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

by Luke Sky Wachter

  Brence clenched his fist. “Finally!”

  “But first, put these on,” Spalding said, handing over a contraption that looked like nothing more than dark eye glasses and a pair of earmuffs. “And make sure,” he wagged a finger, “that no matter what you hear—or think you hear, or even see, for that matter—don’t take these off. It’s the only way to protect you from what’s inside.”

  Brence nodded seriously. “Okay,” he said.

  “Good! Now put them on,” Spalding ordered.

  Minutes later, they entered the Heart of the Ship.

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

  It was difficult to move around in the Heart, and Brence could hardly see a thing. They didn’t look like much to Brence, but he knew enough about the pair of audiovisual mufflers when he put them on his head. They were normally used by those in therapy, men in desperate need of sleep, or technicians that needed to focus on a single task inside a highly active work environment, the mufflers automatically sorted out extraneous noises—and even certain shapes and colors—so a person could focus on the task at hand.

  But the reason he was wearing such a thing or rather things on his head was because, clearly, the ‘circle of trust’ only went so far. Not that he was complaining, of course. In these sorts of situations, the less you knew the better off you’d usually be.

  The Commander might talk a good game about saving lives, worlds, and galaxies, but there was clearly more going on down here than would easily survive official scrutiny. Not that Brence particularly cared; the old engineer had seen something in him that no one else had, and Brence would follow him into a core overload if that’s what it took to get his back.

  He smirked as he stumbled around and started to help lift something because, now that he thought of it, that’s exactly what he’d done for the Chief Engineer at one point in time. Thank Murphy he hadn’t had to do it a second; he doubted he’d survive the experience.

  Still and again, not that he particularly cared what was going on one way or the other but, if there was one thing he as a former grifter of no particular skill had learned, it was the value of not knowing too much. And for all that Spalding ‘Hero of the MSP Fleet’ said otherwise, his nose was telling him this was one of those occasions when ignorance was probably bliss.

  So, whistling a tune under his breath, the reformed engineer set about with a will. Whatever else it might signify, he knew that once they were done with this load they could finally call in the Imperial repair robot and the days of heavy lifting in both their on-duty and off-duty hours would come to an end.

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

  Spalding peered at Brence with the beady eye until it became obvious that, not only did the younger man not have any clue what sort of business they were actually about in here, but more importantly it didn’t appear he wanted to know either. All told, that suited the old engineer right down to the deck.

  The other Engineer wasn’t the weak reed he’d appeared to be at first blush, way back when Spalding had taken control of the Lucky Clover’s Engineering Department for the first time—officially, at any rate—by not being as bad as a man first ‘appeared’ wasn’t quite the ringing endorsement it could be. Yes, Brence had proven himself again and again several times over and yet still he wondered. Maybe he was letting the past unduly influence him but still…no. It was best this way. Safer, at any rate.

  He would have preferred Gants. The man wasn’t quite the tightened-down sprocket that Brence was, but he was steady as the day was long. Unfortunately, the lad had been enticed away by the tune of murder and mayhem and now walked the Armory path. The Armory was a fine department—necessary, even. But Spalding couldn’t have a man with mixed loyalties; the Locker was a mystery that belonged to engineers and engineers only!

  Which left Brence: a man who had walked into a fusion reactor to pull him, Spalding, back out, at no little danger to himself—not to mention the pain and suffering he had endured afterward.

  Well he was probably just being an old worry-wart. Not that he was going to change his mind at this late point; there was no need to take unnecessary chances. But after this was over, maybe it was time to see about Brence becoming ‘Senior Lieutenant Brence’ and have him put in charge of something small—a corvette, or a cruiser maybe. The boy wasn’t ready to run a battleship, but a smaller ship should be just the challenge—and no one knew better than Spalding how the title Chief Engineer had a certain ring to it.

  Pulling the boy over to right where he needed him—next to the new four foot tall, crystalline pillar next to the original Core Fragment near the middle of the room—the two engineers carefully maneuvered the wheeled cart into the appropriate spot.

  -Greetings, Commander- the words appeared on the physical screen hanging down from the middle of the ceiling.

  Spalding gave a nod and grunted. “How do you do?” he asked perfunctorily.

  -The We that is Us have been aware of your efforts for quite some time now- replied the Core Fragment(s?) leaving a blinking dot on the screen after its latest words.

  “My efforts? Oh,” Spalding said, realization suddenly dawning, “you mean you sensed the vibrations through the floor.”

  -It is clear you intend to move the crystal repositories- flashed across the screen.

  “Now, just hold on a mike,” Spalding frowned, “who says I have to be moving the pillars? Could be I was just here for any number of reasons.”

  -In descending order of probability are: removing the Pillars to a secondary site; a fragment destruction attempt; or an improvement of the current containment facility onboard this ship. However. due to previously stated goals, current behavioral model. and the equipment present at this time, the last two are of increasingly lower…

  While the overgrown crystal continued to blather, the old engineer helped Brence start to unbolt the large metal plate beneath the new second crystal.

  The moment he took a break to look up again a series of letters and words flashed across the screen.

  -What are your intentions- asked the Crystals.

  “You can rest easy; I’m not here to destroy anyone,” he said irritably.

  A line went across the screen several times, but he didn’t have all day to stand around the job site chit-chatting, so he turned back to the job at hand.

  What was he, some kind of itinerant slacker who showed up to work only to then spend the next several hours chatting up the client—or his neighbors—before so much as lifting a hand to the job? It was those kinds of slackers who gave hard-working engineers like himself a bad name.

  With resolution, he turned back to the job pulling out the auto-wrench and a plasma torch and starting to work on the original crystal.

  “Alright, you,” the Chief Engineer said standing up and straightening his back. Pausing for a moment, he twisted from side to side before placing his hands behind his back and pressing until he heard a pop, “that’s better. Anyway, you won’t be going to the great waste recycler in the sky anytime soon. Just stand by while old Spalding puts you onto this wheeled-cart and we’ll get you transferred over to your new home in just a jiff.”

  To the old Engineer’s surprise, there was surprisingly little resistance to the move from the Core Fragment. He eyed the crystal pillar suspiciously but, being a mainly inanimate object, there was of course no physical sign as to any hidden intentions. Just to be safe, he whipped out a scanner and pointed it at the Fragment, watching for any sign of abnormal electronic activity.

  But when nothing was found, he frowned at the Core Fragment and turned back to his work bound and determined to keep a weather eye on the situation.

  Swept up in the work, it only took several hours to carefully and painstakingly disassemble the area and transfer the vital crystal pillars onto the wheeled-cart.

  “Well then,” he said wiping his hands together, “I think that just about does it for the easy part!”

  Beside him, B
rence stirred.

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

  He’d been standing around for the better part of a minute when he heard a muffled sound. Looking over through the distorted goggles he was wearing caused his vision to zoom in until he was looking at individual fibers on Spalding’s uniform.

  “Did you say something, Chief?” Brence asked. Between the auditory mufflers and the vision-focusing goggles, he could hardly hear or see a thing. Plus, after more than a few hours, they were starting to itch. He placed a hand on the mufflers and started to pull.

  “That’s okay, lad,” Spalding said over the com-link built into the mufflers placing his hand over Brence’s, causing the younger man to stop removing his head gear, “we’re almost done in here. I was just talking with myself, as a man tends to do when he gets older—you’ll find out for yourself someday, if you’re as unlucky as me.”

  “Of course, sir,” Brence replied after a moment, his natural inclination to delay and avoid at odds with the desire to take off the gear and rub his face.

  Heaving and pulling, the two men managed to load the two pillars onto the wheeled-cart.

  “Just help me throw this tarpaulin over the load to keep the dust off and we can get this show on the road, Brence, me boy,” Spalding gasped from the effort and, when you factored in the strength of his reinforced body, that said something about just how heavy the load was.

  After covering the load with the reflective sheet, and dragging the cart out of the room, Spalding activated the four-sided ion field he’d built into the contraption and gestured for Brence to pull off his head gear.

  “That’s a relief,” the younger man sighed, tearing off his gear and rubbing his scalp. He stopped and gave the cart’s covered load a jaundiced eye. It didn’t look like much, but whatever was under that tarp had been heavy. He knew that and with that ion field…well that was as much as he cared to know also.

  Finally, and after much effort, they pushed cart to the lift—after a minor hang-up on a jutting piece of pipe which wedged between the cart’s wheels. As they neared the lift, Spalding pulled out his diagnostic scanner and went around the cart performing a series of last-minute tests and adjustments before pronouncing the cart ready for transport.

  Paranoid to the last, the suspicious old Engineer pulled out an advanced portable scanner on a hover floater and walked back and forth between the Heart compartment and the lift doors. He did so twice, peering intently at everything in the darkened compartment as he did so before taking the cart into the lift and over to the heavily shielded shuttle craft waiting for them in the shuttle bay.

  Unbeknownst to either man, the pipe they’d run into previously hadn’t just been lodged between the wheels, forcing them to tug it backward until it was freed—it had also temporarily knocked loose a critical wire feeding power into the right side of the ion field.

  If that had been the extent of it—a loose wire that was reconnected before the pair of Core Fragments had even left the Locker—it wouldn’t have been any problem whatsoever. However, on the other side of that pile of pipes was a pair of old, outdated regeneration tanks—one of which received a very important update, as well as one very large file via electrically-transmitted download before the cart once again began to move.

  Thirty minutes after the engineers had vacated the floor with their precious cargo, the decrepit old regen tank began to slowly bubble.

  Chapter Fifty-six: On Patrol

  “What’s the status on our in-system sweeps, Executive Officer?” Commodore Druid asked, peering around the bridge of his battleship, the Parliamentary Power, with satisfaction. It had taken more weeks than he was comfortable with but, despite robbing his ship for core startup crews to assign to the newly captured battleships sitting in space dock, his ship and his crew were finally back in what he could once again consider fighting trim.

  There was a short pause. “Last sweep was negative, Commodore,” reported Lieutenant Commander Mark Reordan Slim. The man was his new replacement first officer, after Druid had made the mistake of suggesting his previous XO for the top slot on one of the new captured battleships. Slim was a decent enough Officer, and Druid had worked with the man back in the Sector Guard, and even before that in the Aegis Defense Force. But the man was still feeling his way around as the XO of not just a Captain, but of a Commodore.

  “Did Intelligence pull anything new out of the data dump from that freighter, the,” he looked at his pad to clarify, “Brilliant Cargo Gem out of Old-Old York?”

  Lieutenant Commander Slim shook his head. “Nothing actionable, Commodore. Although we did pick up a surprising amount of chatter from their trader logs about a potential blockade of Prometheus Star System,” the other man reported.

  Druid sighed. “Another trade embargo?” he asked

  “Most likely, sir,” Lieutenant Commander Slim nodded. “Reading between the lines of the blockade’s vague descriptions, it looks like someone is sending a message to Prometheus.”

  “Another Core World dispute,” the Commodore growled, “you see it all the time now. I thought that with Isaak taking the Sector Governor spot, and the local Assembly finally looking like it was getting its act together, we wouldn’t see these kinds of inter-world disputes anymore. It’s another good reminder why we signed up with Montagne’s Patrol Fleet; at least out here we’re actually trying to stop these sorts of things from happening in the first place! When will these fools finally realize that they’re doing more harm to themselves than Pirates and the collapse of Imperial Authority combined? You know one of these days….”

  “I hear you, sir,” the Lieutenant Commander replied after the Commodore trailed off.

  “Well, package it up; anything that looks serious—including the Prometheus situation—should be forwarded to the Admiral via the ComStat network,” Druid ordered.

  “We’re ready to jump anytime now, Sir,” Slim reminded him, “you want to package it up and send it after we have a chance to scan the next System?”

  Druid shook his head.

  “We’re at the edge of network range,” pressed the Xo.

  “And we’re only going to get further out,” Druid stiffened, “send it now, XO.”

  “Will do, Commodore,” Lieutenant Commander Slim said formally and then cocked his head. “When are you planning to point transfer out of this system?” he asked, no doubt wondering how long he had to crack the whip on Intelligence so they could keep sifting for vital data.

  “I think we’ll wait until next shift. Third shift hasn’t had as many chances at being on duty during a point transfer,” Druid replied judiciously.

  “Aye-aye, Sir,” said Slim.

  Druid nodded grateful that his ship the recently revamped Parliamentary Power had been selected for extended patrol duty. Someone needed to do it. It was what he and his squadron of men and ships had signed up for when they’d resigned from the Sector Guard and signed up with the Confederation’s Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet. And, honestly, he didn’t feel a bit ashamed about pulling rank by pointing to the Power’s effectiveness in the Battle for Elysium—and otherwise calling in every favor he could—in order to get this assignment.

  His was a fighting battleship and, although he hadn’t been in command for that long, it was a blasted sight longer than any other ship or commander, save Captain Laurent or Admiral Montagne himself. With Laurent’s Imperial Strike Cruiser down for extended repair work on its drives after the battle and boarding action, to his mind, the choice of which ship should patrol had been clear.

  In six hours they had performed another jump along their designated patrol route and once again show the Confederation Flag. They’d already run off a pair of suspicious merchant ships with unusual power fluctuations in their fusion plants. Most likely they had been pirates of opportunity, who continued to run cargo when things were good and indulge in a little selective piracy out on the border of known space when things weren’t.

  They were doing good work but
, after Elysium, they were ready for anything.

  Chapter Fifty-seven: On the Move

  “All hands, prepare for combat jump. I say again: all hands prepare for combat jump, by order of the Commodore,” the com-tech’s voice echoed throughout the ship.

  “Boats, verify the Captain’s Cutter is fully spun up and crewed,” Druid ordered calmly. “I want everything except the hyper drive charged up and ready to go.” Having a second hyper drive active during a jump would have been suicidal, potentially destroying both the cutter and his battleship, so that was out. But he wanted everything else ready to go.

  “The Cutter is spinning up its power plant and charging energy banks as we speak, Commodore,” said the bosun, after a beat adding, “can also confirm Captain’s Cutter is now-fully crewed with volunteers from First Shift Bridge and Engineering staff, Sir.”

  “Alright, people,” Druid instructed, “let’s do this by the numbers. I want sensors scanning the instant we emerge from hyper-space; I want gun ports opened and ready to fire on my mark; and I want this battleship free from the inertial sump as soon as physically possible. This is a combat emergence drill, and I intend for this ship and crew to set the standard for the rest of the Fleet. Let’s do this.”

  Heads nodded and people turned to their stations with renewed intensity. This wasn’t just a routing point transfer; this was now about something more, and it had been turned into a case of ship’s pride.

  Yes, thought Druid, this ship is finally coming back together again after crew transfers that cut us to the bone, only to be replaced with greenhorns who didn’t know their knees from their elbows.

  Looking professional and unconcerned, Executive Officer Slim turned up at Druid’s elbow not half a minute later.

  “Is there something I should be aware of, Commodore?” he asked in a low voice, one intended to reach just the commodore he was standing next too.