Edge of Redemption (A Star Too Far Book 3) Page 2

  Now it was happening again, except now it was Flag Officers.

  Admiral Dover turned and walked through the crowd. Pain was etched across his face. Sweat ran down his cheeks and stained the collar on his working uniform, the steel gray cloth turned black.

  He passed William and looked up in surprise. A look of shame spread across his face as he dropped his eyes and walked down the passage. Behind him the dozen Admirals he stood with repeated the same words: “I resign.” Each walked out silently.

  Admiral Hollins watched. His face had a surprised look, like he’d bluffed a hand of cards and still lost the pot. He glanced up and noticed the crowd. The surprise drifted away and was replaced by a calm professionalism of a man who’d made a decision.

  William watched Admiral Hollins walk out. The room had the feel of a boxing ring. Of a bout where it ended in a technical knockout in the second round. No one wanted to leave, still expecting the fighters to keep going. Voices drummed up and the crowd dispersed. Marines walked back into the room and took up posts.

  He stood in stunned silence. It took a moment to process what he’d just seen. The faces he saw were all men and women who’d served a lifetime in the name of the colonies, not just Earth. And now they were being tossed aside. He felt cut loose, adrift from everything he’d ever believed in.

  *

  The officer he reported to was a chubby Commander with cheeks perched on his face like peaches. He smiled and squinted at William. “Sit, Lieutenant, sit!” His voice was friendly. A bowl of orange rock candy was on the desk.

  The room was tight and raw. No one had bothered to come through and add any coating to the walls. It, like the rest of the area, had the feel of a coal mine turned into a cheap hotel. The only decoration was a picture frame with a cracked corner. Inside was a picture of a beach stretching to nowhere. William recognized the photo, it was from the paradise colony Haven.

  “Admiral Sahji will be here shortly, he had to meet with Admiral Hollins,” the Commander said. “Have you been through the yard?”

  “No sir, I just arrived from Bosporus.” William eyed the candy.

  The Commander’s eyes widened. He leaned in closer and glanced out the door. “Is it true?”

  William smirked. “I’m uh, I’m not sure what you mean, sir.” He wasn’t sure what was open knowledge and what was rumor. He knew couriers had arrived before he did, but didn’t want to spread rumors.

  The Commander leaned back and smiled slyly. “I’ll wait for the Admiral, but was there really a Queen?”

  William tried not to laugh. A gossip? “No, no, I don’t think so. I didn’t think they were a monarchy.”

  “Well, who knows, right? You send someone off into the stars and god forbid what sort of habits they’ll pick up in a few generations.”

  William smiled back and nodded. The conversation was taking a turn somewhere he didn’t want to go. Not after watching a pack of Admirals resign. His desire for the orange candy soured.

  He drummed his fingers on his pants and watched out the door. The Commander peered back to his console and made small talk. Every time he leaned back, his chair crunched against the milling lines in the floor. Crunch. Shift. Crunch. Shift.

  William thought of the voyage. He had a data packet from Admiral Mesman with a glowing recommendation. He recognized the glaring hole from his previous Captain on the letter. Did Mesman send something else with the couriers? Would he be relegated to supervising docking operations or some such useless task? The very thought made him nervous.

  “Sit, sit!” Admiral Sahji said before he even entered the room. William snapped out of his daydreams and realized he hadn’t been paying much attention to the Commander.

  “Mr. Grace.” Admiral Sahji shook his hand. He straightened himself out and sighed. “Damned dirty business this is.” He looked around for a chair and, upon not finding one, stepped out into the hall with apologies flowing behind him. He returned with a gray plastic box and sat upon it with a wink.

  William looked over the Admiral and wondered where he stood. He didn’t recall seeing him with either of the three parties. Nor did he know anything about him.

  “Ahh, well, what do you think of our little hole in the wall?”

  “A bit more spacious than the ride back, sir,” William said.

  Admiral Sahji smiled at the Commander. “Can you call up the sheet please?”

  The Commander turned to the console with another crunch. One wall lit up and a display cast upon it. The entire view was rough as the light played out across the tool marks. On it a schematic floated for a ship William had never seen before.

  “This will be your new command, Lieutenant,” Admiral Sahji said proudly. “I’ve been working with Core on this. It’s a no frills warship. It’s not a colony tender. All our ships in the past had to fulfill dual roles. Not this one.”

  William looked to the Admiral and back to the screen. The ship on the wall was ugly. Even accounting for the distortion in the raw tool marks. The body wasn’t plates, or even cast alloy, but a rumble of stone, like concrete.

  “We use an asteroid for a shell, bind it with nanite, burrow out the insides, and then add what we need. Fairly substantial savings on material, but most importantly time too.” Admiral Sahji looked around the room and nodded, smiling. “I bet it will look something like this room.”

  William managed a polite smile.

  The Commander leaned towards William and sounded slightly embarrassed. “We haven’t actually finished them yet, Lieutenant.”

  “But they’re almost done! Very soon.” Admiral Sahji said. He turned his eyes back to the screen and looked at the rock potato on the wall. He seemed like the proud parent of the ugliest baby on the block.

  “How long, Admiral?” William asked.

  Admiral Sahji tore his gaze from the screen and looked back to William. “Soon.”

  “Soon?”

  “Soon,” the Commander said.

  “So uh, what can you tell me about them, Admiral?” William asked. Both the Admiral and the Commander seemed pleased just to admire something that was finally leaping out of the computer and into space.

  “Quad batteries of Gracelle mass drivers. Single keel mount railgun, probe launcher, and two missile launchers. K142 Haydn drive, a zero point three percent efficiency boost.” The Admiral nodded to the Commander with a smile. “Hmm, crew quarters for a dozen, and supplies enough for a four month tour.”

  “Four months?” William spat out.

  For the first time in the conversation, the Admiral squirmed in his seat. Glances were exchanged once more. Pleasant smiles returned. William looked between the two with his mouth slightly agape.

  “Four months is barely enough time to travel to the frontier, let alone back,” William said. “I’ll need a resupply ship following just to get anywhere and remain on station.”

  He peered closer at the print. Shared crew quarters, no paneling, zero amenities. It had a bare minimum of gravity systems—even the grav shield complement was low. The passages between occupied areas were zero-gravity. It was everything a warship needed to be and nothing more.

  “Here is your data packet with the crew list,” Admiral Sahji said quickly, as if eager to change the subject. “Things are a bit tight at the moment. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have another Captain to brief.”

  The pair stood and moved to the door, leading William out.

  “What’s her name?” William asked.

  “Who?” the Commander asked.

  William looked at the print on the wall. “The ship.”

  Admiral Sahji shrugged. “I’m not sure, they’re Ganges Class pocket cruisers, you’ll have to speak with the Admiral about the naming convention.”

  “Thank you, sir,” William said. The two men shook his hand and wished him well. He walked on the rough floor and scanned the tablet in his hands. The complete ship specifications was listed along with his crew manifest.

  A dozen. A dozen crew. He could hardly
believe it. Barely enough to make a decent watch. The ship would have an XO, a junior officer, three maintenance personnel, three Engineers and three Marines. Sweet Jesus, he thought. A second glance showed that two of the Marines doubled as cooks. He keyed the next tab and saw his crew.

  The first bit of good news came when he saw Huron’s name, the ship’s Engineer from his last tour. When he’d last seen him, Huron was arguing physics with other Engineers on the way back. The wounds he suffered in the Bosporus system were mostly healed.

  A few of the names were filled, but most were blank. His orders were to report to the shipyard the following day and see the actual ship. The schematic he stared at was generic enough to show basic details. As he gaged the mass, he saw that it had only a small additive cell. It was as far away from self-supported as a ship could be.

  Materials would be tight. They’d also have to spread crews out for the biggest bang. The Malta, his last command, barely had the same spread of weaponry. As he saw it the ship, had the frame of a yacht with the weaponry of a frigate. They were mass producing and maximizing assets. He liked that, but it would take some getting used to.

  The mission was simple enough, an escort job there and back to the Winterthur system. The map showed it in the absolute middle of nowhere, the very edge of colonized space. He searched for more details but found nothing else. He shrugged and kept browsing the tablet.

  “Mr. Grace?” a female voice chirped.

  “Yes?” he said, startled.

  An olive-skinned female Lieutenant stood before him with a crisp smile. On one of her cheeks she wore a nanite tattoo that shifted between colors in a simulated sunset. She was stocky on the shoulders with legs like a dancer. Her brown hair was tied back into a ball tight enough to crack a window. “I’m Lieutenant Ali Shay, your XO.”

  William glanced around. “Walk with me, Lieutenant.”

  The pair moved through the passage in silence and finally exited past the pair of sentinel Marines. Neither one looked any happier, just a bit more weary. When William finally stepped into the larger corridor, he pointed to a storage area and sat down on a stout crate.

  “What the hell is going on?” William ran his fingers through his hair and looked up to Ali. “I walked into a dozen flag Admirals resigning.”

  She looked around with soft eyes and leaned against a large shipping container. “There’s been some disagreements.”

  “Disagreements be damned, I thought they’d pull out pistols and duel. What is it about?”

  “Rumor is, the UC only wants an Earth-born command staff. They were running the others into nonessential tasks.”

  William shook his head and looked down. Not this again. The time when they’d need every bit of force and expertise and there was a rift. They couldn’t afford it, not now.

  “What news from the Hun front?” William asked.

  Ali shook her head. “I don’t know, there’s been nothing back yet.”

  William nodded and looked around. The last he’d heard, the UC was sending out fleets to both sides of space. One side to defend against a possible Sa’Ami invasion and the other against the Harmony Worlds. He’d already tangled with the Harmony Worlds fleeing Redmond and the Sa’Ami at Bosporus. It was almost a guarantee there’d be a fight that way.

  “And from the Sa’Ami front?” William asked.

  Ali cocked her head. “You were there?”

  “Humor me.”

  She raised her eyebrows and shrugged. “Nothing official yet.”

  “Unofficially?”

  Ali looked to the floor and back up to William. “They say we won, sealed the front.”

  William smirked and shook his head. “Well, it was a helluva fight, but we came out on top.” He left out the details about the Sa’Ami barrier, and especially about the breach.

  A buzz followed by a beep sounded from William’s tablet. He slid it out and checked the screen. In a split second he acknowledged the message and tucked it back into his bag. “Meet at the shipyard nexus, 0900 tomorrow. See if you can track down an Engineer named Ebenezer Huron.”

  Ali looked to him with a slight smile. “Ebenezer?”

  “That’s right,” William said and disappeared into the flow of people.

  *

  The farther edges of the station were rough like a fresh volcanic eruption. Seams and edges were coated in a coarse flexible insulation. Row upon row of wedge-shaped containers were tucked in as tightly as they could be.

  William found him near a pile of baggage. “Admiral.”

  Admiral Dover gave a somber snort and patted a long case. “Sit.”

  William sat. Admiral Dover stared at the floor and squeezed his hands together. It seemed as if he was about to speak but just couldn’t find the words. Finally he let out a deep breath. “Outmaneuvered. Plain and simple. Shit stomped and I didn’t even see it coming. I was the most senior Admiral not born on Earth. Should’ve known. So here’s how it is.” Admiral Dover looked up to William. “You’ll get a ship, a nice little brig, and they’ll give you a crew of nothing but people born off Earth. Sound about right?”

  William nodded and watched as the Admirals face turned red. Sweat pooled on his brow.

  “Then they’ll send you off somewhere that is safe, secure, and not a chance that you might run off with a precious starship. To top it off, the ship has an additive cell barely big enough to print a new toilet seat. So you couldn’t refit if you wanted to, right?”

  William felt a lump growing in his throat.

  “Oh, it gets better,” the Admiral said, “if you’re not back in time, the ship will disassemble.”

  “Disassemble? Why give me a ship at all?” William clenched his fists and dug his nails into his palms.

  Admiral Dover smiled. His eyes softened and he sat back with a thud. The mass of his body rested against a slate gray container. “Patrons, maybe? And they lost a good many command officers engaging the Sa’Ami. You have combat experience and they need it. They’ll just see how trustworthy you are.”

  William stared at his hands and flexed his fingers. The augmetic hand felt exactly like the real one. He still couldn’t get used to the augmetic nerves even if it felt the same. An honest man on the street couldn’t even tell them apart. “What are you going to do, Admiral?”

  Admiral Dover looked up with a sparkle in his eye. “You can take the Admiral out of a fight, but you can’t take the fight out of the Gruffalo.” He stood and his knees popped and rattled. “Now go. You’ll not make any friends if they see you talking to an old has-been. Just remember, you’ll be a long way from home, keep your options sharp.”

  A loud bang and a shudder shook against the containers. A gantry crane scooped up a yellow container with the letters CONDI stenciled on the side.

  “I’m on that freighter. Once they’ve got the crates, I’m out,” Admiral Dover said as he kicked a piece of luggage. He nodded to William. “Good luck.”

  William felt a pang in his chest and shook the Admiral’s hand. “Thank you, sir.”

  He wondered if the Admiral got him that ship. The Admiral embodied what he stood for, a United Colonies, not a Colonial defense force working with an Earth defense force. For now, he decided, he would focus on his mission. There was an oath.

  He turned and walked out without looking back.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ––––––––

  “Profit,” Samson Kretikos said slowly. “Profit. It is why we exist. Think about it. If there is no profit, there is no Core.” His gaze turned and swept down the length of the alloy-topped table. He paused at each executive and held the gaze long enough to connect with each person. His eyes were intense, rich, alive.

  Emilie Rose looked back and felt relieved when the eyes passed. She sat in silence with all of her netlinks turned off. One did not remain connected to the net when Samson Kretikos was speaking.

  “You’ve all seen the projections,” Samson said. “Ms. Ndebele, please.”

  A woman
with dark skin stood. “All three AIs are in agreement: there will be a retraction. This is regardless of how the kinetics go. Sentiment on Earth is for focusing on defense, regardless of the outcomes.”

  “Thank you, Amahle.” Samson smiled. “We’re getting out of the colony business, folks. Defense. Defense. Defense. Already that division is seeing spectacular growth.”

  “Mr. Kretikos,” Emilie said. Eyes snapped to her and the room shifted tone. Shit, she thought, my timing was off. “All of the colonies?”

  Samson glanced to his side and returned his eyes to Emilie. “Yes.” His tone sounded distracted, bordering on annoyed.

  Emilie smiled and continued. “What will be done with them?”

  “Miss, uh, Rose?” Samson’s tone rose. “I suggest you contact the Colony division, they can fill you in on the relevant details. Now, if we can—”

  “Will we be shipping everything back?”

  Samson set an ivory shafted fountain pen on the table. He cocked his head slightly and leveled his gaze. “Get to the point.”

  Perfect, she thought, I’ve got his attention. “I want those assets.”

  Samson’s face softened and a slight curve of a smile rose on the edge of his lips. “I’m listening.”

  Emilie licked her lips. “Group eight only. Ten percent above transport cost. Library license for five years. Option for Core asset transfer after three years.”

  Samson clicked his teeth together. “Amahle, what’s the projected time until return?”

  “Eight years.”

  Emilie’s cheeks grew warm. She didn’t have much time—either she secured it now or it would go into negotiations. A labyrinth of accountants and lawyers. It’d take her longer than eight years to buy it. But if she could get it now. Up the odds. “Military library license also.”