Spineward Sectors 6: Admiral's Spine

by Luke Sky Wachter

  My eyes narrowed as the Captain addressed his crew—a job that I was generally used to doing—but I didn’t say anything. Like the man said: we needed to win this thing first, not get bogged down in petty power plays. Someone needed to say something, and he had done it. “That’s right,” I said, standing up and thrusting a finger at the screen, “it’s time to put on our game face and figure out just what is going on here. The Captain and I are going to need every one of you working at your best,” I finished on a steely, determined note. Because after all, while someone had to inspire the crew and the Captain was a good choice, someone needed to inspire the Fleet.

  So that’s why I turned to the Officer Laurent.

  “I’m going to address the Fleet—or at least send out a transmission for them as soon as they arrive—so, in the meantime,” I said my eyes boring into his, “find me those droid ships!”

  “Aye, Admiral,” Laurent said, iron entering his eyes before he gave me a sharp salute and jumped over toward the sensor section. Mid-jump, he stumbled as the ship gave a very familiar lurch.

  “Sump slide successful,” came the belated warning from DuPont, “I’m retracting engine baffling now.”

  “Contact; multiple contacts registered deeper in-system,” cried a Sensor Operator, lunging up out of his seat.

  I opened my mouth and leaned forward to demand numbers when the screen started populating and populating and populating until it zoomed out to take in the full numbers of the forces engaged in this system.

  I fell back in my chair with a thump. There were eleven of the large cruiser/mother-ship droid ships, along with swarms and swarms of their little gunboat ships.

  Realizing my mouth was open I snapped it closed with an audible click.

  “Sensors—” Laurent stopped and cleared his throat before turning to Tactical. “I need a count on enemy numbers, Tactical,” he said in firmer voice.

  “Hard numbers will be hard to impossi-” the Tactical Officer started.

  “A preliminary estimate will be fine, Tactical,” I cut in.

  “Yes, Admiral,” that Officer replied almost sheepishly.

  I waited while he turned back for a furious discussion with his team, with occasional input from Eastwood who quickly joined them.

  While they were talking Laurent eased over to me, and I could tell he wanted to talk. I could also tell that the sheer number of combatants we’d discovered, eleven…no, twelve mother-ships, and hundreds of the small gunboat types had the bridge rattled. They were looking at me out of the corners of their eyes and with an uncertainty I hadn’t seen in quite a while.

  “Captain?” I asked, reaching deep inside and finding the calm confidence I needed to reassure the crew that I absolutely knew what I was doing, even and most especially at times like right now when I didn’t have a clue. I mean was this system being contested, or had it already been conquered, and if so then what could we hope to do against that kind of weight in metal?

  “That’s a lot of enemy out there, Admiral,” Laurent muttered out of the corner of his mouth, the fixed line of his lips trying and quite obviously failing to be a reassuring expression.

  “Tell me something I don’t already know, Mr. Laurent,” I quirked a smile and it was a cold smile.

  “Engineering has taken a look at the wreckage of one of the boats we knocked out in our last engagement and Tactical has looked at what they found as well as gone over the records of the battle,” Laurent replied once again telling me things I already knew, “and those gunboats are pretty ineffectual one-on-one, with slow engines that even a battleship could make a race of it with and a single, slow-firing, light laser in a fixed mount. We can take those things out in job lots, and their mother-ships aren’t much better. A pair of destroyers or a squadron of corvettes could handle one, but there’s over a dozen of them now as well as,” he was pointing to the new totals up on the screen when he cursed, “Sweet Murphy! There over a thousand of those fighters,” he quickly lowered his voice, “Admiral, we’re heavily outnumbered here.”

  I wrinkled my nose and drew in air through my left nostril in an audible sound as I shook my head. “Those are very good points, Flag Captain,” I said formally, “and I’ll be sure to take them under advisement.”

  The Captain stiffened and his expression flattened. He knew as well as I what that meant when it came out of my mouth, and it was a whole blasted lot closer to ‘damn the torpedoes and straight ahead’, than it was to ‘bug out now!’

  “Of course, Sir,” the Captain said, his voice grating slightly but I was too busy trying to figure out my best move to worry about his tender feelings. I didn’t have time to let him down slow, my position was simple: pulling out was the last option in my playbook. I certainly wasn’t going to entertain it right out of the gate, no matter how bad the initial numbers seemed.

  Why, if I’d looked at things in Tracto and just played the odds, Akantha’s home world would still be under the tyrannical boot of my…uncle. I shuddered at the path my thoughts were taking and forcefully pushed myself back on track.

  On the screen, the first non-droid ship’s we’d observed since entering the system popped up on screen. They were fighting a running retreat toward the most populated world in Aqua Nova, but they were there—and they were still in the game.

  “Contact!” screamed a Sensor Operator. “I’ve got a squadron of ships with profiles matching known designs in our databases. They’re human, Sir!”

  “Get me numbers, statuses, and hull types,” I snapped, jumping out of my chair pacing back and forth in front of it for a pair of steps before realizing what I was doing. “And someone establish communications with those ships!” I finished, thrusting a finger toward the screen and pointing at the presumed system defenders retreating in the face of a droid defensive. We needed a data dump on just what had been going on in this system before we arrived and an update on the defensive capabilities of the defenders like there was no tomorrow!

  I clenched my fist and then sat back down in my chair.

  “Comm. will take a while to establish anything,” Steiner said speaking rapidly, “but I’m sending our ID right now and requesting a status update on all friendly and enemy contacts.”

  “Make it happen, Steiner,” I said brusquely, my eyes still locked on the continually moving dance of enemy and friendly forces. I resisted a cheer as another half squadron of human ships came around one of the moons of the system’s outer Jovian. They were deep into a slingshot maneuver which would send them barreling through a massive formation of enemy fighters with minimal time on target, cutting down in the return fire.

  “Yes, Admiral Montagne,” she snapped eagerly.

  “And somebody get me Kong Pao and that Lieutenant we picked up from Middleton’s ship,” I demanded, my mind racing. “I need answers and I need them fast, people; we’ve got a limited window to make an impact. I, for one, have no intention of letting a human world full of innocents fall to a bunch of the machine plague!”

  “Man not Machine, Sir!” shouted the entire Bridge as one.

  “Redline the engines and set a course for the nearest group of friendlies, and let the Demon Murphy take the hindmost, Mr. DuPont,” I said, feeling a sense of righteous purpose fill me and push all of my problems back home in Sector 25 blessedly out of my mind. “It’s time to tune up these droids and let them know they need to think three—and four—times before messing with a Confederation world.”

  There was a pregnant pause and then the ship’s Helmsman replied firmly, “Yes, Admiral; course set.”

  Some might ask ‘why did you feel a sense of peace after giving the order to attack a superior force of heartless, logic-filled droids who would crush us if given half a chance?’ but for me it was a no brainer. This was exactly why we were out here. More than that this was why I, personally, was out here: because when the going got rough and there was no one else around to help defend you from the reavers and wreckers and pirate invaders and, yes, even droids, the Multi
-Sector Patrol Fleet was there to help.

  I could have tried run away from that duty at several different points along the way. It would have meant leaving the galaxy to my uncle and the assassin-using politicians back home on Capria and the legal murders at Sector Central and heartless, honorless, Imperials and their Empire of Man but I could have done it. The reason I hadn’t—the reason I’d put up with all their threats, attempts to kill me, and tries against my interests—was simple.

  “We’re going to save those people, Bridge Crew,” I declared standing up, clenching a fist and thrusting it at the screen, “we’re going to fight for them, or my name isn’t Jason Montagne, Admiral of the greatest organization to travel these space-ways,” I said my voice rising until I was almost shouting, “the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet!”

  Fools that they were for trusting me, every single member on the bridge who wasn’t already standing took to their feet in a rising wave of human noise. “Admiral Montagne, and the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet!” they roared once, and then again.

  Blinking wetness out of my eyes, those blasted allergies again, you wouldn’t think they’d be such a problem in a top of the line Imperial Warship like this, I thought surreptitiously dabbing the corner of my eyes with the sleeve of my old style confederation uniform.

  Reaching down beside the chair I picked up the old, bowling ball-shaped helmet that had come with the original—and very aged—Confederation Admiral’s uniform my people had scrounged up for me back on the Lucky Clover and placed it on my head. I silently swore that while they were fools for believing in me, they were my fools, and I wasn’t about to let them down.

  Being outnumbered and outgunned was nothing new for this crew. With these people around me, I was prepared to take on the universe itself.

  “Full speed ahead, Mr. DuPont,” I repeated glaring at the droid ships daring to appear on my main screen and within a human star system, “full speed ahead.”

  Chapter 34: There’ll be no Tremblay-ing here!

  “How much longer are they going to keep us locked up inside this little metal box?” Bethany Tilday demanded, once again going over to the communication unit build into the wall next to the hatch leading out of this room—a former storage closet, if one Lieutenant Raphael Tremblay was any judge of things.

  “Who knows?” he said shortly.

  “Three weeks!” she all but screamed. “Or at least as close to three weeks as I can reckon without any access to a computer network, or even so much as a simple data slate. It’s intolerable is what it is! Simply and quite utterly intolera—”

  “I thought ‘intolerable’ was being forced to use the portable, self-contained toilet, Princess,” he said, jerking a thumb over toward the corner of the room where the little portable head rested without so much as a concealing curtain to give them privacy while availing of the ‘accommodations.’

  “Forget for a moment the lack of so much as a privacy screen, when I am entitled to the Admiral’s quarters and head onboard a ship such as this!” she raged. “And let’s go to the head itself; chemical baths I can understand but what kind of retro-tech is being used when a toilet uses actual, live, flame in the breakdown of waste products?” the Sector Representative turned and glared at him as if it were all his fault. “Live flame onboard a ship; it’s a safety hazard,” she stomped her foot.

  “Perhaps they don’t care if we die of asphyxiation,” Tremblay laughed darkly, more pleased at the chance to land a dig on the insufferable Princess than in actually believing the crew, or its captain, wanted them dead. If they did there were much easier ways to go about quietly offing them than through the potential out-of-control fire resulting from the burning of human waste.

  “I don’t particularly care for your tone, Lieutenant,” Bethany said severely.

  “Well I don’t particularly care for you, Princess,” the Intelligence Officer mocked, turning her title to one of scorn.

  “Watch yourself, Raphael,” she said, giving him a look that almost qualified as a weapon in its own right, “Flat Nose isn’t here and I am not a woman to cross lightly.”

  Tremblay looked at her with disbelief. “You Royals are all the same,” he scoffed, suppressing a chill at the look she was giving him. “I praise Parliament every day that you were removed from power when you were.”

  “Parliament,” she snorted and then sneered at him, “the things I know about your precious Parliament would make your hair curl.”

  “Sorry but I’m fresh out of rolling pins, Milady Tilday,” he grunted sourly, “so I doubt my hair will be curling anytime soon, no matter what lies you try to tell.”

  “You mock me; you are actually mocking me,” Bethany said with disbelief and wonder in her voice.

  “Please, for both our sakes,” the former First Officer, former Chief of Staff and general all around Montagne and Royal punching bag groaned, “just stow whatever threats you’re about to make and consider them already bestowed upon the masses. We’re on a suicide mission to go speak with the droids, and seeing as I doubt there’s anything you can do which the machines can’t, death would almost be a relief.”

  “Who says anything I did to you would be quick, you insolent military stooge?” Bethany hissed. “There are worse things to fear than the droids.”

  Tremblay’s gaze sharpened and he lowered his brow. “I’d be careful if I were you, Princess,” he said angrily with a shake of his head. “You want to threaten me? You’re trapped in a room with a dangerous man—one who’s had it up to here with your entitled, Royalist whining of the past three weeks. I’d think again before pushing me.”

  “I’ll push you wherever I like,” she said, smiling sweetly and stepping toward him.

  Someone less wise than a trained parliamentary Intelligence Officer like himself might have been taken in by the deceptive image of a short, thin, beautiful, Royal Princess but he wasn’t fooled.

  “Keep back,” he said, taking a step back and falling into a defensive crouch.

  “What?” she sniffed. “Is a big, strong man like you afraid of a little girl like me? I thought you said it was the other way around just a few moments ago.”

  “There’s not a Royalist alive left to be trusted,” Tremblay snapped, “and that includes you, Ms. High-and-Mighty Princess Bethany Tilday. So back off,” while he spoke he reached around behind him until his question hands felt the plastic tray their meals came in and he gripped the tray hard.

  Bethany came to stop and shook her head scornfully. “Now there’s a fine example of a ‘real man,’ cowering in fear of a woman too long cooped-up in this infernal room, ready to leap to his own defense with whatever dinner dishes he can scrounge up,” she said in mock pity.

  “I know your kind too well not to,” he said stiffly.

  “Oh, poor Lieutenant,” she shook her head sadly, “your Parliament has abandoned you, Cousin Jason won’t have you, and here you are—stuck with me. Am I really so fearful a person that you feel the need to insult me and then cower in fear of my response?”

  “It’s not going to work so don’t even try it,” Lieutenant Tremblay said narrowing his eyes. “I’ve spent too much time up close and personal with you Royals. Jason tried his best to get everyone around him, including himself, killed trying to seize power. Jean Luc was a pirate who would do anything for power—and was crazy, to boot—cutting off my hand because it offended him and said he would only give it back after I’d made amends to him. So you can mock me and you can goad me about not being a real man, but I’m wise to your kind so you shouldn’t even bother trying.”

  “You’ll have to tell me more about my uncle and your hand,” Bethany said sounding intrigued but almost immediately focused back on point like a laser beam, “but there’s one thing you’re forgetting, Lieutenant: those relatives of mine were all Montagnes but I am not a Montagne; I am Bethany Tilday Vekna.”

  “You Royals are all snakes in the grass—all of you,” Tremblay said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you tried to kill
me just for pleasure, or even more likely because of some twisted reasoning that concluded you’d be better off doing this mission alone.”

  “Now why would I want to do that?” Bethany said pulling out her hair picks.

  Tremblay’s eyes tracked what were usually considered minor female hair accoutrements, but in her case he knew were in fact deadly weapons in her hands.

  To his shock and alarm she dropped the picks to the ground.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded backing around the toilet and toward the corner that held the cot he slept in.

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” Bethany purred, stepping out of her shoes and kicking them off to the side, “I’m just trying to reassure you that I have no designs on your life. After all, we’re going to have to work together if we’re going to make it out of this alive.”

  Tremblay stumbled and held the tray out before him like a shield.

  “Very closely,” she continued in a throaty voice, “especially if we’re to come out of this little suicide mission not only alive and with our skins intact, but on top,” she said pointedly and, using only her toes, removed first one sock then the other without bending over. “And I do so like to be on top, Raphael."

  “I don’t know what game you’re playing, but—” he said in a rising voice.

  “Oh, now you’re interested in games,” she smiled, like a hunting cat stalking her prey, “I’ve been watching you.”

  “I’m not interested,” he said stiffly, his eyes unable to leave her body as she used a finger to remove the fabric of her dress covering first one shoulder, and then the other.

  “There are depths to you that I haven’t plumbed yet,” then she gave him a coy look that did nothing to hide the predator hiding just below the surface, “and if we’re to be the sort of team that’s going to not just survive but win then we’re going to have to start working together—without all these Royalist/Parliamentary differences.”