Defiant Read online

  “Aye, sir,” she said and went on her way. Then I headed up to the galleria to catch up with Karina and Zander.

  We had a quick meal before digging into the business at hand. Karina served Zander some of his favorite Sumatran coffee from a small stash we had onboard.

  “Thank you, Princess,” he said as she poured.

  “You’re supposed to stop calling me that. On Defiant I’m just a lowly lieutenant,” she complained in mock anger.

  “Sorry, uh, Lieutenant. Old habits die hard.”

  Presently Karina sat, and we got to it.

  “So, what do you expect from this conference with Wesley?” I asked.

  “I expect it to be a communiqué,” he replied between sips of coffee. “I doubt he’ll risk sending anything vital over the longwave ansible network. Most likely it will be an encrypted packet with new orders for you. I’m merely a bystander in these events.”

  “I doubt that,” said Karina.

  “You may be right, Prin— Lieutenant. I’m sure Vanguard will be under orders to bug out of this rock at the first sign of trouble.” I thought about that for a moment.

  “I hate to say it, but I’ve expected this. The weapons the Sandosans used on us were far more advanced than they had any business having, so I presume they had help. Imperial help,” I said. Zander nodded.

  “It seems likely they made a deal with them for improved technology, and likely the trade for that was your and the princess’s lives,” he said.

  “But they failed,” Karina commented.

  “Indeed,” said Zander. “I’ve analyzed the Imperial attack strategy. Very unusual. They didn’t commit a single living, breathing man or woman, just the suicide drones. And those things aren’t very effective at taking out sophisticated weapons like the ones Lightships have. I think this attack was aimed at you and your wife specifically. The Sandosans were just pawns they trusted to do the dirty work.”

  “I agree. But that’s just one part of it. If they’d wanted to take out Defiant, they would have needed a dreadnought at least. These other weapons seemed designed to catch us in our shuttles, when we were vulnerable,” I said. “If we hadn’t taken the initiative with the attack on the camp, I think those drones would have taken us both out on our way back to Defiant at the conclusion of negotiations.”

  “Seems a logical strategy. For assassination, anyway.”

  “You’re both so casual about this,” said Karina.

  “We’re both military men, Princess”—he missed that one—“and your husband is thankfully the suspicious kind.” I stood up and paced at this.

  “What?” asked Karina. I turned back to them but addressed Karina.

  “I want you to stay with Vanguard,” I said. She stood to her full five-foot-one height, seething.

  “No!” she said. “My place is on Defiant, with you.”

  “You’re a princess of Carinthia and the most valuable thing in the galaxy to me. The odds are that Wesley will order us to Skondar in search of Impulse II. That will be very dangerous, and the Empire just tried to kill you through agents on Sandosa,” I said.

  “But my place is with you,” she repeated. I shook my head.

  “Karina, Sandosa was only the first move. Likely Skondar is second, and God knows what is coming after that. Defiant is on a war footing, and I don’t want a princess, especially when she’s my wife, to be in the middle of a war zone,” I said.

  “I trained for this mission,” she said, much more calmly. “And I won’t let you take me out of it. I’m staying, and as a fellow sovereign, you can’t order me to leave this ship.” I looked to Zander, who shrugged.

  “I think she’s got you.” I turned back to my wife, unwilling to give in where her safety was concerned.

  “Yes, but as a lieutenant in the Union Navy, I can order your commission transferred to Captain Zander’s command,” I stated.

  She looked at me, not challenging me, but furious that I was trying to kick her aside. She mulled over my proposal for a moment, then said, “Very well. I will resign my commission in the Union Navy and hereby relinquish all rights and privileges bestowed upon me by my rank. I will stay aboard Defiant as a princess of the realm and as your wife. Just try ordering me off your ship now in either one of those roles,” she said. Then she sat down on our sofa and crossed her arms, fuming, and refusing to meet my eyes. I sat back down.

  “Well, that’s settled,” I said, but Karina wasn’t finished. She looked at me, eyes burning in anger.

  “Did you really think I’d let you go rescue your old girlfriend without me to watch over you two?” she asked. I shook my head.

  “No, I didn’t, and I was foolish to even try.”

  “You were,” she said. Then she got up and left the dining area for our bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

  “Well, I think that went well,” Zander deadpanned.

  “Finish your coffee,” I said. “And let’s go visit our Historians.”

  On the way to the Historian’s quarters I broached the subject of adding another squad of thirty-two marines from Vanguard. It took some horse-trading, but eventually Zander agreed, seeing as the six Wasps he had brought carried more than two hundred troops each besides the cultural and technical personnel.

  When we arrived at the Historian’s quarters, Gracel and Lenkowsky didn’t look happy to see us—but then, most Historians never looked happy. The style of Gracel’s public rooms was much different than Serosian’s had been. It was a much more minimalist style on what was essentially another spacecraft within Defiant. The room was mostly white with black trimmings with four club-style chairs laid out around a central table. Presently Zander and I sat down with the two Historians.

  “What’s our status?” I asked Gracel.

  “Upgrades are installed and calibrated, Captain,” she said, then stopped.

  “And . . . what are those upgrades?” I prodded her. She sat forward.

  “Generally, frequency modulation disruptors for your coil cannon arrays, enhanced jumping capabilities, and a weapon known as a torsion beam.”

  I tilted my head at her. “Well, generally that certainly sounds formidable, but what specifically can you tell me about each one?” I wasn’t here to dally. The call from Wesley was coming up in another few hours, and I wanted as much information as I could get before then.

  Gracel stayed silent for a moment, contemplating me, then proceeded. “The frequency modulation disruptors are keyed in through your coil cannon arrays. Essentially it’s a carrier wave that rides piggyback on your coil plasma. This wave rotates its frequency every few microseconds. This will allow it to disrupt any similar technology, like the kind the Empire has been using lately with their warheads, allowing you to shoot their incoming missiles out of space before they get near you. It could also be used against a Hoagland Field, or some such similar defense, to bore holes in their energy shield and allow your weapons to penetrate to their hull,” she said. “Your weapons officer will not have to engage this system; it will simply be a new component of the existing coil and antimissile defenses of Defiant.”

  “That is an enhancement. Thank you, Gracel,” I said. “I’d like that capability to be available in some of our missile warheads as well, just as a backup method of delivery.”

  She nodded. “Will a hundred be enough?” she asked. I smiled.

  “It will.” I looked at Lenkowsky, but he said nothing, so I turned back to Gracel. “What can you tell me about the drive enhancements?” I asked. Gracel continued.

  “Simply put, point-to-point jumping will now be available to you, Captain. Defiant won’t need to waste hours after a jump to navigate to a High Station or an enemy target. With our enhanced ansible and probe network, we’ve now mapped out in detail every star system within a more than fifty light-year sphere around Earth. We can place you in nearly any position wit
hin a system, as long as we have about half an AU barrier around you when you jump in. This jump system displaces a lot of normal space with jump space, but it dissipates rapidly. Still, the effects of a displacement wave can be uncomfortable even on shielded ships.”

  “So I guess what you’re saying is don’t jump in too close to a friendly,” said Zander.

  “Exactly, Captain,” replied Gracel.

  “What about jumping out?” I asked.

  “The same general rules apply to proximity,” she said. “The ship’s drives will generate a hyperspace bubble around the vessel using the Hoagland Field as a limiting barrier, and once you press the go button, you’ll be gone in microseconds.”

  “And how is this system accessed?”

  “Through the longscope, of course. Your astrogator will bring up spatial coordinates from our network, and the ’scopeman will verify, integrate, and execute,” she said. That reminded me that I’d just lost my most experienced ’scope officer, a relationship I would have to repair in more ways than one.

  I looked to Lenkowsky again. So far he had said nothing, so I asked him directly, “Tell me about the torsion beam.”

  Lenkowsky merely stared at me as Gracel stepped in again.

  “There was much debate about giving you this weapon, Captain, about whether you were even trustworthy enough to be given this much power. In the end your Admiral Wesley convinced the Order to release it for use on Defiant and Defiant only,” she said.

  “What’s this?” said Zander, practically growling at her.

  She snapped around at him with a quickness that reminded me of a snake striking at its prey. “Your Admiral agreed to these terms—in fact, he was the one who proposed them—so complain to him, Captain Zander, not to me.”

  Zander let out a rough grunt of derision, then quieted as Gracel turned back to me.

  “The torsion beam is the most powerful weapon we have ever entrusted to the Union, Captain Cochrane, and also the most dangerous,” she said.

  “How does it work?” I asked.

  “It’s not important how it works, Captain,” said Lenkowsky, finally speaking. “It’s how you learn to use it in battle.”

  I thought that was a very stark statement, and his tone made it feel like a warning. I found that I didn’t like him much. Gracel certainly had more charm going for her, even if she was much more distant to me personally than Serosian had ever been.

  I waited for Gracel to continue.

  “I won’t go into too many technical details, because quite frankly, I don’t know them. Torsion is essentially the energy created by the rotation of a highly magnetized object. We use these rotating magnetic cores in all of our interstellar drives and our energy weapons; even the guidance systems for our missiles and torpedoes have magnetic cores in them. When a Lightship spins up the Hoagland Drive, essentially what we’re doing is rotating a magnetic core and energizing a magnetic field. The crystalline structure of the drive components acts as an energy conductor for the magnetic field energy, which can then be channeled to either the drive components or to generate a field around the ship. This magnetic field, the Hoagland Field, is then extended around the ship, creating a ‘bubble’ of normal space in our dimension that protects the ship. Eventually, as I understand it, the energy created by the torsion becomes so great that the drive opens a singularity to a higher dimension, a hyperdimension, and we can jump through it.”

  I nodded for her to continue.

  “The torsion beam is generated the same way, by our own magnetic drives. Because it uses the internal singularity to pull in energy from the hyperdimension, its power is essentially limitless, but it does have other limitations. It’s not an energy weapon, so it can’t be used to, say, have a shootout with another ship. Rather, it is a field generation device that can focus that field on a specific target, as long as that target has a rotating magnetic core,” she said.

  “Missiles, torpedoes, HuKs, drones, dreadnoughts, and the like,” said Zander.

  “Yes,” cut in Lenkowsky, “or even other Lightships.” I didn’t miss the obvious implications of that statement.

  “Or planets,” I said. I looked directly at Gracel. “What would happen—”

  “If you used it on a planet?” she interrupted. “You could accelerate the spin rate of the planetary core. The target world would be ripped apart from the inside out in mere minutes.”

  The room got silent then.

  “That is not the intended purpose of this weapon, Captain,” said Lenkowsky in a much softer tone. “Your Admiral Wesley requested a weapon so that you could hunt Prince Arin. This is what we gave him. Its other potentialities will hopefully never have to be used.”

  “How will it be integrated through Defiant’s weapons systems?” I asked Gracel.

  “It will be an additional option on the gravity weapons display. It can be charged and queued up on the longscope, then firing command will be transferred from there to your console. Only you can use this weapon, Captain,” she said.

  “I understand. Will you be regulating my access to the weapon?”

  “No,” she said. “It will be available to you at any time. The power, and the responsibility of using it, will be solely yours.”

  I thanked her and Lenkowsky, and then Zander and I departed. As we silently walked down the galleria together, I was deep in thought. Then Zander spoke.

  “Looks to me as though you’d better get your longscope officer back in the fold,” he said.

  “It’s my top priority before we hear the communiqué from Wesley,” I said. Zander looked at his watch.

  “Two more hours, laddie. My boss has already insisted on sitting in on the meeting, along with his Special Secretary,” he said.

  “I understand. We’ll prep the command deck briefing room for the five of us,” I said.

  “Five? Including your wife?”

  “No,” I said. “Including my most experienced longscope officer, who also happens to be a princess of Carinthia.”

  And with that we walked silently together into the unknown.

  When I went back to the stateroom, Karina was busy reorganizing her clothes, specifically setting aside her dress and duty uniforms.

  “Karina, we have to talk,” I said. She turned back to me, garments in hand.

  “About what, honey?” she said sarcastically, like an adoring wife. I came in and sat down on the edge of bed, facing her.

  “About your resignation,” I said.

  “What about it?” she replied without looking back at me, casually sorting through her collection of blouses.

  “I want you to rescind it.”

  “Oh, that,” she said, then pulled out the blue dress from the Sandosa dinner and turned to me. “I’d rather like to keep this. I know they were awful people, but I think it looks fantastic on me, don’t you agree?”

  I nodded yes. She turned and put it back in the closet. I took my chance to take her by the arm and sit her down next to me.

  “Karina, this is serious business. We could be in grave danger. The Union, I mean. I want to protect you above all else, you know that. I love you. I want you to be the mother of our future children, but right now I need you here on Defiant as an officer, not as a princess,” I said.

  “I’m afraid your actions haven’t left me any other role but that of princess,” she replied. I stood up.

  “There are new weapons, powerful weapons. Weapons that require an experienced longscope officer to manage them. Without that experience, we could all be in great danger.”

  “You’re not just saying this to get me back on your bridge deck, are you?”

  “Well, yes and no. I need you. Defiant needs you. Hell, all of the Union needs you at your post. Now, will you put on your uniform again or not?”

  She looked up at me. “You’re serious.”

 
“As much as I’ve ever been.”

  She pulled her uniforms closer to her, rubbing the green fabric between her fingers, then hung them up again. “When do I report?”

  I looked at my watch. “Ninety minutes. In the briefing room. We’re expecting Wesley’s communiqué packet then.”

  She turned back to me. “I’ll be there,” she said.

  “We’ll talk about the other issues . . . later. When there’s more time.”

  “There’s never more time, Peter,” she said. That was true enough. I pulled her in and kissed her on the forehead.

  “Thank you. I’ll be on the bridge.”

  “Aye, sir,” she said. I gave her a quick smile—all that I could manage—and made for my captain’s chair.

  I entered the briefing room ten minutes early, expecting it to be empty except for the techs setting up the call receiver. I was wrong. Zander was there. I sat down next to him, at the head of the table.

  “Any last words of wisdom?” I asked. He shook his head.

  “None I can think of, lad. This is going to be your situation to handle. Wesley will want me to keep station here, oversee the rebuilding of Sandosa while you do the dangerous work. Not three years ago it would’ve been the other way around. Such is my lot in life,” he said.

  “Well,” I replied, “if this get as sticky as I think it might, we’ll see each other again sooner than you might think.” He just nodded at that.

  Shortly Harrington came in, accompanied by the Special Secretary, and sat down without saying hello. Zander and I both stood as she entered, then repeated the gesture when Karina followed half a minute later. I was glad to see my wife in her duty uniform, at least for now. The truth, though, was that I wanted her off this ship and back to the safety of Quantar as quickly as I could make it happen. She was my wife, after all, and a princess, both roles for which I valued her highly.

  Once the techs were done, I ordered them out of the room and locked the door, activating the room’s security protocols. Then I called up to Ensign Lynne Layton at the com station.