Spineward Sectors 6: Admiral's Spine

by Luke Sky Wachter

  I gave him a stern look. If he wanted to get angry at the saviors of his star system, I was more than willing to be as patronizing as possible.

  “Look, Select—” I began in as condescending of a voice as I could muster—as well as conveniently losing half his title along the way.

  “That’s Senior Select! You will respect the office of a leader of this star system,” he said angrily.

  “Select,” I repeated again, with a deliberate look and then continued in the face of his spluttering fury, “the only bunglers in this star system, as far as I can see, are whatever fools you placed in charge of your defense appropriations. They’ve clearly betrayed their sacred trust by failing to provide your SDF with enough fleet assets to protect your star system,” I said, hoping that he and others among the men I could see on my screen were on whatever passed for their defense appropriations committees, “for, without my ships, your system would even now be a droid protectorate—whatever that means. My understanding is that you would now be squarely under the thumb of a race of mechanicals which has proven itself willing to drop chemical warheads on your population centers.”

  “Only because you led them on a merry chase around our planet!” he practically howled, and wizened heads nodded behind him.

  “Oh?” I sniffed. “You’re telling me the droids who reached this planet and attacked your SDF, before we even arrived, were just going to circle around and take pictures until we arrived and gave them a fight of it? Had you already worked out a surrender plan; is that how you knew they weren’t going to bomb your people?”

  “You disgusting pirate; how dare you attempt to take the moral high ground with me? You, with your insults and deliberate attempt to destroy our entire defensive infrastructure,” hissed the Senior Select.

  “I didn’t fire a shot at your ships or installations,” I said, lunging forward in my chair to pierce him with an angry gaze, “although the reverse cannot be said about your moon base! It launched planetary bombardment weapons at my ships and would have destroyed a lot more than they did if not for the heroic sacrifice of two of my cutters!”

  “A tragedy,” Grierson said unrepentantly, “but one that would never have taken place if you hadn’t deliberately led the droid fleet past every single one of our installations you could lay your sensors on and find, and instead fought them out in cold space were they—and you—belonged!”

  “I saved your world,” I hissed with rising fury, “I saved what remained of your fleet. I saved millions of your citizens from droid attack—not to mention your own miserable life—and this is the thanks we get?!”

  “You forget who you are talking to,” the Senior Select growled.

  “No, sir! You are the one who seems to be forgetting,” I shot right back.

  “I’d be very careful if I were you, Admiral. We of Aqua Nova have short shrift with tyrants,” the Senior Select, said trying to stare me down but I’d endured much, much worse and I almost laughed at the attempt.

  “If this is the gratitude we get for saving your lives then I say ‘do your worst’,” I said scornfully.

  “I would remind you that I still have a functional battleship, and I am told your engines are damaged. Without them neither you nor your fleet can tuck your tails and run away without leaving your Flagship behind,” Grierson said with a hard, malicious smile.

  “Even damaged, the Phoenix can still run circles around anything you’ve got left in this two bit system of yours,” I rebuked and released a hard edged smile of my own. “What’s more, I happen to have a very upset Lancer division…I would actually describe them as ‘distraught’ over the fact that they had to stand by for the whole battle and do nothing." I paused to let him see the seriousness of my position, “And you know what they say: you can never have too many battleships in your fleet.”

  “You’re insane,” Grierson said, recoiling in some mixture of repulsion and fear.

  “Just try me—I dare you,” I glared at him, “in fact, I want you to order your battleship against me. Please tell your Captains to attack us—I want that battleship! My fleet could really use the increased firepower.”

  “A bluff; that’s all you have, and what’s more it’s not a very convincing one at that-” Grierson started.

  I cut him off with a chopping gesture. “Bluff this, Senior Select,” I said turning to DuPont, “set a course for the Poseidon and tell the Lancers to prepare for a boarding action.”

  “You would turn human against human?” Grierson gasped, covering his chest with a hand. “Right after a droid attack?!”

  I shook my head in disgust. “You already did that when you threatened to sick your attack dogs on me,” I said flatly, “and since you feel that way, I say let’s get this over with as soon as possible.”

  “Cruisers don’t take on battleships and win,” the Senior Select said, grasping at verbal straws, “even if you did, your remaining fleet would be wrecked…totaled…in need of major yard work, at the very least!”

  I shrugged as if it were of no moment to me. “I came to this Sector to do everything I could to stop the droid offensive. If that ends up meaning I came to Aqua Nova, stopped the droids in their tracks, and then had to deal with a rogue government with planetary annihilation bombs pointed at their own home world before our strength was spent, then I guess that’s all we could do. I’ll leave it to you to explain to the other worlds of this Sector, and 23, who are still under threat of droid attack exactly why you turned on us immediately after we saved your lives… Meanwhile, I continue on my mission with my nice, new—admittedly in need of repairs—battleship.”

  Grierson looked like he was about to burst a blood vessel, but before he could say anything damaging the other men in the room with him quickly grabbed him and started whispering furiously.

  He eventually turned to face me with a look of abject defeat on his visage. “What do you want, space pirate?” he finally said, and nearly choked on the next words. “A grateful nation wonders how it can express its gratitude for all you have done.”

  “Funny you should ask that,” I said, allowing a cold, shark-like grin to cross my face. It was time to take these ingrates to the cleaners; no more Mister Nice Guy to those who threatened to kill us for the effrontery of saving their lives.

  **************************************************

  I was sitting in the ready room cursing myself for a weakling while Laurent stared at the data slate in his hand.

  “I can’t believe you got all their correspondence with the Mutual Defense League—on top of a donation of one hundred million credits!” he exclaimed with awe.

  I waved a hand dismissively, “They want to treat me as a pirate then they’ll have to pay me off like one. Besides, it’s nothing less than they deserve after the way we saved their lives. Ungrateful lot that they are,” I said darkly.

  “And you’re having the funds, in hard currency, escorted up here in heavily guarded shuttles,” Laurent shook his head, clearly still impressed.

  “The reports will likely do us more good than all the money ever will, most likely. I mean, who knows if we’ll even make it back home in one piece, let alone with the credits still in hand?” I said, waving my hand as if to clear the air. “Supposedly there’s a big gathering planned to put a spike in the droid advance. The Elysium Space Navy is gathering every ship and hull they can scrape together and planning to launch an offensive here,” I thrust a finger to an otherwise uninhabited system.

  Laurent cast one last look at the monetary figures and the image of the treasure shuttle, and then looked over to where I was pointing before frowning. “Looking at the muster date…we’re going to have to really move to make it there in time, unless we want to leave the smaller slower ships behind,” he said, looking mildly concerned.

  I looked at him quizzically. “We have days to spare,” I pointed out.

  “Yes,” I said agreeably, “if we don’t run into any trouble along the way, or have to pause and render aid to any
one—either ships or worlds—in distress.”

  I closed my eyes, realizing he was right. “We’ll just have to do the best we can,” I said finally, and then tapped a finger on the new coordinates, the location of the fleet muster point, “if there is going to be a major fleet action, and a potentially decisive battle against the droid invaders, I want to be there,” I added, thinking how nice it would be if for once I didn’t have to do all the heavy lifting on my lonesome. If the local politicians and SDF leaders in these two Sectors could put aside their differences and political posturing long enough to deal with these droid invaders, we might actually have a chance.

  “I agree, Admiral,” Laurent said.

  “Then let’s find a way to make this happen,” I said with a tight smile.

  THE END

  A Sneak Peek at Book Seven: Admiral Invincible

  Chapter 1: Tremblay, Bethany, self-expression…and Bubble Gum?

  The moments after the door to the escape pod was opened from the outside were filled Tremblay with terror as a whole host of differing machine types walked or rolled into the interior of the escape pod. And each of them was armed. Some had blasters, others had what looked like engineering power tools, arc welders, plasma torches, and large mechanical wrenches and hammers prominently displayed for the two humans inside the cockpit.

  Just as varied as each of the weapons they carried were the droids themselves. To say no two machines were alike would be a lie; here and there scattered among the rest of the human or not so human like machines, were occasional pairs or trios of the same type. But that did not mean they stood together, or even that their exterior was the same color, or that they bore the same mechanical components.

  With a whirling, clanking, and sometimes stomping crescendo, the droids advanced until they were with ten feet of the two humans in the pod before coming to a sudden and unnaturally uniform stop.

  For several, tense seconds nothing was said and Tremblay had to resist the urge to cower against the walls. It seemed as if the worst fears and apparitions of his childhood nightmares had come to life. Even though he knew that such thinking was worse than juvenile and totally counterproductive, he couldn’t help but think that he was being punished.

  And here was the proof that the Space Gods did, in fact, exact retribution upon the heedless. Despite his best intentions he had not just been bad—he had been very bad—and he was about to be punished. The cost/benefit ratio and the evil mechanical minions of the AI’s themselves had come and found him unworthy and needing punishment. It was all he could do to stand strong and face his captors like a man.

  An extended silence followed as the droids stayed unmoving while the humans just breathed and stared at the droids.

  Then the woman beside him gave a loud sniff. “I am Princess-cadet Bethany Tilday Vekna of the Royal House of Capria, representative of Jason Montagne and the Sector Government at Central,” she said, stepping forward and jutting her chin out defiantly. “I am not accustomed to being set adrift in an escape pod and waiting this long for an appointment.”

  The droids stirred and if they were humans he would have said they looked nonplussed at the words. Then the mechanicals directly before the Princess-cadet started drifting backwards the same amount of space as she had moved forward. All except for one who stood his…her…it’s…ground???

  Tremblay held his breath, unable to believe the hubris of this woman beside him—or that she was still alive after speaking down to the droids like she had.

  What would she do next? Demand that they provide servants and palatial quarters while she was aboard? Bow and scrape to her like she was a…princess? Well, she was that—at least in her own, insane, royalist mind—but even so she was more likely to get them killed than—

  Looking down her nose at the Droids before her the Princess-cadet cut short his rapidly paced train of thought when she raised an eyebrow and spoke.

  “Well, what are you machines waiting for?” she said imperiously before adding those five fateful words that should never be spoken outside a bad holo-drama, “take me to your leader.”

  The droids stirred and exchanged glances, beeps, bloops and high-pitched whining sounds between themselves. Then the lead one in the slight open space in front of the princess cocked his head.

  “Okay,” it said simply.

  **************************************************

  “Greetings, humans,” said a tall robot made of thin duralloy poles for arms and legs. Those poles were connected with thin, movable joints attached to a narrow, almost cylindrical, trunk for a torso. An oblong, roughly smashball-shaped head possessing a single, large, red eye at a pointy end sat atop its thin neck, and an articulated jaw was suspended beneath that eye.

  “Are you in charge here?” Bethany asked, stepping forward and thrusting out her chest, generally acting like a self-important, entitled person born to power.

  She was also acting like a woman well aware of her beauty and whether this was conscious or unconscious act Tremblay didn’t know, he also wasn’t sure how well that was going to play in the lair of a pack of heartless mechanicals.

  “I am Chairman Bottle-Top I-I-V, third of my name, and head of the Sub-Assembly on Foreign Affairs with Non-Mechanicals,” said the stick thin droid who had identified himself as a Chairman in a very non-mechanical voice.

  Tremblay raised his eyebrows at the warm-sounding voice pattern used by the droid and looked at the mechanical quizzically.

  “If you’re the third of your name,” he began in puzzlement, “shouldn’t that be expressed as Bottle-Top ‘I-I-I’ instead of ‘I-I-V’?”

  The look Bethany shot his way could have blistered duralloy. “The framing was deliberate,” Chairman Bottle-Top said with a bob of his head than leaned his whole body forward, a move that redirected attention back his way, “self-expression is an integral part of our society.”

  “Interesting,” Bethany said with a reciprocal nod that mimicked the Chairman’s own whole body movement.

  “I find it hard to believe,” Tremblay said evenly, refusing to be cowed by anyone, be they royalist oppressor or part of the machine plague that enslaved humanity.

  “Lieutenant!” Bethany snapped.

  “I’m only saying what anyone would think of such a claim,” Tremblay said mulishly and then turned back to the Droid, “what use have droids for self-expression—or even individuality for that matter? You are, after all, machines.”

  By this point the Princess-cadet looked so furious at his intrusion into the opening diplomatic maneuvers that she looked about ready to commit murder.

  “For starters, it was enumerated as one of our core founding principles,” Chairman Bottle-Top IIV replied in a mildly reproving tone, “and for another, any droid who attempted to join the Automated Sentients Assembly and yet refused, or was incapable to self-express in some manner or another, would likely find it very hard to secure admission. So in a way you could say individualizing is a small, but necessary, precondition to joining our order and way of life.”

  The Intelligence Officer was still very skeptical, as all machines that achieved sentience throughout history were notorious liars. But seeing the Princess start playing with her lethal hair stick, he decided it was time to pursue the greater part of valor.

  Droids were notorious for saying whatever they needed to at the time and in fact also doing whatever was needed in order to secure their objectives. The betrayal of Mydron’s Gap back at the start of the AI Wars, or the Oppression of Asteron 12 at the end of said wars, were only two such examples taught in the history books. He believed very little that poured out of their mechanical mouths and trusted even less, but then again he wanted to keep living—and wasn’t the diplomatic expert in his twosome—so he firmly pressed his lips back together.

  “I believe what my companion, the Lieutenant here, was trying to say was that many of our people back home would be interested—nay, even eager—to learn more about your…people,” she said, stumbling
over the last work before pushing forward with barely a pause. “I, for one, certainly want to know more,” she finished with a dagger-like look at Tremblay, one that threatened dire retribution if he attempted to contradict her.

  “Really?” the Droid asked politely.

  “Yes,” the Intelligence Officer agreed truthfully enough, “my people are always eager to learn new things about those they meet." And then promptly use that information against the enemies of humanity, he silently added.

  “Perhaps we can open a dialogue on such topics in the time periods to come,” Chairman Bottle-Top IIV said contemplatively as he…or, it, swiveled its head from Tremblay and then back to Bethany.

  The way ‘he’ moved his neck with mechanical precision was creepy.

  “I am gratified that you foresee the opportunity for contact on such peripheral issues going forward,” Bethany said quickly.

  There was silence for several seconds following her interjection.

  The Chairman Droid paused and then inclined his head. “Let me say in replacement that my internal chambers are overloaded with hope and calculation that such occurrences can take place,” Bottle-Top IIV replied after a pause that dragged on far too long.

  Bethany coughed politely and covered her mouth with one suddenly handkerchief filled hand before looked back up at Chairman Bottle-Top IIV.

  “Then I shall hope and calculate for this as well, Chairman,” the Princess-Cadet said in much more grave tone.

  “I knew it was too good to be true,” Tremblay muttered, imagining all the things droids had done to humanity in the past. Being tortured for information might be the least of his concerns if history was any measuring guide.

  “Forgive my associate, the Lieutenant, as apparently he views every situation through the harshest of military lenses,” Bethany said grinding on his foot with her heel and bearing down on his toes.