“Come on, Felix,” she muttered. “Come on.”
All work on the bridge, aside from Merritt at the helm, slowed to a crawl, all eyes on the sensor display as it tracked the debris field flying towards them, the force of the multiple explosions casting it out into space far faster than they had hoped. The second detonation, the unexpected lava pocket, had increased the scale of the devastation many times over, giving the enemy cruisers no chance to escape.
Or Lincoln, unless they could move in a hurry. The door slid open, and Romano walked in, his uniform battered and torn, bloodstains on his tunic. He moved over to the tactical desk, standing behind Forrest as he watched the carnage on display. Forrest glanced at him, looking over his uniform with a critical eye.
“What the hell happened down there, Lieutenant?”
“I don’t think I should tell you in public, Captain. Though as I said over the communicator, you don’t have to worry about the saboteurs any more. They’re either dead or under arrest.”
“And Commander Singh? Commander Kirkland?”
Taking a deep breath, Romano replied, “If you give me a direct order, Captain, I’ll tell you here and now, but I strongly recommend that you don’t give such an order. I will state that Captain Sinaga fell in the defense of this ship. We’d all be dead without him.”
“He was nothing but a PacFed bastard,” Clayton muttered.
Romano stormed over to the technician, barking, “One more word, Specialist, and I’ll be more than happy to send you to wherever he’s heading right now. I’m sure he could use some company on the road to the afterlife.”
“Lieutenant,” Forrest chided, “Mind your station, if you please.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” Romano said, wincing as his elbow brushed a console.
Frowning, she said, “Maybe you should head down to Sickbay. Have the Dutchman take a good look at you.”
“My place is here, ma’am. I’m fine. Better than most.”
Nodding, Forrest turned back to the viewscreen, her mind flooded with questions. She trusted Romano enough to wait, and with the debris still racing towards them, it didn’t much matter in any case. Not now.
“Two minutes to first impact, Captain,” Fox said.
“Helm…,” Forrest began.
“I can’t give you any more acceleration, ma’am,” Merritt added. “If we could buy just a little more time, we’d have enough speed to outrun that mess, but we’re just too far behind the curve.” He looked down at his board, and added, “We can’t even keep this pace for much longer.”
“Turrets ranging, all ready,” Fox added. “For whatever good it might do.”
Forrest looked down at her communicator, a part of her wanting to call Brooks, to exhort the engineer to greater efforts, but she knew that would just be a distraction, would be more likely to slow him down than speed him up. He already knew that his life, that the life of everyone else depended on him. That had to be enough.
“Signal from Komarov,” Romano said. “They’re ready to jump out of the system, and ask if there is anything they can do for us?”
“Tell Major Volkov to get home safely, and that if we don’t make it back, he’s to make it clear that the mission was completed. If nothing else, we’ve bought Zemlya and Lemuria the time they need to get their fleets up to strength.”
That was something. A certain sense of satisfaction to warm her on their way to the afterlife. She couldn’t stop watching the dancing debris as it swirled around, a seemingly endless storm that ranged all around, bubbling and boiling, some of it still molten rock even now, minutes after detonation. Millions of new craters had formed on the planetoids, their action likely setting back the reformation of the planet by millions of years.
Strange to think that a collection of tiny bipeds could have such an impact on the universe. Eons from now, some alien geologist would be studying this system, and wonder just how to explain the destruction wrought today. Perhaps he’d find some fragment of hull alloy, twisted and blackened, and wonder who had fought here, and why.
“Komarov has cleared the system,” Clayton reported from the sensor station. “No sign of any other enemy ships capable of hyperspace travel.”
“Fifty seconds to impact,” Fox said, with a sigh. “It really was a nice try.”
“We’re not dead yet,” Forrest replied. “Don’t give up until we don’t have any chance.”
Merritt looked down at his instruments, then said, “Helm controls responding. Auxiliary hyperdrive coming on-line. He’s done it!”
“What the hell are you waiting for, Sam! Punch it!”
Reaching down for the controls, he threw the levers forward, and Forrest felt the familiar, and for the first time comforting sensation of the ship leaving normal space, escaping into the other-dimensional reality of hyperspace, just ahead of the first wave of debris. The starfield faded away, purged by a glowing burst of Cerenkov blue, and with a final, last shudder, the ship left space-time.
“Transition successful, Captain,” Merritt reported. “Returning to our origin point. One hour, five minutes to emerge.” He sat back in his chair, all energy spent, as a round of applause swept the command deck, starting by the sensor controls until everyone present joined in, the red-faced helmsman looking around in disbelief.
“Bridge to Engineering,” Forrest said. “Nice work, Felix.”
“My pleasure, Captain. The bill’s in the mail.”
“Very funny. Do we have a stable hyperfield?”
“Just about. We should be able to limp back to Zemlya again, but we’re going to have to go back in for another refit as soon as we get there. You think this time we might have a chance to finish the job properly?”
“No promises, Commander. Let me have a full damage report as soon as you can.” The elevator doors slid open, Flynn and Benedetti walking out. Turning to the duo, Forrest said, “Excellent work. My complements to your flight teams.” At their expressions, she added, “What was the final bill?”
“Five fighters, three bombers,” Flynn said, morose. “We lost a lot of good people back there. People we can’t spare. We’re going to be a hell of a long time getting over this one, Captain. It was the debris as much as the enemy defenses, that field was a nightmare.” Looking over the sensor records, still displaying on the aft bridge monitors, he said, “If I’d known how bad it was going to be, I’d never have suggested it. I’m sorry, Captain.”
“This operation was undertaken on my order, Commander, and any responsibility for casualties rests with me.”
Fox turned, looking at the two of them, and said, “Come on! We’ve just won a major victory! We took out one of their largest task forces, and they’ll have had their top engineers and scientists on those ships for the refit and research. A major fleet anchorage is gone, and their ability to strike Lemuria with it. According to the strategic data we’ve assembled, they don’t have anywhere else close enough to mobilize a strike. They’ll be months recovering.”
Nodding, Benedetti added, “And even if they execute all of the survivors, their leadership will still know what happened here. However you look at it, this is a major victory.” Glancing at Flynn, she added, “It might have cost us, but I think it was worth it. And more importantly, I think the people who paid their lives for it would have thought it was worth it.”
“Maybe,” Flynn said, shaking his head. “I hope so.” Turning to Forrest, he said, “By your leave, Captain, I should go back and check on my people. I’ll be sending up my recommendations for commendations presently.”
“I think you can assume that they’ll all be accepted, Commander,” Forrest replied. “The after-action report can wait until we get back to Zemlya. We can spare you and your people the usual clean-up. Go get some rest.”
“I’ll try, Captain,” Flynn said. “I’ll try.”
“If it helps,” Forrest replied, �
�you can consider it an order.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said with a faint smile. “I assure you that I will do my very best to obey it.”
Nodding, she said, “Dismissed,” and he and Benedetti left the bridge, stepping into the elevator, the doors sliding shut behind them. She looked around the command deck, her eyes briefly locking with Romano’s before the young officer turned away, his face flushing red. There was something different about him, something harder, as though the edges had been filed off by whatever had happened to him during the battle.
She looked around at the rest of her crew. They were true veterans now, had faced the fire not merely out of necessity, but by choice. That was the key difference. They’d seized the initiative, and dealt the enemy a blow from which they would struggle to recover. And that they had destroyed the PacFed fleet that had been responsible for stranding them hundreds of years out of their own time was a nice bonus, to boot. There had been a sense of unfinished business, now well and truly dispelled.
Rising to her feet, she looked at Fox, and said, “Lieutenant, you have the deck. Co-ordinate repairs with Commander Brooks. And get a report from sickbay on casualties. I want to know the status of our wounded as soon as possible.” Turning to Romano, she added, “I think you and I had better have that conversation now, Lieutenant. In my office, if that’s sufficiently private.”
“It is, ma’am,” he replied, following her through the door. “Though I can tell you right now that you aren’t going to like it.”
Chapter 24
Forrest walked down the corridor, Romano by her side, making her way to the brig. Grogan was standing outside, alone, her hand close to her holster. She nodded as Forrest stepped inside, Romano moving to stand next to the door at parade rest. As she entered the room, Forrest glanced at the scanner controls, nodding in satisfaction as she saw the internal monitors all still safely deactivated. Inside, along, Singh lay on his side, struggling to rise as he saw her enter.
“Don’t worry about it, Vik. You can stay where you are.”
Nodding, he asked, “The ship?”
“Intact. We completed our mission. I suspect you’ll be unhappy about that.”
“Surprised would be more like it.” He paused, then asked, “I know why you’re here.”
Reaching for a chair, she sat down, and asked, “Why?”
“PacFed, or the Guild?”
With a sigh, she said, “I think I have that answer.”
“Admiral Haynes made it clear to me that my career was over, Captain. Over because of another officer’s mistake, but because he was a friend of several senior politicians, and they didn’t want his memory besmirched, they threw it all on me. That’s not why I turned, though.” Looking down at the deck, he said, “I thought I was working for a mega-corporation at first. Selling information on fleet movements so they could pick up logistical contracts. They gave me a share of the profits, which I used to start bringing my family out of Dhaka.”
“I didn’t know you had any family.”
Cracking a smile, he said, “It didn’t seem wise to talk about my relatives in the Pacific Federation. A half-sister, several nieces and nephews. My brother-in-law was a political dissident, arrested for campaigning for democracy.”
“I think I can guess how this story ends. Threatening to expose you was the stick, and promising to allow your family to defect to the States was the carrot.”
“That’s about right. Oh, they were going to give me enough money to get them set up. And I’d already told them that I was planning to leave the service. To answer your next question, I didn’t know about the surprise attack. I thought that I was giving them information to allow them to covertly monitor the fleet exercises.”
“Treason is still treason.” She looked at him, and said, “Once it was all over, why the hell did you go on with it? Nobody on this ship knew who you were working for. You could have just kept quiet. Or left the ship, got passage to neutral space. You had enough opportunities, and I wouldn’t have come after you. Not under the circumstances. What made you switch sides and join the Guild?”
“Most of the others were happy enough to get the cold, hard, currency, Captain. None of them believed that you could possibly win, and they hoped to get a better deal when the fighting was over and the dust had settled. Either as part of the Guild, or as you say, elsewhere, with a grub stake on the frontier. As for myself, I was working for the good of the ship and her crew.”
“How can you possibly even begin to justify that?”
“This isn’t our war, Cat. These aren’t our people. We don’t owe them anything. The best option would have been to cut and run. Find some isolated part of the galaxy and hole up. Wait for the storm to pass by. The Guild isn’t stable. It’ll tear itself to pieces soon enough.”
“And probably crash what remains of interstellar civilization at the same time.”
“Does that mean that the whole crew should be sacrificed so that you can play Don Quixote? The galaxy is a very big place. Too big to save. Putting the lives of the men and women under your command for a nation of strangers is a decision you didn’t have the right to make. You still don’t.” He sighed again, and said, “I had to walk a fine line. I held the others back from anything permanent, anything that would put lives at risk. When it came to the shuttle, I knew that Flynn would bring it down safely, but I figured it would buy some time.”
“And the hyperdrive. That was intended to prevent us continuing after Lemuria.”
“Everything I did was meant to force you to hold back. I figured that given enough time, I could convince you that the only way to win the game was to put our cards back onto the table and walk out of the casino.” Shaking his head, he said, “It couldn’t last. When I found out about the explosive charges, I...”
“Led your men into a trap,” she interrupted, her eyes widening. “You gathered all the saboteurs together, and charged them right into Romano’s ambush.”
“He’s a bright boy,” Singh said, with a smile. “You want one last piece of advice? He’s going to be one hell of an officer in the not-too-distant future. Keep your eye on him.”
“I’d already intended to do just that.” She paused, then added, “The crew don’t know any of the details about what happened down there. I intend it to remain that way. As far as they’re concerned, there was a gunfight, and Kirkland, Romano and Grogan managed to take out the saboteurs. Something they seem pretty happy about, actually. Morale’s way up. Especially as it appears that we managed to pull off a miracle after all.”
“You beat off the Guilders?”
“The task force is destroyed, the PacFed cruisers are destroyed, and the hidden anchorage will be useless for a couple of centuries. I’m expecting representatives from half a dozen neutral worlds to join us over the next few weeks. I think the war against the Guild just got a hell of a lot bigger.”
“It’s not enough,” he warned. “It’s not nearly enough. They’re an iceberg. Most of their strength is under the surface. You’re not going to beat them with a full fleet action, and you’ll never be able to herd together that collection of cats for long enough to make any difference.” He looked up at her, and said, “I worked like hell to try and convince you of that before. I’m not going to stop.”
“The crew don’t know that you were working against them. I think it better that they continue to think that you’re one of us. Right now, only Grogan, Romano and Kirkland know the truth, and all of them have undertaken to take the secret to their graves, if needs be.”
“Even if I offered a parole, you couldn’t trust it,” Singh said. “And if I left the ship now, no matter what I promised, the Guild would do everything they could to capture me, and extract every bit of useful information from my brain before I died. So far, for the record, I’ve told them nothing they don’t already know, and nor have any of my confederates.” With a thin
smile, he added, “I convinced them to hold it back to get a better deal later on. It seemed logical enough at the time.”
“No parole. No escape. Let’s just say that you’ve got a last chance to serve your shipmates, and make good on at least some of the damage you did.” Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a small vial, containing a translucent, viscous liquid. “This is painless, and quick. It’ll be over in seconds. You’ll simply go to sleep, and not wake up.”
Nodding, he added, “The autopsy will confirm that I took poison, but you’ll convince the Dutchman to cover it up for the formal record. As far as the crew are concerned, I died in the firefight below decks.”
“That’s what I had in mind. The penalty for treason is death, in any case, and I have no ability to conduct a formal court-martial. This is about the best I can do in the circumstances.” She walked forward, opened the door, and placed the vial on the floor. “The monitors are off. Damage to the computer network in the aftermath of the battle. You’ll have a quarter hour before I send someone in to take a look.”
Picking up the vial, Singh rolled it in his hand, and said, “Before you go, I have two things to say. The first is that I meant all my advice. You can’t beat the Guild, and you’re going to get all the men and women on this ship killed trying.”
“You’ll forgive me if I’m somewhat reluctant to take that on faith.”
“Of course. The second thing is a legacy I’ve got for you. Go deep into my files, get Lopez to do a search, and you’ll find records of all my contacts with the Guild. You might find something useful down there. I wanted to have a little insurance, just in case.” He paused, and added, “You might not believe this, but it has been an honor to serve with you, Captain.”
“Thank you, Commander. I wish that I was in a position to say the same. Goodbye.” She turned, walked out of the door, and paused at the threshold as it slammed shut behind her. Turning to Grogan, she said, “Wait fifteen minutes, verify what has happened, and contact Sickbay. You know the story to tell the Dutchman.”
Never In Vain (Lincoln's War Book 2) Page 19