Accord of Honor (11 page)

I
’d already decided
to take command of the Constellation. But that still left me in a bind – I needed two more experienced captains who were willing to follow me into battle commanding the other two ships. I had a decent array of crew to choose from here – but less experienced hands. And I didn’t have a lot of time.

One came to mind, for sure: James Kessler. He’d stood up for me, back there in the conference room. And he’d been with Dad for a long time. I called him in.

“Thom,” he said as he came into the small room I’d set aside for our meeting. “You’ve come a long way.”

“A lot’s happened.”

He looked up at the ceiling – all transparent, one huge high-density window. I picked this room for a reason: if you looked up here, you could see the hangar bays. Constellation sat dead center with the other two ships flanking her. It was an impressive sight.

I was counting on that.

“I’m guessing that you’re looking for crew for those other ships. Am I right?”

“Crew,” I replied. “And captains.”

He sat down next to me. “Of course, I’ll help. Is it as bad as you said, before?”

I exhaled a deep breath and relaxed a little. If I could get James on board, then I was sure I could find someone else to run the third ship. “Probably worse. Dad’s made Earth by now and is fighting a huge fleet with only two ships. I don’t know what’s happening there, except that I doubt it’s good.”

He frowned. “Your father’s a good man. Don’t count him out of the fight just because he’s outnumbered.”

“I’m not. But the sooner we get there, the better. There’s more: multiple enemy ships headed for this station. Less than two hours out.”

James’s eyebrows raised. “Time to get moving then. Those ships ready to go?”

I nodded.

“Who’s your third captain?” he asked.

I hesitated. That was the question, wasn’t it? “I thought you might have some suggestions? I was thinking Sam, maybe.”

“Sam served with me that last cruise. Good man, but captain? For an easy shipping run, maybe. For this? No. He hasn’t the seasoning for it, not yet.” James replied.

I looked down at my tablet where I had a list of the prisoners’ names, and some basic information about their shipping background. Sam had seemed such an obvious choice to me, but I realized he was only obvious because he was a known factor. I trusted James on this one – I’d have to find someone else.

James looked upwards again, and I could see the longing in his eyes. After a long moment, he looked back down at me. “I’m not getting my ship back for this, am I?” he asked.

“Constellation was yours?”

He nodded.

I gave him a wry smile. “I would, James. You’ve got far more experience as a captain than I do, but...”

He waved me off at that point. “But you’ve commanded a ship in a space battle before. Something I can’t claim. I get it.” He sighed. “Take care of her then. I want her back in one piece!”

“I’ll do my best,” I said. “Now, about that third captain?”

“I think our best bet is Owains.”

“Kel?” The idea stopped me in my tracks and set my pulse racing. I knew my shock was showing on my face, and there wasn’t much I could do about it.

“Oh, Thom, I’m sure she’s over...that...” James was grinning with good humor now. Kel and I must have been the scuttlebutt for the entire SSI fleet for months after our mandated breakup.

“I’m not so sure,” I growled.

“Get over yourself,” he said, all the humor gone in an instant. “Nobody has time for that crap. Kel was the Connie’s pilot for our run out here, and she’s worked with me a bit off and on over the years. She’s one of the best pilots SSI has – maybe the best pilot in space. No idea why she’s never taken a command, but it’s certainly not for lack of skill. She might turn out to be the best combat captain you have. Her feel for 3D movement dynamics is incredible.”

“I’ll try. But I don’t think she’s as over ‘us’ as you think.” I told him. I briefly went over seeing her in the conference room, and her reaction.

He grimaced. “I don’t know what she’s thinking, Thomas. But if you want the best person in that third chair, she’s the woman you want.”

This was bigger than us. James was right. There was too much at stake for me to put anyone but our best in command of these ships. “I’ll speak to her then. In the meantime, circulate with the rest of the crews we freed. See how many of them are willing to sign on to help in the fight. I’m not counting on a lot of them joining us, but even a few will help us out.”

“I’ll do that. How long we have?” he asked.

“I plan to be gone from here in about thirty minutes,” I said. “Ask Kel to join me, please?”

“I will,” James said. On his way out, over his shoulder, he called out, “Good luck!”

I let out a long sigh. “Thanks,” I said to the empty room.

I
rose
from my seat as she entered the room. Keladry Owains – I wondered if the woman she’d become was much like the girl I’d known all those years ago? Her eyes flashed, which made me suck in my breath a little. I was guessing yes. Which was probably a good thing for all of us right now because Kel had never been anything but tough as nails. We needed that.

I ground down my personal feelings, bottling them up. No time for that, right now. Time to be professional.

“Thanks for coming so quickly,” I said.

“James filled me in, a little. Time sounds like it's in short supply,” she replied.

Hearing her voice made my heart do something awkward in my chest.

“I need a captain,” I said, keeping it short and to the point.

She quirked an eyebrow. “And you want me? I’ve never captained a ship.”

“James says it’s not for lack of experience.”

“Oh? High praise, from him. He’s a good captain,” she said.

I sat back down. “He’s the other one. But we have three ships,” I said. I pointed upward at the window. “The one on the right, there? That one would be yours.”

“Looks a little banged up,” she said.

“My fault,” I said, grinning. I couldn’t help it. Being with her again – it just felt so natural.

“You always did have a knack for making a mess,” Kel said.

She was standing close enough that I could smell her now. The scent hadn’t changed, or if it had, it was still close enough to seem the same to my memory. Her face was a little older, but it was still the same face.

“I missed you, Kel.” As soon as I said the words, I wanted to take them back. That wasn’t the cool, professional demeanor I’d wanted to present!

She sighed and looked away. “I’m a big girl now, Thom. It’s been a long time. But I’m still a bit raw over the deal I got. You know I spent two years on boring out-system runs? Two years of doing nothing, Thom.”

I could see how much that had hurt her. It was etched there on her face. For a moment I regretted putting us both through all this. It was a lot of pain to dredge up after all these years. But as much as it hurt to be around her, I found myself loving every moment of it. Wishing she would stay here longer, even if it hurt. I framed my reply as carefully as I could.

“I had no idea.” I frowned. I had been in school all those years, and when Harvard wasn’t in session I was in training with Chief Acres or one of Dad’s other friends. He’d kept me as far from her as possible – and it seemed he’d also kept her as far from me as he could. “I’m sorry. My father...”

“Is still an asshole,” she said, turning to me. She had a smile on. “But let’s go bail him out of this latest shitstorm, shall we?”

“So you’re in?” I asked, standing up. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, all of a sudden. I had an urge to push her away, to tell her to go someplace safe. Suddenly I understood my Dad’s desire to see me kept out of the line of fire until all this was over.

“How could I miss this?” she asked, shrugging.

“Great!” I said. “Your ship still needs a name. Any ideas?”

She made a face. “How about a proper ship name? Never understood the Brit need to name ships after some adjective. How about...” she thought a moment, then said “Aisling?”

I cocked my head a bit and raised an eyebrow.

She glared back. “Perfectly good wet ship name from Ireland in the late twentieth,” she said.

“Your ship. You name her,” I said. “Now I have to try to convince James to go with something other than ‘Enterprise’.”

We both chuckled, then a long silence dropped. I looked up and she was staring at me. I looked back, our eyes met, and all those years seemed to tumble away in an instant. The rush of emotion was overwhelming, and I blinked to stop my eyes from tearing. When I opened my eyes again, she had looked away.

I spoke again to break the quiet, “OK, go get Aisling ready for departure. We leave within the half hour.”

W
e loaded
every missile we could store, and packed the rescued hostages into the three ships. The station was nowhere near stripped bare, but we couldn’t leave it for the pirates. Instead, we left them a surprise. Something extra special in case they tried to dock.

We pulled out just in time. As our three ships picked up speed, pouring on the best acceleration they could handle to push us away from the station, the three pirate ships came into missile range. One of the pirates on the station had obviously gotten some sort of message away, because the enemy ships didn’t bother trying to radio to us. They just opened fire.

Luckily, we were already nearly out of range, and boosting hard. Very few of the missiles managed to reach us at all, and Constellation’s antimissile fire easily handled the few that threatened us.

I was ensconced in the Connie’s bridge. It was a well-appointed command center with scans better than any ship I had captained, and room for a crew of six plus the captain in the bridge. In theory, most of the ship could be run from there. The automation was superb, state of the art. In practice, we needed crews in the engine room to keep things running smoothly, and down in the missile bays to ensure they ran well. But it was still less crew than one might have thought a ship this size needed, which was a good thing – we were going to be understaffed once we dropped our noncombatant passengers off.

“Return fire. Give them something to think about – one volley, all bays, nuke missiles,” I said.

“Aye sir,” replied my weapons tech – one of the old crew from the Indefatigable, serving here with me still. He paused, then said, “Sir, there’s a problem with fire control. We can’t launch.”

That was when we realized we had a significant problem. The fire control mechanisms that looked so completely installed were still full of bugs and problems. We could fire the missiles – but we had to manually trigger each launch by hand in the missile bays. Antimissile fire worked, but that was all. I was about to order the other ships to fire instead, but realized we were well and truly out of effective range now. Better to conserve our missiles.

Two of the ships set off after us in pursuit. One, which looked like it had already suffered some damage during the fight in Mars orbit, headed for the docks of the repair station instead. They were in for a shock.

We were several hundred thousand kilometers away from the station when the wounded ship docked. Docking triggered the explosive devices we’d set in the hangar shell, and a daisy chain of small nuclear blasts in each hangar bay. They ruined the interior of the shell, destroying the docking berths, the repair stations, and millions of dollars in equipment. I was gratified to detect the secondary explosion of the enemy ship; the concurrent detonations plus the explosion just outside its airlock had been too much, and something had blown inside the ship, ripping it to bits.

There had been some debate over the booby trap among my captains and I. James was concerned that the station represented such an important hub of trade and commerce out here, and damage to it would hurt the company and the economy. I pointed out that we couldn’t defend it, but couldn’t afford to let the enemy use it either. Blowing the entire station was out of the question. We simply didn’t have enough explosives without burning up all our missiles. The best I could think of was to make the repair bays inaccessible. Taking another resource away from the enemy was worth the loss. Taking away one of their ships at the same time was just gravy.

The other two ships stayed in pursuit. We were four days from Earth.

O
nly two days
after leaving Mars, Defender and Indefatigable decelerated into Earth’s gravity well, pinging active radar as we came. That was still more than enough time for the pirates – and I was increasingly disliking that word for the enemy – to make a mess of the place. The orbital structures were wrecked. That was the only word for it.

Before the crisis, Earth had thousands of small satellites. Most were simple communication and navigation systems. A few dozen were inhabited by people for various things, ranging from tourism to manufacturing. Humanity had two stations which could rightly be called cities, one each at the geosynchronous orbit sites of L4 and L5. And one station – the International Space Colony, distant descendant of the old International Space Station – had become a hub of commerce instead of a colony, taking in goods from bases all around the solar system and shuttling those goods down to Earth, and storing supplies from the mother world to be ferried out to all our far-flung outposts.

The ISC was gone. It had been vaporized by the first attack, the hundreds of men and women who worked there annihilated when a rock hundreds of meters across tore through the fragile framework separating them from the void. One of the other colonies had suffered a similar fate, although the thousands of families residing in the third had been spared so far. Debris from strikes against assorted other satellites was scattered all over in low orbit, smashing many of the remaining satellites and causing huge navigational hazards. Particular care seemed to have been taken to wipe out every ship building facility in orbit. Nothing remained of Earth’s ship building infrastructure.

We dumped a lot of speed toward the end of our trip. I had no interest in walking into the same sort of trap that I had set for the enemy at Mars. The enemy had gone silent, their drives shut down, waiting. Somewhere out there were ships, that much was certain. And there was no way they could have missed us coming, not at the speed we were moving. Greater acceleration equates to greater energy output, with ion drives. Our acceleration leaving Mars and then the deceleration at the end of the trip stood out like a flare against the background of space. They knew where we were – and we had no idea where they were. It was an uncomfortable lack of intelligence.

We’d been picking up the panicked communications from Earth for a while now. Another city had been taken out, this time Melbourne in Australia. I didn’t miss that both cities were selected for having spaceports and heavy space oriented industry. The enemy was systematically destroying Earth’s ability to build new ships.

We were sailing into a mess. The first hails came from Lunar City when we were still some million kilometers out. I ordered both ships to maintain radio silence for the time being, but the calls became more frantic as we got closer. Finally, the comm officer told me in a nervous voice that he was getting calls directly from the United Nations headquarters building. Not who I really wanted to spend time talking to right now, but I might have attracted attention from high enough up the political food chain to get some real intel at this point, which would be valuable. I gave the order to put the call through.

The face that came up on screen was one I knew well and would happily have never seen again. “Patrick,” I said. “Whatever can I do for you today?”

“Stein. I might have known you were involved in this somehow,” the old man on the screen replied. If looks could have killed, he’d have slain me even across all the distance between us, his glare was so hate-filled. The years had not softened Patrick Shaunesey, not even a little.

“If by ‘involved’ you mean I am trying to save your sorry ass, then yes,” I snapped. “You more than anyone else shouted me down when I was trying to point out the idiocy of the Accord. Well, you won. You got your damned Accord. Now you’re reaping the whirlwind, and I have to say... I’m feeling a little self righteous about now.”

“You smug, arrogant bastard,” he replied. “Are you in league with these people in some way? Have you come to finish the job, now that they’ve run off?”

“I suspect they ran off because they saw me coming. I’ve already destroyed three of their ships defending Mars, and the other ship with me has killed one and captured another. We came as soon as we heard they were attacking the surface. I may dislike you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t understand duty.”

“It doesn’t matter, Stein. You’re a dead man now. Dead man walking.” Patrick Shaunesey smiled in a way that exuded an oily feel.

I was done with him. I didn’t have time for this crap right now. “If you have Admiral Perrault around, which I suspect you do, then put him on. Otherwise...” I moved to press the button to cut the connection but there was a jumble on his end, and then a man in US Navy blues came on the screen. Admiral Perrault was the Chief of Naval Operations – basically the buck stops here man when it came to anything the United States did in space, and he had a hand in guiding United Nations policy as well. Unlike Shaunesey, his face was a welcome sight.

“Nick,” he said.

“Barry,” I replied. “I wish I was able to say hello under a bit better circumstances.”

“Patrick is still an ass. Sorry about that.”

I shrugged. “Nothing new there. He’ll die spitting in my face.”

“He’s right about one thing, Nick. You’ve stepped in it this time. The Accords don’t give us a lot of wiggle room, you know? But we need your help right now. There’s at least six ships that we’ve seen, but they keep flitting in and out, so it’s hard to track their numbers. There could be more. Are those ships of yours up to a real fight? The pirates seem to have backed off for now, but I doubt that will last.”

“We’re up for it. If we can find them, we can probably kill them. Or at least take enough of them with us to put a serious crimp in their style,” I replied.

“Don’t get blown up,” he said with a grim smile. “You must have seen the damage to our orbital platforms. It’s going to be a long time before Earth can get any new ships made, and that means you’re literally our last means of responding to this threat.”

“I’ll do what I can,” I said. “No promises, but I’ll do what I can to stop them. If you can send me the tracking data of their movements since they got in close to Earth, that would be a big help. Perhaps we can figure out where they are, or at least what they plan to do next. I’d like to try to whittle away a few of their ships, but that’s hard to do when they’re hiding from us. What I don’t want is for them to get the jump on us. That would be catastrophic.”

“Agreed. I’ll authorize transmission of all the data we have to your ship, including their movements and last known locations. Defender and Indefatigable, eh? You always were a romantic at heart, Stein. Just don’t get yourself killed out there. It would ruin Shaunesey’s day down here to have to speak at your memorial service instead of your court hearing.”

I laughed. “If I was worried about the good opinion of people like him, we’d all be in a lot more trouble right about now,” I said in a voice dripping with scorn.

“You’re right, damn it. OK? Is that what you’ve been waiting to hear someone say? Yes. You were right.” He looked grim. “For everyone’s sake, I wish you hadn’t been.”

“So do I,” I said, and cut the connection.

“Well,” I looked around at the bridge crew. “Things might be looking up a little bit. Earth seems to be finally coming around to my point of view about the need for a space navy.”

That got a few laughs. Cheering up the crew was important. We were outnumbered and outgunned. The enemy knew where we were, and we had no idea where they were or even how many of them there were. Morale was going to be vital. I wished it didn’t feel so hollow in my gut. True, Earth would likely abandon the Accord and launch a real space force after this – assuming we won. All it took to get them to see the light was a few million deaths and the destruction of most of their space infrastructure. I sighed heavily and sat back down on my bridge chair.

I had spent a lot of years thinking about the eventual – I always considered it inevitable – day when someone would break the Accords. I’d gone through countless variations of attacks which might come up, ranging from a nation state breaking the Accord to make war on another nation, to a small group which had managed to smuggle a couple of ship based weapons into space. But this seemed like something different. This group had the deep resources of a major corporation or nation behind them. They had many ships. At least six here plus the six at Mars and the two the Indefatigable had met in space. That was at least fourteen ships, and it seemed likely they had more. Even assuming that they had captured many of those by forcing them to surrender, just arming that many ships should have been beyond the means of almost anyone.

Getting weapons up into space was very, very difficult. I knew from experience. And setting up to manufacture weapons in space was almost as hard, even for the exec of a large corporation that had good, legitimate reasons to have secret R&D bases on the books.

So this had to be more than some private individual who thought they could make a quick buck and then vanish, or was just out to make their splash on the pages of history. The enemy had large numbers of launchers and missiles. Those had to be manufactured somewhere. They had ships to start off with. Those didn’t just appear out of the ether, either – but these ones seemed to have. And they had crew. Lots of crew, if they were running fourteen plus ships. All of this implied a high level of organization, and strong monetary backing – from somewhere. The trick was to trace back where those funds were coming from, and nail the head of the snake.

We had been drifting in Earth’s orbit for a day or so when the enemy made their next move. I realized I had been unconsciously thinking of them as just an ‘enemy’ for a while now. Not pirates or anything so pre-defined. Just my enemy. That they were not simply out for piracy was growing more and more clear by the day. It seemed more likely to me that their aim was nothing less than the subjugation of Earth. Or at the least, the destruction of Earth’s ability to reach to the stars, which in effect was the same thing.

Defender and Indefatigable were on station side by side. I was keeping the two ships close, the better to support one another against their greater numbers if they decided to attack. Our early efforts to spot them had failed utterly. Space was too big and spotting a cold target sitting still out there was beyond our abilities. It was too easy to power down a ship and hide very well. So we settled back into a fairly close orbit and waited for their next move. I didn’t like it, but it was the best we could do.

“Inbound object, closing fast!” came the call from our radar station.

I tensed immediately, but kept my voice calm. “Object? What is it?”

“Not a missile, sir. Looks like maybe another rock, aimed at Earth.

“Will it pass within our missile envelope?” I said. It would be best if we could hit the asteroid with missiles without diverting our course. I suspected that wouldn’t be the case.

“Negative, outside it. We’ll need to accelerate to catch it.”

“Helm, give me a boost to bring that target inside our missile range. Weapons, fire as soon as you’re in range. I don’t like this. They’re testing our ability to respond. Radio Indefatigable and have them stay tight with us so we can combine our missile defense if needed.”

Ten minutes later, missiles were away and within half an hour, the object was destroyed. It was only minutes after it was blasted to bits, however, that radar spotted another asteroid in our back path – back around the orbit the way we had come. We’d have to swing around the entire planet to catch it. Simply reversing the orbit and turning around would take too long to dump all the velocity we’d already built up. Everyone suited up into the acceleration suits, and we poured on the speed instead, pushing the engines to come around in time. By the time we blew the second rock, we were all tired of the suits and their aqueous breathing medium.

That wasn’t the end, though we had a rest. The enemy ships kept on slinging rocks at the Earth. We were stuck running around the planet in circles, trying to keep up with their shots. Once they fired two at the same time, and we missed one of them that was just too far away to fire on. It was probably aimed at New York City, but tore a chunk out of eastern Connecticut instead. I ground my teeth together in frustration at the loss of life. After that, I split the two ships up. I knew in my gut that was a mistake, but what else could I do? It was either that or let the enemy get kinetic strikes through our defense with impunity.

The pattern of strikes intensified as the days went on. Our enemy spent a day slinging rocks at Earth, over a dozen in all. Then they paused for a day as if to reassess. Likely, they were gathering more ammunition. The third day they were back at it, and we were hard pressed to keep up the pace against their asteroid attacks. Nothing got past our defense, but none of our crew got any rest. The fourth was quiet again. I spent the time cursing them, wishing they would come out and fight. I even took Defender out and away from the Earth a bit, but all I was ever able to detect were some faint long range signals, the echoes of their travels. They were staying far away from my ships.

Then on the fifth day, they unloaded three volleys of six rocks at a time. We only managed to kill about half of each volley. The others impacted fairly randomly, but all did some level of damage and all caused casualties. It was disheartening. No matter how hard we fought – and we had put ourselves through the wringer trying to keep up with those last attacks! - it wasn’t enough.

Having worn us down and demonstrated their power to the Earth, they sent a new message over open radio.

“People of Earth, despite your continued attempts to defend against our attacks, we have proven we can push past your defenses any time we choose. We could destroy every major city on Earth if we want to.”

I tried to place the voice. Male with an Aussie accent. Not a shock – the Melbourne space-port had been down on its luck for a few years now. There were a lot of spacers who were out of work as a result. It would have been a prime recruiting ground.