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

by Luke Sky Wachter

  Nastor of Thebes flushed. “I am an honorable warrior, following the way of my ancestors—my every action is filled with honor!” he growled.

  “Keep telling yourself that,” I yelled, losing my cool, “but I think it’s time the ways of your people had a little chat with mine. Prepare to defend yourself.”

  “You’ll die at my hand!” roared Nastor, a sword already in his right hand.

  I could have attacked right then, but I suppose that I was following in the footsteps of Nikomedes. I waited until he reached around and grasped hold of his blaster rifle—I wanted to make a statement with this first battle, and that statement was this:

  Even if I give you time to fully prepare yourself, you’re still going to die if you face me.

  “If you want to bring a new suit of battle armor to our challenge then I’ll use every weapon available to me, too. You did say battlefield rules,” he yelled with a savage grin.

  Bringing up my left arm so that the built-in ion cannon was pointed at him, I yawned into the mike of my external speakers. “Are you ready yet?” I asked, feigning boredom—the truth was I was genuinely interested in putting this suit through its paces.

  “Die!” he howled, leveling the blaster rifle and opening fire.

  I let the armor take the full power of his two shots before I returned fire, and a series of ion bolts shot out from my cannon. My shots hit him first in the head and then, as I carefully aimed, at the joints of his arms and legs. A lucky trick shot hit the hand holding his blaster rifle about the time his fifth shot had pinged against my D-II armor, and suddenly he could no longer depress the trigger.

  “Gaah!” he howled as his suit started to malfunction, casting away his plasma rifle in one violent movement before rushing me with his sword held high.

  Or, he tried to rush me, but this suit—and its plasma cannon had been built to deal with Imperial Battle-armor—was far and away superior to even the old battle-suits that Spalding had refurbished himself ,and all my new foe managed was a stiff legged hobble.

  With his superior speed neutralized by the ion attacks, I stepped forward to meet him—I also deliberately decided to allow him the first attack.

  Without hesitation, he decided to take me up on my offer, launching a wicked strike with his vibro-sword, which clanged off my pauldron.

  Stepping forward, I reached out. He tried to dodge back and out of harm’s way, but it’s hard when your knee joints won’t move freely—a complication which came courtesy of my well-placed ion bolts—and with a punch of my useless, right hand I easily knocked him over.

  “Face me like a man!” screamed Nastor of Thebes, his face so red with rage that I clinically wondered if he was about to have a stroke. But, fortunately for him, I could now say with total certainty that he was in fact not going to have a stroke—because with a whine I lifted my foot and placed it on the heavily-armored breastplate of his armor.

  “Come out and face me!” he raged, repeatedly swinging his vibro-sword and striking me in the leg and knee joints as fast as his arm would move. “Face me like a man, you coward—or hide like you did when your Uncle invaded my home-polis of Thebes. Come on! You complete and utter cow—”

  Extending my built-in arm blade with a verbal command, I leaned down and placed the tip of my arm-blade on the glass of his visor—and cut off his hate-filled diatribe mid-sentence when I placed the full weight and power of my battle-suit into the thrust.

  The visor shattered, sending shards of crystal flying into, and out, of the helmet as my blade struck home with a final resounding force, silencing his rage once and forever.

  With an effort, I pushed myself off my foe and resumed an upright position before my men—if I could even call these rebels who wanted to kill me mine any longer—could act.

  “A man takes my suit, my sword, and my training—and then dares try to use them against me so he can take everything I hold dear? He then thinks I’m going to listen to him when he complains that I didn’t give him the best that I had to use against me,” I said, flipping open my visor so that I could lean forward and spit on him in disgust.

  There was silence, during which a series of newly reassessing looks could be seen on the face of every single man in the gym. It was now obvious, beyond denial, I wasn’t going to be the easy win they had been expecting.

  “Such a man with very little loyalty to his Warlord is nothing but easy meat for my blade,” I said with an audible ‘snick’ as I retracted my extendable vibro-blade. “Gants, this battle-suit belongs to me now—which is why it only needs a new visor and some circuits replaced. See that the Armory repairs it back to spec; I’ll make sure its next user is worthy to wear it. Take the cost of its repair out of this man’s final wages, before those funds are sent to his surviving family,” I finished, toeing the fallen warrior with my heavy, D-II clad boot.

  Looking furious, one of the men who had been standing beside Nastor of the Thebes locked eyes and glared hatefully at me.

  Glancing down, I waited a few more seconds until my internal built-in cannon had fully recharged its power cell from the suit’s mini-generator. Then, nodding with satisfaction, I looked up from my display.

  “Next!” I said, and pointed my ion cannon at that man.

  With a howl, my next foe decided he didn’t want to wait to pull out his unfamiliar plasma rifle—like his fallen leader had—instead choosing speed and two-handed grip on his sword to make me meet my end.

  Unfortunately for him, now that my point had been made, I was done playing around. He failed to take his second step before I opened up with my Ion Cannon full throttle.

  Using the reinforced armor of my right arm, I blocked a strike aimed at my head as I placed my forearm on his shoulder and leaned forward. For a long moment, he grunted and strained against the power of my suit before finally crashing to the ground.

  A few dozen more shots while he scrambled around on the ground, and his mobility was reduced to the point that all he could do was curse and try to thwart my intent by thrashing his head side to side to avoid my blade and batter at my legs ineffectually.

  Giving up on a clean kill, I stabbed downward again and again until I finally buried my right arm blade in his neck and half tore off his head—which, thankfully, caused him to stop moving. I mean, if I wasn’t going to get a quick kill then there was no point in trying to save on repair costs. Better to be sure the job was done right and proper. I could always buy, build, or extort more power armor out of someone to replace it if anyone complained

  “Next,” I said coldly.

  After seeing two of their most eager members die in quick succession—and remembering the way I’d also defeated Nikomedes—no one jumped forward to face me. Certainty, and the desire to take what was mine, had turned into resignation by the time I was ready to face my fourth challenge.

  “I can keep doing this all day,” I said with ringing finality.

  The next warrior in a suit didn’t even make it close enough to land a blow before a lucky strike to the helmet paralyzed him, leaving him trapped and helpless before me. Or, rather, because he was a Tracto-an he was strong enough to hold himself upright and move forward a half step at a time. But without the ability to effectively defend himself, or jump around and cause me trouble, I finished him quickly.

  “Next,” I said, flicking my arm to get rid of the blood before retracting my blade. After all, I still had a few dozen left and this could take a while. I didn’t want to have a perfectly good blade permanently stained if I could help it.

  The next one was a jumper. He lasted longer than all the rest put together, but in the end he, too, fell before my arm blade. I thought for a long moment about kicking him to death, to discourage the others, but decided it might be counterproductive and let the idea go.

  It was going to be a long day, I could feel it already…but at least we’d get a good set of field tests for the new armor.

  Chapter Forty-six: Let her rip!

  “Build the pyre an
d light the fire!” shouted Commander Terrance Spalding, stabbing a button on the fold out console built into the side of the fusion generator.

  “I hope you’re right,” Glenda said, standing beside him.

  “Easy as getting a Puckanese Dancer out of her clothes,” he said dismissively.

  “Don’t be so glib over something that could kill everyone on this ship. And besides, what business did you have that required getting a dancer of any sort out of her clothes?” she growled.

  “Don’t bother me with trifles,” the old Engineer said, waving her concerns—both of them—away as if they were inconsequential matter, “I need to focus here.”

  “I’ll bet!” she harrumphed.

  Slowly, the old engineer smiled; the startup sequence on the first fusion generator was going as smoothly as he could have hoped. So far, so good, he thought to himself.

  “She’s not running hot, although you sure seem to be,” he bragged, his eyes never leaving the screen. Much as he refused to admit it, his thoughts were much clearer than they had been in quite some time. And he could think faster too. Knowing that, he might have admitted the quacks had done something right for a change if it weren’t for the fact that, by their own admission, none of this…cognitive degeneration of theirs would have happened if they hadn’t failed to do their job properly the first time!

  Baldwin snorted.

  “Besides, I’m an experienced old man; it’s part of me charm. I mean, how exactly did you expect me to get that experience…by living like a Saint, mayhap?” he chortled as the core spun up approaching self-sustaining levels. “I’m an engineer, lass, not a monk. Why, in my wild days, you know, I wasn’t always as staid and laid-back as I am now.

  Baldwin looked at him in disbelief.

  “Why, there was even this one time—back during a quick port call on New Pacifica—I had a shuttle nozzle out of alignment, and the head of the local repair team…boy did she ever know her way around a space wrench. Taught me a thing or three about nozzle alignment in the hold of that shuttle, she did, and I’m not ashamed to admit it!”

  “How the subject of your nozzle became a topic of this conversation, I neither know nor do I care. But I warn you: one more word and I’m leaving,” she threatened.

  “And who wants the presence of a non-believer and a backstabber, who turns helpless men only concerned for her well-being over to the merciless cutting knives of the Doctors, so-called, in this fleet involved in this project in the first place?” Spalding huffed.

  “You listen to me,” Glenda snapped, “until the day—no, the hour and minute—that I’m relieved, I am the Construction Manager in charge of this yard, and I’ll go observe any project I deem, wherever and whenever I feel it’s necessary. And so long as you persist in this questionable plan to resurrect this battleship and convert her into a boat carrier, I’m going to be standing over your shoulder, pointing out your errors and making sure you don’t get anyone killed—other than your infuriating self!”

  “You’re the high-and-mighty, all-powerful Construction Manager, aren’t you?” Spalding chortled. “Why don’t you get the project shut down then, if you don’t believe in it? Admit it: you believe in the back of yer mind, where you don’t want to admit it, that this project is going to be a success. We’re going to turn two hulks, good for nothin’ but the breakers, back into functioning fleet vessels!”

  “You idiot,” she glared, “I did try to get you shut down, but when I took it to the Admiral and handed in my report he wouldn’t listen. So now I’m stuck out here trying to mitigate your insanity.”

  “Poor lass,” Spalding said consolingly, “but maybe, if you’d come out with us next time and manage to put a battleship or two in the bag—like I did—the Admiral would listen to you, too, when you get a wild hair up your backside and propose a reasonably ambitious idea like this one.”

  “Reasonably ambitious?” Glenda shouted, and then the console Spalding had been paying attention to beeped.

  He looked down at the rising temperature and evidence of a leak of some kind down in the core chamber with concern.

  “Is that what you call ‘reasonably ambitious,’ you old moron! You’ve got imminent collapse and fusion core meltdown on your hands,” she pointed.

  “Hatterson,” he bellowed, “where is that monkey suit!”

  “Right here, Chief!” a husky-looking engineering woman said, huffing and puffing her way over to his generator with an oversized, heavy load—heavily modified—suit on an overloaded hover-pallet, which trundled along behind her as she pulled.

  “Blast it, Spalding,” Glenda said her face turning white with a clear mixture of emotions, “you don’t intend to get in that suit and go into another fusion generator, do you?”

  “Oh, o’ course not,” he said, shaking his head and giving her a look like she was a bug under his microscope. “I already got an automated version of the load suit my boy came up with for quick-starting the Power, back at Capria right before we took her.”

  Glenda’s breath went out in a quick release of tension.

  “No,” he said reassuringly, “that suit there is just the last resort. You know, in case the monkey in the fusion chamber shuts down from the radiation and we have to go manual. I mean, what kind of fool do you take me for, woman? Why ever would a man go into a death trap like a core unless he had no other option?!”

  She cursed loudly. “So you really are planning to go back into a generator if you ‘have to.’ You utter, sublime, moron; why do you do this to me—don’t you realize you almost died the last time! Call off this nonsense and eject that core right now. There’s no need to risk it.”

  “Eh? Of course I realize what happened last time,” he said scornfully, “why else do you think the suit out here was heavily-reinforced? Only a fool would take that kind of rad-load twice in his lifetime. Hatterson here has been working off my plans the entire time we’ve been rebuilding these generators here. Well…when she hasn’t been working on the auto-monkey stationed right outside the door to the core, that is.” Then something seemed to occur to him, and he gave her a penetrating look, “What do you mean ‘why am I doing this to you’? I haven’t done a thing; it’s only you that’s been doin’ the doing in this relationship—if ye take my meaning,” he demanded, thinking back to the time she had hit him upside the head with an auto-wrench, and again just a couple weeks ago when she had played the damsel-in-distressed and handed him over to those dark sorcerers, who were all-too-eager to practice their bloody arts on him in station Medical.

  Glenda grabbed her hair and pulled on it, a look of pure frustration on her face. Knowing when it was wiser to turn back to minding his own affairs, he turned back to his console and fired up the auto-monkey.

  “Why call it a monkey? It’s just a modified heavy load suit,” the Construction Manager finally asked with ill grace, while looking over his shoulder as he manipulated the controls.

  “Eh?” he muttered, his focus fully on guiding the monkey over to the damaged heat exchange line in the core chamber, before sudden realization struck, “oh, that. I took one look at that suit Tiberius modified and decided it looked like nothing more than an oversized, hairy ape,” he explained, pulling up the picture. “And even after I improved on it a mite, still the ugly thing didn’t look like anything more than a big, ugly, ape.”

  “Ah,” Glenda said shortly.

  “And, o’ course, you don’t think I was goin’ to let an ape of any stripe into my engineering space—much less the heart of a fusion generator,” he said scornfully, “so that’s why I decided to call it a monkey. Monkeys, after all, are the closest relative to the ape, don’t you know? Their arms are kind of long and spindly…sort of like this one,” he said, pointing to the long, slender manipulator he was using to try and manually unfreeze the blocked-up heat exchanger line inside the core.

  “You mean…you’re using an arm you only added onto that mechanical beast of yours so that you could call it a monkey instead of an
ape?” the Manager sounded dumbstruck.

  The old Engineer flushed at having been found out so easily, but he quickly masked the reaction with a scowl. “Well…and it’s a good thing I did, too, isn’t it?” he said defensively. “Otherwise, I might have had to send it back out and go inside there myself. My process isn’t always like other men’s—or women’s,” he allowed, “sometimes my mind knows what I need before even I know that I’m going to need it!”

  “Says the biggest packrat, and proponent of the outdated technology it runs on, in three Sectors!” Baldwin said.

  “I’m workin’ here; don’t distract me,” Spalding grumbled, leaning forward and jiggling the area of pipe with the auto-release valve. There was no manual valve in there, as no one envisioned an actual person ever going into the core once it was fired up for any reason whatsoever. Out of frustration, he finally gave the sticky valve an angry thump with the monkey’s main manipulator, and suddenly the particular temperature exchange it was linked in on started working at half capacity.

  “Ha!” he said triumphantly, using the fusion panel on his console giving it orders to cycle the valve back and forth until the amount of heat exchange rose to 60%, then 70%, and finally 85% before slowly increasing a tenth of a percentage every few seconds as the frozen valve line returned itself to full function. “Nothing but pure, unmitigated skill at the controls and engineering knowhow,” he bragged. “I told you I could get her working,” he added, as the temperature slowly lowered until the reactor was no longer in danger of a meltdown, “just a little bit of somethin’ solidified in the line—most like it just needed a tap in order to break it up enough to re-liquefy,” he finished knowingly, feeling quite pleased with the way things had turned out—and all thanks to a bit of daring and a large portion of engineering knowhow.

  “You hit it with the monkey’s main arm, out of frustration,” Baldwin said with disbelief. “There was no ‘engineering knowhow’ involved. You got mad and lucked out when the pipe didn’t explode, and the clog got busted instead.”