Wreaths of Empire Read online

  Maybe that wasn’t the best way to proceed—Mears-Hadley was—had been—of the “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” breed of commander.

  Instead, she thought, Don’t be reckless. Pick the option with the best odds…

  “We can’t just sit here,” she said slowly, speaking more to herself, trying to delineate the choices. “We can’t fight. We can barely maneuver, let alone run. That means we have to hide.”

  “We could play dead,” Tung suggested.

  “No. We still have detectable energy emissions. One good look and the Gara’nesh will be onto us.” She addressed herself to the computer. “System profile.”

  The scan screen showed the dim red light of Felton 114 with its motley assortment of uninhabitable planets. Jade superimposed the last known positions of Terran and Gara’nesh ships. The fleet had been near one of the outlying planets; a useless chunk of rock and methane ice.

  “Here.” Jade pointed to a blip.

  Tung frowned. “Are you serious?”

  Annoyance flared; Jade bit it back. After all, what reason did Tung have other than her marginally higher rank for blindly accepting her decision? She hadn’t proved herself, hadn’t earned the right to be obeyed. “We’ll hide behind this moon—we’re drifting that direction anyway. If we play it right, we should be able to avoid detection in its shadow. Once the Gara’nesh have left, we can see about repairing the stardrive and getting ourselves out of here.”

  “It might work.” Tung moved over to helm and inputted the commands.

  “Slowly,” Jade said. “Make it look like we’re falling into its gravity well.”

  Retribution trembled under the impetus of the maneuvering thrusters; only the changing tactical display showed the altered velocity. The cracked and riddled surface of the moon crept closer.

  “Come on,” Jade breathed as the minutes passed, each second expecting the awful blare of the proximity alarm to announce that their maneuver had been spotted and that a Gara’nesh frigate was within range. “Come on.”

  Retribution slunk into the shadow of the nameless moon.

  “Orbit achieved,” Tung leaned back. “We made it.”

  “For the moment.” Jade sighed with relief. “Shut down all non-essential systems. Everything but life-support, on minimum. Make us look as dead as you can.”

  “Shutting down.”

  “I’ll want a full status report. Casualties and all systems. Let’s see what we’ve got left.”

  “Not much,” Tung said.

  “Not much is better than nothing. Find some warm bodies to help us.”

  Bodies.

  She dared not look down.

  Fifteen hours later, Lieutenant Junior Grade Jade Lafrey squirmed in the command seat situated at the exact center of the bridge, and watched junior engineers and simulation-trained bridge crew bring Retribution’s systems back online. To her dismay, the battle had taken a severe toll of Retribution’s senior officers.

  Of the command staff, First Officer Bray, Second Officer Soren, and Lt. Traggert survived, lying in stasis in Retribution’s medical bay, captured in the grey zone between life and death. Lieutenants from engineering and security were similarly incapacitated, and the few other surviving JGs were inferior to her in length of service. So here she was, a JG assigned to staff duties, trying to act as if she knew how to command a star frigate.

  The bridge reeked of smoke and blood, although ventilators had exchanged and filtered the air, and the bodies had been removed and the blood stains cleaned from the deck. Maybe it was just that her nose retained the smell of battle.

  Her neck and head both throbbed from when she’d struck the deck. She rubbed the sore muscles, feeling the tightness of fatigue superimposed on injury. The dull ache of acid burned in her stomach.

  Jade ran a hand through her tawny, not quite shoulder-length hair, and brushed a stray bang back from her high forehead. She winced as her fingers encountered the contusion at her hairline. Her mother had always told her how pretty she was—but she knew she didn’t look it now, not with another purple bruise mottling the tanned skin of her cheek, and creeping towards the left side of her nose. At least the lump on her forehead had finally stopped swelling, although the bruises, she knew, wouldn’t fade for days.

  She’d left the bridge briefly in the aftermath of the battle to scrub the matted blood from her head and face, and change into a clean uniform. She hadn’t even had a doc run a medical scan on her—the machines were operating at full capacity on far more seriously injured crewmembers.

  She had to set an example. So she’d remained at her post, supervising the efforts of the surviving crew. A rating had brought her a meal; she’d picked at it, but found she wasn’t hungry. She ached to lie down and sleep—told herself that she’d function better if she did—but remained on the bridge anyway.

  The damaged consoles essential to ship functioning had been repaired, the debris cleared away, and seats replaced. Once again, the bridge looked like the command center of a major warship instead of a scrap heap.

  Even so, Jade couldn’t rid herself of the sight of Mears-Hadley’s shattered form lying crumpled on the deck. Death in battle, in action on the bridge of her ship. She thought Mears-Hadley would have wanted that. But not so soon.

  Jade wriggled her hips. In spite of the command seat’s thick cushioning and silky-smooth synthetic covering, she couldn’t find a comfortable position. The seat was custom-contoured for Mears-Hadley’s broader, stocky figure and not her own taller and lighter frame.

  The seat didn’t belong to her. But she couldn’t circumvent either that fact or the knowledge that as the ranking survivor she had to sit in it.

  Once the imminent danger to Retribution had been averted and the ship made secure, she’d presided over a hasty funeral service. The Political and Ideological Bureau discouraged the presence of priests on board, but allowed the final decision to rest with a ship’s commanding officer. Mears-Hadley hadn’t objected, but Father Norval had succumbed to injuries shortly after the battle.

  Jade had recited the solemn words as Captain Harriet Mears-Hadley’s body had been consigned to space, along with those of the other senior bridge crew members. Her mind’s eye saw the stream of blue body bags floating away from the crippled ship, sparkling in reflected light until they disappeared into Retribution’s shadow to be swallowed up in the awful blackness of space. Each one of those bags contained a person who ranked ahead of herself.

  Then followed the other members of the crew who’d perished—far too many of them, leaving her with only a skeleton crew to handle one of the Hegemony’s largest warships.

  Jade chewed a knuckle, then dropped her hand and drummed her fingers on the armrest.

  She shouldn’t let the crew see her nerves. She must be calm.

  She stopped drumming. “Helm,” she said, trying to keep her voice even.

  “Ma’am?” Ensign Tung replied.

  “Do we have full insystem drive yet?”

  “Engineering’s still working on it. Half-power at best.”

  “Bring us out anyway. Slowly.”

  “Ma’am.”

  A vibration coursed underfoot. Retribution stirred. The scene on the forward holoscreen shifted.

  It seemed strange to be giving orders to bridge crew and having them followed—so far—as promptly as if Captain Mears-Hadley herself was issuing them. Jade flicked her sore, irritated eyes around the bridge, studying the backs of the very young company. At 25, she was now the old lady.

  Old lady!

  These men and women—some just out of training, raw Academy graduates on their first assignment—were depending on her. On her—an intelligence analyst with a background in linguistics.

  The thought gave her both determination to succeed, and fear of failure should she miscalculate.

  Her fingers strayed to her left shoulder, where the twin stripes of her rank—red and broken orange—brightened her uniform—white from mid-chest upwards, sky-blue below
. Mears-Hadley had borne five solid stripes. A full captain, not a JG playing at higher rank.

  Please, God, she prayed silently, her hand moving over to where a small crucifix nestled beneath the collar of her uniform, give me wisdom. Don’t let me make any mistakes.

  Star Frigate Retribution crawled out of hiding, like a soldier picking himself up from the carnage of the battlefield, surprised—and perhaps dismayed—to find himself still alive.

  Jade tried to banish the comparison from her mind.

  The small moon slipped astern.

  Fifteen hours ought to be long enough, Jade thought. The Gara’nesh wouldn’t linger. They had no more use for Felton 114 and its pitiful collection of barren rocks than did the Terran Hegemony. Hours earlier, a cloaked probe had peeked out from behind the moon and detected no evidence of hostile activity.

  She leaned back, transferring some of the pressure from her complaining thighs to her lumbar spine.

  The silence of the bridge grated on her nerves.

  “Scan?” she asked.

  Thank heavens the discovery of Roessler space had made communication virtually instantaneous across the distance of a stellar system. No waiting for light or radio waves to meander at lightspeed. If Retribution wasn’t alone, Jade would know it—now.

  “Not much, ma’am.” Ensign Polz, a trainee on his first cruise, studied the readout. “No hostiles. Ship hulks, all dead. No, wait! Escape pod. Nemesis ID.”

  “Plot it.”

  The track of the pod flashed up on the main holoscreen.

  “Can we catch it before it goes outsystem?” Jade asked.

  “It’d be close,” Ensign Tung interjected from Helm. “It’s moving fast.”

  “Don't bother, Lieutenant,” Polz said. “It’s cold.”

  Jade sighed. “So we’re it. The only ones left.”

  “Looks that way,” Polz said.

  A few thousand kilometers, and Retribution passed the twisted metal that was all that remained of Courageous. Some of the ruined ships would drift outsystem, to be lost forever in the vastness of the interstellar void. Others would fall into orbit around Felton 114, perpetual tombs for their luckless crews.

  Jade felt as if they trespassed on a graveyard.

  “Picking up one signal,” Ensign Polz reported.

  “Where?”

  “Gara’nesh ship.” Polz’s face registered confusion.

  “Are you sure?” Jade stared at the visual of the first of Retribution's two kills. Could anyone—anything—be alive in that riddled hull? “They never let themselves be taken prisoner.”

  “Positive. The reading is strong.”

  Jade tapped a finger on the armrest. Mears-Hadley would have known what to do. Mears-Hadley had the rule-book memorized backward and forward. Jade knew it pretty well herself, too. But an idea surfaced in her mind. Many times, she’d fantasized what she might do in the highly unlikely—impossible—event that she ever met a Gara’nesh. She’d known it would never occur; nobody but high-ranking Naval officers and Political and Ideological Bureau members ever met a real live alien.

  But now it was happening; the impossible was sitting in that carcass of a warship.

  She became conscious that the bridge crew was waiting for her orders.

  “Helm, take us over.”

  “Ma’am?” Tung goggled.

  “You heard me, mister. Within shuttle range.”

  “Aye, ma’am,” Tung said, his voice heavy with disapproval.

  Jade closed her eyes, rested her head against the command seat’s headrest, and listened to the pounding of her heart.

  You’re disobeying orders, the voice of her training warned. Don’t be foolish.

  She was being both disobedient and reckless. She knew it. Her rational mind insisted that she not pursue this course of action. But yet…some contrary, inner urge demanded that she proceed.

  It took an hour for Retribution’s damaged insystem drive to close the distance and match velocities with the hulk of the Gara’nesh warship.

  Jade needed that time to reach a decision, to balance the conflicting impulses that warred within her.

  “Fifty kilometers, ma’am.” Tung reported at last.

  Jade nodded. “Have Security ready an R/A team to board the Gara’nesh ship and bring back the survivor. Alive,” she added.

  “You’re going to rescue it?” Tung swiveled around to stare wide-eyed at her.

  Jade returned his gaze. “I am.”

  “It’s—it’s one of those things!”

  “It’s an opportunity, Ensign. Follow orders.”

  “Captain Mears-Hadley would—”

  “The captain is dead.”

  “Killed by those creatures!”

  Jade gritted her teeth. “I am captain now, mister!”

  The words hung in the air. I am captain.

  After a long pause, the dark-haired man complied. His stiff back expressed his disapproval more eloquently than words.

  Jade surveyed the remaining bridge crew. Tung wasn’t alone in his sentiment.

  A chance to save a life, and everybody opposed it.

  Everybody but her.

  She could quote the official directive:

  Regulation 143c, Section 24, Part 7: Direct contact between Naval personnel and Gara’nesh hostiles is prohibited without specific approval of the senior Political and Ideological Officer.

  Part 8: Gara’nesh survivors of conflict may be taken into custody by authorization of the senior Political officer. If no Political officer is present, Gara’nesh hostiles are to be terminated immediately, without exception.

  Retribution’s Political and Ideological officer numbered among the casualties.

  Terminated. Without exception.

  Tung reported the Recon/Assault team’s departure. Jade nodded, and remained alone in her thoughts. She was an intelligence officer. This was a chance to obtain intelligence. But the rationalization gave her no comfort.

  Three hours later, with Retribution underway and heading towards the periphery of the Felton 114 system, her nerves tingled as she strode into the detention block. Ensign Tung, her de facto first officer, trotted at her heels. The rescue, although time consuming, had been accomplished without incident.

  It wasn’t too late to turn back. All she had to do was give one order, two simple words—“Kill it”—and the creature would be terminated.

  The leader of the Recon/Assault team was waiting in the detention area. He saluted. “We got it, ma’am.”

  “Did it resist?”

  “No, ma’am.” The man sounded regretful. He held out his hand. “We found this on its person.”

  Jade accepted a small, palm-sized device of some grey material. She turned it over to study it from all sides. “What is it?”

  “One of the engineers said it’s a translator, ma’am.”

  Jade shrugged and shoved the translator into a pocket. “Dismissed,” she said to the R/A man.

  Jade turned her attention to a trooper positioned outside a cell. “Has it made any aggressive moves?”

  “Nothing, ma’am. It just sits there.”

  Jade straightened her uniform. “Let me in. And keep me covered.”

  The guard raised his laser rifle to a ready position. “Count on it.”

  “May I come?” Ensign Tung asked.

  Jade raised an eyebrow. “You’re not Intelligence. There’s no need for you to risk—”

  “I’d like to, anyway.”

  “Why?”

  “You might need a witness.”

  Jade hesitated—was that the real reason behind Tung’s request?—then nodded. “Your choice. Not my order.”

  “Understood.”

  The door hissed open. Followed by the ensign, Jade entered the small cell.

  The Gara’nesh sprawled on the narrow bunk, looking like a collection of cast-off spare parts, a refugee from an explosion in an organ bank. At first, Jade found it hard to tell which end was which. It clambered to its feet as Ja
de entered, removing her uncertainty.

  The few censored pictures she’d seen hadn’t prepared her for the reality. Her first thought was that surely this ill-assorted assembly of spindly limbs, barrel chest and oversized head, clad in a khaki garment of some metallic material wider over the trunk than the legs, could not be humanity’s greatest enemy.

  She stood still, watching, conscious of the Gara’nesh returning her gaze through the transparent fabric of its atmosphere mask.

  Images cascaded through her mind—a naked monkey; an emaciated, starved human; a Greatmount forestwalker—but no analogy did justice. The Gara’nesh was none of them.

  It wasn’t even remotely human.

  Even though she was only slightly above average height, having been born on Greatmount, a world with near Earth-normal gravity, Jade towered over the alien. Were they all short, she wondered, or just this one?

  Only after the difference in height registered did she notice that the color of the hairless, leathery, skin stretched tight over bone structure was a mixture of pale green and pink. Not a blend, but a mixture, as if small, adjoining patches of skin managed to hold onto different tones. Even as she watched, the patches seemed to shift, although the overall ratio of green to pink remained constant.

  A faint odor permeated the cell, reminiscent of fall on Greatmount when the vegetation shriveled. For some reason, she’d anticipated that the alien would stink. It didn’t.

  She slid the translator from her pocket and tossed it on the end of the bunk. The Gara’nesh, moving slowly, stretched out a skeletal hand, picked it up and activated a control.

  Jade spoke first. “I am Lieutenant Jade Lafrey, in temporary command of Star Frigate Retribution.” She couldn’t hear the translation issuing from the device, so the alien presumably possessed an auditory implant. A piece of information that probably wasn’t important.

  The Gara’nesh twitched its bony digits. The lipless mouth didn’t move, but soft sibilants whispered across the cell to be picked up by Retribution’s internal systems, relayed through a translator program, and then fed to her own auditory implant.