Birthright: Battle for the Confederation- Reprisal Page 11

  Loren’s look must have said it all, because Elco felt the need to continue before Loren objected. “What I need is somebody to lead this that I can trust to keep a lid on it. You probably can figure out that Admiral Privac and, since we’re being honest here, Admiral Bak, want this kept under wraps so they can be free to use the prisoners and technology without the standard oversight.” Elco realized as he was saying it how it sounded, and doubts flashed through his mind about whether he had agreed to do something he would regret in the years to come.

  “Acting XO, Captain? I mean, Sirian.” Loren could handle calling the captain by his name, but acting XO was another matter.

  “Yes, Loren, XO. We’ve had this discussion before, I believe. Truth be told, I saw that you had a review and were approved to apply for a command position. I wondered if you turned it down gracefully.”

  “I used a lot of swearing and references to illegal sex acts and venereal diseases in my last few after-action reports,” Loren replied with a straight face. “The review officers hate it when you do that.”

  Elco almost choked on the sip of coffee he was drinking. While it evoked a laugh, he also considered the possibility that some vengeful bureaucrat might have tried to get a medical review on Loren for a questionable mental state. That would have cost Elco Loren’s services, and that would have created a problem.

  “Still, I need an XO for the near term, and you’re it, dammit. You will make a fine captain some day, and the training starts now. No arguments. I assume you have no problems with Captain Sosus acting as CAG for a while?”

  “I’d recommend her enthusiastically.”

  “Good, because right now I need somebody on that mission who will cover our interests. Nobody needs to know about the Primans. What we’ll do is send in a boarding party of Marines from Torino. She will be accompanying us on this Op to provide the boarding party, plus she has plenty of hangar space in case we find anything large worth salvaging. The Marines you’ll lead don’t know there will be live Primans aboard, and it needs to stay that way. I’ll have Medical fix you up with some tranquilizers and stun weapons, and you’ll knock the survivors out cold before bringing the Marines in. As far as they’ll be concerned, if they find out there are Primans on board, they’re just retrieving them for autopsy. The Marines won’t even know that’s why you’re there; Captain Spiron, who doesn’t even know about this himself, received a briefing that there were possible Confed survivors, and that’s our reason for boarding the Stormhawk. Can you abide by this?”

  “There once was a time that I would feel a moral obligation to question the treatment of these Primans, and ask why we’re considering doing the Admiral’s dirty work. But not any more. If I get to rid the galaxy of a few more Primans, you can count me in, and you can count on my discretion, too.”

  Elco was glad to have Loren on board with the mission, but secretly wondered how far they’d go to win this war and protect those they loved and cherished. He hoped he wouldn’t be asked to decide where that line was.

  It was time to commit to the action that Captain Krent had advocated these past few weeks. His speeches, briefings, and impassioned pleas for open discussion had paid off, and his work had borne fruit. Almost three quarters of the captains he had talked to had agreed to sign up for a coalition with the Confederation and Talarans. They had told him specifically to avoid the use of the word ‘surrender’, since they hoped to enter into any sort of arrangement as a legitimate force and not stragglers from a shattered empire. Unfortunately, that’s what they were, and if it came to it, Krent would throw semantics out the window and get the point across however it needed to be said. He had been empowered to speak on their behalf, and after a final meeting had struck out in search of a Confed or Talaran force to approach. He had run his ship around the Confed/Talaran border for two days now, since that was where the Primans had ripped through on their way coreward. For all the logic of it, though, Krent could find no hot-spots, not even a recon patrol. He was beginning to think he should just make a run in toward Delos- there would be Confed ships monitoring that system for sure, and he’d draw attention.

  Thinking along those lines, he had in fact begun to plot the journey when his sensor operator had called out a distant contact. Then more, and more, until he realized the Union had stumbled across an entire Confederation fleet.

  He had immediately called for an all stop on the engines, and started broadcasting a neutral/surrender message over his transponder.

  Now, Krent walked to the sensor station again to check the latest, letting his eyes roam to the next station and checking again that all weapons were offline.

  “What do we have now, Sensors?”

  “Captain, this is a major fleet, and they most likely saw us at the same time or maybe even before we saw them, because they already have several destroyers moving to encircle us. In any case, I count a Sabre class fleet carrier broadcasting the name Dauntless, escorted by two Starshaker class battleships. There are five Confederation class cruisers, eight Pulsar class destroyers, one Marine Assault Ship, a half dozen tenders and supply ships, and most likely two Crusader class ships, who have most certainly already closed the range and have us targeted.” The cool rundown by the officer masked the man’s wavering confidence in the virtues of this mission. Either they would obtain their audience, or they would receive a large number of torpedoes in short order. Either way, they’d get it over with soon.

  “Captain,” came a call from Communications. “I have a response from the Dauntless. They want to open a channel in response to the proposal contained in our hailing message.”

  “On screen,” Krent directed.

  The visage of a Drisk female appeared on the screen. In the background, Krent could see the bridge of the huge ship, with a large number of crew milling about and attending to various stations as well as one large plotting table. The Admiral was middle aged, her face betrayed no emotion, and he had no doubt she was prepared to have his ship vaporized in a heartbeat. Knowing the Drisk as he did, he figured she was probably itching for a reason to order him destroyed.

  “Captain Josias Krent, of the Enkarran ship Union,” the Confederation Captain started. “Your hailing message states you approach under a flag of truce. What is it exactly you have to say?”

  Krent knew this would be an uphill battle, just by her bearing and tone of voice. He would have to tread lightly.

  “On behalf of assorted elements of the Enkarran Navy, I have a proposition for the Confederation.”

  Avenger and Torino exited hyperspace far away from the Stormhawk site. Since the battle had taken place in deep space, there was nothing to use to mask their approach. This required a good old-fashioned long range approach, including the use of Prowlers, Talons, and Intruders. The smaller craft gradually edged closer to the site while the capital ships hung back in case there was a trap in the making. After repeated scans, they determined that there were no Priman ships in the area.

  As Avenger closed the distance, Captain Elco stared at the displays arrayed about him on the bridge. He walked back to the sensors station in the rear, with their sophisticated detection gear. He made his way back forward near the front of the bridge platform and his command chair, where he looked at the front of the compartment and studied the 3D holo displays and synthetic images. He then glanced down on both sides of the bridge platform two steps below and tried to sort through all the raw data that was flowing through the stations manned along the bulkheads. He imagined that Loren was doing much the same one armored deck below in C3, and also had little doubt Loren was cursing the captain’s heritage for parking him down in an armored room instead of letting him fly his Talon. The problem was that Loren would be rotated out of that assignment sooner or later, and if he wanted to stay in space he could only do it as a command officer such as a Captain or Executive Officer. Besides, he had to admit that he somewhat selfishly wanted Loren to act as his XO because he knew the man could handle it and he wanted one less thing to
worry about right now.

  It had taken the better part of an hour and all the spacecraft Avenger carried, but Elco was confident at this point that there was nobody waiting for them among the wreckage and debris of the battlefield before him. His eyes were drawn first to the Stormhawk, and his spirits sank a bit as he surveyed the damage. The ship had sustained some sort of engine core breach which had vaporized the aft third of the hull. Forward of that were the stereotypical blast marks, impact and exit holes, and wrenched hull plates that signified internal explosions and burning oxygen- a sobering reminder of the dangers that awaited the crew of any spaceborne vessel.

  Close by were the slowly spinning and blackened hulls of a Confederation Pulsar class destroyer and two Priman cruisers. There was at least enough wreckage floating about to make up a squadron of fighters and another small capital ship, as well.

  Satisfied that they had done everything they could to detect any Priman forces, Elco sat down in his chair and touched the intercom tab that connected him to Loren in C3.

  Loren’s face appeared on the small screen next to Elco’s chair. “C3, Captain. Everything looks about as we expected.”

  “I agree,” replied Elco. “You have a green light for the mission.”

  “The transport is waiting in the hangar; we’ll leave as soon as I get there. XO out.”

  Loren signed off and headed for the turbovator. He was already dressed in fatigues, with web gear and a sidearm, plus a smaller bag which contained two stun pistols and tranquilizers in a variety of forms.

  The Freedom class transport left Avenger and headed straight towards the Stormhawk. She was met enroute by an identical ship from Torino- the Marines that the Asssault Ship was there to loan out for the mission. Torino had also dispatched transports and Marines in powered armor to investigate the other wrecks in search of data recorders, computer core downloads, and any Priman technology they could liberate from the derelicts.

  Escorted by four Talons from Torino, Loren felt safe enough as he rode in the back of the shuttle. Still, it still felt inherently wrong to be the guy being chauffeured around instead of being the one flying, sort of like kissing your own sister. Not that he had a sister. Or would kiss her if he did have one. He found his mind wandering off track at that, and snapped it back into place. When you were flying, you could concentrate. When you were luggage in the back, you had only spare time and idle thoughts to drive you slowly mad. And he was making great headway at that during just this short ride.

  Finally the shuttle approached the starboard docking bay on the ventral side of the Crusader class ship. He looked out a window and saw the shuttle from Torino with her Marines on board entering the portside hangar.

  Once the shuttle was on the deck and magnetically locked in place and everyone had checked their suit integrity, the pilots gave him the thumbs up and he opened the rear hatch himself. The hangar bay felt strange and sullen, and it struck him what felt so out of place. All the fighters were gone. He looked around but didn’t see any squadron markings, so he couldn’t tell if it was the Intruder or Talon bay, but to see the vast space dark and littered with debris gave him a mild set of the chills.

  Taking it in stride, he walked through the ready room and up to the blast door opening out into the main cross-corridor. The door was dead, as was the control panel, and using his handheld scanner he saw that the corridor beyond was devoid of atmosphere as well. Inserting a special tool into the center of the blast door unlatched the safety catches, and he pushed it smoothly open on well maintained tracks, a reminder of how new the ship was. His helmet mounted spotlights illuminated the corridor and the remains of one of the crew, which he walked by on his way to the portside hangar bay. It only struck him in passing that the artificial gravity was still functional, but that system was designed so robustly and with so much redundancy that it would often run for days after power was removed from a ship.

  He could see the blast doors of the other ready room open, then beams of light stabbed out into the darkness as the Marines entered the corridor with him. While traditionally they would have liked to wear their powered armor, the tighter confines of the ship precluded that, though they weren’t entirely thrilled with it. Even on a rescue mission, they tended to operate in the mindset that they would get to blow something up.

  “XO,” the Marine Captain started. “We’re all set to deploy here. I see on my scanners three possible life signs two decks above, about fifteen bulkheads aft, reading pretty strong. I estimate three other locations with possible life signs, as well. Where should we start?”

  Loren had come prepared for this. All he needed to do was send the Marines off to check out all the other possible survivors while he searched for the Primans alone.

  “I’ll take that first hit you mentioned, Captain.” He held out his datapad while the Marine Captain did the same; they touched them together briefly, thus allowing them to synchronize data.

  “From our scans on Avenger,” Loren started, “it looks like the way to those life signs aft and above is clear- there might even by oxygen there. I can handle that.”

  “Are you sure, sir? I could go with you and send the rest of the team off. Not wise to travel around in a shipwreck alone.”

  Loren weighed the man’s offer. It would get more suspicious the more times he had to deflect offers of help, but he didn’t need the man to get involved with this, either. Time was wasting, and he had to look relaxed about the decision.

  “Alright, you’re with me. Let’s get your people moving.”

  It only took about five minutes to reach the deck where the Priman captives were. Loren could only hope that the Marines were locating survivors elsewhere in the ship. His datapad was set to look for lifesigns, but didn’t find any until after they had found airtight compartments. That deck had somehow managed to retain much of its’ structural integrity, and the system of airtight blast doors had held in a surprising amount of oxygen. They kept their helmets on anyway; you could never afford to relax too much aboard a ship with this many holes in her.

  Loren and the Marine Captain occasionally broadcast on their external speakers, calling out to survivors. Eventually, they found their first, a badly wounded Qualin woman who had lost an arm and had managed to tie a tourniquet around it before losing consciousness. Satisfied that her condition was stable and unable to do anything more, they marked her position on their datapads and pressed on.

  Luck was with Loren as he came to the brig area where the Primans were most likely to be. There were two groups of life signs, but Loren couldn’t tell which was the Primans and which was Stormhawk survivors. Taking a gamble that the Primans were the ones in the brig, he sent the Marine off to the adjacent compartment to check out those life signs.

  Loren announced himself as he entered the compartment, then took off his helmet and attached it to his web gear. He reasoned that there were too many life signs for them all to be Priman and that thus there were Stormhawk crew with them, so instead of tossing a stun grenade in first, he simply entered the room with his SSK in his hand and datapad in the other.

  He saw four Stormhawk crew, looking the worse for wear. There were two live Primans sitting in a corner, as well as one Confed and one Priman body in the other corner.

  Loren entered the compartment, and instantly was on alert. Through the dim illumination of damaged emergency lighting, he could see overturned tables, blast marks in the bulkheads, and fresh blood on several surfaces. He saw that one of the crew was holding an SSK, and his grip on the SSK tightened; suddenly he wasn’t feeling so cavalier about sending the Marine off down the corridor.

  “I’m XO Loren Stone of the Avenger. Report.” He hoped that a swift return to Confed decorum would knock everyone into gear and make things go smoothly. He wasn’t entirely right.

  “Sir, I’m Lieutenant Miko Thorin, Navigation. I was down here assisting in the interrogation of the Priman captives when the Stormhawk was attacked.”

  “And the rest of you?” Lo
ren looked at the other three, who rattled off their names and ranks, all being assistants or lower grade specialists.

  “No Security staff here?”

  Thorin indicated the deceased Stormhawk crewer against the wall near the dead Priman. “He was the only Security man in here, and the Primans attacked us when we took a direct hit. They managed to kill him before we regained control of this compartment.”

  “You had to kill one of the prisoners to do so?” Loren replied.

  “Yes, sir, we did. And frankly, we aim to continue. We interrogated them, we know all we’re going to find out from them. I don’t recall them ever taking prisoners of war, and we were about to space them both when you showed up.”

  The casual ease with which the man said it was what made Loren’s personal warning bells and whistles start going off. The man might very well have cracked, and he figured the three other crew would side with the Lieutenant on that one. He also doubted the validity of the man’s claim about Primans and their policy on taking prisoners. Loren breathed a sigh of relief when the Marine Captain, Olan Foth, finally entered the room, supporting another Qualin who had his arm over the Marine’s shoulder.

  “Something the matter, XO?” asked Foth

  “I was just about to round up these two Priman prisoners as well as the bodies of their shipmates. Then we’re going to get the rest of the Stormhawk crew off this ship and onto the Torino.”

  “With respect, sir, we can clean up this mess,” interjected Thorin. “Leave the Primans with us.”

  Up to this point, the Primans had sat there defiant but silent. Finally they stood up. “At least do us the honor of shooting us like soldiers.”