Battlegroup (StarFight Series Book 2) (14 page)

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Jacob said more calmly. He sighed. “Guess some battle loss was to be expected. I gather the Marines brought in captives and tech?”

Joy nodded quickly. “They did. I’ve put the four wasps in a holding room set to half gee gravity, with bowls of water and tubes of honey set out for them. They should recover from the taser zaps within an hour. Maybe they will like the honey.”

Daisy admired Joy. The straw blond had taken her ship right into the teeth of the wasp ship’s energy beams, defeated two of its three weapons rings and had recovered the surviving Darts. And nearly all of the Marines who had boarded. They now had gigabytes of video imagery from the Marine shoulder vidcams that would be intensely examined by Lieutenant Branstead’s xenologists, as would the captured tech. Surely some of the tech were pheromone signalers that could be reverse engineered. Plus they had living captives who could be shown future cartoon videos, and watched as they pheromone spoke to each other. If Science Deck could figure out how to make a pheromone signaler that converted human speech into wasp pheromones, maybe they could avoid the next battle. Maybe they could convince the wasps it was all an accident and that humanity would leave Kepler 22 and the wasp colony planet alone. No doubt Lori would be in the thick of the wasp research, leaving her and Jacob to hang with Carlos, Kenji and Quincy. Or maybe just Kenji and Quincy since Carlos and Lori were a devoted couple.

“Maybe they will,” Jacob said after a long pause. “Lieutenant, bring your ship and our Marines back to Valhalla. You, your crew and the Marines deserve some shore leave!”

Joy smiled quickly, then grew thoughtful. “My Weapons chief had excellent results from her close-up targeting of the enemy’s weapons rings. While half our adaptive optics are gone due to lightning bolt hits, our hull withstood concentrated laser fire. Shall I transmit my chief’s targeting solutions and our hull data to your people now? Or save it for when we arrive at Valhalla?”

“Send it now,” Jacob said quickly. “Address it to Chief Diego y Silva at Weapons and to Chief Garcia at Life Support here on the Bridge. Also send it to Chief Bannister at Weapons Deck and Lieutenant Yamamoto at Life Support Deck. We have no idea when the new wasp fleet will show up, so I want our ships and our deck chiefs to know everything from your encounter.” Jacob paused, rubbed his chin, then sat back, laying his arms on his armrests. “Did you get any sense of what that wasp ship was doing way out in the Kuiper Belt?”

Joy looked left to her Welsh helper. “XO, you tracked the early sensor and electro-optical scans of the comet and how the enemy ship’s hideout appeared before it launched on us. What say?”

The intense woman looked to her left at a holo, then faced Daisy, Aaron and Jacob. “Our sensor scans showed tech sensors atop the hidey hole they cut into the comet’s ice. Only one item was active, a standard lidar for tracking nearby objects. The rest were passive tech.” She paused, her expression turning thoughtful. “My guess is they were monitoring neutrino emissions from us and from Valhalla, and watching the planet with their version of a scope. Being similar to wasps, my guess is they were watching the ultraviolet, blue, white, cyan and green parts of the spectrum. They would know their attack on Valhalla failed to kill large numbers of people.”

She saw Jacob turning thoughtful. “Could the wasps also have been monitoring planet three? Its gravity is just half a gee, and it lies in this system’s liquid water ecozone.”

“That is likely,” Aelwen said quickly, her rust-red eyebrows rising. “Planet three is a near copy of the planet they colonized in Kepler 22.”

“Which makes it one reason the wasps will return,” Jacob mused. “Jefferson, keep watch on those wasps after they awaken. I’ll have Lieutenant Branstead send you a cartoon video that will show your ship heading inward to Valhalla, with the wasps living in a park-like space. That should reduce their confusion. And maybe we can put them in the
Lepanto’s
Forest Room at half gee gravity.”

“They would like that,” Aelwen said, looking to her captain.

Joy folded hands over her woodland camo uniform. “Captain of the fleet, may I tend to my people? Most shifts are overdue for sleep or a meal.”

“Of course, Lieutenant. Please inform your crew that I intend to recommend them and your ship for a unit citation, once the Earth relief ships get here. What you did was beyond dangerous. I consider the
Philippine Sea
to be one of my most valuable assets.”

Joy smiled briefly. “Captain, thank you. Ending signal.”

Her image vanished from the wallscreen. Which adjusted to show the surface of the planet Valhalla in the middle of the screen, with the left and right sides continuing to show the images from 43 AU out.

“XO.”

She turned and looked up to Jacob. His smooth-shaven face had no wrinkles on it. But his gray eyes looked tired. “Yes, Captain?”

“Call up Lieutenant Branstead to the Bridge. She and I need to confer on these captives and on the incoming wasp tech. Plus the cartoon video is a top priority for the moment. I want those captives to survive!”

Daisy nodded. “As you order, Captain.” She looked down to her right armrest. She tapped a comlink patch. “Lieutenant Branstead, report to the Bridge.”

“Coming,” the woman said quickly, her tone eager.

No doubt the Science Deck chief had been watching the All Ship video of the wasp ship boarding and Joy’s report. The Australian woman had been a good boss to Lori, and a vital help on the Bridge during the last battle with the wasp fleet. Daisy hoped Alicia could do a fast turnaround on the cartoon video. When the tasered wasps awakened, they would be confused, angry and locked into a fairly small space on the
Sea
. For people used to open sky flight, the movement limitation would be a severe strain. They needed to know her people would not torture them, kill them or mistreat them. The video cartoon would convey that. But how much would the four wasp captives be willing to share back to Alicia and her people?

CHAPTER EIGHT

Aarhant looked away from the All Ship video of the conversation between the Jefferson woman and the Renselaer whelp. Disgust filled him as he sat in the stuffed chair in his quarters. Once again the pretender had survived a potential disaster. If he had been in charge of the
Lepanto
and the fleet, he would have sent three ships to fight the lone wasp ship. Sending a single destroyer had been incredibly chancy. The fact the Marine boarding parties had mostly survived was not due to the whelp’s judgment. While Jefferson was a capable ship commander, still she was just a lieutenant, one of several lieutenants in the fleet who had stepped forward upon the death of the fleet’s senior officers. He was a lieutenant commander, the highest ranked officer on the
Lepanto
. He should be commanding the Battlestar, the same way Swanson was commanding the
Chesapeake
and Mehta was running the
Salamis
. The only ship commander with a higher rank than him and the other two lieutenant commanders was Captain Sunderland of the
Aldertag
. He sighed, grabbed the bottle of
tequila
from his side table and took a swig. The burning heat of the liquid filled his throat.

Well, when the new Earth fleet arrived, it would be led by an admiral of some sort. Either a rear admiral or a vice admiral. Captains did not command fleets. They commanded single ships. While Renselaer had been given a field promotion to captain by the Star Navy base captain, still, the new fleet’s admiral would surely take control of the StarFight fleet. Perhaps he would demote the whelp to run a deck on the
Lepanto
? That would please Aarhant. While that was a long shot, he had spent 23 years in the Star Navy, earning his way to command of the Battlestar’s Navigation Deck. It was a very senior position. He had turned down command of a frigate in order to serve on the
Lepanto
. In his mind, the senior officers of Earth Command flashed through his memory. Some of them owed him favors. And his parents served with those senior officers. Surely, when the new admiral arrived, that man would know of Aarhant’s long history of service in the Star Navy.

He put down the bottle, folded hands in his lap, and mentally began preparing his neutrino appeal to the admiral in charge of the new fleet. That man, surely it would be a man, would have decades of service in the Star Navy. Surely he would respect the same years of service that Aarhant had given. All he had to do to ensure the whelp’s downfall was to prepare a convincing summary of the youth’s misjudgments in the disastrous First Contact. As the former personal ensign to Rear Admiral Johanson, perhaps Renselaer would be seen as carrying some of the fault in the admiral’s decision to call down all the senior command officers of the fleet ships. That had been against all tradition and normal chain of command practice. He licked his lips. Well, he had weeks before the new fleet arrived. And when the
Lepanto
moved to the orbital base to undergo repairs, he would do all he could to get O’Sullivan onto his side. He just had to bide his time. A task he had learned well in the long years after his graduation from the Stellar Academy.

♦   ♦   ♦

Five days after the raid, Jacob scanned the table in the admiral’s conference room. To his left sat Alicia Branstead. The stocky woman wore an NWU Type III woodland camo uniform of cap, shirt and pants. Everyone at the table wore the same camo uniform. Including Richard, who sat beyond Alicia. Beyond him sat Joy Jefferson. The seats on that side of the long table were empty beyond Joy. To Jacob’s right sat Daisy, exobiologist Lori Antonova, programmer Carlos Mendoza and gunner’s mate Quincy Blackbourne. His brain trust, excepting Kenji Watanabe who was off shift and sleeping. Jacob had not wanted to bother his fellow chess player. Anyway, this meeting would focus on the wasp captives, the salvaged tech and the wasp reaction to Alicia’s earlier cartoon video.

He gestured at the trays in the middle of the table. “Grab your poison of choice. This talk is informal. Leave rank behind. I need insights from each of you.” Jacob fixed on the woman in charge of their Science Deck. “Alicia, how did the wasps react to your video? And what is their condition now that they are in our Forest Room?”

The woman’s high-cheeked face turned pensive. Her amber eyes looked his way. “Captain, uh Jacob, all four are still alive and eating some of the food we set out for them. Solid meat like steaks and pork chops they pass on. Small fruits, peas, honey and protein drinks they like. Raw eggs they like a lot, though they will eat hard-boiled eggs. One of my geeks released a dozen white mice in the Forest Room. Every wasp took out after a mouse, munching it down with those mandibles in their head. Clearly they like small live food. Probably small insects too, but I’m not about to let them munch on our butterflies, dragonflies and bees that we rely on to keep the flowering plants healthy. It was not easy moving the insects out of the Forest Room. I put them in the Park Room, down the hallway.”

“The cartoon video?”

The Sorbonne grad lifted brown eyebrows. “They understood it. One of them, a leader type I think, drew an outline of the planets in the system in the dirt, using one of his chitin feet. Then he drew a line from a ship image to planet three, and looked up to the hard-suited Marine who was showing him a tablet with the cartoon imagery.” Alicia looked around the table at Jacob’s brain trust, then back to him. “Clearly he hoped we would take him and the other wasps to planet three. The Marine redrew the line from Joy’s ship to Valhalla low orbit, and the shape of the
Lepanto
. That caused all four wasps to fly back from the Marine. Clearly they know of our ship and its deadliness.”

Jacob noticed Joy and Richard paying close attention to what Alicia was sharing. Those two had had longer exposure to the captive wasps. Now all three waited for his response.

“What about the tech salvaged by Richard’s Marines. What have your people figured out about it?”

Alicia blinked. “There are at least six types of tech in the stuff they gathered. The square blocks are not vid slates. They have slots around all four sides and on the outward facing side. Wires attached each square to its wall. Inside are small fans. We think these are the pheromone signalers. Every room had them, based on the suit vidcam records. My technicians are breaking down three of the blocks.” Alicia nodded to Lori. “Once we have an idea of how the innards relate to each other, we will bring in Lori and our xenolinguist.”