Last Flight of the Acheron

by Rick Partlow

  “What should I do, Chief?” I asked her. I wasn’t even angry anymore. Nearly three days in T-space had burned it all out of me. Now, I was just tired and ready to be out of this boat.

  I should have been scared, I should have been paranoid, but I couldn’t seem to muster the energy for it.

  “I’ve seen a lot of shit in the Fleet, ma’am,” she told me, shaking her head, “but that wasn’t during a real, shooting war. Things are different now, and I don’t know that my experience is going to do you any good.”

  “Don’t go all barracks lawyer on me, Chief,” I said with a sigh. “Just tell me what you think.”

  “Keep your cool,” she said, almost before the last syllable was out of my mouth. At first, I thought she was speaking about what I’d just said, but she went on. “Don’t get rattled. Don’t get defensive. Just be honest, tell them exactly what happened and what you were thinking. They’re going to have the logs, so they’ll know the facts; lying or trying to spin things your way won’t work. Just let them know why you made the decisions you did, tell them how the situation filtered through to you.”

  I guess I must have looked as skeptical as I felt because she laughed softly at my expression.

  “Honestly, ma’am, the brass can fuck things up, but they’re not going to be looking to screw you over. You’re a Medal of Valor winner, and you and your boyfriend are basically the face of the war effort at this point, especially with what happened to your mother.” I wanted to be pissed off at her mentioning it, but I’d asked her to give it to me straight.

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I muttered.

  “Whatever, ma’am. Just don’t be afraid to use what you got.”

  She turned the log recorder back on with a wave of her hand through the haptic control hologram.

  “I’m sure everything will be fine and Captain Keating has our best interests at heart,” she added for its benefit with a subtle roll of her eyes.

  The MP’s who met us upon landing told a different story.

  I’d seen them waiting for us as we descended, particularly conspicuous because there was nothing else on this remote landing field; we were a good twenty kilometers from the spaceport and the bulk of Tartarus base, at the edge of an old and seldom-used training area. The humidity stole my breath away as I stepped down the ramp with Burke two steps behind, into the mild cloud of dust thrown up by the idling fans of the two hoppers sitting in the middle of the access road. It was mid-afternoon and I barely noticed the flashing of the strobes on the sides of the ducted-fan helicopters against the glare of too-close 82 Eridani, but the matte gray body armor the security troops wore and the sonic stunners they carried were unmistakable.

  “Lt. Hollande?” The man leading the contingent was an officer, a Lt. Commander McAvoy by the markings on his chest armor. The primary star reflected off his helmet’s visor and I couldn’t make out his face, but his voice was grave and professional.

  “Aye, sir,” I responded, snapping to attention. You didn’t salute on the flight-line.

  “I’m going to need you both to come with us,” McAvoy told me, gesturing back at the nearer of the two hoppers, its passenger door yawning open. I could see other Military Police escorting the crews of the remaining boats into the second aircraft, except Ash and Ngata, who were being led to ours.

  I followed McAvoy into the rear compartment of the hopper, ducking down and sliding across the bench seating to make room for Chief Burke. Ash and Ngata moved in across from us, with McAvoy next to them and another MP seated beside us.

  “I guess they must think we’re awfully dangerous,” I commented drily, eyeing the two armored and armed men as the passenger doors swung downward and the rotors spun up for takeoff.

  “Sorry, Lieutenant,” McAvoy said, and he honestly did sound sorry. “Orders.”

  I nodded noncommittally, then met Ash’s eyes. His face was a battleground of conflicting emotions, and I’d known him long enough to sort one from another. He was worried, angry and scared, all in equal doses, with a bit of confusion thrown in to fill out the edges. He hadn’t figured out why we were here, but then I guess he was always a bit more naïve---he’d probably call it “idealistic,” if I asked for his opinion. And I think he was more worried about me than himself, which might also have been naïve, though I appreciated it.

  But this was on me. He’d gone along with my call, followed my tactical decision, and afterwards, I had been the one to call Keating out on it instead of keeping my head down and my mouth shut. I’d be the one to fall on my sword if it came to that. I wanted to tell him that, to let him know it would be okay, but I thought it would just make him get all noble and want to sacrifice himself for me, and honestly, I wasn’t sure they’d let us talk anyway.

  The flight took us back into Tartarus and over the city, which was the same as saying the base. Inferno was military, the whole planet, and Tartarus was all the headquarters and personnel centers for all the military units on the planet. If you’d asked me to imagine a city built by and for the military, Tartarus would have been it. Unimaginative, ugly, blocky and drab, the buildings had been constructed with speed and utility in mind and not a damn thing more.

  I let the drab grey domes and the tan boxes slide off my eyes, not paying attention until we began to descend. The building was impressively large for all that it was just as ugly and plain as anything else we’d built. It was centrally located, the streets of the city centered geometrically on it like a spider’s web, and traffic snarled at its massive front and rear entrances as Generals and Admirals and bureaucrats climbed into or out of vehicles driven by a human chauffeur instead of a computerized guidance system as a sign of their rank.

  I couldn’t see the street signs or read the physical engraving across the arch of its front entrance, but I knew it by heart; I’d passed by it over and over walking down that street, first during assault shuttle flight school and then again when we’d reported back for training in the missile cutters. It was the Fleet Headquarters Building, loved by the brass and hated by anyone else ever forced to wander within its walls. Its roof stretched below us, a slate-grey plain with yellow circles to guide hoppers to their landing zones for high-ranking officers or VIPs---which, in our case, meant Very Important Prisoners, I suppose.

  “What the hell are we doing here?” Ash blurted, eyes wide. “Shouldn’t we be at the JAG offices or something?”

  “This command is Admiral Sato’s brainchild,” I answered him. “Lots of people with Admiral and Commodore in front of their name are going to want to know why we lost seven crews on our second mission out.”

  “No talking, please,” McAvoy said. From the tone of his remonstration, I knew he was just following orders again.

  It didn’t matter; we were here. The landing gear of the hopper scraped fitfully against the surface of the pad before it settled in with a shudder and the whine of the fans slowed to a deep hum. McAvoy hit a control and the rear doors began to swing upward on both sides, letting in the oven-like heat of the primary star baking the surface of the rooftop and us with it. I made a face as I followed the MP’s out onto the landing pad, shading my eyes with a hand and squinting against the glare as heat mirages rose up around us and turned the roof into a slate-grey river.

  The elevator we boarded was, thank God, air conditioned, but I hated walking into this already sweating. I also hated walking in under guard, like I was some sort of damned fugitive. That was a head game, though, a way for Keating to make us look guilty before we got to say a word. I suddenly wanted, more than anything else, more than I wanted to kill Tahni, to put my fist right through his doughy, pasty, fat face.

  The elevator dumped us on a level I’d never been to, somewhere close to the top floor I guessed, given how short the ride was. The hallway was decorated in typical military bland, with paintings of battles from Earth history and a couple from the first war with the Tahni, plus the usual assortment of “chain of command” photos starting at the top of the pyramid with
the Commonwealth President and not going that much further down here in Brassville. Functionaries zipped down the corridor with the speed and purpose of toadies anywhere in the military, only these were Captains and Commanders rather than your usual Ensigns and Lieutenants-junior grade.

  Doors lined the hallway and, as we marched down it at a brisk pace, I looked at the brass nameplates beside each one and saw more Admirals and Generals and Commodores than I think I’d ever seen in one place before. If my mother hadn’t been who she was, I might have been intimidated by that, and perhaps that was the point.

  I blocked it out and concentrated on clearing my head, trying to make myself a blank slate; that was from another therapist, my favorite one. Mom loved therapists. They were expensive, but they were so much easier than being a parent.

  After what seemed like a kilometer of walking through hallways and dodging gophers and clerks and ignoring curious stares, we finally turned a corner into an anteroom of some kind, a waiting area with a half a dozen chairs against the military-beige walls. The double doors it guarded didn’t seem like an office; I guessed it was some sort of conference room.

  There was an officer there waiting for us, his utility fatigues surprisingly Spartan in this land of dress blues and decorated chests. He had the look of youth, but I could tell he was older than his appearance by the way he held himself. He was strikingly handsome, but played it down with a regulation haircut and a soft-eyed expression that would have been at home on a schoolteacher. You had to look close to see the Admiral’s rank in subdued grey on his shoulder. McAvoy came up short when he saw the man, stiffening to attention.

  “Sir,” he said smartly over his helmet’s external speakers. “I’ve brought the prisoners, as ordered.”

  “Thank you, Commander,” the flag officer said with a nod. His voice wasn’t deep, but it was sonorous, like a professional speaker’s, and I found it captivating despite the circumstances. “But they’re not prisoners, and they have yet to be charged with anything. I’ll take care of it from here; you can return to your station.”

  “Umm…yes, sir,” the MP officer responded uncertainly. “I, umm…I had orders to…”

  “You have orders from a Captain, Commander.” The professional speaker’s tone turned slightly, almost imperceptibly harder, not brooking any argument. “Last time I checked, I’m an Admiral. Am I clear?”

  “Clear, sir!” McAvoy said.

  “Dismissed, Commander.”

  The MP’s turned on their heels as if they were on a parade ground and headed back down the hallway. The Admiral turned toward us and I snapped to attention and I didn’t need to look back to see that the others had as well.

  “Lt. Hollande, Lt. Carpenter,” the flag officer said genially. “Chief Burke, Ngata. I’m Jason Aviles; I work for Admiral Sato’s office.”

  “Sir!” I felt more respect and deference in my voice than I had in four years in the Academy. “Is this…” I hesitated. “Is this an official Board of Inquiry?”

  “It’s a bit ad-hoc,” he admitted, almost as if he were embarrassed, “but it’s something we kind of threw together at the last minute after we received the report from Captain Keating when you Transitioned into the system. Fortunately, it was during the workday, and there were enough Admirals handy…” The last was delivered drily and I had to fight not to laugh.

  “Thank you, sir,” I said. It was like I’d figured: the Attack Command was the Next Big Thing and everyone was watching it carefully.

  He nodded, as if he was following my thoughts.

  “We went over the logs from the mission about three minutes ago,” he told me. Then he grinned, a predatory expression that didn’t at all fit his demeanor or his voice. “It was at that point that our attitude began to shift. But please, come in, meet everyone.”

  Shit. I didn’t want to meet everyone…

  The conference room was huge, perhaps the largest I’d ever seen, even in the Academy, with ten-meter high ceilings and a gallery of seats, each with a data center. Which made the ten men and women gathered at its center around a small, oblong table seem even smaller in perspective. I recognized some of them from the chain-of-command posters in the hallways, and a couple from auditing military current events at school, and they were a collection of the most powerful military officers outside the Solar System. Admiral Sato wasn’t around, or the Commanding General of the Fleet Marine Corps, but everyone else who might be mentioned in the same breath was.

  They were an odd bunch, I thought irreverently. All looked fairly young save for one woman who had to have voluntarily and purposefully elected out of anti-aging treatments, which was such an outlandish concept that it shocked me. Everyone got them at birth nowadays, at least on Earth and the inner colonies. This woman hadn’t. She had the unmistakable lines and wrinkles and grey hair of someone who’d aged naturally and who didn’t give a damn. She wore the tailored black uniform of Fleet Intelligence and a Lieutenant Colonel’s rank; Intelligence ran their rank system like the Marines for some odd, arcane reason.

  The other individual who stood out from the group was a tall, handsome-looking man in civilian clothes. He had an oily, too-smooth vibe about him and I just knew he was a spook; Department of Security and Intelligence, the civilian counterpart to Fleet Intell. I disliked him immediately, with the military’s innate bias against the DSI. We hadn’t worked and played well together, historically.

  “Have a seat,” Admiral Aviles invited us, dispensing with the formalities of reporting, and motioning the four of us toward four pre-positioned chairs set back from the table, facing the gathered luminaries.

  I let Chief Burke move in first, down to the furthest seat, then I took the one beside her. Ash sat on my left, with Ngata at the end. I felt better with Ash beside me, though I was careful not to touch him or even lean against him; there was no use giving anyone ammunition to use against us.

  “We are here,” the old woman spoke first, despite the fact that she was only the equivalent of a Commander in the Fleet rank system, “to determine what recommendations to make to Admiral Sato about the future of the Attack Command, based on the missions run by Strike Wing Alpha thus far.”

  Wow. That was even a bit more far-reaching than I’d originally thought.

  “So, we’re not…,” Ash blurted, then fumbled his words. I looked over and saw his face reddening as he realized who he was interrupting. “Begging your pardon, ma’am,” he tried again, “but we’re,” he indicated the four of us, “not…under arrest?”

  There was an exchange of glances between several of the officers, including Aviles. Embarrassed? Guilty? Amused? I couldn’t tell. These people were hard to read.

  “The orders to take you into custody were given through the Provost Marshall’s office,” Aviles explained, “based on the statements of your commanding officer, Captain Keating. When you came out of Transition Space for your mission brief, he stated that you two, Lieutenants Hollande and Carpenter, had violated standing orders and Fleet doctrine, and had been responsible for the deaths of seven flight crews.”

  “He also threw insubordination, dereliction of duty and illegal fraternization into the report,” the old woman added with the ghost of a smile.

  I felt a nuclear reaction reaching critical mass inside my head. It was standard procedure for any longer mission to stop in the first system with a wormhole jumpgate and transmit a report through it just in case. I hadn’t understood why we’d done it this time, since it was only a three-day ride in T-space, but now it was obvious: Keating had wanted his ducks in a row when we got back to Inferno.

  “You’re about to blow a gasket, Lieutenant Hollande,” the Intelligence officer observed, and my ears warmed with embarrassment at my inability to conceal my anger. She sounded as if she found it hilarious. “I would be, too,” she admitted. “Particularly after what we just saw in the ship’s logs uploaded when your squadron Transitioned into the system.” She cocked an eyebrow. “I’m not certain Captain Keating is comp
letely aware of the reporting systems built into your ships. I wonder if he thought he could alter the records before we saw them, or if he even planned ahead that far.”

  “As of now,” Admiral Aviles informed us, “Captain Keating has been relieved of command of Strike Wing Alpha. His XO will assume temporary duties as the CO, but we’ll find a permanent replacement before you go out on your next mission.”

  I noticed Chief Burke shape a silent whistle and on the other side of me, Ash’s eyes went wide. Chief Ngata made no reaction at all; his face could have been carved into the side of a granite cliff. I don’t know what my face looked like because it was numb.

  “If you’ll pardon me, then,” I said slowly, “but if we’re not under arrest, then why are we here? That is,” I clarified, “why us and not the squadron leaders? The living ones.”

  “Lt. Hollande,” Aviles answered, again seeming amused, “Lt. Carpenter, you are both recipients of the Medal of Valor.” He leaned casually against the table with one hand, waving the other dismissively. “So maybe that was political, maybe the high command needed some heroes to deflect the bad press of getting blindsided by the Tahni.” I almost nodded. I’d had that thought myself. “Or maybe it was just luck. Maybe you just blindly charged in without thinking. It’s happened before. Maybe you were young and brave and stupid.”

  He pushed away from the table and hovered over where we sat.

  “However, since winning it, you’ve gone on two missions for the new Attack Command, and in both of them, the two of you have played crucial roles in the accomplishment of the stated objectives, despite losing two separate squadron leaders, and despite unimaginative and overly restrictive tactics and strategies mandated by your former commander.”

  His eyes went between the two of us.

  “I’m going to be straight with you, we’re running on the ragged edge right now. It’s going to take us another six months to finish reconstruction work on the shipyards, and another three to six months after that to get the first new cruisers off the line. While we’re trying to get our shit together, the Tahni have been invading and occupying any colony they can get their hands on. They took Demeter last week.” I swallowed hard at that. Demeter wasn’t that large of a colony, more of an ecological park than anything else, but it was one of our oldest. The thought of all those people being at the mercy of the Tahni was sobering.