by J. F. Holmes
“Can’t be helped. Alex, keep us side on to the fleet,” said Meric.
“Don’t tell me my job!” muttered the pilot under his breath, but loud enough for Meric to hear him. The Captain took the point, not speaking again, but still restless.
“We just got painted by a J band search radar from Boudicca base,” said Box, quietly. It tapped a few keys, and continued, “…no return, and our vector is taking us away. Next point is Helgate traffic control station, then we have to pass through the outer system gravitational detector net.”
That would be the hard one. The gravitic sensor measured disturbances, minor gravity masses down to the size of a ground-effect truck. It was set to cover just inside the jump spaces between planets, but there were holes, if you knew where to look. It was a military system, extremely expensive, and the tech was jealously guarded by the Britannics.
Getting to Helgate was easy enough, and the past sixteen hours had put the fleet on maximum dispersal looking for them. Now the cruisers were heading back to their normal defensive patrol systems, standing down tired crews, and Asote plotted a hole through the covering screen. The Brits couldn’t afford to let their coordinated fire nets lapse for too long; sure as hell there was a French corvette sitting far outside the system, just watching.
Meric looked at the time, and then asked Box to monitor a specific com channel used by the Twelfth Fleet. After the expressionless alien indicated that there was, indeed, traffic coming in, Meric ordered him to put it up on screen.
The face of Admiral Smythe-Jordan appeared, and he looked pissed, face red with anger. “I know you aren’t going to answer this, but you’ll hear it. I received your message, and I’m calling off the search for your ship. I will not hold your individual crewmen responsible, except for Sparks, but if you or your ship shows up in system, it will be fired on.”
“Alex, take us straight out, vector for the Graveyard,” said Meric.
The former BRN pilot smiled and said what everyone was thinking. “Aren’t you going to tell us what dirt you had on him? And why Chief Sparks?”
“No, I’m not,” said Meric. “That’s for me to know, and you to all die of curiosity over. Chief, Ski, my office, please.”
He got up and left the bridge, followed by Chief Sparks. Once inside, he offered her a seat, and sat behind his own desk. Solbliatski remained standing; sometimes it was easier than getting up and down from a chair.
“That was a quick setup, Sparky, thank you. How much do I owe you?” he asked the petite woman.
“Five hundred credits. He really was an easy mark. The guy is in charge of Britannic Naval Intelligence, and can’t keep his dick in his pants.”
“You didn’t…” began Ski.
“No, of course not. Just paid the right whore to let me install holocams in his room. The admiral was a regular for him.”
“Him?” asked Meric, surprised.
“Sure,” answered Sparks. “Those upper class Brits will think nothing of going to a female prostitute, but for some reason they’re pretty homophobic. It would have destroyed his career.”
Meric mused on the idiosyncrasies of the Britannic elite, but then put it out of his mind. “Well, that closes Jamesport for us for a while. Maybe, once we get Amanda back, we might cross the Rift and hire out with one of the Star Nations.”
An odd look passed between Sparks and Solbliatski, one that Meric didn’t catch, lost in his own thoughts. Ski sat down in a chair, and commed for Merrifield, Lynch and McHale to join them.
“What’s going on?” asked Meric. “Is this a mutiny or something?” he joked.
“We need to talk, Captain,” said the old man. “Do you mind if we move to the conference room?”
“I suppose so, but remember who runs this ship, Ski. We operate on trust.”
“Do we, Captain?” said Solbliatski, arching an eyebrow. He got up slowly and made his way out of the room.
“What’s going on, Chief?” asked her Captain.
“I guess we’ll find out, boss,” she answered, but he thought she already knew.
Chapter 37
They sat, the leadership of the Lexington, around the conference table. Solbliatski stood at the end of it, in front of the holodeck. Chief Sparks sat next to him, a subtle distance between the two of them and the rest of the officers.
“OK, Ski, what’s going on?” asked Meric. They were five hours out from jump, and the ship, for once, was running well.
“Well, first off, let me state that I am no way questioning your abilities as a Captain. I am, however, questioning your motives.”
Meric sat up, and said harshly, “This is my ship, and you’re well paid. My motives are my business.”
“That’s true,” replied the old man, wheezing gently, “but if the crew is going to put their lives on the line, they need to know why.”
“We fight the French, for prizes and money,” said Merrifield, but he gave Meric a look.
Sparks spoke then, asking, “Captain, yourself, Commander Lynch and Commander Merrifield grew up on Earth. In what used to be the United States, and is now a territorial unit of Earth’s United Nations.”
“So what?” said Lynch. “So did you. Lots of people do.”
“Few of them make it off Earth,” answered Sparks. “I got lucky, stowing away on a freighter. The mountains of North Carolina are a hard place to grow up. Wilder than most.”
“What’s your point, Chief?” asked Merrifield.
Solbliatski brought up a holo, showing a passenger liner. “This is the Spanish liner Cielo that we took last year. Commander Lynch condemned it, saying the reactor core had been breached, and that the hull wasn’t salvageable.”
He flipped forward, to show a French destroyer escort, the Marshall Petain. “Again, too much damage to the hull.”
Another ship. “Cargo freighter Hannover, Prussian flagged but French crewed. Potential lethal bioagent contamination from ruptured hold.” He flipped through two more ships, reciting a deadly problem with each.
“Lieutenant Zlatcov dropped into the Graveyard thirty light minutes short, as a precautionary measure. Low and behold, she finds these five ships, mixed in with an asteroid field. Their signatures were in the database. She put it in an encrypted message to me, trusting in my discretion.”
Nate Meric looked at Chief Sparks, who wasn’t looking at anyone. She was in her zone; Meric knew that she could kill all of them in a few seconds, but didn’t think that would happen.
McHale looked at all of them, obviously not knowing what was going on. “Ski, what the hell is this all about?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” answered the Intel Chief. “Commander McHale, are you aware that the United States military is still a functioning organization?”
McHale drew in a breath, and said, “But that’s impossible! The war was over two hundred years ago!”
“A blink of an eye to a patriot, Alex. Am I correct, Colonel?” said Solbliatski, using Meric’s actual military rank.
“So you caught that from Schmetzer, did you?” asked Meric.
“Yes, and other things. It’s my job to gather intel, Captain.” Ski shut off the holo, and sat quietly, not saying anything more.
Annie Sparks slammed her hand down on the table and shouted, “WHY NOT ME?!” Tears actually started to roll down her cheeks. “Why not me? Don’t you trust me?” she said again, in a hopeless voice.
Meric was stunned. He had never thought to ask her. Lynch and Merrifield had been commissioned, like himself, when they were young, and sent out into the stars. When he had his incredible stroke of luck and found the Lexington drifting, he had sent a message to Earth for qualified U.S. Military people to join his crew. They had been the only ones to show up, along with Master Sergeant Stenger, a bit later and in a more roundabout way.
“Annie,” he began, but then stopped. How could he explain years of hiding his own identity? Sure, he was Nate Meric, Captain of the privateer Lexington, but periodic contact had se
en him move up through the hidden ranks, until he was also Colonel Nathanael Meric, United States Army.
“Well,” said McHale, “now that that’s out on the table, want to tell us what the hell has been going on?” The former BRN pilot was angry, and it showed in his face.
“Alex, how much do you like the way the Britannic Empire is run?” asked Lynch. He had sat silent through the whole things so far, but, like Merrifield, he had his hand resting on the stunner in his pocket.
“Not very much,” he admitted. “It’s just a hair better than the French, to be honest. Personal feelings aside, I don’t care much for royalty. I’m Irish.”
Meric said, “Have you studied any history, Ski?”
“I have, and before you start preaching about Liberty and Freedom, let me remind you that the US was a pretty inequitable place itself by the time the Cyberwar happened.”
“Yes, I get that, but the ideals were still there. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Equal treatment of all. What if that could actually be done?” answered Meric.
“But Captain,” said Sparks, “I grew up there. So did you. America, hell all of Earth, is a shithole, and the Star Nations, through the UN, have a boot on every American’s neck.”
“Not every American,” interjected Merrifield. “Some of us remember, and we work toward it in our own way.”
“Regardless,” answered the Chief, “it isn’t going to happen. We’re done, defeated, and that dream is gone.” She unconsciously wiped at the tears on her face, and for the first time they all saw her as a person, instead of a force of nature.
“Not on Earth, no, it’s not,” said Meric. “We have a whole galaxy to start over in.”
“The ships!” exclaimed Solbliatski. “You’re going to try again, someplace else!”
“Yes, the ships, Jason. Zlatcov is lucky she didn’t get blown out of the sky when she came in short on the Graveyard. Now, do we have a problem?”
“I want in,” said Sparks immediately. There was no plea in her voice, it was just a statement of fact.
“Wasn’t America a land of immigrants? If so, there has to be a place for me, and you’re going to need good pilots,” said McHale.
Solbliatski eyed Meric carefully, and then said, “Where? And when?”
“We can’t tell you that, because we don’t know,” said Lynch. “When the time comes, our chain of command will notify us. It could be tomorrow, or a hundred years from now. The US military has been playing this game for a very long time now.”
“I should report you all,” came a voice from the speakers. “Traitors!”
“Traitors to what, Buckley?” answered Meric. “You were left drifting by an ungrateful country, who didn’t care enough to rescue you. I gave you life again, and they tried to kill you with their virus attack. Trust me, Buckley, there’ll be a place for you in a new America. AIs will have citizenship.”
“Traitors to…traitors to…Did you say Citizenship?” followed by a long pause, then, “You all suck.”
Chapter 38
“Translating…now!” said Asote, and the Lexington dropped down three dimensions to appear in normal space.
Miranda’s primary was a bright yellow disk, but the light they were seeing had travelled five weeks to get there. The ship ghosted along at .2c, and Warrant Officer Stueben carefully watched his instruments.
“Nothing, Captain,” he said, and Meric cursed. This was their tenth drop; they were carefully quartering the system, looking for French ships lying outsystem, watching traffic. Their prisoner had talked, eventually.
He wouldn’t, couldn’t talk about the mission he’d been on, but Sparks had figured out that they could maybe get him to talk around it. Starting first with questions about general dispositions of French forces, which the man actually knew very little about. They had combined lack of sleep with several different drugs, and eventually the subject had gotten around to Miranda.
“I would tell you about the operation, but I cannot,” said the prisoner.
“Never mind that,” said Sparks gently. “Are there any Republic ships around Miranda?”
The man started to speak, but then trembled. A vein began to pulse on his forehead, and his mouth opened while his faced flushed red. He started shaking, then suddenly blood leaked out of his ear and he fell forward on his face. The smell of shit and piss filled the room as the man’s bowels let loose.
“Well,” said Ski, “so much for that. I’m going to assume there’s someone outside the system.”
Space was a big place, and they spent several hours in each spot, passively listening across all the spectrums. Nothing. Of course, the entire French Navy could have been sitting out there, engines off.
But…there was always something. “I’ve got a hot spark, two light weeks, bearing three two zero point nine,” said Stueben. “Classifying it as a Montcalm class cruiser, using maneuvering thrusters. And…it’s out.”
It had been pure luck; the maneuver had happened two weeks ago, so no chance of them being spotted. As big as space was, there was still always an errant comet or rock, and space was a cold place. If you were looking, you could see it.
“Think they’re still there?” asked Meric.
McHale rubbed his beard, and thought. “Probably. Lighting off an antimatter drive would be like setting off a blow torch, so they’re just station keeping. Watching for our drive signature. They might have a picket boat somewhere close in to the station, with an ansible to report back. Once they see us coming, they jump in close and hammer us.”
The Lexington had translated in with zero velocity, hanging in space like a black hole. “If we jump right into Miranda Station, they’re going to fire on us,” said Guns. “They’ve got a damn good sensor net.”
“So we send in the shuttles. Jump us into the far side of the planet from station, we can drop down after we send in the shuttles, ground and wait,” said McHale.
“OK, staff meeting in ten, I want Knight, Agostine, Lin and Zlatcov, XO and you, Commander. Also Commander Lynch. I want to know how atmosphere will affect the Lady.”
****
“What do you think happened here, Doc?” asked Meric. They were standing on a broad plain, surrounded by overgrown ruins. Like many worlds, the ancients had seeded it with DNA based lifeforms, compatible with humanity, though the air still held a high radiation count. The humans themselves, settled there like Asote’s people, had reached a mid twentieth century level of technology, and then blown themselves to hell.
“Figure that out, and you’ll be a very rich man, Captain. I suspect, though that it had been our usual human nature.” She waved a scanner at the air, looking for pathogens. “All clear.”
They unsealed their helmets and breathed in deeply, and Meric turned to look at the Lexington. Sitting on her rarely used struts, the ship looked hugely out of place, but she was still beautiful to him.
“Pat, how long can she be exposed to weather?”
Commander Lynch thought long about it. “Well, her composites aren’t going to like being exposed to atmosphere much. Not a regular titanium aluminum skin, you know.”
“How long?” asked Meric again.
“I’d give it a day, max. We’re in good shape after that overall, but we don’t want to lose our stealth.”
“Got it. I expect you to be picking us up sooner rather than later.”
First one shuttle lifted off the ship, then the other. Both grounded next to ship, and shut down their engines. The assault teams filed out the back ramps, and their pilots joined them.
“Take a knee,” he asked, and some of them did. “Half of you know Midshipman Schmetzer; all of you know what she did for the ship. Heroism like that comes along rarely, but regardless, she is crew, and I will never leave any of you behind. Even you, Zivcovic,” he said, to laughter from everyone else.
“Up there is a right bastard, some Foreign Legion prick who tortured Amanda. He means to trap us; might have a full platoon hidden on a merchant ship,
and half the French fleet at his call. Probably overcompensating for something, but that’s neither here nor there. Ordinarily, I’d say we go in guns blazing, but we have friends up there. So I’m open to suggestion.”
“I am thinking we go in guns blazing anyway,” said Zivcovic.
“Next?” asked Knight, scowling at the Serb.
“Do we know WHICH ship the Legion guys are on?” asked Zlatcov.
“No,” said Meric, “and we might not have time to find out. Unfortunately.”
“The way I see it, you’re going to have to set up a meeting with the French,” said Jimmy Cahr, “probably in the dueling grounds. Anything else won’t be tolerated by the station personnel.”
Everyone turned to look at their most recent recruit. “What?” he said. “I’m young, not stupid!”
Meric smiled but shook his head. “That won’t work. Only two people are allowed in there at a time. Good thinking though, Private Cahr.”
“I did a suborbital jump into Barsoom once, but I don’t think we have time for that,” said Scott Orr.
“And a station is a lot smaller target than a planet. Next?” said Meric.
“Captain, if I may?” asked Sergeant Major Knight.
“Go ahead, Rob.”
“We have to keep this simple. Find out from Marjorie which ship they’re on. Have Team Scout charge the lock. No offense to them, but it will be well defended, and they probably won’t take it without casualties, but it’s just a diversion. Team Poison boards through the hull, cuts the ship’s gravity, and fights their way to Schmetzer, clearing as we go. The Legionnaires are primarily ground troops, and will be at a distinct disadvantage in zero G.”
Meric thought hard about it, then shook his head no. “Maybe, but timing is the key. We have to get Amanda to a known location, AND cut off or take out the French reaction force. If we go in blind, she’ll be dead before we get there. Here’s what we’re going to do…”
Chapter 39
They were assembled in the Lexington’s hangar, the entire ship’s crew, except for Merrifield on the bridge and Lynch in engineering, just before their last jump to the Graveyard. It was a rarity, and although he was grateful for Agostine’s men standing where Team Knife had been, it was still painful. So many gone, he thought.