Spineward Sectors 6: Admiral's Spine

by Luke Sky Wachter

  Laurent’s face tightened fractionally, he was clearly expecting more of what he considered bad news. Well hopefully he’d change his tune after I explained further, although personally I gave him less than fifty-fifty odds of being reassured by my words.

  Pausing outside the conference room I activated the door before stepping inside.

  “With our focus on repair slips and getting ships there, I thought that repairs were the priority before deciding whether or not to tackle a Droid Invasion, Sir?” Laurent said formally.

  “No, the important part is getting our damaged, crewless prizes somewhere other than here where anyone and their weak sister could become tempted to come swooping in to steal them,” I said patiently. “After that we only need to focus on those ships which can be repaired and crewed rapidly. The rest we’re going to have to leave behind.”

  Laurent choked.

  “If we ultimately decide to go for it,” I said with a false smile. Somewhere in the back of my mind already knowing what my decision was…what it had to be. I wasn’t like him; I would never become like him, not in a hundred years. If it killed me first and if that meant bellying up to the grenade right before it exploded then so be it. Jean Luc could rot in the Hades of his own creation.

  “Admiral—” Laurent protested and then stopped and pulled himself back short, before starting again. “What are you thinking, Admiral?” he said finally and then sat down with a thump in his chair.

  I eyed my Flag Captain with the barest hint of approval. It looked like he was going to follow my lead, even if it killed him to do so. Good, I thought as I, too, sat down.

  “Everything here is hammered, so let’s be honest about this, at least amongst ourselves,” I said firmly.

  “I wish you would,” Laurent said fervently.

  “We have to go,” I said, “if we don’t, everything we’re trying to do here will be for naught.”

  “That’s not true,” Laurent exclaimed jumping back out of his chair, “we need time to pull things back into order and then we’ll come back out of the gate stronger than ever. There’s a difference between not helping because you literally can’t and because you’re a lazy, uncaring blighter who can’t be bothered to risk his skin. We’ve risked it already—and by the bucket load, Admiral—don’t throw that all away, I urge you!”

  “I don’t intend to throw anything away,” I said, taken aback by the vehemence in his voice before leaning forward and thumping the table with the flat of my hand, “look. We both know that we can’t raise enough of a battle fleet to settle these droids all by ourselves. Not now, and maybe not even if everything we’ve managed to get our hands on these past few months was in working order. So sit back down.”

  “We finish repairing that new fleet out there and you just watch us,” Laurent muttered rebelliously before dropping back into his chair.

  “Be that as it may, I don’t think the worlds of those Sectors have time for us to start singing hymns around the campfire and hoping for the best while our ships are repaired and crewed up to regulation before we do something,” I said with a patented royal smile to break the tension with.

  Laurent placed both elbows on the table and then ran a hand over his face. “What’s the plan, Sir?” Laurent said fatalistically.

  “Half the problem over there are, of course, the droids, but the other half is that they don’t seem to be able to pull together,” I said with a confidence I hoped wasn’t unjustified, “what they need is something we can actually provide. What we can do that none of them has managed to do yet, is provide a unifying banner under which to rally the worlds of those two Sectors by offering them something greater than themselves and their petty squabbles.”

  “And what’s that?” Laurent asked leaning forward unhappily.

  “Why, the Confederation of course,” I thumped the table with my fist for emphasis. And I felt like a fraud while doing it, but they say ‘you dance with the one that brought you,’ and for me that was my commission as Confederation Vice Admiral. “We just have to get them all pulling in harness and in the same direction and with a little bit of luck things will start slotting into place before you know it,” I said, projecting confidence with every bit of my royal and on-the-job training as a fleet commander over the past year.

  Laurent took a deep breath and then nodded. “Alright…I can see it,” he said slowly.

  I was surprised. Did he actually think this plan had a real chance of success? Because as far as I could see, showing up and waving the Confederation flag at a bunch of previously feuding SDF’s and world governments didn’t seem to be a recipe for success—assurances from Kong Pao aside.

  “You do?” I asked with a lifted eyebrow.

  “There’s an outside chance of it working,” Laurent admitted, tapping his finger on the table while thinking.

  “An outside chance,” I blurted without thinking, wondering after the fact if I should be more outraged at the lack of faith or amused at the idea that he actually thought I could just show up and win everyone over to my way of thinking by sheer force of personality.

  “You’ve shown you can bring people together even when you start out from a heavily disadvantaged position. Take this crew for instance,” he said, alluding to the fact that even as a Montagne I’d been able to turn a group of crewmen and women who had no reason to trust an untrained naval novice like myself from a disparate group of Montagne-distrusting individuals into a loyal crew who would follow me through fire and beyond—half of which had already done so more than once.

  “Thanks,” I said, feeling genuinely touched.

  “As well as slip the noose when they’ve got you dead to rights and every hand seems turned against you,” he added, serving an unhealthy portion of reminder regarding my capture at the hands of the infamous Blood Lord. A capture followed by imprisonment and a farce of a trial by the Sector Assembly, in turn followed by my eventual escape from a literal death sentence, “so…yes, I think we have a chance. How many ships are you planning to take?”

  My mood instantly soured I had to work to keep my face cleared of the half a dozen emotions that wanted to escape my control.

  “I figured the Phoenix could be repaired fairly quickly if she were given priority,” I put forth, surprised at the sullenness welling up inside me, at the question. I have to stay focused here, I reminded myself.

  “A good choice: she’s fast and powerful. What else?” asked my Flag Captain.

  “I figure we bring everything else that’s working, minus a small system defense force for Tracto and whatever LeGodat decides to do with his destroyers. We can’t send him damaged warships without a proper escort; that wouldn’t just be foolish, it would be stupid as well, but not sending McCruise and her squadron back just so we could hold onto her would look suspicious,” I frowned pointedly. “Not that I haven’t considered it—to the blazes with the consequences—but that’s not a decision I’m ready to make here and now…at least not yet.”

  “So a handful of ships based around the cruiser—unless the yard tells us one of the battleships isn’t as badly damaged as we feared,” Laurent said looking unsettled.

  “That about sums it up,” I agreed unhappily, “the way I see it we have to go or lose our moral stand. The entire reason for the MSP is to be a Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet, and how can we do that if we don’t patrol our signatory Sectors and come running when there’s an invasion? On the other hand…” I paused and then shrugged, “if we show up with our best faith effort and they turn us away, at least we did our duty and showed up to the party. After that, anything that happens is on them.”

  “A task force built around an Imperial Strike Cruiser,” Captain Laurent said skeptically.

  “The Pride of Prometheus might have brought us back an edge or three when they brought the representative here,” I said, my mind racing as I tried to calculate all the possible angles. Captain Middleton and his harebrained lost patrol had, for all their faults, brought back a few startling bits of
intel in addition to the Sector Judge cum Representative for their Mutual Defense League, “I think we can use that to our advantage.”

  “The decision to get involved or not is above my pay grade,” Laurent said, “however, before we can start counting our chickens there’s one person we’ll need to speak with before we can have an accurate estimate of what ships are space and battle worthy.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Chief Engineer Terrence Spalding,” Laurent replied, “no one knows Gambit’s repair capabilities like the Chief.”

  I closed my eyes and then nodded. “I should have known,” I muttered.

  Chapter 10: Are you Insane?!

  “Are you insane?!” Spalding shouted as soon as I asked him the question.

  I blinked, this not being the answer I had expected from my normally gung-ho engineering expert. “Which part of it do you feel will be too difficult to carry out?” I asked calmly.

  “You’re out of your bleedin’ mind, Admiral!” Spalding exclaimed. “There’s no way we can fix up the entire fleet in a less than six months—at a minimum! Just no way.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” I said, looking over at the Chief Engineer and frowning, “all I wanted to know was how many of the capital ships you could…”

  “Capital ships; you mean battleships,” Spalding cursed, winding back and kicked the duralloy wall with his cybernetic feet. The clang as he connected almost caused me to jump and unlike the rest of his burgeoning tirade sent a jolt of adrenaline through my body that sent my heart rate temporarily skyrocketing.

  “All I want to know is how many of these ships we can fix up so I can take a fleet over to liberate the worlds of Sector 23 and 24 and repulse a droid invasion force,” I said mildly—as soon as my heart rate had settled.

  “Are ye possessed, lad?” Spalding asked, peering skeptically into my eyes with the solid red light that was his cybernetic eye. To call it disconcerting would be an understatement; it was something more like what you would have expected from a machine or a droid than a living, breathing—fuming—Chief Engineer, “those quacks down in Medical didn’t let you out too early, I hope?”

  “Not at all,” I glared.

  “Well then,” Spalding said in a reasonable tone before suddenly turning beet-red, “if one of Murphy’s imps didn’t crawl into yer head while ye weren’t looking, then what the blazes are you goin’ on about? It can’t be done,” he declared, throwing his hands in the air and walking off.

  I stared after him flabbergasted. I knew—Saint’s mercy, everyone knew—that Terrence Spalding was eccentric but the man had never just told me ‘no’ and then walked off like this before.

  The sight of his retreating back about to round the corner jumpstarted my brain and I started after him before I lost sight of the gleaming metallic back of his head.

  “Wait up,” I called after him in vain and finally, heedless of what anyone would think of seeing their Admiral running down the corridors when he didn’t respond other than to shake his head, I broke out into a sprint.

  “Most people can say, ‘at least I’ve got me health’ if things go sour, but what do I have?” the Chief Engineer was muttering under his breath when I caught him. “Droid legs and an evacuation port on me front side, that’s what!”

  “Which part can’t be done?” I asked, slowing down to match his pace and catch my breath.

  “Or they say ‘well at least they left something behind in this rotten, cruel old galaxy,’ but what the blazes have I left behind?” Spalding snarled, ignoring me in favor of slamming the wall of the corridor with a fist and then apparently when that wasn’t satisfying enough he activated his fingers one by one and started burning lines in the wall with his inbuilt mini-plasma torches as we walked.

  I stared non-plussed at the damage he was doing the wall as he continued to walk. The only sign he was even aware of my presence was the way he moved over fractionally to make room for me to walk beside him.

  I opened my mouth and Spalding snapped the tips of his artificial fingers closed cutting me off.

  “We took everything that was space-ready and ran her through the grinder for this last one, Admiral, and until we have a few months,” he rounded on me before leveling a finger accusingly, “not days, not weeks, I said months—there’s nothing to be done about it!”

  “Surely—” I stared with dismay.

  “The Prince’s been pounded, the so-called ‘Vineyard’—what used to be properly called the Queen Anabella—has been pounded so hard she’s good for nothing but scrap and salvage metal. Maker only knows how we’re going to haul her broken back through hyperspace so we can part her out good and proper back home. Might could extend the lives of a few of our other torn-up battleships and save factory time we can’t afford to spare,” he said, and then his breath hitched and a tear glistened in his single remaining biological eye. “And then there’s the Clover,” he drew in a deep, shuddering breath, “I’m afraid there’s nothing to be done. The old girl,” he broke down into open weeping that appeared so suddenly I reared back in surprise, “she’ll never be the same again—and it’s all my fault!”

  If you’ve ever seen a grown man openly weeping in the middle of a transit corridor then you know how utterly helpless and uncomfortable I felt right then.

  “There now,” I said awkwardly, patting the bald, borged-out Chief Engineer, “you did everything you could. And the initial reports all indicated that the Clover was actually less damaged than the Prince, so whatever hidden structural damage you discovered, I’m certain we’ll get her back into space and into fighting trim again—probably before you know it.”

  Spalding stopped shuddering long enough to glare at me. “She needs a complete rebuild, I tell ya,” he snapped, “there’s no way she can fight like this. If we put her back out there she’ll be cut down in her prime for sure! She needs a total and complete rebuild before we can put her to the hazard again, or the first time she faces anything over her fighting weight she’ll be lost with all hands!”

  I raised my hands in a surrender gesture and backed away, not really sure what ship we might encounter that would have more throw weight than the 600 meters of a fully-fledged, Caprian Battleship—but I was also unwilling to tell the Spalding he was wrong.

  “You’re the engineer; we’ll do it your way,” I assured him hastily.

  “Darn blasted right ‘we’ll do it my way’,” Spalding said angrily, wiping his cheek and corner of his eye with the back of his utility sleeve. “I’ve already got the initial plans worked up.”

  “Okay…but even if both the Prince and the Clover are too clobbered to be put back into action right now, what about the Rage?” I pressed, determined to run down the entire list before giving up. “From all the reports I’ve seen say she was moved into the repair slip as soon as the Prince was moved out.”

  “That bucket of bolts?” Spalding looked at me with disbelief. “Those pirate blighters parted her out right good—and hard. One look from me and it was clear we were going to have to replace all her major systems as well as the majority of her hull armor. I ordered new internals fabricated—upgraded to Imperial specs, o’ course—and enough Duralloy II to replace a few of her internal struts and bones and re-sheath her hull. Soon as the Armor Prince moved out that’s what they started working on. That baby’s not getting out of a space dock for months, but boy when she does,” and unholy glint entered his eye as he declared, “she’ll be twice the ship she ever was before!”

  I clenched my fists, because while having a more powerful battleship would be good and wonderful news for the future, what I needed right then were hulls that could fight—preferably battleship hulls, which seemed in short supply right then.

  “Well then, how about the Phoenix? What’s it going to take to put her back to rights in time…?” then something occurred to me. “And I was talking with Akantha; what’s this I heard about the Parliamentary Power? Do we have an ETA on that ship being ready to take on a crew?�
� I asked, chewing on my lips. I knew I was grasping at straws but I couldn’t show up in another sector in a destroyer. I mean, I could, but the message I would be sending by doing so had to be worse than just not showing up at all. What I needed was just a little additional firepower—then we could put the MSP on the map!

  If Spalding’s face had been red before, now every part of it that wasn’t metal—or sytha-skin that bordered that metal—literally turned purple.

  “If you want to know the status of the Phoenix then you’ll have to speak with the bleeder they put in charge as Chief Engineer over there,” the old Engineer seemed to swell up to almost half again his normal size, and I could hear as each individual fingertip flipped back on his artificial hand, “I’ve got no time to deal with traitors and Parliamentarians with mush for brains, and democratic homilies and odes to the elected order spewing from their lips instead of honest engineering updates!” by this time spittle was flying from his mouth, and I was afraid the old man was about to have a coronary.

  I stood there mouth agape at this unexpected response to what had seemed like a fairly straightforward, non-controversial question about the status of our most powerful—or, potentially powerful—still-functioning capital ship.

  “They put a Parliamentarian in charge of engineering? I mean, an openly patriotic one?” I asked, briefly flabbergasted. I then took myself to task by reminding myself that it was Commander Terrence Spalding I was talking with, and if ever there was a man given to exaggeration, it was him. “What do you know about this guy?” I inquired, knowing I was going to need further clarification, such as why exactly the Lady Akantha would put such a man in charge and why he didn’t deserve to be swiftly demoted to somewhere relatively harmless.