Admiral's Gambit (A Spineward Sectors Novel:)

by Luke Sky Wachter

  “Well, the new men from Lyconesia were pretty impressed when we blew the top clear off a tall hill within sight of their city. Every man not directly sworn to someone’s cause picked up their gear and hightailed it to come join up,” said Suffic. “It's caused a couple of minor issues down on the decks, but nothing we can’t handle.”

  Wonderful, my barely-seasoned Lancers had been dealing with trying to integrate a new host of violently aggressive natives, ones who had an ancestral grudge with my wife’s people and were already causing trouble. Why was I always the last person to know these things?

  I tried to look on the bright side, which was that more warm bodies with a penchant for charging into sustained barrages of combined blaster and plasma fire when attacked couldn’t be all bad. I leerily turned the concept over in my head a few times, hoping it would sound better after a couple repeats.

  “Excellent then,” I said with forced exuberance, “I’ll leave everything in your capable hands.”

  Colonel Suffic shook his head and sighed. He muttered something under his breath as he snapped off a salute and turning on a dime, marched out of the Flag Bridge. If what he muttered not so quietly under his breath was ‘Montagne’s,’ who was I to say he was wrong? I did tend to ask the utmost of the people under me. I just hoped today wasn’t the day I went and asked too much.

  **************

  The men were organized into three groups; those that would stay on board the Clover, those that were going home to Capria, and those that were about to become LeGodat’s problem.

  Watching over the internal monitors set up in the docking areas, as those that were slated to leave for one reason or another marched off the ship was one of the hardest moments of my life. I felt as if part of my body were being cut off, an arm or a leg perhaps. It's important to remember that I actually have experienced that pain, so I'm not being hyperbolic.

  I knew these people, many of them by name. What was more, I trusted them. Who was I replacing them with? Sweet crying Murphy, but how many crews did I have to convince that I wasn’t the scum of the Royalist Montagne Earth? I wanted to kick the desk but refrained because, if my life back home followed by my time out here had taught me anything, it was that life was almost never fair. Certainly not for a Montagne.

  When the first of the men who were resigning from the bridge crew came in, I assumed an appropriately stoic face. Each loss hurt but as I was only losing a handful of men, five in total, I really couldn’t complain.

  “It’s been an honor serving with you, Admiral,” said the first soon to be former bridge staffer, coming up to the desk and offering me a salute.

  Making a snap decision I got up and came around the desk. I shook his hand firmly and said, “The honor has been mine, Technician. I hope our paths cross again the future.”

  “I’m sure once my shore leave is up they’ll reassign me back here on the Clover, Sir,” the rating said with a smile.

  I could feel my smile wilting slightly.

  “That’s my hope, as well,” I said, forcing a winning smile.

  As each man came over, I clapped him on the shoulder and shook his hand. “Hope to serve with you all again,” I said as they saluted and exited the cabin.

  Once I’d finished with the personal farewells and the bridge staffers joined with their fellows heading off the ship, there was nothing to do but tell the external communications section to contact the Caprian armed merchant conversions and instruct them to begin transferring over their personnel via shuttle.

  There was no way I was letting three ships carrying Murphy knew how many thousands of trained SDF personnel and at least three thousand trained marines dock directly with my ship. Each shuttle would be carefully scanned on the way in, and Lancers in battle suits would meet our new arrivals.

  Welcoming committees from each department in the ship would be waiting to show the arrivals to their new stations.

  And as fast as that, I’d gone from over eleven and a half thousand reliable crew and around two thousand blooded lancers, which constituted about three quarters of a full crew, to a little less than thirty five hundred men and women who’d been with me through thick and thin.

  Colonel Wainwright and the Captains of the armed freighters all wanted to holler about just what I was going to do with the additional thirty five hundred men they were planning to put on my ship in place of the men who would be staying. I informed them that I had plans for those men that didn’t involve them setting foot on this Battleship.

  The transfer process was still ongoing when I ordered the Lucky Clover to break connection to the Wolf-9 Star Base and head out of the system. The shuttles could continue transferring those that were returning home to one of the armed merchants. While the new arrivals would just have to follow along with us and keep those shuttles running back and forth.

  Glaring at the counter on my screen that showed how many men still had to transfer off the ship, as well as another counter right beside it that showed how many still had to come on board, I leaned back in my chair and contemplated this brave new world I was inhabiting.

  I sure hoped LeGodat and his people appreciated the ginormous risk I was taking here.

  Chapter 56: A Miracle Delivered, Complete With Shoddy Tools

  What in Murphy's name?

  There was the sound of beeping in the background, getting faster and faster and then the beep went ominously continuous with a harsh strident tone.

  “Blast,” said the grey haired Doctor, followed by his kicking the side of the hover stretcher repeatedly. “I think we’ve lost him for good,” he sounded utterly drained.

  “There’s still a chance he could pull through if we tank him again,” offered the same female orderly who had been with him through the last several surgical procedures.

  “We’ve replaced just about every part of his body with new tissue or a mechanical prosthesis, except for his brain. If he’s not going to pull through after all that and with the best medical equipment and most advanced computer system I’ve ever seen or heard of since the fall of the AI’s working overtime on his case, there’s no hope,” said the Doctor.

  “I just hate to give up on him like this. After the way he helped save all of us,” the orderly said sadly.

  “He deserved better,” agreed the Doctor sounding exhausted. “I’m not as young as I used to be,” he complained, his legs wavering underneath him as he walked over to a chair before he collapsed.

  The orderly look at the Doctor with concern before shaking her head.

  “It was a brave thing, heading into a room with a cracked power core,” she said sounding near tears, “I just wish we could do more. Men like this- no, that's not right. Heroes like this don’t come along every day.”

  “It was a foolish thing to do. Foolishness heaped with double portions of extra strong foolishness on top of even more foolishness. No one should have headed into that power core. The man was an idiot, is what he was,” the Dr. snarled, emotion getting the better of him after over eighteen hours of continuous surgery.

  “How can you say that,” gasped the orderly, for the first time actively disagreeing with the doctor.

  The grey haired old man frowned at her and then sighed, slumping back in his chair. “That’s not to say when we get in contact with Capria again, I’m not going to nominate him for Parliamentary Iron Cross, because I am,” he said firmly. “But going into a power core…a cracked power core, leaking lethal amounts of radiation by the millisecond in nothing more than a light load suit was nothing less than a death sentence,” he said despairingly, “the man should have known better.”

  “He risked his life to save others, and that kind of sacrifice shouldn't be trodden upon” the orderly said firmly, before getting up out of her own chair. “Now, let's go get you out of here. I’m prescribing a hot shower and some warm food, immediately followed by a trip to bed,” she said strictly.

  The grey haired Doctor quirked his lips tiredly, “Only a physician or a doctor
can officially prescribe anything,” he said.

  Looking rebellious, the orderly opened her mouth.

  The doctor hastily held up a hand. “That’s not to say you're in any way wrong,” he said hurriedly. With a groan and the creak of several joints, he laboriously climbed to his feet.

  “Which way’s the door, dear,” he sighed, “I’m so exhausted I can’t even remember which way leads back to my quarters. Getting old I fear.”

  "Right this way doctor," replied the orderly, taking the elderly doctor by the arm.

  Behind them an eye popped open and glared at the ceiling in slowly mounting fury as his body refused to give heed to his quite reasonable demands to get up and let the pair of dumb quacks that just left the room know that he was still very much alive.

  A light load suit! What kind of fools did they take him for?! Why, he’d been in a heavy load suit and holding a section of duralloy, to boot!

  The brief surge of fury subsided and he slowly faded back into darkness. Perhaps they were right and it was time to let go and just give in to Saint Murphy’s sweet embrace as his spirit was transported to the great workshop in the sky. As he contemplated oblivion, his awareness began to slip.

  Just before he faded completely, something about the structural load-bearing crossbeams caught his attention. The darkness was so tempting with its soft, warm embrace. Soft and warm, were things an old man came to appreciate more and more as time went by. Quite warm, he thought with a sigh.

  Determined, he let his eye sag shut along with the rest of his body.

  But something about those crossbeams was off. He tried to ignore it but the blasted problem just wouldn’t leave his mind. It kept churning and churning and churning without getting resolved. Finally, he had no choice but to wake up enough to fix it so he could get on with dying properly.

  Eye feeling like it was filled with sand, it felt like it took several minute to drag it open. He gazed at the crossbeams without seeing for several long moments. Then with a sudden jerk he spotted what had been bothering him.

  It was hard, but he managed to move his eye far enough to see where the crossbeams intersected with the structural supports built into the wall. 'Too big,' he thought with rising irritation. Medical was too far away for anything that size to be running through it. And that’s if the bunch of idiots had decided to waste their time remodeling the place after the last battle. Not that he’d put much past that ornery old doctor. Pulling a team of engineers away from the ship to remodel his infirmary when they were needed elsewhere sounded just like something that old goat would get up to.

  But no, even then those beams were just too big. His eyes traced the crossbeams and the supports slightly faster than before. He wanted to sleep, or die, but first he had to figure out where he was. Had medical been holed in the fire fight and they were moved closer to one of the main bones of the ship?

  Then the fact that the walls were painted an ugly color of puke puce registered. Feeling as if each thought had to be forced through a faulty hydraulic pump, he wondered why, since they didn’t carry that color of paint in supply, someone had made up a batch with such a hideous color to it and repainted.

  Then a thought so horrible, so wretchedly, impossibly awful that it must be true occurred to him. He had just about every schematic of the ship memorized and down cold. There was no area on the ship with those size crossbeams, structural supports and that ugly color of paint. Not even from back when Captain Falcon had tried to repaint deck 11 a strange green color.

  That meant that logically, there was only one conclusion to be drawn. Why, even now it occurred to him those size structural supports had no business on a Battleship, but were almost certainly factory standard for a Star Base or space station.

  Those blue-faced blighters, they’d shanghaied him and taken him off the ship! They couldn’t even let him die in peace!

  Then a second horrible thought occurred to him. Maybe he was wrong and this really was the afterlife. This could be the Demon’s revenge for spitting in his eye and daring to save the ship from a timely end back in the power core. Maybe he’d been judged, found wanting and eternally condemned to live out the rest of his afterlife here, on a poorly-assembled space station, and with the use of only one eye!

  Yes, this was Hades, the very place, he moaned. It wasn’t much of a moan, hardly even the barest hint of one, but it was faintly audible.

  'Oh Murphy, where did I go wrong,' he wondered. Was it because he’d gone too easy on the men when he’d caught them slacking off? Perhaps that faulty coupling he reinstalled after jerry rigging it so it would last long enough that it wouldn’t break down again until the end of his shift and someone else could fix it? Maybe it was that time he’d tossed out half a pallet of perfectly good environmental equipment because it had been mislabeled and he hadn’t bothered to visually check if the barcode in the system matched the actual equipment in the pallet.

  If he’d only known then what he knew now, he would have gone back and signed every single form in triplicate and accepted the very valid reprimand from his supervisor in his file.

  Something twitched. He would have sworn it was his finger, but everything felt wrong. Almost like that time he’d had a temporary mechanical prosthesis installed because he hadn’t wanted to be off the Clover long enough for them to slow grow him a new hand. After all, an Engineer who couldn’t make use of any mechanical device known to man wasn’t much of an Engineer, in his opinion.

  Except perhaps for some of that medical equipment they kept down in medical. It wasn’t right for a man to know too much about the inner workings of the human body, in his opinion. That’s what you paid professionals like that dumb quack of a doctor for. Give him a faulty hyperdrive past the point of no return any day of the week over digging through the mysteries of the human body.

  He shuddered and the blanket slipped. He tried to frown but his face felt stiff, and all that happened was a few muscles twitched. The last thing he needed in here was a draft up his nether regions, he was too old, and too sick for such nonsense.

  He must have dozed off at some point because the next thing he knew, the bed was in motion.

  “I’ve got to take this one down to the ejection port, poor fool got himself cut in half,” said a voice somewhere behind him. Close behind. “No way they can put you back together after that. You’d have to practically fall into a regeneration tank immediately afterwards to have any chance.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “Who’ve you got over there?” asked the same voice.

  “Just some old Engineer those Confederals are all worked up over,” sniffed a slightly higher voice. “I don’t see what the big deal is. I mean if there’s one thing we’ve got plenty of, it's engineers.”

  “Yeah,” muttered the first voice, “hey, slow down a mike.”

  “Sure, what’s up?” said the second.

  “The monitoring system hasn’t been installed in this hall yet. You want a toke?” said the first.

  “I suppose…just a couple puffs, though,” warned the second.

  There soon followed the sound of a pair of ill-begotten slackers lighting up a pair of illegal smokes.

  “Ah, that’s better,” said the first.

  “Some fine weed there, my man. Where’d you get it?” asked the second.

  “Hydroponics garden over in environmental,” the first bragged, “they’re so short of hands that when I volunteered to help monitor one of the smaller outlaying gardens, they all but fell over themselves giving me the access codes. Now in addition to endless rows of soy beans, I got me a decent sideline in smoke weed,” he finished smugly.

  “You’ve got a pair of big brass ones on you, that’s for sure, Steg,” chuckled the second voice.

  “Got to keep your eye on the prize, friend. Eye on the prize,” said the first voice, this illicit smoke weed grower named Steg.

  “Anyway, got to run this corpscicle down to the ejection port. Can’t spend the whole day in th
is corridor,” said Steg.

  On one of the stretchers an eye popped open and it burned with silent fury.

  “I’ll go with you the rest of the way,” said the second voice, this ‘friend’. “After we eject your guy, we can dump mine and head over to level 54. I hear they’ve got a card game and a liquor still over there, and none of the officers bother to check because the level is still on a construction hold as a non-critical task.

  On the stretcher a finger twitched.

  The stretcher started moving again. “I mean, I appreciate the way these Confed types saved us from being conscripted by the Impies, but do you realize how many credits worth of equipment and treatments have been wasted on this guy alone,” asked the second voice, giving the stretcher a good shake.

  As the bed he was laying in rocked from side to side, one by one his fingers curled until all five had clenched into a fist.

  “How much, Philip,” inquired Steg, sounding interested.

  “Moron went into a power core and got himself irradiated,” sneered the second voice, now identified by his weed smoking partner as Philip, “I looked up how much it would have cost, to get this kind of treatment back home.”

  There was a pause.

  “Well don’t leave me hanging,” demanded Steg.

  “Over a million credits just for the radiation treatment and organ rebuild. But get this,” Philip said sounding outraged, “they went and built this whole cutting-edge medical facility because of this fool here. That’s hundreds of millions in equipment, if you calculate how much it would have cost to hire a Constructor to come to your system and build it for you.”

  “These Confederals sure do have a good scam going on here, conscripting for free what would have cost them big-time if they were paying what we were worth,” agreed Steg, he sounded almost admiring of what he clearly considered just another big scam.