Heirs at War (The Marmoros Trilogy Book 2)

by Peter Kenson

  “It appears I may have made a slight error of judgment, your Majesty. May I be allowed to go now?”

  “Of course.” Rachel touched the panel and the door slid open. “One question before you go.”

  The man raised his eyes to look at her again.

  “Will you serve as a member of my new council?”

  There was a long pause as the man considered his reply. “Yes I will serve on your council but I warn you, I abhor weakness.”

  “So do I, my lord. So do I.”

  As the door closed behind them, Mahagama made a full court bow. “That was very impressive, your Majesty. I had no idea you had such a strong telekinetic ability.”

  “Neither did I, my lord. I’ve never done anything like that before. But it just came into my head, what I needed to do and it happened. Who was that man anyway?”

  “That was Lord Dhamina. He has a lot of influence with the council.”

  “I could sense that. That’s why I want him working for me. Now, let’s get out of this room and find somewhere where you and I can have a quiet conversation and maybe some refreshments.”

  ***

  Immediately he walked through the door, Chaqi knew that something was wrong. The tension in the room was almost palpable. Beside him, he felt Anise shiver and he instinctively put his arm round her shoulders to draw her close. Around the table, the faces of the other resistance leaders were registering a range of emotions from anger to outright fury.

  “What’s happened?” he demanded. “Has there been another attack on the queen?”

  “No, not that,” Thorson replied. “The queen is safely on Sorinto now, surrounded by our people. No, I’m afraid the problem is much closer to home.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “A Belsi patrol visited the farming community at Jalak. Everybody thought it was just a routine patrol, you know; searching for surplus food or supplies coming down to us in the caves. They didn’t find anything, of course, but then they suddenly arrested Amkrit and Jamila, the headman and his wife, and took them away.”

  “Did they give any reason?”

  “No, they just singled them out, loaded them aboard a flitter and took off.”

  “Where did they take them? We’ll have to organise a rescue and get them back.”

  Thorson shook his head. “It’s too late for that. One of the watchers in the hills above the base, reported the patrol coming back. She said that one flitter flew directly to the landing field. Two prisoners, a man and a woman in Ystrad clothing, were dragged off the flitter and manhandled aboard a shuttle which took off immediately. We have no way of tracking the shuttle but it’s a fair bet it was heading for Belsia.”

  “But why? It doesn’t make any sense. What possible reason could they have for arresting them in the first place, let alone taking them off-planet?”

  “We don’t know. I’ve spoken to some of the villagers at Jalak. The patrol found nothing. There was no provocation, no confrontation. The villagers just stood by and let the patrol search. And then, when they had finished searching, they seized Amkrit and Jamila and left.”

  “Have you tried to contact them?” Anise asked.

  Thorson shook his head again. “They put two of those damn collars on them before they left the village. We’ve tried to contact them but those collars block everything. We can’t even find them anymore.”

  A silence filled the room as they considered the enormity of that statement. In such a close telepathic community, everyone was aware of everyone else. It was like a background hum that was always present; a sea of thoughts that was murmuring away in the distance. From childhood they had been taught to filter it out and ignore it but it was always there. When they wanted to contact someone, they could dive into this sea and search for the unique ‘voice’ of the person they were looking for. And now two of those voices were silent.

  Chaqi seated Anise and himself at the table. “We have to respond. We can’t let them get away with this.”

  “Maybe that’s what they want,” one of the other leaders said. “They might be trying to force us out into the open.”

  “Maybe they are, but we can’t just do nothing,” Anise snapped.

  “We can’t do anything useful. We can’t help Amkrit and Jamila; they’re gone. I won’t put the lives of my fighters at risk for no good reason.”

  Chaqi slapped the table with his hand. “Don’t say that. We have all lost someone close to us in this struggle. But every Belsi soldier that we kill is one less enemy to steal our food. Every act of sabotage that we do, weakens them. We have to believe that our resistance is useful; that we are preparing the way for our queen to return and lead us to victory. One day we will be rid of these Belsian invaders and reclaim our homeland.”

  There were nods of agreement around the table even if traces of doubt lingered on some of the faces. “So what do you suggest? How do we respond to this?”

  “We know there is some sort of crackdown going on,” Thorson said. “The watchers at the base report that every shuttle that lands, brings more troops with it. They have strengthened the defences and doubled the patrols around the perimeter of the base and the mine. Any attack there would be suicidal at this time.

  “In addition, the word is that one of their top commanders has been sent here with orders to root out the resistance. There are more patrols through the farming communities and there is even one patrol going round with a drilling crew. Two days ago they broke into one of the tunnels on the far side of the base. We had to collapse three connecting tunnels to contain the breach.”

  “How did they find the tunnel?” Chaqi asked.

  “We’re not sure. We know that patrol had several sniffers with it but we run our own checks on the tunnels every day and we believe our shielding is good. They’ve drilled several other holes that have missed our tunnels by some distance, so we think it was just bad luck but we can’t be completely certain.”

  “That patrol is a threat,” Chaqi stated. “Do we know where the drill came from? Did they pull it out of the mine?”

  “We believe so. There’ve been no reports of new equipment coming in on any of the recent shuttles.”

  “So if we take out that patrol and destroy the drill, they will either have to bring in a new equipment from Belsia or reduce production at the mine by taking another drill out. Either way, it will slow them down.”

  “It’s a large patrol,” Thorson warned. “Nearly company size with the drilling crew as well.”

  “But it’s operating out in the open, away from the base,” Chaqi said. “Anise and I will handle it. Give us a couple of days to follow them around and we’ll come up with a plan. We’ll probably need to rope in some of your men for the actual attack though.”

  “Not a problem,” Thorson said amidst the general nodding of heads. “But what do we do about Jalak? The people there are absolutely distraught.”

  “Who’s in charge there now? Didn’t Amkrit have a son?”

  “Yes Salman. He’s acting as headman at the moment until we get more news of his father.”

  “How’s he holding up?”

  “He’s very upset naturally. He’s also very young. But he’s his father’s son and seems to have an old head on his shoulders. He’s doing his best to calm the villagers down and make sure that nobody does anything rash.”

  “Good! Get word to him of what we’re doing so that he doesn’t think we’re taking this lying down. Also, if the Belsi are bringing in more soldiers, they will have more mouths to feed and will be looking for more food. I think the farmers in the Jalak region should have a sudden catastrophic crop failure. And if they ‘arrest’ anybody in any of the other farming communities, they will suffer crop failures as well.”

  “They’ll just bring in more farmers from Belsia,” Thorson objected.

  “To do what? The Belsian farmers who are already here are struggling to feed themselves never mind producing a surplus. Even
if we weren’t actively discouraging their crops from growing, they could never match our farm yields or growth rates because they cannot empathise with the plants and animals they are trying to rear. They need our farmers to survive and to feed their troops. And if we all have to tighten our belts a little, I think we will manage to do so more easily than a garrison of hungry soldiers.”

  Chapter 11 - Runnymede

  There had to be a court martial, of course. Whenever a ship is lost, a court martial is always convened on the commanding officer, if only to determine the facts surrounding the loss. It was a very formal affair, chaired by Space Admiral Gallagher from Star Base Caledonia with Capt. Hood of the Missouri and Capt. Renwick of the Indomitable sitting alongside him. A ceremonial dress sword was lying across the desk in front of the court, a relic from an earlier era when a captain would have to surrender his sword at the start of the trial. Traditionally when the court delivered its verdict, if the sword was arranged to point at the accused, he would know he had been found guilty. “Which way,” Mikael wondered as he sat listening to the evidence, “would the sword point when the court reached its verdict this time.”

  The court listened to the evidence of the Cleopatra’s officers and to the commanding officers of both the Juno and the Jupiter before Mikael was called to the stand. From the earlier witnesses, the court had already established the facts of the incident and the sequence of engagements that had taken place. What they wanted now was Mikael’s reasoning at each of the key decision points. Decisions taken in the heat of battle do not always survive the cold light of analysis and more than once, Mikael was forced to examine the logic of his commands. “Could he have done things differently? Yes. Should he have done things differently? Probably not.”

  The court challenged every key decision but the one they concentrated on was the decision to pursue the attack on the frigate at the expense of stabilising the life support systems on the Cleopatra.

  “Lieutenant Commander Boronin, your executive officer has testified that, when you ordered additional power to be fed through the phasors, he warned you that this was drawing power from the already unstable life support system.”

  “Yes sir. That is correct.”

  “And you chose to ignore his warning. Is that also correct?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “And as a result of overloading the weapons systems, the Cleopatra suffered a general power failure which destabilised the life support system even further, to a point from which it could not be recovered.”

  “The cause of the power failure has never been conclusively established, sir. The Cleopatra had taken significant damage to her internal systems and the engineering records downloaded with the ship’s log, were insufficient to specifically identify the exact cause of the failure.”

  “But you were aware, were you not, that the power you were redirecting to the weapons systems was increasing the instability of the life support systems?”

  “Yes sir. Lieutenant Bennetton did inform me but I felt that the priority was to maintain the attack on the Dominator.”

  “I put it to you, Lieutenant Commander, that the failure of your previous manoeuvre to inflict serious damage on the enemy frigate, clouded your judgement to the extent that you continued to press the attack beyond the point of reason.”

  “No sir. I do not believe that my judgement was in any way clouded.”

  “I put it to you, Lieutenant Commander, that you became, in effect, obsessed with destroying the enemy and that by pressing the attack on the enemy frigate to the extent that you did, you disregarded the safety of your ship and recklessly endangered the lives of your crew. You took a gamble, sir, which did not come off.”

  “No sir, that’s not true. On the facts that I had at the time, in the middle of a combat situation with a superior enemy force, the best option I had was to pursue the attack on the frigate. The stability of the life support system was a calculated risk. But if I had not maintained the attack and damaged the Dominator’s engines,” Mikael argued, “she could have returned at any time to destroy the Cleopatra which would then have been lost anyway.

  “The transport Arctic Fox would also have been lost together with the Ystrad ambassadors and their queen and the Vostovian fleet would still have one additional active frigate. Under the circumstances, I consider that the actions that I took offered the greatest chance of survival for both the Cleopatra and her crew.”

  The faces of the judges gave nothing away as they asked Mikael to withdraw while they considered their verdict. The antechamber was crowded with officers, witnesses from the hearing, well-wishers from other ships and the curious who always attend the spectacle of a court martial. Suzanne was there at the front of the crowd but not even she dared approach Mikael. They cleared a path for him as he paced the length of the room wrapped in the cocoon of his own thoughts. If any spoke to him, he did not hear them as he battled with the twin demons of self-doubt and guilt at the deaths amongst his crew.

  “Twenty two paces from one end of the room to the other. One pace per second, 0.8 metres per pace, 2.88 kilometres per hour. Change direction, walk the width of the room. Fifteen paces across, that means the room is 12 metres wide by 17.6 metres long. That makes the area of the room 211.2 sq. metres. Assuming a standard ceiling height of 2.2 metres that gives a volume of 464.6 cubic metres. That volume of air can support life for…. How many people in the room?”

  Mikael swung round as the doors to the courtroom opened and the officials escorted him back. He hardly dared to look at the desk as he took his place facing the judges. Summoning his last reserves of courage and will-power, he forced himself to look at the sword. It pointed away from him. Then he looked at the judges and saw the smiles on their faces.

  “Lieutenant Commander Boronin. The court has listened carefully to the evidence of the events surrounding the loss of His Imperial Majesty’s corvette Cleopatra whilst under your command. It is the verdict of this court that you were in no way responsible for the loss of the Cleopatra and furthermore, that you acted in the finest traditions of the Imperial Navy. The actions that you took, significantly reduced the potential loss of life amongst your crew and undoubtedly saved the transport Arctic Fox from capture or destruction.

  “It is also the opinion of this court that, following the leadership of their captain, the officers and men of the corvette Cleopatra acted with conspicuous gallantry in the face of superior enemy forces and we commend this report to the attention of the Admiralty.”

  If anything else was said, it could not have been heard as the courtroom erupted in a spontaneous outburst of cheering and applause. Mikael himself was surrounded by a hoard of people all trying to shake his hand, slap him on the back or otherwise offer their congratulations. The doors to the courtroom exploded open as the ex-Cleopatrans waiting in the antechamber, heard the noise and rushed in to support their captain. Anton and Suzanne led the charge but made no impression on the crowd until Anton announced, at the top of his voice, that cases of Elurian champagne had been put on ice in the wardroom bar.

  ***

  The following day Mikael woke from a dream of his last skiing trip where he had taken a nasty tumble and somersaulted about 20 metres down the slope. Only this time he seemed to keep on rolling over and over on his shoulder, shaking every time it hit the ground.

  “Wake up, sir. Lt. Commander Boronin, sir. You’ve got to wake up, sir.”

  “You’d better have a bloody good reason for this,” he growled.

  The pressure on his shoulder stopped instantly as the orderly took a hurried pace backwards.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but you do need to wake up, sir.”

  Mikael opened one bleary eye and glared at the man. “Why do I? If it’s anything less than a declaration of war, go away until tomorrow.”

  “Admiral Wei’s compliments, sir and he requests your presence in his office at 09:00 hours, if you’re not too… ah, indisposed, sir.”

  Mi
kael sat up in bed and immediately regretted it. Holding his head in both hands to prevent it rolling off his shoulders, he groaned. “Time. What time is it, man?”

  “It’s 10 after 8, sir. I have been trying to wake you for a little while, sir.”

  “Get out,” Mikael ordered. “No wait. Get me some black coffee. A pot, at least. And wake Surgeon Commander Barasny. Tell him it’s an emergency.”

  “Aye aye, sir. You should eat something, sir. Would you like me to…?”

  The orderly fled, closing the door just as one of Mikael’s boots thudded into it. “I’ll take that as a ‘No’ then,” he thought to himself as he considered the relative merits of getting the coffee with all possible speed against not venturing back in there without the protection of the Surgeon Commander. In the end, the instinct for self-preservation won out and he hurried away in the direction of Anton’s room.

  By the time he returned with the coffee, Anton was already there with a selection of medical supplies. “Getting you sober is not the problem,” Anton was saying. “It’s not knowing what the old devil wants you for. The more I pump you up, the further and faster you’re going to crash later. And if he sends you flying off on one of his ‘errands’, crashing out in four to six hours’ time may not be an acceptable option.”

  “Put the coffee over there,” Mikael groaned at the orderly. “And lay out a clean uniform for me.”

  “Just get me to a state where I can stand upright without swaying,” he said, turning back to Anton. “I’ll worry about the rest when I know what the Old Man wants.”

  “Okay.” Anton made a selection from his bag. “Two of these now with some of that coffee. Put another two in your top pocket for emergency use but after that, absolutely nothing else for at least 24 hours. Is that understood?”

  “Yes Tony.”

  “Will there be anything else, sir?” as the orderly stood hopefully by the door.

  “Yes, one more thing,” Mikael frowned, trying to gather some semblance of organisation around him. “Nip down to the main door and make sure there’s a scooter there. I don’t have time to leg it all the way to the Admiral’s office.”