by Terry Mixon
He had to admit that he was a lot more relaxed than he’d been an hour earlier. He felt ready to take this challenge on now. He still might not win, but he’d give it his very best.
Commodore Talgat Saltanat, the commander of Deimos Command, sat at the other end of the table. He was the senior surviving Mars Command officer. Commodores Bailey and Nuremberg sat across from Michelle, while Commodores Sonja Gold and James Harding sat to either side of his wife.
The remaining seats were filled by senior Fleet and Mercenary Guild captains, including his own—rather, Michelle’s—Vikings. They were a steadying sight. He’d held any number of briefings with those faces around his table. He knew without question that he had their support.
The rest? Well, time would tell.
“For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Brad Madrid and I’m in command of First Fleet,” he said as he looked around the table, meeting each person’s eyes for a moment. “If you don’t know what that is, I’m not surprised. It didn’t exist a few hours ago.
“I’ve been tasked with picking up the pieces here and putting together a force to challenge the OWA ships that took Saturn, and you all are going to help me make that happen.”
“With all due respect and so on,” Gold said, “that’s crap. From what I hear, those damned pirates have a battleship and as much force as we had before all these Fleet idiots started shooting their friends. Exactly how do you hope to pull that off, Commodore Madrid?”
More than one person started to tear a strip off the abrasive mercenary officer, but Brad pounded his fist against the table to distract them.
“Yes,” he said into the suddenly tense silence. “I was a mercenary Commodore like you just a few weeks ago. Since then, I’ve trashed an OWN task force that could’ve scrubbed Mars clean of defenders. I didn’t ask for this job, but I’ve got it and I’m going to make it work. Commodore.”
Rather an angering the woman, his response made the corners of her lips twitch up. “I see. Thank you for the explanation, Admiral.”
“Well, I don’t see,” Harding said in a much less challenging tone. “The points my associate raised are still on the table. How do we possibly take on a force like that? If any of the Fleet ships in orbit here are undamaged, I’m not aware of that fact. Some of them are in pretty bad shape.
“How can we win that kind of battle? I’m a mercenary and I’m not throwing my ships into a meat grinder. You hired us to defend Saturn. Well, that’s off the table now and we have no authority to attack the OWA. In fact, we have specific guidelines not to take a contract to do so. The Mercenary Guild is neutral.”
“I have every expectation that that set of circumstances will change very shortly,” Brad said in far more conciliatory tone than he felt. “I’ll be heading down to Mars to see Factor Kernsky as soon as we finish here, as a matter of fact.
“As for the rest, you’re asking the wrong question. What you should be wondering is how your people will survive the purge that’s coming if the OWA wins this fight. If you think Jack Mader—the leader of the Cadre, no matter how he changes his name or title—is going to allow armed forces not under his direct command to exist, you’re mistaken.
“He’ll disband the Mercenary Guild and confiscate every ship with a weapon in this system. He’ll press every surviving mercenary and Fleet crewman and officer into service, unless he decides to space the ones he doesn’t think he can trust. And I guarantee that he won’t trust anyone at this table.”
He let that sink in for a few moments before he continued. “Even if you decided you weren’t going to fight, Commodore Harding, it’s already far too late to save yourself. The key now is to find a plan that has the best chance of working, no matter how bad the odds stacked against it.
“Because make no mistake, we’re not only fighting for our lives but for the lives of everyone in the Commonwealth. The Phoenix has no mercy in him. He wants to rule humanity with an iron fist while crushing any resistance under hobnailed boots. We have two options: stop him or die trying.”
That seemed to settle the meeting down. No matter what the Fleet officers thought, they weren’t going to show dissension in front of the mercenaries.
“Commodore Saltanat,” Brad said. “What is the status on rooting out the virus in your controls?”
The officer smiled grimly. “Now that we know what to look for and don’t have to work while everyone is shooting, I think we’ll have the platforms back under control in a few hours. We have the mass drivers on the moon under manual control at the moment and are relying on Commodore Gold’s ships to provide us warning if anyone is sneaking in.
“The logs aren’t going to help determine who did this, but I’ve implemented safeguards to require a number of trusted people to oversee any updates and to check one another. They got us once, but they won’t manage it again.”
“We thought that after they did this at Blackhawk Station,” Michelle said. “Yet I’m almost certain we’ll find out they did it again when they made this new attack.”
The Fleet officer didn’t quite sniff, but he managed to look down his long nose at her. “That was a civilian group. We’re a lot more organized in Fleet. Now that we know this is possible, we’ll be on our guard.”
“Will we?” Brad asked. “We reported what the Cadre did at Blackhawk Station the first time, but they still pulled it off on Deimos today.”
Saltanat frowned. “I never saw a report about anything like that.”
“It probably never made it out from Earth,” Bailey said. “Those bastards have been suppressing information that could’ve made a difference against them for a long time.”
“We can’t control what’s happened in the past,” Brad said. “Let’s focus on moving forward. Do we have any idea how they got nukes aboard Eternal?”
The other officer shrugged. “We haven’t got a clue. They should’ve been able to detect something like that, but someone on the inside must’ve cleared the way for them. We’ve been hunting for any of her crew that was off the ship during the blast, but most of them have vanished.”
“We need to make sure that doesn’t happen to any of our other ships,” Nuremberg said tiredly. “Or to Deimos. Everdark, to any of the cities down on the surface.”
“We’re going to have to rearm,” Bailey said. “We used every nuke we had.”
“We’ve got reloads for you,” Saltanat said. “I suggest we only send people we trust to bring them back to the ships. I already took the liberty of securing the facility holding them even more tightly than it was before, just in case someone might want to blow it up.”
“We’ll also want to check each warhead before we move it,” Michelle said. “It wouldn’t shock me if someone sabotaged a few to blow up when we tried to load or fire them.”
That produced a long silence in the wardroom.
“I hate being that paranoid,” Nuremberg said. “Still, I suppose it’s warranted.”
“What about our current force?” Brad asked, moving things along. “How many ships do we have left in each class out of the Mars force?”
“The Martian Squadron has three cruisers, thirteen destroyers, and forty-five corvettes and frigates,” Saltanat said. “All are damaged to one degree or another. Some of them were recaptured from mutineers, thanks to Commodores Gold and Harding as well as the Vikings. We can repair the worst of the damage, but I wouldn’t call them fully combat-capable.”
“My ships didn’t take too many hits,” Gold said with more than a hint of superiority in her tone. “Even for mutineers, I expected better of Fleet.”
“You’re a jackass,” Harding said, frowning at the woman. “Seriously, can you debitch while we try to save our asses?”
“Stop!” Michelle said, holding a hand up to the mercenaries at her sides. “We have zero time for personalities. Do I need to put someone in the corner?”
Gold blinked at Michelle, opened her mouth to say something, but stopped. When she finally did speak, it was in a
calmer tone of voice. “Sorry.”
For a moment, Harding didn’t seem to realize Michelle had meant him too—and then Brad met and held his eyes.
“Sorry,” the younger mercenary muttered.
It didn’t sound as if either of them really meant it, but Brad bulled ahead before the mercenaries could derail the meeting. “We’ll repair what we can here and reload all the spent ordnance. We’ll have time while I try to get the Mercenary Guild fully onboard and convince the Jovian governments to get off the fence.
“We’ll also need to question the prisoners. I damned well don’t expect much out of that, but someone we took knows something useful, and we have a very short window to get it out of them. I hate to say this, but they’re mutineers. Does that give us some leverage to compel cooperation?”
Nuremberg’s eyes narrowed. “They might be bastards, but we can’t treat them like pirates and space them. As much as I want to, they’re allowed a court-martial. That isn’t happening right away. Everdark, if we lose, it might not happen at all.”
“Which doesn’t mean they have to know that,” Bailey said with an evil grin. “If we get a bunch of them in a room and lead them to believe we’re treating this like piracy, we can hustle the most obnoxious ones out and put them in solitary. If the rest happen to think we spaced them, well, that would be an unfortunate misunderstanding.”
That made Brad chuckle. “Then I think you should deal with them. As they were stationed here at Mars, they already know and fear you, if they have any sense at all. Make them sweat and get me any useful information you can, Commodore Bailey.”
“You bet your ass I will,” she said grimly. “They helped kill my ship and my crew. It doesn’t matter that I’d been moved; they were mine. No one takes what’s mine without paying for it.”
He nodded. “Then we all have things to do. Keep my staff updated on your progress and I’ll make sure the information is passed back about what we’re going to do and the timeline in which we’re going to do it. Dismissed.”
As they started filing out, Brad stopped Jahoda. “A moment, please, Captain.”
When they were alone, Brad closed the hatch. “We have one other major problem to solve and I’m going to need your input for that.”
“Anything you need, sir,” the man said, standing at ease.
“Three of the Martian cruisers survived, but the Commodore commanding the group didn’t. I want to get your honest opinion about your executive officer.”
Jahoda nodded, a look of understanding on his face. “Commander Nah is one of the finest officers it’s ever been my pleasure to command, but wouldn’t it make more sense to have one of the surviving cruiser captains take command? Alycia doesn’t have the experience to guide three cruisers into battle.”
Brad smiled a little. “No, I didn’t think she did, but I suspect she’ll do fine as my flag captain, Commodore.”
The other officer blinked. “Excuse me?”
His smile widening at the other officer’s reaction, Brad pulled the same box Jahoda had given him earlier from his pocket and handed it to the man.
The Captain—now Commodore—opened it with a look that mixed confusion with consternation. Inside sat the Commodore’s insignia that Orcho had given Brad just a few weeks earlier.
“I’ve already spoken with Admiral Orcho and she’s approved your promotion. You’re the best man to lead my second cruiser group, Commodore Jahoda. Congratulations. We’ll go surprise Captain Nah now, if you’d like to give her your old insignia.”
The other man smiled, still obviously shocked. “Nothing would give me more pleasure. I’ll do my best for you and the Commonwealth, Admiral.”
“I know you will,” Brad said, clapping a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “Let’s hope our best is good enough.”
Chapter Fifteen
Once he had everything moving in orbit, Brad took a shuttle down to Olympus Mons City. This visit was far different from the last time he’d been there. For one, he wasn’t sneaking in with Kate Falcone. This time, he was coming openly and in force.
He’d wanted to do something low-key, but his officers wouldn’t hear of it. With everything that had happened so far at Mars, it was far too likely that the OWA had forces lurking around that would love to be able to decapitate First Fleet, figuratively speaking, and decapitate Brad, literally.
So, rather than taking a shuttle down in relative anonymity, Fleet descended on the spaceport in force. First came a wave of Marines strong enough to hold off even the most determined ground attackers. Second was a screen of small craft that could intercept any attempts to shoot down Brad’s shuttle. Only with them in place was he allowed to proceed.
He’d have argued that that was too much, but he knew from past experience that it wasn’t. The Cadre had managed to attack him in places that he’d never have thought possible. If they took him out, the Commonwealth’s last chance to convince the Jovian system to join them might die, too.
Michelle was waiting for him when he stepped out of his shuttle.
“How do you ever get any privacy?” she asked as she fell in beside him as he walked toward the ground cars waiting nearby. “Do they send in Marines to clear the bathroom and provide overwatch while you take care of business?”
“Only on days where they think there won’t be any trouble,” he said as he held the door open for her. “But all kidding aside, I did find out that they make sure I’m protected at all times, even when I’m in a safe area.”
Once they’d put their seatbelts on, the driver joined a convoy of other cars and left the spaceport.
“What does that mean?” his wife asked, turning to face him.
“Just that they take care to have the areas I’m in under continuous observation, except for my bedroom and bathroom.”
She frowned for a second before her eyes bulged. “Are you telling me they had your office under surveillance when we…”
He gave her a long, sad look and then grinned. “No, that’s off limits, too.”
Michelle smacked him hard on the arm. “That’s not funny!”
“I disagree, though I won’t push my point of view too far because I certainly don’t want to make you mad enough to not do it again.”
“You make me crazy,” she said with a huff. “What’s the plan here? We got the word from Factor Kernsky that the restriction on taking contracts against the OWA has been rescinded. You can hire anyone you like. What’s next?”
“Have you ever heard of an overriding contract?” he asked. “As someone relatively new to mercenary work, I’m betting not.”
She shook her head. “What’s that?”
“When the Mercenary Guild decides they’re going to call every unit in and go after something together. Every ship, every trooper. They drop whatever they’re working on and the Guild puts everything they have into kicking someone’s ass.
“The last time it was used was when they went after the Terror and his cruiser Black Skull. They killed the ship and got his bosses—my frigging parents—but not the man, sadly. I want them to do the same now. We need them.”
“But you expect resistance.”
He nodded. “No one wants to willingly stick their hand into a meat grinder. Factor Kernsky said that it takes four director-level Factors to declare an overriding contract, and after the last time, I wouldn’t be surprised to see that the OWA took steps to make sure that wouldn’t happen again.
“Either they’ll have moved behind the scenes to see that people less inclined to do something like that are in positions of power, or they’ll kill the Factors before they can come to a decision. We’ve seen them do stuff like that before, and I’m hoping we can get a favorable ruling before they do it again.”
Once they’d arrived at the Mercenary Guild offices and were ushered inside, Sara Kernsky met them in a conference room rather than her office. She had several other people with her, and her expression was grim.
After they’d declined refreshments, the F
actor got right to the point. “I tried to get the directors to invoke an overriding contract and they refused. Well, refused is perhaps too strong a word. They dithered.”
Brad frowned. “Don’t they understand the danger we’re all facing?”
“If they don’t, it’s not because I failed to tell them in every way I could think of. What do you know about the Guild directors?”
He shrugged. “Not that much. You said they were director-level Factors, which is the first I’ve really heard of them. As a mercenary commander, I never really had to deal with anyone higher in the hierarchy than someone like yourself.”
His eyes narrowed. “Unless you’re a director-level Factor and I didn’t know about it.”
“I’m getting up there in seniority, but that’s not the kind of club that allows just anyone in. There are five director-level Factors. You almost certainly haven’t met any of them because they don’t do contract work once they join the board.
“Personally, I think that’s a mistake. They lose the bond that joins them with the mercenaries that we represent. That kind of insulation is never a good thing.”
“So, they turned you down?” Michelle asked. “What does dither mean in this case?”
“That they want to discuss the problem at greater length,” Kernsky said with a hint of disgust in her voice. “What I really suspect is that they’ve been in contact with the OWA and have let them blow sunshine up their skirts.”
“In other words, you think they’ve cut a deal to stay out of the fight,” Brad said, feeling himself sag a little. “You think they’ve been paid off?”
She shook her head. “Not in so many words and I could be wrong. We’re based out of the Jovian system, so they might be allowing the governments there to make them more cautious. I just can’t tell from here. That’s why I’ll be going with you when you set out for Jupiter.”