“Understood.” For the first time since entering his cabin, Delphyne seemed confident.
Mao stood and extended his hand. “Lieutenant, it has been my absolute pleasure to act as your captain.”
Delphyne rose and took his hand. She fumbled with her words. “Captain, this isn’t a reflection on you. I just want you to know that.”
Mao nodded. “Understood.”
Delphyne left before the tears welling in her eyes could spill over.
Mao put the transfer request through before he lost his nerve. First Sigurd. Now Delphyne. The core crew upon whom he relied as XO of the Royal Blue was gone. A looming loneliness hung over him.
He would need to appoint a new XO. He scrolled through the personnel files. No one jumped out at him. No name cropped up immediately. The decision felt like a burden.
“Sir?” Officer Graeme’s voice sounded over his comm. “The conference room is set up.”
“Thank you.” This burden would have to wait. There was another burden that presently needed tending.
The conference room was empty, as Mao had requested. Graeme and Delphyne would normally be there, Graeme to ensure the integrity of the call and Delphyne to officially act as his second and unofficially read the subtext of the conversation. She could glean things that Mao could not. Another reason his command would suffer without her.
He focused on the moment.
Mao stood at the head of the conference table, facing the large monitor at the opposite end. He waited. He was early, he knew, but still nervous that he’d missed something. He checked the clock several times in the seconds that passed, until the monitor lit up.
Admiral Mara Jeska appeared on screen. She carried herself with a regality that seemed less forced each time he saw her. She was a longtime veteran of the Navy and had seen enough combat to sharpen anyone’s edges. She was hesitant about her promotion to admiral, to fill the position vacated by Shay Ayala, but had since embraced it.
“This is ridiculous.”
Though it seemed not all of her edges had been smoothed out by her new position.
“Yes, sir,” Mao answered.
“It’s just us on the line for another minute, Captain. Anything you need to say to me before the others join?”
Mao was at a loss. There were many things he wanted to say but did not know to whom he could say them. He trusted Admiral Jeska but didn’t know whether that trust was warranted or just sentiment. They’d served together. She was one of the few captains who flew wing to wing with Bayne. Mao respected her more than any other, but she had been years in Central now, put there by Colonel Tirseer. “No, sir.”
She seemed disappointed, but only answered with a nod.
The screen fragmented into several smaller squares as others joined the call. First came Force Commander Calibor, who met Mao with a cold sneer. Then Selvin Bigby, Captain of the Glinthawk. He seemed older than when Mao had seen him last, just a few months ago. The hair at his temples had grayed significantly and the skin under his eyes was purple and sagging. He sailed the frontlines of the war, making swift attack runs into Byers held territory, leading a guerrilla campaign that wore on his crew and ship. And him, too, apparently.
Three other captains joined the call within a minute, and finally Rear Admiral Milton Klepper. A relic of the pre-United Systems era, Klepper was perhaps the most experienced sailor in all the Navy. He’d sailed under several flags before the UNS was formed, and he was a hero of the war that ended the time of the warlords and brought about unification. He commanded the Mjolnir, a Behemoth-class carrier ship, the strongest in the entirety of the Navy. The Mjolnir housed a fleet of single-pilot fighters, two dozen destroyers, and a dozen frigates. It was a mobile command station that could operate in Central’s stead should it ever become compromised. It was a fortress, the Navy’s most powerful weapon. Currently, it was stationed in the Torres Sector, about a klick from the informal border between Navy-controlled and Byers-controlled space. It was the wall holding Byers back.
However, there were many reasons why Klepper had never, and likely would never, rise to the rank of admiral. “Glad we could all make it. I’m sure Byers is sitting on his hands as we take the time to chitchat.” He was a gruff and unpleasant man, for one.
“Mind yourself, Rear Admiral,” Jeska said. He grunted in reply. “This meeting couldn’t wait. I’m sure by now you’ve all had ample time to study the debriefs Force Commander Calibor sent last week.”
“Lot of good it did,” Klepper said. “Was I supposed to understand any of it?”
“That’s why we’re here,” Jeska said. “And why Captain Mao has joined us.”
“Instead of being locked up in Central awaiting court martial,” Calibor said under his breath.
Jeska opened her mouth, anger flashing across her face, but closed her eyes and took a deep breath before speaking. She forced herself to speak in a steady voice. “If we are going to get through this meeting and back to the war, then I’ll ask all attendees to hold their questions and comments until I ask for them. Captain Mao, if you would.”
Mao mimicked Jeska. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then he told his story. He filled in the gathered captains and admirals on the incident at the Inferni Cluster, about Sig and Hep and the clash with the Byers Clan, and about the devastation that followed. He paused before finishing. Even from lightyears away, he felt Calibor’s burning glare. He finished his report and waited for the fallout. It was nothing, he assumed, they had not read in the debrief, but hearing it firsthand had a different impact.
The captains and admirals were silent. Finally, Klepper spoke. “Well, that’s a hell of a thing. And I still don’t understand any of it. What happened to this Sigurd exactly?”
“We don’t know,” Mao said.
“And how do you plan on finding out now that he’s gone?” Klepper asked.
Mao swallowed hard. “I don’t know, sir.”
“Tell me, Captain,” Klepper said. “What you were thinking when you let that salvager Hepzah Montaine abscond with the most dangerous weapon we know nothing about?”
Mao’s face burned. “I was thinking only of my crew and fellow sailors, sir. I assumed an altercation with Montaine would set off Sigurd, possibly triggering another event and killing whoever survived the first wave.”
Klepper grunted but didn’t press any further. Calibor stepped in to do that. “And what were you thinking when you defied my direct orders to enter the Inferni Cluster, Captain Mao? What excuse have you concocted to cover your ass on that?”
“Commander Calibor,” Jeska scolded. “Please maintain some sense of decorum.” Mao didn’t take the comment as a defense of him. In fact, Jeska folded her arms across her chest and looked down, seeming to consider the merit of Calibor’s outburst. “I, like most of you, have known Captain Taliesin Mao for a long time. Served alongside him. I am not ready to drag him through the mud on the way to gallows quite yet.” Mao swallowed hard. He was not aware that was an option. “Though I wouldn’t mind some answers.”
Mao suddenly wished he’d taken the time to speak with Jeska alone when he’d had the chance. “I will give as many as I can.”
Jeska shook her head. “And that’s what concerns me. When you say that, I hear I’ll give whatever answers I want. I think you can tell me more than you are, but you’re holding back for some reason. I want to know what you’re not saying, and I want to know why you’re not saying it.”
Mao looked at each of the faces on the screen. They ranged from apparent indifference to seething anger. He believed he could trust some of them, but he knew he could not trust all of them. He pressed a button on his tablet, which sat on the table out of sight of the cameras.
“Nothing?” Calibor said. “He now defies your orders, Admiral. I will never understand why this man is still commanding a ship and not locked up waiting to be—” Calibor’s voice cut off.
A few of the captains looked confused. They tried to speak with Calibor and
seemed overly anxious to get his disrupted communication back online. A younger captain, Zaya Medviev of the Brightstar, seemed amused and somewhat relieved to no longer hear Calibor. Bigby’s distraught face seemed to lighten. Rear Admiral Klepper’s expression did not change at all.
It was hardly an indicator of anyone’s trustworthiness, let alone of confirmation of loyalty, but it was all Mao could think of on short notice. He pressed the button on his tablet again and said, “Captains Salizar, Sullivan, Carter, and Peppin, Rear Admiral Klepper, is something the matter?” As they all attempted to respond, their microphones went dead. They, along with Calibor, gesticulated in silence.
Jeska’s confusion quickly turned to suspicion. “What are you playing at, Captain Mao?”
“Apologies for the subterfuge, Admiral. I was not and still am not sure who I should trust.”
“Should I take the fact we are still speaking to mean that you trust us?” Captain Medviev said.
“I’ve served alongside Admiral Jeska and Captain Bigby a long time,” Mao answered. “If my intuition is at all reliable, I feel I know them enough to make a judgement. I employed this very basic rubric to determine with whom else to share this information.”
“The fact that I think Calibor is an ass is your rubric?” Medviev said, her face lighting up with a huge smile. “Basic indeed.”
“What information?” Bigby said. The tired captain leaned forward, his face growing larger and more youthful on screen.
“I have reason to believe there are persons inside the United Systems Government who are acting against the interests of its people. I believe they have, and currently are, committing treason. I believe that if these persons acquire former Chief of Security Sigurd, then it will present a clear and present danger to the safety of the United Systems.”
Jeska inhaled deeply. She breathed out with a long, measured breath. “Are any of these people high-ranking officials?” Mao nodded. “Are any of these people of a higher rank than me?” Mao nodded, effectively implicating only a handful of people, as she was the highest-ranking officer in the Navy, and only a few individuals in the systems issued her orders. “Proof and details.”
“I’m afraid this is not the appropriate venue, Admiral,” Mao said. “The other captains will already be suspicious. Such a disclosure would take longer than this ruse allows.”
“Understood,” Jeska said, opting not to push. “I will contact you via black channel. You will share what you know, Captain Mao. Don’t mistake my intrigue for a dismissal of the irregularity of the situation or your apparent disregard for regulation. I haven’t ruled out court martial yet. Bring everyone back online.”
Mao pressed the button on his tablet, and the other captains roared back into the conversation.
“Settle, please,” Jeska yelled, calming them all. “We are scattered across the systems, some of us rather deep in the Black. Don’t take it as a personal insult that we would have communication issues. The matter has been settled, and now we can move on.”
“Looked like you were moving on without us,” Calibor said. “Or was I imagining that you were having a conversation while the rest of us were floundering in silence?”
A quick flash of anger showed on Jeska’s face before melting away. “You weren’t. Again, don’t take it as an insult, Commander Calibor, but I don’t have time to waste waiting for comms to come back online. Captain Mao briefed me on some of the specifics, and I’ve come to a conclusion.” The other captains leaned forward expectantly. Mao found himself doing the same. “The Fair Wind is to be considered a rogue ship now wanted by the United Navy. Its captain, Hepzah Montaine, is wanted for questioning in connection with the massacre at Inferni and is to be considered extremely dangerous. He must be taken alive, and the Fair Wind in one piece. That is mission critical. It is assumed that Sigurd is on that ship. The intel on board is of the utmost importance.” An unspoken question hung in the air. Jeska didn’t let it hang long. “As he has the most experienced in dealing with all the parties, Captain Mao and the Royal Blue will pursue.” Jeska raised a hand to silence Calibor before he could speak. “As will you, Commander Calibor. The Illuminate and the Royal Blue will sail immediately.”
Mao locked eyes with Admiral Jeska and suddenly questioned whether his trust was misplaced.
4
The fumes of the engine burned Hep’s nose almost as much as Horus’s personal stink. They’d been crammed together for nearly two hours now, pressed like fish in a can. Hep’s legs had begun cramping twenty minutes ago. He couldn’t stretch or move them, only suffer in silence as the muscles twisted in knots. He didn’t dare move with what little space they had for fear of making noise and getting discovered, but he also didn’t want to move his face any closer to Horus’s body than needed.
Horus’s body rumbled as he groaned, and Hep swallowed the bile rising in his throat as he felt Horus’s belly shift. “The little bugger left us in here to die.”
“He didn’t.”
“The hell would you know? I’m telling you, we’re going to die in here. You first probably, because you’re small and frail and weak. You better hope, anyway. If I die first, then I’m coming down on top of you and will crush your pathetic little body under me.”
Hep swallowed again. Horus was a massive man of New Viking blood. He was gruff and disgusting and had little reverence for anything beyond self-preservation. “He’ll be back. Now shut up before you get us caught.”
Horus grumbled, and his body shook some more.
Hep assured himself that Horus was just being a baby and that his worries weren’t founded, but the doubt seeded in his mind. He pressed his ear to the wall panel, foregoing his fear of the counterforce pushing him further into Horus’s gut. He heard nothing but the rumble of the engine. Things were taking too long, and they were taking him too far down a road he did not want to travel. “You hear anything from Byrne?”
Horus grunted as he struggled against the space to raise his wrist. He wore a first-gen comm watch, half of a set that he salvaged from a wreck in the Wastes, a relic of a time when warring factions were confined to a single planet. Alenna Byrne, Chief Engineer of the Fair Wind, wore the other. They transmitted simple text messages only from one to the other, a closed loop that could not be monitored by modern comm systems. “Nothing.”
Hep resented that Horus might be right, that he might have been right from the beginning in his opposition to this plan. “I’m going out.” Hep removed the wall panel as quietly as he could.
“Finally,” Horus grunted. “I didn’t want to be rude, but you’ve got yourself a body odor problem.”
Stepping through the opening, Hep emerged in the engine room. The charged air tickled the tips of his ears and tasted like metal on his tongue. He scanned the room, hand on his sidearm. They were alone. Horus seemed disappointed by that fact. “Ship isn’t overrun. Maybe they just abandoned us.”
Hep shook his head. “Maybe some of them, but not my crew.”
Horus huffed. “Keep telling yourself that.”
The bitterness in Horus’s voice was sharp. Hep understood it and felt a twang of sympathy for the big man, even though he would never wish it on anyone to serve under Elvin Horus. “Spetzna stuck around.” Hep hoped to alleviate Horus’s self-pity so they could focus.
“Yup,” Horus said. “Between you and me, he creeps me out.”
The pair slunk through the engine room, wary of every noise for fear of running across a hostile. They were soon content that they were alone. Hep logged in to the engineering terminal, keenly aware that should Byrne ever find out, assuming she was alive and hadn’t abandoned ship, she would kill him. He ran diagnostics on the ship. The engines were idling, still spun up and ready to fire should they need to take off, but he couldn’t sail it on his own. He scolded himself for jumping to the conclusion that his crew had abandoned him. He cursed himself for being stupid and weak-willed, for letting Horus get in his head so easily.
As he scanned through
the readings, he cursed again, this time audibly. “Shit. The drive locks are on.” The engines were running, but the drive locks prevented them from firing.
“That wasn’t part of the plan,” Horus said.
“I know that,” Hep snapped. So why were they activated? And who activated them?
“They sold us out. They locked down the ship, tricked us into hiding in the wall panel, and skipped off, serving us up to the highest bidder.”
The thought danced through Hep’s mind, lingering perhaps a bit too long, before he dismissed it. “No, look.” He pointed at the terminal monitor. “The drive locks were engaged remotely, by an outside system. We were hacked.” Hep smiled, taking an odd relief in the notion that he was just attacked and not betrayed. He scanned the diagnostics again, hoping to find an answer to all of his questions. “There.”
Horus pushed him aside. “Where?”
“The oxygen sensors are offline in the galley.”
“Meaning?”
“According to this, there is no oxygen in there.”
Horus rubbed his chin. “Meaning?”
“Meaning we’re going to the galley.”
“Where there’s no oxygen? Will there be sandwiches?”
They moved quickly through the ship, the corridors silent and empty. There appeared to be no one on board, friendly or hostile. Hep slid open the door to the galley with ease, confirming his suspicions. If there really was an oxygen leak in this section, then the automated protocols would have locked it down. The door would have been sealed. There was oxygen in the room. The sensors were just malfunctioning, sending up a flare.
He entered with caution, body tense and ready to react. Though not ready enough. A pole came down in a deadly arc. Horus shoved Hep out of the pole’s path just in time to avoid getting brained. The pole slammed into the floor and vibrated so fiercely that it shook out of Byrne’s hands.
“What the hell, Alenna?” Hep climbed off his knees. “You almost took my head off!”
The Deep Black Space Opera Boxed Set Page 50