Manticore Ascendant 1: A Call to Duty (eARC)

by David Weber

  But Travis could also see Metzger’s point. So far all they had was a freighter and an RHN ship bringing up their wedges, which was hardly even vaguely aggressive, let alone combat-level threatening. The fact that neither of the two Havenite ships was talking to Guardian was irrelevant—they didn’t have to answer to the Star Kingdom for anything they did.

  Going to Readiness One probably wouldn’t be visible from the outside world, though pouring power into the laser might be detectable at the relatively close ranges of the other orbiting ships. The problem was that, given Guardian’s current positioning, bringing up the wedge and sidewalls would be immediately visible to at least Saintonge, and probably Péridot as well. Travis wasn’t sure whether or not that would be considered an aggressive move, especially the sidewall part, but he could see the XO not wanting to risk it. Relations between Haven and Manticore were cordial, and Metzger clearly didn’t want to put any dents in that friendship.

  On the other hand…

  “Maybe there’s a way to split the difference, Ma’am,” he said. “The agreement was for Guardian to hold station and keep our wedge down, right?”

  “That’s my understanding,” Kountouriote confirmed, looking up at him. “So?”

  Travis hesitated. Once again, he was offering unsolicited advice to a superior officer. He’d gotten along well enough with Kountouriote, and she’d been good about teaching him the ins and outs of gravitics, but this might be pushing the line.

  “Spit it out, Long.”

  Travis braced himself. “Maybe we could leave the wedge down and just ease out of position, Ma’am,” he said. “If we drop a few kilometers inward, we’ll not only get out of Saintonge’s direct laser line, but we’ll also start moving away from her. Which will also take us closer to Péridot,” he added as that added bonus only now occurred to him. “I know she’s a lot farther away than Saintonge, Ma’am, but any distance we’re able to close can only help our sensor analysis of what’s going on over there.”

  “And if Saintonge points out that we’re drifting off-station?” Kountouriote asked.

  “We act surprised, Ma’am, and tell them a green helmsman keyed in the wrong program,” Travis said. “In fact, warning us about our movement might get their XO to come out of wherever he’s hiding.”

  “Or at least should get us some senior officer to talk to,” Kountouriote said, nodding thoughtfully. She hesitated another moment, then keyed the intercom. “Bridge; CIC. Commander, we have a suggestion.”

  Travis listened tensely as Kountouriote described the plan, half wishing he could see Metzger’s face, half relieved he couldn’t.

  It was something of a shock, then, when she agreed. “Helm, starboard thrusters. Slow burn; ease us inward at point one klick a minute. Be ready to reverse. Long?”

  “Yes, Ma’am?”

  “Report to the bridge,” Metzger ordered. “If Saintonge squawks, I want a properly green helmsmen to parade in front of him.”

  Travis felt his eyes widen. Between his specialty badge and his rank insignia, there was no way he could pull off such a charade.

  “Excuse me, Ma’am—”

  “I know, it’s ridiculous,” Metzger continued. “But these are the same people who didn’t seem to know how Havenite intercoms worked. Let’s see if they also don’t know about Manticoran rank and insignia.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Travis said. “I’m on my way.”

  And as he headed around the curve of the ship toward the bridge, he wondered distantly if he would go down in history as a footnote, or as the prime offender in a major interstellar incident.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Vachali had been wrong about all resistance aboard Saintonge being subdued. It turned out there was a handful of Marines still capable of making trouble.

  “We got three of them before they pulled back,” Labroo’s grim voice came from the intercom. “Don’t know for sure if any of them are dead, but we probably got at least one. All they’ve got are frangible rounds, though, and the micro-airlock barriers we set up are working just fine.”

  “Keep an eye on them, and watch for other exits from the hab module,” Vachali ordered. “I’d rather not try to depressurize the whole module yet—that kind of thing brings out desperation, and I want to wait until we’ve reached the rendezvous and have a full complement aboard before we have to face down any Light Brigade charges.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll hold them,” Labroo promised. “Trev’s pulled one of the reconnaissance drones and got it in the accessways. If he can find the route into Marine country, we can send in another one with a gas canister.”

  Vachali grunted. “Just make damn sure no one gets out.”

  “Yeah, don’t worry. They won’t.”

  Vachali clicked off. “Boss?” Munchi spoke up behind him. “Not sure, but I think Guardian’s on the move.”

  “On the move where?” Vachali demanded, searching the bridge’s screens for the tactical display Munchi said he would be bringing up.

  “Mostly down and starboard,” Munchi said. “Really doesn’t make much sense.”

  Vachali found the tactical. Munchi was right: the Manticoran destroyer was sinking slowly toward the planet far below, the laws of orbital mechanics mandating that it pick up a bit of extra speed as it did so. “They trying to get away from us?” he asked.

  “If they are, they’re doing a pretty stinking job of it,” Munchi said. “Thrusters are slow, but even Manticoran thrusters can’t be that pathetic.”

  Vachali chewed at his lip. Back when Guardian first arrived, Commodore Flanders had assured Guzarwan that he would make sure the Manticorans behaved themselves. Guardian’s movement, however small, was technically in violation of that promise, and as unofficial captain of the battlecruiser it was Vachali’s job to slap the Manticorans down for it.

  Only he couldn’t. A high-level agreement like that required a senior officer to deliver the warning that Guardian get its tail back into position, and Vachali’s uniform was only that of a lowly lieutenant. In theory he could throw Dhotrumi or even Labroo into a higher-ranking uniform; in actual practice, all such uniforms were either locked away in the hab section with the majority of the ship’s surviving crew or else wrapped around inconveniently bloodstained bodies.

  “Boss?” Munchi prompted.

  Vachali bared his teeth in a snarl. “Ignore it,” he said.

  Munchi pursed his lips. “Okay. Whatever you say.”

  He wasn’t convinced, Vachali knew. But he didn’t care.

  Because the cold, hard fact was that whatever Guardian was up to, whether its drifting movement was accidental or deliberate provocation, it didn’t matter. Even if the Manticorans knew for a fact what was going on—and they didn’t—there was still nothing they could do. No RMN ship would take it upon themselves to fire on a Havenite warship, certainly not one holding this many hostages, absolutely not without first trying to negotiate those hostages’ release. Vachali could easily stall them until Wanderer had her wedge up, her missile prepped, and Guardian in her sights.

  So let the Manticorans stew. Right now, Vachali had more important things on his mind.

  Like getting Saintonge’s damn codes cracked and getting his new ship the hell out of here.

  He turned his attention back to Dhotrumi’s station, scowling at the program data flowing across the display. And it had better be soon.

  * * *

  Getting to the aft endcap turned out to be considerably easier than Gill had expected. Not only did he and Flanders encounter no resistance, barriers, or booby-traps, but they didn’t see a single one of the hijackers along the way.

  That was the good news. The bad news was that they didn’t see a single member of Péridot’s crew, either.

  Where were they? The depressurized amidships section that had trapped Gill and the others in Alpha Spin would serve equally well to pin down the personnel in Beta Spin. But surely no more than half to two-thirds of the crew would have been in there when
Guzarwan blew the amidships hatches. Were the rest of them, the ones who’d been on-duty, locked up somewhere out of the way?

  Or were they all dead?

  He didn’t like that answer. If Guzarwan was willing to kill everyone in the bridge and impeller rooms, he was probably also willing to kill everyone still in the spin sections.

  And if he was willing to do that, he was undoubtedly willing to kill everyone aboard Guardian, too.

  Including Jean.

  A hard knot formed in Gil’s throat. Colonel Jean Massingill was a Marine, and a good one. She’d been through hell and back in the little brush fires that periodically erupted around the Solarian League’s borders, collecting more medals and scars than she’d ever really wanted, and had been ready to retire to a desk job when the Star Kingdom’s representatives came calling.

  Those desk jobs had been a mixed bag. The Casey-Rosewood stint, for one, had been slathered with more politics than she’d liked. But at least the jobs had been safe. If Jean hadn’t always appreciated that, Gill certainly had.

  Now she was in danger again. Serious, deadly danger.

  And she didn’t even know it was there. She and Guardian could get shot out of the sky before she had so much as a hint that anything was going down.

  But she would now. Gill couldn’t protect her, not from here. But he could at least warn her.

  “Status?” Flanders murmured.

  “Done,” Gill said, finishing his last connection and surveying his handiwork. Tying Péridot’s com system into her aft radar wasn’t pretty, but it would work. Theoretically. “You want to talk to them, or should I?”

  “You’re Manticoran,” Flanders said. “They’re more likely to listen to you.”

  Gill nodded.

  “Here goes.” He keyed the radar. “Guardian, this is Alvis Massingill. Repeat: this is Alvis Massingill, calling RMN Guardian.”

  He keyed to repeat and switched to receiving. The speaker remained silent. “How long?” Flanders murmured.

  “Hard to tell,” Gill said. “Figure one to three minutes for the rating in CIC to notice that the radar they’re being painted with is modulated, then another two to three to convince the Watch Officer that he or she isn’t crazy. Tying in voice to their radar shouldn’t be too hard—Com and Helm are next to each other, and the helm has its own link to the radar—”

  “Massingill, this is Guardian,” a voice boomed from the speaker.

  Hastily, Gill dialed back the volume. Guardian was more alert than he’d expected. “Commander Metzger,” the voice continued at a quieter level. “Report your status.”

  “Péridot has come under attack, and appears to have been taken,” Gill said. “The hijackers appear to have gained enough control to start bringing up her wedge.”

  There was a brief moment of silence. Then, in the background, he heard a sound that sent a ripple of both fear and hope through him: the klaxon of Readiness One.

  Guardian was preparing for battle.

  But it was a brittle hope, and it might already be too late. By his estimation, Péridot was already ten to fifteen minutes into its node warm-up procedure, and Guardian’s impellers would take the same forty minutes as Péridot’s to reach full wedge. A ten-minute head start would theoretically be all the hijackers needed to take their newly functional ship out of orbit and slash her wedge across Guardian’s half-formed stress bands, destroying the destroyer’s nodes and leaving her helpless.

  A second pass with that same functional wedge would rip Guardian into a nightmare of twisted scrap metal.

  The klaxon’s background blare dropped to a distant whisper. “Who, and how many?” Metzger asked.

  “I don’t know how many,” Gill said. “But we think Guzarwan is part of it.”

  “We?”

  “Commodore Flanders is with me,” Gill said. “We were able to escape from Alpha Spin after Guzarwan’s people sealed us in.”

  “You brought Commodore Flanders out instead of Captain Eigen?” a male voice cut in. Commander Calkin, Gill tentatively identified it.

  “Commodore Flanders once served on Péridot and knows the ship,” Gill said, part of his brain wondering why the hell he had to justify his actions to anyone. “Not to mention that he’s Saintonge’s commander. I don’t know what Guzarwan is planning, but I think you’ll need all the help you can get.”

  “I’m sure we will,” Metzger said grimly. “But that help won’t be coming from Saintonge. We think she’s been taken, too.”

  “What?” Flanders demanded, crowding Gill out of the way as he pressed closer to the speaker. “How?”

  “Presumably, the same way Péridot was,” Metzger said. “We know a shuttle arrived from Péridot, and we observed what looked like the last few seconds of an EVA incursion. Since then, all calls get stopped at Com, with the man there claiming the XO and other senior officers are unavailable.”

  “It’s the same scam we’re also getting with Péridot,” Calkin added. “Have you seen Captain Eigen? We haven’t been able to contact him.”

  “Captain Eigen and Ambassador Boulanger disappeared with Guzarwan shortly before the attack that locked down the spin sections,” Gill said grimly. “We haven’t heard anything from or about them since.”

  He’d expected at least one angry curse to be audible through the speaker. The utter black silence that followed his statement was in some ways even more chilling.

  “I see,” Metzger said. “What are your current resources?”

  “Thin,” Gill admitted. “We haven’t seen any other officers or ratings, and without a secure com system we can’t easily hunt for any. We have the resources of Péridot herself, but only to the point where the hijackers have control.”

  “Which we assume precludes the reactor, impellers, bridge and CIC,” Flanders added.

  “We also have no weapons, or any way to get any,” Gill finished.

  “Understood,” Metzger said. “Recommendations?”

  “I don’t know,” Gill said reluctantly. “I was hoping that you had some ideas.”

  “I have one,” Flanders said. “Commander Metzger, I presume Guardian has a laser and is carrying a full complement of missiles?”

  “Yes, to both,” Metzger said cautiously. “What are you proposing?”

  “You know what I’m proposing, Commander,” Flanders said, his voice stiff. “As captain of RHNS Saintonge and commander of Havenite forces at Secour, I’m directing you to destroy Péridot and Saintonge before their hijackers can fully activate their wedges and escape the system.”

  Again, Gill expected an audible gasp or curse. Again, there was only silence. Maybe Metzger and Calkin had already known Flanders was going to say that.

  Maybe Gill had known it, too.

  “You know we can’t do that, Commodore,” Metzger said. “Firing on a Havenite ship would be an act of war.”

  “These aren’t Havenite ships anymore, Commander,” Flanders said bitterly. “They’re pirate vessels, and as such are not entitled to share space with civilized nations.”

  “That may be. But—”

  “No buts about it, Commander,” Flanders cut her off. “Now, you’ll need to log both my order and my personal command code to confirm my authorization when the—when this is all over.”

  Gill felt his stomach tighten. When this was all over, and Metzger and the entire Star Kingdom were hauled before a Havenite court on the charge of starting a war.

  “The code is as follows,” Flanders continued, and rattled off a complex series of numbers and digits. “Do you need that repeated?”

  “No, Sir,” Metzger said, her voice stiff and formal.

  “Good,” Flanders said. “I know this is going to be hard, Commander Metzger. But if you can’t frame it as what’s best for the galaxy, frame it as what’s best for your people. Because if you don’t destroy them, I guarantee the first ship they’ll go after will be yours.”

  “I’m thinking about my people, yes,” Metzger countered. “I’m also th
inking about yours. You have, what, around a thousand men and women on those two ships?”

  “Nine hundred eighty, plus your captain and several planetary diplomats,” Flanders said. “None of that matters. Whatever action you do or don’t take, none of them is going to survive the day. If any of our people are still alive, it’s only because Guzarwan hasn’t had time yet to kill them.”

  “What if we send a boarding party?” a new voice cut in.

  Gill stiffened. It was Jean. His Jean.

  What was she doing on Guardian’s bridge?

  “Do you have armored assault shuttles?” Flanders asked.

  “Negative.”

  “Then your boarding party will be dead before it even gets close,” Flanders said bluntly. “You’re way the hell over there, we’re way the hell over here, and there’s no place to hide along the way. Guzarwan will have plenty of time to prepare, and if he can’t kill them with Péridot’s wedge, he’ll kill them with shoulder-launched missiles. These people are well-equipped, and they came prepared. I have no intention of adding two functional RHN warships to their arsenal.”

  There was a moment of silence. Gill tried to conjure up his wife’s face against the soft glow of the radar status board. Tried to imagine the rigidly controlled expression she was even now hiding behind.

  Because Flanders was right. They had to make sure Guzarwan and his killers didn’t leave Secour with his prizes.

  And at the moment, Gill couldn’t see any way to do that except at the cost of all of their lives.

  “I assume there’s no way for you to get to the impellers and shut them down,” Metzger said. “More time means more options.”

  Gill smiled, his eyes unexpectedly misting up. More time means more options. The same phrase, the same exact words, that Jean trotted out whenever Gill was frustrated by some insurmountable problem. She must have said it aloud just now, and Metzger had picked up on it.

  But in this case, there was no way to buy more time. Not with the hijackers in control of all the critical sections of the ship.

  There was only one thing left they could try.

  “There may be a way, Commander,” he spoke up. “We know that most of the officers and visitors are trapped in Alpha Spin, and we can probably assume that Guzarwan has at least some of the enlisted in Beta Spin. Assuming the sections are now locked vertically—are they, by the way?”