Admiral's Nemesis (A Spineward Sectors Novel: Book 11)

by Luke Sky Wachter

  Say what you want about me but I personally have no interest in being torn limb from limb by an angry mob. Especially one who would feel, not even without some reason, that I’d sold out humanity for a handful of silver, or in this case a fleet flagship equipped with antimatter generators and weapons technology.

  “The more I think about it the less enthused I am by this idea,” I said glumly, imagining a crowd pulling me from a hover-car. I needed to make a note not to head down to any planetary surfaces in the near future, I decided.

  “Aye, that’s why I told the Lieutenant it was a bad idea,” Spalding admitted.

  “But the droids have the legal standing to own such technology. Or at least they are generally recognized to have antimatter weaponry, like with the Conformity droids. And if we don’t want the USA to own it, which I admit has certain legal ramifications all of its own, we could just have them work for a company owned by Tracto, or even you personally, as paid employees, Admiral,” pointed out the Lawyer.

  “Whose side are you on, Harpsinger?” I demanded. “I thought we were trying to rehabilitate my image among the general populace, not give them more reasons to hate me! I mean what’s the law on paying machines for their labor anyways? I can’t image it’s any good, at least from a droid perspective.”

  Harpsinger grimaced. “There is precedent for using droids in forced labor situations without threat of legal sanction,” he finally muttered.

  “Ah ha!” I said triumphantly. “I don’t think the droids are going to be interested in any forced labor contracts. Do you?”

  “Probably not,” he allowed.

  “I guess we’re just going to have to pay out for hazard duty,” Spalding said finally. “We’ll have the men work in rotation. No more than a week per month, with mandatory radiation treatments in between.”

  “It might be better to hire civilians, that way if we lose anyone it won’t be on Fleet Command,” said Steiner.

  “Having civilians experiencing medical harm because of the Fleet is a much worse situation than with fleet personnel, at least from a legal angle,” Harpsinger said. “Can’t we just have Tracto-ans man the plant? Not only are they naturally more resistant to radiation poisoning, the local laws are somewhere between loose and nonexistent.”

  “They're non-existent because the family is liable to kill you if you got their son or daughter killed outside of an honorable combat situation!” I exclaimed.

  “Besides, there just aren’t enough trained technicians from the planet Tracto to man the facility. They’re not exactly jumping at the bit to learn a tech trade, Lieutenant,” Commander Spalding added, “and as for the Belters, they know better than to mess with antimatter and our own mixed community on Messene,” he grimaced as if that facial expression said it all. “They’re colonists at heart, sure some might have the skills but not enough to staff the facility. Most of the ones that were young and space crazy, or old and figured out living on a dirt ball just wasn’t for them, have already signed up with us or left for orbit with the Belters or the Station…”

  There was a pregnant pause. “Well all of these options sound terrible. Either we hand an antimatter facility to the droids, we hire USA droids to man our facility, we shut down our antimatter projects entirely, or we accept that we’re going to have potential human casualties from running an antimatter generation facility,” I said.

  “Now wait just a bloomin' moment,” Spalding snapped, “shutting down the Lucky Clover is right out. Because that’s what you’d have to do if you couldn’t get the antimatter.”

  “You forgot shipping out trillium and importing antimatter,” my Chief of Staff pointed out helpfully.

  “Which we would need to apply for a series of permits to legally purchase it from a facility in the Confederation or Empire,” the ship’s lawyer countered.

  “So we’d have to purchase it illegally,” said Spalding.

  “Not necessarily. It’s possible to purchase antimatter second hand but…” replied Harpsinger.

  “Good thing we know an arms dealer,” I said dryly, “it’s just too bad he’s disappeared, taking with him our entire covert-operations arm of the fleet!”

  I silently sat there and fumed as I thought about McKnight’s betrayal. Oh, it had been couched nicely, how she’d traded her covert operation for a number of warships, automated defenses, and obsolete power armor. Material which we’d then used to save Easy Haven, if not the Wolf-9 Starbase, and the entire Sector from Arnold Janeski’s invasion forces. But blast it all, that wasn’t her call to make!

  If only Middleton were still alive. He might have been a loose cannon who ran off doing whatever the blazes he felt like, but at the end of the day he’d still come home to the fleet instead of selling his services to the highest bidder and haring off into the Empire on a lark!

  “So in the end it comes down to endangering our own people, selling massive amounts of trillium to criminals, and then sending out major escort forces to make sure our cargo comes home or…the droids,” I grunted.

  “That does seem to be the long and the short of it, Sir,” Spalding agreed.

  I sat there thinking furiously. People hated me right now—or better to say they feared the Tyrant of Cold Space. The boogeyman of the spaceways. They’d only hate me if I proved so powerful that they no longer felt safe in bed at night.

  I just couldn’t see running convoys into the Confederation through the Overton Expanse, much less the Empire. Either we’d be ripped off at the purchase or our freighters and escort forces would be dogged all the way back home, and the second time we brought a massive convoy full of trillium into the Confederation every pirate in six Sectors would be sharpening their knives—much less the local governmental customs enforcement operations.

  Pirates were one thing, but avoiding the tax man was another entirely.

  Which left me with the unpalatable option of risking our own people by running everything with MSP or Tracto-an personnel or compromising in some fashion and using droids. On the plus side I didn’t care if some droid fried its motherboard producing my antimatter. I cared deeply if the droids got their hands on antimatter because of me and used it against humanity but, in fairness, they already had a number of antimatter pellets used to fire the spinal lasers of the old Conformity Droid Motherships. So it’s not like I was giving them new tech or anything they didn’t already have their metal mitts on and the capability to build.

  So involving them in an antimatter facility as labor risked only my own reputation if things got out, the same only worse if I put them in charge of the facility. That said…

  “Is there any way to hire radiation resistant personnel from Sector 23?” I asked with narrowed eyes. “As I recall they have a planet with radiation resistant people living there.”

  “That…could take a while,” said Lisa Steiner, “but I think it might be do able. Given enough time.”

  “Time? Ask me for anything but time,” Spalding fumed clearly put out, “the Clover won’t wait and neither will our enemies, buzzards who are circling just out of sight waiting to descend on us like a blasted plague to...”

  The old engineer railed on for the better part of a full minute before winding down.

  “We’re currently at peace, Spalding,” I interrupted him as he started to flag. “For the first time in a long time we have the opportunity to take a few deep breaths and put things on the right track without a crisis or mortal enemy looming over our shoulders.”

  “The Clover won’t wait,” Spalding said with finality.

  “Keep running your test bed and start building your full sized facility,” I compromised. “Meanwhile I’ll work on hiring a work force from Sector 23. It’s a ways away and we’ll need to run background checks so it will take a while. In the meantime hire whoever we need locally, pay them hazard pay and make sure they know what they’re getting into beforehand. But I’m not going to be selling the USA the means to make weapons of mass destruction. These droids may be different t
han the rest of them but I’m not going to risk an uprising among the ranks. The last thing we need is another attempted mutiny!”

  “I’m going to get the Clover up and running by hook or by crook!” Spalding glared, as if challenging me to dispute him.

  “So hire the techs. I’m putting you in charge of the entire operation,” I said.

  “Then I want a real budget for it. The kind of shielding we’re going to need to run the antimatter plant without killing our people is almost criminal,” Spalding warned.

  “Of course,” I agreed at once.

  Spalding scowled and grumbled but finally settled.

  “Now what was next on our agenda?” I asked.

  “Next is a pre-rollout presentation from our newest staff member,” Lieutenant Steiner said with pride and, at this, even the old Engineer’s countenance seemed to perk up.

  I looked over with anticipation as a familiar, acne-ridden face appeared. I immediately felt a headache starting to form.

  “This is the cartoonist I told you about. In collaboration with myself, Commander Spalding, and the tech team of the new media department we’ve decided to unveil our new series: The Tyrant of Cold Space!

  I immediately stiffened as Lisa Steiner hit a button on her console controls and the holo-screen began to roll.

  -Episode One: The Tyrant of Cold Space strikes again!- rolled across the screen in flashing gold letters.

  “What is this?” I asked harshly.

  “Just wait for it,” Spalding assured me, leaning forward to eagerly watch a show that he’d, presumably, already seen before.

  A cartoon caricature of an incredibly short-looking man with a fiendishly flat nose—one that almost looked like a pancake in the middle of his face—appeared.

  “We’ve got to stop those border pirates before they blast those helpless colony ships to pieces,” squeaked the freakish-looking leader in a high-pitched voice. He was dressed in what looked like half an old style Confederation Admiral’s uniform and half some kind of pirate black leathers declared.

  “That’ll never happen, Glorious Leader,” sneered an officer in an all black uniform that made him look just like some kind of evil old style AI polit bureau political officer. “The colony ships are waving us off, citing obscure sector regulations.”

  “Well, what about the pirates?” the midget demanded nasally.

  “They say that we have no weapons and they’ll destroy us after they’re done looting the colonizers if we’re still here,” stated the Political Officer.

  “Unacceptable, you sniveling Intelligence Officer,” the ‘Glorious Leader’ declared.

  “There’s nothing you can do; the regulations are clear, Admiral. You must turn back and report to the Assembly before taking action!” shouted the black-uniformed Intelligence Officer before chuckling darkly.

  “With the FTL com-buoys down that would take weeks. They’ll all be dead!” cried the midget.

  “If you do this, you’ll be labeled a tyrant for taking governmental authority into your own hands,” barked the Intelligence Officer.

  “Then it’s time for some Tyranny!” declared the mis-uniformed Admiral, punching the other officer in the face.

  “All of cold space will turn against you for this you monster!” warned the Intelligence Officer from the floor where he was now holding a bloody nose.

  The webisode then continued on into a series of misadventures very—very—loosely based in reality that had the ‘tyranny-loving’ Admiral ramming the Vengeful Clover into an pirate fleet and ended with Captain Moonlight a droid slaying engineer with a hate for slackers and equipped with a very strange hair-do punching the Little Admiral in the gut.

  I stared in silence, dumbfounded at the cartoon they had just shown me.

  “Isn’t it great, Sir?” Lieutenant Steiner asked eagerly.

  “It's...it's...it's...” I stuttered under a rising tide of outrage and anger.

  “It’s perfect,” Spalding declared, satisfaction veritably oozing from his pores, “it does everything it’s supposed to in just the right way.”

  “What?!” I blurted, turning to glare at the cartoonist. “This is what you want to run? It’s completely outrageous!”

  The young man quickly raised his hands in surrender, looking panicked. “I just made it like they told me to,” he said quickly.

  “What don’t you like about it, Sir?” Spalding asked, looking surprised that I wasn’t falling all over myself to praise this travesty.

  “Well, first it makes a mockery out of just about everything we’ve fought and stood for. And for another thing…” I scowled darkly, feeling my face redden, “that midget on the screen is nothing like me!”

  Spalding rolled his eyes.

  “That’s not funny!” I snapped.

  “Of course it’s funny. The toon characters aren’t supposed to be life-like,” he explained patiently, “they’re supposed to poke fun at everything—including the Sector Assembly.”

  “No one calls them 'toon characters' any more,” the Cartoonist rolled his eyes, “that’s so last century. What we’re doing here is making a caricature out of real people and putting them into our story.”

  “A story that, if anyone hot to disprove our cartoon for a farce takes the time to research it, will discover is more true than they’d like—especially all the important particulars,” said the old Engineer.

  “It’ll never work,” I said with complete certainty.

  “It doesn’t hurt to try…unless you’re upset at how we made the main character?” asked Spalding.

  “As if I’m that vain,” I huffed.

  “Then that’s settled. We’ll roll out the first episode and see how it’s received,” the old engineer nodded, as if that decided it. And to my ever-growing surprise, the heads bobbing around the room seemed to agree with him.

  “Whatever,” I said, flipping that single word at him before crossing my arms across my chest and setting back with a frown. I wasn’t in the least bit vain about how my character looked, I just hated the whole thing in its entirety, including my malformed doppelganger.

  “Then next up on the agenda is a complaint from the quartermaster department. Apparently there have been a number of complaints about the latest batch of ration bars. The 'spicy lemon bars' are not as well received as hoped,” Steiner reported.

  I shook my head. “I’ve tried them and they’re terrible,” I agreed, recalling the time I’d picked up one of the new spicy lemon bars by accident and chomped into it without thinking. That had been the first and last bite of spicy lemon I’d ever eaten.

  “There have been complaints ranging from just the taste to several suspicions that something must be wrong with the fungal base used to make the bars,” Steiner said.

  “They’re a concoction not fit for man nor beast,” Chief Engineer Spalding concurred. “I move we shut down the spicy lemon line permanently and have the fungal tanks they were made from purged and thoroughly cleaned before being used again. Whether there’s anything wrong with the fungal vats used to make them or not, once we let the crew know they’ve been scrubbed and the entire line discontinued confidence in the food supply will be restored.”

  “That's good, because we’ve had a run on the fresh greens and vegetables. If everyone uses their fresh ration cards at the same time it puts a strain on hydroponics,” my Chief of Staff said with relief.

  “That's settled then. Make it so, Lieutenant,” I instructed.

  Lisa Steiner gave a strained grimace and looked at me apologetically.

  “That still leaves the issue of tens of thousands of already processed ration bars on ships spread out all over the fleet. Despite the various complaints, they’ve been tested by medical on multiple ships and there’s nothing actually wrong with them except how they taste,” she looked down at her data-slate as she spoke. “We could recycle them all but that would put a fleet-wide dent into each ship’s mandatory dry food reserve, in case a crop disease or battle damage takes o
ut hydroponics.”

  “Since they’re not fit for the crew to eat that only leaves one choice,” Spalding slammed a fist down on to the table, “give them to the marines. The Lancer Department is so full of complainers from Tracto that they wouldn’t recognize good space-faring food if it came and hit them upside the head. If they’re going to complain I say give them the stuff the rest of us don’t want. Problem solved. But just how the blazes did an untested ration bar get put into fleet-wide production in the first place?!” Spalding demanded, angrily switching subjects now that he’d just thrown an entire fleet department under the bus. “The stuff tastes terrible.”

  “Umm,” Steiner looked down at her slate, “it looks like it was a recommendation from the Fleet Department in Tracto System. It was recommended by them as a cost-cutting measure for implementation fleet-wide and it passed all our built-in food system processors scanners.”

  I gave the Lieutenant a sharp look.

  “Whoever recommended this were fools at best,” Spalding said irately, “a ship fights on its stomach and I don’t think a fleet’s any different. This is the sort of morale-hitting measure that leads to complaints, intransigence and work slowdowns and I won’t have it in my Department, do you hear?!”

  “I agree with the Commander on one thing,” I said, my eyes turning cold, “since the Tracto-an contingents are already complaining, they can chew on spicy lemon bars until we can recycle and replace the rest of the batch with new bars. Preferably the old style bars. Also, please make a note of whoever recommended those bars and forward the details to me personally,” I instructed with narrowed eyes.

  This was the second time instructions received over the FTL system had been implemented causing me all sorts of trouble in the very heart of what was the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet. Once could have been a mixup—though I didn’t believe it for a moment—but the second smelt like enemy action to me.