Rich Man's War (42 page)

People had watch stations and department quarters to get to. Officers and NCOs had to work up any number of special task groups, requests for gear and refresher training sessions. Most of all, many of the men and women present would have to work with new teams and unfamiliar stresses for Beowulf to succeed. Tanner hadn’t actually opened up the message on his holocom outlining his specific place in the Table of Operations & Equipment; he was still trying to digest the bigger picture.

Given the grim faces he saw before him, he figured he wasn’t the only one.

“Hey!” belted his partner beside him. “Hold it up! Yeah, you guys! Just stop a second!” Baldwin held up one hand to halt the surge of people to the right of their perch and then waved with the second. “It’s okay to bark at ‘
em when you need to, Tanner,” she said off to her side once she saw the crowd follow her traffic directions. “Don’t worry about stepping on some chief’s toes when you’re on the job. It’s all part of being an MA, y’know?”

“Right
. Sorry.” He watched Baldwin work, surmising that the hangar bay would empty out within only a couple of minutes. “You have experience with this?”

“I worked in an amusement park before I enlisted. Try sending
mobs of tourists home when they don’t wanna leave. That’s a real challenge.” She watched the crowd, making sure it did as she wanted. “You think it’ll actually happen?”

“Think what will happen?”

Baldwin gestured toward the platform where the admiral and her staff stood minutes before. “That whole scenario. The Big Three coming to get us.”

“I dunno,” Tanner
said. “We’ve hurt them pretty bad. The things that Aguirre revealed can’t have been good for their business in the rest of the Union.”

“Yeah, I know, but… they were screwing us. They’re screwing everybody. You think they’ll actually invade because we caught ‘
em and told on ‘em? I mean, they’d really go to war?”

Tanner snorted. “Ask the East India Company.”

“The who?”

“Nineteenth Century. Britain
sold opium in China even though it was illegal to sell in Britain. When the Chinese decided to outlaw the trade, Britain went to war over it. You could nitpick the details and who said what to who, and if you asked the British, they’d have said it was about free trade. But in the end, Britain went to war over the chance to sell an addictive drug that they didn’t want on their own turf. And they won. They got their ‘free trade’ and then some.”

Baldwin didn’t respond. Tanner looked over his shoulder at her. “How do you know all that?” she asked
finally.

“I read a lot.
”

“Apparently.”

“You want other examples? Britain’s not the only country to pull something like that.”

“No, I’m good. I’ll take your word for it.”

Tanner just smiled. “At this point, I’m never surprised how far people will go for the chance to make a whole lot of money off of someone else’s misery. There’s usually a lofty excuse to justify it, too. Think the crowd’s dying down.”

“
Think you’re right. Don’t go anywhere on me, though,” she added.

“I’m good. No place else to be right now anyway.”

“You sure?” Baldwin asked. “Did you look at the lists? Who’d they put you with?”

He opened his mouth to dismiss her question, but saw a familiar face in the crowd as it grew thinner and less needful of management. “Alicia!” he called, waving and then jumping down from their crate.

“Way to stick with your partner,” Baldwin sighed.

Tanner slipped through a couple of bodies to meet Alicia and found her
coming toward him but with greater purpose. He noticed a couple of familiar faces beyond the young marine, but hadn’t so much as waved hello to Ravenell or thought of something suitably polite to say to Alicia’s boyfriend before Alicia hooked her arm around Tanner’s and tugged him backward. “Okay, we need to talk now,” she declared.

“What?” Tanner blinked. He saw both Ravenell and Collins look on with surprise as Alicia dragged Tanner over to
ward the bulkhead rather than the exit. Without the least bit of ceremony or commentary, Alicia brought Tanner to the nearest damage control locker, threw open its hatch, pushed Tanner inside and followed him in before pulling the hatch shut behind them.

Though they followed curiously, Ravenell and Collins both came to a halt outside the hatch. Collins raised one finger to point at the locker, opened his mouth, and then closed it. He scratched the reddish stubble on his head. “Um,” he opined.

“Hey, Brent,” piped up another marine nearby, “isn’t that your girl—?”

“Shut up,” Collins warned, holding up one hand but not looking away from the hatch.

“Yeah, this isn’t awkward,” muttered Ravenell.

“Is it?” Collins asked.

Then it was Ravenell’s turn to scratch his head while trying to form words. “Uh, well…”

“Hey! Jarheads!” Baldwin called from atop her crate. “What the hell was that?”

“Lights?” Tanner asked. His head turned this way and that, but the locker full of damage control gear was pitch black. He already felt a shelf full of tools and emergency kits against his back, and soon his right shoulder. Then Alicia hit the light on her holocom, which flashed right into Tanner’s eyes. “Aw, dammit, now I’m blind!”

“Oh, shut up,” sighed Alicia. “You
’re fine.”

“Still,” Tanner
winced. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t want everyone listening in on every little conversation and there’s hardly anywhere on this stupid ship that isn’t crawling with people anymore. Plus I’ve had Brent on me to talk to you, so, thanks for that,” she frowned. “I figured I’d just take care of it now. Figured I’d
better
take care of it now.”

“Okay?” Tanner ventured. “Why are you mad at me?”

“Who said I’m mad at you? Did Brent?”

“Like I need someone I don’t know to tell me? Jesus, you brush me off like you’re annoyed to see me when I get here, you don’t respond to a single message on the comm
, you avoid me at the reunion and the couple times I’ve seen you in the passageways you barely even nod or wave.”

“Did you come here to win me back?”

“I—
what?
You made it pretty clear all along that there wasn’t a ‘winning’ to be had,” Tanner said. He tried to throw his arms out in a gesture but only banged his gloved hands against the racks. “Ow.”

“Yeah, right from the start.”

“Well, more like
after
the start, but whatever,” Tanner corrected with a mutter.

Alicia kept talking. “And I’ve told you about Brent all along, too. I’m happy with Brent. Happy as you can be dating someone on a ship, anyway, which isn’t much, but—“

“I’m not trying to break you up!” Tanner snapped in exasperation. “I missed you! I missed you and Rav and—for Christ’s sake, they sent half our recruit company to this ship. I didn’t know how many might still be here, but I figured it was a safe bet that I’d at least be able to find a friendly face or two! You don’t know what it’s like to serve on a ship and have no one to talk to!”

The retort took her aback. He lowered his voice as soon as he saw her blink. “I’m fucking
lonely
, okay? It wasn’t so bad once I got off
St. Jude
, but I had to take another underway billet after MA school and I figured this was my best bet. I didn’t want to wind up stuck trying to pretend I’m more interested in reading than having a conversation with people at every meal, three times a day, all over again. I’m not trying to get you into bed again. I missed my friends. I’ve missed
having
friends.”

She didn’t know how to respond at first. “You’re a good guy, Tanner,” Alicia shook her head. “You make friends all the time. I know you had it rough on
St. Jude
, but those guys were assholes. It hasn’t been like that since, right?”

“No, it hasn’t,” he agreed, “but I didn’t want to take any risks when I was looking at the list of open billets. I figured I had a decent shot of getting what I asked for, so I asked for this. I thought you’d be happy to see me. I mean, I know it’s not like we’re going to see all that much of each other, and maybe you and
Rav and the others from Oscar will rotate out before too long, but still. Better than coming in cold.”

Alicia frowned. “Okay, whatever. You wanna know why I’m mad at you? If you knew they’d send you wherever you asked, why didn’t you ask for shore duty?” She gestured up and down at him with one hand, as if to indicate his sidearm and the beret on his head. “Why’d you go Master at Arms? What the hell were you thinking?”

“You don’t think I can handle it?”

“
You
don’t think you can handle it,” she asserted. “You get torn up about combat. You’ve said so yourself, more than once. God, you could’ve had any number of jobs, why’d you take the one rating that might even have you fighting with some of our own guys?”

“Hey, that thing with
DeLeon was stupid. I don’t think that’s a regular occurrence.”

“No, but you picked the one job where it’s most likely to happen. Not to mention boarding teams and ship’s security postings and this crazy shit they want us to do now,” she added, jerking her thumb at the hatch.

“Yeah, well, given everyone they brought onto this ship, I have a feeling I’d be here anyway,” Tanner thought aloud.

“That’s not the point. You don’t have to prove anything to anyone, Tanner. You of all people. And you know it. You’re too smart
not
to know it, and you don’t go for the gung-ho bullshit. So why in the hell are you here?”

“You’re mad at me because I went MA?”

“That, too. I’m complicated.”

“Apparently.”

“Well?”

The answer didn’t come right away. He wasn’t sure all of his reasons would sit well with Alicia, nor did he think he could do them justice in two minutes inside a closet with people likely waiting on the other side of the door. But even a partial answer was still truthful: “I don’t want to leave other people to deal with the mess when things go wrong. I don’t enjoy combat, no. I doubt very many people do. I don’t think
you
enjoy combat, either.”

“I—
“ Alicia began, but promptly stopped herself. The two stared at one another. “That’s the
other
reason I’m pissed off,” she admitted, almost speaking through her teeth. “Don’t say anything,” she warned, holding one hand up. “I’m just… I walk off a shuttle, and there you are, and I can see the wheels turning inside your head, and yeah, that was a little frustrating.”

Tanner nodded slowly. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I’ve dealt with it, probably better than you have, and that’s what bothers me. I don’t want to see you tear yourself up again, Tanner. Do you get that?”

“I get it,” he answered. “I’m okay. I wear it on my sleeve. It’s how I cope. When things go crazy, I’ll be fine.”

“You’d better be,” Alicia sighed, “because you’re on my team for this one.”

Tanner blinked. “
I am? I didn’t look yet.”

“Yeah, I looked at my orders already, and I figured we’d better straighten ourselves out before we’re in the middle of combat wondering what we should’ve said.”

“You normally think about your personal drama when people are shooting at you?” he laughed. “I’m usually stuck on,
‘Oh God, please don’t let me die.’
” Alicia slugged his arm, but grinned. “Are we okay?” he asked.

Alicia brought her arms up and hugged him tightly. “I missed you, too,” she sniffed.

Tanner held her close. Eventually, he had a thought, and opened his mouth.

She cut him off before he spoke. “If you ruin this by hitting on me as some sort of joke, I’ll break your collarbones again.”

He kept it to himself and just appreciated the hug.

Coming out of the locker, the pair found Baldwin and
Collins waiting for them. With no one of rank watching closely, Alicia slipped her hand in Brent’s and walked away with him. Tanner took in a long breath and let it out, feeling better despite the impending crisis.

“So,” Baldwin began slowly, “you’re gonna tell me all the dirt, right?”

Tanner made a face. “Don’t we have an invasion to worry about?”

“Yeah, in a couple
weeks
. What’s going on now? C’mon, this ship is boring without any drama!”

Fight Like a Pirate

“We will not bow, and we will not break. We will not take back what we have said, for we have both the evidence to back it up and the fortitude to withstand the inevitable backlash. My friends, it does not matter if they come at us with trade sanctions and boycotts. It does not matter if they tarnish our good name in the Assembly or in the media services they own. They can try all the shady, bloody covert actions they want, for we will know them for what they are. We know the truth, and the truth has set us free.”

--President Gabriel Aguirre, Uriel Town Hall Speech, November 2276

“Nice of him to come up and deliver the news in person, I guess,” Casey scowled. He watched the shuttle exit
Argent’s
bay on one of the monitor screens at the captain’s chair.

Hawkins stood by, looking over his shoulder. “Is that resentment for the rear echelons I hear?”

“Well, the fucker never served a day in the field, I’ll bet. Oh, sure, he’s probably been
near
a crisis or three. Maybe he carried a gun a few times because regulations said it was appropriate. But he’s smart. Too smart to be that damn arrogant if he’d ever been staring down the barrel or at least gotten a solid ass-kicking once or twice in his life.

“But no, I’m not
callin’ Kiribati a wuss for being a career bureaucrat or a politician. That just makes him a different kind of predator. He’s risked as much here as anyone else,” Casey said. “When it all falls apart, he’ll either eat a bullet before the goon squads get their hands on him, or he’ll wish he had. Oh, the corporate types won’t torture him. They’re not amateurs. He knows that. But he also knows it’ll still be hell and they’ll get everything they want out of him in the end, anyway, so I’m betting on the bullet.” He glanced up at Hawkins and saw a disapproving glare. “What?”

“Torture is something we don’t do, either.”

The captain rolled his eyes. “Oh, fuck your morals. It’s a matter of efficacy,” muttered Casey. “They’ll play as dirty as I ever did. Only difference is, I never had a trained interrogator in my crew, or at least nobody ever stepped forward.”

“Shuttle bay secure,” called out the helmsman. “Visiting shuttle is outbound for Raphael.”

“Thank you, Schlensker. Bring us two-zero-zero by zero-fifteen and start cruising. We need some clear space for privacy, ‘cause we’re gonna be running drills. Renaldo,” he said, turning to the woman at the comms station, “I need you to call the department heads into the wardroom for a briefing in ten minutes. Have all four of our duty shuttle pilots there for it, too.”

“Aye, aye, captain,” came simultaneous replies.

“Here’s where it starts feeling like work again,” Casey grumbled.

* * *

“We’re on picket duty for the foreseeable future, and that future is a matter of days, maybe a week or two,” the captain explained to the officers at his table. “Whatever back-and-forth diplomacy Aguirre’s people run should be able to give us a better read on the situation, but until that catches up with the time lag between here and Earth and Fairhaven and New Shanghai, we’ve gotta expect the sky to fall on us. It’s drills and training until then.”

“So, business as usual?” asked Chief Engineer
Okeke. His dark face held a stony but calm expression. Given his decades of experience, he had a talent for setting a good example for the younger officers and crew. It was a contribution Casey appreciated.

“Yeah, but now we’ve got a role and some idea of what to expect, so I think we can narrow down the specific drills we run. Still, we took on some new people with that last shuttle run, so we’ll need to get them all up to speed. Nobody gets to pull the ‘new guy’ excuse once the real thing happens.”

Casey called up a holo projection of Raphael and its moon. He then added a net of icons in a sphere outside the lunar paths. “In about a week, the Navy will deploy the drone net. It’s too expensive to run indefinitely, but they can’t wait until the last minute, either, ‘cause nobody knows what that last minute is. The enemy knows we’ve got a drone net, naturally, so they’ll have to drop out of lightspeed further out to avoid the risk of a catastrophic shift out of FTL. The drones have guns and shields, but they won’t mean a damn thing against a serious attack force,” he explained for those officers without military experience, “so they’ll crash right through it. Ships like ours will be on the outside of the net—we’ll be right here—pretending we’re doing a shakedown cruise or whatever.

“If they come through near our position—and that’s a huge if, when you consider the
volume of space we’re talking about here—they’ll order us to high-tail it out of the combat zone. I suppose it’s possible that they’ll let one ship break off from their force to board and commandeer us, because a liner like this would be a nice little prize, but that’ll only happen if they show up with ships to spare on chores like that. They might not want to divide up right away.

“Regardless, it’s our job to
make
them split up. The goal is to throw off their game plan from the start. We play innocent civilians long enough to let them think they’ve got their bearings, and then we hit ‘em.”

Silence followed. The assembled officers waited for Casey to continue, but after a beat, they realized he wouldn’t. “I’m sorry, captain,” spoke up Dr. Stanwood. “We ‘hit ‘
em?’ You mean as a hit and run, or…?” He held out his hands questioningly.

“Depends on how they react,” Casey shrugged. “If we see ships break off to deal with us, it comes down to how big and how many. That’s a judgment call. If they don’t take us seriously enough to send a significant force after us, we dive in until we bite off a bigger detachment. We need to push them into a real fight. We don’t just throw a couple punches for a token effort and then bail out.”

“So it’s a suicide mission?”

“I don’t do suicide, Doc,” Casey said levelly. “Look around on your way back to sick bay. This crew is made up of
survivors
, not quitters. Nobody would be on the
Argent
if they wanted to take the easy way out. We’re gonna fight our way through this. Any other questions? Dismissed.”

Hawkins lingered until the room emptied out. “Nice pep talk,” he commented.

“I know how to motivate a crew, Hawkins. I could do it better without you running interference.”

“You command the ship, I manage the crew,” Hawkins replied in a calm tone. “That’s the XO’s job on any vessel I’ve ever been on. They’ll perform. I’ll make sure of that.”

“You guys in the Intelligence Service screened this crew to make sure you didn’t have any mutineer types on board,” came Casey’s dry response. “And it ain’t like I’m going anywhere. I don’t know what you’re worried about.”

Hawkins offered a tight, insincere smile. “Just doing my part to share the load, captain,” he said as he stood and headed out.

Casey sat back in his chair and let out a long breath. “God, I miss Lauren,” he grumbled.

* * *

“Dominguez, I’m putting you on Damage Control Team One. That team is closest to the bridge. Baumgartner’s on there with you as a medic. She’s one of ours. Grosser, you’re in with security. The department lead knows you’re coming. Szweda, you’ll be in engineering… far as I can tell, things are solid down there, but keep your eyes peeled.” Sitting at his desk, Hawkins killed the holo screens before him. He checked a small indicator on his desk to ensure that none of the three new crewmen before him had any of their own devices broadcasting.

“You all came up together?” he asked. The three newcomers, two men and one woman, all nodded. “Then you’re all in the know? Repeat the protocol for me, please.”

Grosser and Szweda glanced at one another. Dominguez spoke without further prompting. “Keep an eye out for mutiny or misconduct. Bring any concerns directly to you. If the captain tries to leave the ship without code-word authorization from you or the Minister, we stop him. At all other times, follow orders per normal.”

“What do you do if he gives the order to abandon ship?”

“Put two shots in the back of his head,” Grosser answered, her voice calm but assertive. “Same as we do in the event of capture. Preferably, we make sure there’s nothing left to identify, but top priority is to make sure he isn’t breathing.”

Hawkins nodded. “Correct.” He frowned darkly. “He knows what he’s doing in command of the ship, but we’re coming up on the real moment of truth here, and I don’t know what’s gonna happen. In the end, we still have to follow the protocol. We’re on this ship to make sure the captain doesn’t escape. We make sure he doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.
Aside from that,” Hawkins trailed off, shaking his head in pensive thought, “we have to let him be the captain. Any questions?”

“How is the rest of the crew?” asked Dominguez.

“Solid enough. I had my doubts, and I’d rather be going into battle with a uniformed Navy crew, but the Scheherazade op gave us a good trial by fire. We shook loose some dead weight after that and the rest have had a chance to master their jobs since then.”

“And their loyalty?” Grosser ventured.

“They’ll hang together in a crisis. They’ll follow the captain’s lead. He’s gotten them through tough spots before, they should trust him to do it again.”

Grosser’s eyes narrowed. Hawkins did not answer her real question. “And if we have to put him down?”

“I don’t know,” Hawkins admitted. “Doesn’t matter regardless. We follow the protocol, come what may. But I hope to God we never have to find out.”

* * *

“Government authorities in seven systems, as well as numerous governments on Earth, have promised a full investigation into Archangel’s accusations. Numerous other system governments have already decried these claims as a desperate stunt, while grumbling both on the street and in the financial houses of the Union continues to grow. Many observers say that the fallout is simply a matter of where a given system’s loyalties lie and how much they can afford to bite the hands that feed them. In the end, the question is: What can the Big Three do to regain the Union’s trust?”

--Gibril Coleman, Solar Herald, December 2276

The general quarters
alarm woke Casey from his dreams. Its jarring urgency erased any emotion those dreams might have left behind, pushing him upright on his bed. He slapped the personal comms panel on his headboard, then reached for the vac suit he’d left on the chair beside the bed. “Bridge, captain. Report.”

“Multiple contacts dropping out of FTL outside the picket line, sir,” came the answer. Casey threw on his suit with a rapid efficiency borne of long experience as the voice continued. “Roughly 170,000
klicks out from our position, bearing zero-seven-one mark zero-three-zero relative to us, sir. We’re only 22,000 klicks from the line.” The speaker paused long enough for Casey to grab his helmet and get to his feet. “NorthStar Security Fleet identifiers.”

“How many ships?”

“Still acquiring new contacts… I think they brought all of them, sir.”

Casey let out a pensive breath. “Well, fuck,” he muttered. He looked down at himself to make sure he was good and sealed in, then headed for the bridge. His stateroom was only twenty meters from there. He saw other officers and designated bridge crew headed the same way. Routine drills paid off in response time, at least.

“Captain on the bridge,” someone called out as he arrived, but no one popped to attention or looked up from their stations. The duty bridge crew kept at their work. The captain’s chair was empty only because the ops boss, serving as the current Officer Of the Deck, was over by the astrogation table. Casey moved straight for him.

“Signal incoming,” announced Renaldo at comms. “They want to speak to the captain.”

“Tell ‘em the captain is on his way,” Casey answered over the voice of his ops officer. Quentin looked up from the astrogation table with an obvious question. “We’re a space liner,” Casey explained as he took in the tactical info on the sensor bubble. “Nothing strange about a slow response. Jesus Christ, they really are right on top of us.”

* * *

“
Telesto
and
Pallene
confirmed…
Cascia
confirmed…
Werrengo
arrived and… confirmed safe arrival, sir. Battle group Hercules on scene and in proper order,” the ops specialist finished. He turned from his station to look across the flag bridge at the commodore. “Command bridge reports they’ll be ready to launch
Foxhound
in one minute.”

Commodore
Eldridge didn’t look up from his screens. Standing on
Hercules’s
flag bridge, he could see the battleship’s condition and that of her escorts for himself. Announcements were a matter of routine. He pressed a button on the table to speak with the battleship’s captain on the command bridge. “My compliments on the smooth ride, Captain Wagner.”