Insurrection (Athena Lee Chronicles Book 5) (2 page)

The officers said their goodbyes and started getting organized.

Chapter 2

Moving about a ton of equipment in 8 short hours while trying to stay covert was a stone cold bitch! At least that’s what Lieutenant Mutai was thinking to himself. Fortunately it was third shift and most of the crew were asleep. His men had been stopped only three times by navy officers. On all three occasions the marines had told the truth, mostly. Their general response had been along the lines of “The commander has us practicing night maneuvers," or "A crazy-ass young officer has a burr up his backside over something” His favorite had been “Stupid officers-stupid navy-stupid regulations.” His men could be very creative when talking to officers.

Engineering was beginning to look like a storeroom. Carefully stacking the ammo and other explosives away from the fusion engines the crew were having to stash things in, over, around and under all the other equipment. With an hour to spare before the next shift started, Lieutenant Mutai told them all to stop. All efforts now shifted to making what was left in the armory ‘safe’ for the loyal crew. Working in shifts, the tired marines began removing the firing pins from the handguns and rifles. All of the remaining weapons were tossed into large bins. If someone wanted a weapon they would have a ‘build-it-yourself’ type project. Not much could be done for the remaining ammo. Chief Engineer Kościuszko provided the Marines with a corrosive agent, which they sprayed on the boxes, but short of spacing it, they could not destroy it in the time that they left.

Under the guise of standard maintenance the engineering crew began working in the access tubes. Their task was to seal them off from the rest of the ship or at least make them as inaccessible as possible. Access codes were changed and doors were welded shut. A few electrical conduits were rerouted and reprogrammed. Without a major overhaul, not much could be done to change the internal passageways without giving away that some of the crew knew about the mercenaries. The only question now was when it would happen. What were they waiting for?

___

Captain Pigot sat on the bridge watching his crew. The XO was flitting between the weapons and navigation consoles. His excuse was that both officers were new and had questions about the procedure. Uh huh. They were waiting for something. The captain could not figure out just what that was. His marine guard had passed along a message explaining the work that had been done the previous evening. His biggest worry now was determining which of the crew were loyal without giving the game away to one who was not. Signaling the XO the captain left the bridge and headed to the mess hall. Chief Gomez the head cook, had been with the captain on two different ships. His muffaletta sandwich recipe was to die for. It was not unusual for the captain to go into the kitchen and Chief Gomez cook his food personally.

The captain found the chief in deep discussion with his cooks over a pot of boiling soup. The chief was yelling at them about flavor and too much salt. Seeing the captain, he broke off from the other cooks. “El capitano, welcome to my kitchen.” Gomez made a sweeping motion with his arms.

“I ‘have’ been here before, Chief.” replied the captain.

“Ah, but every visit is a new adventure when it comes to food! Are you here to try my new fritatta? So far the crew is ‘eating it right up,’ heh heh heh. My own little joke.”

“No, Chief, no. I actually came about a dinner idea of mine.” He directing the chief toward the office. “Let’s go in your office and talk about it.”

The captain and chief entered the office and close the door behind them.

“I’m sorry or the subterfuge, Chief, but I have something important to discuss with you.”

The Chief perked up and looked at his captain.

“What is your honest opinion of the new crew that we took on?”

Thinking a moment, Gomez looked at his friend the captain and replied, “I don’t trust them. They don’t ‘feel’ right to me, sir. Something about the way they carry themselves is not proper. They have made advances toward one of my cooks and navy folk just don’t do that.”

“Advances Chief? This is the first I have heard of this. When did this happen? If the XO is covering up something I’ll…”

“No, sir! When it happened, I responded immediately. These are MY people! Mine. I took care of it.”

“May I ask what you did.” The captain was interested now.

“I jumped the counter and held him at knife point then told the pinche pendejo that if he messed with my people, I would cut his cajones off and feed them to him.” The chief smiled at that.

“Remind me to never make you mad, Chief.” The Captain smiled and then frowned as his thoughts turned serious. “What I wanted to speak with you about is those new people. I have reason to believe that they might be a mercenary group called the Bad Pennies and that they may be trying to take over the ship.”

The Chief’s eyes grew enormous, then he grabbed a chef knife off of his desk and began waving it in the air cursing. “Hijo de la chingada madre! I will catch them and I will cut their cajones off and make criadillas with them.”

Half laughing at the response he got the captain told the chief to calm down a bit. “Sorry Chief no chopping off their balls today. I need for you to not let on that you know. Can you do that?” At the chief’s nod he continued. “We know we can trust your department, engineering, and the marines. Several of our officers around the ship like Dr Smith are with us too. I will have the marines drop some weapons by later today. Hide them if you can. Tell only your regular crew, no others.” He paused. Eyeing the chief and his knife he thought that maybe the cooks were far more afraid of the Chief than the captain. “We are not sure how far this goes, or when they'll strike. The fall back position will be here in the galley and down in the engine room. Understood?”

“Si, El Capitano. I will do as you say. If those pinche puta’s come in here and attack us, we will carve them up.”

“As you say, chief. But keep it quiet, OK?” Still chuckling at the chief’s response the captain went back to the bridge.

___

The first glimpse of who might be behind the plot to take the ship came when communications intercepted a communique to all ships and outbound traffic. It was a non-government broadcast.

“Sir, we are picking up a broadcast from the planetary government.”

“The
planetary government
? Not the Sector one?”

“Yes, sir. It is directed to any outbound ships with a request to rebroadcast if possible.”

“Can you put on screen? Let’s see this broadcast. The planetary government doesn’t have that kind of authority.”

Looking at the main screen the captain watched a planetary newscast of farmers with their families peacefully marching to oppose the new government taxes. The sheer amount of people in the march was shocking to him. Were there really that many people even on the planet to begin with? The screen captured the undivided attention of the bridge officers. When the ESS troops opened fire, Captain Pigot jerked back in shock. They watched in horror as thousand of unarmed civilians were cut down and killed. The slaughter, for that was what it was, continued for over 30 minutes. The images of a heroic man trying to protect a group of children would stay with him his whole life.

The newscast switched to a written message begging for anyone receiving this to rebroadcast it so the truth would be known. The broadcast claimed that the Sector government was locking down the satellites preventing messages from going out.

“Communications? Start scanning all frequencies. Try and find some government response to this or any official news if you can.”

“Yes, sir, right away sir.”

The captain closed his eyes, and deep in his thoughts, he missed the brief conversation between the XO, navigation and weapons officers.

“Excuse me, sir? Communications has found a Government Broadcast.” The XO touched the captain on his arm waking him up.

Opening his eyes, the captain jerked awake. “Sorry XO, I guess I dozed off. What was it you were saying?”

“Captain, we received a Government broadcast.”

“Excellent. Put it on screen, please.”

Once again the screen lit up and different newscasters could be seen. This news report was very different from the previous one. According to Government sources, the protest was a violent insurrection that had touched off a civil war on the planet Hong Kong. Rebel forces opposing the government killed the brave ESS troops that tried to prevent mobs of protesters from killing innocent children. The video showed a space battle with local forces shooting down ESS troopships. The Sector Government was calling for all navy ships to return to base to help to put down this insurrection.

“Did we receive any navy messages to return to base?” Captain Pigot asked the communications officer.

“No, sir. Not that we can find. Nothing official. There are some personal mail messages and the usual navigational beacon changes. One brief message mentions the satellite network going down for repairs. Nothing else, sir.”

“Thank you commander. Go ahead and log those messages. Notify me if you find anything else. I will be in my Ready Room XO you have the conn.” The captain got up from his chair and left the bridge.

___

Commander McKay, the ships new XO, looked to his boss ‘Commander’ Alvin Glatkowski. His boss was better known as Alvin-the-taker, leader of the Bad Penny gang.

The communications officer Lieutenant Humphrey waved them both over to his station. “Sir, we received a communication from the Governor. He said to take the ship as soon as possible and deliver it to Legation Station security. He said that we would be paid double for a quick delivery.”

“Good. Waiting was risky. Start spreading the word to our men. Have them meet us in cargo hold number one tonight at the start of third shift. We will strike just before shift change when as many as possible are asleep.” The mercenary Captain was pleased.

“What should we do with the crew, sir?” the ‘XO’ asked.

Looking to the communications officer Alvin asked “Were there any instructions about the Navy crew?”

“No, sir, just to deliver the ship. Nothing about the crew.”

“We should have some fun, then. When we are done, we can just space ’em. Less mouths to feed that way.” He thought for a moment. “If the Governor had not paid us so well I might think about trying to take this ship, but crossing him is not a good idea. OK get back to work. Look at it this way, only 12 more hours of this navy BS to put up with.”

All three ‘officers’ returned to their duties. Unknown to them a new security camera now located on the main door captured their entire meeting.

___

Captain Pigot and Lieutenant Mutai sat watching the meeting on the new security cameras. “Well, at least we know for sure now.”

“Yes, sir. They are meeting in cargo hold number one. They must have weapons stored there. It can’t be very many or else our scans would have told us of their existence. They must plan to use what they have to take the armory. They should be in for a surprise there. We moved out what we could. The rest we sprayed with a corrosive Chief Tad gave us. It should make the ammo, mostly unusable and difficult to handle. That will limit how much they can come at us. We set up defenses inside the CIC and the medical department, and we prepared the engineering department as a main base. The access tube hatches have either been welded shut or had the codes changed. My marines are booby-trapping the tubes as we speak. I have the Chief’s techs trying to reroute the navigation controls from CIC, to engineering. If they can do it, we will still be able to steer the ship.”

“Lieutenant, you and the rest did all of this in less than 15 hours? That’s- incredible. If we survive, I promise you a commendation for this!”

“We still have to survive this, sir.”

Chapter 3

One hour before the start of first shift was when the mercs made their move. The crew was just waking up to start the day when the hull breach sirens went off.

“Attention there is a Hull Breach in Section 2……..Attention there is a Hull Breach in Section 2”

The standard operating procedure was for personnel to evacuate away from the breach, which in this case was the armory. Surprised crew members in many states of undress, were clustered in the forward part of the ship. They had been herded there by armed the now armed mercenaries. The flashing lights and alarms stopped. The ‘XO’ accompanied by ‘Commander’ Glatkowski approached the crew members and called them to attention.