Flagship (A Captain's Crucible #1) (11 page)

Three days later the two task units unceremoniously reunited.

"The
Hurricane's
comm officer bids us welcome," Lieutenant Lazur said from the comm station.

Jonathan nodded absently. He doubted the
Hurricane's
comm officer used such polite words. Even over official channels, officers usually kept things informal, and slightly offensive. "Nice to see your ugly hunk of slag" was probably closer to what the
Hurricane's
officer had said. All in good fun, of course. Though compared to the
Hurricane
, the
Callaway
was indeed a hunk of slag.

The admiral had scheduled the conference for eighteen hundred hours. That left Jonathan two hours of final preparation.

He glanced at the tactical overlay. Darkstar Gate was a full standard day ahead of them; the pursuing enemy fleet resided twelve hours behind, and closing.

This is insane,
he thought.
We should already be taking up defensive positions. Maybe launching some nukes to serve as mines.

Instead, the task group traveled onward just as if the fleet hadn't a care in the world. Jonathan didn't think the upcoming battle was going to end very well. Not if the admiral remained in command.

No pressure or anything
, he told himself.

"I'll be in my office," he told the conning officer. "You have the bridge."

About twenty minutes before the meeting, the door chime to his office rang. He pulled up the ship's blueprints, zoomed in on the bridge, and saw Commander Cray's dot flashing outside the room.

"Come in, Robert," Jonathan said.

The hatch spiraled open and Robert stepped inside.

"Have a seat, Commander." Jonathan beckoned toward the chair opposite the desk. He promptly disabled logging and extended his noise canceler over Robert. "So what's the final tally?"

Robert counted on his fingers. "We have the captains of the
Aurelia
,
Maelstrom, Selene,
and
Grimm.
Captains Felix, Rodriguez, Brown, and Martin. That leaves seven for, eight against, and three still on the fence."

Jonathan sighed. "The undecided hinge on my speech, then."

"They do."

Jonathan felt his heart rate increase ever so slightly. "I'll convince them. I have to."

Robert smiled sadly. "And if not, tonight the two of us will be sitting in the brig."

Jonathan didn't answer immediately. He would do his best to keep Robert out of the brig, if it came to it.

"Come now, Robert," Jonathan finally said. "Where's the characteristic positivity?"

"I lost it after the attack. Good luck, sir."

Jonathan dismissed the commander and continued to mentally prepare himself for the meeting, frantically going over in his mind all the key points he planned to cover.

Then he stopped himself.

If he didn't have those points committed to memory by now, then he never would. It was best if he spent the next few minutes relaxing.

He sipped a concoction of green tea he'd prepared with his high speed convection kettle, one of the few pieces of actual furniture in his office. The tea itself was sourced from the Coreward Asiatic Alliance; they produced some of the best tea in the galaxy, thanks to their specialized agricultural worlds—entire planets painstakingly terraformed over three centuries to enable the best possible growing conditions for different crops. One planet produced coffee and tea. Another apples, peaches, oranges and nectarines. Pollination was done by solar-powered microdrones. The only other galactic government that came close to the CAA's dedication to food production and quality were the Franks, who had entire colonies devoted to the maturation of wines.

He gazed at the overhead LED lights. They were imperceptibly flickering on and off at that very moment, faster than the human eye could detect, transmitting data to his aReal at terabit per second speeds via the latest generation of Li-Fi, the main wireless communication protocol. His aReal spectacles had similar sensors and LEDs to receive and transmit data back. Contact lens users had their sensors located in the standalone earpieces, while Implant wearers had the option of either an earpiece or a skin-color transmission and receive device grafted to their hands—for the true body augmentation lovers.

Jonathan listened to the distant hum of the engines, the low-pitch frequency audible even there. An engineer had once done a sonic analysis on the sound and determined that it was eerily similar to the background noise emitted by the universe, though dialed up to a macro-level volume. That hum was somehow soothing. Relaxing. It brought Jonathan focus. It was as if he cradled in the great arms of the universe itself.

His gaze drifted almost unconsciously to the stars beyond the glass beside him. The window wasn't there in reality, of course. Neither was the bookshelf, or the Caravaggio on the far wall. They were all projections created by his aReal, which existed, like most of the decorations throughout the ship, solely in a computer's memory. A projection that would display on the aReals of any other personnel who visited his office. And if he or any one of them were to take off their spectacles, they would find themselves in a windowless steel compartment whose only furniture was a desk of bare steel, two barely padded chairs, a couch for napping purposes, and a locked storage vault.

Some crew decorated their offices with jungle landscapes from alien worlds or favorite locations from more familiar settings—mountain chalets were popular—but Jonathan had opted for something simple for his office, not too ostentatious or distracting, as would befit a starship captain and his guests.

And yet while that portal was false, the stars behind it may as well have been real. For what was reality, other than what the mind created, or perceived? That humanity could now partake in the vast mindscapes of shared personal realities thanks to technologies like aReals only further reinforced that fact.

Stars. So many of them out there. The universe was so damn vast. And yet filled with so much emptiness. Mostly chaos. Sometimes life: the order within that chaos. And yet life was chaotic, too, at war not only with the outside world in its struggle to survive, but the inner world of the mind and body. Immune systems were held back from killing the body's own cells by only the most fragile genetic code. And doubts and fears plagued the thoughts of even the greatest minds.

There was alien life out there. The conspiracy theorists were fools to believe that past alien invasions and encounters were staged. Given the billions of galaxies out there, the near infinite number of planets and stars, it was nearly impossible for there
not
to be life.

And yet that didn't mean humanity would understand that life. Nor that we would even view that life as sentient. But it worked both ways: perhaps to the aliens that now pursued the fleet, humanity was something more akin to mosquitoes than sentient beings. There were differing standards when it came to measuring what constituted intelligent life, after all. Jonathan wouldn't blame the aliens for believing humanity little more than semi-intelligent apes.

And if the admiral had his way, successfully deploying the star-killing bomb, then the aliens would be proven entirely in the right.

Jonathan prayed he had the courage to go through with what he planned. He sincerely hoped the other captains did, too.

A small reminder tone sounded in his aReal. One minute to the conference.

Time to tap in.

He set his palms flat on the tabletop and inhaled two deep breaths.

I won't let humanity down.

I will win this.

I will see this through.

No matter the personal cost.

"Maxwell, connect to fleet conference," Jonathan said. "ID nine zero one."

"Connecting to fleet conference nine zero one," Maxwell returned. "Please provide the passcode."

"Three five seven."

"Access granted," Maxwell said. "Establishing remote connection."

A moment later his aReal grew opaque and the office was replaced with a conference room that wouldn't have been out of place in a president's situation room.

A long, oval table dominated the center of the room. The walls were decorated with the portraits of great officers from the past, reminding those present of the history of the great navy to which they belonged.

The captains of Task Group 72.5 sat in swivel chairs around the virtual table. Roughly half wore aReal spectacles, like Jonathan. The remainder had either contact lenses or Implants. Admiral Hartford Knox, who had publicly expressed his disdain for spectacles, calling them a sign of weakness, sat proudly at the head of the table, his face free of eyewear. His body appeared lean and muscular within his uniform. It wasn't an illusion of the virtual environment—Jonathan knew the man had undergone multiple revitalization treatments over the years.

However, like most in positions of power, the admiral had refused to rejuvenate his face, preferring weathered lines and white hair. Most human societies still unconsciously associated age with wisdom, and while that culturally-embedded trait was completely outdated, one had merely to look at the authority figures in any human community to witness the continuing influence of the association. Studies had proven time and again that constituents elected older-looking candidates into power, and grizzled officers were promoted more often than their younger-seeming counterparts, especially at the upper echelons. In the military, like in politics, a baby face didn't get one very far.

But although the admiral seemed old, his blue eyes glinted with intelligence and hinted at the cunning that had seen him rise to his current position.

All of the ships had closed to within five thousand kilometers by then, putting the communications delay at slightly over five seconds. While it only took light sixteen milliseconds to travel that distance, the overhead and complexities of the node packet transfer network constituted the remainder of the lag. The rather large size of the data didn't help matters—though the individual 3D models and textures were scanned and transmitted as part of the initial connection bundle, the constantly updating vertex data was continually streamed to meet the two hundred and forty frames per second requirement of the aReals, eating up the bandwidth. With so many participants, a delay of only five seconds was considered extremely low lag.

"Welcome, Captains," Admiral Hartford said. "And thank you for agreeing to this meeting on such short notice."

Stay calm,
Jonathan told himself as his heart began to race.
Calm.

"All of you are aware of the imminent threat we face," the admiral continued. "And the important mission we have been tasked with. We cannot let these ruthless SKs stop us from achieving our goal. You have all received my earlier notices regarding Operation Darkstar. The mission is still a go. We are not turning back. We will not waver in our resolve. At all costs the AI-manned destroyer, the
Fortitude
, must reach Darkstar Gate and deploy the bomb."

The admiral gestured and a three-dimensional display floated in the center of the table for all the captains to see. Several dots representing the fleet appeared near the center. Each individual ship was labeled. The Gate was represented by a small oval positioned about a meter in front of the fleet, while the pursuing vessels were indicated by red dots half a meter behind them.

"At what range from the Gate can the
Fortitude
launch the bomb?" Captain Hague asked.

The question seemed rehearsed, as if the captain had planned the presentation with the admiral. It wouldn't be surprising, given that Hague was firmly in the admiral's camp.

"The bomb isn't launched, per se," Admiral Knox said. "The destroyer
is
the bomb. The entire AI-manned vessel must enter the Gate."

"So it's going to need an escort the entire way," Captain Hague said, again playing into the admiral's theatrical production.

Admiral Knox nodded. "That's right. While the rest of the fleet makes a run for Darkstar Gate, the slowest ships, the
Marley
, the
Selene
, and the
Grimm
will remain behind, guarded by the new Task Unit Two: the
Callaway
, the
Aurelia
, the
Maelstrom
, the
Dagger
, and the
Linea
."

The tactical display updated, showing the first task unit escorting the
Fortitude
and the flagship
Hurricane
toward the Gate, while the second unit stayed behind to face the incoming red dots.

"If any of the enemy vessels break past the first defenders," the admiral continued. "I'll order successive units behind to keep them occupied."

Some of the red dots tore past the waiting second task unit, and three more escorts turned away from the
Fortitude
to face the enemy. Moments later the
Fortitude
reached the Gate, which flashed, indicating the successful completion of the mission.