The Last Flagship (The Science Officer Book 6)

by Blaze Ward

  THE LAST FLAGSHIP

  THE SCIENCE OFFICER: VOLUME 6

  BLAZE WARD

  KNOTTED ROAD PRESS

  CONTENTS

  Book Seventeen: Avalon

  Part One

  Part Two

  Part Three

  Part Four

  Book Eighteen: Derelict

  Part One

  Part Two

  Part Three

  Part Four

  Book Nineteen: Hammerfield

  Part One

  Part Two

  Part Three

  Part Four

  Part Five

  Part Six

  Part Seven

  Part Eight

  Part Nine

  Book Twenty: Excalibur

  Part One

  Part Two

  Part Three

  Read more!

  About the Author

  Also by Blaze Ward

  About Knotted Road Press

  BOOK SEVENTEEN: AVALON

  PART ONE

  JAVIER HAD the door to his workshop locked. Partly for safety reasons. Mostly just to keep people from wandering aimlessly in and wanting to chat. Even on a starship in flight, that happened.

  His manners were generally up to chatting. Just not today.

  He could be alone here. Just him and his junk. And Suvi.

  His AI sidekick sat in her little armed probe, watching. It was like a giant, gray eyeball, bigger than his head, smaller than his shoulders, parked on her charging ring with a slobbering amount of music, books, and videos stored down in the base, in case she got bored.

  The rest of the room was an organized mess.

  He had redone everything when he’d first claimed the space. Turned the shelves into clear-faced drawers so he could see what was in them, while still keeping it all from flying around if they lost power to the gravplates, which happened less frequently than it used it. Stuck things into drawers with a filing system that existed only in his head. It would look utterly random to a stranger walking in.

  Fourteen years in the Concord Fleet meant that those habits were automatic on a starship.

  The off-white tabletop in front of him with burn marks, coffee rings, and dried gunk, had stretchy nets on each corner. They held things like his welding laser and clockwork tools down, but kept them at hand.

  He was mostly tinkering, anyway. Working on a new waldo arm that he could mount on Suvi’s probe. Something to do with his hands while his backbrain dug deep into old memories and raked the muck about until it found what it was looking for.

  His nightmares, the last few days, had been spectacular as a result.

  The door chime was almost a welcome interruption.

  Almost.

  Javier took a deep breath, stashed everything under handy nets, and rose.

  His back hurt from being hunched over too long on the four-legged stool. Probably time to go do some yoga or something. He was pretty good about maintaining his regular lifting and stretching cycle.

  He ran his hand back through his short, black hair and contemplated how much of it was coming in gray now, mostly at his temples, but a little everywhere. He wasn’t vain enough to dye it, and many women seemed to think it made him look more distinguished.

  Always a good thing, looking good for the women of this crew.

  Privately, he made a bet with himself who would be on the other side of that hatch. There were only a few people who would come down here, rather than just call him on the comm to ask a question.

  That meant it would be a private conversation.

  Another deep breath, finding his calm center, as he approached the hatch.

  He unlocked the system and opened it, finding himself staring at her chest. Not hard to do when her breasts were about on a level with his chin. Small ones, to be sure, hiding on top of muscles. Lots of muscles. But breasts.

  Djamila Sykora. Dragoon of the private service, Strike Corvette Storm Gauntlet.

  A woman 2.1 meters tall. She towered over Javier by thirty centimeters.

  Her brown hair was still worn short to fit inside an armoured lifesuit, buzzed very tight on the sides and spiked into a petite Mohawk on top.

  It was still the only thing petite about her.

  She had bright, pretty green eyes. They reminded him of Holly, his ex-wife, but he only told her that when he wanted to annoy this woman. Mostly, it was the faint freckles, anyway.

  The bone structure in her face wasn’t delicate enough to be pretty, but he suspected she could be stunningly beautiful if she ever cared to try. Not that a hardass like Sykora would, unless she was undercover on a grift. Like the Pleasure Dome had been.

  Artemis, by Michelangelo.

  The only vaguely-female touch was the collection of tiny gold or silver rings, studs, and stones in both ears. Seven on the right. Nine on the left. Nothing through the nose, though.

  Javier sized her up, then stepped back and to the side so she could enter.

  Today, he couldn’t even work up the energy to ogle her ass, or bitch at her intrusion into his personal space.

  Just as well. She surprised him by walking to a side wall, crossing her arms, and leaning her weight against it.

  That was so out of character for Sykora that Javier had to fight to keep his mouth from falling on the floor.

  After all, the woman was a veteran; a bad-ass, former marine of the Neu Berne Navy. A close-combat expert of zero-gravity fighting who was commonly referred to as the Ballerina of Death.

  A woman born with a stick up her ass. And willing to abuse anybody she felt was slacking the slightest amount from their true potential as she saw it.

  He would have said they mixed as well as oil and water, but it was frequently petroleum and fire between them.

  Javier closed the hatchway and locked it again.

  Keeping any of her friends out.

  Suvi was in her armed probe and watching from the workbench. If Sykora got out of hand, Javier knew his sidekick would happily shoot the woman.

  He walked back to the stool he had been using before, pulled it to the opposite side of the small room, and sat. It put his eyes about at a level with her belly button.

  Not that it was visible, but he knew it was there, riding a hard eight-pack of abs. Today, she was in muted gray. Slacks and a button-up overshirt in chambray with a very petite camouflage pattern. The top of a black t-shirt peeked over the highest button.

  With a start, Javier realized it was the uniform she had stolen when they snuck aboard Shangdu, the resort vessel known as the Pleasure Dome. He wondered if that was a conscious choice on her part. And what it said about why she was here.

  More unfinished business, at least on her part.

  Silence bound them for several seconds.

  Javier took another deep breath. Released it.

  “Why are you here?” he asked bluntly.

  No elegant turn of phrase. No chiding sarcasm. Nothing.

  He was tired, and didn’t want to deal with the dragoon today. Especially not the scowl on her face.

  “Hammerfield,” she said, finally, in a quiet, alto voice unlike her normal angry bellow.

  She was not saying as much as she said.

  Javier assaulted her with silence in return.

  He could out-patient a hunter like her, probably by orders of magnitude. Patience was his thing.

  “It really exists?” she asked, relenting from her harsh stare.

  Javier shrugged.

  “I told you and Captain Sokolov what I know,” he said. “Nastiest piece of orbital chaos I’ve ever surveyed. And sitting back in the corner, orbiting a small gas giant like one o
f her moons in a tiny and exceedingly complex LaGrange point, a vessel with a transponder code identifying her as Hammerfield. Whether it really is THE Hammerfield, I don’t know. Won’t, until we board her. That was several years ago, and I only memorized so much.”

  “So it wouldn’t be in your old logs?” she asked.

  There was something in her voice. Hope?

  Her?

  What would the High Priestess of Death hope for, in the lost flagship of her own nation’s navy, vanished decades before she was born?

  The Great War had ended in a collapse so complete that only today was Neu Berne anything more than a tourist destination. It was the sort of place rich folks from the Concord could go to watch the proud descendants of the warring generation still trying to come to terms with loss.

  “You cut up my ship,” Javier growled angrily at her. “After you made me kill her. Those logs are written in a symbolic language so dense, only a Sentience can unravel them.”

  Uncertainty crossed Sykora’s face.

  For a moment, Javier was sure some sort of vampire doppelgänger from a bad sci-fi vid had appeared on his doorstep.

  Djamila Sykora didn’t know the meaning of the word uncertain.

  He watched her eyes dart to her left, linger for a second on Suvi’s probe, and then return to his face.

  Javier saw pain there.

  Imposter. Alien. Invader.

  Not the dragoon. Not the Ballerina of Death.

  “I was hoping…” she wavered, uncertain.

  Wavered.

  Was this woman stoned?

  She wasn’t a good enough actress to pull this off as a prank.

  “What?” Javier said, trying not to snarl at the woman.

  If you had told him this morning that his day would go like this…

  Sykora took a breath. Held it. Centered herself in the same way he had before opening the door.

  Stood back upright, when all her weight had been leaned back. Grounded herself. Pulled her shoulders back and down.

  Fixed him with those sharp, emerald eyes. The pain was still there. The uncertainty. The doubts.

  “I know you have worked to program your probes for greater autonomy,” she said in a voice finding its footing on slippery ice. “I spoke with this one on Svalbard. How long would it take you…Is it even possible to augment one of them enough to read those old logs and know if she really is Hammerfield?”

  “No,” Javier said. “It would take me years. We’ll be there in less than a week. We have to locate Hammerfield and hope nobody else beat us to the punch. Then board her, hoping that the Sentience doesn’t kill us out of hand, while we figure out a way to reprogram it. Only then will the truth be known, Djamila Sykora.”

  She sagged, only the tiniest bit. Anybody not watching so closely would have missed it.

  What she really wanted to know was if the Neu Berne equivalent of King Arthur was out there, waiting for her to come and find him.

  Lady Percival, seeking the Grail.

  Javier couldn’t decide if he hated himself more for dashing this woman’s hopes, or not dancing in unholy glee in the process.

  And yet, he had promised to kill this woman. One of these days. When it could be made to look like an accident.

  Knew that she had made the same vow. The same Arms Race. The unwritten rules in a duel to the death.

  And yet…

  The conversation with Del about needing this woman.

  All possible tomorrows?

  Javier stood. It didn’t put him at her level, but it put him in her space.

  She flinched. Not much. Barely visible.

  Enough.

  The killer had come in here with all her guards down, hoping her worst enemy would somehow bear good news.

  How far they had come from the first time she had shot him.

  “I believe it is your old flagship,” he said quietly. “I think they knew the end was near, and took her away to prepare for a surprise attack of some sort. Leading the resistance, or something. Why it never happened, nobody knows. We may find out.”

  He watched Sykora reassemble all her walls. Put them back in place, brick by brick.

  Return to that lethal creature he knew as The Dragoon.

  That comforted Javier, all by itself. They could be proper enemies now, because probably only Captain Sokolov had ever seen this tremendous woman be the least bit vulnerable.

  “Why are you doing this, Javier?” she asked.

  It wasn’t plaintive, nor angry. Inquisitive, perhaps.

  Javier nodded in recognition. That was probably the question that had driven her here today. And it had become necessary for her to be vulnerable to ask it. For him to answer it.

  Petroleum and fire.

  “There is someone I hate more than you, Djamila Sykora,” he said simply.

  She processed his words, and then nodded.

  “And when we destroy them?” she said in a tight voice, eyes boring in on his.

  There was no uncertainty in her voice now. Military problem. Military solution. An enemy that needed killing. Nobody better in the galaxy at that task than Djamila Sykora.

  Javier felt eternity open up at his feet, a bottomless chasm threatening both of them.

  All possible tomorrows?

  Javier considered his weariness at the ongoing game, her emotional vulnerability.

  All possible tomorrows.

  He decided to gamble everything.

  “There is a whole galaxy out there, Djamila,” he said. “Maybe we’ll both fit in it.”

  He saw doubt in those eyes now, but it was sarcastic. There on the tip of her tongue, wanting to lash him with verbal razors.

  As was normal.

  “Ha,” she said with sharp humor, jutting a jaw at him.

  She didn’t say anything more. Just turned, walked to the door, and opened it.

  She did glance back over her shoulder once, fixing him with a wry smile, a promise that this conversation would resume on some fateful day.

  And then she was gone.

  Javier let all the air out of his lungs in a loud blow.

  He grabbed the stool, slid it over to the worktable, and sat. It wasn’t necessary to lock the door at this part. Everything that he had been trying to keep outside was done.

  Running lights on Suvi’s probe flickered briefly, drawing his eye.

  “Why not?” she asked in a petite tone, proving she had been listening very carefully to the byplay. Knowing her, probably scanning both of them with everything she had, monitoring heart rate, respiration, and truth.

  Javier understood the core of her question.

  Why wasn’t he willing to make them promises about “upgrading” the probe so that she no longer had to hide in there, pretending to be nothing more than a dumb-bot set of programmed responses to external stimuli?

  “Because I don’t want them to even be able to guess what I’m going to do, young lady,” he said quietly. “Not until it’s too late to stop me.”

  PART TWO

  ZAKHAR SOKOLOV LOOKED out over his airy bridge, surrounded by the crew he had hand-picked over the years, having tried to gather the best of the ones who no longer fit their old jobs, or their old navies; frequently for budget cuts, occasionally for being too artistic, too weird, or too much for small fleets with more people seeking employment than jobs were available.

  As with most days, Zakhar wore something that very closely approximated the old Concord fleet uniform. The fleet that had been his home for twenty years.

  Before piracy.

  Moss green slacks and a matching, button-up, dress shirt. He had done away with the tie as a daily requirement, but kept his black, leather brogues polished as a reminder.

  Who he used to be.

  Around him, the bridge crew wore any variety of things, some based on old uniforms from their past, others on whatever deal the purser had been able to swing in terms of cheap, surplus uniforms and gear along the way. Those colors stood out against the la
urel green of the various bulkheads, that color midway between green and gray that walls, ceilings, and floors were painted regularly, with white numbers and arrows here and there following conduits.

  “Pilot,” Zakhar called, waking Piet Alferdinck up from whatever day-dreams the man was enjoying over on his boards. “Confirm time to insertion.”

  It was there on Zakhar’s own screen, but acting like a professional constantly ingrained that habit in his crew. When you were pirates, every day was a struggle against entropy. Doubly so when your ship, the old Osiris-class Strike Corvette Storm Gauntlet, was on her last legs.

  Their last engagement, with the battle frigate Ajax, over Svalbard, had been a fast one, which was good. Storm Gauntlet was enough to take any freighter in the galaxy, but desperately overwhelmed by almost any warship she would encounter.

  They had repaired as much of the damage as well as they could. Enough to escape, to flee into the darkness, looking for the place his science officer had hoped they would find an even bigger warship, derelict, but claimable and repairable.

  Otherwise, Zakhar would probably be better off selling this old boat to someone else, or even a breaker yard, paying off the crew, and retiring to whatever desk job he thought he could do.

  Maybe even go back to his real name and finally tap his retirement pension, sitting in a bank somewhere, slowly earning interest.