Spineward Sectors 6: Admiral's Spine

by Luke Sky Wachter

  I glanced over at my Flag Captain, and he looked back at me. I could see that he knew as well as I did that tangling with fifteen hundred boats or even an appreciable fraction thereof was no laughing matter.

  “We’ve faced worse odds,” he said with a shrug and a tone of voice that belied the worry I’d seen on his face just moments before.

  “That’s true,” I said, and it was; even earlier in that very day we’d faced worse odds. However, everyone’s luck runs out sometime…I just prayed to the Sweet Saint that mine would hold just a little longer.

  “Enemy boats starting to encounter the third bomb wave now,” Tactical reported clinically.

  This should be good, I thought, with more than a twinge of savage anticipation.

  Moments later, the wave of bombs entered range of the gunboats small laser fire. A growing hailstorm of fire erupted from the leading edge of the droid swarm, and I cursed as only a few of the bombs detonated, destroying only a handful of the fastest running droid gunboats. Unfortunately, by the time the bombs started to get deep enough to do any significant harm, there were enough boats with their small lasers to ensure their destruction.

  “It’s the Demon’s work,” muttered a yeoman.

  “Belay that nonsense, yeoman,” the Flag Captain snapped, scowling thunderously.

  “Sorry, sir,” woman said ducking her head and backing away.

  “Droid Swarm entering attack range now, Admiral,” reported the Sensor operator a minute later, and my eyes snapped back to the screen. Due to the contours of space and our recent flight close to the surface to draw the droids into range of the moon base, the swarm was actually swinging in towards us from our rear and to the right from further outside the orbit of this moon. Which meant our broadside was able to be brought to bear.

  “The Fleet is free to go weapons hot and fire on targets of opportunity,” I instructed, turning to the Comm. Section.

  Steiner nodded and relayed the orders, and after that it was time to wait. To my surprise, toward the tail end of the Droid Swarm a large group of gunboat four hundred strong split off to attack the moon base. Of course, that still left us with nearly a thousand of the little blighters.

  And then they were on us.

  “Fire!” ordered Eastwood, and our long range weapons started taking their toll on the droids.

  The closer they got, the more of our lasers were brought to bear starting with our longest and most powerful. Not, I think, that that mattered too much, since one hit by a heavy laser was enough to wipe them out of cold space.

  But regardless of how many we destroyed, the main group drew inexorably closer until finally they were within weapons range of even light lasers, and we started to take shots.

  At first it was only a hit here and there, and then the gunboats started arriving in greater and greater numbers.

  “Shields holding steady at 98%,” Longbottom reported crisply, no longer appearing shaken by the overwhelming numbers we were shortly about to face. But then, I guess being in multiple battles for your life all in the same day can have that effect on a person. After a while you just become numb to the danger and just focus on the job at hand.

  By then we must have destroyed a hundred gunboats, and I have to say that giving our lasers maximum time on target while the enemy is only slowly coming into our own range was really the way to go. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and when this one did it did so with a vengeance.

  It seemed to happen all at once, and before we knew it we were under assault from more than a hundred light laser attacks.

  A wing-shaped formation of almost a hundred and fifty gunboats descended upon our defenses with, replacements filling the gaps almost as fast as we could destroy them.

  “89%-82-73-69-61% and still falling, Captain,” cried Ensign Longbottom as the droids fired with mechanical precision, and our recently recharged shields proved that no matter how strong they were, nothing withstands the better part of a hundred and fifty shots of anything in short order without suffering for it. “Severe spotting on the starboard side, sir; shield strength now under 50% and shots are definitely getting through, Captain!”

  “Ship, prepare to roll,” Laurent barked out, “Shields, divert whatever you have to but keep my shields up!”

  “Yes, Captain,” replied Longbottom.

  “Now, Mr. DuPont, and with alacrity if you please,” the Captain snapped.

  I gripped my command chair as the ship started to move but even I could see that it was much too slowly.

  “Shields under 35% and fluctuating dangerously!” shouted Longbottom.

  “I’ve lost a number of sensor arrays,” reported the Sensor Warrant.

  “Gunboats moving in on close approach, plasma cannons go to rapid fire!” roared First Officer Eastwood.

  “Shield collapse is immanent,” Longbottom cried his voice cutting through the din, “we’re at less than 25%.”

  “Blast it all; I thought we got that problem fixed. I was told it was repaired!” Laurent raged.

  “We’re not going to make it in time,” shouted the Navigator with obvious fear in his voice.

  “It was, sir,” Ms. Blythe said almost laconically, ignoring the Navigator’s outburst. “This isn’t a case of failure to meet factory specs—this is factory specs being exceeded.”

  “Shield collapse; multiple circuit breakers tripped. Starboard generators are going into emergency shutdown now,” barked Longbottom, raising both hands and stepping back from his console, indicating by both word and deed that there was nothing more he could do on the starboard side.

  “Hold steady, crew,” I stood up from my chair and glared at the screen, “they may have taken down the shields on the starboard side, but our armor is thick and heavy. We will come out of this battle stronger than ever!” I lied. I knew we were about to get hurt, and hurt badly, but there was no sense in bemoaning the fact.

  “It’ll take more than a few light laser bolts to cut through this hull,” growled the Flag Captain.

  “Longshot is requesting positioning orders,” Lisa Steiner had to say in an elevated voice to be heard over the din, with one hand on her ear piece as she spoke.

  “I don’t have time for this,” I snapped as the screen indicated multiple hits to our starboard side, “tell Archibald to hold his blasted position and shut the h—”

  “Movement,” cried a sensor operator, “Destroyer Longshot is falling out of position and drifting to stern!”

  For a split second I thought Archibald’s destroyer had been hit, but it was just a second and then I slammed my hand down on the arm of my chair.

  “Blast him—blast that man,” I hissed furiously, “I just got done instructing him to hold off the heroics and this is what I get?!”

  “Longshot is taking up position between us and the center of the enemy formation…she’s taking hits, and not just from the enemy, Admiral. Our plasma cannons raked her port shields while she was passing through, and even now a few hits are getting through, sir,” reported Tactical.

  I opened my mouth to order Archibald’s Destroyer out of our way—and out of the line of fire—but then I hesitated. I knew it was important not to issue orders you know are going to be disobeyed.

  “How strong are their port shields?” I demanded instead. I wanted to know how much longer the rogue officer and his warship could continue to function while stuck between the hammer of the droid fleet and the anvil of my new Flagship.

  “I see signs of spotting on their portside,” Tactical replied quickly, “they must be diverting energy from the area facing us in order to strengthen the starboard shields facing the droids.

  “How long do you think they can hold out?” I asked with false calm.

  There was a brief pause. “Unknown,” Tactical replied simply.

  “Issue orders for the gunners to avoid shooting that fool destroyer in the side, if at all possible without endangering our own ship,” Laurent growled.

  Once again I almo
st spoke but instead settled back into my chair with a nod. The die was cast and, unfortunately, putting my oar into it would only weaken my authority and throw confusion…well, further confusion at any rate, into the mix. As much as I hated to admit it, I had to let the Captain fight his ship and hope the droids continued to focus on the Flagship.

  I didn’t understand why these droids continued to focus on the most powerful ship in the formation to the exclusion of the lesser ships. This pattern had held true throughout the engagement, unless the Phoenix temporarily lay outside their range and another one of our ships was inside.

  Still, I wasn’t going to open a com-channel and ask them to change their minds or explain themselves either, so for the moment it would remain a mystery.

  Lasers and plasma fire shot out from our banks of weaponry in a rapidly-expanding swarm, until our guns started to overheat and then, one by one, they started to fall silent. Meanwhile, for every droid boat that we knocked out of commission, another one plinked us with their light laser.

  “Multiple laser strikes to the starboard side; we’ve just lost a pair of plasma cannons and a turbo-laser,” reported Tactical.

  “Faster, Helm,” ordered Laurent.

  “We’re going as fast as we can, Captain,” DuPont grunted.

  “Hit to our starboard secondary engine, sir!” Damage Control Watch Stander Blythe reported, “the Chief Engineer took it offline before it tore itself apart.

  “We need—” the Captain began furiously, only to cut himself off with an angry wave of the hand.

  Another hailstorm of light laser fire wracked our ship, and the Destroyer heroically attempted to interpose itself between us and the barrage.

  “Longshot just lost her engines!” cried the Sensor Warrant.

  “Her shields are going down,” howled the Tactical Officer.

  It was almost as if I could feel the damage to Longshot with my own body, and the resulting strain upon the fleet and officers of this bridge. It was a nearly tangible, palpable thing, and I knew in that instant that we had reached a tipping point. Longshot had sacrificed herself to buy us precious minutes—minutes in which we had started to pull ahead of the swarm of gunboats.

  It would be the work of not even moments to sit back and let the drama play out as once again Captain Archibald came up with a last ditch desperate plan to save us all. Of course, in sitting back and taking what leisure I could find in the middle of a battle meant I would be doing two things. The first is I would be letting a ship and entire crew of men who trusted, believed in, and followed their Little Admiral, down. The second was I would be granting Captain Archibald tacit control of this fleet, even if only momentarily and for the length of his heroic last stand, through my inaction. And while the first I might let pass…the second I simply could not abide.

  Jason Montagne stood aside for no man—not here, not now, and categorically never when it came to the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet. If someone wanted to steal my thunder and wrest control of my men and my fleet from me, he might or might not succeed, but I would not grant such a man control over that which I…which we had laboriously built. He would have to take it as Jean Luc took the Lucky Clover: with guile, treachery, and plain old, brute force. And after all of that, it would still have to be done over my bleeding and broken body.

  Which is why I turned to Arienne Blythe and drawled, “Call down to Engineering and prepare to deploy the bucking cables, if you would be so kind.”

  The Damage Control technician started and stared at me for a moment before nodding sharply.

  Smirking ever so slightly at having gotten through the unflappable reserve of the stoic Watch Stander, who had been on the bridge with us during the Campaign leading up to the Second Battle of Tracto, I turned to the Helm but my Flag Captain beat me to the punch speaking before I could.

  “Admiral! We risk throwing away every bit of breathing space Longshot’s sacrifice has gained,” he said urgently.

  “I’m not about to let such stalwarts of the fleet fall by the wayside if there’s anything I can do about it. Not without at least an attempt to save them,” I said, thrusting my hand at the icon of the Longshot and then dismissing the captain and his concerns with a wave of my hand I turned to the Helmsman, “We will hazard a single pass, Helm—no more and no less. I couldn’t live with myself if we didn’t try at least to save them once." Or, more accurately, I couldn’t live with the notion that I would willingly let myself be a pawn in another’s game…or worse, reduce the people around me to nothing but mere numbers like my uncle had done.

  “There’s no guarantee they’ll make it without their shields up even if we snag them on the first pass and everything goes perfectly, Admiral,” Laurent said clinically.

  “There are few guarantees in this life, Flag Captain,” I said harshly, “and one of those very few is this: when you fight for the Little Admiral, he will fight for you. With every last breath in my body if necessary. Oath for oath, measure for measure, I throw no one away who is not a traitor or, possibly, a coward, although that last isn’t necessarily always true. So while there may be times when there is nothing I can do, I will not throw away lives proving the point. This is not one of those times and we will do all we can do,” I finished, turning away.

  “Yes, Admiral,” he said nodding as he stepped back. I could see that he was still skeptical in his head, but that while intellectually he might still have qualm, the fire in his eyes argued that his heart would be fully engaged in our mission.

  “Very good,” I sat back down abruptly, “carry on then, Captain. I’d like to see the fish that is our Longshot snagged, roped, and made ready to be hauled away before our mutual foes have the chance to cause any more mischief,” I ordered.

  Really, what more could an Admiral ask for? I had a Flag Captain who was willing to tell me when he thought I was wrong, and was willing to put his heart into carrying out my orders even when he disagreed. That was worth more than my feckless former First Officer every day of the cycle and twice on off-days.

  Sitting back, I watched as the well-honed machine that was my captain and bridge crew threw themselves and thus, my new Flagship, into action.

  A renewed barrage of fire lanced out from our recently-turned port broadside, knocking gunboats out of cold space with renewed fury.

  “Initiating pass-by maneuver now,” DuPont said, spinning the heavy cruiser and moving her around like she was a much smaller ship.

  “Engineering reports bucking cables ready for deployment,” came the terse report from damage control.

  “Shields are still taking laser strikes,” Longbottom reported, “port shields are down to 73% and the starboard generator still hasn’t started to reinitialize yet.”

  “Well, get on it, Longbottom,” Laurent said fiercely.

  Longbottom shook his head in dismay but dutifully leaned back over his console.

  “Longshot is now leaking atmosphere off her starboard side,” reported Tactical. “I don’t know how much longer she can keep taking these kinds of hits.”

  “Mere pinpricks,” I said encouragingly, “they’ll hold.”

  Yet, even as I said this, the destroyer started venting vigorously into space.

  “Those are a lot of strikes they’ve absorbed by placing their ship between the gunboats and us,” warned Tactical.

  I shrugged it off, not because I didn’t care but because I couldn’t care. I couldn’t do anything more for that ship than I was already doing, and beating myself up over something I couldn’t do anything about was an exercise in self-pity I couldn’t indulge in right now.

  “We’re going to come in on our closest approach in a few seconds,” Helmsman DuPont informed, “prepare to catch that destroyer, because I’ve taken the Admiral at his word and with the maneuver I’m using we’re only going to have time for one pass!”

  “Bucking cables standing by,” Watch Stander Blythe said evenly.

  “Here we go,” said DuPont in a rising voice just before the Phoenix
swept across the bow of the Longshot from port to starboard.

  I wasn’t the only one who held his breath as the bucking cables shot out from our ship, trailing for seconds like the tendrils of some kind of giant, metal, jellyfish before snagging on the unshielded side of the destroyer’s hull.

  “Cables away,” reported Crewwoman Blythe.

  As the cables snagged, and then jerked free before skittering along the bow of the ship in a way that made my heart sink. Then the cables caught again and, this time instead of breaking free, I and everyone else on the bridge could feel the faint shudder as the addition of the other ship’s weight jerked the nose of the Phoenix around as soon as the lines went tight.

  “We have good traction and the connection is solid; increasing polarization now,” reported the Damage Control tech.

  I released the breath I’d been holding and suppressed a sigh. For all of my high-minded talk—and low-minded thinking—I really didn’t want to lose the destroyer and its crew to the droids. Especially the crew, I reminded myself sternly.

  The fleet wasn’t so flush with crew that I could just throw them away without a thought. It was easier to get more ships than the crew at this point, and loyal crews were worth their weight in trillium and for all their flaws—not following orders, for one—they were loyal. If the worst flaw I had to deal with was a set of officers and crew who were not just ready and willing, but actively throwing themselves in front of danger to protect the Fleet—not to mention my own person—then that was something I could learn to live with.

  I didn’t like it, but now that the hot flush of anger and, yes, shame that I hadn’t been a better leader was gone and we were actually starting to pull away with the destroyer in tow, I could admit to myself that my initial thoughts may have been overly harsh.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I instructed completely redundantly as far as I could discern, seeing as everyone was already doing everything they could to widen the distance between us and the slow-moving droid gunboats.