Slipspace: Harbinger Page 10

  “Good hunting.”

  Cassie turned off her microphone and directed her attention to the next data point Aler had provided. But the reports and statistics washed over her as she found herself grasping once again with the truth of the matter that had been niggling at her all night. The one who deserved the most blame for what had happened between her and the family, was her.

  October 15, 2832

  03:30

  Deep space - Mjöllnir – Captain’s Quarters

  CODY AWOKE, his arm wrapped around his wife, her warm body nestled against his and groaned. His head pounded. This always happened when he overslept. He lay there, his eyes squeezed shut as he willed the Condition One alarm silent so its rhythmic pulse would stop interacting with his already throbbing head.

  Context hit him as if he had been struck by a fighter. The ship was at Condition One and the voice of the officer of the watch called over the ship-wide intercom. “Attention all hands. Condition One! Condition One! All hands to battle stations! Repeat Condition One! Condition One! All hands to battle stations! This is not a drill! Repeat...”

  Amado didn’t wait to hear the call for a third time before adrenaline took him and sent him into motion. Rolling over, he kicked off the covers, enticing a grump of frustration from his wife. She rolled over and pulled the covers over her naked back in a vain effort to preserve whatever heat there had been a moment ago.

  “Nira!”

  Like an adolescent getting up for school, Nira groaned. Cody stepped into the closet and grabbed her scrubs, throwing them at her. This seemed to do the trick as her groaning became louder and more coherent.

  “What the hell is that noise?” she demanded as she sat up.

  “Condition One,” Cody called as he pulled up his pants. “We’re at battle stations!”

  Realization graced Nira’s face. “Shit. There go my hopes for you getting quality sleep.” She slid out of bed, her scrubs in hand, and dressed.

  By the time Cody had finished buttoning up his duty jacket, Nira had finished combing her hair. The two departed together and headed off to their respective posts.

  Cody entered OpCom as the alarm klaxon fell silent, leaving only the red lighting to indicate Condition One status.

  “How far out?” Cassie called.

  “Intercept in three minutes, Commander.”

  “Report status!”

  All heads turned to the Captain as he entered the compartment. He gave them a dismissive wave.

  “I sent Labonne’s CAP to the Artez Primary to follow up on some energy signatures we picked up,” Cassie reported. “They were ambushed by a fleet of Verasai warships.”

  “Tactical analysis?”

  Aler was ready for the request and responded almost the instant the Captain closed his mouth.

  “Twelve destroyers, led by a battle cruiser, Captain. Ordinarily, we outgun any single one of them six to one. However, my scans indicate that they’ve all been outfitted with additional armaments beyond specifications, though I can’t get more specific than that. Assuming their fleet commander is competent, and given their enhanced weapons, I estimate they can outgun us four to three. Still, I’m detecting no support craft and no form of fighter deck on any of them. Between us and Gryphon Squadron, I think we can give them a run for their money. However, I can’t guarantee we won’t take catastrophic damage and go down with them.”

  “Like a pack of wolves taking down a bear,” Cody summarized. “Strike for strike, we hit harder, but we’re bigger and slower. They can wear us down to exhaustion and take us out. Hardly a favorable outcome.”

  “Not to mention the political fallout back home,” she added.

  Cody’s mind raced, though his fatigue pulled at him, preventing him from running through everything as quickly as he might have liked. As the Verasai were an independent government, relations with them had been a roller coaster over the years. Although they never signed on to the ISPA, they had been more than happy to take on Alliance assistance after the Ralgon had subjugated their home world. Even in the decade since, Verasai society had not recovered. The Alliance backed unified government collapsed as divisions grew against into a previously abandoned Cadre system and within two years’, disparate factions and warlords had started fighting one another for control. According to the latest report he had read before taking command, the surface of Varem remained little more than a bombed-out war zone where poverty, disease, violence and chaos were in excess supply.

  “It was them. They attacked Artez,” Cassie said matter-of-factly. “Why else would they hide and attempt to ambush our recovery operation?”

  The conclusion, such that it was, did not sit well with him. His instinct followed her reaction, but buried beneath the fatigue, something about the idea gave him pause.

  “Order all defensive rail positions to begin calculating firing solution. All offensive weapons hold and standby for my orders.”

  Cassie’s eyes met his in an angry glare but he tried to ignore it as his instinct felt sharper than the daggers she stared into him. The fleet. Yes...yes. That was it. The fleet was too damn small. It would take far more than thirteen destroyers and a battle cruiser to take down a slipstation and lay waste to a planetary surface. He willed himself to think, to give his sister the benefit of the doubt and assume she was correct. The Verasai fleet was huge. If they had mustered enough ships... yes... they could have taken the station out, leaving the planet defenseless. But that would have taken time. Artez would have sent a call out. No. That didn’t matter. Communications could have been blocked.

  He closed his eyes tight, fighting off the fatigue, but it still took an act of sheer will to force his heavy lids to re-open.

  A fleet large enough to take out the station would have required time and resources. More than any one cadre could have pulled together alone. So, if they had been responsible, it would signal the existence of a new military alliance within the Verasai. That kind of power shift... No. Even if they had allied, attacking a colony like this would have risked open war with the Alliance in retaliation. No way would they come out ahead on that front. So why provoke it?

  The deck bucked beneath them.

  “Captain, they’re firing!”

  “Damage report,” Cassie ordered.

  “Minimal. Their ordinance detonated off our bow. I think those were warning shots, Commander.”

  Warning shots. If the Verasai had wanted to hit the ship, they would have. Warning shots were intended to back an opponent down.

  “Fighter status,” Cody called.

  “They’re within our defensive perimeter, Captain and holding position pending reinforcements. Labonne is requesting an update on their launch.”

  “Order the launch deck to put the Gryphons in the theater!”

  “Belay that!”

  Cassie shot him another glare.

  “Open a channel to that battle cruiser,” Cody ordered before his sister could argue with him. But where her words were forced into silence, her glare spoke volumes.

  “I have it,” reported the communications officer. “Viceroy Curnan on center.”

  Amado gave no response as the holo in front of him changed from the tactical scans of the system to the animated bust of the Verasai Viceroy.

  “This is Curnan,” he said, before Amado could speak. “Viceroy of the Verasai Cortaraga Cadre. Stand down your weapons, Captain.”

  Cody almost lost his breath at the audacious demand. “Viceroy, this is Captain Cody Amado of the ISPA battleship Mjöllnir. On what grounds do you have the authority to cross our borders, lay in wait in one of our systems, ambush a fighter patrol? It is you who will stand down, and state your business in our territory.”

  He glanced to the side of the holographic bust, stealing the briefest of moments to see if the rest of the Admiral’s task force had moved to respond. The smaller combat ships had, but as expected the Admiral had held back the larger relief forces as well as his own flagship. Via written text, he ordered his
pilot to hold position. This would allow the Alliance time to catch up, while at the same time require more time for the advancing Verasai fleet to arrive.

  “Our purposes, Captain,” Curnan said, spitting the last word, “are none of your concern. We are here on our own business and you would do well not to interfere.”

  “Regent, be advised that your presence in this system, in conjunction with the circumstances of the loss of our colony, of which I’m sure you’re aware, could be interpreted as an act of war against the Alliance. I will ask once more, stand down.”

  “I do not take orders from you, Amado.”

  Cody stepped back from the holo display, knowing his image would disappear from Curnan’s display as well. Perhaps he had been too quick to dismiss Cassie’s theory after all. But even so, if they were here with only a dozen ships and a command vessel, either they were the dumbest instigators, or they had a different tactic up their sleeve. Either way they were closing range.

  “Mr. Aler. All defensive flak positions commence fire to extreme range. Give me a line in the sand.”

  He stepped back into the view of the comm. “Last chance, Regent. Heave to or my defensive fire will rip you apart.”

  Curnan’s eyes narrowed and his face twisted into a sinister smile. “Just the threat I was looking for. All units, full speed ahead.”

  Instinct took over. “Mr. Aler, arm all offensive rail positions. Melor, re-route power to the ECM. Give them as much as you have.”

  “Captain!” Curnan’s face bellowed from the holo projector. “Who did you just address?”

  From behind her station, Vivine Melor stepped forward and into the view of the holo. But she held her silence, looking to Cody for approval. He gave her a silent nod, unsure of what to make of this.

  “My name is Lieutenant Vivine Melor. What business is it of yours, Warlord?”

  Cody shot a harsh glare towards her. Melor saw it and backed away.

  “Captain, I apologize but I must put you on hold. Please standby.”

  Before Cody could protest, the avatar transitioned into a standby view. The line had been put on hold. He used the time to his advantage.

  “And just what the hell was that, Lieutenant?”

  “I’m sorry, Captain,” Melor began, “Viceroy Curnan is well known for his brutality and violence. There are very few outside of the Cortaraga Cadre who hold Curnan in any form of esteem. You should know that he and whatever Regent he serves should not be trusted.”

  “I see, Lieutenant. Do you have any idea as to who his Regent might be?”

  Before she could answer the question, he had put to her, the holo transitioned out of standby. But instead of Curnan’s bust a different Verasai had returned. This one, definitively female in form, though hardened, marred, and scarred by age and war, did not carry the same intense anger as Curnan had just a moment ago. Cody did not recognize this woman, but by the silent wide-eyed look of his engineer, she most certainly did.

  “Mom?”

  October 15, 2832

  04:00

  Deep space - Mjöllnir - MedDeck

  “ARE YOU CRAZY?”

  Cody winced under the force of his wife’s voice. Had they not been in one of the private rooms afforded to patients requiring an extended stay, he might have been embarrassed at both the outburst and the request that had caused it. But the relative privacy emboldened him.

  “So, that’s a ‘no’ then?”

  “You’re damn right that’s a ‘no,’ Cody,” she huffed. “I can’t believe you’d even ask me that!”

  He closed his eyes, allowing himself a moment to collect his thoughts. He had to make her see his point, but the fatigue continued to weigh on him, clouding his ability to string a coherent argument together. That was his whole point in the first place, or at least he thought it was.

  “Nira, the Verasai delegation will be on board in twenty minutes. I’m supposed to meet with them in thirty. I need to come to some sort of peaceful resolution to this stand off before the Admiral decides to retaliate and I can barely think straight.”

  She narrowed her eyes as her arms interlocked across her chest. “Which explains why you thought it would be a good idea to come down and ask me to inject you with a stim.”

  Again, Cody took a breath. Slowing the conversation down gave time for his sluggish mind to catch up. “I never said it was a good idea, Nira. It’s just...” He paused. “Just... necessary.”

  “Necessary! Necessary? I can’t believe I’m hearing this from you, of all people, Cody. There’s a reason we don’t let pilots fly on stims!”

  “I’m not a pilot, dammit!” He regretted the anger as soon as he said it.

  “No, Captain.” Nira let the words hang there. “You are the master and commander of this vessel. You should be setting the example.”

  He deflated and turned away, unable to look at her. He knew better, they both knew it and now that he had called attention to it, the urge to leave compelled him. But Nira stood between him and his escape.

  “Cody, dear, I understand where you’re coming from. In the short term, they can work wonders. But the rate of dependence and the risks associated are just too high.” Nira slid onto the exam bed, sitting herself next to him. “I’m sorry. But even beyond the issues of medical ethics, I can’t endorse this.”

  He sighed, and as the air left his lungs it was as if the strength had left his body too. How the hell could he do this? How could he command this ship, find out what the Verasai knew about the destruction of Artez, be accountable to Admiral Marr, and do it all when every time he closed his eyes for even a second, it felt as though it took a sheer act of will to open them back up again. No. This was not going to work and if Nira would not help, he would find help elsewhere.

  “Fine,” he snorted as he pushed himself off the exam bed and onto his feet. “I’m sure there’s a pot of coffee on the mess deck I can take down before they arrive.”

  “You don’t drink coffee.”

  He stopped just short of the door and turned. “You know I can count on one hand the number of cups I’ve had in my lifetime. But desperate times, dear.”

  Cody reached for the door, but stopped just short of the handle by a gentle tug at his upper arm where Nira’s hand had come down. “You’re really in that bad of shape?”

  A soft, silent nod was all he could manage.

  Nira let out a sigh. “Sit down, Captain. If you’re so damned insistent on doing this, at least do this properly so I can regulate your regimen.”

  He followed her instructions and almost voiced his own objection when she opened the room’s medicine cabinet and removed an injection pen. As if things weren’t tense enough already, now she was conceding to him, violating her own moral conviction to help him. He loved her and hated himself just a little more. But as he had said, these were desperate times and he would not allow himself to fail again. He would not be the reason the Civilized Races fell into another war and he would be damned if he would allow his failure to put Nira or Cassie in harm’s way again. She slotted the medication vial into the pen and turned to him.

  “This,” she said, holding the pen up, “is the first, last, and only dosage I will allow you under these circumstances. I’ve dialed enough to keep you going for a couple of hours, which should get you through this meeting. After that, you go back to bed.” She took a step closer to him. “And if I find out that you are going behind my back to obtain more of this, or are in any way violating my medical orders on this matter, I will not only remove you from duty so fast your head will spin, but I will have your commission. Am I in any way unclear on this, Captain?”

  Her instructions cut through his fogged brain like a hot knife through butter. “No, ma’am. You are crystal clear.”

  “Good.”

  She pressed the injection pen to his neck. He felt the pressure as she released the medication into his system and almost immediately the fog began to lift.

  October 15, 2832

  04:00
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  Deep space - Mjöllnir - Mess Deck

  THE SMELL of seasoned steak and eggs, cooked breakfast meats, potatoes and vegetables coursed through the mess hall from the kitchen. Today’s skillet breakfast would be an amazing medley of flavors and texture that any member of the crew would devour when they came in for the breakfast service. The mess attendants had even gone so far as to bring Melor a plate, well ahead of the scheduled service, the mix of ingredients bound together with melted cheese. Wisps of steam and heat lifted from the plate: calling to her, teasing her nose with the aroma they carried.

  But Vivine Melor ignored the plate.

  She had stored nearly half a dozen books in the tablet in her hand, all designated for personal and recreational reading, a morning ritual of hers; a way to wake herself up and come on duty in a relaxed state of mind before shit hit the fan with the ship. She had stopped yesterday on a plot twist that had surprised the hell out of her and had spent all that day looking forward to getting back to the story to see how it played out.

  But Vivine Melor hadn’t advanced the page in twenty minutes.

  The engineer stared at the words on the screen as if she couldn’t comprehend the text. For all she knew, she could be looking at the latest theories in quantum physics or a children’s nursery rhyme.

  One thing, and one thing only stuck in her head. Her mother. Melor had lost track of how long it had been since she had seen the woman. In some respects, she had worn that estrangement as a badge of honor: one that grew in size and luster the longer the silence remained between them.

  The whole mess started just after the liberation of Varem and the subsequent expulsion of the Alliance. Her mother’s argument had grown stale, and at the time, Vivine would have given anything to never hear it again. The memories of that conversation returned to the front.

  “I just don’t understand why you’re so upset, Vivine. We don’t need the Alliance of Planets, or whatever they want to call themselves. We’ve survived this long without them.”

  “Excuse me?” she had interrupted. “Did I just hear you say that we don’t need them?”