Edge of Conquest (The Restoration Armada Book 1)

by Hugo Huesca

  Clarke’s had spent his day trying to avoid the topic of the pirates. He made an effort of will not to sigh at the captain.

  “More of a daring retreat, I’d say. The only thing I did was tell you how to best run away from them.”

  “While shooting all the while,” Captain Navathe said. A spark of humor danced across her eyes, like she knew exactly what Clarke was going through. “The turrets of the Beowulf had never fired in combat before, Clarke. My crew will tell the story about their victory against pirates for the rest of their lives.”

  Clarke took a deep breath and plopped down in one of the g-seats near Navathe. He pulled a new holo screen and helped her plow through the bureaucracy of New Angeles. They worked in silence for a while before Navathe resumed the conversation:

  “Antonov told me you were on the fast track to becoming a Fleet’s Captain before Broken Sky,” she said, her tone neutral, the same careful expression one may have while talking about a person’s recently deceased family.

  “Yes, sir,” said Clarke, matching her tone. “As it turns out, I’m not fit for command.”

  That earned him a quizzical look.

  “You really believe that,” she said, examining his face. “Your performance the last couple days suggests otherwise. If the Defense Fleet would not have you, you could’ve gotten a job as a freighter’s captain for almost any corporation in the Edge, made a fortune. Instead, you chose to fade into obscurity and become a cargo hauler.”

  “Sir, as a hauler, if something goes wrong with the ship, I’m not responsible for the death of hundreds of people.”

  Navathe’s expression darkened. “Broken Sky? Hells, Clarke. What happened to your ship wasn’t your fault, you must know that.”

  Clarke shrugged without energy. Talking about the battle didn’t make him angry, like it had done at first. A decade of memories helped cool off some memories. Never the regret though.

  “Doesn’t matter who’s guilty,” he said, “Applegate’s crew is still dead. Nothing is going to change that.”

  “When the pirates hailed us, Pascari suggested we should attack them head on. In hindsight, I can see that idea for what it was, a suicide mission. Without you keeping calm during a crisis, my crew would be dead,” Navathe said, her gaze focused so intently on Clarke it burned. “Don’t you forget it, Clarke. If it’s responsibility you’re hiding away from, remember there’s still responsibility in choosing not to lead. After all, you’re letting innocent people be led by the second best choice, and sometimes that isn’t enough.”

  A long time ago, in very different circumstances, Captain Yin had told him something similar. He had been a young officer, still fresh from the academy and already promoted. He could feel the animosity from the other officers his age, the huge responsibility weighing on his shoulders. He had been of a mind to reject the promotion before Yin found him and changed his mind.

  The memory made him smile. Navathe interpreted it as a victory.

  “You know,” she told him, “my husband served in Asteria Station during Broken Sky. He lived another five years before his kidneys failed him, you know, thanks to you. Those were five years of happiness we shared precisely because you commanded Applegate and not some Tal-Kader crony.”

  Clarke’s eyebrows rose a notch, and he found that words failed him. Navathe wasn’t expecting a reply, though, since she returned to the holo.

  The sleep cycle had only a couple hours left when Navigation connected to the bridge with an emergency message.

  “Captain,” the pilot’s voice said, “you really want to hear this.”

  The man patched the message without waiting for Navathe’s confirmation, a break of protocol that instantly put Clarke on high alert. That pilot was scared shitless.

  A holo appeared, showing a man dressed in the impeccable formal garb of a Defense Fleet admiral, a river of ribbons stuck to his chest. He had a long, elegant forehead, black eyes just a tad too far apart from each other, white and gray hair, and a hooked nose that gave him the air of a bird of prey. His pursed, small lips finished the image.

  “To New Angeles and all its in-system space forces, I am Admiral Ernest U. Wentraub of the SA Defense Fleet Sentinel. This is an emergency broadcast for all available ships to deploy at once in interception path against Free Trader Beowulf, designation FT89900.0b. Beowulf is guilty of harboring EIF terrorists inside their ship and plotting an attack against the people of the Edge. They’re to be detained at all costs. I repeat. To New Angeles…”

  What? Clarke was too stunned to feel anything but confusion. Antonov said we had ten cycles on the Sentinel.

  The pilot cut the feed. “The message loops after that,” he said. Then, he cursed loudly and said, “There’s also a message directed for us, Captain.”

  “Patch it through,” said Navathe, her voice a dry rasp.

  A new man appeared on screen, this one younger, about Clarke’s age, dressed in captain’s garb.

  “Beowulf, this is Captain Riley Erickson of the SA-DD Vortex, Defense Fleet Sentinel. We’re on your tail. Surrender now or we’ll use lethal force against your ship.”

  The message ended there. Captain Erickson was a man of few words.

  Who are these people? Clarke thought. There had been a time where he had known, if not by name, then by sight, all the admirals and battleship captains of the SA. There was something about Admiral Wentraub that made him uneasy, like looking at the picture of a corpse. The man didn’t belong at the command of a navy fleet.

  At the back of his mind, panic threatened to settle in, a burning tsunami that would wash away all reason and logic. With the Defense Fleet here, it was likely the EIF’s quest had ended before it started. He could feel their presence looming over him, a dangerous shadow waiting to pounce.

  “There’s a visual?” asked Navathe.

  “Visuals won’t pick them up at that range,” said the pilot, “but the computer confirms a ship registered at about same time their message arrived. It’s moving fast.”

  A destroyer, Clarke realized. It must’ve run ahead of the Sentinel fleet to catch up with them. Back at Jagal, someone must’ve betrayed the EIF.

  Clarke did some quick math in his head. The protons carrying the information to the computers had arrived just now, but the Alcubierre point was less than a quarter of a light-day away from New Angeles. All vessels in a military fleet could pull .1c without trouble, double the normal speed of a merchant ship. If Vortex had been on the move for the last six hours…

  “Shit,” breathed Navathe. “We’re fucked.”

  “Don’t worry about them,” said Clarke, “they’re too far away from us.”

  “We’ll be in targeting range of their computers in an hour,” Navathe said. Her hands hovered over her controls, vying to make a decision. “We have to surrender.”

  “They’ll kill us anyway,” said Clarke. “We need to save the crew, first. Talk to Antonov, alert the crew, have them man their posts and don pressure suits. Let me try to figure this out.”

  “Not even you can make us escape from a battleship…”

  “I don’t intend to,” said Clarke, getting up. He floated to the bridge’s lockers, where the pressure suits were kept. If they came under fire, and he had little doubt they would, they would need to be able to survive if the ship suddenly lost atmosphere. He tossed one suit to Navathe and donned one himself, expertly maneuvering his body in zero g while racking his brain for possible routes and escape plans.

  As he did so, Navathe woke up Antonov and showed him the messages, while at the same time donning her own suit.

  “Antonov’s on his way here,” Navathe said, her voice muffled after she put the suit’s helmet on and had to switch to a comm channel. “You found us our magic solution?”

  Clarke had never thought much about matters of religion. But, as he floated toward Captain Navathe, he imagined that, if an afterlife existed beyond the endless void, Isaac Reiner would be watching them from there, wondering if the EIF w
as about to get his daughter killed.

  “No magic, sir,” he told the captain. “Gravity assist. We accelerate all we can, slingshot around New Angeles and use the planet’s gravity to hide us from Vortex’s targeting computers. We head for the nearest Alcubierre point and hope to lose them from there.”

  “What about the New Angeles’ garrison? They’ll shoot us down.”

  “It’ll take time to get the ships to match our speed,” said Clarke. The garrison must’ve seen the message at about the same time Beowulf did, so their engines were burning right now… “Every second counts, Captain.”

  Clarke heard a clank behind him and turned to see Antonov, Pascari, and Julia as they floated into the bridge. They had followed Navathe’s orders and wore their pressure suits.

  “We can’t leave,” Antonov bellowed, “without the Independence’s coordinates!”

  “There’s a destroyer about to get us down its sights as we speak,” said Clarke. “The plan just changed, sir. We need to survive first, worry about your fleet second.”

  Without waiting for an answer, Clarke turned to Navathe. “Sir, ask Navigation what’re the nearest Alcubierre points opposite the one Vortex came from.”

  Navathe did as he asked, wasting no time. While she spoke to her pilot, Julia strapped herself to a g-seat next to Clarke.

  “Are we under attack?” she asked.

  Clarke put her up to speed as fast as he could. Both made the tacit agreement to set their differences aside for the moment.

  “How can I help?” she asked when he was done.

  “Help me choose an Alcubierre point,” he said.

  There was no time to waste, but if they set a course without thinking it through, there would be no time to change it later.

  Antonov and Pascari settled next to them and Captain Navathe cut her conversation short and turned to them.

  “There’s three points past New Angeles. We have enough fuel to Alcubierre through any of them, but we’ll be stranded afterward.”

  She transmitted the points to their wristbands. Clarke gritted his teeth at the prospect of being stranded at some unknown outer system.

  One problem at a time, he told himself. He studied the points.

  “This one is the farthest,” he said, pointing at the middle one, “and it’s exactly behind the planet from our perspective. I doubt there’ll be a strong defense waiting for us there. The slingshot maneuver will have a tight angle that will help us dodge any incoming fire.”

  Julia and Antonov exchanged one glance full of meaning.

  “Take the third one,” she said, marking the point in a holo.

  “Explain,” said Clarke. Julia’s point was only a quarter turn away from their current course, and farther than Clarke’s option. It wouldn’t hide them from Vortex tracking, and if they were unlucky, neither from its torpedoes.

  “We don’t have the Independent’s current coordinates,” Julia said, “but this point takes us close to their last known location.”

  She keyed a series of coordinates and sent them to Navathe.

  “It’s in deep space,” said Navathe.

  Clarke winced. Even Pascari didn’t seem enthused with the idea of being stranded in deep space. If no one knew where they were if the Independent had moved on…it would be a death sentence. A slow death.

  “Do it,” said Antonov. “Isabella Reiner is worth the risk.”

  Even though he had the authority, Antonov still looked at each of them in the eye, like searching for validation for his decision. Clarke nodded at him.

  “But first we evacuate the crew,” he said.

  “The SA will arrest them,” Julia pointed out.

  “Not if we say the truth,” said Clarke. “Captain, sir, can I send a message to New Angeles and Vortex?”

  He explained his plan quickly. Everyone agreed to it. A couple seconds after that, Clarke was staring at a gray screen with the words TRANSMITTING pulsating red and awaiting his input.

  Clarke hadn’t realized, until now, how his chest was pounding. After he did this, there’d be no turning back. He’d take the same kind of decision he’d hoped he’d never have to take, the one where he gambled with the life of innocent men and women.

  And his hope of ever returning to a semblance of normal life would be gone forever.

  He cleared his throat, made sure his uniform was tidy, and faced the music.

  “This is Joseph A. Clarke of the Edge Independence Front,” he said. “We’re on board Free Trader Beowulf, which we took hostage. We hope to negotiate with Vortex and the New Angeles’ garrison, and to prove our good will, we’ll allow Beowulf’s crew to evacuate. Clarke out.”

  He exhaled loudly after the TRANSMITTING screen closed. Without missing a beat, Navathe opened a new transmission, this one internal, and spoke to the crew:

  “This is Captain Navathe. I’ve been in collaboration with the EIF. When you’re interrogated, tell the SA the truth. I’m guilty, you’re innocent. I lied to you all, you owe me no loyalty. Think of your families and don’t play hero. Whatever they say I did, they’re right and you can testify to it in court. Save this transmission, it’s my confession. All personnel, head for lifesaver capsules. Do not dally, do not return to your quarters, head straight for the capsules. We may come under fire soon. Abandon ship. I repeat, abandon ship…”

  Clarke’s wristband buzzed with messages. They were from Mann and Lambert. He ignored them. The less they knew the better.

  Julia got Clarke’s attention with a gesture. Her face was pale and sickly. “You think it will work?”

  “It better,” Clarke said. “The Defense Fleet won’t shoot unarmed lifesavers. They just won’t. I served with them almost all my life, Julia. There’s honorable people aboard their ships.”

  Julia shook her head. “I don’t know, Joseph. That may not be the same Defense Fleet you remember.”

  Clarke could only hope she was wrong.

  Outside the Beowulf, the lifesaver capsules shot out, one after the other.

  15

  Chapter Fifteen

  Delagarza

  Lotti’s friendly smile didn’t reach her eyes.

  “Sammie, you don’t look so peachy,” she told Delagarza.

  He flashed her a tired grin.

  I killed a man today and didn’t feel a thing.

  “Must be age, Lotti-doll.”

  The surrounding gangers formed a semi-circle spread around Delagarza and their boss. Delagarza had the certainty that, if they jumped him, he wouldn’t get them all with his pistol and the scarce few rounds he had left.

  Still, it wasn’t the gangers who worried him the most. He looked behind his back, at the empty side-street from which he’d come from, and wondered if Taiga Town thugs really had lost his track. A part of him whispered that it would be like this for the rest of his life, always looking over his shoulder, wondering where the bullet would come from. Unless he made things right.

  “It’s late, Sammie,” Lotti told him, “what do you want to talk about?”

  “I want to hire you and your boys,” he said. “As protection for a quick job.”

  He explained what he wanted, for them to find a man named Bruno Choffard, a mid-level manager who worked for some obscure tech startup.

  “Oh, dear,” said Lotti after Delagarza was done with his quick explanation, “I’m afraid you misconstrued our relationship. Sammie, my boys and I don’t do charity. You can’t afford us, and worse, I can’t let people go around thinking they can waste my time, so…”

  She made a gesture to the gangers. Without any of them seeming to move, the semi-circle tightened around Delagarza.

  “Wait!” he said. “I can pay you, Lotti. Name your price. Three hours work.”

  Lotti flashed him a grin and stopped her gangers. Given her attitude, she must’ve thought Delagarza was lying through his teeth, buying time to run away. She reminded him of a wolf toying with her food.

  “My boys only work the night, Sammie. Who do you
take us for, honest working ladies?”

  She named her price. It was outrageous. Delagarza refused. The gangers approached again.

  “Half,” Delagarza said, trying his best to keep his knees steady.

  “You’ve always been a joker, Sammie, sweetie,” Lotti said.

  “Fine,” he said, “three quarters. You know you’re making a killing.”

  “That I do,” Lotti laughed. “Alright. If you can pay, right now, we’ll have ourselves a deal.”

  Delagarza’s fingers flew across his keyboard before she could change her mind. A ganger’s word over money paid was as good as steel. After all, if they went around betraying their business partners, no one would work with them. They had a reputation to uphold.

  Lotti’s eyes widened when her wristband dinged and a holo showed her her increased bank account.

  “Sweet fuck, you really did have the credits,” she said.

  In fact, Delagarza could’ve tanked any price she named. The enforcers may be many things, but forensic accountants they were not. Krieger had been smart enough to send killers after him, but she hadn’t even thought of cutting off his contract—and his credit line.

  The only reason Delagarza had rejected Lotti’s first offer was to protect her pride. Had he accepted, the gangers would’ve seen it as a failure of their boss, who surely could’ve asked for more. Now, it looked like she’d scored them a juicy gig.

  Delagarza saw the ganger boss realize this. She eyed her crew, saw their hungry smiles, then walked to Delagarza. “Sold to our handsome friend, Sammie. Walk with me, and we’ll talk shop. Guys, give a lady and her friend some space?”

  The gangers spread away. Delagarza and Lotti headed for a nearby bench. They didn’t sit. Benches in Alwinter were cold enough to damage reg-suits.

  “What mess have you gotten into?” Lotti asked him. “I know how much you make cracking ‘ware, you shouldn’t have enough to handle my price.”

  “Lucky me, right? Look, don’t worry about it, Lotti,” said Delagarza.

  “Delagarza, in my experience, random wage-slaves that come across a sudden influx of money always carry trouble on their backs. Big trouble. The kind of trouble that spills onto anyone nearby. I want to know if my boys will get splashed.”