” Bailey asked.
“He wanted me to join him,” Brad said quietly. “Despite everything, I think he wanted to avoid having to kill his brother.”
The call was silent.
“What. The. Fuck.”
Bailey’s words were harsh, but they summed up Brad’s own opinion of the situation.
“He worked it out about the same time as the Agency did,” Brad told the Commodores. Michelle already knew. The others, it seemed, hadn’t been briefed. “Jack Mantruso was born to seal an underworld alliance.
“My birth name was Brad Mantruso. I was apparently born after our parents actually fell in love. When my parents died aboard Black Skull, my father’s brother apparently kidn
apped me to get me out of the Cadre’s clutches.”
Brad shook his head.
“Believe me, it’s quite a shock to find out that the criminal and terrorist organization you’ve spent your adult life fighting is the Everdarkened family business. It doesn’t change anything in the end, though. Mantruso won’t stop until he’s emperor or he’s dead.”
“Our job is to make sure it’s the latter.”
Chapter Nine
Twelve days in space was normally a chance to relax, to catch up on paperwork while keeping an eye on what was going on in the Solar System.
This time, however, Brad’s every waking hour had been consumed by everything from learning just what Fleet paperwork even looked like to negotiating with the Mercenary Guild by recorded messages to, thank the Everlit, spending time with Michelle when he’d managed to bring her aboard the flagship.
“It’s mostly the lack of Platinum ratings that’s bothering me,” she admitted to him as she went over the latest transmission from the Guild. If the mercenary Commodore was looking at that transmission naked in the Admiral’s bed, well, no one had any illusions about Brad’s relationship with the Vikings in general and Michelle in particular.
“Getting a Platinum rating is hard,” he pointed out. “A minimum of fifteen contracts in a row with no complaints, plus at least forty contracts with no more than two complaints overall. Plus, you have to demonstrate a level of professionalism the Guild is willing to declare top-tier. Plus, all of your officers have to pass exams, plus you have to pay more money.”
“You got a Platinum rating while flying a single corvette,” she replied. “These guys have destroyers.”
“And aren’t willing to hand over an additional four percent of their contract revenue to the Guild,” Brad countered. “I needed that stamp of approval. The Goldmisers and Harding’s Guardians? They don’t.”
The Goldmiser mercenary fleet had actually been in Mars orbit, which made Brad’s life much easier. The Gold-rated mercenary corporation was one of the few that actually mustered a heavier space fleet than his own Vikings at this point.
Six destroyers, older ships but still potent, plus four brand-spanking-new corvettes. Brad had never met the Commodore commanding that fleet, but he knew the woman’s reputation as a problem child. Competent as all Everlit but hard to deal with.
There were more reasons than one that the Goldmisers weren’t rated Platinum.
Harding’s Guardians, on the other hand, only had two destroyers. They fielded six heavy corvettes, though, the biggest that Fleet had ever built of that class.
Harding was a giant question mark. The Guardians weren’t Platinum because they hadn’t completed forty contracts at all, let alone without complaint. They’d come into existence during the fleet downsizing a couple of years before when a slew of ex-Fleet officers had been looking for work.
They’d found a backer in the reprobate son of a Martian merchant dynasty. The Harding family had underwritten James Harding’s mercenary company to be rid of the man, so far as Brad could tell. His kin had probably been pleasantly surprised by their return on that investment.
“Both the Goldmisers and the Guardians are Gold-rated, field destroyers and are reputed to be competent and capable,” Brad continued. “If Sonja Gold is an abrasive bitch and James Harding is a remittance man who got lucky, well…my brother is the Lord Protector of the OWA.
“I can’t throw too many stones from my glass spaceship.”
Michelle snorted at him.
“They also are either at Mars or will be there within twenty-four hours of our arrival,” she agreed. “That’s worth a lot on its own. The Vikings will be there almost the same time as us. That’s six more destroyers, and I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of the two new Oaths.”
Brad shook his head.
“I hate standing back and letting others run the company,” he admitted. “I trust you—and Saburo and Brenda and the others—but damned if it still isn’t hard.”
“Shelly’s in command of the deployment,” Michelle told him. “Finally got her out of the office and onto a command deck. Gave her Oath of Vigilance.”
Shelly Weldon had been Brad’s navigator when the company had started. Her husband had been his original tactical officer, but he’d died when the ship Brad had given them command of had been destroyed.
Shelly had spent the time since running the Vikings’ administration on Io. Brad had promised her one of the Oaths if she wanted it, but she’d been unsure for a long time. He was glad to hear she’d taken the ship.
“That’ll give us an extra fourteen destroyers and ten corvettes,” he concluded. “Thirteen destroyers, I guess, since Oath of Vengeance is already here.”
That would double his destroyers to twenty-six and bring his corvettes and frigates to thirty ships. It would be quite a fleet he’d be taking to Saturn, even if half of it was technically forbidden from engaging the OWA.
The Guild had proven surprisingly willing to codify the loophole he’d chased, though. The companies he’d contracted were not permitted to be deployed against the Outer Worlds Navy…but they were explicitly contracted to defend the space stations at Saturn against any enemy.
“We’re close enough to Mars I should probably get back to Oath of Vengeance,” Michelle said regretfully. “Let you focus on your job and me focus on mine.”
“I know,” he told her. “I’ve already traded some messages with Admiral Weber. We haven’t solidified numbers yet, but it’s not just mercenaries we’ll be picking up at Mars.”
“Good. I’m having nightmares about trying to take down a battleship with this fleet,” she admitted. “Immortal’s defection really messed everything up.
“I know,” he told her. “I’d poach Eternal if I thought that was remotely possible, but there’s no way the Fleet will uncover Earth or Mars now.”
“Everyone’s afraid.” Michelle shook her head and kissed him fiercely. “It’s your job to make them feel safe again, right, Admiral?”
Brad returned the kiss but sighed.
“Somehow,” he agreed. “I still can’t believe where I am or what I’m doing, but…we’ll make it work.”
“You’ll make it work,” she told him. “I know you will. And the Vikings will be with you the whole way, regardless of whose uniform you’re wearing.”
“Speaking of which, you should probably put on a uniform if you’re planning on making it out of here,” Brad pointed out as he gently embraced her.
“Oh, I was thinking I could take a bit longer,” she said with a teasing grin.
As the distance to Mars continued to shrink, Brad returned to Incredible’s flag deck to study the information available to him. His fleet was currently decelerating, fusion thrusters flaring brightly as they followed a course that would slot them neatly into high orbit.
They’d be under the guns of Deimos, the outermost moon having long since been repurposed as the linchpin of the Martian defenses. There were no civilians on the tiny moon, only a small army of Fleet personnel who manned the big mass drivers that stood guard over the still-terraforming world below.
Deimos was the centerpoint, the only place in the planetary system with fixed fifty-centimeter mass drivers, but it was far from the only defenses Mars commanded. They were intermingled with the civilian platforms, almost hidden to the casual observer.
In fact, as Brad reviewed the Fleet files, he realized that many were hidden to the professional observer. He’d recognized many of the forts and weapons platforms when he’d visited Mars before, but the Fleet files told him he’d missed at least a third of them.
Mars was, in many ways, more heavily defended than Earth itself. It was certainly more vulnerable and there was less question of the Commonwealth’s authority there. Earth’s defenses were more patchwork, many still operating under the authority of the homeworld’s nations.
The Martian defenses were a unified command with the defending squadron under Admiral Weber, led by Eter
nal herself. Brad’s own fleet would melt like a snowball in a blast furnace if he were to challenge Mars’s defenses.
It was reassuring to know that the core of the Commonwealth was secure, for now at least. He had no illusions about what would happen if Jupiter and Saturn fell, however.
The effective range of a mass driver was a few tens of thousands of kilometers at best, but that was based on active radar and ships’ ability to dodge. Stations and moons didn’t dodge.
Long-range mass-driver fire could gut the defenses of Mars. The collateral damage would be unimaginable, but Brad was grimly certain that Jack Mantruso would gleefully accept it.
If the OWN acquired the fueling infrastructure to deploy its full fleet against Mars, Mars would fall. Until then, however, the planet was as secure as anywhere in the star system. That was part of the argument that Brad had used to convince Admiral Weber to hand over ships to him.
The Martian Squadron was secure and supported. Task Force Seventeen was heading right to what was about to become the front lines.
“Sir.” The channel to the bridge drew Brad’s attention as Captain Jahoda opened a video link.
“Captain.”
“Our ETA is just over twenty-four hours,” the cruiser’s captain told him. “We’re close enough for functionally real-time communication if you need to talk to anyone.”
Brad chuckled.
“I can do that math on my own, Captain,” he pointed out. “I did live out here.”
Jahoda winced.
“Apologies, sir. I’m used to Admirals who haven’t left Earth orbit. Ever.”
“That’s not the best structure, I have to admit,” Brad murmured.
“We’ve got a few space-born Commodores, but everyone higher…they’re from Earth, sir. We are Earth’s Commonwealth, after all.”
Brad shook his head as he eyed the screens.
“I’d say that would come back to bite us, but I think it already has,” he said. “No one past the Belt wants to trust the Commonwealth. It’s why Mantruso succeeded in putting together his empire and why Jupiter and the Guild are trying to be neutral.”
