by Jake Elwood
"So," said Constantine, rubbing his hands together. "Options. I could sharpen your sword. It won't take long, and if you can't shave with it, at least it will be sharper than it is now."
"I've suddenly lost enthusiasm for that option. What else can you do?"
Constantine took the rapier from him. "If you want this kind of balance, I'll have to make you a new sword." He put the rapier away under the counter. "You've got two options. Machine-made, or hand-made. Some people want a blade that's been made by a man swinging a hammer at a forge. They want authenticity."
"Is the blade any better?"
"Nope," said Constantine cheerfully. "Just more authentic. It costs more and it takes longer, and you wouldn't believe how often that's a selling point."
Hammett chuckled. "I'll pass."
"Good. I'm a busy man." Constantine fingered the gemstone in the hilt. "I can replicate a stone that's pretty close to this one. Or I can take this one out and use it in the copy. How much do you care about getting the original sword back?"
Hammett thought of the solemn ceremony where they had presented him with a ridiculous oversized letter opener. "I don't care in the slightest. I barely need one sword. What would I do with two of them?"
"Good point. I need about fifteen minutes to program the machine, and maybe half an hour tonight to take the gemstone out, and another half an hour tomorrow to put it into the new sword. I could have it done by about nine tomorrow morning."
"That sounds fine," said Hammett. "Will it be a perfect match?"
"The shape of the blade will be slightly different. The hilt will be a just about identical, though. If you were to put the two swords side by side, you would see minor differences, but I can pretty much promise you no one will notice."
"Excellent. I'm going to need that delivered."
Constantine nodded, his fingers curling as he prepared to type into a mid-air keyboard visible through his implants.
"Send it to the captain's cabin, SS Alexander."
Chapter 2 – Velasco
"The Alexander? What the hell?" Anna Velasco bounced out of her chair, fighting to contain the knot of frustration in her stomach. The middle-aged man sitting behind the desk in front of her was her cousin, but he was also an admiral in Spacecom. She could push him, but only so far. "Dammit, Alvarez, that ship is a joke."
"That's Admiral Castille to you," he admonished. "You've just been promoted. We talked about this. You need some time on ships."
She caught herself touching the commander's bars on her chest, and she lowered her hand. The promotion was barely two weeks old, and it still didn't feel quite real. "Time on real ships," she said. "Not relics from the war."
"It's the biggest ship left in the entire fleet," he said. "Someday you'll be the only officer around with time put in on a real cruiser. You can serve on a corvette any time. Everybody does that. How many people can say they've served on a cruiser? And the window of opportunity to get that experience is about to close."
"Exactly! The ship's getting mothballed. And I'll be her executive officer. It's embarrassing!"
"It's a temporary assignment," Castille said. "That's what you wanted, isn't it? A few months on a ship so no one can say you're just a desk sailor."
Velasco slashed at the air in a gesture of frustration. "I wanted to serve on a ship I could be proud of!"
"The ship has a proud history," Castille said mildly, "but that's not the point. The point is that she'll be decommissioned in three or four months. You'll be back in your office by winter. Do you know what a senior officer's term of service is on a corvette?"
"I …" She let her voice trail off as she realized she had no idea.
"It's usually a year at a minimum. Six months, if the officer is a really bad fit."
Velasco let that sink in. A year traipsing around the dusty corners of the alliance? You didn't rise through the ranks by wandering around millions of kilometers from the Admiralty. I didn't join the Navy to ride around on ships.
"Trust me," Castille said. "I have your best interests at heart. Now, your first voyage is going to be a good networking opportunity for you." He held up a warning finger. "It won't seem that way at first. It's a training mission, and the ship will be full of cadets. But these will be the enlisted personnel and officers serving under you for the rest of your career."
He gestured at the chair beside her, and she sank back down. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad. She would be counting down the days, however, until the Alexander finally hit the scrapyard.
Chapter 3 – Kasim
Kasim al Faisal tilted the shuttle Albatross a couple of degrees to port so he could watch the Earth fall away beneath him. The Baja Peninsula was a long brown finger stretching into the cool blue Pacific. The city of Hawking glittered like a jewelled ring at the base of the peninsula. It was a nice city, but he was deeply grateful to be heading back into space. He felt reduced when he was planetside, like some gravity-bound slug dragging himself along the surface. Beyond the cloying reach of the atmosphere, at the controls of a small ship, he felt free.
He felt like a god.
The bulk of a supply ship loomed ahead of him, and beyond it the long, dark shape of the Alexander, with bright corvettes hovering around her like attendants. The proper thing to do – the sensible thing to do, if he wanted to avoid yet another disciplinary notice – was to trudge along behind the wallowing metal hippo in front of him and wait his turn to dock with the cruiser. He queued up behind the supply ship and behaved himself for forty-five interminable seconds.
"Oh, to hell with this." He leaned over in his seat and glanced into the passenger bay. The shuttle was filled with cadets, just like on the last trip and the trip before. They would be anywhere from 18 to 21 years old, and they'd be almost as bored as he was with this sedate bus ride. Why, it was practically his duty to show them there was still such a thing as real flying in the galaxy.
He turned on his microphone. "Attention, passengers. This is your captain speaking. In the interests of rounding out your woefully inadequate educations, I will be providing you with a demonstration of tactical evasive and pursuit maneuvers. If you're not already buckled into your seats, right now would be a very good time to strap in."
Then, grinning in anticipation, he overrode the shuttle's AI and wrapped a hand around the control stick. He accelerated, surging straight at the back end of the supply ship, and a couple of cadets in the front row cried out. Kasim chuckled, then twisted the stick and sent the shuttle corkscrewing sideways. They cleared the stern of the supply ship with a good meter to spare, maybe even a meter and a half.
No one could call Kasim reckless.
The shuttle blasted past the supply ship, and Kasim maintained the corkscrewing motion. Centrifugal force pushed him against his shoulder straps, and he heard a babble of excited voices from aft. The sky spun around him as he zipped past the nose of the larger ship. He jerked the Albatross down until she was directly ahead of the supply ship, then accelerated hard. The Alexander swelled as he rushed toward her, and an alarm blared. The Albatross was being targeted by weapons systems on the Alexander and the surrounding corvettes.
"Oops." He fired the nose thrusters, decelerating hard.
"Shuttle Albatross. What the hell are you playing at?"
"Just demonstrating some maneuvers for the cadets." He winced, waiting for a reply.
"Kindly explain to the cadets that approaching a warship at ramming speed falls somewhere between stupid and suicidal on the official list of things you shouldn't do," said the clipped, starchy voice over the radio.
"Roger," he said. "Thanks for helping me, ah, impart such a valuable lesson."
"Let's not repeat the lesson, Albatross. Alexander out."
Somewhere behind him a cadet snickered. Several more cadets gave him a mocking round of applause.
"Thank you. You're too kind. Hang on for just a moment longer; we'll be docking with the Alexander shortly. A good ten minutes sooner than if you'd had any oth
er pilot, I might add."
That brought fresh applause, and he smiled. With just a little bit of luck, none of the weapons crews upstairs would bother mentioning him in a report. No cadets had puked. Kasim figured he had a better-than-even chance of getting away with his stunt.
He brought the shuttle up under the belly of the cruiser, marvelling he always did at the sheer bulk of the warship. The sleek corvettes that surrounded her seemed inconsequential, like a flock of sparrows around an eagle. They were shinier, prettier, quicker and more manoeuvrable. Their hulls were smooth and flawless, not marred by patches and seams from refits. They were better suited to the duties of the modern Navy, patrolling the vast borders of the scattered republic, intercepting smugglers, and doing customs inspections.
The Alexander, though, was built for war.
She was five decks high, but narrow, no more than forty meters across. She was long, almost two hundred meters from her steel prow to the massive engines in the stern. A missile bay decorated her port side, and a shuttle bay jutted from the bottom of her hull.
He tried to imagine the old days as he brought the Albatross in close to the shuttle bay and let the Alexander's tractor beams take control. Before Kasim was born, when his father was still a child, Earth's colonies had rebelled. They'd gone to war with Earth and each other. The Navy had been a very different organization in those days. Instead of customs and police work, fast warships had slugged it out in the depths of space.
Very little remained from the days of war. A handful of officers and enlisted men. One ship.
The Alexander.
A gentle thump echoed through the Albatross as they set down on the deck of the shuttle bay. Kasim rose and stretched, nodding to the cadets as they shuffled past him and into the larger ship. Most of them smiled as they nodded back. One young woman gave him a thumbs-up and said, "Great flight." No one looked upset or annoyed, and Kasim smiled. It was going to be all right.
Then a flash of colour caught his eye, and the smile froze on his face. A man and a woman stood at the back of the lineup. Instead of the drab green jumpsuits of cadets, they wore officers' uniforms. The man was poker-faced, but the woman transfixed Kasim with a glare of pure outrage.
Kasim kept smiling, but his stomach sank as if the ship's gravity had failed. He nodded to the last of the cadets, hiding his dismay, with only one thought in his head.
I'm screwed.
Chapter 4 – Hammett
Hammett leaned his shoulder against a bulkhead and waited for the fireworks to begin. He hadn't been enjoying the uncomfortable silence he'd been sharing before the pilot had interrupted it with his wild demonstration. Commander Velasco had alternated between indignant sputtering and silent terror as the shuttle had whipped around in tight corkscrews. Now she almost seemed to swell in front of him. He didn't want to hear the dressing-down she was about to unleash, but she was blocking the corridor. He resigned himself to waiting.
"What the hell did you think you were doing?"
The pilot had a sickly smile glued to his face, and he shrugged. "Demonstrating proper combat flying?"
"You were demonstrating grossly unsafe stunt flying!" Velasco's face was getting red. "What's your name and service number?"
A bit of the smile still persisted, and Hammett found himself admiring the kid's sangfroid. "Lieutenant Kasim al Faisal. 51983. Ma'am."
"Well, I hope you've enjoyed being a lieutenant, Faisal, because you won't be one for much longer." She didn't have the power to reduce him in rank, though it might happen. She makes hollow threats. Not a good sign.
"That's al Faisal, ma'am."
"What?" Velasco looked about ready to burst a blood vessel from sheer outrage.
"My last name. It's not Faisal, ma'am. It's al Faisal."
"I don't give a good damn what your name is! When I'm done with you, your parents will be disowning you anyway! You're a disgrace to your uniform, al Faisal. You're finished in the Navy. I'm going to make it happen." She glared at him for a time, then seemed to realize she had nothing more to say. She whirled and stomped off into the landing bay.
Hammett ducked through the shuttle's hatch, then paused to look back at the pilot. Al Faisal wore a pained grimace that contained just a ghost of his former grin. "Nice flying," Hammett said. "Keep up the good work." He grinned at the startled expression on the man's face, turned away, and clumped down the steps into the landing bay.
All the petty frustrations of his trip Earthside seemed to fall away. He was back on the Alexander. He was home. The deck beneath his feet had chipped paint and oil stains and gouges from clumsy landings, but he loved it anyway. Every imperfection told a story. Even knowing she was headed for the scrapyard couldn't stop the smile that spread across his face. After too many days of bureaucrats and offices he was finally back on a proper ship.
Velasco waited for him on the far side of the landing bay, visibly fidgeting. He headed toward her, keeping to a slow saunter just to annoy her. You may be the Admiralty's rising star, but I'm still the captain of this ship. I won't he hurried along by a desk pilot half my age. No doubt you'll be promoted above me soon enough. In the meantime, you can show me the respect due my rank.
"It was courteous of you to wait for me, Commander," he said when he reached her. Her lips tightened in obvious annoyance. She was waiting because she had no idea how to find the bridge, or anything else. She'd be lost on a corvette, if the stories were true, and Hammett sighed to himself. His First Officer had never served on a ship. It was ridiculous, and it underlined how the Navy saw the Alexander. She was an unimportant relic, not one of the shiny corvettes that did actual work.
"You'll want to stow your bag," he said, indicating the duffel slung over her shoulder. "After that, I'm sure you're keen to learn your way around the ship."
A cadet came across the shuttle bay toward them, then hesitated, clearly unsure how to deal with two senior officers blocking a hatchway. Velasco gestured him forward. "You, there. Take this." She thrust her duffel at him, and he took it, looking uncertain. "Put it in my quarters. I'm Commander Velasco."
"Um, yes, ma'am. Uh, where are your quarters?"
"How should I know? Show some initiative. Find it." She stepped out of the hatchway, clearing a path, and the cadet gave her a hesitant salute before hurrying deeper into the ship. She ignored him. It was a rough way to treat a youngster on his first day aboard ship, and Hammett frowned. He was beginning to dislike his new First Officer.
"No offence, Captain," she said, "but I don't plan to be aboard this hulk for long. What I need is a data lounge where I can catch up on paperwork. I haven't had good network access in almost two hours." A sailor came down the corridor, clearly busy with a task of her own, and Velasco stepped into the woman's path. "You, there. Where's the nearest data lounge?"
"Well, let me see. Two decks up in green section? The stairs are-"
"Show me," Velasco ordered. She followed the sailor down the corridor, glancing back long enough to say, "I'll see you later, Captain."
Hammett stared after her, dumbstruck. There was nothing insubordinate in her behavior, not exactly. It just wasn't the least bit respectful. Nor was there any respect in the way she treated subordinates. She was going to be a real thorn in his side, and she was going to be hell on crew morale. He sure wouldn't want to take her into battle.
I suppose she's good enough for a training run on a ship that’s destined for the scrapyard. The thought soured his mood. He stared after her, replaying everything she'd said, looking for grounds for an official reprimand. There was nothing, he decided reluctantly.
"Well," he muttered, "if I can't write her up, at least I can annoy her." He touched his ear, activating his com implants. A menu appeared, projected on his retina. He reached a hand out, tapping and swiping icons. To anyone else it would look like he was poking empty air, but he could see his finger touching the projected menus. He found the AI that handled Spacecom personnel.
"How can I help you, Captain Hammett?"
"I met a remarkable pilot today," he said. "But I have reason to believe he's not entirely suited to his current assignment. He's been getting reprimand notices. Or he will be. His name is Kasim al Faisal, service number, let me see … 51983, I think."
"That's right, Captain."
"I'd like to request a transfer for the young man. I'd like to have him aboard the Alexander." He smiled as he imagined how Velasco would react. "He's got the instincts of a combat flier. I think he's wasted as a shuttle pilot."
"I will make enquiries," the AI said. "I'll contact you when I know if a transfer will be feasible."
"Thank you," Hammett said, and broke the connection. He grinned.
Velasco was going to be furious.
Chapter 5 – Janice
The press scrum mostly contained robots.
Janice Ling ducked as a softball-sized camera bot zipped past her head. The bloody things were notoriously aggressive, ignoring the petty safety concerns of mere organics in their quest to capture the right clip from just the right angle.
A Channel Nine bot strutted past, a silver-skinned android done up to look like a woman, complete with an archaic steno pad and fountain pen. Those were props. Her mechanical eyes and ears would take a much better record than pen and paper ever could. It wasn't the only props the android had. Those ridiculous gigantic breasts, for instance. The android was made up like some vulgar fantasy dreamed up by a teenage boy. It was ridiculously over-sexualized, and Janice rolled her eyes, wondering what kind of knuckle-dragger followed the Channel Nine feeds.
Three other human reporters jockeyed for position in the mechanical crowd. Two were junior reporters like Janice, willing to put in long hours at long odds for a shot at a story that would make a splash. She also recognized Jerry Sturgeon, a washed-up alcoholic who'd sobered up and now worked the fringes of the news trade. On her bad days she was pretty sure she'd end up like him. If she lasted that long.