Frontiers Saga 12: Rise of the Alliance (33 page)

“Come on,” Captain Poc said, “Let’s get to the command deck and see what happened.”

The three captains turned and headed up the ramp, only to stop abruptly as they saw Captain Scott coming down the ramp, followed by Lieutenant Commander Nash and Sergeant Weatherly.

“Captain,” Captain Poc said. “What happened?”

“Did you destroy that thing?” Captain Roselle demanded.

“The platform performed a micro-FTL jump, came out two kilometers in front of us with all weapons firing,” Nathan explained as he descended the ramp toward them. “We took four missiles and a barrage of heavy rail gun fire before we could jump clear.”

“What about the battle platform,” Captain Roselle demanded a second time. “Did you hit it with the KKV?”

“The KKV missed,” Nathan said as he passed them by. “The platform went back into FTL.”

“So now what, hot shot?” Captain Roselle challenged. “Is that three times or four times you’ve failed to bring that thing down?”

Nathan stopped dead in his tracks in the middle of the ramp.

“What’s your plan now?” Captain Roselle taunted.

Nathan turned around slowly and walked back up the ramp toward Captain Roselle. Jessica and the sergeant both stepped aside, as did Captains Poc and Nash as Nathan approached.

“My plan is to see to the rescue of the twenty-seven men still trapped in the starboard fighter alley. After that, I’m going to medical to make sure that the sixty-two wounded crewmen are getting proper medical attention, and that the twenty-three dead crewmen are respectfully tended to.”

“Don’t you have subordinates to do that, Scott?” Captain Roselle said, continuing to berate him, “or are you one of those captains who thinks he needs to hold everyone’s hand and tell them everything is going to be alright?”

Nathan took a step closer to Captain Roselle, his face only centimeters away. “How many times have you flown into combat, Captain? How many men and women have died bravely following your orders?”

“Oh, don’t give me that shit…”

“I asked you a question!” Nathan yelled directly into Captain Roselle’s face. “How many!”

Captain Roselle glanced to Nathan’s right, his eyes meeting those of Sergeant Weatherly’s. He then glanced to Nathan’s left, locking eyes with Lieutenant Commander Nash as she winked at him and blew him a kiss. He could see it in her eyes, clear as day. The look he had always heard of.

Nathan watched Captain Roselle’s face from centimeters distance as his expression suddenly changed. “Help out, or go back to your ship, Captain. Either way, stay the fuck out of my way, because I have work to do.” Nathan turned to look at Captain Poc and Captain Nash. “Captains,” he said before he turned and continued down the ramp with Lieutenant Commander Nash and Sergeant Weatherly following close behind.

“Jesus,” Captain Roselle said.

“What?” Captain Poc asked.

“You saw it. Both of you. That little asshole is out of control. He’s on a power trip, and he’s got his crew and the Ghatazhak backing him.”

“All I saw was you being an ass, Roselle,” Captain Poc said as he turned to head back down the ramp.

“Are you kidding me?”

Captain Poc stopped and looked back at Roselle. “The kid was right, Roselle. None of us has seen combat. He has… And plenty of it. You might want to show him a little respect, at least for repeatedly charging back into the lion’s mouth.”

Captain Roselle watched, his mouth agape as Captain Poc turned and headed down the ramp. “Where are you going, Poc?”

“To see how I can be of help.”

Captain Roselle turned to look at Captain Nash, who himself was turning to follow Captain Poc down the ramp. “I suppose you agree with Poc, right?”

“Yup,” Captain Nash answered. “Especially the part about you being an ass.”

* * *

Nathan stood staring at the Scout ship that all b
ut filled the Aurora’s massive hangar bay. Before him was a piece of history… One of the first space faring ships built by post-plague Terrans. It was also the first post-plague ship with faster-than-light capabilities. They had been built for a noble reason, to reestablish contact with the original six core colonies of Earth.

“I would’ve bet my pension that this thing wouldn’t fit in here.”

Nathan turned to his left and saw Captain Poc walking toward him. “Nice landing, sir.”

“Easy enough, really. Just floated her in and parked her above the struts your people rigged up for us. Once they started dialing up the gravity, we just settled down nice and easy.”

“I watched the whole thing from flight ops,” Nathan admitted. “It might have been easy, but it was still pretty impressive to watch. I’m surprised you were worried, about it
fitting,
I mean.”

“Well, even with your bay wide open, the clearance was pretty tight,” Captain Poc explained. “When this thing was built, nothing ever came out exactly to plan. We didn’t have any experience building spaceships at the time. Hell, we had only put people in orbit a few years before they started planning these things. We thought we could just follow the blueprints we found in the Data Ark, substituting the methods and materials we had for the ones the designs called for.”

“I expect it was a bit more exact than you’re letting on, sir,” Nathan said.

“Well, I may be exaggerating a bit. We did the best we could with what we had.”

“You talk as if you were there,” Nathan said.

“I was,” Captain Poc said. “Hell, I was the one who flew this thing into orbit for the first time. Strapped a bunch of solid rocket boosters onto her and blasted our asses into the sky.”

Nathan looked at Captain Poc, his eyes squinted, unsure whether or not to believe him. “Exactly how old are you?”

“Chronologically, sixty-eight. I was thirty-five the first time I strapped my ass into that thing. Five years of test flights, then out to Eighty-Two Eridani and back. Made the Centauri run a few times as well. Hell, I’ve got more than twenty years in stasis altogether.”

“Must’ve been hard on your wife,” Nathan commented.

“She gave up on me the moment I took the assignment. Navy life had been hard enough on her. Married her dentist. Hardest part is looking younger than my kids. If I go to a bar with my son, everyone thinks he’s
my
father.”

“Still, you got to go places that no one had been to,” Nathan said, “at least not for a thousand years.”

“Sounds a lot more exciting than it really was,” Captain Poc insisted. “You go to sleep, wake up five years later and you’re there. Hell, the first trip to Eridani we couldn’t even get anyone to answer us on the comms. We never even left the ship, just ran a bunch of scans, took some pictures, gathered some SIGINT and came home. Two five-year naps and a week of data collection.”

“Still, it was a pretty brave journey, all things considered.”

Captain Poc looked over his ship. “I can’t remember the last time I looked her over from outside. You know, they built her pretty much the same way they built boats back then. At least the frame and the hull. Every piece, hand-welded… None of those laser-guided precision welding systems they used to build your ship.”

“And yet they have lasted more than thirty years,” Nathan said.

“Well, they over-built them a bit. Just between us, the damn thing barely made it to orbit. Tanks were bone-dry by the time we shut down.” The captain continued gazing at his ship. “Yeah, a lot of light years on this old hull.”

“Well, that number will be going up a lot faster than you ever dreamed,” Nathan said. “The first four mini-jump drives arrived from Karuzara a couple of hours ago. In a couple weeks you’ll be jumping all over the core.” Nathan smiled at Captain Poc.

Captain Poc also smiled. “I’m not going to lie to you, Scott. The idea
is
pretty exciting. It just seems… well, somewhat dangerous, you know? I mean, what happens if you inadvertently try to jump through something?”

“Well,” Nathan tried to explain, “as I understand things, it works pretty much the same way as linear FTL. At least in the sense that the smaller stuff will deflect off our hulls. If an object is big enough to damage you at normal speeds, it’s big enough to damage you in a jump. Actually, jumping is
safer
than linear FTL, since technically you’re still traveling at speeds less than the speed of light, so the kinetic energy of the impacting object would be less.”

“Not much of a comfort, I’m afraid,” Captain Poc said.

“I’m not very good at explaining it,” Nathan admitted. “The fact is, I don’t really understand it myself. You might want to spend some time with one of the Corinairan specialists on the Karuzara. They actually understand it better than the original inventor did.”

“What about your cheng, Kamenetskiy? Surely he understands it?”

“Yeah, but you don’t want to get him started talking about it, trust me. The Corinairans will be far more succinct.”

“I’ll try to remember that,” Captain Poc assured him.

“Captain?” Nathan asked. “Can I ask you something, off the record, as it were?”

“What’s on your mind, Scott?”

“It’s about Captain Roselle. The man seems to outright hate my ass, and I’m not sure why.”

“Why do you think?” Captain Poc asked.

“Because command fell into my lap? Because I’m the son of a rich politician? Because I’ve made a lot of mistakes since I took command?”

“Yeah, that pretty much covers it,” Captain Poc agreed. “Look, Scott, Roselle doesn’t hate you. He doesn’t
know
you, so how can he actually
hate
you?”

“Then why does he seize every opportunity to chew my ass?” Nathan wondered.

“Don’t tell me you never had your ass chewed, Scott.”

“Of course I have,” Nathan assured him. “Plenty of times, in fact.”

“Roselle doesn’t hate
you
, Scott. He hates that events have placed all our fates in
your
hands. Let’s face it, you’re not exactly trained for this. Hell, none of us are, really. Sure, we may have more time in service, more command training and experience, but as you pointed out the other day, we haven’t really seen combat. At least not in space. But here’s the difference between you and us. We
want
command. We’ve trained for it our whole lives. It’s what we do. By your own log entries, you never wanted to command anything, let alone the ship that is supposed to save the galaxy.”

“Trust me, sir, I would…”

“…Don’t say it, Scott,” Captain Poc warned, cutting Nathan off in mid-sentence. “Don’t you fucking say it.” Captain Poc looked Nathan straight in the eyes. “Whether you want it or not, the responsibility is yours. You have the experience, you have the trust and relationships with our allies, and you have the ability. Captain Roberts knew you had it in you, otherwise he wouldn’t have accepted Fleet’s last minute transfer of you to his ship. He had too many friends in high places to allow himself to get dicked around like that. Fact is, son, it would take any of us months to get up to speed and become better qualified than you are right now to run this ship, under the current circumstances.
That’s
what Captain Roselle hates about you.” Captain Poc turned back toward his ship. “That, and all the other things you listed. But mostly that.”

Nathan stood there, dumbfounded.

“You know, when we were first reading that synopsis of events you gave us, we thought you were making it all up. Roselle himself said ‘There’s no way a week-old lieu-ee could pull all this off.’”

“I’m not sure how to respond to that, sir,” Nathan finally replied.

“Like I said, Scott, you’ve got talent. Roberts knew it, and we know it. I’m pretty sure your crew knows it as well, which is why they’re so loyal.” Captain Poc turned and looked at Nathan again. “You’ve also had some pretty good cards dealt to you along the way, though. Don’t forget that. Remember, there are only so many good cards in the deck. That’s why Roselle and I will be jumping your shit every time you fuck up. And you will fuck up, I promise you. Just see that you
don’t
fuck up such a way that you get
my
ass killed.” Captain Poc smiled. “I’m shooting for second-oldest man alive.”

“Understood, sir,” Nathan answered, “and thank you.”

“Well, if you’ll excuse me, Captain, it appears my crew and I have a lot of work ahead of us.”

“As do we all, sir,” Nathan replied.

* * *

“You’d think with all the crap they want us to learn that they would pull us out of the rotation once i
n a while,” Josh complained.

“Everyone else is flying the same number of hours,” Loki replied as he studied the sensor displays in front of him. “Target course and speed are unchanged.” Loki looked away from the sensor display, glancing at the jump-nav display. “One minute to next jump point.”

“You know, you don’t have to report ‘target course and speed unchanged’ to me at the end of each cycle. If you say nothing about the target’s course and speed, I’ll just assume that the platform is still headed for Earth.”

“Just following procedures, Josh.”

“That’s another thing,” Josh said, turning to look over his shoulder at Loki in the seat behind him. “You’ve become
way
to ‘procedural’ lately.”

“We are going to be tested, you know.” Loki glanced at the jump-nav display again. “Thirty seconds to jump.”

“Yeah, I know. Why do you think I’ve been spending so much time in the simulators these days?”

“I heard.”

“What did you hear?”

“That you keep busting. Ten seconds.”

“If by ‘busting’ you mean ‘surviving’, then yes.”

“Jumping in three…”

“…Besides…”

“…Two…”

“…Their maneuvers are stupid…”

“…One……Jumping.” Loki pressed the button to execute the jump. “By ‘stupid’ you mean ‘you don’t agree with them’.”

“No, I mean they’re stupid.”

“Starting scans.”

“Jesus, they had me low and outside on a tight left ascending turn the other day. Neither one of us could pull it in any tighter, and the bogie knew it. Breaking right and coming around on the opposite angle got me the kill.”

“And left your leader uncovered,” Loki reminded him.