The Expansion Box Set, page 37
part #1 of The Expansion Series
Nicola Halstead shut her mouth, then opened it again to push her luck.
“In that case, I want to command the mission.”
Dassiova readied, aimed, and fired his trademark glare. She didn’t falter one bit under his oppressive stare, which perturbed him a little.
“You are aware that this is this the UNPF? That I’m still the fleet admiral and that you are still a frigate captain?” he asked her dangerously.
“Yes, sir, I am. I also formally request that my crew fulfill the Norton’s final mission.”
“If I say ‘granted,’ ” Dassiova asked stiffly, “will you stop eyeballing me like that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You can command the mission, but Captain Torres will be your second-in-command and your crew will be a skeleton crew sufficient only to pilot the Norton into position before you make your escape back here and we can all go home for medals.”
“And you can guarantee that I’ll be back with the next fleet with a new ship?” she asked, pressing her advantage.
“I cannot guarantee anything, Captain,” Dassiova said testily. “But you have my word that I will do everything in my power to make good on what I offered. This is the UN; we’re not pirates who can just make our ransom demands. I have to sell it to the powers-that-be based on the heroism and selfless sacrifice of you and your crew.”
Silence hung in the room as Halstead turned to fire a full broadside of stink-eye at Torres.
“You better tell me your plan then, Commander.”
44
Deep Orbit of Alpha Centauri
Eight Days Later
They had made a four-minute jump to get from the dull red dwarf at the fringes of the system to the brighter of the twin suns. From that deep space infiltration point they travelled half a million kilometers until Torres called an all-stop.
“Power everything down,” he said softly. “Activate the shroud.”
The Ichi went into emergency power mode. Paterson had suggested this when he had retrofitted the device copied from the Kuldar’s small ship and aligned it to their main power source and shield generator. All pieces now hummed the same tune.
“Tactical: give me passive long-range sensor sweeps at minimum intervals.”
The officer at the tactical station aye-aye’d him and tapped at the screen. The passive sensors were reactive only, but to use their active sensor pulses would be to ring the dinner gong for any Va’alen in the sector. Beside him, radiating anger that didn’t require the projective telepathic power of the Kuldar to detect, sat Captain Halstead.
“How long do we wait?” she asked, criticism heavy in her words.
Torres doubted that she would ever forgive him for his plan to intentionally destroy her ship.
“Tactical?” he said without actually answering her. It was his bridge after all. “Time to the gateway device and the Va’alen hub at non-FTL from here?”
“Stand by.”
“A little over three hours, sir.”
“We wait three and a half hours,” Torres announced. “Then we can move.”
Halstead took a long breath in through her nose and let it out. Such a sigh spoke more about her feelings for Torres than mere words could have achieved.
After two hours sitting in the dull silence at battle stations, Torres ordered the teams on the gun positions to rotate. Halstead shot him a questioning look.
“Fresh eyes,” he responded. “Need to stay sharp. And two hours looking down the HUD sights on alert saps a person’s strength.”
Halstead huffed slightly, unclear as to whether she was dismissing his orders as frivolous or unnecessary, or whether she begrudgingly accepted the logic in them.
“You served much time as a ground-pounder?” Torres asked her quietly, trying to make conversation.
Halstead turned to answer but hesitated. “You tell me. You’ve read my file, right? You UNID types like to know all the details about your allies.”
“Who said I was UNID?” he asked. She merely raised an eyebrow to dismiss his question as a stupid one. “I’ve not had that pleasure,” he said in a tone that he intended to be smooth but came across as a little aloof. “I’ve not had reason to.”
He could have accessed her confidential personnel report at any time given his UNID clearance levels. If he really wanted to, he could get to the really juicy bits that are redacted from almost every other security access level, like the transcripts from mandatory psych reports and access to personal comm device records.
“I…” She hesitated again, then continued brusquely as if the information she was about to give was of no consequence. “I went to sea as a lieutenant. Comm and helm specialisms. Never went back to the units.”
“So, you’ve been doing Red Runs and lunar patrols all this time?”
“No,” she said, not bothering to hide her annoyance at his words. “I’ve been doing deep-system reconnaissance missions, running security for science vessels as well.”
“Nice,” Torres said. “So when did you get the Norton?”
“Listen, asshole,” she hissed at him. Her temper finally broke when his casual small talk mentioned the ship she was about to lose.
“Contact detected!” the tactical officer reported.
Both captains looked to the displays beside their chairs. The officer called out the bearing and put it on screen. Nothing showed, only the faintest ripples as the cloaked ships distorted the light of a few distant stars.
“Just one contact,” Torres said, “but we can assume that’s a small pack of four Va’alen ships. People, it’s safe to say that they can detect the presence of a ship jumping in but don’t have FTL capability in their small ships. Keep an eye on them, Tac. I want to know if they get our scent and head this way.”
“And if they do?” Halstead asked Torres.
“What would you suggest?”
She snorted, knowing that he was intentionally blowing smoke up her ass when he could’ve just given the answer. “Then we jump towards the objective, ping as many active sensor sweeps as we can before they launch fighters at us, and jump back out.”
“Good plan.” Torres smiled at her, infuriating her even further. He knew he should lay off, should stop goading the fierce Australian woman.
He had resisted the urge to pull her file, even when he found himself with a small window of time within the previous week that had been a manic rush of constant, round-the-clock work. They had fitted the shroud to the Ichi with surprisingly few problems. That in itself sparked fear—if something was too easy, then it was probably wrong. The team took it all apart and refitted everything on his orders to be absolutely certain. When they tested it, they found only a ten percent drop in auxiliary power and had hailed the Venture to see if they had her on any sensors. They tested everything for a day and a half; how fast they could travel before they were visible, what sensors they could use without showing an energy reading in a ship actively looking for them. They fired weapons to see how visible that made them, and eventually they came up with a protocol to be followed when shrouded.
Dassiova, despite his nature and his position, was impressed. Both with the technology and with how fast the engineers in his fleet had built and retrofitted it to the recon ship.
He ordered the team responsible for it, under the leadership of a scientist who had also served under him long ago, to ship immediately to the Venture where they could join the other teams working constantly to fix up the Norton and fit her with the same kind of device.
He had ordered every supply, almost every round of heavy ship ammunition and all but two of her remaining guns to be offloaded. The crew had been pressed into temporary service elsewhere with the majority going to the Hammer to best utilize their expertise with frigates.
Halstead had made a promise to her crew. They had conducted a ceremony in which they honored the dead, burying those at sea for whom they had bodies and remembering those whose lives had ended horribly when the decks lost containment and they were sucked into the vacuum of space. She had promised them a new ship, to be reunited with the rest of the surviving crewmembers, and she had promised them that she would be back with them, by whatever means necessary. They had cheered her, humbling the other captains with a crew’s dedication to their leader. She had stepped down from the podium with only the most fleeting of dirty looks being fired at Torres.
“Sir, it looks like they’re… de-cloaking…?” the tactical officer said uncertainly.
“On screen,” Torres ordered, standing to take a pace toward the large display. There he saw four of the Va’alen ships split apart and fly in different directions in pairs.
“Why do they shroud as one?” Halstead asked as she stepped up beside him.
“I do not know,” Torres mused slowly. “Perhaps they have to combine their fields or something? Perhaps it’s tactical?”
“Whatever,” Halstead answered. “There’s your answer; they can’t find any breadcrumbs to follow. Helm? Set a course fo—” She stopped, turning to look at Torres with a mixture of apology and shock as she had fallen into the command she had held naturally for so long.
“I apologize, Captain,” she said quietly but humbly.
“No apology necessary,” Torres muttered back to her. He had only been a captain for a few weeks but already the ship and her crew felt like his children. He could not imagine how bad it would feel when they got back, and he found himself demoted in place of a more experienced leader.
“Set a course for the gateway, one-half speed,” he ordered, erring on the side of caution. He knew they could travel at close to three-quarters speed without detection.
“Course laid in, sir,” the helmsman responded. “ETA seven hours and forty minutes.”
“Good work,” Torres said aloud to the bridge. “Tac, you keep a close eye on those bugs and call me if any of them head after us. Mister Sarvanto, you have the bridge. Remind Commander Brandt to rotate the gunners every two hours.”
He turned to Halstead, gesturing for her to lead on toward the captain’s cabin. She nodded her thanks and stepped confidently through the doors. Torres followed, pouring coffee into two mugs from the permanently lukewarm pot that he never quite figured out how to turn up.
“You stayed a ground-pounder, didn’t you?” she asked him as she sipped her drink and winced at the temperature.
Torres sipped his own and pulled a similar face, holding out a hand for her cup to throw them both into the small sink and start a fresh pot.
“Yeah, I actually served under Dassiova on the lunar surface about eight years ago when that big terror attack happened,” he said. “I was a fresh ensign then, and man was I scared…”
His honesty intrigued her, and she leaned back to regard him with something resembling fresh eyes.
“And after that?” she asked.
“After that I got shipped back to Earth, got a medal for shooting a terrorist when I wasn’t even sure I had my eyes open when I pulled the trigger. Got a bump to LT through OTA Colima.” He paused, decanting the instant coffee into two cups and sitting back down opposite her. “After that I trained and studied harder than ever and made CP. Hit lieutenant commander after another three years, not that the rank mattered in CP as I was still working for a Chief PO but at least the pay increased some. I did a few Red Runs and qualified for command at sea, went back home and got my own CP command and then… I got posted elsewhere.”
“You got drafted by UNID,” Halstead said, accepting the fresh cup and levelling the statement as an accusation.
“As a UN military advisor.”
“As a spook,” she shot back.
Torres chewed the inside of his cheek as he ran through his available options of responses. He chose to move on and ignore the comment.
“And now I’m here,” he said. “I made commander on a technicality so as to be in mission command prior to the test flights for the Ichi and when it all hit the fan on the moon I was the ranking officer onboard.”
“But you weren’t, though, were you? Brandt is the senior commander, isn’t she?” Again, her question was an arrow-straight statement of fact.
“Yes, but she never qualified for ship command, because she chose CP instead.”
“Yeah, to avoid doing waste runs in charge of a tub taking dried pasta to Mars with two lame troops under her command…”
Seeing Torres’s expression in response to her mockery made her think that she’d made a mistake by insulting the woman who everyone knew was a fast-tracked officer candidate. Like other tracks, Brandt had attracted scorn everywhere she went. Nobody thought she’d stick around long enough to care about those under her command before she got shipped to the next job. It was well known that when tracks hit rank they were usually pushed off into political roles ready to leave the service and take up office somewhere, but those who weren’t that connected usually faced the worst commands in the solar system.
“I…” Halstead began before trailing off.
“Leslie Brandt is an outstanding soldier who is totally committed to the corps and her mission. She’s an asset to my crew, and she’s my friend. You know we served together on the moon when the terrorists attacked us? You know she took a few bullets for that and earned her way into OTA with me? There are tracks and there are tracks. She’s a fine commander and you’d do much worse than to have someone like her in charge of your ground-pounders.”
“I’m sorry, Kyle,” she said, surprising him that she even knew his first name. “I didn’t mean to cause offence. I didn’t know you were close.”
Another accusation tinged her words and Torres’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“It’s not that, either,” he told her.
She was saved having to respond when the buzzer sounded from his door.
“Yeah,” he yelled informally into the intercom that automatically came to life when the door was buzzed. He continued to surprise the older captain with how easy he took to ship command. In walked a beautiful young woman with soft brown skin so smooth it didn’t seem natural. She was dressed in armor minus the helmet and bore the insignia of the CP teams with Viper stenciled on her right breast.
She even looks like a Viper, Halstead thought.
The woman walked in speaking but stopped and stared at Halstead like she was a target as she sat comfortably opposite the captain.
“My apologies, Captain,” she said in an African accent much softened by living in a different territory; probably Britain if Halstead’s ears were to be trusted. “I did not know you had company. I will leave.”
“No, Eze, it’s fine. Lieutenant Amare Eze, Captain Nicola Halstead.”
Halstead stood, offering her hand to the suited but still petite soldier who was a head shorter than her. Eze seemed to hesitate for a fraction of a second, then shook the hand and smiled her greetings. Her eyes didn’t mirror the smile, which Halstead always looked for. The grip of the powered armor was only slightly uncomfortable to her, but she let it slide.
“I will speak to you later, Captain,” she said, giving them both a nod and dismissing herself by walking out of the room. As the door hissed shut behind her, Halstead turned to raise another eyebrow at Torres.
Torres didn’t meet her gaze and seemed to shift awkwardly in his seat as he cleared his throat.
“Personal visit, was it?” she needled him gently.
“What?”
“Your lieutenant? She didn’t have anything to report?” A smile crept across her lips; she couldn’t contain what the most basic of female intuition had detected.
“I’m sure it wasn’t an important matter,” Torres said in a tone that was as dismissive as it was unconvincing. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need a few hours’ sleep before I take the next rotation.”
Halstead finished her coffee, placing the cup down carefully as she swallowed the last gulp.
“I’ll do the same,” she said as she stood and smoothed down her flight suit. “See you back on the bridge in six hours.”
45
Orbit of Earth-Like Planet
“Can we risk sending out the new sensor probe?” Halstead asked Torres.
Torres thought the question was worth exploring and asked his tactical officer.
“Not sure, sir,” she replied. “The velocity of the launch is close to the speed of the warheads and they were detected by the Venture when we tested the shroud.”
“Can we override the launch burn and use maneuvering thrusters only?”
“Not without taking the probe apart, sir…”
“What about a soft launch?” Brandt asked. She had joined the bridge, still in her replacement armor courtesy of the big colony ship. She had to remain ready to do her job in an instant.
“Could work…” Torres mused. “Tactical, open the probe launch doors and prepare to release the clamps. Helm, line us up with the planet and stand by for all ahead stop.”
Both stations reported ready. Torres gave the command and watched the display beside him as the two stations worked in tandem. The free probe was a version of their warheads that ran on charged battery power instead of carrying a singularity. That singularity was usually both weapon and power source. This one, however, carried a full sensor array in place of the targeting and detonation equipment and slid from the tube to slip ahead of their suddenly stationary ship.
“Probe launched,” the tactical officer reported. “Engaging thrusters now.”
“Excellent,” Torres said. “How long does it need to soak?” The sooner the small projectile would take to orbit the planet and transmit the sensor data to them the better.
