Shadow of Victory - eARC (43 page)

Their smaller dimensions limited the size of the modules they could mount, and the maintenance module had only about twenty percent of an Ericsson’s machine shops and fabricator capacity. It also meant they could carry fewer spares than an Ericsson, even with a cargo module dedicated to that specific purpose, but the dorsal ribs extended beyond the outer profile of the modules—and the permanent hull section—and were fitted as full-length mooring points for the RMN’s standard CUMV(L)s. That created four “cargo racks” that provided a substantial external cargo-carrying capacity, since the various marks of Cargo Unmanned Vehicles (Large) could be used for spares—or for ammunition or general stores. They’d even been provided with a module suitable for turning them into long term LAC tenders…and they required less than a quarter of an Ericsson’s crew.

They also had military-grade sidewalls, and they were armed.

It had always been RMN policy that repair and ammunition ships had no business involving themselves in combat, to begin with, and that hull volume aboard a service ship was too valuable to waste on weapons they wouldn’t need. The Janacek Admiralty, however, had decided differently, and the Taylors were the result. The forward hull section contained a heavier armament than most light cruisers, taking full advantage of the RMN’s off-bore missile capability, and—as part of their Trojan DNA—eight launch bays for LACs.

The truth was that the Taylors had represented a solution in search of a problem, in Ginger’s opinion, when she’d first heard the scuttlebutt about them. She’d been able to imagine instances in which they’d be valuable, but those instances would be relatively rare, so she’d questioned the diversion of resources into their construction. Unfortunately—or fortunately, she supposed, depending upon one’s viewpoint—the class’s initial units had been well advanced when the People’s Republic of Haven reinitiated hostilities. They’d been pushed to completion to clear the slips for new war construction and, somewhat to the Navy’s (and Ginger Lewis’) surprise, they’d proved extremely useful. There were never enough Navy-owned service ships—especially with the Navy’s expanded role in Silesia, the acquisition of Talbott, and the enormous deployment of relatively light units as part of Operation Lacoön—and none of the “taken up from trade” merchant ships being pressed into service could possibly have matched a Taylor’s sheer versatility. And even though a Taylor cost a good bit more than a “regular” repair ship on a per-ton basis, it cost a lot less in absolute terms, even allowing for its armament and integral LAC squadron. That meant the Navy could build more of them, and despite their Janacek pedigree, BuShips was doing exactly that.

“Well, you’re about to see one from the inside,” Mathis told her.

“Yes, Sir,” she said. “I’m not really familiar with how the Taylors’ command structure’s arranged,” she continued. “How does the ship’s engineering department interface with the repair and support component?”

“It’s all one department,” Mathis replied. “The EO runs both sides of the shop.”

Ginger suppressed an automatic blink of surprise. It definitely hadn’t worked that way aboard Ericsson.

“Sir, I’ve never run a dedicated construction or repair department,” Ginger pointed out. “That’s one reason I was assigned to Weyland. I’ve spent almost my entire career in shipboard assignments. The way it was explained to me, BuPers detailed me to Weyland to pick up more ‘yard dog’ expertise, and I’d think that kind of background would be in demand running the engineers aboard something like a Taylor.”

“That’s all right, Captain. That’s not what you’re going to be doing.”

“It’s not?” Surprise startled the question out of her, and he snorted.

“No.” He shook his head. “What we have in mind for you, Captain Lewis, is something a little more challenging. Welcome to your new command.”

She stared at him in disbelief, and he lifted a chip folio from his blotter. He tossed it across to her, and she caught it automatically, still staring at him.

“I suggest you get started reading up on your new ship, Captain Lewis,” he told her dryly. “They’re holding a shuttle for you. If we’re lucky, there’ll be time for your personal gear to catch up, but I wouldn’t count on it. Hopefully, you'll have at least a few days—maybe even a couple of weeks—to settle in. It's definitely going to take me at least a day or two to round up the rest of your senior officers. But as soon as we can get her squared away, Charles Ward is going to be headed for Talbott.”

* * *

“Well, damn,” Henrique Chagas growled as the news feed scrolled up his display aboard the “Hauptman Cartel” freighter decelerating towards Thurso.

So much for this part of Operation Janus, he thought sourly. Crap.

It must have been an interesting call for the local news channels, he reflected. On the one hand, advertising to the galaxy at large that you’d just killed two or three million of your own citizens with kinetic strikes that took out entire cities wasn’t exactly good for your star system’s public image. On the other hand, driving that point home for anyone foolish enough to think about emulating Megan MacLean’s revolutionaries had to be pretty high on Tyler MacCrimmon’s to-do list. And since the “free and independent” news media of the Loomis System did exactly what the Loomis System’s government told it to do, that was exactly the message the newsies had delivered.

He froze the feed, looking at the imagery of the crater the KEWs had left where the city of Conerock used to be. There’d been no survivors at all from that one, according to the newsies, and it hadn’t been a lot better than that for any of the other targeted cities. That would have been more than enough, he was sure, to have ended the rebellion, but if official reports were to be believed, every single member of the LLF had been killed or captured following the government’s successful assault to retake control of Elgin. Megan MacLean, Erin MacFadzean, Tammas MacPhee, and Tad Ogilvy were all confirmed dead according to Senga MacQuarie’s official communiqués. There was no specific mention of Luíseach MacGill or her husband, which was an interesting omission, but it was depressingly clear the Loomis Liberation Front had been totally crushed.

And not one frigging mention of the Manties in any of this crap, he thought disgustedly. All that work right down the toilet! He glowered at the ugly hole where Conerock’s neat homes and families had once been and shook his head. You’d think they could’ve taken at least one of the bastards alive and gotten them to talk about their “Manticoran sponsors,” but, no! MacCrimmon and MacQuarie couldn’t even get that right!

He growled an obscenity, killed the feed, and punched in a com combination. The ship’s captain appeared on his display almost instantly, and Chagas smiled sourly at the worry in the other man’s eyes.

“Don’t sweat it, Captain,” he said. “Under the circumstances, there’s more than enough ‘local unrest’ hereabouts for a reasonable merchant skipper to give the system a miss until things settle down. Go ahead and jettison the arms shipment just in case, but I think the ‘Hauptman Cartel’ is going to pass on picking up this particular load of seafood.”

“Yes, Sir.” The captain made no effort to disguise his relief. “Back to Mesa, then, Sir?”

“Might as well,” Chagas said morosely. “This system’s a total bust.”

* * *

“Oh, damn,” Ginger Lewis muttered as the com signal pinged at her.

She thought about ignoring it—Captain Mathis had been right; she had a lot of reading to catch up on, she was due to go aboard Charles Ward in less than an hour, and her baggage hadn’t caught up with her—but for all she knew sanity had broken out at the Admiralty and one of Mathis’ superiors was screening her to tell her it had all been a mistake.

Part of her hoped that was exactly what it was.

The signal pinged again and she hit the acceptance key, opening a window in the corner of her display. Then she twitched upright in her shuttle seat.

“Ms. Terekhov!”

“I’ve told you before, Ginger. Ms. Terekhov is Aivars’ mother. My name is Sinead.”

“Well—” Ginger began, then stopped, closed her mouth, and smiled. “Sorry. I’ll try to remember, but it’s hard. I still think of you as ‘the Skipper’s wife,’ I’m afraid.”

“I understand, but I hope you’ll find it a little easier to think of me by my first name now that you’re a CO yourself.”

“You heard about that?” Ginger shook her head. “I think somebody’s made a serious mistake, to be honest.”

“Nonsense!” Sinead Terekhov said sternly. “That’s not a thought you’re allowed to entertain, young lady! When they pull out the captain’s chair for you, you sit, and whatever else you may do, you never let anyone think your posterior isn’t completely comfortable in it. I trust that’s clear?”

“Aye, aye, Ma’am,” Ginger acknowledged wryly, and Sinead snorted.

“Better. Honestly, Ginger, you’ll do just fine. I know you didn’t see it coming, but there are a lot of things we haven’t seen coming lately.”

“That’s for damned sure,” Ginger agreed. They gazed at each other for a handful of seconds, each of them thinking of all the people she’d never see again. Then Ginger cleared her throat.

“May I ask why you’ve screened me…Sinead?”

“Well, partly to congratulate you on your new command. My spies reported it to me about ten minutes ago.”

“Thank you.” Ginger’s smile was a bit lopsided. “They told me about it about twenty minutes before they told you about it!”

“The Navy can be like that even under normal circumstances. Under these, you’re lucky you got that much warning!”

“I know. But you said that was part of the reason you’d screened,” Ginger pressed and cocked one eyebrow. Sinead Terekhov had become one of her favorite people, but she did have all that reading to do.

“Well, the other reason was to ask you for a small favor,” Sinead said. “You see…”

* * *

The shuttle braked, then shivered as the boat bay tractors reached out and locked. Ginger put away her reader and gazed out the port, watching the bulkhead markings slide by as the shuttle moved vertically up the cavernous, brilliantly lit well of the bay. That bay was larger than most warships, even superdreadnoughts, boasted because of the outsized parasite work boats it was designed to host at need. Then the shuttle shivered again, harder, as the docking arms locked, the umbilicals engaged, and the boarding tube ran out.

Less than three hours had passed since the moment she walked into Captain Mathis’ office in Landing.

“Good seal, Ma’am,” the flight engineer announced.

“Thank you, Chief.” Ginger made herself sound calm, as if things like this happened to her every day, even as a little voice screamed that BuPers had made a dreadful mistake. But then she remembered her conversation with Sinead Terekhov, and smiled ever so slightly.

She waited until the petty officer unsealed the hatch, then reached for the grab bar and swung herself from the shuttle’s artificial gravity into freefall for the brief passage down the boarding tube to the boat bay gallery. She floated to the matching grab bar at the gallery end of the tube, caught it, and twisted, moving feet-first from the tube’s zero-grav into the gallery’s standard one gee. She landed with the graceful, spinal-reflex proficiency of thirteen T-years spent almost continuously on shipboard and saluted the absurdly young-looking midshipwoman wearing the brassard of the boat bay officer of the deck.

“Permission to come aboard, Ma’am?” she requested formally.

“Permission granted, Ma’am.” The youngster returning Ginger’s salute looked more than a little nervous, even uncertain, and Ginger suppressed an urge to pat her on the head and tell her everything would be all right.

Instead, she glanced at the midshipwoman’s nameplate and nodded as her brain pulled the information out of storage. Paula Rafferty, twenty-one T-years old, assigned to Charles Ward for her snotty cruise. She’d only come aboard the ship five days before the Yawata Strike, poor kid. And the only reason she was still alive was that, as the most recently arrived of the ship’s four midshipmen, she’d still been aboard when the others all drew leave aboard Hephaestus.

Snotty Row must feel like a mausoleum, Ginger thought compassionately. I wonder if the others’ effects have been cleared out yet? I guess that’s one of the things the new captain’s going to have to find out about.

“Thank you, Ms. Rafferty,” she said out loud and looked around the spotless gallery. The “new air car” smell of a ship fresh from the builders enveloped her, but aside from Rafferty and one maintenance tech, it was empty, with no sign of a proper side party or anyone senior to the midshipwoman.

“I’m sorry, Ma’am,” Rafferty said quickly. “We didn’t have notification you were aboard the shuttle until it was already docking. Commander Nakhimov is on his way, but—”

She broke off with visible relief as the nearest lift slid open. A lieutenant commander jogged out of it, and Ginger’s memory offered up another name. Dimitri Nakhimov—Dimitri Aleksandrovitch Nakhimov, actually—Charles Ward’s astrogator. He was about ten T-years younger than Ginger, with fair hair and gray eyes. He was also fifteen centimeters taller than she was, but very slightly built. He didn’t look fragile, precisely, but no one was ever going to mistake him for a native of Sphinx, she thought.

“Captain Lewis,” he said as he came to a halt. “I apologize for not meeting you, Ma’am! We didn’t know—”

“That’s all right, Mister Nakhimov,” Ginger interrupted. “Ms. Rafferty already explained about that.” She smiled crookedly. “I imagine it’s going to be a while yet before we get all the confusion cleared away.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Nakhimov acknowledged.

“I take it you’re the senior officer aboard?”

“Yes, Ma’am.” Nakhimov’s nostrils flared. “Actually, I’m the most senior officer period, I’m afraid.”

“I know.” Ginger nodded sympathetically, but her voice was cool and professional. “I only asked because I understand from BuPers that Commander Hairston is en route to us now. No one seemed to have an official ETA for him, though, and I wondered if he’d beaten me here. Obviously,” she smiled thinly, “he hasn’t. But I realize the ship’s casualties have been heavy, and I know that’s dropped a lot of responsibility on you—and on you, Ms. Rafferty,” she added, glancing at the midshipwoman. “According to BuPers, they’ve found most of the replacements we’re going to need.” Something flickered in Nakhimov’s eyes, and she faced him squarely. “I know it’s going to hurt to see so many strangers’ faces. Trust me, I’ve been there a time or two myself. But what matters right now is that the ship needs us…and she’s going to need them, too.