by T J Mott
“Thanks, Chief. By the way, what’s the temp over here? Feels good. I wanna go make snow angels, right there in front of that Marine transport.”
“About forty-five,” Allen answered. “That’s been about our normal post-jump temp until the cooling systems recover.”
“Damn nice. Next time I go to the head I’m gonna stop and make snow angels. Anyway, who the hell are we rescuing? Cap hasn’t told me nothing.”
“Really? Hmm. Admiral Marcell thinks he found a woman he knew from Earth and wants to free her from a slave ship. And we have to catch that ship at its next refueling stop because we don’t know where it’s going afterwards.”
Boegrin let off another string of loud curses. “Really? Now I wish you hadn’t told me. I’ve got waterfalls of sweat gushing out my ass over some Earth lady? No wonder nobody told me about it! I’d have told them to stuff it and walked right off the ship.”
Allen held up a hand in frustration. “Please. I know you’re frustrated, but you’re being disorderly, in front of other crew.”
“Aw, hell, Allen. It ain’t nothin’ they haven’t heard before. None of my men think much for Marcell.” He gestured nonchalantly towards his technicians as they worked on disassembling the damaged motor. “Just his triple pay grades,” he added with a toothy grin.
Allen shook his head in disappointment. He didn’t care that much for Marcell, either, at least not on a personal level, but he never let his own feelings about Marcell’s beliefs interfere with his work, and he certainly didn’t share his reservations with subordinate non-officers lest it compromise their work, too. “Watch your mouth, and that’s an order,” he said sternly. He paused for effect. When he spoke again, he softened his tone a bit. “Listen, I’m more worried about my men, Boegrin. We have to work alongside the Admiral. You don’t. I don’t want my guys thinking they can act up, especially when he’s aboard.”
Boegrin laughed boldly, apparently not concerned about it at all and continuing to border on insubordination. “He got to you, didn’t he!” he chided. “Don’t tell me you believe in Earth now!”
Can you even charge someone with insubordination in a merc fleet like Marcell’s? I’ll have to ask Bennett how that’s supposed to work, in case I ever have to go there. “I don’t really know what I believe. Sometimes there is some truth in the myths. And I’m kind of rooting for him to be honest. If he ever finds it, things will change a lot around here.”
“Man, you’re nuts.”
“Surely you have some goals, something you strive for in life,” Allen said with a raised eyebrow.
“Well yeah, but I’m different. I set my goals low so they’re easy. Just give me a ship and some tools to crank on it with, some ladies at port, and that’s all I need. Wenches and wrenches, nothing more. Won’t see me charging off on some crusade to find fairy tale planets.”
“And yet here you are…” Allen noted.
“Dammit, Allen, don’t remind me. By the way, been meaning to ask. We’re hearing some rumors about Marcell. Says he’s not himself. Even getting angry and snapping at people. I only met him once or twice. He might be a loon but never seemed the angry type.”
The sound of power wrenches slowly died out, and Allen suddenly realized that Kahr, one of the Caracal’s rated engineers, was standing next to them. “Boegrin’s right, sir,” he said. “Look at that motor. We’re already burning the ships up. If you ask me, we need to slow down before we fall apart. To hell with Marcell’s mission! We all know this woman can’t be from Earth anyway!”
Allen frowned deeply and was about to respond that nobody had asked him anyway, when one of the Panther’s techs interrupted. “Hey boss, come look at this!” The men lifted away the heavy motor casing and set it aside. Allen and Boegrin stepped up to the motor. Boegrin whistled as he looked in. “Damn!” A new scent: that of burnt oil, quickly permeated the airlock.
Metal shavings and fragments lined the inside of the device and loose, mangled ball bearings were everywhere. The gears’ teeth were badly damaged, appearing to have either melted away or been ground off. Much of the alloy was discolored, heavily pitted, and gouged.
Boegrin shouted disapprovingly as he examined the motor. “Damn cheap model. Probably would have worked for a hangar door motor, but dammit, this was a primary heat pump!” He stooped to look at the inside of the removed casing. “Shit. Doesn’t even have filter screens. Hey, one of you guys call home, tell them to flush the hydraulic circuit for this unit. Probably all kinds of crap in the system. I hope the filters caught it all. We don’t have time to tear down and rebuild the pumps.”
The Caracal was just large enough to have its own machine shop, and they’d definitely need it to get the Panther going again. “Kahr, Bouls!” Allen shouted in the airlock. “Take a scan of these gears and get down to the machine shop to fabricate replacements. The rest of you, keep tearing this down. Get all that crap out of there, get it cleaned up and resurfaced!” Two of the men headed back into the rest of the ship. “Fast as you can, we’re on a tight schedule here!” The two men broke out into a run.
Chapter 6
Thaddeus stood alone in the Caracal’s navigation bridge, his feet planted just a meter short of the bridge’s sloped, forward-facing window, his eyes staring out into space. This bridge, built at the very nose of the frigate, offered a great forward view but was far too exposed for the officers’ comfort and thus rarely used. Everyone preferred the heavily-armored Command Center located deep within the ship. And with the enemies Thaddeus had, he didn’t blame them for that choice.
Over the past few years, he spent far too much of his time on the dark, isolated Headquarters asteroid, and he rarely got to see much else. After the past week of reckless deep-space travel within the claustrophobic hull of a small warship, Thaddeus appreciated the vast view through the empty bridge’s forward viewport. Outside, the K-class star Waverly hung before him, a brilliant pinpoint of pale orange light shining from several light-hours off the frigate’s bow. About twenty degrees from the star, the Waverly Depot itself was visible, the light from its high-powered beacon steadily rising and falling through a slow sine-wave pattern which helped distinguish it from the stars.
In most respects, Waverly was an unremarkable star system, quite similar to many of the nonaligned low-population communities scattered throughout the Independent Regions south of the Norma Empire. The politically-independent system had a permanent population of about ten million people, some mineral and agriculture operations on two of the rocky worlds, and not much for infrastructure or luxury. However, its distinguishing feature and biggest asset was its most massive gas giant. Waverly V held an unusual concentration of deuterium in its upper atmosphere, making it a cheap and efficient source of reactor fuel. As a result, a consortium of local gas mining corporations held most of the political power for the system, and they jointly administered the Waverly Depot, a space station on the system’s outskirts which was widely regarded as the best source of bulk fuel for two hundred light-years.
Per standard interstellar navigation protocols, the Caracal had jumped to a rally point some distance out from the system and would make a short, precise jump to complete the journey once the Panther arrived. Stopping a bit short of the intended destination gave pilots room for error in their hyperspace vectors, allowed them to coordinate with the system’s traffic control agencies, and monitor local news to avoid surprises such as heavy traffic, port closures, or even pirate raids.
The local navigation and traffic data broadcast by the station via phi-band showed at least fifty other starships waiting at similar rally points around the system. Thaddeus was certain a number of them would cancel their final jumps if he was forced to attack the Cassandra to retrieve Adelia.
“The Panther has finally reported in,” Captain Bennett told him through a comm channel linking the bridge to the Command Center. “I believe we’re on schedule for our final jump, awaiting final clearance from System Traffic Control.”
�
��Good,” Thad said, his voice calm despite the growing anxiety he felt. He’d kept it at bay during the trip out here, but now, with his ship sitting just ten kilolightseconds away from the Depot, the reality of his mission was starting to take over his mind. Soon, I will actually have another person from Earth on board. The firstfruits of my search, finally, after a decade…in just a few more hours. “What’s our readiness?”
“The crew is stressed,” Bennett replied frankly. “The high speed and heat have exhausted them, and they’ve made a lot of mistakes over the past couple days. We’ll be going into the raid without much time to cool down. Expect orders to be carried out sluggishly and sloppily.”
Thaddeus lowered his head in disappointment, though Bennett’s report did not surprise him even a little bit. He felt pretty ragged himself despite having very little to do with the intense day-to-day operations of a task force struggling to run beyond its limits. The regular crew had been working hard.
“This has been a new experience for them,” added Reynolds over the comm channel. “I’ve never run ships this hot before, not for this long. But, despite a tired and cranky crew, we still all arrived in one piece and on time. This does give me some new training ideas.” Thaddeus could almost imagine the old man smiling fiendishly on the other end of the channel.
“Well, once we finish here, we can take our time returning to Headquarters,” Thad reassured. I’ll even toss a good bonus their way. They’ll have earned it. “I know the crew needs the rest. How are the Marines doing?”
Bennett laughed nervously. “I checked on them during one of our cooldowns. It was forty-five degrees, and they were running laps around the hangar in full combat gear…wearing heavy snowsuits.”
Thaddeus frowned. “Snowsuits? That Weber must be a mean old bastard.”
“Oh Weber? He was at the front of the pack, and he looked like he was enjoying it.”
But Thad’s mind was still stuck on snowsuits. “Why would they even pack snowsuits for a mission like this?” he asked, his jaw hanging slack. “At worst we’re boarding a cruiser…”
“Don’t worry about them, Admiral. The regular crew might be tired, but I think your boarding party is eager for action.”
He shook his head. “Snowsuits…Well, good. I need them to be eager. I don’t expect the Cassandra to fight back once we board her, not once they see how many men I’ve committed, but just in case…this mission is important to me. I don’t mind over-provisioning resources to make sure we succeed. How is the Panther?”
“Making do,” Reynolds replied. “They had to make some emergency repairs to their cooling systems but it’s mostly sorted out. Otherwise, they’re running pretty hot, hitting fifty-five, even sixty degrees post-jump. Their crew is pretty worn out.”
“Damn. I do wish we had more ships.”
“Yes,” Reynolds agreed. “But we’re only after a single slave. Hopefully the Cassandra’s crew will cooperate and this will be nothing more than a minor inconvenience for them.”
“Hang on,” Bennett cut in. “We’re getting a phi-band hail from the system.”
Phi radiation was an ill-understood form of superluminal energy produced by objects entering or exiting hyperspace. It could be used to detect incoming or outgoing ships using a hyperdrive from a light-year or so away, but was even more useful as a form of faster-than-light communication with about the same range.
“This is Captain Bennett speaking,” he said, sounding nonchalant. There was no need for him to use an alias. The galaxy probably had a hundred thousand Captain Bennetts.
“Waverly Traffic Control. Will you be coming to the Depot, or heading into the system itself?” The voice was bored-sounding monotone, sounding over-rehearsed and almost pre-programmed, like he’d already said that a thousand times already in the past day.
“The Depot is our destination. I have two ships. We’d like to dock and purchase fuel before heading out again.”
“Copy. Please transmit your ship profiles and manifests and await further instructions.”
“Thanks. I’m going to transfer you to one of my subordinates and he’ll help you with paperwork.” The channel fell silent for a moment. “Now let’s see how well our profiles work,” Bennett remarked.
“They have no reason to suspect anything,” reassured Reynolds. Civilized space was large enough that fake ship profiles were dead simple, especially with the slow travel rate of interstellar news. It could be months before anyone could cross-check their profiles with other organizations’ records and realize that they were invalid. “I just checked their public traffic logs. I see hangar records for two ships with descriptions matching our corvettes. They were given landing berths in the primary hangar and docked three hours ago.”
“Good,” Thad said softly. “If the Depot tries to interfere, hopefully the threat of two warships firing on the inside will force them to stand down.” It was a bold move. The Depot’s main hangar was by far its biggest and busiest, with the most starships parked inside and plenty of activity, which would give Thaddeus’s threat even more weight. But if the station thought he was bluffing and called his hand, and he had to order his corvettes to open fire, things would quickly fall into chaos. Depending on what other starships were in the area, such a battle could be a confusing multi-sided mess, with possibly staggering collateral damage.
But Thaddeus didn’t have a choice. He needed to succeed. He needed to recover Adelia and any information she had about Earth.
At any cost.
“The station’s commander is not going to like you,” Reynolds said.
“Well, I guess he can just join the club,” Thaddeus remarked dryly.
***
“I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t authorize you for combat duty at this time.”
The Caracal was en route to Waverly Depot, making its last jump through hyperspace to close the final distance and bring them into sublight range. Thaddeus stood in the main infirmary, dressed in a full Marine-issue vacuum-rated combat suit sans helmet and gloves, sweating like crazy as the hyperdrive’s heat continued to outpace the frigate’s cooling systems. He’d stopped by for a quick analgesic to deal with a throbbing headache, but Commander Janssen, an experienced starship doctor who had apparently once served in a real military context, had other, incorrect ideas about the chain of command aboard the frigate.
“I don’t need your authorization.” Thad kept his voice calm and low, but the agitation he felt within felt like an imminent coronal discharge. Here he was, moments away from finally recovering a clue to his Earth heritage, and for Janssen to think he could block Thad from participating…He took a slow, deep breath, feeling his chest expand and press into the armor suit’s thick padding.
“Admiral, you’re overheated, dehydrated, and hung over,” Janssen explained. “Joining the boarding party is too dangerous.”
Janssen’s assessment was spot-on, he knew, but that didn’t really matter to him. In his quest to relocate Earth, nothing else mattered. “I don’t care, Doc. I’m going.”
“Sir, you aren’t rested, you hardly slept, and you drank heavily for the entire voyage here. You can’t go into combat like that.”
“I haven’t had anything to drink for a day now!” he snapped back. But in the back of his mind he realized just how ridiculous that statement was.
“And now you are experiencing withdrawal symptoms.”
“I can deal with it, Commander. I’m joining the boarding party!” Thaddeus exclaimed, feeling a drop of sweat release from the tip of his nose as he raised his voice, the volume of which only exasperated the pounding headache he was struggling to ignore.
Janssen closed his eyes and shook his head, looking disappointed. “Admiral…you’re in no shape for combat. I have to pull medical rank on you.”
“Commander Janssen, I don’t think you know how we run things around here!” he snapped. “There is no medical rank to pull!”
“But I still have a duty to—”
Thad cut him off
by raising a hand and shoving lightly into Janssen’s chest. The doctor staggered back a step in surprise. “You are an employee of my private organization! You have a duty to follow my orders! Nothing else!”
He couldn’t tell if the doctor’s red face was from anger or just the starship’s heat. “Sir, you could get your men killed!” he said, sounding flustered.
Thaddeus narrowed his eyes and glared at the doctor, as if trying to cut through him with his gaze. He stilled himself and dropped his voice, and his next words emerged as a deadly whisper. “I am going on that boarding party. If you try to stop me, I will toss you out the nearest airlock.”
Thaddeus continued to drill his gaze into the doctor, and Janssen remained silent, his expression showing subtle signs of the fear he was trying to keep masked. After several seconds, Thad felt satisfied that he’d intimidated the doctor, and he turned and stormed out of the room.
***
Senior Captain Reynolds watched the exchange in silence from the infirmary’s main entrance, and smirked subtly when Admiral Marcell nearly toppled him over in his haste to leave the medical section and join his Marine boarding party. “He’s going to get himself killed,” Janssen muttered as Reynolds approached.
“Possibly,” Reynolds responded, offering a mild shrug. Sensing the doctor’s need to vent, he pointed at Janssen’s nearby office and they entered, shutting the door behind themselves.
“He’s being irrational!” Janssen exclaimed, unleashing his pent-up anger and tossing his hands at the air in frustration. “In a real Navy, I could have him removed from command for his behavior!” He stepped behind his desk and sat down, letting out a deep sigh as he settled into his chair. Reynolds continued to stand with his hands clasped behind him. “Permission to speak freely?”
Reynolds nodded. “Of course, Doctor.” He held back from smiling, feeling amused that Janssen had asked for permission to speak freely after already starting an outburst. In a real Navy, it would have been a breach of protocol, but at most times the discipline and behavioral expectations within Marcell’s organization—usually considered a pirate or mercenary group—were just a few tiny steps above “anything goes.”