Rich Man's War (46 page)

The security teams remained at their posts. The damage control team focused on their jobs. Quentin rushed over from his spot at the table to check on Hawkins, calling for a corpsman.

Hawkins didn’t speak. He couldn’t. Casey saw that plainly. Hawkins couldn’t breathe, let alone give any last orders to whoever on the security or damage control teams might be part of his plans. His eyes turned up toward the captain.

Casey couldn’t speak any last parting words, either. Not with the comms net in full swing, recording every statement. He contented himself to flashing his middle finger at his first officer.

It was the last thing Hawkins ever saw.

And Thousands More Like Him

“Civil Emergency Warning: This is not a test. The Civil Defense Force has declared a military emergency for the planet of Raphael. All emergency responders must report to their duty stations. Civilian air and space traffic is suspended. Citizens are advised to take shelter. Repeat: Take shelter immediately.”

--All-Media Emergency Override Message, Raphael, December 2276

“So Freeman says Miller has been a good gunner’s mate lately. Reliable guy except for this one little case of missing movement, does his job well, blah blah blah,” Tanner said, his disagreement with that particular assertion plain in his tone. He shifted in his seat at the front desk in the brig. “Stevens listens and nods. He doesn’t ask anyone else to make statements. Doesn’t ask me anything about the calls that night. He sits behind his table with Miller standing there in his dress uniform lookin’ all puppy-dog-eyed and asks if Miller wants to make a statement.

“And Miller goes, ‘Sir, I want to say that the cause of my downfall was the same thing that caused the Trojan War and the expulsion from Paradise. I was in the clutches of a woman.’”

Seated beside him, Baldwin choked, then laughed. It was the only sound in the compartment apart from the soft hum of the ventilation. The two young MAs were the only ones on watch in a brig that had grown thankfully empty. “Wow, he actually said that?”

“He did.”

“Fuckin’ gunner’s mates. What’d the captain do?”

“He sat there with his jaw
hangin’ open for a couple seconds and then said, ‘I agree,’ and threw the book at Miller. Temporary reduction in rank, thirty days confined to the ship, forfeiture of half his pay for three months and extra duty shifts.”

“That’s pretty usual for a captain’s mast,” said Baldwin. “
That sounds like the maximum for an offense like his, but those are all standard measures of non-judicial punishment.”

Tanner nodded
. “We lost a guy while Miller was passed out drunk. Almost lost two others on account of injuries on board the ship, and then there’s the whole bit with the pirates taking off with me and two other guys still on board. Three, counting the one who died.” His voice, already a bit subdued by weariness, turned sober as he recounted the casualties. “The captain felt like an asshole for being on leave when it happened. I mean, that wasn’t his fault. Wasn’t anyone’s fault. The guy had leave days to burn and we weren’t in any sort of crisis mode. But he felt awful, and there’s Miller being a fuck-up.”

“You think he was taking it out on Miller, then?”

“I dunno. I never figured that out. The captain never talked to me, anyway.”

“Well, if shit went sideways while I was away on vacation, I imagine I’d feel pretty bad, too. You guys wound up in a fight and the guy who had ‘gunner’ in his
job title
wasn’t there.”

“I guess. It’s ancient history now. I just still think what Miller said was pretty funny. I mean, at a captain’s mast, he said something like that. I’ll never forget
it as long as I live.”

Baldwin smiled. “No women on that ship, I take it?”

“No. Not that one. For all I know, Miller would’ve said that anyway. Guy was a piece of work.”

“You don’t sound too fond of any of them.”

The observation gave Tanner pause. He liked Baldwin. She showed every indication of liking him. Yet she was also a genuine gossip, or at least interested in prying juicy details out of Tanner and presumably plenty of other people. He wondered what he could say.

He didn’t feel the weight of the dead anymore, but he still felt the weight of their reputations.

“They died before I could settle everything that I needed to work out with them.”

“You ever lose anyone close to you?”

Tanner blinked.
She really does just go for it, doesn’t she?
“My mother died when I was fifteen. We were close. No teenage rebellion angst. But she got hit by a car, and…” he shrugged.

“I’m sorry. Shouldn’t have asked.”

“Nah, it’s okay. But I think about everything that’s going on, and she was all in favor of Archangel doing something like this for as long as I can remember, and here we are, y’know? Only my dad and my step-mother aren’t in the system anymore, and I know the media propaganda was getting bad before Aguirre made his announcements. Here we are in quiet mode. I can’t imagine what they’re thinking now.”

“You know they’re proud of you, right?” Baldwin offered. “Your mom, too.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do. What about you?”

“Ugh. My parents were shocked when I enlisted. They didn’t have the money to put me through college themselves, but past that, things were okay. They figured I’d stay home and dive right into all the extra college debt like everyone else. God, when I went off to basic, they cried and cried and cried.”

She spoke of it easily. Casually. It didn’t sound like a touchy subject at all for her. Tanner considered the implications. “Felt like you had nowhere else to go, huh?”

“I wouldn’t say that, but… nowhere else that’d let me feel like I was standing on my own two feet.”

Tanner smiled. “That’s kind of how I felt.”

“Anyway,” Baldwin said. “Back to captain’s masts. Captain Bernard will stick close to the book. It’s practically his script. It’ll be like the mock procedures from MA school. You wait until—“

The battle stations alarm interrupted her. Red lights flashed in the overhead fixtures. “All hands to battle stations!” announced a voice on the PA. “Operation Beowulf is underway!
This is not a drill!
”

After two weeks of practice drills and rehearsals, with response time and precision meaning everything to the operation, crewmen and marines found themselves lugging around all relevant gear to whatever duty station they might have. People slept in their bunks with combat jackets on top of their blankets. Rather than relying on emergency stations to provide oxygen
cartridges for helmets, everyone carried at least four of their own in their pockets. Baldwin leapt out of her seat to grab her combat jacket from its resting place on the back of her chair.

Experience still held firm for Tanner. Before he did anything, he threw on his helmet and activated the seals. Then he hit the comms net button. “Lewis,” he said, snatching up his own combat jacket and quickly assembling the buckles, “the brig is empty right now. No prisoners, just me and Baldwin.”

“Go!” replied Lewis over the department channel. “Seal it up and get to your station. We’ll handle the rest.”

Per their most successful drills, the pair only had twenty seconds. Helmets were secure
. Indicators glowed in green. Tanner hefted up his damage control bag. Baldwin slung a field comms unit backpack over one shoulder. “You good?” she asked. He nodded. “I’ll get the door. Let’s go!”

Tanner rushed out of the compartment, where he found the passageways filled with crewmen going this way and that in a carefully
rehearsed traffic plan orchestrated by the deck department. As people made it to their individual stations, the passageways would clear up, but for these first few seconds the focus was simply on avoiding bumps and jostles while moving as fast as possible. Tanner paused only long enough to seal up the brig before turning to follow his predetermined path.

Most of the crewmen he came across were suited up and ready to go. Some weren’t. “Put your fucking helmet on!” he growled at several as he passed, caring little for rank or seniority. The sight of shipmates leaving themselves vulnerable like that made him genuinely angry. Didn’t they know how dangerous this would be?

He moved on. Tanner and Baldwin crossed over to the other side of the ship, almost vaulting up a ladder well from one deck to the next, and soon came to their destination.

A vac-suited crewman stood inside Airlock Four. Given the combat jacket that covered up his nametag and the helmet that obscured his face, he’d have been all but unidentifiable to most of the people on
Los Angeles
. His only defining trait was his significant height.

Tanner slapped hands with the tall crewman on his way through the airlock. “Sanjay,” he
said.

“Good to see you, Tanner,” came the reply. As Tanner passed through the airlock, he heard Sanjay say over his own ship’s comms net, “Two more aboard, three left to go.”

The lurching sensation of going from one ship’s artificial gravity system, through a low-gravity tube and into another field of gravity still played havoc with Tanner’s guts. He accepted this and put it aside in favor of stressing over the mission that lay ahead. Throwing up wouldn’t get him out of this.

* * *

“
Argent
just engaged. Repeat:
Argent
has opened fire… holy shit,” stammered the disembodied voice from
St. George
. Though Lt. Kelly and the others on
Joan of Arc’s
bridge listened with natural interest and tension, none of them paused in their work. Chief Romita drew up numerous contingency courses. Stan busied himself clearing the bridge of any coffee mug, hand tool or papers that might go flying around in the course of combat. Kelly sat at the captain’s chair watching
Joan’s
internal status boards as they signaled increasing readiness in engineering, her turrets and her cargo bay. The voice of
St. George’s
ops specialist elaborated after a few seemingly endless seconds: “
Argent
has neutralized two targets! One frigate listing and silent, one destroyer KIA, one destroyer damaged!”

That declaration
briefly stopped work on the bridge. Kelly, Romita and Stan shared an instant of surprised glances, but no more than that. The situation left no time for commentary. They got back to work.

“Captain, this is Sanjay,” the ship’s comm broke in. “That’s a full house. I’m sealing up the airlock now. XO and Ordoñez are getting everyone squared away.”

“Acknowledged,” Kelly replied. “Take over for Ordoñez as planned. We need her on the cannon right away. Command, this is
Joan of Arc
,” she said, keying over to another designated channel. “We are go for Beowulf. Ready to launch on your order.”

“
Joan
, command, understood. Stand by.”

Kelly released the key. She looked up through
Joan of Arc’s
bridge canopy. Raphael floated above her—or perhaps beneath her, given
Joan’s
orientation in space—with the bright light of the star of Archangel falling across the planet’s polar region. The scene offered a good deal of natural light within the bridge.
Los Angeles
and the rest of the fleet hovered near the edge of the planet’s atmosphere, hoping to take advantage of Raphael to conceal the fleet’s presence, or to at least have the world to their backs while defending it.

The enemy force
arrived almost on the opposite side of Raphael from the fleet, which depending on how one looked at the situation meant that Yeoh had gotten either lucky or unlucky. Only
St. George
, sitting near Azarias, had a direct view of the action, which her bridge crew relayed with breathless tension.

“Three more ships breaking off from the main fleet to pursue
Argent
,” reported the voice. “Decoy Two is making a run now.”

“The tension’s gonna kill me before the bad guys do,” Stan muttered. His workstation was now clear of any possible debris. All he had now at the astrogation table were holograms and hardened screens.

“Take a look outside, Stan,” Kelly offered. “It’s a pretty view.”

“I’d rather get on with this, ma’am,” Stan confessed politely.

Kelly didn’t quite smile. “Can’t blame you.” She noted one more green indicator on her status board. Ordoñez was at the main cannon now, which was already powered up and good to go. About the only battle stations system not in effect was the electrostatic generator, which couldn’t activate until
Joan of Arc
separated from
Los Angeles.
The cruiser and her other exterior “passengers” all had the same problem.

“XO, how are we doing?” she asked over the comm.

“All secure, ready to move.”

Another indicator on her control panel lit up, warning of a transmission from the flag bridge on
Los Angeles
. Per the comm system’s prioritization protocol, the signal stepped on anything else incoming on
Joan’s
systems. “Alpha wing, command. Attack vector set and confirmed. Stand by.”

Joan of Arc
vibrated as
Los Angeles
gunned her thrusters, carrying the docked corvette along with her. Most of the other fleet vessels were close enough to be seen with the naked eye: all five of the Navy’s frigates, six destroyers and a half-dozen freighters from Archangel’s Independent Shipping Guild, all of them volunteers with a brief but important role in the operation. Each of the ships involved had corvettes piggybacked to their hulls; the destroyers all had three each, while every frigate held two and the freighters carried one apiece.
Los Angeles
carried four. Only a handful of others flew freely among the group; unlike the rest, they had no last-minute payload to pick.