Halsey reconned Pierce’s face. No surprise there. She found the aristocratic demeanor she’d come to know before, during the briefing prior to the Battle of Wellington Shipyards. But accentuated somehow, as if it had become even more set in stone. Cold, pallid cheeks surrounding a prominent nose from which, Halsey had no doubt, Pierce had spent his privileged life looking down on others. It seemed to extend like a runway for launching daggers from his ice-gray eyes.
Pierce began. “Captain Halsey, you are here because you disobeyed a direct order from me during the recent action against the Swarm at Wellington Shipyards. Are you cognizant of this fact, and do you stand ready to plead?”
Wow. It really was like he was reading from the manual and filling in proper names as he went along. She opened her mouth to answer.
“Actually, Admiral, this is an informal meeting,” interrupted Kilgore. “We’re here to assign Captain Halsey counsel and to set the tone for a more formal hearing that I have every hope and expectation will be resolved quickly and to the satisfaction of the service.”
“Ma’am, I don’t need counsel,” said Halsey. “Admiral Pierce is correct that I disobeyed a direct order.” Pierce’s crow-like face began to crack with a smile that suddenly curdled as Halsey continued. “However, I would do so again in the same circumstances because—”
“Captain Halsey, shut up,” said Kilgore. “You will answer a direct question with a direct answer and that is all. Consider that an order. And don’t disobey this one.”
Halsey closed her mouth.
“Admiral Kilgore, Captain Halsey’s insubordination is clear,” said Pierce. “Your inserting yourself in these proceedings is highly irregular.” He seemed to lace his voice with as much Englishness as possible. But Kilgore was a Midwestern girl from way back, and his accented attempt at superiority fell on deaf ears. “By the Articles of Interstellar Law, I have sole authority to—”
“This whole damned war is highly irregular, Henry,” Kilgore said. Her words were almost playful, but her tone most assuredly was not. “And anyone that treats the court-martial of an IDF captain with a sterling record like Halsey’s like it’s a midshipman’s come-to-Jesus should have their….” She stopped herself in recognition for their audience of junior officers. “Apologies, Henry. It’s been a long couple of days.”
“Ma’am,” Pierce acknowledged stiffly.
“And on that note—Captain Halsey, I’ll be assigning my aide, Commander Olsen, to act as your counsel during the formal hearing. We’ll conduct that tomorrow morning at 0900 hours, after I’ve had a chance to settle in, see to the Russians, and hopefully find a long, hot shower. Until then, you are restricted to Invincible to oversee repairs.”
“Admiral!” exploded Pierce. “Captain Halsey should at least be kept here on station under guard until such time—”
“Negative, Admiral,” said Kilgore. “We have no idea how soon the Swarm might be back. The reconnaissance force we sent to Veracruz is a good set of eyes to have out there, but Wellington Shipyards is a strategic asset and obviously a target—no reason to think the enemy won’t be back to finish the job.” Almost to herself, she muttered, “And only the Russians know what the hell the Russians will do.” Staring hard from the screen, she concluded, “Until found guilty, Captain Halsey will continue to do her duties as commander of Invincible—in this case, get it ready to get back in the fight.”
Addison struggled to keep the smile off her face.
Pierce’s thin cheeks seemed to surrender to their natural, sallow state. “Aye-aye, ma’am.”
Kilgore nodded. “Captain Halsey, get back to your ship and do your damned job. I’ll have Olsen hail you when we’ve arrived.”
“Aye-aye, Admiral,” said Halsey, saluting smartly.
“You are dismissed, Captain,” Pierce said.
“Yes, Admiral.” She turned on her heel in a parade-perfect about-face and strode from Pierce’s office.
Sector 519, 9 lightyears outside United Earth Space
Bridge, ISS Avenger
Avery sat staring at the emptiness of Mother Universe on the forward screen. She could hear the ping and whir of Buckland’s sensor readouts behind her, as she had for the last several hours. Malcolm sat to her right, apparently well and performing his XO duties, albeit mechanically, by rote. She closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair.
“Current readings, Mr. Buckland?” asked Brent.
I kinda wish he was a little less efficient, Sam joked to herself. That makes about the hundredth time he’s asked that. She wondered if she’d hear the damned question in her sleep, if she ever got any again.
“Sensors show all clear, sir,” replied Buckland, suppressing a yawn. All of them, it seemed, were managing the dual challenges of pedantic survey duty compounded by the post-victory celebrations. “Moving on to grid 519-Alpha-Alpha.”
“Very well, Ensign,” replied the commander. “Captain, are you all right?”
“Fine, Malcolm, just a little tired,” she replied without opening her eyes. They burned with fatigue. What she wouldn’t give right now for a shot of whiskey. Then again, maybe the regulation against drinking on duty was a good thing. “But it was nice of you to ask.”
Hathaway at the helm failed to stifle his boredom as successfully as Buckland had. His yawn echoed around the Bridge before the helmsman, remembering protocol, issued an embarrassed, “Sorry, Captain.”
He should be sorry, she thought. Hathaway’s yawn had prompted Avery’s own jaw to start stretching. “Think nothing of it, Lieutenant,” she said to cover it. Leaning over to Brent, she whispered, “Maybe we could all use one of your pills.”
“Of course, Captain. Or I can call Doc Yaklin and he—”
“I was joking, Malcolm.”
The XO nodded. “Listen, Captain … why don’t you get some rack time? I can handle the surveys.”
Oh, you angel in a uniform you. But what she said was, “That’s not necessary, XO. But again, I appreciate the thought.”
“Ma’am, maybe you should get some shut-eye,” said Hathaway. “If the Swarm does show up….”
Sam thought about it. He had a point. A sidelong glance at Brent confirmed he appeared to have shaken off whatever strange mood he’d come on duty with. And there was nothing out here but dust and vacuum.
“Mr. Buckland, how much longer to complete the assigned course of surveys?” she asked.
“Approximately an hour and fifteen minutes, Captain.”
“Captain, I just received a message from Captain Preble on the Independence,” said O’Brian at comms. “Apparently you’re invited to a dinner with Commodore Wheatley at 1700 Heroic time, ma’am.”
Sam wanted to hang her head. She settled for flexing her fingers.
“Very well, Lieutenant. Send acknowledgment to Independence and give Captain Preble my compliments. Tell him I’ll be there with bells on.”
“Bells, ma’am?”
“It’s an old expression, O’Brian. Never heard of it in those naval novels you read?”
“Um. No, ma’am.”
“Send the message, Lieutenant. Without the bells.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Okay, you talked me into it, Malcolm. I’m going down to my quarters for an hour of rack time. I’ll be back on the Bridge before Ensign Buckland finishes his last sweep. Anything—and I do mean anything—out of the ordinary, you call me. Understood?”
“Aye, ma’am.” Then, more earnestly but beneath his breath, Brent added, “I can handle the duty.”
“Very well,” she said, rising and stepping toward the lift. “Lieutenant O’Brian, wake-up call in one hour flat.” The comms officer acknowledged the order. “Ladies and gentlemen, I bid you a fast yet unexciting passage of the next hour.”
“Pleasant dreams, Captain,” said O’Brian.
As the lift doors closed in front of her, she saw her XO move to the center seat. Something in the back of her mind was buzzing, a warning. But she wrote it off as parano
ia fueled by fatigue.
Chapter 15
Veracruz Sector
Outpost Heroic One
“Welcome to the ass end of space, Captain Preble,” said Commodore Wheatley. “Nice of CENTCOM to send us a couple of ships of the line to look after us.”
Noah Preble laughed. “Well, Mike, someone had to come out and make sure you didn’t make things worse with the Swarm. We’re already at war with them, right?”
Michael Wheatley smirked. He had a reputation for picking fights whatever the odds of him winning them might be. It’s why he was in command out here on the border between UEF space and the vast unknown beyond it. Most of those sectors didn’t even have names yet, only numbers. And some of them butted up against Russian Confederation territory.
“I’d like to have you and Captain Avery to dinner, if you don’t mind space rations. Here at Heroic, we barely have toilets that work. Some j-hole installed half the pumps backward.”
“I hear they’re planning to make you a full starbase with nuclear armament and enough mag-rail guns to stop a Russian dreadnought,” said Preble.
“I’ve heard the same thing. Ever since the Swarm caught the IDF with its pants around its ankles and one hand busy.” Wheatley looked unconvinced. “For now, we still have to remember to flush up.”
Preble tried not to laugh. “Why don’t you join Sam and me as my guest? We’ll have our cook whip up something that doesn’t taste like it came out of a can.”
“What? And get used to dependable artificial gravity and taking a piss without ducking? You’ll spoil me, Noah.”
“I always try to spoil my superior officers, sir. It’s how I’ve advanced so far at such a tender, young age.”
Wheatley actually cracked a smile. “Very well. I like to support up-and-comers with a talent for brownnosing.”
“I sent Avery on ahead to make a survey of Sectors 518 through 520. Her last logs indicate an ETA of 1600. Dinner at 1700 hours?”
“I’ll have my ensign make sure the shuttle is fueled up.”
“See you then, sir.”
Somewhere in Q-Space
Avery’s alarm assaulted her ears. How could that be already? She’d just lain down, hadn’t she?
Wait a minute, she hadn’t programmed an alarm at all. O’Brian was supposed to call and wake her up. And the noise banging around the walls of her quarters was Avenger’s red alert.
She shot out of bed and hammered the comms switch. “Bridge! Report!”
“Captain!” came Hathaway’s relieved voice. “We keep getting hails from Veracruz Sector demanding we answer. I know the XO ordered me not to, but I decided to sound the red alert and wake you up anyway—”
“Mr. Hathaway? What hails? What’s going on up there? Where’s Commander Brent?”
Her brain was still knocking down the cobwebs of interrupted sleep. Avery glanced at her bedside clock. She’d been asleep almost three hours! A quick conversion told her it was 1730 Heroic local time. She was late for the dinner with Wheatley, she realized. And that was the least of her worries. Something about the ship felt wrong, too.
“He’s gone below, ma’am,” said Hathaway, sounding mystified. “He said he was going to wake you up personally to ask if we should respond after all, run-silent orders or no run-silent orders.”
“What run-silent orders?”
“The ones Commander Brent passed along from CENTCOM.”
That warning she’d heard in her head when leaving the Bridge competed with the ship’s klaxon for her attention. But she shoved it aside. She’d have to deal with Brent later.
“Pipe the signal from Veracruz down here, Lieutenant. I want to know what the hell is going on out there.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Fuzz and popping. Avery pictured O’Brian at his station turning knobs and dials as he tried to clean up the signal.
“…Avery, respond … long-range … Swarm force … Independence … alone. Avenger, respond!”
It sounded mechanical, like an automated message. Desperate, almost pleading. She recognized the voice. The signal wasn’t coming from Heroic but from Independence Actual—from Noah Preble himself.
“Lieutenant O’Brian, acknowledge that hail! Why the hell haven’t you done it sooner?”
“Commander Brent put us on radio silence, ma’am,” he said, echoing Hathaway. “He said Admiral Kilgore’s orders explicitly stated we were to remain dark all the way back to Churchill Station.”
“All the way back to.…” Avery knew why the ship felt off to her. The harmonic thrum of Avenger riding q-space was the reason. They were no longer surveying the outer sectors at sublight. She was tempted to start cursing but instead processed O’Brian’s report. Kilgore had ordered Avenger to return to Churchill? Had the Swarm returned? But Preble’s broken communiqué suggested he was about to be attacked in the Veracruz Sector, if he hadn’t been already. Was the enemy attacking Veracruz and Britannia simultaneously?
“Let me see those orders, Lieutenant. And maintain red alert but turn that blasted noise off!”
“They were eyes only for the commander, ma’am,” said O’Brian. “And he said he was to purge them upon reading. All he would tell us is that the Russians are making trouble at the Shipyards, and Admiral Kilgore ordered us back ASAP as a show of force.”
Avery took a breath. “Mr. Hathaway, what’s our position?”
“Two light-years from Britannia, ma’am. We’ll be there shortly.”
Sam’s palms felt clammy, a cold realization creeping up her spine. Addie’s story of Baltasar’s betrayal and how his actions seemed so strange before he’d sold out humanity to the Swarm came to the front of her mind. It had taken Addie too long to see it, and that was her greatest regret about the entire incident—not relieving Baltasar sooner, even if it had meant charges of mutiny. She hadn’t wanted to see it, she said, hadn’t wanted to admit to herself that her captain could be a traitor. Just like Avery hadn’t wanted to listen to that alarm going off in the back of her head about her own XO.
“Mr. O’Brian, hail Admiral Kilgore’s flagship. I want a direct, encrypted channel, and right now.”
“Aye-aye, ma’am.”
The pieces of the puzzle clicked abruptly into place. Hours had passed since she’d hit her rack. Brent must’ve manufactured Kilgore’s orders, if they ever existed at all, with the plausible story of the Russians making trouble at Britannia. What seemed more likely—if her instinct was right, and Brent really was a traitor—was that it was all an elaborate ruse to pull Avenger out of position, leaving Noah to face the Swarm alone at Veracruz. A calm descended over Sam as she realized the extent of Brent’s treachery.
The vidscreen lit up with the red face of one very pissed-off admiral. “Captain Avery, what the hell is going on? Why are you returning to Britannia?”
“Admiral Kilgore—I don’t have time to explain, except briefly. I believe my XO is a Swarm agent and has deliberately pulled us away from Veracruz to enable a Swarm incursion. I’m reversing course immediately to lend Independence my assistance. Can you spare ships to reinforce from Wellington?”
Despite the dire news she’d just received, Kilgore’s face relaxed a little. “No ships there to spare. I’ll be on station within the hour, but the Russians haven’t arrived yet. You’re all we’ve got in range. Preble’s burning up comms trying to find you.”
“I’m changing course for Heroic now, Admiral. Avery out.”
The screen went dark before Kilgore could speak again.
“Avery to Bridge. Mr. Hathaway, reverse course. Jump us to Heroic as soon as practical. Push the q-jump drive to the limit. Mr. O’Brian, send an encrypted message to the Independence: ‘Returning at best possible speed.’ And Mr. Hathaway?”
“Captain?”
“You’re acting XO. Notify security that Commander Brent is to be taken into custody. And he should be considered armed and dangerous.”
“Ma’am?”
“You heard me, Lieutenant. And tel
l them it’s a silent search. No shipwide announcements. Get the marines on it, too. Two-man teams. I’m on my way up.”
“Aye-aye, Captain.”
Her cabin door had hardly slid aside when Avery was thrown violently against a bulkhead. Pain exploded upward from her left thigh. Avenger had suddenly, unexpectedly dropped out of q-space, and the inertial dampeners had failed to keep up. Lifting herself from the wall, she thumbed the comms switch again.
“Bridge! What the hell was that?”
“Hathaway here, ma’am. That was the q-jump drive going down. Someone yanked the main converters offline. And we’ve lost contact with Engineering.”
“Someone? I think I know who,” she said through clenched teeth. “Have a security detail meet me in Engineering, Lieutenant. And see if you can raise Independence.”
“Um, that won’t be necessary, ma’am.”
“Lieutenant? Explain.”
“Captain Preble just began livestreaming on an encrypted channel.”
Sam closed her eyes. Shit. “I’m going to Engineering, Mr. Hathaway. Secure the Bridge. Our first priority is to get those goddamned engines back online.”
“Aye-aye, Captain.” Hathaway’s voice was solemn and assured. The Bridge was in good hands, she knew.
“And our second is to catch that Swarm-loving sonofabitch. Sound intruder alert throughout the ship.”
No need for a silent search now. Once again, the klaxons squawked around Avery as she double-checked the clip in her sidearm, strapped it on, and limped into the corridor.
Chapter 16
Veracruz Sector
Bridge, ISS Independence
“CAG, launch! Give Wheatley’s people what cover you can.” Preble was calm, but his voice sounded raw and splintered.
“Aye, sir,” replied Laz. He knew why the captain was angry, no matter how Preble tried to mask it. Where the hell was Avenger? Why wouldn’t Sam answer their hails? He didn’t want to think about the possibility, but he couldn’t help it—had the Swarm turned her like they had Baltasar when they’d first attacked?
Legacy Fleet: Avenger (Kindle Worlds) (The First Swarm War Book 2) Page 9