Admiral's Challenge (A Spineward Sectors Novel: Book 8)

by Luke Sky Wachter

  “I’m leaving,” the old Engineer said shortly.

  “Just one word before you leave, Commander,” the Ball said as Spalding headed for the door. “What do you say to the outraged workers across the star system who think that it is intolerable that a person who is anti-machine and anti-uplift be placed in such a high position within the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet?” asked The Discerning Gaze sharply, its voice shifting from the jolly-happy interview of moments ago into that of a cutthroat journalist.

  Stopping mid-step, Spalding froze and turned around sporting a smile that had sent entire generations of engineering work parties running the other way.

  “Oh, lad, you’ve got me all wrong,” he said icily.

  “I am most correctly titled as an ‘it’,” the Ball cut in. The old engineer ignored the little droid and continued as if uninterrupted.

  “It doesn’t matter to me a man’s DNA, the shape of his body, or the amount of metal in his exoskeleton,” the old engineer said righteously.

  “If you could expound on that,” the ball demanded, not giving and inch, “and tell our audience why they should believe the words you speak at this time instead of the evidence of the United Sentient Assembly’s automated video files?”

  “To all the outraged work parties out there, I just have a few things to say,” Spalding said thrusting out his hands and lifting a finger as a diabolical plan sprang into his brain at the knowledge that this interview was going out system wide. “First, I call on all of you out there to test me; it’s a good thing—no, it’s a great thing that you all think I’m some kind of overbearing, arrogant, human-first-and-only type of person.” He smiled broadly.

  “It is?” the reporter droid sounded surprised. “You mean to say that you actually want people to think you’re a bigot of the first rank!?”

  “I would never go out of my way to create a false impression, but now that I’ve been so foully slandered and libeled by your worthy organization, I’d say it is the right—nay, the duty!--of every free thinking worker out there to find out for himself the truth! Is old Spalding a bigot, or a righteous Chief Engineer doing his best for all the inhabitants of this star system without bias—except that of whether a man, woman or it can do the job set before it?!”

  “Let me assure the audience that there was no slander or libel involved. The Daily Update has a stringent legal program that constantly monitors—” the Ball started to ramble.

  “Yes indeed,” Spalding continued happily, “the sentients of this Star System have a duty to themselves and their children to ensure I’m not some raving loon! That’s why I vow that every man, woman, machine or uplift that wants comes to see me on the Flagship will be given a seat on one of our routine shuttle runs, listed as a worker volunteer upon arrival, and given a task equal to its qualifications. The Flagship needs a powerful amount of work, so you can think of it not just as your duty as a freethinking sentient, but as a patriotic duty to your new and newly beloved Star System!”

  “What!??” exclaimed the Overseer Droid.

  “You mean this was all a publicity stunt to secure free advertising for your Engineering Department?” The Discerning Gaze sounded surprised, as if it had been duped and only now found it out.

  “As has been mentioned before, Old Spalding is an officer with pull in this star-system and we can use all the hands we can get! That’s why I’m not only promising to clear up any minor difficulties with your supervisors; on a one time basis I will take anyone who is not yet a part of the fleet and, based on their qualifications and how well they’ve done the job during their volunteer work on the flagship, I will offer to give them a commensurate position in the Fleet as either an enlisted crew—or possibly even an officer!”

  “The United Sentient Assembly has strict protocols on military advertising, Commander Spalding,” The Discerning Gaze said and then quickly added. “We will be going into a commercial break within thirty seconds!”

  “That’s right,” Spalding said loudly, talking over the floating droid reporter, “every creature in this star system that can do the job and take the oath is needed. Don’t hesitate. Don’t hold back. And if ye don’t feel the position offered is a fair one…well, then at least you’ve done your civic duty by volunteering to check on the mysterious, much-maligned, Terrance P. Spalding!”

  Moments later, the droid’s light spun down.

  “And that’s a wrap,” said The Discerning Gaze, who then turned to grunt and beep angrily at the Droid Overseer before heading out.

  The Overseer, Negotiates from a Superior Position, sat back down in its chair with mechanical precision.

  “Now then,” Spalding smiled happily, “where were we?”

  Negotiates From a Superior Position stared at him.

  “The Battleship?” the old Engineer reminded the machine creature.

  “Ah, yes,” the droid said tonelessly, “I have just been notified there is an emergency meeting of the Assembly Council to investigate this incident and am instructed to finish negotiations quickly.”

  “Oh, aye?” Spalding asked with a smirk.

  Five minutes later, he walked out of there with a deal for battleship that he could live with. At the same time, the word sent out to potential hordes of socially aware workers—all of whom could even now be clamoring to help repair the flagship. He might even end up with one or two gems among the philosophically opinionated horde of slackers.

  If there was one thing that knew no race, gender, form, or function, it was his desire to tap as many hard workers as he could. He didn’t care if it had a metal head, or ate bananas for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. All of them were welcomed into the loving embrace of Saint Murphy and his senior supervisors, named Chief Engineers.

  His work here was done.

  Chapter Twenty: The Gambit Yards

  “Point Emergence!” reported the new Navigator.

  “Resistance at 18 gravities,” reported the ship’s Science Officer, a Fleet Confederation officer.

  “Extending baffling outside of gravity sump,” said Helmsman DuPont.

  “Sensors confirm a good jump, Sir. We are inside Gambit System,” reported the Sensor Officer.

  “Very good, Sensors; Navigation; Helm,” Captain Hammer said in a dry voice.

  As the crew continued with the post-jump routine and Captain Hammer stayed on top of it, I once again found myself with nothing to do other than manage the Fleet information as the various other ships of the MSP transferred in and then started breaking free.

  “We’re receiving IFF beacons on the expected frequencies, but with all the radiation soup in this System we’re having a hard time independently verifying the data. It’s going to take us a few minutes, Captain,” reported the Officer.

  “As expected, Sensors,” Hammer replied without rancor.

  Although I itched to take action, and wanted nothing more than to interject myself into the smooth operation of the Bridge, I held back. Our trip from Elysium had shown that Acting Captain Leonora Hammer both knew her stuff and had decided opinions on how a Flag Officer was supposed to conduct herself on her bridge. For me, who was used to acting half-captain/half-Fleet Admiral, this had been something of a rocky learning curve. I was still resolved to doing whatever was needed during battle conditions, no matter what anyone including the new Captain said or thought, but in the meantime I was trying to curb my bad habits and restrain myself to important injections only. It was hard.

  “We’re receiving a welcoming hail from Gambit Station, Admiral,” said Lieutenant Steiner, “they say: welcome back, and we’re ready to play with the new toys.”

  I shook my head and chuckled. Thanks to our improved communications network, we had been able to send word ahead so that our arrival wasn’t quite the surprise it would have been even six months ago. This meant that the Engineers and other support personnel out here had time to get the welcome reception ready—and, of course, to gear up for the new arrivals to the fleet, in particular our captured battleship
s.

  “Relay to them that it’s good to be back; I’m expecting to make hard use of their services in the near future so they’d better get ready,” I replied with a smile.

  “On it, Admiral,” the Lieutenant said with a grin.

  In the face of her pixie-like expression and obvious happiness, I found myself staring a moment too long and looked away, forcibly reminding myself that I was married and thus automatically immune to the beauty of others.

  As the ship swept in closer to the growing Yard and Industrial complex, I blinked and then blinked again. Not only had the facility grown to three large slips with a pair of smaller, flexible space docks that could adjust for up to light cruiser size, but there was a new, large industrial furnace half the size of the original factory complex. There was also a half-completed internal structure of a second factory complex growing up alongside the first.

  The only thing that looked the same was the medical complex. For the rest, the main habitation Station had been completed and arms now extended out from it like spokes, where shuttles and other craft were docking. The mining operations had also expanded, with the number of small craft and tenders ballooning until it looked like there was more traffic zooming around this system than there was back at Tracto!

  But what caught my eye, causing me to do a double take before fixing my attention and holding it, was a large pile of struts and girders located off to the side of the main ship yard near the ‘bone yard,’ where those ships considered un-repairable floated with warning beacons.

  “What the blazes is that?” I muttered making use of the zoom function and looking at sensor returns. Upon closer inspection, it looked like a nearly-completed ship construction bay, but according to the readings from the ship’s sensor pit, the construction rig was more than 2000 meters in length—making it more than three times the length of the largest repair dock in the System, which were themselves used to build or repair battleships.

  The final clue as to what exactly I was looking at came when I started to zoom back out and caught sight of the partially deconstructed nose section of the battered-looking Lucky Clover located in the part of the bone-yard closest to the construction slip. The handful of repair tenders floating around the old ship—which appeared to be removing armor plates—was also a definite clue. This had definitely not been in any of the ComStat reports I’d seen up till now.

  “Spalding, you wily old cyborg,” I half breathed, half cursed. “’Every bolt, every weld,’ he says.” 2.0, my stinky, well-bred backside! The old borg had never intended to repair the old girl; he’d wanted to rebuild the entire ship from the ground up since the very beginning—or so I speculated. The sheer hubris of not even consulting me—even after the fact—was breathtaking.

  Someone is definitely going to have to start explaining himself very fast, and very soon, I thought with as much anger and outrage as I could muster.

  “Lieutenant Steiner!” I shouted, my voice heavily laden with outrage, although I feared the smile threatening to break out on my face at any moment was going to give the game away. “Get me that cursed, infernal, non-consulting Chief Engineer on the com now, and shoot the feed over to my ready room—on the double, Mister Steiner! This is not to be borne lying down, do you understand?!” I finished, standing up and starting for my ready room with a determined expression on my face.

  “Sir?!” said the Comm. Lieutenant looking shocked before quickly turning back to her console and immediately starting to follow my order.

  The surprised gazes of the bridge crew and the reserved assessing look of its Captain followed me out of the room.

  ****************************************************

  “Just what are you playing at, Commander?” I demanded with my most strict and least hospitable expression.

  “You needed me, Sir?” Spalding asked from the other side of the holo-screen, looking confused.

  “Don’t toy with me, Chief Engineer,” I warned, “just what have you done with my ship?!”

  The old Engineer’s eyebrows beetled. “The ship’s in good shape, Admiral,” he said stoutly, “now that we’re back at Gambit, she’s doing even better! Just give us the time to let her rest a bit while we rebuild her—and the other battleships—and you’ll have a full squadron you can definitely rely on, Sir.” He finished with a wink and referring to a squadron of specifically ‘battleships’ not just any warships.

  But I refused to allow the sweet sounding music in my ears of a squadron of my very own battleships sway me from my mission. “I’m not talking about this ship; I’m talking about the ship, Spalding,” I said sternly, “just what have you done with my flagship? The Lucky Clover’s being disassembled as we speak!”

  The semi-confused expression disappeared and Spalding’s aged features became much more animated. “Ah yes! She’s being rebuilt better than ever,” the old Engineer said proudly, “I told you before that she had some serious structural problems and there was just no way a simple patch job would work—not if we were going to bring her back a hundred percent. We were going to have to strip her down to the bone and replace some of the major supports.”

  “Right…” I said, nodding since this was in line with what I’d heard before.

  “You yourself told me to do ‘whatever it takes’ to get her back to being the queen of the battlefield,” Spalding continued blithely.

  I coughed and shook my head. “I don’t recall saying anything about making her the ‘queen of anything.’ In fact, I distinctly remember not saying anything of the sort,” I objected firmly. “Eh?” Spalding paused looking confused and then shook it off. “Minor details, Admiral,” he said dismissively as if waving away a buzzing fly that was annoying him.

  I wasn’t quite so unconcerned about what I had or hadn’t said exactly, but was willing to let it slide for the moment.

  “Anyway,” Spalding continued passionately, “the important thing is that the only way to bring her back to herself was to strip her down anyway. Since you were so set on turning her back into the Queen she was back when she first launched, that’s when I knew what I had to do.”

  “Once again, I didn’t say—and had nothing to do with—any of this Queen of the Battlefield business,” I insisted over my lowered my brows.

  “I knew what I had to do,” Spalding repeated obstinately and then continued as if preaching to a choir, “since she had to be taken mostly apart anyway was just finish the job.”

  “Making a bigger ship out of the pieces?” I prompted, tired of beating around the bush and trying to force the conversation back to the part I was mainly interested in.

  “Yes! At 600 meters long, she was a Battleship as big as anything out there. But then, the Imperials built a 1200 meter Command Carrier, and then they built another, and another, and before you knew it there you were,” Spalding said, now frowning. “Which was okay and all, seein’ as pound for pound she was still the best, but then we started running into Bug Motherships over 2000 meters on the keel, and havin’ running battles with multiple other battleships at the same time. So I knew—I knew,” he slammed a fist into his other hand.

  “What did you know?” I prompted.

  “We’re going to run her keel through the duralloy II plant,” Spalding said eagerly, “converting it from plain duralloy into duralloy II and making it bigger and longer. All the beams and armor will be converted as well. I had to modify her design a mite to take into account the new size, additional power plants, and new propulsion method, but everything else will be taken apart and put right back into the ship after we’ve stretched her keel,” he hastened to assure me. “Every bolt, every weld—everything. She’ll be the same ship on the inside, and on the outside, but only more so!”

  “2.0,” I said neutrally.

  “The Lucky Clover, version 2.0,” he agreed, pumping his fist and then shaking it in the air as if arguing with invisible opponents.

  “Look, I’m not against this thing in principle but there’s one problem: this
isn’t a simple repair—or even rebuild—job. You’re basically building a new ship and stripping the Clover’s systems for a starting point,” I pointed out. “If we’d just rebuilt her, even sheathed her in outer duralloy II armor, she’d have been back in action in a matter of months—not the years it’s going to take to build a newer, larger ship.”

  His head snapped back around to me fast enough I wondered about whiplash. “It’s the same ship!” he said with such finality in his voice I didn’t have the heart to continue that part of the argument. “Besides, before we stretched her and get around to adding back in all the new systems, pound for pound she may have been able to stand toe to toe with a Bug Mothership or Imperial Command Carrier,” I blinked, highly doubting that the Lucky Clover—even back at her peak—could go up against either of those examples straight. “But they just had too many pounds on her. There’s just no way she could continually survive those kinds of engagements.”

  Finally something we could agree on, even though I didn’t share his belief in the old Clover single handedly fighting such Titans of the Battlefield.

  “But by stretching her into not just the best battleship, but a Super Battleship, well now,” he wagged his finger at me, “even those Imperials with their fighters and fixation on oversized, 1200 meter Carriers will have to sit up and take notice of my 1800 meter Super Battleship!”

  I coughed. “1800 meters,” I said with disbelief; that was half again an Imperial Command Carrier—and over three times the length of a proper Battleship. It was truly an audacious plan…perhaps too audacious. I genuinely had to wonder.

  “There’ll be no stopping her, Admiral,” he said his eyes shining with an unholy light, “it’ll be like the demon personally come down to the battlefield to ruin their day. It’ll all go wrong for them once she shows up!”