Defiant Page 7

  “Tell me something I don’t know.” It came out a bit harsher than I wanted, so I set the office screen to opaque and offered Pendax’s chief merchant a drink. He favored our Quantar Shiraz, so I was more than glad to share one with him. Then I got down to business.

  “Where are my survey teams, Mr. Harrington? What do you know of this Sandosa government?” I asked.

  Harrington sighed. “All I really know is what we’ve been able to communicate by com and visual longwave up until now. They are interested in trade, surely, but how much they really have to give—besides female immigrants—is unknown. From your own survey team’s early reports, they have nothing close to hyperdimensional technology resembling ours or First Empire utility. That should make the system safe for our negotiations,” he said.

  “‘Should’ is an imprecise word that I have never liked, Mr. Harrington. The survey teams are now nearly a week overdue to report, and Sandosa shouldn’t have anything that could detect, deflect, or block a longwave signal or packet or disable a Historian network ansible. In short, unless they have been taken captive and their communications devices disabled or destroyed, they should have reported by now.” He had nothing to say to that.

  We drank for ten more minutes, making small talk, when the breakthrough came.

  Karina called me on my desk com to report they had picked up a signal. I dissolved the office screen, and Harrington and I rejoined Karina, Layton, and Gracel at the longscope station. Lena Babayan followed a few seconds later.

  “Report,” I demanded of my longscope officer.

  “Gracel found a packet embedded in some low-level telemetry. The ansible was knocked offline about twelve days ago, probably by a collision with a small meteor. They’ve been using an embedded longwave packet in something known as radio frequency radiation signals to try and contact us. Since this is an archaic technology, we didn’t even know the signals were being sent,” Karina said.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant,” I said. “That explains the technical side of things. Now what about the signals themselves? What do they say?”

  Babayan jumped in. “All conditions normal on Sandosa, sir. They remain anxious to greet us and begin negotiations at the first opportunity,” she said. “They have even provided us a preferred vector to approach the planet, sir.”

  “Thank you, XO,” I said. “Hold status.” Then I headed off to my office with Gracel without giving any further orders, expecting my crew to wait. Once we were in private, I gave the Historian my instructions.

  “Plot us a variant course that follows their preferred path as closely as possible. I want us to avoid any moons, space stations, or asteroids that might house weapons that could be used against us,” I said.

  “You don’t trust them?” Gracel asked.

  “I didn’t say that, Historian. I just want options. Arrange a coded signal that I can transmit to you to overtake the helm onto that variant course in an emergency. Understood and agreed, Historian?”

  She nodded, but I said nothing more.

  “Understood and agreed, Captain,” she finally said.

  “Thank you, Gracel.” With that I disengaged the privacy screen and returned to my bridge while she departed for the lifter to begin her work.

  “Helm,” I called to George Layton.

  “Aye, sir,” he responded.

  “How long to Sandosa using their preferred path at our current speed?” Layton looked at his display readouts.

  “I make it approximately twenty-one hours, sir,” he replied. I nodded.

  “Set our speed to make planet fall in fourteen hours,” I ordered.

  “Sir,” cut in Duane Longer. “We can get there much faster if we use—”

  “I’m aware of our propulsion options, Lieutenant. Please carry out my orders precisely,” I said. I turned to Babayan. “XO, call up second shift personnel immediately. All senior bridge personnel are on a twelve-hour break. No more than four hours of R&R, and no less than eight hours of sleep. I want us to be top-shelf ready when we arrive at Sandosa. All senior officers and department heads should stay on yellow status during the rest period. First shift resumes at 0800 tomorrow,” I finished. That would give us two full hours before arrival at Sandosa.

  “Aye, sir,” replied Babayan as she began calling up the second shifters and dismissing the senior staff. Harrington nodded to me as I made one more trip to my office. When full security was engaged again, I called back down to my marine commander on the voice com.

  “Marker here, sir,” came his gravel-rough voice.

  “I want you to prep one of the gunships we loaded at Candle with a tech crew and make for that damaged ansible. I want a full assessment of how and why it became inoperative,” I ordered.

  “Yes, sir. Do you suspect sabotage, sir?”

  “I suspect everything, John. If the damage is a natural malfunction, as the reports say, then I want the report by 0800. If it’s anything less than fully natural, I want to be notified immediately by longwave com. Now get that crew out there. They have four hours.”

  “Yes, sir. Anything else?”

  I hesitated for a moment.

  “I want all of your ships fully outfitted for combat operations by the time we arrive at Sandosa. No less than ten minutes to clearing the deck of all vehicles after any distress call,” I said.

  “You expecting trouble on Sandosa, sir?” asked Marker.

  “Expect? I don’t know. But something tells me we should be prepared for any eventuality on this trip.”

  “Intuition, sir?” Marker pressed.

  “If you like,” I replied. Then I cut the com and headed off the bridge for my stateroom.

  I woke a full ninety minutes before first shift started in a raging sweat and with a pounding heart. My dreams had been fitful and once again full of imploding dreadnoughts and the screams of dying people I had never heard and that I had never met nor even seen. The PTSD I had denied existed for so long was still there, heightened by my unease over this Sandosa mission. I slipped out of bed and put on casual fatigues, stopping only to brush my teeth and take another look at the bottle of pills the doctors had prescribed back on Carinthia. I shut the drawer, slipped on my boots, and quietly shut the door behind me as I made my way out of officer country and down to the private observation lounge near the stern. I rang once and got no response, so I opened the door and went inside. The lounge was empty. I set the privacy lock for thirty minutes, the maximum, and then found a single-seat enclosure, turning the view to the beautiful passing stars.

  I took the lotus position, as Serosian had trained me to do so long ago, back on Quantar. I went through my mind, clicking off my concerns for the day one by one on a mental checklist, then throwing those thoughts outward to the passing stars to let them go. I gave special attention to the fate of the dreadnoughts and their crews and my still-strong guilt about my actions, actions which I believed to be right but which had cost me my mentor and friend.

  Then I turned to receiving, to quieting my mind and opening myself to my meditations, breathing deeply and regularly, slowing my heart back to its normal, healthy rhythm, and discarding the anxiety. Once I was free of my concerns and found myself literally floating along in space, inside the vessel I commanded, a thought came to my mind.

  You are a very lucky man.

  I smiled at that, and a few seconds later the quiet two-minute chime rang. I stretched my body and filled my lungs with deep breaths, then came back to my world and my ship.

  As I exited the lounge, others were waiting outside, some for morning prayers, some no doubt for meditation, others for a last bit of intimacy before the day began. As they greeted me I nodded to them all but did not reply; I wasn’t on duty yet, and neither were they. It reminded me—and them, I hoped—that we were all equal, just simple men and women navigating the massive waters of the universe in the tiny boat we all shared
.

  I slipped quietly back into the stateroom and heard the sound of Karina running the shower water. I slipped out of my fatigues to wait my turn, laying down on the bed. But she was having none of that.

  She peeked her forehead, soaking-wet hair, and eyes over the glass door of the shower. It reminded me of how tiny she really was. “Get in here, Captain. That’s an order,” she said.

  “I thought I’d wait until you finished,” I replied. She shook her head.

  “No chance. Move it, mister.”

  With no possibility of talking her out of it, I slipped into the shower next to her, but instead of giving me room under the showerhead, she spun around in front of me and gently bit me on the shoulder. It was curious foreplay.

  “Karina, I’ve got no time for play this morning,” I protested.

  “And you didn’t last night, either,” she said, clearly disappointed. “You’re salty. Were you dreaming again? The sweats?” I pushed myself under the showerhead and let the water run over my head and face.

  “Yes, if you must know.”

  “And?”

  “And I did my meditation.”

  “Did it work?”

  “For now,” I said, then handed her the shampoo. “Now if you don’t mind, the captain needs his hair washed and his back scrubbed.”

  “Oh, now that it’s your needs, it’s a priority,” she said.

  “Just wash, woman,” I said. “I’ve got less than an hour to be on duty.”

  “Same here,” she said, then gave me a smack on the ass that I probably deserved.

  I was on the bridge ten minutes before the day shift officially began. I’d left Karina in my wake, as she was still messing with her makeup for the day. It made her mad that I’d left without her, as we usually came to the bridge together as a show of unity. But today I had more serious things on my mind. I went straight to my office after acknowledging the last of the night crew and put up the aural shield, but I left the visual mode open to the bridge so that I could watch the comings and goings and everyone could see me. I checked my message coms on my desk panel and found nothing out of the ordinary except an acknowledgment by Gracel that she had corrected our course three times during the night, each time to avoid a potentially threatening object. But in each case her scans had come back negative for hyperdimensional activity, meaning no Imperial presence, at least for the moment. I voice-commed her a thank-you, but when I looked up from my display she was already on the bridge at her station. She gave no acknowledgment of receiving my message, so I just assumed we were on the same page. I scrolled through the messages on my monitor and found another com from John Marker stating “ANSIBLE SURVEY NEGATIVE” in the subject line and nothing else but his usual sign-off. Normally I would let it pass, but today was not going to be a normal day.

  I tapped my ear com and said his name out loud. He came on the line a second later.

  “Good morning, Captain,” he said, a bit smug. “Did you rest well?”

  “As well as could be expected under the circumstances, Chief,” I replied.

  “Good to hear, sir.” Now that the phony pleasantries were over . . .

  “I’d like some more details on the ansible run, if you please,” I said.

  Marker cleared his throat. “Of course, sir. The tech crew got to the ansible in about four hours. It didn’t take long for them to determine what the problem was. There was a cricket-ball-sized hole in the thing, sir. Went right through the central processor unit.”

  “Coil rifle fire?”

  “Negative, sir.” I could almost see him shaking his head at that. “There were no discernible traces of energy weapons fire, sir. They reported back to me, and I had them swap out a replacement CPU. Took them some time to get it properly calibrated, but once they did it fired right up, and now it’s purring like a warm kitten on a cold winter’s day, sir.”

  “I take it they’re on the way back now?”

  “Yes, sir, about two hours and forty-five minutes out at three-quarters speed.” I thought about that.

  “Tell them to take it up to full burn. I want them back here before anyone on Sandosa can get a full look at one of our gunships. And I want that ship turned around in thirty minutes for full marine operations, just in case,” I said.

  “Yes, sir. If I may ask, what is it about this situation that concerns you so much, sir?” I pondered that for a moment before responding.

  “The fact that there was no coil fire residue doesn’t mean that the ansible couldn’t have been disabled from its primary function with intent. Someone could have used a kinetic weapon on it to simulate a natural malfunction,” I said.

  “You mean like a rock or some kind of grapeshot, sir?”

  “Or a cricket ball, John. Are we running our standard in-system debris screens?” The debris screens were a low-level electronic field designed to clear a ship’s path through normal space. Not high tech or high-powered, but useful enough to take out anything smaller than a two-person ground car.

  “Aye, sir, we are,” Marker said.

  “Relay to the XO to raise the sweep level to max. I don’t want any surprises.”

  “Will do, sir,” he replied. I thought about having him up on the bridge at his weapons station when we arrived at Sandosa, but then I decided that if we did need marine help at any point, I wanted him as close to his shuttles, gunships, and men as I could get him.

  “All as ordered, Master Chief,” I said by way of signing off.

  “All as ordered, sir,” he echoed, then cut the line.

  I looked out to my bridge and then to my watch. The day crew were all at their stations, waiting for my call to make the shift change. I still had forty seconds. I shut down the aural screen and made my way down to my chair, which sat empty at all times except when I was present.

  I sat down. “XO,” I called to Lena Babayan. She came up.

  “Sir.”

  “Day shift begins.”

  “Aye, sir.” Then she repeated my words to the bridge crew and again on the shipwide com. The bridge became a bustle of noise and activity as the night shift crew was relieved by the day shift and relinquished its stations. The change was done in less than two minutes. Babayan took her station next to me.

  “Day shift underway, Captain,” she stated. “Debris screens at full as requested.”

  “Acknowledged,” I replied. “I think it’s going to be an interesting day, XO.”

  At Sandosa

  Ninety minutes later, the gunship was neatly tucked away in our Landing Bay being prepped for full marine missions, including combat operations, and we were on final approach to Sandosa. At twenty minutes to our designated orbit point above the capital city of New Seville, the Sandosans got hold of us via a standard com wave. Not very advanced. Usually a longwave signal would be appropriate protocol, but they had what they had.

  In a very formal manner and with some broken Standard, the message very politely invited us down to New Seville at our earliest convenience. It was 0400 local time there, but they seemed eager to meet regardless of the hour.

  I had Babayan send a message informing them we’d like to make one run around the planet for a geological survey to match historic records, but it was also a chance to scan their satellite network, space defenses, and level of technology. I made her promise them we would be down at the capital at their designated coordinates in three hours max.

  They politely and excitedly accepted.

  Admar Harrington called up from his stateroom and asked permission to talk with his trading contacts. I agreed, as long as my Intel team got to monitor all communications. He was a bit put out at that but agreed to my conditions nonetheless.

  Next I called for a senior staff meeting to discuss final strategy. Fifteen minutes later we were all in the command deck briefing room.

  “John,” I said, looking d
own the table at Marker. “What’s our passenger capacity for this first trip?”

  “I wouldn’t be comfortable with fewer than a dozen marines going down fully geared, sir, and that doesn’t count me,” he said.

  “Light arms on your person, please, Master Chief,” I said.

  “Sir,” he responded quickly. I could see from his face that he wasn’t pleased, but he was my marine commander, not one of the grunts.

  “So that leaves twenty-four seats, then. Myself, you, Harrington, and the Special Secretary. Gracel is five, and I don’t want you flying, John,” I stated.

  “Private Verhunce can fly her, sir,” suggested Marker.

  “I can fly a damn shuttle,” said George Layton from the end of the table. I considered his request, and it made sense. He was our best pilot.

  “Okay, Commander Layton, then,” I said. “But make sure Verhunce is one of your twelve marines. It doesn’t hurt to have backup.”

  “What about me?” interrupted Karina with some force. “I’m not needed on the longscope now that we’re in orbit, and I am still a princess of Carinthia.”

  I looked around the room, sizing up the mood before I spoke. Everyone was dead still. They knew this was a personal issue as well as a professional one. “You’re also my wife. And I don’t like risking you so soon,” I said. “If you could wait until we can assess the situation on the ground?”

  “You know how I hate waiting,” she responded, more on a personal level than a professional one.

  “Captain,” piped in Babayan. “I assume you’re leaving me in command in this scenario. But may I remind you that if you do, you won’t have a single high-ranking Carinthian among the diplomatic contingent to make first contact.”

  “She’s right!” piped in Karina. I put my hand to my forehead and sighed. There was a round of laughter. Everyone was jockeying for position.

  “Lieutenant Commander Layton, you’re staying for now.”