Flagship (A Captain's Crucible #1) (10 page)

"Pray it doesn't come to that, Commander. Pray hard."

Two days under way, Jonathan was reviewing the status updates from his department heads and captains under his command when Robert requested permission to join him.

Jonathan remotely opened the hatch to his office. The commander stepped inside and took the visitor's chair.

"I'm disabling local logging," Robert said.

Jonathan followed his lead and disabled logging on his own aReal, instructed the computer to cease audio and video data capture, and extended his noise canceler around Robert.

"So, you bring news of our plot?" Jonathan said.

"I do. The captains of the
Aurelia
,
Maelstrom
and
Grimm
are with us, as expected. As for Task Unit One, I'm fairly certain Captains Felix, Rodriguez, and Brown will back you when you call for the admiral's arrest. Four other captains seem on the fence—they agree upon the sanctity of human life, but they're not entirely convinced the new attackers are alien. The other eight seem squarely in the admiral's corner. They despise the Sino-Koreans, and feel that any chance we have of inflicting harm upon them, we should take it, regardless of whether aliens are about to invade or not."

"Concentrate on the four swing votes," Jonathan said.

"I'll see what I can do to prove the attackers are alien."

"It's too bad we don't have a sample of some kind from the hull," Jonathan said. "Maybe you should talk to the chief scientist about getting a remote spectrum analysis done."

"Actually, I did. He was able to perform a partial analysis on the aft section of the second vessel, but so far it's nothing special. A composite alloy of aluminum, steel, and other base metals. There
is
a lot of silicon mixed in, and while that's unusual, it's not precisely alien per se." Robert hesitated. "Maybe you should talk to the other captains yourself. You might get better traction."

"No, too risky," Jonathan said. "If the admiral gets a whiff of our plan, he'll shut us down so hard we won't know what hit us. Keep working on those four. Emphasize the fact that we're cut off. It's been two days since we lost contact with NAVCENT. A lot can happen in that time. Tell them we detected two new comm nodes passing into the Vega-951 system from Contessa Gate, and the alien ship disabled each one with its EMP beam."

A flashing beacon on Jonathan's aReal indicated Ensign McNamara was trying to contact him. Jonathan reenabled logging and deactivated the noise canceling.

"Captain, I have news," Ensign McNamara said via the aReal.

"Go ahead, Ensign," Jonathan said, looping Robert's aReal into the conversation.

"The alien vessel has halted outside Contessa Gate."

"Thank you, Ensign," the captain returned. He knew the data was delayed by an hour thanks to the distance between the vessel and the task unit. "Notify me if—"

"Captain," the ensign interrupted. "I just detected a high-intensity thermal flash. The enemy vessel has destroyed Contessa Gate."

Jonathan felt his jaw tighten. He pulled up the tactical display. Sure enough, the latest readings reported that Contessa Gate was so much space debris. All that remained was the raw Slipstream, 1-Vega.

"Thank you, Ensign," Jonathan said. When the ensign disconnected, he glanced at Robert. "Well, I suppose that's better than the alternative. I'd much rather have the task group stranded here than allow an alien ship to enter a populated human system uncontested."

"I'd prefer the same," Robert said. "Still, we don't really know if the aliens can traverse Slipstreams without Gates. We've seen that ability in at least one other spacefaring race in the past."

"Good point," Jonathan said. "What we really need is someone to invent a damn jump drive."

"We'll have to make sure nothing happens to the Builder ship with Task Unit One," Robert said. "It'll be two years before NAVCENT dispatches another one."

Central Command wouldn't send any other ship types through the Slipstream while readings indicated the return Gate no longer existed. 

"Or even longer." Jonathan pulled up Task Unit One on his tactical display. The Builder ship followed along near the rear of the admiral's unit. It was the slowest ship in the bunch. Like the
Grimm
, it had no offensive capabilities, and would be very vulnerable in an attack.

Jonathan transferred his attention to the red dot on the far side of the system. The enemy vessel remained near the wormhole.

"They're assuming a guard position at 1-Vega," Robert commented.

"I see that," Jonathan said. "We'll have to eliminate it before the Builder can start a new Gate. Or at least scare it away."

"We easily outnumber the vessel," Robert said. "If the whole task group joined forces, we could eliminate the threat with minimal losses."

"I agree." He gazed at the third Slipstream in the system, 2-Vega, which led to uncharted space. "But I'm worried reinforcements will arrive long before we ever begin building a Gate."

"Can we tow the Darkstar Gate to 1-Vega?"

"Even if we could," Jonathan said. "Gates are intrinsically tied to the Slipstreams they regulate—constructed with just the right dimensions to suit their given wormholes."

"So we have at least one more battle to go before we get out of here, then," Robert said. "Or two, if reinforcements arrive, like you say."

Jonathan continued to focus on 2-Vega.

Oh enemy reinforcements will arrive
, he thought, keeping his mental doom and gloom to himself.
It's only a matter of time.

* * *

Three days away from the rendezvous with the remainder of the task group, Jonathan was rudely awakened in his quarters by the computer.

"Your presence is requested on the bridge," Maxwell said.

He donned his aReal spectacles and selected "crew manifest" from the HUD with a hand gesture. He sorted by current location, highlighted every member of the bridge crew, then initiated a "shared mode" connection. He was wearing pajamas, so he selected a uniformed avatar to represent him.

He forced himself to stand. The glasses grew momentarily opaque and then the bridge appeared around him. He resided in the center of the Round Table, where a three-hundred sixty degree lightfield camera had deployed to capture live holographic video of the bridge. To the officers at their stations, it would also appear that he stood in that exact spot on the bridge, his image hiding the multi-lensed camera.

"What is it?" Jonathan asked.

"Eight thermal signatures just appeared in the system," the ensign manning the fourth watch ops station told him. "From the 2-Vega Slipstream. A fleet of ships."

Jonathan overlaid the tactical display from the CDC onto his HUD. Sure enough, on the far side of the system, eight new red dots had appeared.

He smiled grimly.
Reinforcements. Sometimes, I hate being right.

"Do we have a visual?" Jonathan asked.

"I'm sending the port camera feed to your aReal now."

He saw five more of those dart-like alien ships, along with two bigger, box-like vessels, and a smaller, cylindrical craft with flat faces on either end. The latter shapes didn't shock him—vessels intended for deep space travel alone didn't have to account for the aerodynamic forces of lift and drag. A box would move just as fast as a dart in the void.

Jonathan zoomed in on the feed. He didn't like the looks of the ominous dark holes that dotted the forward faces of the box ships. There were at least twenty such portholes. Those could be launch tubes either for nukes, smart missiles, fighter crafts, or something never before encountered by human-kind.

"Vessels are turning," the ensign announced. "And accelerating."

"Do we have an estimate on their trajectory?" Jonathan said.

"An estimate, yes. They're heading away from both task units, toward one of the outlying gas giants."

"Undoubtedly using it for a speed boost," Robert commented. The commander had joined him via his own aReal. Robert stood outside the Round Table, his image overlapping the secondary lightfield camera near the main hatch.

"Our enemy continues to rely upon Newtonian physics," Jonathan mused.

"You sound like you were worried they'd pull out a reactionless drive trump card?" Robert said.

"They might be pretending to be limited by Newtonian drives..." Jonathan said, muting the rest of the bridge crew.

"Always assuming the worst," Robert chided him.

"As a captain, that's my job. Though I admit it's rather unlikely that they'd fake Newtonian physics."

Robert rubbed his right earlobe. "If I had a reactionless drive, I'd set a course directly for Task Unit Two, destroy it, then move on to Task Unit One. I wouldn't bother to slingshot around a gas giant, giving time for the two groups to rejoin."

"If all of those incoming ships carry the same particle beam weapon," Jonathan said. "It's going to be a hell of a fight, united or not. And I'm not convinced we've seen all of their armaments."

"Just as they haven't seen all of ours," Robert said.

Jonathan unmuted the bridge crew. "How old is the data?" he asked the ensign.

"About two hours."

Jonathan tapped his lips. "When will the admiral spot them?"

"About now, sir. Same time as us."

"Initiate standard hails with the new targets," Jonathan told the fourth watch comm officer. "Ping me if they ever respond. Captain out."

Four hours later, after a restive sleep, he donned his aReal spectacles and checked the tactical display. The CDC had updated the system map with the latest computed trajectory of the alien fleet. The dashed line moved away from 2-Vega, at twelve degrees inclination, looping past an outlying gas giant before turning inward. The course intercepted the combined projected course of the task group roughly two million kilometers away from Darkstar Gate.

"Maxwell, was there any answer to our hails?"

"No," the ship's AI answered. "There have been no responses to hails from either task unit."

"Maxwell, assuming the information I'm looking at is correct, when will the enemy ships intercept the fleet?"

"The unknown targets will intercept the fleet four days from now, or approximately a day after the task units reunite, two million kilometers from Darkstar Gate."

Jonathan leaned on the table with his elbows, folded his hands, steepled the forefingers, and tapped his upper lip.

The individual task units were only as fast as their slowest members. Task Unit One was bogged down by the
Marley
, a Builder ship, while Task Unit Two's bottleneck was the
Grimm
and the
Selene
. But even without those vessels to slow them, the incoming ships would have still overtaken the fleet before Darkstar Gate. The pursuers simply moved too fast.

A day after the task units reunite.
That didn't give the fleet much time to prepare a strategy after the admiral was arrested.

He glanced at 1-Vega on the opposite outskirts of the system, where the red dot of the isolated enemy ship remained, keeping up its remote vigil of the exit Slipstream.

"Have we received any messages from Central Command?"

"No. Though a flash was detected at oh five hundred outside 1-Vega. Likely it was the alien ship destroying yet another NAVCENT comm node."

Jonathan continued to tap his lips. "The built-in safeties prevent ordinary comm nodes from passing through a Gate when no return Gate is detected on the other side."

"Yes," the AI agreed. "Central Command wanted to transmit something important to the stranded fleet."

"The question is, what?" So many unknowns.

"You believe it was a retraction of the previous order?" the AI asked.

"There's no way to tell, Maxwell," Jonathan said. "None whatsoever. Damn the timing of this alien attack."

Jonathan poured a drink of water, took several sips, then mentally rehearsed the points he would make during the fleet conference. He had practiced in every free moment, refusing to write anything down, too paranoid about leaving a digital footprint in the ship's database.

His heart rate increased as he thought about standing before all those captains, reciting words whose impact could very well determine the fate of the task group, let alone the entire human race. It wasn't an easy burden to bear.

Three days until the conference.

"Captain, is there an issue you wish to talk about?" Maxwell asked suddenly.

"What do you mean?"

"Your heart rate has increased, and you have folded your hands to tap your lips, a nervous habit of yours."

Jonathan froze, setting his hands flat on the table. He felt... violated.

"Additionally," Maxwell continued. "You and Commander Cray have been engaging in unusual behavior as of late. Muting your conversations, purging logs. You wouldn't be planning a mutiny of some sort?"

"No," Jonathan said, trying to remain calm. Damn AIs with their ability to read micro tics and other bodily tells. The less he talked about the subject, the better. "Focus on your job, computer."

"My job is to prevent mutiny, Captain."

Jonathan allowed himself a weak smile. "I'm not planning a mutiny, Maxwell. How can I mutiny against my own ship?"

"Not your ship. The admiral's."

"Trust me when I say this. Every action I take is for the good of the fleet." That was the truth, at least. "I have nothing to hide."

"If you have nothing to hide," Maxwell persisted. "Then why won't you allow me to hear all of your conversations?"

"There's such a thing as human privacy, computer. It's something we value and hold dear. As a machine, you simply wouldn't understand."

"You lost your privacy when you joined the military, Captain."

"Yes," Jonathan said angrily. "Which is why I'm fighting tooth and nail for every last minute of it I can get. Speaking of which, would you mind?"

Maxwell finally remained silent. Jonathan would have to be very careful in the coming days. The last thing he needed was a suspicious computer on his back. He had always assumed the AI would side with him, the captain of the vessel, but programming prevented that, of course. AIs were meant to be objective, taking no sides in a dispute, and they followed fleet laws and codes to the letter.

Jonathan expressed his concerns to Robert later in the day.

"Watch yourself around the AI," Jonathan told him after they had disabled logging and extended their noise cancelers. "Maxwell is keeping an eye on us."

"I suspected as much," Robert said. He updated him on the latest with the captains. The commander thought he had converted another swing vote to their side.

When Robert finished, Jonathan shared the tactical display between them.

"The enemy is going to intercept the fleet a day after we rejoin the admiral." Jonathan indicated the point where the calculated trajectories intersected.

"Not something I'm looking forward to," Robert replied.

"Their arrival helps us, you know," Jonathan said.

Robert cocked an eyebrow. "How so?"

"It boosts our campaign to undermine the admiral. The man continues to doggedly pursue the mission objective, an operation based on outdated information. Did you see the fleet-wide address he forced down our throats earlier? Calling us all brave men and women for continuing our mission in the face of this new SK threat. He
still
believes these are Sino-Koreans. Even though we have two more strange ship designs being thrown our way. Designs that have somehow escaped the notice of the moles we have in SK ship manufacturing companies, and the cyberwarfare specialists we have hacking into their databases."

When Robert didn't comment, Jonathan continued. "The arrival of the enemy
will
help us. It has to. For one thing it's obvious, to me anyway, that we should be using the planet killer against these aliens, not the SKs. At least if we want to get out of this alive and report our findings to Central Command before it's too late."

"It might be obvious to you," Robert said. "But try telling that to the captains out there. As I said, I only managed to convert one of those who was sitting on the fence: Martin, of the
Borealis
. At least I think I managed to. It's hard to say when you can't speak your plans outright."

"I don't envy you," Jonathan said. "Politics was never my strong point." He tapped his lips. "Maybe put it to them directly. Say: 'If someone should call for a vote of no confidence, who would you—' actually, no, don't say that. You're already risking enough as it is." He shook his head. "Three days. We have three days to take that scheming bastard of an admiral down."

Robert smiled slightly. "You know, if I didn't know better, I'd almost believe you were following some sort of personal vendetta against the man."

"This is nothing personal," Jonathan said. "It's all about the good of the fleet. Trust me."

"But it's obvious you don't like him."

"The feeling is mutual, I'm sure," Jonathan said. "But just because I don't like him doesn't mean I'm planning all this merely out of spite. If I let my personal opinions toward someone get in the way of my judgement, and the good of the people who serve under me, I would have never made captain."

At least, that was what Jonathan told himself. He had seen his fair share of scheming officers who had put themselves far ahead of the men they led, officers who had no idea of the meaning of the word selfless and used every political means at their disposal to achieve the captaincy.

When Robert left, Jonathan couldn't help but wonder: what if the commander was right? What if he
was
doing it for the wrong reasons? He had recently begun to entertain the notion of nominating himself to the position of flagship commodore, as Robert had suggested. He dismissed the entire idea in that moment, ashamed for ever having thought it.

He glanced at the tactical display, and at the alien vessels bearing down on the fleet, and reminded himself precisely why the admiral had to step aside. He definitely wasn't doing this to fulfill some personal vendetta.

If we bomb the Sino-Koreans, humanity is, in all likelihood, doomed.

* * *

Jonathan sat in the office of the chief weapons engineer, Lieutenant Harv Boroker.

"So what is it that you so urgently wanted to see me about?" Jonathan asked the man.

"I've been going over the battle logs for the past few days," the lieutenant said. "Analyzing the thermal bands, the visual bands, the full spectrum. Over and over. And I think I have a way we can jury-rig the fighters to protect them from the particle beams."

"Explain."

"Our geronium reactors use charged fields for containment," Harv said. "In theory, we could repurpose the containment generators to provide a charged field around a few of the ship's Avengers, providing some protection from the particle beams. Enough to allow them to close for strafing runs."

Jonathan frowned. "You're asking permission to cannibalize some of the reactors? Because I won't give it."

"Not exactly," the lieutenant said. "I want to cannibalize the replacement parts."

"If the containment fields fail, those replacements are the only thing protecting the ship from a runaway nuclear reaction."

"No," Harv said. "You're forgetting the backup generators that kick in immediately if the mains fail. I won't touch those. I'm talking about the true replacement parts, those we would use to repair the main reactor in case of a failure."

Jonathan tapped his lips with his usual triangular finger arrangement. "How many fighters can you provision with these spare parts?"

"Four. The precise number of manned Avengers the
Callaway
has in its cove."

There were two Avenger squadrons aboard the
Callaway
. Each was led by two human-piloted fighters, while the remainder were AI-controlled drones.

"How confident are you that it will work?" Jonathan asked the man.

"Oh it will work. The lead fighters will be protected, up to a certain range."

"So that's the caveat," Jonathan said.

"Yes. Get too close to the enemy's beam projector and the field will break down."

"What about the
Callaway
itself?" Jonathan said. "Can we use these fields to protect the cruiser instead?"

Harv raised his hands defensively. "No. I wish. First of all, we don't have big enough projectors. And second of all, the energy requirements grow exponentially with the size of the charged field. We'd have to fly a ship whose entire insides were one big geronium reactor. I'm sorry, sir, the most I can do is protect four Avengers."

"All right. Do it, then. And dispatch the details to your counterparts in the fleet so that the other squadrons can perform similar upgrades."

"I will, Captain."

Jonathan stood. "And Lieutenant."

"Yes sir?"

"Well done. Exceptional out-of-the box thinking on your part. It will reflect well on your performance review."

The department head beamed. "Thank you, sir."