Penance (RN: Book 2)
Read Penance (RN: Book 2) Online
Authors: David Gunner
RN: Book 2
Penance
David Gunner
Copyright © 2015 David J Higgins
. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without prior written consent from the author.
First Edition - June, 2015
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The man sat on the fold away cot. His hands palm down on the thighs of the grey jump suit, his knees brushing the gun metal wall as he gazed side long at the riveted metal door. The only movement in the room was the metronomic skip of keen grey eyes, which move as if tracking a distant object. First vertically, then horizontally, his irises traced a minute straight, followed by the climbing and descending of a dome as he moved along the line of rivets that held the door in form. The count completed, he looks away with a small despairing breath escaping him.
After knowing this room for three months, the counting of rivets induced a low stupor with the unceasing line of domed fasteners advancing from and marching into a senilic fog, so who knew the count for sure.
He remained leaden for many minutes before coming too with a start and gaze about the cell as if it were new to him, only for realisation to return with his head drooping forwards and shoulders sagging. Such idle pursuits had become the daily routine. However, today the distraction failed and after some moments he took a deep breath, rubbed his aching eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose before gathering together several well thumbed sheets of paper spread about the thin blanket. He dusted them needlessly before assembling them into some form of order.
Despite months of daily review the Earth Defence Pact watermark remained clear beneath the stencilled wings and eagle head of the justice department. He knew the words by heart, yet his lips moved silently ..
.Commander Chauer Denz ...guilty of desertion ...sentenced to twenty four months.
When done he reordered the papers neatly and let them slip from his lap to the bed.
He stared at the door for several more minutes before standing, clasping his hands in front of a bowed head and closed his eyes to give the appearance of meditation until hearing a low gong. With the ritual complete, Denz smoothed his light grey overalls, needlessly ran a hand over short grey silver-flecked hair, and holding in the last of several deep breaths, pushed open the door to enter the command deck of the
RNO
Bristol
. A modified, Royal Navy Orbital, gunboat.
“Captain on the bridge!” Acting sublieutenant Raulin said snapping to attention on seeing Denz.
“
Commander,
on the bridge.” Denz corrected the young officer
“Aye, sir. I beg your pardon, sir,” The man flushed as he stood rigid behind his console. “Commander on the bridge.”
Denz sighed and shook his head in wonder. He had repeated the same correction almost every day for twelve weeks and the man still got it wrong. He noticed the low grins on several of the bridge crew as they busied about their work stations. An infectious grin that soon turned the corners of his mouth up, but he checked himself.“Status!” He snapped to bring them back to their duty. He liked an easy ship, but the command deck had a seven day work week, and it didn’t hurt to remind them of that every once in a while.
“Gate action completed, commander. We’ve arrived at system LL-03 on time, and have commenced initial handshake with the Nightingale defensive platform,” said first officer, Lieutenant-Commander Malcolm Canthouse in his smooth Cambridgeshire accent. He stood to respectful attention beside the vacated command chair with his hands behind his back. His athletic six foot plus frame bore the relaxed but attentive posture of someone schooled in elocutions from an early age, followed by many years as a military cadet before Royal Naval College. The regulation officer’s hair cut gave his thin angular face something of a youthful look for his thirty six years, but he carried the requisite edge to keep the ranks content but controlled.
“Handshake complete,” said the operations officer from her station to the left of Canthouse. “IFF accepted. We’re cleared to approach Tristan da Cunha colony. There are three priority messages for you commander.”
Three messages!
Denz pursed his lips and quizzed inwardly. The ship had arrived at the edge of human settled space in this quadrant, with everything from this point on being raw rim territory. They were hundreds of light years from Earth with only a handful of people aware of their even approximate position, so to receive even one priority message could be a hackle raising proposition, let alone three.
“Ops, traffic?”
“One or two distant tracks too faint to query in the past six hours, but nothing local, commander. We’re effectively on our own.” Petty officer Rachel Cummings said, her hands working the keyboard.
Denz stood clasping and unclasping his hands behind his back as he stared through the main viewer at the system’s brilliant G2 yellow dwarf star, a star not unlike that at the center of the Sol system. He then shifted his gaze left to the bright blue-white crescent that bore the settlement of Tristan da Cunha, and waited.
The arrival at a new system always heightened the senses and gave a momentary thrilling tension as you waited for the sensors to complete their sweep. You never knew what to expect when the ship dropped back into normal space. You may jump in on an unexpected supernova, or find a rogue comet bearing down on you. However, if anything out of the ordinary were to happen it would be bandits attacking a colony, which had become the norm in recent times.
Yet the sensors remained quite. There were no traders under attack from marauders in their irregular junkyard ships, and no colonists screaming for help. They’d arrived at a perfectly boring colony, orbiting a perfectly mundane star on the outreaches of a wholly uninspiring sector of space controlled by Britannia. This was the space equivalent of a wild west ghost town with tumble weed whisking down the high street, and too distant for even the most fledgling of pirate crews to cut their teeth.
Denz looked about the crew at their stations. His narrowed gaze lingered on the plump chest of the red haired operations officer, her face a kaleidoscope of colours from her touch screen console. Apart from cancelling the occasional chirp or click of a button, the crew were as hushed as a ministers meeting. How he wished for an alien invasion fleet, a comet or even a particularly interesting asteroid to bring some life to the room. In any respect this cruise had failed to provide anything in the way of stimuli, and he so enjoyed the bustle of an efficient crew hard at work. Maybe he would implement an emergency action drill just to liven things up.
Denz lowered his head and chewed his top lip. He was distracting himself from what lay ahead. Unpleasant tasks awaited and there could be no avoiding them. He became aware of several of the crew casting glances at him, awaiting orders. “Standard approach.” He said in a ‘jump to it’ voice.
“Aye, sir,” the navigator responded.
“Lieutenant-commander. Is there anything to report?”
“No, commander. Ship’s systems report nominal. All crew present, correct and mostly sober, sir.”
Denz gave Canthouse a wry look and cracked a smile. The first officer stood impassive, his mouth a thin line across a sombre face unblessed by sunlight for three months. Lieutenant Commander Malcolm Canthouse, or ‘LC’ as he was popularly known amongst the crew, was a pleasant easygoing man from a good family. He was intelligent and attentive to a fault. Popular with the commissioned and non-commissioned alike, with his loud braying laugh regularly heard over the companionable buzz of officers and ratings in the mess. Yet, despite the privileges of family and rank, not once had Denz heard even a hint of the aristocratic entitlement that many officers in the RN, and even some on this ship, occasionally let slip to remind the NCOs that there was still a societal rank.
These moments of praetorian rigidity were something of an in joke between first officer and himself. A joke that the crew, despite many a mess hall conspiracy, could never quite figure out.
“Good. In that case, I’ll take the messages in my cabin. I need to ... prepare. You have the bridge, Malcolm.”
“Yes, commander.” Canthouse remained statue like, the only movement being his slitted eyes tracking Denz off the bridge. He knew all too well what would soon be occurring, and though unable to show it, he couldn’t help but feel a small sorrow for his commanding officer. He also needed to remind the crew to pay no attention to what would be coming from their commander’s quarters. It was almost time for the screams to start.
***
The water in the shower trickled to a halt as Denz reached for a towel and patted himself dry as he walked naked into his compact living area, where he sat on the cubical bed and rubbed his feet.
He stared heavily at his No 1 formal uniform hanging across the room and couldn’t help but feel a vague ambivalence. It was a uniform he would soon be wearing; for a short while at least.
His gaze roamed over the navy blue material of the jacket, his attention drawn to the gold compass star that replaced the loop found on the sleeve insignia of blue water officers. Unlike other navies that had transitioned from water to void, the dress uniform of the Royal Navy had seen few alterations with the most obvious being the star on sleeve insignia and six diminishing stars astride a reduced ‘scrambled egg’ on the peak of the cap. The only other adornment being a violet band mid way up the left forearm, an addition that looked as odd as it did out of place.
The band appeared to be little more than a garish violet decoration until placed under an ultraviolet lamp, which would reveal a series of glyphs and other unidentifiable strokes that meant nothing to the average crew member, but meant plenty to The Koll.
The Koll were a little understood species of belligerents that had annexed the Earth a little less than two years earlier, following a series of escalating engagements that culminated in the invasion of Chinese space at LN-0R. It had been here that the entire Chinese fleet of over eight hundred modern warships, the Fujian provincial station and the entire colony were destroyed to a man.
With the single most powerful navy wiped out and almost a million dead in less than five hours, Earth surrendered when five thousand Koll warships came face to face with the fourteen hundred ships of the combined EDP forces in the Sol system. Earth’s immediate offer of unconditional surrender had sparked wide spread dissolution among the ships of the defending flotillas. Many of which refused to capitulate even when fired upon by their own comrades, and they gated away to be forever known as traitors and hunted like fugitives.
Three months he had lasted before his gate engine failed.
Three months of dodging patrols, hit and run raids, scavenging from pirates and derelicts, but it all came to an end when several of the drive rings developed cracks and they could run no further.
It all ended four days later when a Koll patrol found them and summoned eight more. The Bristol had fought to the end, damaging two and destroying one. The Koll response was remorseless in its severity, and with his brave men and women dying all over and the Bristol certain to be destroyed by the next volley the firing abruptly ceased. RN fleet Admiral Quincen awaited their pleasure.
Despite the elegant words there was no negotiation. The Koll’s foremen took the ship and removed her crew.
Her fine honourable crew...
Let the suffering begin.
Denz knelt as if shackled before a tyrant, his chest heaving as the tears joined the rivulets dripping from him to form an expanding shadow on the dark blue floor cover. The Koll had done their work well. They had found a grim memory, long buried and used it to herald the slide into dark places.
It was the final day of cadet selections: the final event. An obstacle course of truck tyres and logs stacked and fastened to form barricades and wire slides. He’d barked his shin cruelly climbing the last wooden wall and almost severed a finger leaping from the aerial slide, but he’d made it to third place and the only the two hundred meter run remained. He gave it his all. Arms and legs threatening to unhinge like over-sped pendulums as heavy boots clumped in muddy puddles. His eyes were fixed, his lungs grating and burning as breaths squeezed through a constricting throat to jet foaming spittle from between clenched teeth. A hundred meters to go and the Ischemia made itself known. A light dizziness, followed by his peripheral vision blurring and the feeling of moving along a glass tube. His comrades’ mere shadows as they flashed by. The clapping of the crowd slowed with their shouts of encouragement distorting as if from a corrupt tape recording until the only the percussion of his heart remained. He tried to slow but his fists continued to piston forward as the muddy grass rushed to meet him, and then he slept. He woke to a different darkness on the steps of Antenora with the looming forms of giants all around.
He didn’t deserve this. He only wanted to do his duty. Earth’s surrender had been a terrible wrong, his desertion an act of desperation. He had only been considering the greater good and how could they continue to punish him so? With a creaking of stone and heavy things moving, the dark giants leaned in until they formed a dungeon; the damp walls oppressively close. Then came the whispers, a hundred familiar voices from shadows that crept towards him. They chided and ridiculed. Tormented and teased. They told him he had failed them. That he was bruised and impure and something rotten lay inside. They told him he needed to do it, to stop wasting time, it was the only way. They’d never release him.