Badger

by Kindal Debenham

  “Well, what does the damn thing say?” Isaac was leaning forward so far he was nearly falling out of his chair.

  “It says I’m to report to Badger for a staff assignment.” A brief silence followed, and Jacob shook his head as he continued. “Leon, you’ll be transferred to a defense station above Celostia pending a transfer to a new warship, while Isaac will be heading off to New Harel. You’ll be on a corvette for system defense out there, the Feather. Laurie’ll be following me around, acting as my staff lieutenant, but most of the rest of the crews will be shuffled off to various other ships.”

  “A staff assignment.” Isaac sounded stunned. Then his face twisted abruptly in anger. “A staff assignment, and with my wife! While I’m off where, the very least exciting part of the entire Union? New Harel hasn’t seen any action since the first settlements or the break with Telos.”

  Leon seemed slightly stricken as well. “And I will be on a defense station. Put in holding while I wait in line for a transfer.” The discomfort in his voice was clear, but Jacob was still too stunned over his own fate to sympathize much. He remained silent longer than the others had apparently expected, because Leon suddenly leaned forward. “Jacob, what is it?”

  It took him a moment to respond. “My assignment to Badger is only temporary. I’m filling in for some of the officers they shifted to cover casualties in the rest of the flotilla.” Leon and Isaac glanced at each other, as if suddenly uncertain, but Jacob continued before they could ask their inevitable questions. “Once the Badger returns to Celostia, I’m to be shuttled down to the surface.”

  Isaac reacted first. “The surface?” The words nearly came out as a shout, and Leon tried to gesture for Isaac to stay quiet. Jacob didn’t bother; on the heels of his shock at the orders, he now only felt fatigue and disappointment creeping in on his mind. Isaac glanced at Leon, shrugged, and continued in a barely more acceptable tone. “What the hell are they thinking of having you do on Celostia? Not some desk assignment there too.”

  “No, Isaac. No assignment at all.” Jacob smiled a little sadly and looked up. He met Isaac’s suddenly shocked eyes, and forced the words out. “I’m going to be on leave. Mandatory, at least four weeks, if not longer. High Admiral Nivrosky signed the orders himself.”

  Leon grunted, and when Jacob looked in his direction the other officer looked stricken. When Leon opened his mouth, Jacob abruptly stood. The prospect of hearing the apology, the rationale, or the outrage that he truly didn’t deserve turned his stomach, and the night had already been difficult enough for him. “Thank you for bringing this to me, Leon. Isaac, let me know if you find out anything else. I think it’s time I got some rest.”

  He started for the hallway, trying to keep the limp from his stride. His friends murmured their farewells, but the sheer regret in their words stung his ears. Jacob made it halfway down the hallway before he glanced back to make sure he was alone.

  Then, shaking, he let some of the tears come. Not for himself, but for the men and women he’d failed, and for the officers he’d so obviously disappointed in the process. He gritted his teeth, keeping the noise of his grief to himself as he made his way to the bed. By the time sleep claimed him at last, Jacob was only glad the dead of Terrier and Beagle weren’t waiting for him in the oblivion that followed.

  Chapter Ten

  Jacob sat as his console and stared at the screen. That flickering light was the only illumination in his quarters. He knew he should have been focused on his task, but other subjects kept intruding on his thoughts.

  There shouldn’t have been much to distract him. The days after his new assignment had been curiously empty. As the flotilla made the riftjumps to return through Celostian space, there were no further Oduran forces waiting for them. The only hint of enemy activity had been a pair of Telosian frigates who had immediately jumped out when they saw the flotilla. As opportunistic as the Telosians could be, the pirates wanted no part of the Celostian fleet, and it was not hard to understand why. Even the damage and losses the fleet had taken had not crippled them to the point where a pair of marauding raiders would escape destruction.

  Normally, the sight of pirates on the run would have brought cheers, but the fleet was too numb from their losses. Gawain and Terrier were far from the only ships which made up the butcher’s bill, and there were even more that had received heavy damage, in addition to the nearly crippled Beagle. Yet those were just the ships; even more sobering had been the hundreds of crewmen lost in the battle, and the hundreds more still recuperating in sick berths all across the flotilla.

  The memory of those losses brought Jacob’s mind back to his task. Since his recovery from the injuries he’d suffered, Jacob’s primary duty had been different. He did not contribute anything to the rest of the flotilla, or even continue the grinding simulations that had once occupied his time. His only task, the worst, most painful duty he’d ever had, was to inform the families of his crew that they would not be coming home. One letter at a time, Jacob had to explain how his actions had led to the deaths of over three hundred people. After that, there would be no relief; he would have to recommend the honorable discharge of dozens more who were too wounded to continue their service.

  It was his responsibility, and his alone. Jacob’s heart ached as he thought of the grief he was causing for those families. The loss of his own parents in a senseless accident gave Jacob some idea of the pain his words would cause: the quiet hollowness left by a loved one’s absence, the sharp bitterness when their presence was missed, the tears that seemed neverending.

  Yet there would be one difference. Their loss had not come by accident, but in a war. In war, there was always someone to blame.

  Jacob had little doubt who would take the blame for their deaths. By placing Jacob on mandatory leave, the High Admiral had as good as condemned Jacob’s actions before the rest of the fleet. Any political interest that picked up on the message would likely jump on him as well; both the Federalists and Independents were going to be howling for blood soon enough. As quickly as it had risen, the heroic reputation of Jacob Hull, pirate killer and freer of the oppressed, was going to come crashing down, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

  Not that he would have done anything if he could. The responsibility was his. Why bother denying it?

  It had already begun, in fact. The officers who met him no longer had any admiration in their eyes. More knew about his new orders than Jacob expected. Either the High Admiral had seen fit to share Jacob’s fate with other officers, or someone like Kenning or Upshaw had gotten hold of the information and set about leaking it to as many people as possible. Any version of hero worship had fled as the story leapt from officer to officer throughout the Badger.

  The reactions varied, but all were uniquely painful in their own ways. Some officers expressed sympathy and compassion, if not verbally, in their treatment of him. He felt as if they saw in him a wounded dog, unable to continue the hunt but still trying to run. Others had felt free to unleash their contempt in the open. Mutters of ‘reckless waste of lives’ or ‘damned glory hound’ followed him as he passed through the corridors of the command ship. It stung every time, and he could have sworn he heard the echoes of his dead crewmen behind each stabbing insult.

  His friends continued to visit him as they drew closer to home, but their reactions to the change in situation showed that things had obviously thrown them for a loop. Isaac spent half his time discussing what little evidence he had of the intruder and the other half nearly ranting about the idiocy of their orders. Leon made some feeble attempts to discern the intent behind the commands, as if through logic and determination he could ferret out what his father was obviously refusing to tell him. Laurie occasionally made the effort to share information with him about the rest of the crew who had made it off his ships while downplaying his role in their destruction. Each had tried, in their own way, to make sense of what was happening, and Jacob could sense their frustration as their efforts fell
short.

  Al-shira, however, was not among them. The Communications officer kept busy in her own sphere, completely isolated from where Jacob had been enshrined in the medical wing. It was strange. He could hardly blame her for staying away, given his failures, but he did find himself wishing she would at least come by to rage at him for a while. Even the too-familiar sarcastic bite of ‘captain’ would have been welcome compared to the knife-edged nightmares and dull, grinding grief that consumed most of his days.

  Then again, Jacob doubted Al-shira would want to associated with his failure. At times he even wondered if the families he wrote the letters to would want his words, or if they would hate him enough to wish for someone else to deliver the news. Yet all the same, they had been his crew, and it remained his duty. In the end, there would be no one else to speak for them, and for what they gave their lives trying to accomplish.

  Gritting his teeth, Jacob set his hands to the keys once more, and began.

  It is my responsibility to inform you of the death of Lieutenant Andrew Delarouge.

  The day the Badger finally returned to the Celostian system, Jacob saw his coming banishment to the surface almost as a relief rather than a punishment. Jacob had managed to worm his way free of the medical wing only a handful of days prior to the riftjump, but he was more than well enough to observe the arrival of the command ship in the center of the Union.

  Celostia was the closest thing to a perfect human planet Jacob had ever seen, which was probably why the world had grown into the center of the Union’s government and economy. Very little about the system deviated from the conditions that had formed the home of mankind on Ancient Earth. Seven planets filled orbits around the star, three of which were rocky, inner bodies. One of those was a radiation-baked rock no corporation, agency or hermit was mad enough to attempt to develop, while the second had formed too far out, reducing it to a mildly toxic iceball.

  Celostia itself orbited directly in the thin band of space ideal for habitable planets. The atmosphere was the right mix of nitrogen, oxygen, and other elements, and life had flourished on its surface long before the first colonists had set foot on its soil. Fortunately for those first colonists, the microbes and parasites of the virgin planet failed to make much of a dent against them and continued to fail as more and more human invaders had descended from the sky to live there.

  The planet’s axial tilt was a little less than Earth’s had supposedly been, but that had only produced far less instability in terms of seasonal weather, and the inhabitants of the world had taken full advantage of the fact. Farmers could count on the rains and weather conditions with such regularity that they grew incredible yields of crops without the need for habitation shelters or control domes. Imported animals and crops had taken to the environment with almost perverse glee, and the colonists had to restrain their efforts to remake the world in the image of home in order to avoid causing too severe a change. As it stood, much of the native fauna and flora still survived and was even cultivated over Earth species due to their unique qualities.

  Those advantages showed; the system boasted a population in excess of five billion people. The sheer number of people in the system staggered Jacob—he’d already heard mutters about overpopulation from some people—and that was only considering the planet-bound civilians. Space stations, mining and farming platforms, and other habitats sprawled across the length and breadth of Celostian space. The iceball orbiting the star had managed to spawn a few domed habitats on its surface, though they mostly consisted of research stations and a few ambitious but likely doomed extraction sites. Each of the four gas giants had smaller colonies dotting their moons and stations orbiting their storm-tossed surfaces. Even the larger asteroids in the system were already being turned into hollowed out trading posts.

  Not that the civilians were alone in spreading out across the system. There were repair and construction yards in orbit around the second gas giant. Their massive berths and giant frames made Reefhome’s efforts look amateurish and mismanaged by comparison. The frantic activity there nearly doubled as the Navy’s engineers saw the remaining damaged members of the flotilla arrive, and Jacob grimaced as he thought of the work they would need to do to restore the crippled ships still following the command ship home.

  Warships were gliding through the void around the Celostian capital as well, but they rarely saw anything more dangerous than a pirate raid in the center of the Union. Still, as events at Rigannin had proven, it was better to be cautious than to be sorry, and the three cruisers and their escorts had provided more than enough security for the central government to feel secure in their seat of power.

  The sheer scale of the Union’s capital system was alien to Jacob. He felt as if every single person on those habitats and ships were staring at him, and he had a sudden, overwhelming urge to shut off the projection and hide in his cabin. Even when his father traversed the Union on his trading runs, he had only rarely stopped here to visit. The Hull family had tended to stick to the Frontier, where if the risk was higher, so were the profits and opportunities available. His father had always disdained the more settled regions, declaring that running some giant freighter on behalf of a corporation on preassigned trade routes was far too much drudgery for him to consider.

  All of which meant Jacob was completely uncomfortable with the presence of so many people in one place at one time. There didn’t seem to be any damn place where a ship could go to get some space to itself. Where did all these people go, anyway? How could they all possibly just get along? Jacob shook his head, fighting down the unease the image created in him, and continued to watch as the flotilla drew near the repair docks.

  They had nearly reached the spot when a button on his console glowed. Surprised, Jacob reached out and touched it. A beep sounded to let him know the communications channel had been opened. “Captain Hull speaking.”

  “This is Commander Al-shira. We have a standard transmission from the planet addressed to you.” The bite in Al-shira’s voice was curiously missing, but the content of her message distracted him more than her tone.

  He frowned. “Thank you, Commander, but I am sure I could wait to pick it up with the rest of the traffic.”

  A certain amount of almost comforting derision crept into her words. “No, sir. It’s a live transmission. I was told you would recognize a Catherine Hull?”

  Jacob’s eyebrows shot up, and he sat back in his seat. Of all the things he could have expected, this surprise was the last. He shook his head. “I do. If you could put her through, I would appreciate it, Commander.”

  The sarcasm had hardly lessened. “It is no problem at all captain.” He felt half a smile tug at his lips even as the bite in that word stung him, and then the console beeped again. A second louder tone announced the transmission had gone active, and the projection of the Celostian system vanished.

  The image of the head and shoulders of Catherine Hull took the system’s place. Her brown hair and blue eyes did not show precisely in the glowing hologram, but Jacob recognized her all the same. He smiled, a little uncertainly. “Hey, Sis.”

  There was a delay in his sister’s reaction. Such was the unavoidable necessity of light speed communication, especially in full hologram, but her face suddenly lit up with joy. “Jacob! It’s been too long.”

  Jacob grunted and rubbed a hand across his chin. “Yeah, it has. I thought you were still studying at Corleigh. When did you get to Celostia?”

  Another short delay, and then she shook her head, her shoulder length hair swaying with the motion. “Oh, I’m still working in Corleigh, but there was a work program I thought would give me experience out here.” Her face brightened slightly. “Michael’s here too! I’m so glad the two of you can finally meet.” She paused. “That is, if you’ll have time.”

  He nearly groaned in frustration, but he swallowed it. She’d mentioned this Michael in quite a few of the letters he’d gotten, and he was fairly sure that even had the situation been perfect he wo
uldn’t have wanted to meet the man. As it was, it seemed like the universe was piling on the fun a bit. “Yeah, I will have the time. I’ll be on leave for the next little while.”

  “That’s perfect! When you get to the spaceport, let me know. Michael and I would be happy to give you a place to stay.” Catherine’s face glowed with excitement; she obviously had not picked up on Jacob’s dour mood.

  “I will, Catherine.” Jacob tried hard to keep the gloom and frustration out of his voice as he spoke, but something must have leaked through. The glowing expression on Catherine’s face faded slightly, and her brow furrowed.

  “Jacob, he’s not that bad, really. You just need to get to know him.”

  “It’s not that. I’m looking forward to meeting him.” Jacob had to force the last sentence out through half-clenched teeth. She raised an eyebrow at him, but Jacob forged on ahead before she could express her skepticism. “There’s just a few things going on with the fleet right now I’m having to deal with. It has me a little stressed out, but I’ll be alright when you introduce us.”

  “Oh really.” Catherine folded her arms, her eyebrow still arched in a skeptical fashion. “You’re sure.” Jacob nodded. “Because the last time I introduced you to someone I was seeing, you didn’t exactly react well.”

  The memory managed to pierce the haze of grief and pain that had enshrouded him. Jacob smirked before he caught himself. “I thought it went rather well. You didn’t agree?”

  Exasperation filled Catherine’s face. “You practically accused him of treason by the time we finished dessert! He broke it off with me after a couple of days of avoiding me like the plague.”

  The smirk started to tug at his lips again, and she seemed to notice.

  Catherine leveled a finger at him like a railgun battery and scowled. “Jacob Hull, I don’t care what rank they’ve made you, you’re still my little brother. You’re going to be nice to this one, or I promise, you will regret it.”