Chain of Command

by Frank Chadwick

  Victory or death.

  The three-cruiser force sent to deal with the Human destroyers had done little better, although Nuvaash’s attention had been mostly absorbed by their own forlorn and solitary fight. Before the bridge power failed, and took the sensor feed with it, he saw one more flashing surrender tag of another uSokan cruiser and no sign of a coherent uBakai formation.

  When the admiral’s tactical center lost atmosphere and was evacuated, the staff had scattered. Nuvaash made his way by the illumination of his helmet light through the strangely silent mass of struggling crew. A few who had not managed to don their helmets in time no longer struggled. Although no sound travelled through the vacuum of the breached and now-stationary habitat wheel, Nuvaash felt several thunderous hits to the cruiser transmitted through the structure of the vessel itself and into his hands wrapped around stanchions.

  Nuvaash pulled himself to the closest access shaft between the habitat wheel and the main ship hull. If any part of the ship retained power, it would be the main hull. The power lift was inoperable but he joined the crowd of crew free-floating down the shaft, occasionally colliding with crewmen coming the other direction, trying to escape from whatever disaster they had experienced there.

  Nuvaash found a handful of compartments which still had power and atmosphere, and many more where there was at least evidence of power. He had powered down his commlink when leaving the bridge but now powered it up again and pinged the admiral.

  Nuvaash! Where in the name of the Hereafter are you? Where is the rest of the staff?

  “Admiral, power down your commlink at once! There is a plot to kill you. You can be traced by your commlink signature. Meet me at the number three power ring maintenance access bay.”

  Nuvaash heard no more and so he waited inside the maintenance bay hatch. There was power here, of a sort. A broken power router at the far end of the bay, six or seven meters from the hatch, arced and made flickering, shimmering spider webs of high voltage power, and lit the room, if irregularly. Nuvaash hooked his tether to a stanchion near the hatch and made his simple preparations.

  Ten minutes later he saw the admiral move into the corridor outside. He was alone and carried a neuro-pistol. Good. Nuvaash had made him suspicious of everyone. He showed himself at the hatchway and waved the admiral in. As he came through the door Nuvaash motioned for him to touch helmets, the only way they could communicate without using their commlinks.

  “Tether yourself to a stanchion,” Nuvaash told him. “It is dangerous here.” He pointed at the naked, arcing electricity at the end of the bay and e-Lapeela nodded. He turned to clip his tether to a stanchion and as he did so Nuvaash reached back behind himself, took hold of the neuro-wand he had left floating there, and lightly tapped the admiral on his hand.

  All of the admiral’s muscles contracted instantly, and the neuro-pistol flew from his hand, bouncing off of a bulkhead and tumbling toward the other end of the bay. Nuvaash had set the charge deliberately low so it would temporarily incapacitate the admiral but not render him unconscious. There were things Nuvaash still needed to understand.

  First he closed the hatch and secured it. He took the small magnetic jammer from the utility pocket of his shipsuit, the pocket which earlier had concealed the collapsible neuro-wand. He clipped the jammer to the back of the admiral’s helmet. Once e-Lapeela regained his senses he would try to power up his commlink, but now that would do him no good. Nuvaash turned the admiral’s still-trembling body and looked at the faceplate of the helmet. E-Lapeela’s eyes were open and they tracked Nuvaash, so the Speaker for the Enemy touched helmets again with his admiral.

  “How did you learn the secret access codes for the Kagataan jump drives? Of all the great mercantile families, none feel more hostility toward the uBakai than do the e-Kagataan. Why would they share their greatest trade secret with you?”

  “Y-y-you are a f-f-fool, N-Nuvaash.”

  “Speak,” Nuvaash said, and held the glowing tip of the neuro-wand up for e-Lapeela to see.

  “S-s-secret brotherhood. D-Dazzling New Dawn Brothers, passed codes to us. Use as w-weapon, then b-b-blame Kagataan. One b-b-blow . . . strike two t-targets.”

  He smiled broadly, if jerkily, in triumph, as if his revelation proved his brilliance, as opposed to demonstrating his stupidity and the stupidity of everyone who had been party to this disastrous scheme.

  Nuvaash drew back, made sure he was not touching the admiral, and applied the neuro-wand, incapacitating e-Lapeela again. A second shock this close after the first would give Nuvaash at least a minute before the admiral could control his movements, more than enough time. He touched helmets.

  “When you entagled the Great Houses in your scheme, you compromised the entire edifice of the Cottohazz. Three hundred years of carefully built trust—now shattered. I am uBakai, but that is not my only loyalty.”

  Nuvaash reached into his utility pocket and drew out the third object he carried there, the shining metallic shield of the Cottohazz-Gozhakampta Sugkat Jitobonaan, the Co-Gozhak Provost Corps. He held the shield against the faceplate of e-Lapeela’s helmet so he could see it clearly and understand its meaning. Then he touched helmets a last time.

  “My fellow provosts—and I as well, should I somehow manage to survive—will do everything we can to undo the damage you have wrought. You once said that governments must be careful how they deal with their heroes, and you were right. Take some satisfaction in knowing your heroic reputation, however undeserved, has shielded your family from your disgrace.”

  “K-k-kill me,” e-Lapeela said, “b-but not for what I attempted, only for f-failing. And ask yourself this, Nuvaash: c-could a conspiracy this broad, touching this many n-nations, have advanced without the knowledge of your superiors? Without the tacit approval of the Provost Corps?”

  “I have wondered that myself,” Nuvaash said. “Should I survive, I intend to find out. Now, die a hero’s death.”

  Nuvaash removed the portable jammer from e-Lapeela’s helmet, unclipped the admiral’s tether, and then used his foot to give him a soft, carefully aimed push out into the maintenance bay. The admiral floated back and back, slowly tumbling, until his body exploded into the shimmering web of raw electricity.

  For two hours after the brief but violent fight, USS Puebla coasted, running off the remaining power in its forward energy coil and the trickle of power from its LENR generators. All four radiators were out, as well as seven of its eight lasers. Its coil gun was still operational, but it had fired off the last of its missiles. Miraculously, Puebla had suffered no additional serious crew casualties. Sometimes the randomness of battle cuts in your favor. Sam supposed that it had to once in a while or it wouldn’t really be random.

  Rose Hennessey’s EVA crew worked, cutting plumbing from the number four radiator and fusing it into the remnant of the number three mount. After two hours, they had a lash-up that had about ten percent the heat dispersing power of the original radiator suite, but it was enough to light the fusion reactor, recharge the power ring, and kick out about a tenth of a gee in acceleration.

  Vimy Ridge had taken a worse pounding than Puebla. Gambara had been unable to get any sort of response from them. As Hennessey’s crew finished their work on the radiator, the cruiser NNS Aradu, after a long burn to reverse course, docked with the wreck of Vimy Ridge and began taking off survivors. Sam hoped that Sadie Rockaway had made it, but he tried not to hope too hard. Not long afterwards, the other cruiser, HMS Exeter, matched course with Puebla. By then Sam had moved forward to the main bridge and taken command there.

  “Captain, I have incoming text,” Gambara reported. “Message reads: Exeter to Puebla. We are matching course and are prepared to evacuate survivors. Signed, Ranjha, Captain.”

  Sam sat silently for a moment, at first unsure what the message meant.

  “Survivors?” Marina Fillipenko beside him in Tac One said. “What does that British asshole think? That we’re a bunch of shipwrecked mariners?”


  Sam laughed.

  “We probably look that way. Gambara, make the following reply: Puebla to Exeter. Negative. We are operational. Signed, Bitka, Captain. PS Hunting music appreciated.”

  Gambara transmitted the message and after a moment spoke again.

  “Captain, incoming text: ‘Exeter to Puebla. In my judgment your craft not salvageable. Recommend in strongest terms you set scuttling charges and transfer personnel to this ship.’”

  The routine activity stopped and several of the bridge crew exchanged somber looks. He heard the hum of servos as Chief Barghava, and then Ensign Lee turned their chairs to look up at him. To his lower right Burns and Ramirez did the same, and Sam saw Delacroix beyond them craning her neck to see his reaction.

  “Kramer, send: Puebla to Exeter. Noted.”

  For a moment the bridge was silent, and then it filled with the sound of relieved laughter and the hum of servos as the bridge crew reset their stations.

  “Helm, are our docking and maneuvering lights still working?”

  “Captain, it looks like about a third of them might be,” Ensign Lee answered.

  “Well turn them on. Turn on every exterior light we’ve got. Let ‘em see us. USS Puebla has power, thrust, atmosphere, and one laser, and by God we are a boat to be reckoned with.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  16 January 2134

  (three days later) (twenty-sixth day in K’tok orbit)

  It took nine hours at one tenth of a gee to get Puebla’s vector away from K’tok cancelled, and then they were low enough on reaction mass they just gave her a gentle nudge back toward K’tok. By then Sam had gotten the final tally: Vimy Ridge was a total loss, but the uBakai had lost six cruisers to concentrated missile and laser fire, including their flagship. Two cruisers and two transports had surrendered. Three cruisers had jumped away, and one cruiser and one transport had escaped under high acceleration. Where they thought they were going was anybody’s guess.

  He also found out Sadie Rockaway from Vimy Ridge was alive but injured, which meant Lieutenant Commander Chen in Oaxaca was technically the commander of the division. In reality, there was no task group, just two broken boats trying to limp back to K’tok, and Arleux, damaged and undermanned, in low orbit, all of which Brigadier General Irekanmi had taken under his direct control. His commanding hand so far had rested lightly on the destroyers. He asked what the cruisers could do to assist them, and beyond that left things up to the captains. Well before Puebla got back to K’tok, the two heavy cruisers had taken over the bombardment duty and given Arleux a well-earned rest.

  It took three days of coasting for Puebla to make orbit. Somewhere along the way he found out that rescued Varoki crewmembers from the uBakai flagship said tht it had also been the ship which fired the opening shot of the war, the one which had killed Jules. It was just a machine and turning it into twisted junk did nothing to bring Jules or any of the others back. Still, it brought Sam a small measure of satisfaction knowing it was gone. The enemy admiral was also dead; that was better.

  The big, new Human task force was on its way, and Sam would later learn that was why Brigadier General Irekanmi had taken the chance of making an in-system jump. He figured if he lost his gamble, there would still be fleet elements to fight for system control, but if he didn’t do something the Coalition was going to lose K’tok before the cavalry even got there. Of course, he had also waited until the uBakai had followed the task group over a hundred thousand kilometers above the densest part of the plane of the ecliptic. The risk was well-calculated and nicely timed. Sam was forced to rethink his opinion of naval officers with army-sounding ranks.

  He couldn’t remember when exactly he’d found out all that, because those three days became a blur of activity without much rest. Puebla needed a lot of fixing, just to keep its core systems up and running. Sam spent a lot of time in engineering, trying to smooth the road for Chief Miko Tanaka’s A-Gang, pitching in whenever one of their two undamaged fabricators started acting up, but otherwise trying to stay out of their way.

  By the time Puebla made its final correcting burn to enter K’tok orbit, the crew had settled down into the routine of watch-standing and repairs. The boat now had two operational lasers, both on the port side, and could radiate active radar from enough panels on its port side to get a decent picture of one tactical hemisphere. They had to roll the boat to get a complete picture. In some ways it was as if Puebla had suffered a stroke.

  The active crew had been reduced from its original complement of ninety-five to just forty-six fit for duty: eight officers, eight chief petty officers, and thirty other ranks. One chief and six other ranks were still in sick bay while one officer, one chief, and eight others were critically injured and in cold sleep. Half of the crew still active had suffered some form of injury, most of them serious enough to qualify for a Purple Heart. If people thought Puebla looked sad from the outside, they should come inside and look.

  The crew went about their duties differently than they had. At first there was an enormous burst of relief that they had survived when so many other had not. There was a bit of swagger as well, at first, which Sam put down to pride in part, but more than that to whistling past the graveyard, a graveyard which had for the moment closed its gates but which was nevertheless still there, still open for business.

  But Sam noticed something else, first in Tanaka’s A-gang and then the rest of the crew. Once the immediate reactions cooled, they went about their duties quietly, without haste, and with a careful deliberation, as if the circuit boards and hull panels and antenna arrays they worked on were made of spun sugar instead of composite alloy, as if they would crumble at the touch if you weren’t careful. They treated their fellow crewmates with the same deliberate, careful attention. It wasn’t just fear of breaking them, Sam thought, but also a sort of wonder that somehow Puebla was still here, that their crewmates were still here, that they were still here, and if they weren’t still here, if this was just a dream, they did not want to do anything that would wake them from it. One word came to Sam over and over, even though he knew it wasn’t exactly the right word, but maybe there was no exactly right word, and maybe this was as close as he could ever come: reverent.

  The last day before entering orbit he gave himself three hours off to get some sleep, but once in his cubby he found himself wide awake, thinking about those who hadn’t come through to this side, all of them, but three in particular who had died most recently. Three people gone from the world, three people in the tidal wave of death which would flow from this war, three drops in an ocean: Ensign Jerry Robinette, the Varoki Admiral named e-Lapeela, and Lieutenant Commander Delmar Huhn.

  What to make of this, of these lives, or these deaths? Was there some sort of lesson to be learned here, in these lives lived so differently but which had all ended the same? Sam had, in a sense, lived with them, even though he had never met his Varoki adversary. It made him feel something for them, even for the uBakai who had killed so many others—a sense of loss. They’d been here in the world with him, had left a mark on his life, and now were gone. Before them, Jules, connected to him in different ways than these three, but connected nevertheless, and all the connections now severed.

  He wasn’t sure the feeling was just loss. Maybe also fear? Sure, fear too. Live your life however you choose, but whether you are hero or villain or fool, the reaper’s long blade topples you all with the same single sweep. The military is not a life assurance venture, Cassandra had said. Well, neither is life itself, is it? Bargain away everything you hold dear, your pride and self-respect and the lives of everyone you ever cared for, to get an extra month, or day, or hour of life, or a bit more comfort or power or acclaim, and death can still cheat you out of it. No matter how you live, there is no bargaining with death, and Sam decided only fools think they can. So how you live is just . . . who you choose to be, minute by minute, until the clock stops.

  These thoughts did not gladden him but neither did they oppress
him. He remembered, days earlier, realizing there was a sort of freedom which came from being completely screwed. And they were all completely screwed, weren’t they? Screwed at birth, screwed good and proper.

  And so they were all free . . . gloriously, terminally free.

  Two hours after entering K’tok orbit, the chime on Sam’s cabin door sounded and he saw Larry Goldjune waiting in the corridor. They had not exchanged a single word since the battle, beyond the minimum communication necessary to their jobs. Sam had forgotten to reprimand him for turning over the watch to Barb Lee before the last battle, and then had decided to let it slide. For now he was done with battles of all sorts, or at least he thought so.

  “Lieutenant Bitka,” Goldjune addressed him as soon as he entered the cabin, “I have just received orders from the acting task force commander to relieve you, and assume command of USS Puebla immediately, and further to inform you that you are to consider yourself under house arrest pending transportation to the task force flagship, there to stand trial by court martial. I believe the principal charges will be gross insubordination and conduct injurious to order.”

  Sam felt blood drain from his face, felt momentarily dizzy. After all they had gone through during the last week, this was the last way he’d expected it to end. After a moment’s thought, though, it made at least a glimmer of sense: his speech. His ridicule of Larry’s uncle, the admiral. He looked back at Goldjune, whose face now bore the faintest evidence of a smirk.

  “Try kicking admirals around. See what happens,” the executive officer said. “You’re going to get a big chicken dinner, Bitka—six months to eat it and six months to pay for it.”