The Belt Loop (Book Two) - Revenge of the Varson

by Robert B. Jones

  Another round of conversations rippled through the conference room.

  “One last thing,” the captain said. “Until we vet everyone on Berger’s staff, especially her adjutants, we will not be issuing sailing orders for Captains Fraze or Zane. Not until we know for sure.”

  “Captain, I was wondering. . .” Milli Gertz said to the floor.

  “Commander Gertz, Admiral Paine told me what you did over at the Base Hospital. I have recommended that you remain here on Bayliss and assist the medical corps. Your special mission will be to get Commander Yorn back to strength soonest, Milli. We’re going to need him before this thing is over.”

  Her face brightened and she tried to suppress her growing smile. “Permission to —”

  “Granted. Get your butt over to the hospital, Commander Gertz. And as soon as Yorn is talking, I want to know about it.”

  She turned and headed for the door and almost stumbled when she turned at the waist to offer him a salute. “Thank you, sir,” she said.

  “So, there you have it, boys and girls. Get some rest, get your gear, keep your VOX lines open. Expect to get the call to duty around 2300 hours.”

  As the crew filtered out, Max hung back. Finally, when she was alone with the captain, she said, “Sir, I have an idea for you, something my son said while I was with him up at the Hayes School. I don’t know if it will work, but, since you are going to use those ships from the First as bait, I think it’s worth at least a look.”

  Something her kid told her. Geeze. Haad looked skyward for a second then looked back at his communications officer. “Go ahead, lieutenant, I’m listening.”

  Max outlined her plan.

  Chapter 44

  The room was decorated in chocolate brown paneling and had so many nooks and alcoves scattered about Har thought he was in somebody’s version of an old-fashioned curio shop. He was seated in a huge leather chair facing a large oak desk with a lot of other Navy junk on it: a wooden stand with four or five tiny flags stuck in it, a silverized globe about the size of somebody’s head with a lot of jeweled land masses on it, two or three models of Navy warships, a pen holder, a comm stack set, file folders and a large brass nameplate: CMDR HALSTON H. HOLT. Har wondered what the middle H stood for. Hecto-zillionarian maybe?

  “Are you sure this is the man you saw in the mess hall, Cadet Hansen?”

  Har looked at the wizened old man and tried to guess how old he was. A hundred? Maybe two? This guy looked like he had been around long enough to have invented the first boat, Har thought. He was sitting in the chair swinging both legs. His arms were gripping the brass-studded armrests. “Oh, yessir,” he said. “No doubt in my mind at all. And, that’s the same guy I saw on the train coming up here, too.”

  Commander Holt nodded and Lieutenant Miles walked up to the desk and took the photograph. “Have your men start an immediate search, lieutenant. If he’s still on my campus, I want him found.”

  The SP guy took the picture and said something about getting it scanned into their readers. He then told that provost guy behind the desk, the one that looked like he was ready for the crematorium, how he had his men deployed. The provost offered him assistance from his local goons and before you knew it, Har was alone in that museum of an office with the reaper himself. He looked over his shoulder and was relieved to see two armed SP guys still by the door. You never know. They might have to perform CPR or something on this old fossil.

  “I have read your file, Mister Hansen. I don’t know whether to be impressed with you or afraid of you. It seems everyplace you turn up there’s nothing but chaos.”

  Har didn’t get a good enough reading on this guy, who apparently ran this asylum, to know whether or not he had just been insulted. “Yeah, I mean, yes, sir, my mom says the same thing. Even though I don’t really have one, she say’s ‘Trouble’ is my middle name. With a capital T.”

  The old guy smiled revealing a set of perfect artificial teeth. At least they weren’t filed down to razor-sharp points, Har rejoiced. The old headmaster commander pushed himself back in his seat and looked around his own office. Har wondered if he had misplaced something along the way, and if he had, how in the name of space was he ever going to find it? “Interesting, Mister Hansen.”

  Har started to fidget. He was tired, he was still hungry. Maybe this old man could get on his comm stack and order them up some late-night grub. This interrogation was over.

  “If it’s all the same to you, commander, I would like to retire for the evening.”

  The look he gave Har made the boy appreciate the fact that all the weapons hanging on the wall in here were locked up behind glass. If this old geezer had a gun in his hands right now, he’d probably put a shot right between my eyes, Har surmised. The old man did not look pleased.

  “Now, you see here, young man. No more of your petty insolence. If you want to have a good stay here at the Hayes, you’ll start toeing the line. You’ve been here only six hours and you’ve been put on report twice. At the rate you’re going, I’ll wash your little smart-ass out of here before you’ve had the chance to attend your first fucking class. Is that understood?” The old man punctuated the end of his long tirade by slapping the top of his desk with a riding crop. Now where the hell did that come from? The loud slap made Har jump.

  Wow. That old bird has some breath in him after all. Probably need to hit an oxygen bottle after I leave, Har thought. But he also realized that he had stepped across that invisible line drawn between cute kid and insufferable wise-ass. The line that his mom always harped on him about.

  “I’m sorry, Commander Holt. It won’t happen again. It’s been a long day for me, you know, ducking these alien murderers and all.”

  Holt snapped his fingers. “You two,” he said to the guards by the door, “kindly show Mister Hansen back to his quarters.” Then he turned his gray eyes on Har. “This better be the last time I see you in my office, Cadet Hansen, other than to pick up your goddamned diploma. Got it?”

  Stay out of trouble for SIX years? Har didn’t think so. “Aye, aye, sir,” he said and stood. “I read you loud and clear.”

  The two SP guards “helped” him out of Commander Holt’s office without a word. His feet never touched the floor.

  * * *

  The two officers were locked in mortal combat; not of slings and arrows, but one of words. Captain Walt Fraze was getting the better of it at this moment.

  “So, you ran. Typical of your species,” the human said. He looked around the small room and shuddered at its squalor. When he punched up his message to Teeluur on the VOX he could only wait and see if the man actually showed. They were in a safe house on the outskirts of Nardin, a small town about two kilometers from the War College. Fraze had left him the instructions in the hopes that he would still be alive.

  “No more insults, human. It was your boss’s plan, something she hatched through you to that spy Galuud. Typical human cluster fuck,” he said, giving venom for venom received.

  “No matter. They’ve already sent a squad up here looking for her. I think she’s trying to make it off planet. Berger certainly has the resources now to do that.”

  Teeluur thought. The human admiral deserting her sinking career. But, unless she had friends in high places, it would prove impossible for her to find passage off Bayliss. The whole planet was damn-near on lock-down. He had been lucky enough to get out of that stupid boy’s school with his skin. When that clumsy kid had dropped his tray and refused to look up at him, it finally dawned on him who the little maggot was. Hansen’s offspring. Someone who could identify the real Davi Yorn. Of course, those idiots back on Elber had forgotten two important things before they bagged Commander Yorn: first, they forgot to look him over for any new identifying marks or scars; secondly, they failed to get his VOX code from him before they juiced him. And since Teeluur had not looked under the black hood before he helped drag Yorn out to Yaneel’s car, he had no way of knowing about the head wound Yorn had suffered while he sa
iled on the Corpus Christi. He’d just found out about it from this pompous human captain a mere ten minutes before.

  Berger had told Fraze about Teeluur’s physical discrepancies before she disappeared.

  “She’s gone. Now what? This whole thing about revenge cooked up between her and Bale Phatie was doomed to fail from the beginning. But look at me. I look just like a human and now my face has been plastered all across the planet. Me trying to get close to a Navy ship from this point would be just plain suicide. I can’t go, I can’t stay. As you humans would say, I’m fucked.”

  Fraze looked at him. What was he leading up to? “Welcome to the club. I’m sure it won’t take the NIS — Navy Investigative Service — long to get around to looking at Berger’s staff officers. Me, and a bunch of others considered insiders.”

  “Then what will you do, captain? Do you have a way out of this mess? A way off the planet?”

  “If I had, do you really think I would share that information with you?”

  Teeluur grimaced and nodded. “I see what you mean,” he said. “Maybe we should try to pool our resources instead of fighting over who was to blame. I could use someone with your skills to help me with my own escape.”

  Captain Fraze walked to the window and moved the dirty curtain aside a few centimeters. “I don’t think so, Varson pig,” he said as he turned back to look at Teeluur.

  That’s when Teeluur shot him between the eyes.

  Chapter 45

  Vice Admiral Stanley Geoff had a lot on his plate. The Varson resurgence, trouble out in the Belt Loop, a missing diplomatic ship, live-fire skirmishes around Brophy-21, a traitorous admiral and now this. He considered getting Admiral Paine on the horn and discussing this latest request with him mano-a-mano, but with all of the other decisions he had to make just then, he decided to rubber-stamp it. If Paine considered it worthy enough to pass along to the CinC — Commander in Charge — down in the First, then he would do it. Let Admiral Teals make the call. It was more of a maintenance issue, one for the shops, than it was a command concern.

  He signed off on the request and recorded the appropriate documentation. The orders would be on the next courier boat to Canno.

  Geoff had already issued the turn-around orders to the ships he had sent to the Belt Loop, mostly relying on information supplied him by Coni Berger. Now she’s gone missing and her activities were being scrutinized by the highest authorities in both the Navy and the Colonial Administration politicos.

  Then there was still the matter of waiting for the reply to his emergency dispatch to Haines-11. That had left Bayliss two days ago and it would take a couple of weeks before he had a reply. Getting messages to the inbound colonies to be forwarded to mother Earth always resulted in endless waiting, even when those messages were sent via a stripped down courier boat with enough fuel to push the fold to its causal uncertainty. Distance put limits on everthing.

  Stan Geoff was pushing sixty and he had been in the Colonial Navy for over forty-two years. A veteran of the Bayliss Uprising, the first Varson War and now the Kreet exchange. He was one of three Vice Admirals out in the Fringes and the only one with actual combat experience in a multitude of conflicts. The other two three-stars served in administrative capacities and while one kept the Colonial Navy funded through taxes on exports heading back to Earth from the colonies, the other kept the industrial side of the Navy functioning by getting the big-monied corporations to build factories, ship yards, docking stations and the like out here in the void.

  A three-legged stool was a good way to think of it. Geoff rubbed his hands over his sturdy face and looked at the piles and piles of work on his desk. Things he had brought with him from Elber, things that needed his attention and approval. Instead of spending a leisurely two weeks on Bayliss culminating in a rousing speech for the graduating seniors at Hayes and a few promotion ceremonies here at the War College, his temporary office was awash in things to do.

  He reached for his reader and looked at his calendar then slid up his schedule for the next day. Then he started on the pile of orders near his left hand. Thoughts of getting his fourth star before he retired made him wonder if all of the headaches were worth it. It was going to be a long night.

  * * *

  The temporary lull in the fighting gave Captain Pax Curton time to study his forward blister and assess the reports coming into his CIC. His mini-flotilla had managed to repel the invading Varson ships but in the process the Colonial Navy had lost two boats to the new alien weapons. The combination of laser fire wrapped in phase-shifted electrical energy was enough to burn through the Higgs Fields on both the Hilton Head and the Chesapeake Bay.

  He had plenty of unmanned drones out scouring the lanes for more intruders. Captain Fuller on the Lake Superior had done the same. Now, after almost twelve hours of hit-and-run bombardment by the Varson ships, Curton was satisfied that the worst of it was over.

  Still, he monitored each and every report that came in, and looked at magnified images of every scrap of metal the drones transmitted to his screens.

  Three things were apparent to Curton. First, the Varson Empire was relying on more sophisticated weapons. The first encounters with them almost a dozen years ago was punctuated by their antiquated ships hurling explosive projectiles at heavily armored Navy ships equipped with a variety of energy weapons. The first Varsons had brought bows and arrows to a laser fight. They were easily routed and they resorted to treachery and babarism afterwards to even up the odds. Pressure mines, small-boat kamikazi missions, kidnapping and torture of captives, attacks upon civilian transports, infiltrations of Navy shipyards and docking ports and other acts of wanton treachery. Secondly, they had vastly improved their jump drives, now rivaling or exceeding the Dyson Drives of some of the Navy’s smaller frigates and corvettes. Only his destroyers and battle cruisers could still outperform the ships he had seen today. Lastly, the enemy had developed new delivery systems. Now they had down-looking energy weapons. While the Chesapeake Bay had been busy engaging one of the Varson destroyers flank to flank, two small enemy ships had made a run at her topside and opened her up from above.

  After he’d watched the same thing happen to the Hilton Head, Curton had the Pearl execute a series of turns at high-speed until he had his nose pointed directly at the underside of the Varson fleet. The enemy ships tracked him of course and when they fired down at him he was easily able to pour all of his auxiliary power into his Higgs and skim the incoming energy along the flanks, keel and the topsail of his boat. As the Varson ships attacked him unsuccessfully, Captain Fuller had electrically killed three of them with helio-spasms and Curton flopped his boat and unloaded his zanith-lasers from below. Fuller executed a kayak roll and exploded two more destroyers that were converging on the five remaining Navy ships.

  Only two of their big destroyers made it out of the battle arena and folded back toward Varson Imperial space.

  Curton knew that it was only a matter of time before relief arrived. The call had gone out and ships from Elber, Canno, Wilkes and even as far away as Bernard’s Loop and the remnants of the First Fleet were on the way. Timing was going to be critical, he thought, and whichever side showed up with the most firepower first was going to be the victor. With more than half of the picket ships departed Varson space for the Belt Loop and the pursuit of the Kreet, resources were thin and getting thinner. The Second couldn’t afford to lose ships in the twenty-eight to thirty percent range if they had any chance of beating back the Varson for the second time.

  Pax Curton prepared his battle assessment reports and made his entries into his logs. He had one of his yeomen take his reports to a waiting courier boat and then hit his comm link to his hangar bay. He wanted the report to get to Admiral Paine without delay. Fleet had to know what was happening out here, had to be apprised of the new Varson weaponry, their new drive capabilities, and their new attack strategies.

  He returned his eyes to his forward blister. He watched.

  He waited.<
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  Chapter 46

  By 0500 hours Captain Uri Haad was standing on the bridge of the new Hudson River. After a brief sideboy celebration on the flank of her quarterdeck, Haad and his crew from the Christi were piped aboard without the general fanfare of launch seen during peacetime. He was on a mission and he was ordered to get the Hudson River out of port as soon as practical. He was the lead ship in a group of twelve boats that were being sent up to relieve Curton’s first-defense flotilla. If all went according to plan, he was to be joined by seventeen ships from Elber Prime, fourteen boats from Canno and six more sailing in from Wilkes during the next thirty-six ES hours. His mission was to guard Curton’s return to port then assume standard defensive battle posture. When the entire armada was assembled he would be one of 49 ships set up to protect the space around Bayliss.

  When the additional ships from the Second arrive from the Belt Loop, a decision would be made as to how best to make the trek to the outer Fringes and the Varson Empire. That decision would come after Admiral Geoff had all of his ship movements figured out and the resurrected First Fleet ships joined up with the combined Second/Third.

  Those complications in the future didn’t concern him right now. Immediately he had to evaluate the ship’s systems, inspect her weaponry, check her electronics and communications and get assessments as to her lading.

  On the shuttle trip up to the Port Authority he had studied the operational manuals as best as he could on the short trip. The Hudson River would not be his first experience with a Navy destroyer but his first with a Meteor-class warship. While out in the Loop he had exchanged commands for one week with Robi Zane as part of a cross-training exercise. But Zane’s boat was one of the older models and since the Typhoon-class Casco Bay was barely more than a bunch of rust and corrosion held together with a Higgs Field, Haad didn’t take much back to the Christi from his experience.