Spineward Sectors 03 Admiral's Tribulation

by Luke Sky Wachter

  “Authorization code,” the marine prompted tersely.

  Taking a deep steadying breath to keep his fingers from shaking, he slowly and deliberately entered the access code.

  “He’s on the cleared list,” said the first Jack.

  “The code matches,” grunted the second.

  “Can’t be too sure,” explained the first Jack, meeting Tremblay’s eyes, “there are still too many royalists wandering around on this ship, spouting their Confederation propaganda.”

  “For the People,” Tremblay said, replying with a pro-people slogan.

  “Parliamentary Power,” The Marines said agreeably then stiffened, shouldering their blaster rifles.

  “Your purpose here, Junior Lieutenant,” the gruff one asked officiously.

  “I am here to interview the prisoners for royalist intent,” Tremblay said equally officially.

  “The Morale Officer has been having a go at the prisoners ever since the first ones started rolling in,” the Marine replied with a cruel smile.

  Tremblay rolled his eyes sadly, “I guess a little vigorous questioning never hurt a Deep Cover Parliamentary Agent,” he sighed.

  “Deep cover agents,” the first Marine asked sounding concerned.

  “Why, yes,” Tremblay lied, his face the very picture of a concerned junior intelligence officer, “you didn’t think a person of parliamentary sympathies could both help Captain Heppner take back this ship while at the same time openly walking the deck, professing their true belief in the Elected Order, all the while surrounded by a crew of Confederation Royalists, now did you?”

  “Uh, there was nothing in the computer files flagging any of the prisoners as deep cover agents, Sir,” the first Marine said, bracing to attention.

  “Of course they weren’t listed in a computer system controlled by a Montagne Admiral,” left unsaid was the ‘you idiot’ at the end of that sentence. “All Montagne’s are the Royalist Spawn of the Demon himself!”

  “Murphy take the blighters,” agreed the second marine, only to be punched with the clang of metal on metal by his comrade.

  “Careful the Morale Officer doesn’t hear you,” he said stiffly, “he won’t hear so much as a cross word against the Commodore.”

  “Those of us here know the truth, that’s enough,” Tremblay said forcing a wink, “if there’s one thing I’ve learned being surrounded by royalists for so long, it’s when you can and cannot safely exercise your Parliamentary-given Right to Freedom of Speech!”

  “This whole conversation treads too close to the line for my comfort,” the first marine jack said looking uneasy.

  “Enough said,” Tremblay agreed, reaching up and slapping the man on the shoulder. This only caused the Marine to scowl, so he quickly pulled his hand back.

  “About those prisoners…” Tremblay trailed off

  The Marine gave himself a shake. “Right this way, Sir,” he said gesturing with his right arm, careful to maintain his distance from further shoulder slaps, which being in a power-armored suit wasn’t that difficult.

  Knowing exactly where he wanted to go, Tremblay swept past the Jack, Black Gloves resting on the outside of his arms for effect. The posture said as boldly as if he’d just shouted it that he was an Intelligence Officer, a member of the mysterious Black Gloves and he was on a mission.

  The Jack might not want to socialize with him, but the man still knew his duty and having passed all the ID and Security checks, that meant escorting him into the brig.

  Ignoring the Jack, Tremblay entered the monitoring section of the Brig. Selecting a room at random, he entered and activated the computer system. Completely isolated from the rest of the ship’s Distributed Intelligence, the monitors in the Brig recorded everything within view of their cameras.

  Flicking switches in a seemingly random pattern which actually had a design behind it, Tremblay rapidly cycled through the various holding cells. He needed to get a feel for the kinds of prisoners held in the cells. He paused at the sight of a Tracto-an Native in blackened and literally still-smoking, but very inactive power armor, then shook his head and moved on.

  Having scanned through the various cells without luck spotting anything to hold his interest, he took a deep breath. There would be an electronic record of what he was going to do next, and whether or not he was later discovered, this was the point of no return.

  Next to the Captain of a Warship, on a ship dedicated to Parliamentary Service there was no other officer so flat-out terrifying as the Morale Officer. And Tremblay was about to spy on one.

  He stiffened his spine, and before he could think about what he was going to be doing, he activated the cameras in the interrogation cells. Most ships were never assigned a Morale Officer; only those with actively rebellious (read restive royalist) crews were ever assigned one.

  For a moment, Tremblay stared at Commander Justin Suddian, taking the measure of the man. He wore the Black Hat and Black Gloves, meaning that on any ship to which he was stationed, both the Security and the Intelligence Sections were answerable to this man.

  Other than having the eyes of a snake, on the outside this Suddian wasn’t more intimidating than any number of Royalist Officer’s Tremblay had stared down in the past.

  He reminded himself that he’d managed to deal with a Montagne on a daily basis and, in large part due to his own personal efforts, succeeded in laying him low. He could handle one lonely Morale Officer.

  Listening in to the conversation currently going on, Tremblay watched with distaste as the Morale Officer leaned forward and punched a petite little communications technician right in the face.

  She cried out as the entire chair to which she was tied crashed to the floor, slamming sideways into the deck of the Brig.

  “How long have you been spying on this ship’s long range communications array,” Commander Suddian demanded harshly, “and no more of your royalist lies! We have records showing that you personally were monitoring active Parliamentary Class One Transmissions! The interception of such transmissions is considered treason during a time of war!”

  “Even if I had done what you say, it would have been under the direct order of my commanding officer,” the little Communications Tech pleaded, staring up at the Commander with one eye so purple and swollen it was clear she could barely see out of it.

  “The direct order of a Montagne,” shrieked the Morale Officer. “I want transcripts of every dot of every communiqué you decoded, as well as a full and complete list of your confederates,” Justin Suddian raged, then stopped for a moment, breathing hard. “We will get to the bottom of this little conspiracy if I have to break my way through each and every member of this crew you came in contact with!”

  “I didn’t decode anything,” shrieked the Tech.

  “Lies! Not just a lie, but a blasted royalist lie,” the Commander yelled, his voice like a saw as he reached down and jerked the little tech and her chair upright. “Who are you protecting? We have copies of your terminal logs. We have video of you sneaking into the Admiral’s Quarters in the middle of the night. Are you now trying to convince me it was for the purpose of some secret tryst, mere hours after you accessed the ComStat Network!”

  “Yes,” she cried, “I was enamored of the Little Admiral, and—”

  The Morale Officer backhanded her, knocking the chair over backward with the force of the blow.

  “Oh, we’ll get to the truth of your deceptions soon enough,” the Morale Officer assured her as he uncoiled a neural whip from his belt.

  The petite little tech stared at him with growing horror. “Neural whips are illegal to use on enlisted personnel simply obeying the orders of their lawful superiors,” she stammered.

  “Which of the new crew members assigned to this ship leaked to you the fact the Long Range Array had been reactivated,” the Commander demanded, his voice as hard as duralloy.

  “No one! I found it out on my own; I’m the communications tech,” she pleaded, trying to back away but held
firmly in her chair. Her voice rose to shriek of pure, undiluted agony as the Morale Officer drew back his arm and lashed her with the whip.

  “Where are the decoded transmissions,” he roared as soon as the worst the screaming had passed.

  “I never de-decod-ed anything,” she hiccoughed, her body still jerking and spasming uncontrollably from the effects of the neural whip.

  “Someone did; we have the Run Time Logs,” Suddian said forcefully. “If you didn’t decode them, then who among your confederates, did?”

  “Al-lone, I acted alo—” as muscles clinched, her words froze in her throat, only to emerge as a silent scream, as the Morale Officer let loose the neural whip once more. As the whips strike dissipated, the scream was no longer silent but came out as a sob and then... a whimper, her muscles without the strength to reflect the full extent of her pain or fear.

  “Who are you protecting” screamed the Commander with mounting anger, as he lashed her again—and again — and again in rapid succession, her every muscle locked in greater and greater agony without respite, or mercy.

  Tremblay felt sick just having watched this. He owed this little technician nothing, as she was just another member of the Clover’s original crew who’d let herself be turned into a royalist stooge. Even by her own admission she’d been working for the Admiral trying to decode parliamentary transmissions. The most interesting thing from an intelligence perspective was the fact that the Morale Officer (and presumably Heppner) had access to interstellar communications under parliamentary seal.

  Unfortunately, dry technicalities failed to keep him in the monitoring room, learning everything he could from listening to the Morale Officer and his prisoner.

  The next thing Tremblay knew he was forcefully activating the security override to the interrogation room.

  “It was the Admiral, it was all the Little Admiral, it must have been him,” the girl was screaming in her own defense when he entered the room.

  “Jason Montagne didn’t have the training to decode a password protected email, let alone a priority one transmission,” the Commander snapped. “Who are you hiding—” he drew back his arm to utilize the neural whip yet again.

  Tremblay stepped into the room, hands clenched into fists at his sides.

  The Commander whirled around, “What are ‘you’ doing here…Tremblay,” he snapped, his nostrils flaring with rage before his lips twisted in a sneer. “Shouldn’t you be cleaning blood off the Admiral’s ready room floor with a mop!”

  As the import of the dig sank in, as well as the knowledge that word of his humiliation had spread all over the ship, Tremblay trembled with equal parts fear and rage. “She was protecting me,” Tremblay declared as he carefully knocked the neural whip aside, careful to touch only the handle as he did so.

  “You,” Suddian hissed, taking a threatening step closer to the former Chief of Staff, “I always had you pegged for a fool and an incompetent after hearing Oleander’s reports. I just never thought you’d have the stones for outright treason.”

  Tremblay suppressed a gulp. He had to brazen this out or he would be the next to feel the neural whip. What the blazes was he doing here? He forced the down the fear, instead focusing on the outrage he should be feeling at the insults.

  “If you are quite done brutalizing my Deep Cover Operative, I’d like to take her somewhere,” he said trying coolly, but unable to fully suppress the waver in his voice, he paused before continuing, “somewhere away from the brig,” he clarified, “to get her cleaned up.”

  “Deep Cover—” Commander Suddian gobbled for a moment, “There was nothing in the hidden files about this technician!”

  “We’ve been under royalist occupation for the better part of six months,” Tremblay replied, trying for a wry tone, and even to his own ears sounding more high-pitched than anything. “Surely you didn’t expect me to put down the names of my operatives on conveniently tabulated list,” he scoffed with a sinking sensation in his belly.

  It didn’t look like the Morale Officer was buying it, and Tremblay was forced to wonder if this was how Jason Montagne felt the very few times he’d been put on the spot by a senior officer, like Captain Cornwallis or Rear Admiral Yagar. Then he shook off the thought. Since the crew’s ‘Little Admiral’ was so full of himself 24/7, full time around the clock, it was doubtful Jason had ever felt anything approaching the sort of fear or uncertainly Tremblay had to deal with right at the moment.

  The joys of being born a royal, he thought savagely. Jason Montagne had gotten everything handed to him on a silver platter. His every need and want bought and paid for by the common man. Well, Tremblay had never been afforded those luxuries, so he was just going to have to carry on as best he could.

  He raised his chin and, digging deep within he tapped into all the anger he felt at royal entitlement and what it had done to his world. He mustered up the will power to give the Morale Officer a glare worthy of a former First Officer and Admiral’s Chief of Staff.

  Commander Suddian threw his neural whip on the floor and jabbed his finger into Tremblay’s nose.

  “I want a full and complete list of all your operatives,” he snarled, grabbing Raphael by the nose and pulling him close, “do you understand me, Tremblay!?”

  “You’ll have it by the end of the day,” Tremblay replied, hitting the Morale Officer on the inside of his wrist to force him to let go of his nose, “What am I, some kind of pig to be lead around by the nose,” he demanded with genuine outrage.

  “Like a pig in the sty you throw filth around, mucking with everything around you, Junior Lieutenant,” sneered the Commander standing tall and tugging on his uniform, “and you’ll address me as Commander or I don’t care about your service to the ship during the royalist occupation, you’ll be broken from the service!”

  He paused to glare at Officer Tremblay. “Breaking into class one priority transmissions without prior permission is still a treasonous offence,” the Morale Office growled.

  The Comm-tech had stopped shaking and making noises closer to those of an animal than a human being, and was now looking back and forth between the two Parliamentary Officers like a deer caught in the headlights.

  “If I had been informed of the existence of such a transmission, I wouldn’t have intruded,” Tremblay retorted, raising his voice as he mingled truth with volume in the hope of skating through. “You heard the woman, we never broke the communications which was I sent her to the Admiral in the first place,” he continued, each new thing he said sounding more improbable than the last “to see if we could discover if he was behind the transmissions!”

  “You never broke the transmission,” Suddian said coldly, “you simply revealed their very existence to Jason Montagne. So he, not trusting your stooge here, could then set his own people to break them instead?”

  The former Intelligence Officer felt a sinking sensation in his stomach. What was he doing here? He was going to get himself killed, and for what? He shot a glance at the petite technician, a pretty face that wasn’t even that pretty anymore.

  The Morale Officer shook his head. “You disgust me Tremblay. A pretty-faced palace party boy succeeded where you, an educated and supposedly trained Intelligence Officer failed,” he sneered at the former Chief of the Admiral’s Staff. “How does it feel to have been shown up by a dilettante who never worked a day in his life?”

  “You’ll have the report by the end of the day, Sir,” Tremblay said evenly, suppressing the flare of shame and outrage the morale officer had managed to make him feel. He hadn’t even been involved in the transmissions! The other man was good.

  “Get out of my sight!” flared Justin Suddian, “and don’t let me see you again until your report is on my desk!”

  “Yes Commander,” Tremblay acknowledged, reaching down to grab the arm of the Communications Tech.

  “Now I can’t even properly interrogate the prisoners until I have that list,” Suddian yelled, throwing the keys to the restraints holding the T
echnician to the chair on the floor and stalking out of the room.

  Tremblay bent down to pick up the keys and while he was down there, started working on the restraints attached to her ankles.

  The tech stared down at him, her formerly pretty face now one giant bruise.

  “I don’t know what game you’re playing at, Lieutenant, but I’ll never betray the Admir—” Tremblay slapped a hand over her mouth before she could say anything capable of incriminating the both of them.

  “Do you want another session with the Morale Officer,” he demanded in a harsh whisper.

  She stared at him wide eyed and then shook her head frantically.

  “Then please refrain from saying anything for the cameras that might,” he paused searching for the right word, so as not to incriminate himself, “encourage him to come back and take another crack at you.”

  Carefully he released his hand over her mouth, watchful so that if it looked like she was about to say anything stupid he could put it back and shut her up as fast as possible.

  “Alright but—” she started unevenly.

  “Clearly the neural whip scrambled your brains worse than I thought,” he said talking over her, “there’s no need to hide your true allegiance in here.” He glared at her.

  She looked back at him with defiance clear on her bruised and battered face, and then she abruptly dropped her head and gave a jerky nod.

  “Good,” he praised before unlocking her upper restraints, careful to keep a strong grip on her upper arm as he lifted her out of the chair.

  “Ow,” she protested, coming up out of the chair cockeyed.

  “You have to help stand up,” he hissed, putting his shoulder into lifting her up.

  “Dastard used neural whip,” she hissed back, “a neural whip! I can hardly feel my legs except for pins and needles; everything’s on fire. How do you expect me to stand,” she exclaimed.

  “If you want to stay here, just give the word,” Tremblay said darkly, starting to lower her back into the chair.