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

by Luke Sky Wachter

  “Sir?” Tiberius asked with disbelief.

  “Your current post is within the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet, is it not?” the Admiral asked, his eyes hard.

  “I was sent back to Capria by order of Jason Montagne,” Tiberius said, “for mutiny!” he added to clarify.

  “Were your orders, hand written by the King himself, not clear enough for you, Officer?” the Admiral barked.

  Tiberius’s eyes widened and he choked back his first instinctive response, which was that he took orders from the elected government of the people—not some king who had risen to power through an accident of birth, and use of the bloody knife to secure his succession.

  “Sir…the King was under duress when he wrote those orders,” Tiberius choked out.

  “Let me inform you of one thing that could be particularly important for your career—assuming you still have one after exiting this office,” Admiral Anjou said coldly, “and that is that, even more so than Prime Ministers, Kings rarely like to be reminded of their mistakes. And that’s exactly what you are right now: a reminder of a mistake, and not just any mistake, but a mistake made in a moment of powerlessness—within his own star system, no less. Is that what you want, Tiberius; to remind our Commander in Chief of a time when our Star System was attacked, our King taken hostage and one of the prides of this fleet, a Dreadnaught Class Battleship was taken by force?”

  “N-no,” Tiberius stuttered, when every bone inside him wanted to say ‘yes, blast the King and long live Parliament.’

  “So, I’ll ask again: what are you doing here, Lieutenant?” Anjou repeated harshly.

  “Reporting for duty?” Tiberius hazarded when it became clear the Admiral wanted an answer.

  “Not good enough, Lieutenant!” barked the Admiral. “Maybe if you’d come home with the battleship—the one you lost to the rebel, Admiral Jason Montagne—you’d have been welcomed back with open arms. But without a PR win of that size, no one here wants you—especially when you have hand-written orders instructing you to join the Confederation Fleet as part of our Caprian SDF contribution!”

  “Th-they’re pirates—and rebels!” Tiberius cried impassionedly. “How can you ask me to serve under a Montagne? And how is it my fault we lost the Parliamentary Power; I’m just an engineer!”

  “Are you the commander of the SDF?” Anjou barked.

  “No,” Tiberius replied, since of course he was no such thing.

  “You have humiliated this office, not just once but twice: first, when you were the senior officer onboard the Power and allowed her to be taken; second, when you returned in disgrace,” Anjou said coldly. “As I see it, you have one of two choices: the SDF will provide you with a hyper-capable transport and you can return to duty in the Confederation Fleet—until your term of service is up or you are sent home with an honorable discharge—or…” the Admiral trailed off, allowing the tense silence to linger far longer than Tiberius would have preferred.

  “Or?” Tiberius asked hopefully.

  “Or you can stand trial here and, afterwards, face the firing squad for your crimes against the people of Capria—and against its Royal House,” Anjou replied casually.

  Tiberius staggered out of his chair. “I’m a loyal son of Capria; everything I’ve done has been for her! You can’t send me back, Admiral, have you forgotten I was sent back for mutiny?”

  “If you ask my opinion, this world cannot afford a trial of your scope at this time. An officer of the Caprian SDF, involved in a failed mutiny attempt in the middle of a major battle to defend two Sectors from a Droid Invasion? Do you have any idea how that would play on the local and Cosmic News Networks?” Anjou snapped. “If you love your country, son, you’ll head back to Tracto and plead for forgiveness. If said forgiveness is less than forthcoming, beg on bended knee to be shoved out an airlock in Tracto—like you deserve—instead of Capria so your death won’t cause your fellow citizens undue duress. Our planet is like a powder keg right now, and you could very well be the spark that causes rioting in every city across the world.”

  Tiberius stared at him in disbelief. He was too shocked—and horrified—by the picture painted before him to be able to say anything.

  “I need your answer before you leave this office, and you’re leaving here in thirty seconds—even if I have to call in the marines,” the Admiral said evenly, “what will it be?”

  His mouth tasting like ashes Tiberius stood up and glared. “I never thought I’d see the day we destroyed one of our own on the word of a Montagne,” he sneered.

  “Live as long as I have and you’ll see many things you wish you hadn’t. But this? Sending a mutineer off to get his just due? It’s not even on the radar, son,” Admiral Anjou said flatly.

  “Since I’m dead either way, you might as well send me back,” Tiberius glared, “I wouldn’t want to be the reason thousands died.”

  “You made the right choice,” the Admiral grumped, and then he waved to dismiss him from the room, “the rest of your men will be going with you since they’re in a similar situation. This world cannot afford the humiliation you’ve brought upon it.”

  Stepping outside the Admiral’s office, Tiberius swayed unable to believe what had just happened. His men weren’t mutineers—they were patriots!—and yet, after everything they’d done for Capria, they were still thrown to the wolves in an instant because of, unthinkably, the negative publicity.

  It was a hard and telling blow.

  An officer with the black gloves of intelligence bumped into him on his way past the Admiral’s Officer.

  “Watch where you’re going, slive,” cursed the Intelligence Officer.

  “What?” Tiberius asked with shock. Then felt a bulge in his pocket that hadn’t been there before.

  “A problem, Sir?” the Marine escort asked giving the back of the retreating Intelligence Officer a hard look.

  “No,” Tiberius said, realizing he needed to check out the bulge somewhere other than in front of the marine escort outside of the Admiral’s Office. “I think I need to use the facilities.” He said instead.

  “This way, Sir,” the Marines said, escorting him to the restroom.

  Once inside the room, he fumbled the old-style, paper hard copy out into the open and unfolded it.

  Flabbergasted, he stared at official Parliamentary Orders—orders which clearly instructed him to return to the Confederation’s Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet. He was to insinuate himself into its chain of command and send back any pertinent intelligence update he could lay his hands on, and safely send them back home. There was more, but that was essentially it. Also, after reading the note, he was to destroy it.

  Laughing bitterly, he tore up the orders and flushed them down the toilet one piece at a time. There went his one hope of avoiding a return to Tracto. It seemed that both the Royalists and Parliament wanted him out of and away from Capria as soon as possible. This day just kept getting better and better.

  He was so dead.

  Chapter Thirty-four: Pulling the Wool

  Spalding was sleeping the sleep of them that had worked all their lives and deserved a decent rest in return, when the com-panel in his room alarmed.

  “What is it?” he said groggily, for a moment thinking he was back on the Clover before seeing that he was in his room on Gambit Station. More and more, he tended to wake up confused and lost as to where he was, until he had sufficient time to assess the surroundings. It had caused his heart to race a time or three, like it was about to tear itself out of his chest—more proof, as he saw it, that those quacks had given him the cloned heart of a coward instead of his own, naturally-regrown tissue like they were supposed to. And it was just another reason to avoid those medical mal-practicers like the very plague they were, at least as far as he was concerned.

  Fortunately, it hadn’t gotten so bad that he’d needed to get on the com and ask for help as to where he was and when his duty shift began.

  “Commander Spalding, there’s been a problem,” said th
e green-behind-his-ears-sounding rating behind the wall.

  “Well what is it, lad? Spit it out and be done with it,” he barked, images of core meltdowns and environmental emergencies running through his head as he rolled out of bed with a groan and unconsciously strapped on his tool belt.

  “It’s the Yard Manager, Sir. There’s been an accident and she’s being taken to the Medical Center as we speak,” the lad’s voice wavered.

  “Glenda…she’s hurt?!” he blurted, charging out the door only to realize that he was still in his under pants. Hurrying back inside, he took off his belt, threw on some clothes, and then quickly strapped the belt back on.

  “Yes sir,” said the greenie on the coms.

  “What happened?” he demanded, once again headed for the door.

  “I don’t know all the details, but they said something about a problem with a load-lifter,” the rating replied, sounding less than certain.

  “Blast it, lad,” the old engineer shouted as he ran through the hall towards the medical complex, “you’ve got to learn to give better reports than that!”

  But whatever the boy might have said was lost to him as he continued down the hall at full speed. Hurrying through the station, the old engineer arrived in the infirmary out of breath—and looking more than a little disheveled.

  Seeing Glenda sitting on a gurney inside—in a room with clear glass door and walls, no less—his level of anxiety increased.

  “Are you alright, lass?” he demanded pushing his way forward.

  “I’m sorry, Sir,” protested an orderly who was attempting to impede his progress.

  “Out of my way, boy, before I do to you something that’ll see you stuck in this here wretched hellhole for the next two weeks!” Spalding growled, pushing the lad aside.

  “Commander, the Yard Manager is in a reverse isolation room! You can’t go in unless you’ve been through the decontamination process,” the Orderly explained pointing to a modified airlock set up.

  “Decontamination? What kind of chemicals are we talking about?” Spalding demanded, not quite able to believe that Glenda had run into some kind of biological agent.

  “It’s okay, Ventry; you can go,” said a Doctor arriving on the scene taking charge and shooing away the orderly he turned to Spalding. “If you could just step in here, we’ll get you in to see the Yard Manager as soon as possible”

  “If it has to be,” the old Engineer said reluctantly but, too familiar with the need for strict safety protocols, he wasn’t able to kick up as much of a fuss as he would like. However, halfway into the airlock he stopped and wagged a finger at the doctor, “If anything happens to Glenda…I mean, to Yard Manager Baldwin, it will go very seriously for you, Doctor.”

  “Everything will be fine with the Yard Manager,” soothed the Doctor in an overtly patronizing tone—the type he’d heard quacks of all stripes use when dealing with the muddleheaded.

  “What am I, a dog or small child?” Spalding barked. “Talk to me like a man, blast you; I’ll have none of your nonsense right now.”

  “Of course, Commander,” the Doctor agreed, ushering him into the isolation airlock. As soon as Spalding stepped inside, the medical officer picked up a hand scanner and started running it up and down Spalding’s body.

  From his feet up to his head, the other officer scanned before finally stopping at the old Engineer’s head and pausing.

  “What kind of hocus pocus operation are you running ‘round here?” the old Engineer said sourly. “Just finish your scans so I can go through the decontamination wash and have done with it,” he irritably pushed away the scanner—a scanner that was circling his head like a moon in orbit or, more appropriately, like a blighted vulture looking for a tasty morsel to snack on.

  “Hold still,” the Doctor said acerbically, “this will just take a couple more minutes.”

  “Minutes?!” Spalding bellowed with outrage. “Why, a proper decontamination spray doesn’t take more than a few minutes all by itself. Get out of here and let me…” he trailed off, his wizened eyes finally noticing what he—because of his natural panic and concern for Glenda—hadn’t observed right off. There were no nozzles for a chemical spray; neither was he seeing the sort of emitters needed for biological irradiation lights. In fact…

  “High-grade medical scanners?” he growled, taking in the large number of sensor strips and the dedicated medical computer in this particular corner of the room.

  Seeing that the jig was up, the Doctor frowned up at him and nodded affirmatively. “Just hold still, please, and your yearly physical will be completed in just a few more minutes, Commander,” said the Doctor.

  “Physical? I never agreed to no blinkin’ medical examination,” the old engineer roughly pushed the doctor and his hand scanner to the side. “I don’t have time for this monkey business right now, but rest assured that I’ll settle you in due time. Now where’s Glenda? I need to see her.”

  “I assure you, Manager Baldwin is fine,” the Doctor said, once again using that infuriating tone of voice.

  “What? She’s injured, man; get out of my way,” Spalding growled, trying to open the door and finding it locked from the outside.

  “A necessary deception,” the Doctor tried to calm him—once again employing that insufferable style of speech, “as she didn’t think you’d come down here for any other reason. However, now that you are here, the door to the examination room won’t open until after the examination is complete. So please—”

  Spalding’s fist lashed out, taking the doctor in the mouth and sending him reeling. “I warned you once about taking that kind of tone with me, Quack,” Spalding roared with outrage and betrayal. He’d been tricked into here, which pricked his pride and roused his genuine ire, but treating him like a child or small animal was the last and final straw! No one treated him this way or he wasn’t Terrance P. Spald—

  An outrageously attractive figure appeared outside the clear wall of the medical examination room and waved her hands at him, clearly trying to tell him to calm down. Calm down? he thought furiously. Hah!

  “You tricked me, you witch!” he yelled at the Yard Manager on the other side of the glass. Half engineer, half witch, and half succubus, it seemed the old saying relayed by his father—who had told it to him when he was still a young sprout in the first blush of youth—was true: you had to keep your guard up around the female side of the species at all times, lest they suddenly decide to turn on you like a seemingly cute, but utterly voracious, Hyborean Stone-rat.

  Pounding his fists on the wall to express his outrage, he heard a hissing sound and felt a slight prick on his neck. Turning in alarm, he saw the Doctor pull the spray injector away from his neck.

  “Didn’t get enough the last time you tried to pawn your medicine off on me against my will, didja?” he said dangerously, taking an ominous step forward.

  Looking alarmed, the Doctor started backing up rapidly but there was only so much room inside this examination room. He had nowhere to go, and Spalding reached out for him.

  On his second step, however, his leg buckled under him and, before he could stabilize himself, he collapsed to the deck in an ungainly heap—a veritable pretzel composed of both man and machine.

  Stepping over him the doctor opened the door and called for a team to help him get Spalding up onto a bed.

  “I re-refuse treatment!” Spalding gasped, catching the doctor’s sleeve with his fortunately non-biological fingers. All he had to do was get a grip, set them to lock, and he had him! “Send me back to my quarters!” he demanded, as only those who have a healthy dose of fear and knew just what those medical professionals, so-called, could do to a man when he was out of power.

  After the orderlies rolled him onto one side, and then back to the other in order to get him on the gurney, Spalding felt like a piece of bread dough.

  “Sir,” the Doctor said, leaning over him with the kind of pompous expression that just begged a man to give him another smack in the mouth,
“I’m afraid that the preliminary scans aren’t good. If they were—despite the Yard Manager’s concerns—I would have allowed you to leave and we’d have canceled the medical exam already.”

  “I don’t care what it is,” Spalding rasped his peripheral vision going dark, “DNR—do not resuscitate! I waive all medical treatment,” he spluttered, “if it’s a choice ‘tween treatment and letting’ me die then just toss me out the airlock.”

  “I’m genuinely sorry,” the doctor said, wiping the blood from his mouth on the back of his sleeve and not looking in the least bit sorry or repentant, “however, you seem to have a degenerative disease of the brain. It’s probably due to the extensive radiation damage you suffered in the past, combined with the general age of your original brain tissue and massive amounts of cloned tissue grafted into your body. Factor the lack of follow-up care, and right now there are thousands and thousands of microscopic holes in the tissue of your brain. You’ve likely been suffering mental degeneration for quite some time now due to an auto-immune reaction, where your body has been literally fighting itself and attempting to reject the cloned tissue.” “I have holes in my brain?” he asked, his surprise temporarily overpowering his resolve before he once again steeled himself somewhat. “I don’t care—go away,” Spalding whispered, feeling more and more like a fish out of water. Whatever drug he’d been injected with swept over him, leaving only a powerful sense of lethargy.

  “Unfortunately, your condition has advanced to the point that it is very similar to what was called Alzheimer’s disease in ages past; fortunately, we caught it before your condition became irreversible. However, because it’s a degenerative condition affecting your brain, we have to perform more tests to see if you’re mentally competent enough to be making decision about your health at this stage of your condition.” The Doctor shook his head, “Really, even just a routine check-up with a medical scanner a few months ago and all of this could have been avoided.”

  Holes in his brain—ha! Why, when he woke up, someone certainly was going to have holes in his brain—but it wasn’t going to be this Engineer, and neither were the holes going to be microscopic! This was medical malpractice, was what this was…