Bluetooth eyed him dismissively. “They may have no love for the Tyrant but they’ve served with him and that means that even if they don’t like him, they have…connections. Options at least. So, no, we’ll keep the Prometheans at arm's length. It’s safer for everyone.
“I think I get it. Keep them at a distance but don’t stand them off too far,” the Captain said uncertainly.
The new minted Rear Admiral rolled his eyes and then his eyes caught on the screen and mid-eye roll he went from mirth to full blown seriousness.
“Those Hammerhead Medium Cruisers are slugs!” he growled, looking at the screen where another perfectly good ambush was blown because the Grand Assembly just wouldn’t give him the ships he needed to get the job done.
Then one of the Reclamation Fleet Destroyers flared and started to slow down.
“Looks like engine trouble. They pushed their engines too hard; you might get one today after all, Sir,” chuckled Kermit, mouth opening and closing like a fish as he laughed.
Bluetooth face curdled like old milk. “You look like a kek when you act like this. You know that, right?” he asked.
The Captain slowly closed his mouth until his lips made a tight line. “As you say, Sir,” he said.
Bluetooth snorted uncaringly and turned back to watch the rest of his fleet as it finished chasing the enemy out of the star system.
“Any new orders, Sir?” Captain Kermit asked, his voice neutral after they were the only ones left in possession of the star system.
“We’ll take a few hours to contact the government and offer the services of the Governor’s Rifles in clearing out any lingering unwanted forces on the surface of this system’s main inhabited bodies, and then it’s off to the next system,” said Bluetooth.
“This is the twelfth inhabited star system we’ve cleared in Sector 26 this month. Why hasn’t the Imperial fleet concentrated against us yet,” asked Kermit.
“Remember the Reclamation Fleet is an NGO, a non-governmental organization, basically they’re partisans. A paramilitary organization with a thin cadre to support them,” advised Bluetooth turning grim.
“Yes but all the prisoners we’ve taken so far have either seen for themselves or are certain the Reclamation survivors still have access to at least a squadron of Battleships. If that’s the case then why haven’t we seen them yet?” asked Captain Kermit.
“No need to speculate. I’m already considering all the angles,” Bluetooth said abruptly.
“You know what it seems like to me? It’s almost like they’re falling back, waiting for us to reach a time and place of their choosing. A trap, almost, one that—” Kermit rambled with concern.
“I said 'enough'!” Bluetooth said angrily. “Ours is not to reason why. We have our orders. If for some reason we need it, we will request reinforcements from the Grand Assembly. That lazy blighter Manning can get off his duff and come relieve us. In the meantime we free these worlds and secure them for the Spineward Sectors government. Do you hear me?”
“Loud and clear, Sir,” said the Captain.
Chapter 20: It’s a Spalding!
He was the very model of a top secret space engineer
Terrance P. Spalding whistled tunelessly as he parked his Lander alongside his favorite Elder Tech Jump Spindle.
He silently activated the magnetic grapples built into the undercarriage, and wondered what his life had come to that caused him to be perched on the side of a piece of alien tech previously unknown to mankind, while stationed in a system so unimportant—and far from home—that he’d never even heard of it before.
The lander jolted.
Well it had been unimportant, he allowed, unfastening his safety harness. Turning on the expanded screen he’d put in special just for the occasion, he began calibrating the internal sensor feeds build into the lander.
Most landers didn’t have these sort of sensors. Sweet Murphy, even an old Engineer like himself hadn’t heard of half of them before.
He pulled out a large, hover-equipped lock box from under the co-pilot’s seat. He paused to unlock the box, which considering it required a retinal scan, finger prints, a blood sample and a code word, took a while.
“No alien figment of my imagination is going to take out Spalding without a fight,” he muttered, pulling out a plasma rifle and leaning it against the wall next to the pilot’s chair. One by one he pulled out everything from ion pistols to blaster weapons, sonic guns, and even a magnetic launcher. “It’s a mere coloration of my mind,” he declared, jacking a round into the flash shotgun before stowing it in the dashboard directly underneath the new screen.
“Yep,” he said confidently as he finished placing the weapons around the room, “no way it’s real. Or if it is, has to be something on the order of time dilation combined with a bad case of jump psychosis.”
He nodded with certainty as he pulled a special little safe out of the hover box. After going through the process of opening it, he pulled out a small, odd-looking gun.
“If the light is green, the trap is clean,” he mumbled holding the weapon by the handle and peering down the barrel before deciding once again that he had nothing to worry about for his upcoming little trip.
After all, there had been no glowing creatures chasing him down the halls during his last two jumps. Sure, walking down empty corridors and appearing and disappearing from the ship’s internal monitoring system was strange business but when had a little bit of crazy business held back a real engineer? Oh, sure, things might appear strange and unusual but a rational explanation was always found eventually.
“Time dilation, due to some kind of interaction with my cybernetic parts. Faulty internal sensors. Totally alien tech with spotty maintenance records. The beloved Saint reaching down personal like to lend a man a hand, moving him to where the action is,” he finished confidently, once again reassured that everything was nice and logical.
He heard a tap-tap-tap sound and looked down to realize he was patting his strange new space gun against his cyborg leg, and immediately purpled. Quickly shoving the handgun into the front of his trousers and trying to look innocent, even though no one was around to see him, he nodded with complete, total and utter certainty.
“Yep, it’s all in my head. No problems here,” he said, ignoring the half a dozen weapons stashed all around the cockpit of the Lander. “When a man gets old he starts to hear things no one else can hear. He may even see things that no one else can see. That's a completely normal part of the aging process. Why, I remember my own great grand-pappy was convinced the AI’s were sending their servitors around to spy on him, and what did a year and a half of vigilance get him? Nothing but a busted up cleaning-bot he took down with his old auto-wrench. Now, where exactly that bot came from, no one exactly knows. But I remember what they did to him after that,” Spalding said laying a finger alongside his nose. “Kicked out of his own workshop, he was. Didn’t let him touch another tool after that but the ones he snuck out in the night. 'Young Terrance,' he told me, 'If only I’d been smart enough to just take out that bot without letting anyone know, why I’d still be fixing hover-cars and working on heavy equipment to this day!'” Spalding finished with a disgusted look on his face.
“Like they say: loose lips sink Battleships, and no one’s ever accused Terrance P. Spalding of talking out of turn. Nope. Never,” he quickly crossed his heart.
“Besides, old boy,” he informed himself happily, “let’s say it really was something. Let’s say this as a hypothetical, just for instance,” he added, eyeing the exact placement of the magnetic launcher, “that there really was something to the whole 'alien tech, glowing spiders,' business. Just who's the unlucky blighter they’d put on the case? Whose job would it be to get to the bottom of the issue and report back?” he thumped his chest. “Me, that’s who!”
That’s why there really was no reason to start worrying everyone about the integrity of either the Elder Spindles or a certain ornery old engineer.
“If there’s trou
ble, I’m just as mean and twice as ornery. I can handle it,” he assured himself.
Once again he eyed the empty lander and wondered if there was really enough room to run around in…just in case there was a need. Which, of course, there wouldn’t be.
Besides, the Admiral said it had to be sent to a top secret location. Those weren’t his exact words, but that’s what he meant, of course. Spalding just knew it deep down in his bones. The only way to ensure the Admiral’s true intentions were carried out was if there was only one man who actually knew where those hulls were located.
Which is why he’d taken the Nav-console out of one of the new wrecks that was being recycled into spare parts and installed it in the Lander. The tech boys had looked at him like he was crazy when he had them install it in the lander but the Fix was already considered his own personal project vehicle but that was all part of the plan.
'Crazy old Spalding is tricking out his sweet little ride,' that’s what they’d think. 'Quick, don’t tell him that landers are aero-space craft intended more for atmospheric insertions than space travel.' Well, laugh it up, fuzzballs. The joke was on them.
The sacrifices a miracle worker has to make for the good of the fleet, Spalding silently lamented.
“We stole those hulls fair and square,” he growled belligerently, “no one is going to steal them back.”
After the new sensors were all calibrated and he had finished slapping himself on the back for thinking of digging them out of the Imperial Constructor’s database—along with a few that weren’t even in that database, but were from the Mighty Punisher—he was finally ready.
Pulling up the lander’s external sensors, he observed the one hundred warships he slowly had hauled over here by automated space tugs.
“Ninety three hulls, right where they’re supposed to be,” Spalding nodded sagely as he once again ran a sensor scan, this time looking for heat sources, radiation or any other signs or indicators that could give away these warships once they arrived at their final destination.
Who would have ever though that Terrance P. Spalding would be an engineer who moved derelict ship hulls to top secret locations, instead of riding maintenance in the boneyard back at Capria? From Junior Lieutenant to Commander, from the most expendable engineer in the SDF to the most trusted engineer in the MSP, I’ve come quite far, he thought with pride.
Spalding once again decided he had been right to stick it out with the Lucky Clover all those years. Sure, he could have accepted a new assignment. Sure, he could have taken the carrot promotion and walked. They'd offered him a transfer to a new ship when Arnold Janeski came knocking and wanted the Clover for his new flagship. Instead, he took the demotion without a blink and all of his years of hard work and sacrifice had finally paid off.
Oh, sure, going Confederation had been rough. The Clover had been hurt bad, so bad she’d even needed to be almost entirely rebuilt, but then the same could be said about her faithful old engineer. But just look at her now? Wasn’t she the finest ship in the quadrant? Unlike a certain man that was more machine than metal, nowadays the old girl had never looked finer.
Why, even a Command Carrier couldn’t survive when she swept upon the battlefield. The old engineer visibly swelled with pride at the thought of her. The old bird had finally lived up to her potential. Even if he died tomorrow, the legacy of the Lucky Clover would never be forgotten.
Then, before any of the naysayers could stop him with their nonsense, like stopping him to point out he was about to attempt a jump without a trained navigator riding the boards, he loaded in a pre-calculated course and told that computer that yes he really, really wanted to jump out into the middle of nowhere in particular.
They might think he was mad to try to jump out of Gambit like this, but he’d had a few Ensigns calculate this run a couple weeks before as one of his many ‘hypothetical training exercise’. He wasn’t a complete idiot; he’d made sure to have them check and counter check each other's work!
Finally accepting his orders, the Fix’s retrofitted navigation system started to count down.
Then, un-belting for one last check, he went to the very back of the lander to check on what might just be the most critical part of this entire operation.
Unbolting the hatch, he stepped into the large troop bay that took up most of the space in the lander. There, laying in the bed of a powered down grav-cart, was Lieutenant Shepherd. Moving over to check the tie-down straps—which both secure the unconscious man to the cart and ensured that he couldn’t escape the hold of the lander until after it was all over but the crying—Spalding ‘tut-tutted’.
“Must have hit him harder than I thought,” he mumbled, observing the swollen red goose egg on the navigator’s forehead before bending down to make sure his backup plan was fully powered down.
After confirming the grav-cart was down, he stopped and gave his backup plan a sidelong look and then humphed.
Grav-cart computer cores were a secret weapon in his toolbox and they hadn’t failed him so far, but there was a first time for everything. He just hoped young Shepherd was able to carry through.
The important thing was that no one know where these ships were stashed. It was much less vital that an old man long past his most useful years, and a sometimes suicidal navigator, made it back home after. One of them spoke to himself, literally, and the other wanted to die!
Humming a nice little ditty he’d often heard back in his glory days of chasing down the Automated Underground, he wandered back up into the cockpit singing about the good old days that weren’t quite forgotten.
After all, he was still here to remember them and quite frankly there was nothing like chasing down a malfunctioning grav-cart gone bad.
Chapter 21: Bluetooth and the Sector Guard!
“Send the guard units around the starboard flank,” ordered Rear Admiral Bluetooth, “we’ll have them do an end run and break this Reclamation Fleet flotilla.”
“Who's going to hold the middle if you send our former Sector Guard squadrons around the flank? And besides, I thought we’re all supposed to be on the same side? Is continuing to segregate our forces by planetary or other prior organizational loyalties really the best way to bring this fleet together?” asked Kermit.
Bluetooth looked at the captain with steely eyes. “We haven’t exactly had a lot of time for training evolutions and formation maneuvers, in case you hadn’t noticed,” he said seriously, “so first it’s not been practical to try and break down those barriers. Second, I know we can trust the Sector Guardsmen to do their jobs. As for the rest of them,” he shook his head. “Tell Captain Costel Iorghu I’m sending the Promethean Sub-Flotilla in right down the center of that enemy formation. His Cruisers can hit them where they’re strong and hold their attention while we go around them and attack where they can’t defend as well, and break this enemy flotilla apart like cracking an oyster,” ordered Bluetooth.
“Aye, Sir,” Kermit said, his face blank to likely conceal his true thoughts on the subject.
As far as Bluetooth was concerned, the only person in the flotilla entitled to his or her own opinions was the Flotilla Commander, in this case himself, and his Vice-Commander. And just like in a proper Captain and XO situation when it came time to make the decisions the Vice Commander was free to give his opinions and then free to help carry out the final decision of the Flotilla Commander.
Slowly at first, and then with increasingly coordinated speed, the Sector Guard units pulled free from the rest of the Flotilla and skimmed around the side of the Reclamation Fleet formation.
Behind them, Task Force Prometheus slowly fought to form up, their slow engines a detriment but the fact that their weapons and best armor facing were almost entirely in the front of their warships proved a decided advantage as the enemy moved into attack range.
“Tell the rest of the ships to form up on us,” ordered Captain Costel Iorghu.
“That order has already been given, Sir,” reminded his Comm. offic
er.
“I’m well aware of that, Ensign! Now relay the order again,” snapped Iorghu.
“Aye aye, Sir,” muttered the Comm. Officer.
The Promethean Captain frowned at the screen as the rest of the ships once again under his command slowly began to form up. Except for his fellow SDF survivors, no one was in anything he’d consider a proper formation.
“This is intolerable,” he growled.
“The other SDF’s are none too pleased to be a part of Sub-Flotilla ‘Prometheus’,” his First Officer observed quietly from behind his elbow.
“Yes, I’m well aware they’re offended that they were put under my command and that of all the Sub-Flotilla’s in this Fleet ours is the only one the Fleet Commander allowed to be named after one of the contingent’s home world,” snapped the Promethean Captain.
“If it weren’t for our home world being one of the few survivors of Janeski’s attack, and thus with the right to some serious payback, I’m pretty sure it would be worse than just slow maneuvers and grumbling,” observed his XO.
“I’m sure my lackluster career as a ship and squadron commander has failed to inspire any confidence either,” said Costel.
His First Officer’s silence was pointed.
“That bad, huh?” Captain Iorghu winced.
“Let’s just say that it hasn’t helped. At all,” said the XO.
“There’s no need to rub it in. I’m well aware of my command failings,” Captain Iorghu said grimly, “if there was someone else I could trust to look after the interests of our home world better than I could, I’d turn over command in a heartbeat. That is assuming they were a better commander than I am, which frankly wouldn’t be that hard.”
“In my opinion and in that of a lot of the crew, you’re too hard on yourself, Sir,” said the First Officer.
“I doubt it, but we don’t have time for any more jawing,” Costel said, turning back to the battle screen. “It’s time to fight.”
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