Cry of War: A Military Space Adventure Series

by R. L. Giddings

  He remembered that Vincenzi’s father had been a Catholic archbishop and wondered whether that might have had something to do with it. Too much of a humanist to properly take to the cut and thrust necessary for a full commission. Too philosophical. Yet, as an aide, his work was exemplary and Winterson considered himself lucky to have him.

  Still, he’d have preferred to have Vincenzi in charge of The Naked Spur than Kerrigan. In his opinion, the man was little more than a journeyman. Competent enough in his own way, but with nothing to recommend him overall. No spark. No charisma.

  And, despite his injuries, Winterson still felt a duty to the crew, an obligation to the fleet if you liked, to ensure that things ran smoothly. For that to happen he needed to ensure that Kerrigan’s decisions were subjected to the appropriate level of scrutiny and with Winterson still operating at a much-reduced level of efficiency he needed all the help he could get.

  They listened as Kerrigan apprised them of the current state of the fleet. Other than The Spur itself, the fleet was made up of Frans Jacob’s Blackbeard, along with the Molly Maguire, the Hudson and the Santiago. After neutralising the Odin they had suffered a major set-back when the bridge had been hit in a freak attack but were now close to intercepting the Tyr. They had hoped to target her sister ship, Thor, but as she had accelerated away towards the Henrietta Gate, Tyr had slowed in an attempt to head them off.

  Still, the most immediate threat to the gate seemed to come from the Loki but that was on the other side of the system being chased down by that old war horse, Faulkner.

  When Kerrigan had finished delivering his half-baked briefing, Winterson clapped his hands together and immediately a steward appeared at the door with a in a full tea service set on a trolley. The little man arranged the trolley in the centre of the room before gesturing as if to say, “May I pour?”

  Winterson shook his head and indicated for him to leave. He believed in congratulating his officers in public while reprimanding them in private. The little man tipped his head to the admiral and promptly left the room.

  He was immediately replaced by Duvall who, despite his enormous hands and thick fingers, began pouring tea into the white ceramic cups.

  “Good. Now we know where we stand. Tell me, captain, what do you propose to do next?”

  Kerrigan rested his hands on his hips.

  “That all depends, sir. What would you like me to do?”

  Winterson waited until he’d received his tea before replying.

  “You’re suggesting that Tyr means to engage us? To allow Thor to make good her escape.”

  “That would seem to be their intention, sir, though I’m loath to give them the satisfaction of going down that route myself.”

  “And why might that be?”

  Winterson had his own ideas on this subject but he didn’t want to be seen to be simply imposing his will. He wanted to at least give the man the chance to prove himself.

  Kerrigan took a while to answer, no doubt wary of being caught out.

  “I suspect they’re trying to wear us down. Exploit our weaknesses.”

  “And, in so doing, sacrifice one of their warships?”

  “It seems a trade-off they’re eager to make, sir, particularly if it will allow Thor to make good her escape.”

  Duvall approached Kerrigan with a steaming cup but Kerrigan waved him away. Duvall proffered the cup again while Winterson raised an eyebrow. Only then did Kerrigan deign to take it. Winterson liked his officers to at least act like gentlemen.

  “What’s the alternative?” Winterson said.

  Kerrigan took a sip of his tea, his forehead crinkling in thought.

  “We leave the rest of the fleet to engage Tyr and I – we – take The Spur off in pursuit of Thor.”

  “But, why us. Why not engage Tyr ourselves and send someone else after Thor?”

  A slight smile touched the corner of Kerrigan’s mouth.

  He knew the answer to this one.

  “Because The Spur is the only ship with half a chance of catching Thor. The other ships in the fleet are just too…”

  “Slow.”

  It was Vincenzi who had spoken. He slowly got up from his seat.

  “Plus,” Kerrigan continued. “She’s the only ship with enough firepower to have a chance of taking on one of these vessels single handed.”

  Vincenzi said, “I’ve been reviewing the armaments of our other ships and they really are quite pitiful.”

  Vincenzi accepted his tea from Duvall and rewarded him with a smile. Duvall didn’t smile back.

  “Commander Vincenzi is right of course,” Winterson said. “Though I’d challenge his use of the word: ‘pitiful.’”

  Kerrigan said, “But our orders stress that we must defend the Henrietta Gate at all cost. We have to pursue Thor. And if that means abandoning the rest of the fleet to do so than I’m more than willing to pursue that.””

  Vincenzi made some sort of snorting noise at that proposal.

  “Clearly, you had very different instructors at the academy to the ones I had,” he said. “Was it not drilled into you that you had to conserve your tactical advantage? To keep your assets together, to avoid being pulled out of shape? These people are looking for us to show some clear leadership. Take The Spur out of the equation and what are you left with? Chaos. With each captain thinking that he knows best.”

  Kerrigan pursed his lips. As master of his own ship he was finding it difficult to take criticism from a mere commander, though the fact that Vincenzi was Winterson’s personal assistant left him with little choice in the matter that didn’t mean he had to enjoy it.

  “You’d better answer him,” Winterson prompted.

  “I think that, in these circumstances, it’s important that we react boldly and efficiently. The Thor poses the greatest threat, therefore its destruction has to be our number one priority.”

  “Yes, but if we go after her without first dealing with Tyr, what’s to stop her from leaving our other ships behind and coming right back at us? We can’t force her to stay and fight. And, in such a scenario, we’d have the worst of all worlds. We’d might be pursuing Thor but, at the same time, we’d be leaving ourselves vulnerable to an attack from the rear.”

  Kerrigan had finished his drink and stood awkwardly holding his cup.

  “I doubt very much that’s going to happen,” he said flatly.

  Duvall took a long and noisy sip of his tea.

  “But if we’re to avoid such as eventuality,” Winterson said. “What are we to do?”

  Kerrigan looked from Winterson to Vincenzi and then back to Winterson again. This was not dissimilar to being asked a key question in one of his staff college exams. He had to juggle all the variables and come up with the most workable option.

  “I think Commander Vincenzi might have a point. The fleet is still untested in battle and if things started to go awry against the Tyr then, with no clear chain of command, the civilian ships might quickly come unstuck and start working against one another.”

  Winterson was relieved that he’d finally seen sense. “And what about Thor?”

  Kerrigan winched at the name.

  “As tempting as she is as a target,” he looked at Vincenzi. “I wouldn’t be fulfilling my role as captain of the flagship if I didn’t consider the safety of the fleet. Hopefully, if we can work together to defeat the Tyr we can build on that experience to better deal with Thor.”

  Winterson nodded, “Thank you Captain Kerrigan. That will be all.”

  Once Kerrigan was gone Winterson turned to Vincenzi.

  “Well? What do you think?”

  Vincenzi opened his eyes wide as if just coming awake. “He recognises how vulnerable we still are in certain areas, so he’s not quite the simpleton I took him for. But he does seem to think that victory over Tyr is assured whereas I’m very much in the opposite camp. I think it’s going to be tough and bloody.”

  CHAPTER 5

  “What are we looking at?” Faulkner
wanted to know.

  “The navigators have been studying Loki’s intended flight path.”

  Faulkner felt the adrenalin beginning to flood his system.

  “Are there other ships? Is that it?”

  She looked sideways at McNeill who was working hard to correlate the flood of incoming data.

  “Not ships as such, no, but there is something out there we need to be cognizant of.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “A meteorite. Coming in from our port side and due to cross our path in the next three hours.”

  Faulkner looked at the faces of those around him. They looked sullen and defensive as though he were responsible for this. And yet he knew from long experience that the threat from a meteor strike was infinitesimally small. They were, generally, very easy to avoid.

  “And that’s a threat to us how?”

  Schwartz rolled her eyes in McNeill’s direction. “Fin, you want to answer that one?”

  Faulkner noticed for the first time that McNeill’s chair had been specially adapted for his use. It had been built up to bring him up to the eye-level of everyone else on the bridge but it looked fairly precarious with a back brace to stop McNeill from tipping out of it. It looked like it would take a great deal of effort to get in to or out of.

  McNeill seemed dismayed by what he’d found.

  “It’s not so much us who has to worry about it,” he said. “It’s the Loki, sir. Currently, they’re set on a collision course with this thing.”

  McNeill brought up a computer animation which showed the trajectory of both Loki and the oncoming meteorite. They watched as the two smashed into one another, crippling Loki and sending her off into a punishing tailspin. The meteorite, meanwhile, continued along its original course largely unchecked.

  “Are they aware of what’s happening?”

  “Seems too much of a coincidence for them not to be,” McNeill said. “Plus, it ties in with that course change I told you about earlier. Looks like they’ve gone out of their way to orchestrate this.”

  “Which doesn’t make sense. Why track halfway across the system just to make a date with a lump of space rock?”

  Schwartz stepped forward, brushing a strand of hair from her eyes. “McNeill does have a theory about all this, sir.”

  McNeill turned awkwardly, using his backrest to pull himself around, his legs twisted under him.

  “It was the course change which alerted us to this,” he said. “I could be wrong, but I strongly suspect that when they first saw this, someone on-board saw it as a unique opportunity. I don’t think they intend to meet this thing head on. I think they’re trying to set us up so they can use it against us.”

  “What? Try and direct this thing into our path somehow. Use it as some sort of kinetic weapon?”

  This was one of the things the Yakutians had tried when they’d first started targeting Confederation colonies. They’d captured meteorites and then re-directed them at the various settlements in a sub-orbital bombardment. There was a lot of maths involved but they had that capacity. They’d even rigged up three enormous custom-built ships to make it all possible. They’d no doubt still be doing it if the Confederation hadn’t wised up and sent in Special Ops demolition teams to destroy the ships in question.

  Schwartz and McNeill exchanged glances.

  Schwartz said, “I’m afraid it’s a bit more complicated than that.”

  “I’ve nothing else planned for the afternoon, why not go for it?”

  Faulkner could see that a reckoning was coming – and soon – but, for the life of him, he couldn’t see how the Da’al intended to go about it. The physics of the whole exercise just seemed plain wrong.

  McNeill said, “Even if they had the wherewithal to make this work - which they don’t - the fact that we’re alert to the danger means they’ve got virtually no chance of hitting us with it. Kinetic measures have always worked best against stationary targets, so, for this to work the Renheim would have to be at a complete standstill and we’re a long way from that.”

  “So how then?”

  “The key element here is surprise,” McNeill said. “They need for us to be almost on top of them if they’re going to try and re-direct this thing into our path. That way, by the time we realise what’s happening, it’ll already be too late.”

  “They’re trying to use our velocity against us,” Faulkner said, turning to Schwartz. “Is that what we’re thinking?”

  “That’s right,” she said. “But what if they weren’t hoping to hit us with the whole meteor?”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “What if they were to blow off part of the meteor, just to leave it in their wake? The resultant debris would be enough to block off our route, perhaps even destroy us. At the very least, we’d be forced to change our flight path.”

  Faulkner looked to McNeill. “They’re trying to panic us in the hope that they’ll be able to slip away.” in the ensuing chaos.”

  “That seems most likely,” McNeill said.

  “Okay,” Faulkner said. “The question is: what are we going to do about it?”

  *

  Elina clinked her glass against Noah’s.

  “Marsalla!” she said before downing her vodka.

  “Marsalla!” Noah said. He took a mouthful and then started to gag. “My God. What is this stuff?”

  “Chechen vodka. Very good. Very strong.”

  “You’re right about that. It’s burning my eyes.”

  “Hah! I forget how young you are,” she made to take the glass from him, but he resisted.

  “I’m fine.”

  He drained the glass in one go but then stood there clutching his chest, unable to speak.

  “It is good that you take your drinking seriously but you make big mistake. We must go again.”

  She took his glass from him and started to refill it.

  She’d brought the bottle with her as a peace offering. He’d taken her straight to his cabin. It was the only place on the ship where he could be certain they’d be safe from his brother’s surveillance equipment. He’d swept the place himself the previous day and had found three bugs of varying degrees of sophistication. It was another reason why he’d wanted to split from Tomaz. His older brother had to be in charge of everything so even when Noah was working on his own, he always had Tomaz looking over his shoulder. It was ridiculous.

  Elina passed him his glass, the vodka slopping over his fingers.

  “Again?” he laughed. “Really?”

  “Yes, because the first toast,” she waved a finger here. “It does not count. When you toast someone, you must look them in the eye. To show you have nothing to hide. Like this: Marsalla!”

  She held Noah’s gaze while she downed the vodka.

  To be alone with her like this, in his room, was better than anything he could have imagined.

  Well, almost anything.

  He kept expecting the knock at the door to come, to drag him back to reality. He wasn’t used to this level of freedom. Perhaps this was what it was like to be truly independent.

  “Good. Now you try!”

  Noah took a long breath and then locked eyes with her.

  “Marsalla!”

  This time, the burning sensation in his throat was even worse than before. His eyes watered and he coughed a couple of times but at least he managed to keep it down.

  Once he’d recovered, Noah brought his chair around so that she could sit down while he perched on the end of the bed. He really had not expected her to be quite so intimidating. She was taller than Tomas and sat very upright, reminding him of some strange, exotic animal. Even the smell of her he found captivating.

  “Before we go any further,” she leaned across and touched his arm. “I have to ask have you considered my proposal.”

  Noah could only smile. “I have, yes.”

  “And?”

  “It’s not as straightforward as I first thought.”

  “Why not? It’s only
business, nothing personal. Tomas, of all people, would understand that. And besides, what I’m offering here is a partnership. Fifty, straight down the middle. Think about it, that’s not the sort of offer you can afford to walk away from.”

  “Look, I know,” he brushed the hair out of his eyes. “You’ve been really generous. I might even say, too generous.”

  “Nonsense. Look at what you’re bringing to the table: your experience in the salvage business, this ship, your crew. All I’m offering is the haulage, plus security.”

  When she put it like that, she did have a point. The Motar was key to the whole operation – which was kind of weird.

  “You talk as if you’re towing this thing down the road when in fact, we’re talking about a distance of nearly a hundred million miles. Without you, we’d be stranded.”

  “And without you we would have no chance to secure a line. We’d be lost before we started. You’re probably right, on Blackthorn I could pick up ship like Motar, very reasonable price. But we not on Blackthorn,” she leaned forward and grasped his wrist. “I need you and you need me. Partners, yes?”

  “True, but there’s other people we need to consider.”

  “I understand. Your crew are loyal towards brother. I understand this.”

  “But some of these guys have been with the firm since the get-go.”

  She gathered his hands in hers and pulled him towards her.

  “But they have to ask themselves question: would they rather be here with you and fortune or back home with Tomaz and nothing?”

  From where he was sitting, Noah could look straight down the front of Elina’s blouse. To say that he found this distracting would have been an under-statement.

  “It’s bound to cause resentment,” he protested. “And then there’s the people on the Monty. What are they going to think?”

  “I’m sure you’re right? Have you spoken to your brother about our little deal?”

  Noah laughed nervously.

  “This is funny?” she said.

  He dismissed her concerns with a wave. “He was just weird, that’s all. Said that I’d regret ever going into business with you. That there were things about you that I ought to know.”