Spineward Sectors 03 Admiral's Tribulation

by Luke Sky Wachter

  “Our strength is scattered all over the border of this sector,” the Elder Ground out. “We have limited armament and are vastly outnumbered on this Station, to the order of twenty five to one!”

  Glue nodded to his speaking opponent, showing his respect for this point.

  “Now we come to the nut of it. The rub which turns normally fearless warriors into concerned mates and parents,” Glue nodded again, this time to the males and females around him. “As they should be!” he agreed with the rising sentiment, showing himself to understand and share the feeling, “even with the Confederation Humans and their power armor, we would be supporting the smaller of two factions in this conflict, and the price for failure is the dearest one possible.”

  “How can we support such folly,” demanded the Elder, turning to Glue, “suppose by a miracle we win. What then? Even the reward is still a gamble, but if we lose or are crippled, all is lost!”

  “As the Elder himself has said, our strength is scattered. Therefore, all will not be lost for the People,” Glue said solemnly, refusing to personally re-engage the Elder at this time. “Only those of us here personally, if-we-lose, will lose all,” he finished flatly.

  “A cold comfort for the dames and sires here,” the Elder said icily.

  “Yet no more than is asked of my war-band and the scavenger groups that follow with me each and every day,” the Primarch said finally turning to meet the Elders gaze.

  “There is no path to victory,” the Elder pleaded, his eyes closing in acknowledgement of the sacrifice Glue and others had made, but stiff refusal still in his posture.

  “The Hold-Mother was specific in her offer to the Sundered,” Glue replied evenly, “she made mention of the Sundered and any allies, or sworn forces we chose to include within our provisions.”

  “I did not see that,” the Elder grunted, “but it is of small note.”

  “No doubt she meant to include any Humans that are helping us,” Glue continued, ignoring the dig, “but I think it has a broader meaning. I think this is not simply an opportunity for the Sundered, but for all on this station who are trodden upon by natural-born Human Prejudice.”

  “Now you would include the Out-Clans in this folly,” scoffed the other Speaker, “what next, the Tribes!? Battle is not even joined, and already you are frittering away our hypothetical reward, before we can even claim it,” the Elder rumbled in outrage.

  “Yes,” replied Glue simply.

  “And then what,” scoffed the Elder, “summon another Grand Moot and form a new Alliance with the much weaker, disunited gene-mods and uplifts in this region of space! We came here, to the other side of the known sphere in a hazardous journey which left nearly a million dead, losing four in five of our number. We do not have the strength for such action,” he slammed his hands down on the floor, “for all its flaws, the strength of the Triple-AG was indisputable, and even it is slowly being ground into dust by the Imperial War Machine. We have seen what they will do if we try that! They will send fleets, and more fleets, and new fleets to annihilate us to the last youngling if we are stupid enough to raise our heads up.”

  “The Empire has abandoned these sectors,” Glue said flatly, “the humans know it, the pirates know it, and there are even indications that the cold minds of the metal tribes near consensus on the subject. It is time the Sundered knew as well.”

  “Knew our own destruction,” The Elder cried in negation.

  “The Sundered stood on principle and left the so called Alliance Gorgonus, the Triple-AG, when they proposed to break the code of morals we believe all sentients should live by,” Glue said flatly, “But today I look around and ask myself: are we any better than the pirates who are oppressing us? We are raiding here and there, taking what we need from the Humans; those whose race has wronged us badly, but who personally are not at fault. I have stood shoulder to shoulder with my cohorts, raiding and looting and killing and even,” he shuddered, “enslaving, because there was no other choice. To stand by and do nothing was a worse crime, as it would be the crime of genocide!”

  “We all respect your efforts on our behalf. None present questions that your sacrifices of the moral code are all for the sake of our People,” the Elder grudged, “and it is appreciated.”

  “Hear this then, with all the weight of that respect,” Glue said sternly, sweeping the room with his dark eyes. “Before, we had no choice and I… we… many of us here fought, committing offenses great and small, because we believed we had no choice.”

  The Elder looked troubled, but still, he shook his head disapprovingly.

  “Today is different,” Glue continued, his eyes gleaming as they saw a future that was not filled with a sire teaching his sons how to do evil, “today we have a choice. In the person of this female, we are offered not another Gorgon Alliance, not a coalition united only in fighting against humans who would genocide against us, but a deal ‘with’ the humans. With a part of their Confederacy, albeit a small one,” he allowed, “but also a place within a sovereign star system. Then, if and when the Empire comes against us, they will have to kill these humans alongside the much despised ‘monkey boys’!” he spat. “Humans have shown they do not care what happens to us, but they always care what could happen to themselves!”

  “So many have been lost,” pleaded the Elder to the crowd, “many Sub-Clans decimated, others completely destroyed in our Trail of Tears, their lineage lost for all time. Think! Think before out of despair and on a fool’s gambit, you throw away everything we’ve sacrificed for so long to save!”

  Glue frowned, “There is something to what he says, but I say that if we will not try this chance, we are no better than the Humans who destroyed our worlds and slaughtered our people, or the pirates that cannibalize us when they get the chance. If your choice is do nothing… then I will not fight,” he said heavily. “You can fight for yourselves, and I am done with you.”

  He sat down with a weary thump, everything he wanted to say, said.

  It was time for the Moot to vote.

  Chapter 63: Holding Fast

  Akantha felt compelled to speak with someone who had actually been on board the Lucky Clover, the need was so great she could barely tolerate it. What was this weakness that clouded her thinking?

  She knew she needed to be on the bridge, she needed to be there and to be seen commanding, which was why she couldn’t understand why she suddenly found herself jumping into a lift, slapping the sequence for the main cargo hold and then running down a ship’s corridor.

  Pulling herself to a halt just outside the main entrance to the hold, she adjusted her expression to one of icy indifference, then pressed the sensor to cycle open the large double doors.

  She went looking for someone senior, and what she found was a Warrant Officer with a gaggle of grease covered, battered and broken looking ratings.

  “What is the meaning of this,” she demanded striding up to the group. She tried for a reasonable, slightly consoling voice, but all that came out was icy fury.

  Around him, half the ratings braced to attention, but the Warrant and the others just stared down at something in their midst, sadness and in a few cases tears on their faces.

  Before seeing that sadness, she had been ready brandish her sword in order to get the respect she was owed, if necessary. But the urge passed and her heart melted, so instead she just pushed her way into the circle.

  “My Lady,” the Warrant said looking up at her for the first time, tragedy and loss written all across his face.

  “What happened,” she asked, acting on the impulse to put a hand on his shoulder. She looked down at a well-muscled, older man in a uniform so charred and black it was impossible to tell anything about the wearer just from looking at it.

  “They came for us, Lady Akantha,” the Warrant Officer explained, clearly recognizing her, when she had less than no idea who he was. That wasn’t very unusual, as everyone on the Clover (at least among the old crew) had known who she was, not to mentio
n she had experienced the same one-sided recognition during her life in Argos as the First Daughter.

  Unlike Jason, she could recognize a moment that called for silence when she saw one. The realization that her Protector was lost swept over her again, and she found herself using the man’s shoulder for temporary support to hide the trembling of her legs.

  Jason was just a man, she reminded herself, and men die. They died all the time, especially Protectors of prominent Hold Mistresses. But like countless women before her, this comfort was no comfort at all.

  The Warrant drew in a shuddering breath, “But there were too many of them,” he continued, even though several minutes had passed between utterances.

  “Tell me,” Akantha said simply.

  “The Chief—,” he fumbled and then ran a hand over his face, “we drove off the first quad of Marines,” he sighed and then as if a dam had broke it came spewing out, “he led most of the new ratings — the grease monkeys – and they broke through liberating the port gundeck, before making a run for Engineering.”

  “Who led them, Warrant,” she asked, her hope rising.

  “Chief Bogart,” he replied, gesturing down at the smoking corpse at their feet, “he didn’t make it, My Lady,” the man said with tears in his voice.

  Her hope crashed.

  “They broke our charge, right outside Main Engineering,” chimed in one of the dirtier looking ratings, anger warring with sorrow in her voice.

  “Who?” Akantha asked, fury rising inside her.

  “The Jacks ma’am,” the rating said with some heat, although for her continued good health it was not directed at her Hold Mistress, but some invisible foe only she could see, “we could handle the regular crew; those parliamentary boys aren’t that tough,” she said with pride. Then she stopped, choking up.

  “Power-armored Marines…” another rating trailed off, a look of fear crossing his face.

  The Warrant nodded. “The Chief led the charge personally, and then stayed behind, manning a Sonic Cannon to cover the retreat. Although to hear it described, my Lady, it was really more of a route,” he added the last part in a low voice, “after he fell to counter fire, it was these boys who dragged him all the way to an escape pod, and then over here.”

  Akantha looked at the ratings with respect, “You did well,” she offered, even though most of her wanted to scream. Accusing them of cutting and running when they should have fought to the last man wouldn’t get her anything now, nor would it in the future despite her current mood.

  “We tried the Combat Heal, but he just seized and started gasping like a fish until he died,” said another rating, genuine loss on his face as he stared down at his former commander, a man he had clearly come to respect.

  He’d died doing his duty trying to hold the ship, and even in her current state of confused emotions, that was worthy of Akantha’s respect.

  She let out a sigh and gave them several moments of silence out of respect for Bogart’s loss. Now that she knew who he was, she could see the features of the man she had only known through during command staff meetings. He’d been loyal and true to the last. For his sake, she would forgive his men for running. Although it pained her to her core not to address their conduct, his sacrifice demanded nothing less from her. When a leader died, warriors ran; it was a fact of existence like the rain or the sun.

  Finally she couldn’t hold the question in anymore, it just seemed to pop out of her. “And Jason,” she paused, “The Little Admiral,” she clarified, seeking for and finding control of her voice. These men didn’t need to hear a woman asking after her man like a desperate person; what they needed to hear was one leader asking after the condition of another calmly, collectedly and coldly rational, even if on the inside she was anything but.

  “The Chief kept saying we just had to hold out and make enough trouble until the Admiral could get a relief force, but he never came!” cried one of the ratings.

  “We don’t know what happened to the Admiral, my Lady,” interrupted Warrant Lesner, “there were all kinds of rumors.”

  “Such as,” she asked levelly, clutching at straws but determined not to show it.

  “Jean Luc Montagne, the former Captain of the ship, returned to take control of the bridge with Captain Heppner as his willing stooge,” spat the Warrant Officer.

  “Unless we hear new information otherwise, that seems to be the case,” Akantha agreed, her chest tight and painful at this lack of new information. There was nothing new for her to learn here, and each moment she spent away from the bridge put everyone in danger.

  Stiffening her spine, she removed her hand from his shoulder.

  “I know it is much to ask of men who so much has been asked of already,” she said flatly. The words came out, but the feeling was lacking, and there was nothing she could do about that. “But I am going to need the survivors from the Clover to suit up in power armor and help hold this battleship.”

  “My lady?” confusion was on his face, “we’re not trained in power armor.”

  “Unless you think it too much to ask of them after the way they lost their last ship,” she snapped, her voice cracking like a whip.

  Lesner stiffened, his face closing down.

  “No, Lady Akantha, it’s not too much to ask. But some are too injured for a battlesuit and this ship has no one manning its broadside,” he suggested, staring down at the floor.

  The benefits of being able to fire back at anything attacking her outweighed the flash of anger at being talked back to and corrected.

  “Make it happen,” she nodded coldly.

  “My lady,” he said, his brow wrinkling.

  “You are the senior Gunner I can see right now, and since this ship is now mine and I have guns needing crews, that makes you the Chief of my Gun Deck,” she explained evenly.

  “One of the deck bosses might still be straggling in,” he protested, shaking his head.

  “Then put them in charge of the other deck, as we have two,” she retorted icily, gripping the hilt of her sword so as not to give into temptation at all of this back talk.

  “You are Chief Gunner until you die or I find someone better to replace you, and not another word,” she said furiously, turning on her heel she stalked back toward the bridge.

  As Lady Akantha left the cargo hold, Lesner leaned down next to his fallen superior and placed a hand on his shoulder, taking strength one last time from the iconic old royalist.

  “Legends like yours, they never just fade away. Someone has to kill them, but I’ll make you proud, Iron Fists,” he promised, straightening up. “The last of a dying breed they say. I say they just don’t make your kind back on Capria anymore,” his face hardened, “but out here we will. Out here, we’ll make ‘em all just like my old friend, Iron Fists. We’ll make so many of them this Sector — no, the Galaxy itself, will shake with the fury of our broadsides! The Gunners we’ll produce out here, my old friend… just think of it!”

  Chief Lesner stood from his crouch, a fistful of cigars liberated from his predecessor’s pocket. “I really honestly preferred gum, and despised these fat old beasts,” he said wistfully, clamping his teeth into the end of a Cigar to tear it off, before he shoved the other end into the side of his mouth. “No matter what Parliament has to say on the matter, blast them for politicizing gum of all things, anyway,” he snarled, his eyes flashing with anger at the loss of his ship, his leader, and now at the fact he was going to have to set an example by filling his lungs with the byproduct of these terrible tasting smoke sticks. It was just one more crime to set at the feet of Capria’s elected tyranny.

  “You heard the Lady,” barked the new Chief of the Armor Prince’s Gun Deck, “wounded gunnery staff gets to man the Main Guns, while the rest of you sorry lot need to lay your hands on some power armor. I don’t care if you were a Gunner, a grease monkey, or an environmental filter scrubber in your past life; you’re on ship’s security now!”

  He did his best to roar, but it just wa
sn’t coming yet. He promised himself that it would. It would come with time. Bogart had shown what was needed to make hardened gunners out of men like this, and what you needed to be to ramrod the gundeck. Lesner had never failed the old man, and Murphy take him if he started now.

  “I said move,” he shouted, when the shell-shocked and shaken crew in the cargo hold failed to take action as quickly as Bogart would have liked.

  Lesner chomped on the cigar as a grin spread across his face at the sight of his men scurrying to their duties. “Put your game faces back on boys, ‘cause this party is nowhere near finished!”

  Chapter 64: In the Ready Room

  Jean Luc spun his chair in the Admiral’s Ready room and reached into his desk. He spent a moment feeling the old Terran wood the desk was made out of, the varnish sliding under his hand.

  Then his fingers found the lever, and he cocked his mouth in a satisfied smile.

  “Right where I left it,” he said under his breath.

  The door hatch chimed, causing him to flicked a switch. “Blast,” he muttered. If it was anyone other than his new Flag Captain, he could have just sent him away and got on with his business; the real reason he had agreed to play Parliament’s lapdog in this little sideshow. Reuniting with the old crew was nice enough in a nostalgic way, but on its own merits it was nowhere near good enough reason to throw away a sizeable chunk of his hard-earned power base out on the rim.

  Did Heppner suspect? Was that why he was coming to the ready room? The pirate lord knew it was best to get it over with one way or the other. Even as his one hand pressed the admit button, his other slid down his leg to grip a blaster pistol.

  Jim Heppner marched in stiffly and drew himself up to attention in front of his desk. The Admiral’s Desk, Jean Luc thought darkly. They hand out stars to completely untrained scions of the house as if they were candy, but all they could give me were a comet and pennant, he thought bitterly.