by Jake Elwood
Without so much as a flicker of hesitation, he lobbed the bundle of fabric onto the fire.
After that he stood for a few minutes, watching as more uniforms fed the flames. He was careful not to overstay his welcome, though. He knew what sort of damper an officer could be at a gathering of enlisted personnel, and his new rank could only make things worse. Before long he edged back from the fountain, Sanjari following.
They strolled away from the fire, and he heard a gradual rise in volume behind him as crew began to relax and talk. He headed toward the tower-like structure of the alien gun emplacement, now a hodgepodge of alien and human technology. Christine Goldfarb and her team of scientists had all but rebuilt the thing from the ground up.
A handful of figures waited near the base of the tower, each one with rank stripes along their sleeves. They were captains and commanders and lieutenants from Spacecom, with one exception. Ronald Faraday, lean and middle-aged, was one of the shortest people in the group, but he had an aura of quiet authority that made him seem larger than he was. His brand-new title was Military Commander of Colonial Forces, and his sleeves had the same three stripes as Hammett's, plus an additional pinstripe.
The tall, craggy man at Ron's elbow gave Hammett a nod, murmured, "Admiral," then smirked. James Carruthers, captain of the Indefatigable, had served with Hammett for far too long to be in awe of his new rank.
Hammett grinned back, grateful to his friend for taking some of the starch out of the air. He joined the circle of officers, looking around at the familiar faces in unfamiliar uniforms.
"The evacuation of Dryad is complete," Ron said. "We've pretty much scouted every piece of rock in the system, and we've got the Theseus ready to launch. All our ships are back. We need to decide how to deploy them." Ron had an excellent leadership style, in Hammett's opinion. The man owned up to his lack of military experience and listened carefully to his officers, but he had no trouble asserting his right to make final decisions. He'd been a colony administrator before the invasion, and it showed.
Lieutenant Nicholson cleared his throat. "We could blockade the Gate, but I'd advise against it." He tilted his head, pointing at the gun emplacement beside him. "This is our biggest advantage. This, and the other ground guns, and the new satellites, once we launch them. We'd be fools to fight anywhere else but above the planet."
Ron nodded. "What's the status of the new weapons?"
A young lieutenant named Krill spoke up. "All four guns on the north polar ring are online. The south polar ring needs at least another week." She made a face. "That's pretty optimistic, actually. A month might be more likely. We put everything into the north ring. I think they've barely started on the south."
The gun emplacement beside them was a powerful weapon, but it could only cover a limited area. The colony was installing similar guns near the north and south poles, where they could cover every side of the planet.
Ron nodded. "How about the satellites?"
Krill gave him a helpless shrug. "They thought the first satellite would be good to go three days ago. Then they were going to launch last night." She shook her head. "I really don’t know when they'll be ready."
Ron flashed a gallows smile. "Well, let's hope the EDF and the bugs give us a little more time." He looked around. "Anyone else?"
No one spoke. Ron turned to Hammett. "Admiral? What are your thoughts?"
It was a subtle bit of political handling, Hammett thought. Let the other officers speak first, then the admiral, with Ron speaking last. That way, no one would be contradicted or corrected by a subordinate. He wondered if the man had done it consciously. Not that it mattered too much, not with this group. These were seasoned officers with a high level of professionalism. Still, every little bit helped.
"It's high time we scouted the enemy," Hammett said. He gestured upward. "We know they're out there. We even know roughly what direction. We don't know what they're up to, and we should." He folded his arms. "It would also be nice to take the fight to them for a change. I'm tired of scrambling around, reacting to whatever they throw at us. Let them react to us for once."
Ron nodded. "Makes sense to me." He swept his eyes over the gathered officers. "I hesitate to send too much of the fleet into deep space. The Theseus, though, is far more effective against Hive ships than EDF ships."
Several officers nodded. The Theseus, a converted freighter, was covered in heat-shedding hull plates that made her all but impervious to the Hive's favorite weapon. She wouldn't fare so well against the missiles and rail guns of Spacecom, though.
Ron's gaze landed on Jean Harrington. She commanded the Gideon, a Jumper designed to generate wormholes. "The Gideon is the obvious ship to send on a scouting mission. You can open wormholes for the Theseus." He glanced at Hammett. "One more ship, do you think? A corvette, perhaps?"
Hammett remembered Ron's words before the last battle. The Theseus is immune to heat weapons. Your corvettes are not. If you launch with us, you'll die. The problem was, the Hive had a nasty habit of adapting. The Theseus, alone, had prevailed once. The Hive would have a strategy by now for dealing with the refurbished freighter. A corvette, its fighting style so different from the Theseus, would mix things up. He nodded reluctantly. "One corvette."
"Right." Ron turned to a dark-haired, fierce-eyed woman with a silver bracelet on her wrist and a small knife at her waist. "Captain Kaur."
Meena Kaur nodded. She'd held the rank of Commander in Spacecom, but Ron had made her a captain.
"What's the status of the Tomahawk?"
"She's ready to fly," Kaur said promptly. "The heat plating isn't complete, but it covers the most vital areas." Crews were coating the ship with a fine mesh of Fourier metal to spread and dissipate heat.
"Good," said Ron. "Is there any reason not to launch immediately?"
Hammett said, "I'd like an hour or so to get the crew aboard and bring in some fresh produce." The ship was stocked with a week of food, but Hammett, after a lifetime of dried and processed rations, was now accustomed to having fresh fruit every day. He was getting spoiled, he realized. He didn't care, though.
"That works for me," Kaur said. Jean Harrington, captain of the Gideon, nodded as well.
"Good." Ron nodded. "You can launch at eleven hundred, then."
Sanjari headed for the bonfire to spread the word among the crew. Hammett moved away from the group, shoving his hands in his pockets to keep himself from fidgeting. The familiar knot of fear and anticipation stirred in his belly, and he was grateful that he had so little time before he launched. He'd be too busy to fret.
Maybe we finally get to call some shots. If only they'll wait for us to get there. He looked around at the city that had become his unexpected new home, the stone buildings and the lush profusion of plants, the colonists who just kept plugging away without complaint in the face of adversity and terrible danger. The colony seemed so homely, so quiet and safe, but one big rock from space could turn it all into a lifeless wasteland in the blink of an eye.
If the Hive came to Ariadne while Hammett was on his scouting mission, the battle would be over before he even knew it had begun. And the Hive wasn't the only danger.
Maybe you shouldn't leave. Tell Ron you think the whole fleet should stay here to defend the colony. He shoved the thought to the back of his mind. The scouting mission was his own idea, after all. You have your orders, and it's the right thing to do.
I just hope there's still a colony here when I get back.
CHAPTER 2 - HAMMETT
We're through. Looks like it worked." Eddie Walsh, helmsman of the Theseus, looked over his shoulder and gave Hammett a strained smile. Eddie had been a freighter pilot for more than a decade, but wormhole jumps were still pretty new to him. He seemed astonished and relieved every time a jump succeeded.
"Thank you, Eddie," said Hammett, suppressing a grin. He looked at Sanjari.
"All clear, Sir." She leaned back in her seat and sighed. "Nothing to do now but wait for the Gideon to rec
harge."
Hammett nodded. The Gideon would need fifteen minutes or so before she could generate another wormhole. The Tomahawk could also generate wormholes, but they were saving the charge in case they needed a quick retreat.
Hal, the co-pilot, swiveled his chair around. His fingers drummed on the arm of the chair. "I don't know you stand the tension. Nothing's even happened yet, and I'm wired like I drank a pot and a half of coffee."
Hal wore a green uniform shirt, but he wore it unbuttoned to display a bright red singlet underneath. His sleeves were rolled up past his elbows, and he had yet to use the words "Sir" or "Ma'am" when addressing the officers. Eddie had his shirt buttoned up, but he showed no more concern for traditional military protocol than Hal did.
That was just fine with Hammett. Neither man had asked to join the Colonial Forces, but here they were, in uniform, flying into mortal danger without a word of complaint. They knew the Theseus backward and forward, and they knew their duty. Hammett was glad to have them, and he wasn't about to pester them for salutes or any of the other trappings of military life.
No rank stripes decorated their sleeves. They held the rank of Private, not a traditional Navy designation. The Colonial Forces were all of ten days old, though, and entirely free of the weight of tradition. Ron wanted a unified military, with ground forces no different from shipboard forces.
He wanted things simple, too. The only ranks were Private, Sergeant, Lieutenant, Captain, and Admiral. That he was mixing traditional Army and Navy ranks bothered Ron not the slightest, and Hammett, on reflection, decided he wasn't bothered either. Everyone knew their job, and everyone respected the chain of command. The rest was details.
Hammett looked at the fifth and final member of the bridge crew, and felt a tremor of disquiet. Vicente Ramona sat along the port bulkhead, fidgeting with the sleeve of his uniform shirt. The boy kept unbuttoning the sleeve, then buttoning it back up and smoothing the fabric. Every few minutes a determined expression would cross his face and he would fold his hands in his lap. Before long, though, he'd be fiddling with the sleeve again.
Vicente saw Hammett looking at him, flushed, took his fingers from his sleeve, and said, "Any messages, Admiral?"
"No," Hammett said patiently. "No messages." He moved his gaze to the stars outside. Maybe after another jump or two the kid would calm down. In the meantime, ignoring the boy seemed to be the best way of dealing with him.
Vicente and his family were Hammett's new Signals Corps. Like most of humanity they spoke New Standard English, but they also spoke Mayan. Hammett was pretty sure English was enough to keep the Hive in the dark, but the Ramona family gave him a way to send messages that would be incomprehensible to Spacecom.
Rosalina, Vicente's mother, had assured him that the K'iche' dialect was all but a dead language back on Earth, and that her children, who had never set foot on the home planet, spoke with an accent so thick it would be practically unrecognizable to her community anyway.
She'd also promised to murder Hammett if he didn't bring her children back safe, and he was pretty sure she meant it. She was aboard the corvette Epée. Her youngest child, a girl of twelve, was at Colonial Forces headquarters—formerly the spaceport terminal—back on Ariadne. Her husband and other children were distributed among the ships protecting Ariadne. Only Vicente was on the scouting mission.
Eddie said, "Uh-oh."
Hammett stiffened. "What is it?"
Eddie twisted around in his chair, eyes wide. "The Gideon is charged up. We have to jump again."
Letting a quiet sigh escape him, Hammett said, "It will be fine, Eddie."
"If you say so." Eddie turned back to his controls, making unnecessary course adjustments with tense, jerky movements.
Hammett sighed again, a bit louder this time. Sometimes I really miss Spacecom.
CHAPTER 3 - BLOCH
Commodore! It's coming back!"
Commodore Wolfgang Bloch lifted his gaze from the tactical screen beside his seat on the bridge of the destroyer Adamant and fixed the lieutenant at Operations with a wintry gaze.
The young man flushed, said, "I guess you can see that, Sir," and turned back to his own console.
The tac screen showed a little robotic probe no bigger than a bathtub, looking none the worse for wear after its instantaneous journey through a wormhole to the Naxos system and back. He couldn’t see the stream of data radiating from the little probe, but he knew it was there. He'd be getting a report right about …
"No mines, Sir," said Remlinger, his tactical officer, without lifting her eyes from her own screens. "No ships in the immediate vicinity."
Bloch raised an eyebrow. 'Immediate vicinity' translated to a sphere of twelve thousand kilometers around the Gate. Apparently the door to Naxos was open and unguarded. That was sloppy of Hammett, very sloppy.
Well, a lack of professionalism was hardly surprising. Bloch glanced at his nav display and the blue orb of Earth floating not far away. Anyone with the criminally foolish gall to start a mutiny in the middle of an interstellar war could hardly be expected to show professionalism, common sense, or basic decency. His lip curled as the familiar disgust rose in his stomach. The mutineers were like people who went looting in the aftermath of earthquakes and hurricanes, counting on decent people being too busy saving lives to protect their property.
Scum.
Maybe this will be easier than I expected, he thought. The mutineers had an alarming number of ships and personnel, almost a match for the fleet Bloch was leading against them. If they were going to be sloppy and half-assed he'd be able to mop up this mess in a couple of days. Then he could get back to the real war, the one against the aliens.
Damn Hammett and his idiot followers for kicking off this ridiculous sideshow! What did they think would happen? Did they imagine Spacecom, strapped for resources in the face of invasion, would capitulate and negotiate with them?
Like hell.
He'd give them a brief opportunity to surrender. Then he'd crush them.
"They left a probe of their own," Remlinger said. "It's a safe bet they know we're coming."
"Let's not keep them waiting," Bloch said. "Take us through."
The displays on his screens changed, the Earth and the rest of the fleet vanishing. Ariadne appeared in the distance on the nav display, and the rest of the fleet began to appear, one ship at a time, as they followed the Adamant through the Gate. Six corvettes. Another destroyer. A supply ship. A carrier with a dozen fighters. And the Cassandra.
Bloch smiled coldly. The Cassandra was his pocket ace. He wouldn't even have to engage the mutineer fleet. He had the power to wipe the rebel colony from the face of Ariadne without going near the planet.
A quick laser burst destroyed the probe the mutineers had left. The Adamant and two corvettes quickly opened wormholes, and Bloch flexed his fingers as the destroyer jumped. They would be leaping ahead of any signal the probe could have sent, emerging from three points hundreds of kilometers apart. They would catch the mutineers entirely by surprise.
The stars didn't shift on the nav screen, except for Naxos itself. Whiter than Earth's sun, the star seemed to dart sideways in the sky, simultaneously doubling in size. The planet Ariadne loomed close, barely twenty thousand kilometers away.
"No ships," Remlinger reported. The words were barely out of her mouth when a warning chime sounded and Bloch saw a cluster of red circles on his tac display, just above the horizon of Ariadne. As he watched, more circles appeared. The mutineer fleet, nicely bunched together, wasn't quite visible to the Adamant. The tactical display was being updated with data from the other ships in Bloch's fleet. One group of ships had the enemy in sight.
"I'm getting some more signals," Remlinger said. Bloch saw nothing on his own screen, but the tactical station pulled in far more data. "Satellites," she said. "They weren't there when O'Hare and his people left."
"Maintain position," Bloch said. A few satellites were unlikely to pose a threat, but O'Hare had repo
rted taking fire from a ground-based weapon left behind by the Hive. Clearly, anything was possible. Let Hammett do the blundering. I think I can rely on him to do something stupid.
"It looks like their fleet's in a geostationary orbit above the colony," Remlinger said. "They're not coming out to meet us."
That was unfortunate. He'd have preferred to fight them well away from that alien gun. Still, it hardly mattered. He checked his displays. Nine ships. He scanned the list of ship names drawn from transponder codes, checking against the ships that had fled their post to join Hammett in Naxos. The Gideon was gone, and the Tomahawk, the corvette Hammett had commanded when he left Earth. O'Hare had reported a converted freighter, too. It wasn't enough firepower to worry about. "Give 'em a shout," he said to Tomlin at Communications.
Lieutenant Tomlin nodded. He was a seasoned officer in his forties, just back from a crash course in obsolete radio and telephone communications. Tomlin's hands moved across his console. He nodded to Bloch, received a nod in return, and touched a final button.
"EDF fleet," said a dry masculine voice. "Welcome to Naxos."
"This is Commodore Bloch of the Adamant, commanding Spacecom forces in the Naxos system. Who am I speaking to?"
"Commodore. This is Captain Jamison, commanding the Marlborough. Tell me, who's holding your leash?"
Jamison was the senior captain among the nine recent deserters, with more years as a captain than any of the mutineers except Hammett. Bloch frowned. "I don't have a leash, Captain."
"Oh?" There was a sarcastic note to Jamison's voice. "Has Spacecom come to its senses, then? Are real military men commanding warships again? Or is there an EDF stooge standing beside you, telling you what to say?"
"In addition to my Spacecom rank," Bloch said, "I hold the rank of General in the Earth Defense Force."
There was a long moment of silence. Finally Jamison spoke, sounding shocked. "You put on a red shirt?"