Jack of Harts 2.5: Wolfenheim Rising (4 page)

Dawn met Callahan’s questioning gaze and answered it with a calm smile.  “And that is why we never choose to be the partners of such people.  We will never do to you what the Albion did to the Peloran,” she finished, her tone that of a woman making an unbreakable oath.

Malcolm considered her words, everything she’d said in answer to Callahan’s question, and wondered at the possibilities and ideas that they brought to mind.  He looked into Dawn’s wide-open eyes and saw her hesitation.  She’d never said anything like this before to him, and he’d never once considered any of it.  But now that he thought about it, he could see what she meant.

He saw the life he’d live in over a century, and the life he’d lived in the last five years.  He’d done so much more in the last five years than he’d ever imagined doing.  And he really had done it.  He saw many of the times she’d nagged him into doing it, too.  Well, maybe nagging was unfair.  It just felt like it some mornings.  But for the first time, he saw what she meant with that oath and recognized what she was doing.  He could live with that.  He smiled, and she let out a long, relieved breath.

“I see.”  Callahan’s words pulled Malcolm’s attention back to the older man as he started walking down the stairs again.  “Then it really would appear we have much business to discuss today,” Old Man Michael Callahan added and guided them into the bar he’d owned for nearly two hundred years.

The Peloran construction yard seemed to grow larger as the shuttle approached, main engines firing at near maximum power.  The blue glow of fusion-powered engines swept space in the shuttle’s path, decelerating her to match the station’s slow orbit around Alpha Centauri A.  Explosions of white-hot light betrayed the existence of dust particles and larger debris in the shuttle’s path, while objects caught in the edges of the four fusion torches burned orange or red.  Other colors flared into existence for a second from time to time, only to fade back to black again as whatever strange elements existed in that particular speck of dust burned away.  As Malcolm McDonnell watched, the engine wash created the closest thing to true vacuum he would probably ever see so near a working shipyard.

Wolfenheim
floated above the yard, the over six hundred meter length of a modern Class One Colonization Ship barely visible in the pale sunslight of the Alpha Centauri trinary star system.  She was everything a new colony needed, from the hibernation systems that could keep ten thousand people asleep during the trip to the literal hundreds of modular sections that would separate to become buildings when they reached their destination.  The ship had a single mission, one that would be accomplished only by the effective dismantling of the colony ship herself.

Malcolm’s eyes strayed to the ships whose mission it was to make certain
Wolfenheim
finished that trip alive, no matter what hazards they met along the way.  He scowled as his eyes found only eight ships.  There should be nine.  He sighed and scanned the eight he did have, happy to at least have been able to find them.  He counted five frigates, the oldest over a hundred years old.  The youngest was a true whippersnapper of a mere eighty-three years, having been retired only twenty years before The War began.  The two destroyers hadn’t fired a shot in anger in over fifty years, but at least they’d been able to make the trip to New Earth under their own power.

Malcolm’s gaze stopped on
Normandy
, the jewel of his squadron.  He’d found her in Harmony, playing the part of a floating museum, complete with retired fighters in her twin hangar bays.  They’d been so ancient nobody had bothered to refit them for The War, and even
Normandy’s
outer armor had been reclaimed for use by “real” warships years before.  That last bit had actually been good news, since it made it easier to access her hyperdrives and refit them for the long trip to New Earth.  And the Peloran had done wonders for her, just like they had for every other ship he brought to them.

The yards restored her to her original appearance, four hundred meters of first-generation gravtech beauty that gleamed under the work lights of the platforms still arrayed around her.  The rest of the squadron looked just as beautiful to his eyes, long fins and curving armor reminding Malcolm of a time when starships were works of art, not simply one more cog in a giant war machine that no one would miss when their time came to die.

“That’s your ship?” John asked from the other seat in the shuttle’s cockpit.

“Yes,” Malcolm answered with a smile, considering once again that the Peloran did good work when it came to restoring art.

“She’s beautiful.”

“Thank you,” Dawn said from behind them, voice betraying pleasure at John’s reaction.

The shuttle’s engines flared brighter for a moment, and Malcolm felt them shed the last of their speed relative to the shipyard.  They came to a stop, drifting next to the eight warships and one colonization ship that would soon be the only home that mattered to him.  Thrusters came to life and the shuttle moved towards
Normandy’s
bow.  He glanced at Dawn and she smiled.  Then the bow split open to reveal a hangar bay just large enough to accommodate the Peloran shuttle, and the thrusters fired again.  They drifted there, holding station off
Normandy’
s bow until four tractor beams locked onto them.  The thrusters shut down, and Malcolm relaxed as
Normandy
tucked them inside her bay with a precision only cybernetic intelligences could match.  The tractor beams dropped them on the deck just as the outer doors shut, and Malcolm felt the clang through the seat of his pants.

“Nicely done,” Malcolm whispered and unbuckled his five-point harness.

“Nothing to it,” Dawn answered and he heard the hatch screw open behind them.

He rose out of his seat and walked into the shuttle’s rear compartment, eyes scanning back and forth on instinct.  Yesterday, passenger seats filled the shuttle from side to side and fore to aft, with only a narrow aisle splitting them.  Now Malcolm’s last shipment that Michael Callahan had acquired on such short notice filled the compartment from one end to the other.  Almost everything on board was illegal in the Alpha Centauri A star system, but Malcolm wasn’t concerned about that.  As far as he could tell, if something made him giggle when he thought about doing it, somebody had already made it illegal in Alpha Centauri.  And using what was in these crates gave him a serious case of the giggles when he thought of the probable response any enemy would have.

The shuttle’s rear ramp clanged against the deck, making way for a procession of
Normandy
crewmembers to walk on board.  They quickly went to work, lifting the heavy crates with an ease that labeled them as members of the cybernetic segment of the crew.

Dawn looked around, waving a hand to catch the attention of one of the cybers before she could reach a crate.  “Kara, could you take Pastor Parker to his quarters?”

“Of course,” the cyber answered and walked over to the preacher.  “Would you follow me?”

John turned to Malcolm with a calm smile.  “Malcolm?”

Malcolm returned the smile, knowing exactly what John was asking for.  This was his ship after all.  Well, his and Dawn’s.  And maybe a few hundred crewmembers’.  And Captain Wyatt’s.  Malcolm felt a smile take over as he realized just how many people had a claim to the old bucket of bolts.  Not that he would ever call her that when Dawn could hear.  But John was most certainly the newest visitor to the ship, and it made sense that he would want to ask the one person he knew before taking a step into her.  “Make yourself at home, John.”

The preacher nodded and turned back to Kara with a broad smile.  “Lead and I shall follow,” he said in a magnanimous tone.

Kara gave her head an amused shake and turned to lead the man away, exactly as he’d asked.  As they approached the ramp, Malcolm heard her ask, “Are you really fluent in half a dozen languages?

“Not fluent,” John corrected with a shake of his head.  “But I can read Latin and Aramaic.  And I can muddle through Ethiopian,” he added with a shrug.  “Greek and Hebrew I suppose you could say I’m fluent in.  But those are living languages, so learning them is easy.”

Kara turned her head and studied John intently for a moment.  “Why did you learn so many languages?  It must have taken you years.  Decades.”  She sounded truly curious, and Malcolm wondered how much she already knew.  He’d caught Dawn asking him questions she knew the answer to more than once.  Although to be fair, that was usually when he should have been thinking along those lines already.

“It did,” John answered, and Malcolm heard contentment in the voice that had never been there when he was young.  “But I wanted to study the scriptures myself, to read the words as written so many thousands of years ago.  It’s not like they spoke King James English back then,” John said as they walked down the shuttle’s ramp.

“I’ll be lucky if I get her back by the time we hit Sunnydale,” Dawn whispered.

Malcolm chuckled.  “I hope she knows what she’s getting into.”

“She does.”  Dawn turned to smile at him.  “She asked me to introduce them.”

“Really?”  Malcolm raised an eyebrow at her, wondering what she and Kara had planned for the older man.

Dawn’s look turned serious.  “You’d be surprised how many people claim they believe something so they can gain followers, not because they actually believe.”

Malcolm frowned and turned to gaze out the open end of the shuttle where they’d disappeared.  “John’s not one of them,” he declared with a firm shake of the head.

“Is that your instincts talking?” Dawn asked in a very serious tone.  “Or your friendship?”

That froze him.  Malcolm blinked as he considered the question, wondered if he was letting his friendship blind him to some long con.  No.  That didn’t feel right.  Malcolm frowned at the feeling and looked back at Dawn.  “John believes what he says he believes,” Malcolm said, paying careful attention for the mental warning that usually told him he was being stupid about something.  Nothing.  “And it feels right to say that,” he added with a smile made of more relief than he’d expected.  “The John I know was never that kind of con artist, and he doesn’t feel like one now.”

Dawn nodded slowly as she processed his words, before finally bestowing a smile on him.  “Good.  That makes me feel better.  But I hope you don’t mind if we grill him a bit.  He has quite a checkered past,” she finished with a very pointed look at Malcolm.

Malcolm snorted and smiled back at her.  “Are you implying something?”

“Oh, no,” she answered, her face a paragon of innocence, and waved a hand towards the opening in the rear of the shuttle.  “Would you like to go?  The Captain wants us on the bridge.”

“Oh!” Malcolm exclaimed and stepped towards the exit.  “One should never keep
her
waiting,” he added and flowed around a crewmember lifting another crate into the air.

“I thought you might say that,” Dawn whispered with a knowing smile as they walked down the ramp and finally set foot on
Normandy’s
deck.

They moved through the organized chaos of crates filling the shuttlebay and made it to the open lift door in seconds.  The doors shut behind them, and the lift began to move towards the center of the warship.  Malcolm found a wall and leaned against it, eyes examining Dawn.  She cocked her head at him and he smiled, wondering again why she was here.  He managed to suppress the impulse to ask her this time, and her lips twisted in amusement.  Then the lift began to slow and he straightened his suit and tie.

The lift doors slid open and Malcolm stepped out into the guardroom.  The two guards on duty examined him first, before turning eyes to Dawn, probably scanning to make certain they weren’t mad assassins coming to wipe out
Normandy’s
command staff.  The guards nodded after a moment, presumably deciding they were safe, and opened the hatch leading to the bridge.

He stepped through to see nearly a dozen men and women hard at work.  Cybers in grey and blue coveralls worked on opened panels, their legs sticking out from under numerous stations.  The grey-garbed Peloran yard dogs still worked hard to complete the final refits
Normandy
needed so badly.  They weren’t
actual
dogs of course.  Dogs rarely chose engineering as a career.

Normandy’s
blue uniform coveralls and the bridge crew’s pre-War style of white service uniforms came from American navy surplus stores, and the uniforms had proven as rugged and dependable as promised.  Thanks to his long shopping trips, he knew every surplus storeowner within twenty lightyears of New Earth on a first-name basis, and most within fifty lightyears at least recognized him when he walked in the door.  Excluding those on Earth, of course.  He had no fundamental problem with using Charles’ family to acquire the colony equipment without them knowing about their contribution.  But flaunting it by buying stuff in their backyards was a bit too flagrant an abuse for his tender peace of mind.  And one Malcolm McDonnell needed far too much beauty sleep to be keeping himself awake at night with worries of Hurst-family assassins dancing through his halls.

Malcolm turned his mind away from that unappealing nightmare and nodded at each crewmember as they acknowledged his presence in their domain with a smile, a shrug, or a few less flattering gestures.  “Watch it,” he whispered through the side of his mouth at Walter Thompson.  “You might get stuck like that.”

The tactical officer snorted under his breath, but returned to work the moment Captain Wyatt cleared her throat.

Peloran ships boasted very small crews, leaving the operations of their warships to the cybernetic brain.  The ship’s captain gave orders and the ship executed them.  It was a surprisingly simple command chain, and Malcolm had been sorely tempted to follow that example.  But he’d never served in the military, and Dawn was an administrative cyber without a single warship cyber within several generations of her family line.  He trusted her to run the ship, but even she admitted that she didn’t have the family experience to fight her like a real warship cyber could.

  So even with the Peloran upgrades that would have made it possible for him to take direct command of
Normandy
, he’d elected to maintain something closer to standard American crew policies.  On the one hand, by recruiting experienced naval personnel he also recruited their experience and knowledge.  And on the other hand, most of the ten thousand colonists asleep inside
Wolfenheim
truly were civilians, with very little if any military experience.  Recruiting the better part of two thousand retired naval and marine personnel to crew the warships would almost certainly prove invaluable in the very likely event that things got exciting once they reached the other side of The Gateway.