Spineward Sectors 6: Admiral's Spine

by Luke Sky Wachter

  “Still no sign of the battleship or any of its escorts on the scan, Sir,” reported Sensors.

  “The signal is coming from a small communications satellite further around the moon from our position but still within line of sight,” commented the little warrant officer at Comm., “they must be somewhere around the curve of the moon where we can’t see them yet.”

  Then the speaker stopped crackling.

  “In the name of the Infernal, Moon Base II!” snapped Captain Jazz, “I’m the on-scene commander and you’ll blasted well take my orders. I don’t care who you have on the line with your right now; turn those missiles. Or at least broadcast the self-destruct code—even you lot are capable of that much!”

  There was a brief bit of static and squealing, followed by an inarticulate shout of rage from the Poseidon’s Captain and nothing further.

  “Negotiations seem to have gone awry,” I said dryly.

  Laurent, looking like he was about ready to bust a gasket, looked over at me with flaring nostrils, “I don’t know how you find the ability to joke at a time like this,” he said, glaring back up at the screen.

  Without looking, I could tell he was staring at the Moon Base with eyes like lasers.

  “A simple statement of fact,” I said making my voice a quiet rebuke. That comment had been far too close to undermining me in front of the crew.

  Laurent gave me a look, and it was a look that I was more than willing to return and I made sure he was the one to look away first.

  “What are we going to do about those bombs?” he said after a moment, probably as a way to save face. I was more than willing to allow his segue—especially since those bombs had just become our key priority.

  “We can’t outrun them,” he added.

  “We’ll have to turn around and task gunnery with point defensive fire,” I said after an unhappy moment

  Laurent pursed his lips and shook his head from side to side and while his opinion was clear to read on his face, he didn’t say anything further. Really, there was nothing more to say on the subject. We were in a bad spot.

  “Contacts! Multiple contacts rising up from the moon base; it looks like another wave of bombs, sirs!” reported Sensors.

  For a moment at the sound of new contacts I’d started to hope against hope for a new variable to shake things up but that wasn’t to be. But it wasn’t to be.

  My face a hardened into the sort of mask that only comes from seeing far too many of your ships—and, more importantly, your people—fall to the enemy.

  “Let’s not wait around for orders to start clearing those bombs from my sky, Tactical,” I said not caring if I was stepping on the Captain’s prerogatives or not and I turned to the com’s, “make sure the fleet is prepared to come about 180 degrees and engage targets of opportunity.”

  “Yes, sir!” the little com-tech said, snapping to attention and speaking furiously into her microphone.

  “Bombs entering our extreme attack range,” cried the Tactical Officer.

  “Fire!” roared First Officer Eastwood into his microphone.

  “Unauthorized shuttle launches from Destroyer Longshot,” snapped the Sensor Warrant.

  “What!” Laurent barked as my head whipped around.

  “Emergency signals,” cried Lisa Steiner, “escape pods launce and space suited figures abandoning ship on the Cutter Rapid Ranger and…. I have more escape pods and crew in suits exiting Cutter Silent Strike as well,” she continued, sounding stressed.

  “What the blazes! Are you in a mine field or something?” I demanded.

  “No, sir,” reported Tactical, “we have good link up with the Rapid Ranger and the Silent Strike; no sign of battle damage listed as of five seconds ago.”

  “They’re abandoning ship,” Laurent exclaimed sounding dumbstruck, “the fools! They’ll be killed.”

  “Not if the shuttles from Longshot arrive in time to pick them up,” the Tactical Officer said in clinical voice.

  “Cowardice in the face of the enemy!” raged Laurent. “We should have put more Lancers onboard the cutters,” he said savagely.

  “Somebody get me the captains of those ships on the line—NOW!” I shouted.

  “Transferring now, Admiral!” Steiner acknowledged, yet despite her words it still took a precious ten seconds to get the captains on the line. By this time they’d turned their ships toward the wave of bombs and lit their drives to full power.

  “Mutiny!” raged Captain Laurent as the cutters went to full military power.

  I glared at my Flag Captain. “Mutineers tend to run away from the enemy, not dive right toward an enemy attack wave at full speed, Cedric,” I snapped angrily, “get a hold of yourself, man.”

  The main screen split, reducing the image of the battle space down to just one corner of the screen and replacing the remaining space with a trio of Captains. Two men I was unfamiliar with except as names and faces, but the other I had thought I knew: the young Captain Archibald, newly minted commander of the Destroyer Longshot.

  “What is the meaning of this, Captains?” I snapped, bestowing the full weight of my withering regard onto the trio of men now displayed on my screen.

  “It’s been an honor to serve with you, sir,” said the first of the Cutter Captains.

  “What the blazes are you bastards up to?” I demanded angrily.

  “Tell my family I loved them,” said the second Captain, drawing himself up to stiff attention and saluting. He was followed an instant later by the first Captain and I could see tears in his eyes, “It’s been nothing but an honor to serve with you—a real honor, Admiral Montagne. I don’t care what those fools back on Capria say. It’s all nothing but bald-faced lies and you can tell ’em I said so, sir!”

  I placed a hand on my forehead, afraid that I now knew exactly what these men were up to.

  “Get back in formation, Captains—and retrieve your men,” I ordered.

  “That’s the one order we can’t obey, Sir,” replied the first as his cutter continued to accelerate straight toward the enemy ships.

  “The Cutters just lit up like Christmas trees,” Sensors reported, “they’re not trying to mask their signals—quite the opposite. They’re pumping as much power through anything that emits measurable radiation as they can over there.”

  “Don’t be too hard on the crews, sir; it’s the Captains job to go down with the ship…not the men and women aboard her,” the First Captain said.

  My stomach roiled as the two Cutter Captains continued their suicide run straight into the middle of the formation of bombs.

  “Their fusion cores are spinning up, sir!” reported Tactical.

  I stood up in my chair. “I’ve never been prouder than I am this moment, Captains,” I said, bracing to attention. On the inside all I wanted to do was rip off the arm of my chair and beat someone—preferably one, or both, of the errant Captains—with it. My rampage would invariably include a certain Senior Select and the commander of his secret Moon Base.

  “Bombs are converging, slowly, on the two cutters,” reported our Tactical Officer in a subdued voice.

  “Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet—” screamed the first Captain, a brief look of terror entering his eyes while the other Captain held the arms of his little command chair in a death grip and closed his eyes. His face twisted with fear, and then the screen went dark cutting him off midsentence and removing two of the images on the screen until only Captain Archibald was left.

  In the small corner that still showcased the battle, I saw a series of explosions rock the area in the middle of the bomb wave where the two little cutters had disappeared into.

  “And never felt more like a failure than at this moment, either,” I whispered, staring at the place the two proud, little, icons representing warships of the MSP used to blink.

  “They did it, Admiral,” Tactical cried excitedly. “They got them to clump up and then tore the heart of that attack wave. They didn’t get all of them, but Fleet gunnery should be
more than capable of taking out the remaining bombs.”

  “Blast them,” I said in a rising voice, “blast those men!”

  “Sir,” Laurent said in a warning voice and looking over at him, I realized he thought I was referring to the two Captains who’d just sacrificed their lives to save the rest of their brothers in arms and their fool of an Admiral whose incompetence had all but signed their death warrants.

  “Not them, Flag Captain,” I said my face twisting and then I thrust a finger straight toward the moon, “them.”

  “My apologies, sir,” Laurent said, his features quickly schooling.

  I scowled, ready to tear some heads off. “After this battle, I want you to remind me—just in case I forget after a protracted battle,” I said turning to my Flag Captain, my eyes boring into his.

  Laurent waited a beat.

  “Remind you of what, Admiral?” he asked, and I could all but feel him drawing back, wondering what crazy thing the incomprehensible Admiral Montagne was going say next.

  I bared my teeth savagely, loath to disappoint him. Not on this matter. “Remind me that, if our ships are still in any kind of condition to do so after destroying every mechanical in this system, we still have a job to do,” once again my finger thrust out towards the moon base, “and one more target to destroy.”

  “We could turn around and hit them now,” he offered.

  “No,” I said with malice aforethought, “they still have one important role to play before it’s their turn.”

  Then I turned and glared hatefully at the droid swarm. Hate was not too strong a word for the emotion which had nearly consumed every fiber of my being. That being the case, I was definitely starting to hate our other enemies inside this system.

  Then I paused. Strike that and make it ‘all’ of our enemies in this system, I corrected myself as I silently fumed.

  “I ride to your rescue and you destroy two of my ships,” I murmured, staring balefully back at the Planet Aqua Nova, “it’s past time for some gratitude, Senior Select. And this time I will have my pound of flesh.”

  Leaning back in my seat, I began contemplating exactly what I was going to do if and when I survived the gunboat attack and, I briefly wondered if all of this was somehow my fault. Was I too good natured and willing to dive into a strange star system and help out others at the expense of those who believed in my decisions, if not me personally?

  Had I brought all of this on myself by not being…or at least appearing, selfish enough? Perhaps, I thought, the powers that be deeply hate anything smacking of idealism, selflessness or sacrificing for others without the expectation—or at least the precondition of benefit.

  Had I failed my people by not appearing greedy and overbearing enough? It was a terrible thought, that perhaps my naive desire to help others had got a lot of my own people needlessly killed along the way.

  I didn’t know, and I quite possibly could never know. But one thing was for sure and dead certain: from now until the stars burned out, my men and their efforts would be fully appreciated on the front end or, one way or the other, the worlds of these Sectors would bleed for my help.

  I’d spent my entire command, such as it had been, haplessly running around trying to put out fires. The worlds in Sector 25 didn’t seem to approve, and the worlds here clearly didn’t appreciate it—and it was in that moment that I knew I was well past done being everyone’s whipping boy.

  If the old saying ‘nice guys finish last’ was an incontrovertible expression of a deep-seated, immutable aspect of humanity…then it was time for a change.

  “No more Mister Nice Guy,” I muttered under my breath.

  Chapter 50: Fleet against the Swarm

  I turned back to the main screen with a terrible expression on my face and a feeling like the weight of an entire world was on my back. I felt like Hercules, the half-god foolishly carrying the world on his back while Atlas, whose job it really was, took off and partied it up.

  Now, in the old tales, Hercules tricked Atlas (who was more or less a full god) into picking back up the load and returning to his duties. But I felt more inclined to use the ungrateful world on my back like a bowling ball to crush my enemies with. Unlike Hercules, I didn’t particularly feel like handing the fate of our world back; let the shiftless bums who should have been taking care of business continue partying obliviously while things burned down around their ears.

  There was a new sheriff in town, and it was time he started acting like it—it was time I started acting like it.

  “You launched shuttles even before the crews of the Silent Strike and Rapid Ranger started to abandon ship, Captain Archibald,” I said pinning the young captain with my eyes. “What exactly was your involvement in the deaths of two good warships, their Captains, and whatever crew were still aboard?”

  Archibald looked stricken. “It was my idea to take the Longshot into the middle of those bombs, but even though my fusion generators are larger I didn’t think I had the range to get all the bombs,” he said, looking sick to his stomach. “So when I started to talk it over with the Captain of my old Cutter, who used to serve in my crew, he brought the other Captain into the conference and the two of them decided that we didn’t need to kill all the bombs. We just needed to get enough of them so the fleet could deal with the remainder, and for that what we needed were two cutters, not a cutter and a destroyer,” he looked down at his hands which were twisting around one atop the other. “It should have been me out there. It was my idea.”

  “It was a fine idea but you should have brought it to me,” I informed him icily.

  “There wasn’t time—” he started and I cut him off.

  “There was time to plan an evacuation of the crew, so there was time to bring the Admiral into the loop,” I snarled.

  Archibald swallowed his face white as a sheet.

  “We didn’t want you to have to carry this on your shoulders, Sir. You’ve done suffered more than enough already,” he finally said.

  “That’s not your call to make—I’m the Admiral, mister! I’m the one in command, so whether or not you tell me beforehand, those losses—those deaths—are mine to bear,” I bellowed before stopping to take two deep breaths.

  “I’ll submit to whatever punishment you deem fit. It was my idea so I should take the blame, and I’ll share their fate if that’s what needs doing, Admiral,” he said, looking up and meeting my eyes more or less steadily with his own.

  “You saved the Fleet,” I said, falling back into my chair with a thump, “so no. I’m not going to toss you out an airlock, Captain Archibald,” I said, biting out his rank. “So instead of punishing you like you so desire right now, I’m going to give you a warning and put you up for a medal.”

  Archibald’s eyes widened.

  “And the warning is thus,” I growled, “if you ever have another bright idea, then as Saint Murphy is my witness you will tell it to me if it is at all possible because if you don’t…I don’t care if you save this Fleet from destruction, I will put you in a penal colony so fast your head will spin!”

  “Yes, sir; thank you, sir,” he said obviously surprised.

  “Cut the connection,” I snapped, unable to stand looking at his face anymore.

  It took almost a minute of rhythmic breathing to regain control of myself, and when I glanced at the miniature screen built into the arm of my chair I could see as the last of the bombs were knocked out of commission with our ships well outside the blast radius.

  When I looked up again, Laurent was standing over me.

  “I know I probably fouled that up before, during, and after,” I said irritably, “but right now I don’t care—I can’t care about it. So let’s stay focused on the task at hand: those droids.”

  The Flag Captain sucked in air through his teeth and nodded. “We’re still alive, and that’s what’s important. How about let’s wrap this up and blow the rest of these droids to Murphy’s Gates, eh?”

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” I
said shortly and then turned to glare at the main-screen. We needed to nail these guys to the wall and fast—preferably before they overtook my Fleet and nailed us to the wall.

  “How are we looking on an intercept attempt by those boats, Mr. Shepherd?” I asked, doing my best to project confidence. After all, while they might not know it from the results, I was still winging it and nothing makes baffling them with baloney harder than being unsure of yourself in the first place.

  “We’ve been burning for all we’re worth, except for when we turned to deal with the bombs,” he said with a nod over at Helmsman DuPont, “but I estimate the forward ten percent of the swarm will overlap with our formation, unless of course they manage to slow us down by damaging our engines. But as for how much more of the swarm formation will be able to fire on us, that’s anyone’s guess…or, rather, you should speak with the Tactical Officer. I’m just the Navigator and such questions are outside my area of expertise.”

  “Alright, thank you for the analysis, Mr. Shepherd,” I said with a nod, “and keep up the good work, Helm.”

  DuPont ducked his head looked pleased with the words and Shepherd smiled as I turned to Tactical squaring my shoulders.

  “Give it to me straight,” I instructed the other Officer.

  Tactical took a deep breath. “Assuming everything goes as close to perfect as one can expect in a battle,” he said, meeting my eyes to make sure I was aware of the caveat, then continued solemnly, “then we’ll only have to face something on the order of 250-300 gunboats.”

  “Only two to three hundred droid gunboats,” I said sardonically with emphatic roll of my eyes, “well that’s a relief." Which was, of course, a complete and total lie but two hundred—or even three hundred—was better than all fourteen or fifteen hundred of them. Not that it was much better, though, since too many gunboats to handle at any one time was still too many to handle.

  Sure, we’d handled more than two hundred in our previous battle but they had been in waves, their swarms all strung out, giving us time to deal with them a relative few at a time and it had still been touch and go. This greater swarm was also strung out, but even so the odds were still very much tilted their way. The sheer size of this last group of gunboats put our previous battle against the droids to shame.