by Terry Mixon
Senior Sergeant Jones took Kelsey by the arm and looked suitably shocked when she stood and slammed him face down onto the conference table without the slightest effort.
Jared opened his mouth to say something, but Meyer beat him to it. “Captain, we need to take a step back. The princess may have a point. Legally speaking. We should withdraw to consider the situation before we make the wrong choice.”
Breckenridge looked as though he wanted to lash out, but he stepped back from the abyss after a very long moment of silence. Very reluctantly. “Commander Mertz, you will come with us.”
“He will not,” Kelsey said firmly. “Courageous says you don’t believe she is an active Fleet vessel. Fine. I hereby declare her my diplomatic ship and transfer Captain Mertz and his crew from the disabled Athena to Courageous to act as my crew on detached duty. You may be the senior Fleet commander in this area, but they are no longer under your authority.”
Breckenridge’s expression was apocalyptic. He backed out into the corridor. “This isn’t over. We’re leaving.”
Kelsey released the marine and he backed out with his fellows. Meyer inclined his head and strode out.
Once they were all gone, she slumped back into her seat. “Well, that could’ve gone better.”
Jared agreed, but he wasn’t sure how they could have gone about salvaging the situation once Breckenridge attempted to assert dominance. “Courageous, without sounding an alarm that Captain Breckenridge or his people can see or hear, go to general quarters. No battle screens unless they fire on us. Block all transmissions from inside this ship. And signal Lance that she is to withdraw at once. This isn’t the Pentagarans’ fight and I don’t want Breckenridge to think she’s a threat.”
He rubbed his face as Lieutenant Reese looked into the conference room questioningly. “Take your men and follow them to the docking level, Lieutenant. I want them off my ship without force, if possible. Be gentle. They are Fleet personnel.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Well,” he said to Kelsey, “this certainly makes things harder. What do we do now?”
She sat down at the table and buried her face in her hands. “I haven’t got the faintest idea, but we need to get this settled as soon as possible. That freighter could pop up at any time now. If we’re still bickering, it’ll bring the wrath of the rebels down on us.”
Chapter Eight
Kelsey listened closely as Jared finished detailing his interactions with Breckenridge. “The man sounds like a real ass. How does someone that lacking in talent become a senior captain in Fleet? I ask only because I intend to make sure it never happens again.”
Her brother stalked around his office. “Good luck with that. You’ll have to get his uncle thrown out of the Imperial Senate first. And don’t forget his influential family.”
He sighed. “While that’s a worthy goal, we need to worry about our current situation first. The freighter and its escort will be along shortly. I’d intended to make our way over there today, just in case they came early. We have to stop them or we’re completely screwed.”
She took a breath and forced herself to focus. “We will. It’s been three hours. If Breckenridge was going to reject my authority, he’d already have done so.”
“Or he’s trying to figure out how to take Courageous out,” her brother said grimly.
“Let’s hope not. Even his uncle wouldn’t be able to save his ass if he attacked the daughter of the emperor or other Fleet personnel.”
They’d separated from the Fleet task force and entered into orbit around Pentagar. A probe kept an eye on the other ships as they sat out in space a short distance away.
Talbot sat beside Kelsey. “And if you can’t work it out?”
“We’ll work it out,” she said firmly. “Even if we don’t, they don’t have enough military force to do anything terminally stupid in Pentagar space. The Pentagaran fleet would chew them up and the interdiction zone fortresses would keep them bottled up in this system. They’re not going to make that mistake. And that’s the reason I know that we’ll work it out. Because they have no choice.”
Jared shook his head. “Life’s taught me that you can’t count on someone else doing the smart thing. Sometimes you can’t even count on yourself for that. Bright people make terrible mistakes every day. Once you factor in stupidity, well, all bets are off.”
“Pardon the interruption, Captain,” Courageous said. “There is a cutter departing the Fleet task force. Spear is also signaling, asking for Princess Kelsey.”
She rose to her feet. “Thank you, Courageous. Jared, may I borrow your desk?”
He gave her a lopsided smile. “It’s your ship.”
“It was the best I could come up with on short notice. Tell me you’d rather be over there with him right now. In the brig.”
“I’ll take our current circumstances. Thank you.”
Kelsey sat at the desk and activated the console. An image of Captain Wallace Breckenridge appeared.
“Princess Kelsey.”
“Captain. Have you reached a conclusion on my position?”
The man looked as though he smelled something bad. “Those familiar with legal matters have advised me to accept your claims for the moment. Rest assured that I will dispatch a probe for home to get this situation clarified at once. In the meantime, I recognize that this situation requires some compromise. My ships and I are yours to command.
“However, I insist that my chief medical officer examine you in your medical center. I also insist that one of my officers be present on your staff.”
She didn’t like the idea of his people on board Courageous at all, but even if he’d stuffed that cutter full of people, they could handle it. “I accept those conditions. Once I have satisfied your doctor, we need to have the meeting I originally called for. There is very little time before the rebels arrive to discover that we’ve taken the other system from them. We can’t afford to allow them to escape.”
“I feel confident that I will be able to formulate a plan of attack to stop a freighter and its escort.”
“Captain Mertz and his team have been working on a plan for months. I’m certain that he will be able to execute it successfully.”
Breckenridge shook his head. “Unacceptable. I am the senior Fleet officer and task force commander. You have given me the order and I will determine the best method to carry it out. Commander Mertz is on detached duty and solely responsible for you and your ship.”
She sighed, recognizing a futile situation in his intransigence. “I’ll contact you as soon as we’re done here.”
“I look forward to your call.” His tone indicated otherwise. “Good day, Highness.” The transmission terminated.
“Isn’t he just a joy to work with?” she asked rhetorically. “It shames me to ask this, but how do we know that cutter isn’t loaded with a missile warhead?”
“Courageous, was that transmission via tight beam?” Jared asked.
“Negative.”
“Then all his people heard him acknowledge your authority and identity. Would he try to kill the second in line to the Throne with that many witnesses?”
“I certainly hope not.”
Talbot stood. “You two wait for them in the medical center. Commander Graves and I can meet the cutter.”
She glared at him. “And you getting blown up would somehow make this better?”
“Better than you and the captain going up in smoke.”
Jared nodded. “That’s the best plan. We’ll go with it.”
She felt her eyes narrow. “Isn’t this my choice?”
“Not when it comes to your safety. Come on. There’s just enough time for Talbot to arrange everything.”
She and Jared went to the medical center. She filled Doctor Stone in while they waited.
The doctor smiled. “I’ve worked with Doctor Guzman before. He’s not inclined to be anyone’s yes man. If he gave the captain a clean bill of health, he’ll do the same for you.”
“Cutter docking,” Courageous said from the overheads.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to that,” Stone said.
Kelsey chuckled. “Wait until he can say something in your head without warning. While you’re in the shower.”
She brought up the vid feed to the docking area and saw Commander Meyer and several others come onto the ship. It only took them a few minutes to arrive in the medical center. One of the men, a massive black man with a shaved head, smiled at Stone. “Lily, it’s so good to see you again.”
“Justin.” Lily took his hand into hers. “Welcome aboard. I can’t wait to show you around my medical center.”
“And I can’t wait to see it. First, though, I need to examine Princess Kelsey.” He bowed his head apologetically. “I’m Doctor Justin Guzman, Highness. I’ll be as quick as I can.”
She smiled even though she’d rather go through an armed combat drop than a medical examination. “Shall we start with a full body scan?”
“That sounds fine. I’m given to understand you received implants similar to Captain Mertz?”
“Why don’t I let you see for yourself?”
Kelsey reclined on the examination table and let Lily take over. She knew the exact moment when the other doctor grasped the scale of her modifications, because he gaped at the display.
“My God,” he muttered. “What the hell did they do to you?”
Kelsey smiled up at him sardonically. “As hard as it is to believe, they gave me Imperial Commando implants. That’s like a marine on steroids. A lot of steroids.”
“Look here,” Lily said, pointing to the screen beside the table. “You’ll note she has the same cranial implants as Captain Mertz. In addition, her bones now have a graphene coating. She has artificial musculature in all her major muscle groups, as well. I’ve seen her lift a weight machine. Not the maximum weight. The entire machine.”
She’d been wearing her combat armor at the time, but Kelsey saw no reason to elaborate.
Doctor Guzman looked down at her with ill-concealed shock. “That’s hard to believe.”
The marine from Spear—Senior Sergeant Jones—spoke up. “Believe it, Doc. She slammed me onto a table without any problem at all.”
The older man shook his head, as though clearing out the cobwebs. “I’ll accept it, hypothetically. What is this?”
Lily smiled. “You’ll love this. That’s her pharmacology unit. I’ve been working on deciphering what the drugs are, but some of them are still a mystery to me. I know they can do something to speed up the reactivity of her nerves, as well as accelerating her brain functions. There are some powerful painkillers and just about anything that would be useful in combat.”
Chemical data scrolled up the screen. The doctor examined it. “That’s astonishing. Some of these have the potential to revolutionize pharmacology.”
“She also had enhancements to her eyes, ears, and sense of smell. Finally, she has medical nanites, as does the captain. There are millions of small machines throughout her body that can repair a tremendous amount of damage. Do you see any signs of surgery?”
The older man examined the readouts closely. “None at all. The cuts must’ve been incredibly fine to leave no traces.”
Kelsey knew what was coming, but it still made her stomach roil when Lily put up the image of her just after they’d rescued her. She lay flat on the table as the medical team prepped her for the regenerator. Terrible scars, red and raw covered her skull and arms. They couldn’t see under the sheet, but the scars had covered her entire body.
Everyone from Spear sucked in horrified gasps. Even Commander Meyer looked ill, his glance toward her filled with pity. Pity she didn’t want or need.
“The scars covered every part of her body and the surgery was done without any anesthesia at all,” Stone said dispassionately. “The regenerator did what it could, and would probably have fixed everything well enough that the scars wouldn’t be visible, but the nanites fixed the damage right down to the cellular level. They also corrected other damage from childhood injuries.
“From speaking to someone knowledgeable with these kinds of nanites, she can also expect an extended life span. Approximately three hundred years, from what I’ve been able to determine. Though I’ve begun to suspect that her nanites are even more effective than those used by a normal Fleet officer or marine. She might live half again longer. Or forever. We just don’t know.”
Guzman shook his head again. “That’s…well, I was going to say preposterous, but I think I might need to move the marker for that word out a little bit. Difficult to believe, then. I’ll want to see all your medical records for the princess, please. Highness, you can sit up. We two sawbones will adjourn to Doctor Stone’s office to hash this out.”
Senior Sergeant Jones stepped over after the doctors had left and she’d sat up. “Highness, I want to apologize for putting my hands on your person. I deeply regret doing so.”
She considered being snippy with him, but rejected the thought almost at once. He was Talbot’s fellow marine. “You were following what you thought to be the lawful orders of your commanding officer, Senior Sergeant. I won’t hold that against you. Besides, I might have caused you some embarrassment. I’m sorry about that.”
His face took on a wry expression. “It has been mentioned a few times. I’m sure I’ll be able to live it down in a few years.”
“I bet I can help with that,” Talbot said. “There’s a Pentagaran vid of some assassins ambushing a group of us. It’s very…educational.”
Kelsey wanted to tell him not to play it, but she knew she’d have to live with that recording for the rest of her life. At least she hadn’t shared the recordings of the ambush on the asteroid and in the sunken battlecruiser housing the Pale Ones AI. They were still safely isolated in her implant memory.
She’d watched the vid several times and it still shocked her. It hadn’t felt like she was moving that quickly during the attack, but she was. Her implants had taken control of her and moved her through the attackers like a ghost. Yes, they’d grazed her arm with one shot, but she’d been empty-handed against half a dozen armed men. She’d killed most of them before their bodies had hit the floor.
The men from Spear were quiet as the vid played out. Afterwards, they stared at her with an expression much different from pity. Shock and awe, Talbot had called it.
“That was her on autopilot,” Talbot said to the hushed gathering. “Less than a week after the Pale Ones ripped her apart and rebuilt her. In the last two months, she’s been training and has much better control of her enhancements. She’s significantly more deadly now, especially with weapons. Her implants link right into them and she can outshoot me.
“We don’t have recordings, but she interrupted a Pale Ones ambush. She was in powered Imperial commando armor with a high-powered flechette railgun and a plasma rifle. Armed like that, she’d have a better than even chance of taking out the entire marine compliment on Spear while they were in an entrenched defensive position.”
Kelsey took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It’s not something I ever saw myself as, Senior Sergeant, but there is no shame in losing out to me physically. I’m not the little girl I look like. I’m a killing machine. And every single Pale One is just like me. Underestimating them means death or worse.” Her voice turned grim as she told him how outclassed they were.
She shifted her gaze to Commander Meyer. “On a different level, I can interface with Courageous. I watched you when you boarded this ship through my implant feed. I can access the ship’s scanners right now and tell you exactly how far away Spear is from us. I know her weapons status, I know her precise course.
“I’m so in tune with my armor that I forget I’m wearing it. Jared is just the same way with this ship. He could take Courageous to battle stations, fire her weapons, and anything else he would normally do on the bridge from his bed. Imagine what this ship could do if every officer and crewperson were implante
d. At this moment, she’s not nearly as efficient as she will be one day. And even in this reduced state, she could take all of your ships from a standing start.”
Meyer gulped. “It seems I may have underestimated the threat that these Pale Ones pose, and the benefits of enhancement. You envision all Fleet personnel having these one day?”
She nodded. “I don’t see how we can avoid it, Commander. And, honestly, the Fleet implant surgery isn’t that hard to recover from. Jared was on light duty the same day and fully recovered the next. A commando should have the work done in a series of procedures with recovery and training time between them. Regular marines would have less work than me. I’ve fully recovered, even though I’m still learning what I need to know about using them. This is nothing to be afraid of.”
The door to Lily’s office opened and the two physicians came out. Guzman bowed his head. “I’ve been over every aspect of your enhancement, Highness. You have my full medical approval.”
She smiled. “Thank you, Doctor. Gentlemen, if you have no further objections, we need to have that briefing. I want all ship’s captains brought aboard Courageous for a briefing tomorrow morning. I’ve been up all night and they need time to examine all the data we’ve gathered. Captain Mertz will lead the briefing. Come ready to plan our next moves in a hurry. The rebels will be back in less than a week and we must be ready for them. That means we leave for Erorsi as soon as the briefing is over.”
Chapter Nine
Breckenridge came spoiling for a fight. He and his officers arrived in a phalanx and sat across the table from Jared, Kelsey, and Graves. Other than introducing the others briefly, the captain sat silent and hostile. Jared hoped the other ship commanders would be more open-minded than the senior captain.
Thankfully, he’d had ported Athena’s files over to Courageous and had access to their dossiers. Those told him a little more about the men and women arrayed against him. The people he had to convince to follow his battle plan if they were to have any chance of success.