The momentum slammed him against the wall. He lost his balance and slumped to the floor. She fired a rapid sequence of paired volley punches. All of which he deflected with open palms that rained down hard slapping blows to both sides of her head.
Another rapid threesome shook her skull. Her counterstrike caught his eye. But for every one blow she delivered on target, three of his broke through her blocking.
His two hands blurred into four. She caught sight of her woozy reflection. There were two of her struggling to remain conscious. Both Bloks gushed blood from their nostrils. She knew seeing double meant she had seconds to deliver a kill blow. Or die.
She and Dax raised themselves to their knees, she drove her boot hard between his legs. He grabbed her ankle and violently spun her around. Slamming her forehead to the floor.
He got her neck in a dead man’s lock and squeezed. She knew within ten seconds she’d be out cold or dead. She raised herself up with screaming abbs and pummeled his jaw with sharp elbows.
With his free palm he hammered a blow down on the back of her head. Forcing her face into the floor. She reached out to push off the floor and felt her mashed and broken fingers brush the handle of her weapon.
Instinctively, she gripped the handle. Driving her elbow back at him she rammed the weapon into his ear and squeezed the trigger.
His forearm deflected the barrel. An explosion of thunder ricocheted off the walls. She broke free of his dead man’s lock and whipped the gun around.
She held him dead in her sights.
Her eyes narrowed as she fought to contract the double vision.
“Give me one reason I shouldn’t kill you know?” she growled.
“Kill me and you kill our one chance at galactic peace.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“My spy drone reported back its final location,” he said with a splintering voice as his wild eyes burned. “Siorus was no Lupos saboteur. It’s far worse than that.”
“Tell me.”
“Take me to the Captain, first.”
CHAPTER 16 - DAMAGE REPORT
The elevator door slid open and Dax sprinted out onto Valiant’s two hundredth floor. A corridor branched in two directions. On the starboard side, the bridge. To the stern, the Captain’s Ready Room. He headed towards the two marines on sentry duty outside the double doors of the Ready Room.
Oksana matched his pace as he slowed to a jog. On his HGC, he made a rapid search for ‘Hermes’. His contact lens had by now repaired itself from the shock wave blast damage. It re-established a link with the Q-NET for real time intelligence gathering across the galaxy. Information sped across his lens.
Target match: Hermes: Galactic tourism cruise ship.
Passenger manifest: ten thousand humans. Details pending.
Current location: Rings of Saturn.
With paranoia commensurate with his new position as Executive Officer, Dax’s instincts were to lie to his new Captain. He searched spy drone Intel along Hermes’ flight path. He found a report on nuclear fuel rod dumping in the area close to a hyper lane.
Potentially devastating to interstellar voyages. It might just be enough to tempt Grint into action. Give Dax a chance to quietly assess the validity of his earlier vision. It was a long shot that Hermes had anything to do with the sabotage of Valiant. But long ago, he learned to his cost never believe in the coincidence of tragic events.
He recalled fragments of the vision’s words. “Hermes... danger... galactic peace... your son is alive...”
What if? He allowed himself a moment, then shut down that dangerous thought.
It would be safer for his sanity if he concentrated on what he could verify as genuine Intel related to Valiant’s mission: Maintain galactic peace. For Dax, if there was any threat to galactic peace it was in the sabotage of the fleet’s finest flagship. He had to trust there was something to his vision. All he needed now was proof.
Once he had rationalized his next move, he conceded that he was grasping to put the pieces together to make sense. No one in their right mind would believe him. Fortunately, he didn’t need to share with anyone else. But he needed the Valiant and that meant getting the captain on board.
But how do I explain this madness to the captain, when even I can’t make sense of it?
As he slowed, the marines raised their weapons.
“Halt and identify!”
He understood they were on red alert. Just one level away from a war setting. He impatiently submitted to a retina scan. “Are we done, already?”
The marine took his time verifying the list of personnel permitted beyond this point.
“You’re cleared, XO”
The doors slid aside and Dax hurriedly stepped in.
A large oval steel conference table was crowded by the solemn faces of Valiant’s senior officer staff. Dax felt the heat of stilted air and suppressed panic familiar with a War Room. He recognized the square cut bulldog figure of Marine Colonel John ‘Jeb’ Rage sat stiffly next to Grint. He shot Dax a glare that could vaporize a lesser man.
Stood behind the Colonel, Captain Argyle Valkyrie manipulated a three dimensional hologram of the Valiant into the center of the table. She high-lighted multiple red sections and was attempting to demonstrate the areas damaged and those areas yet to be given the all-clear. No one around the table seemed to be listening.
Next to the Colonel sat Chief Engineer Ffion Gonzalez anxiously drumming her knuckles on the table top as if counting the nano seconds until she could return to more important matters. She wailed over everyone about how impossible it was for her engineers to so much as wipe the grease from their own faces without a marine’s express written permission in triplicate. She resented the Colonel’s list of engineering personnel marked for interrogation.
“Damage report, Chief,” Hannibal asked. “Are we shipshape?”
“Aye, Captain, mostly thanks to XO saving the Gravity Core,” Chief Gonzalez said and puffing on a cigar, blew smoke into the air over their heads. It drifted and settled more or less as Dax might expect in near Earth simulated gravity. “All the same, if you’re going for a morning jog, I recommend taking your grav-boots.”
Colonel Rage coughed and rubbed his red eyes. Sleep was not an option for the senior staff. He glared at the Chief’s cigar.
“I prefer my smoke from the muzzle of a gun,” Colonel Rage said.
Doctor Rhodes Ransom winced and fanned the smoke out of his eyes as he flatly continued reading out the latest casualty figures.
“Two hundred and sixty four dead. One hundred and twenty eighty injured, thirty six critical,” said Doc Ransom. “Captain, Colonel Rage’s refusal to medi-vac the critical is an unholy abuse of power.”
The Colonel insisted that all but essential flights to and from Valiant remain suspended until his bomb squads gave the all clear.
“Captain,” bellowed Doc Ransom, “thanks to the Colonel’s belligerent stance on refusing a drugs shipment to dock with Valiant, I’m losing patients by the hour. The man’s attitude is something out of the Dark Ages.”
Rage slammed a fist into the table. “You think I want to see good men and women, sons and daughters, husbands and wives die on their backs in your hospital beds?” he shouted.
“I think you enjoy the power it gives you, yes, Colonel,” Doc Ransom said. “I’ll be requesting your psyche evaluation be pushed up.”
“It will say nothing more than I’m capable of making difficult choices and sticking by them,” Rage said and sat back in his chair.
“‘Difficult’, you say?” Doc said. “I say ‘psychotic’.”
“Doctor, until I give the all-clear,” Rage said, “I will not risk the ship to further explosive devices.”
“Captain, please,” Doc implored.
Hannibal sighed and looked at the Colonel. “Jeb, a little flexibility?”
“If Doc loses ten more men in the next twenty four hours,” Rage said, “It’ll be worth it to save a thousa
nd that could die in booby traps.”
Hannibal nodded. “Thank you, Doc,” said Hannibal. “Keep monitoring the situation.”
Rage resumed his thousand yard stare.
Doc threw up his arms and drummed his fingers dramatically on the table as he stared at the ceiling and shook his head.
Dax got a sense that Ransom wasn’t about to let it go.
“CAG? Hannibal asked without looking up.
The CAG nodded. A hot-shot pilot with a thousand grounded pilots climbing the walls and no sign of an enemy to dogfight with. “Maintaining patrols without incident,” he said. “Pilots are itching to get our injured Earth bound.”
The vein in Ransom’s neck throbbed. “Colonel, if you didn’t have a tin hat for a brain,” Doc Ransom spat, “you’d see how blinded you are by your moronic rules.”
“Those ‘moronic’ rules prevent further loss of life, Doctor,” Colonel Rage growled. “Marines and G-RUNT units are working round the clock to sniff out and make safe.”
“Estimated completion, Colonel?” Hannibal asked.
“Twenty four hours, Captain.”
“We’ll be out of food in less time than that,” the Quartermaster said. “Colonel, I’ll expect you to explain to twenty five thousand crew members why they are starving.”
Doc Ransom pounded the table. The Chief blew smoke at the Colonel.
Add to the mix, a dozen other senior officers and their adjutants embarking on parallel conversations, and it felt understandable to note his captain sat with his head in his hands. Dax considered the strain was getting to Grint. With no wind in his sails, had Firestorm Grint finally blown out?
Or perhaps the Firestorm was reserved for downtimes. Keeping the crew on the edge when it was safe to roast his senior staff. But in times of emergency to just let his senior staff vent while the important business carried on regardless. Either way, Dax’s intuition told him to be frugal with the truth. Trust was not his friend today.
Dax waited until tabby cat, Delilah, paused from cleaning her whiskers to look up from Hannibal’s lap. She poked her nose over the edge of the conference table and wrinkled her nose at Dax. Hannibal glanced up to see what she was looking at.
Dax shot Hannibal a look that implied intelligence matters required only the smallest audience. Hannibal seemed to grasp the implication. Or, at least seemed ready to seize the opportunity to be rid of the pandemonium in his Ready Room.
From behind his polished steel table, resting his aching bones in the chair, Hannibal Grint looked back and forth between his new XO and his trusted Lieutenant Blok. The pair looked a damn mess. A disgrace to the uniform. And yet, he wanted to pin a medal on them both.
But he felt a prickling sensation under his beard when he looked in their eyes. And he still couldn’t bring himself to address Dax as XO in front of Oksana. Hannibal popped a headache pill and washed it down with a soda.
“Thank you ladies and gentlemen,” Hannibal shouted. “That will be all for now.”
Everyone fell silent and stared at Hannibal, and then at Dax and Blok.
None seemed pleased to be interrupted by the new XO and the also-ran.
“Next meeting at 0200 hours,” Hannibal said. “Dismissed.”
The senior staff and army of adjutants filed out with a mixture of relief and frustration etched across their faces.
As the morose figure of Colonel Rage pushed by, Dax stepped in front of him.
“Colonel,” Dax said.
The man lifted his heavy eyes. “Perhaps I could ask you about the incident?”
“The incident?” Rage said and seemed distracted as a new report scrolled across the back of his left hand.
“You were seen speaking with the saboteur, Siorus Nickel.”
“When?”
“Just before the explosion.”
“I don’t recall.”
“If I showed you the G-RUNT unit’s footage,” Dax said, “would it jog your memory?”
Colonel Rage fixed Dax with a cold, hard stare. Neither man blinked.
“If I had the time,” Rage said and sneered, “should I concern myself with these minor matters like interrogating you and Lieutenant Blok for discharging a weapon in an elevator?”
Dax swallowed hard and glanced at the bruise forming around Blok’s eyes.
“Thought not,” Rage said and motioned to walk through Dax.
Dax held his ground.
“You haven’t answered my question, Colonel.”
“No, it would not jog my memory, XO,” Rage said. “And it’s my recollection that the two G-RUNT units were damaged by the blast beyond all hopes of repair. Anything else? Or can I get back to the business of cleaning up this mess before Doc Ransom bends my ears about more patients dying?”
“Thank you, Colonel, that’s all,” Dax said and he knew with certainty Rage was hiding something important.
Rage grunted and turned his back on Dax.
“For now,” Dax said and noted a hesitation followed by a ripple of emotion in Rage’s shoulders as he left the conference room.
“What was that all about?” Hannibal said.
“Routine,” Dax said dismissively.
“The Colonel’s very sure of himself, Dax,” Hannibal said. “You’d be wise to drop that line of investigation.”
Dax nodded. Colonel Rage is indeed sure of himself. Too sure.
When the double doors slid shut on the continuing arguments outside, Hannibal motioned for them to sit.
Dax preferred to set the tone of efficient urgency and remained standing.
“What’s your take on this, Dax?” Hannibal asked.
“My spy drone followed the signal sent by saboteur Siorus Nickel, all the way to the Lupos system.”
“So he was a Lupos spy?”
“No. The drone found a second relay satellite broadcasting an encrypted signal to another system.”
“Which one?”
Dax hesitated.
“Spit it out, XO,” Hannibal said and winced when he caught Blok’s smarting eye. Oh well, she’ll just have to get used to hearing it, or put in for a transfer.
He glared at Dax.
Dax took a deep breath and let it out. “Vanguard, Captain.”
Hannibal’s itching beard became insufferable.
“What’s to say your spy drone won’t discover a third relay satellite once it arrives at the Vanguard system?” Hannibal asked.
“Nothing, Captain,” said Dax. “But it will be some days before my drone sends through another update.”
“In that case, I advise you sit on what you know.”
“But Captain, if this--”
“But nothing,” Hannibal snapped. “That’s an order.”
“Captain, on matters of intelligence must I remind you I have complete autonomy?”
Hannibal stood up, sending Delilah into a sudden, twisting leap onto the table. She voiced her annoyance with a high-pitched whine. Hannibal walked around the conference table and squared up to his XO. Eyeball to eyeball he whispered, “Unless you want to be sucking on vacuum, XO, I suggest you file your concerns where the sun don’t shine.”
Dax narrowed his eyes and stared through Hannibal as if he hadn’t heard him. “Yes, Captain.”
Delilah waltzed over to Dax and rubbed her tail against him.
Hannibal caught the tremor of Oksana’s suppressed grin. He sighed.
“Dax, I apologize,” Hannibal said. “But we need our facts straight before we start accusing our new ally.”
“Ally, Captain?” asked Dax.
“What else would you call the Vanguard?”
Dax’s eyes narrowed once again. “Our jailers?”
It was Hannibal’s turn to suppress a smile, which he did with little trouble. “Not exactly politically correct are you, XO?”
“I call it as I see it, Captain.”
“All the same, if you are correct in your assumptions,” Hannibal said, “tell me this: what in hell are the Vanguard up to? Why would
they sabotage Valiant?”
Dax said nothing.
Hannibal turned to Oksana. Never normally one for hiding her forthright opinions, he reflected she’d been unusually quiet during this discussion.
“And you, Lieutenant?” Hannibal asked.
“Captain?”
“What’s your take on this?”
She swallowed hard. “I have no idea what the Vanguard are up to, Captain. Is it not Commander Dax’s job to find out?”
Hannibal finally conceded this business had the better of him and scratched at his beard.
“And you’ve nothing, Dax?” Hannibal said.
“One rotten fish. I intend to cast my nets in its direction.”
“Which is?”
“At this stage, pure speculation and no need to waste your time with, Captain.”
“Fine, but the second it smells, I want to know, got it?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Dismissed,” he growled and scratched furiously at his beard.
They snapped their heels as one and turned to the doors.
“And report to sick bay,” Hannibal said. “And smarten up. Both of you.”
Dax hesitated at the door to allow Oksana to leave ahead of him. Three... two... one.
“I’ve changed my mind, XO,” Hannibal said. “Tell me about this fishy lead of yours.”
Dax turned to view Hannibal sat back at the conference table. He firmly fixed his poker face.
“I can’t reveal my sources, Captain, but I’d like Valiant to head out to the rings of Saturn.”
“Why?”
“A report on fuel rod dumping.”
“And how is this connected with sabotage on Valiant?”
Poker face Zen... “I cannot say without betraying the trust and safety of my source.”
Hannibal scratched furiously at his beard. “XO, if you want this ship to leave Space port and head to within a million light years of Saturn’s rings, then I need to know your Intel source.”
“Respectfully, no, Captain.”
Hannibal slammed a fist into the table. “Where’d you get your damn intelligence, XO?”
“I cannot reveal my sources, Captain.”
Hannibal took a deep breath and rubbed his fist.
Valiant (Jurassic War Universe Book 1) Page 9