Admiral's Gambit (A Spineward Sectors Novel:) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: Catching Up

  Chapter 2: A Warped View

  Chapter 3: Not So Easy

  Chapter 4: Strategy Session

  Chapter 5: Into the Fray!

  Chapter 6: The Paring Knife

  Chapter 7: The Second Wind

  Chapter 8: Boarding Action

  Chapter 9: Easy Haven and Environs

  Chapter 10: Coping With Loss

  Chapter 11: The Departure

  Chapter 12: On the Gun Deck

  Chapter 13: Trouble in Paradise

  Chapter 14: Into the Great Unknown

  Chapter 15: Planetary Gratitude

  Chapter 16: Big Trouble in Little Tracto

  Chapter 17: A Morale Booster, And Other Violent Pastimes

  Chapter 18: Departure Is Bittersweet, But Arriving Is Always The Pits

  Chapter 19: Dressing-Downs

  Chapter 20: A Transfer Unwanted

  Chapter 21: A Little Glue Goes A Long Ways

  Chapter 22: Honing A Razor

  Chapter 23: The Interrogation

  Chapter 24: A Heart-To-Heart

  Chapter 25: Akantha in the Sickbay

  Chapter 26: Return to Tracto

  Chapter 27: A Royal Welcome

  Chapter 28: A Royal Pain

  Chapter 29: I Spy With My Beady Eye

  Chapter 30: To Rest or Not To Rest. Not To Rest.

  Chapter 31: On The Way Back

  Chapter 32: Expedition Infirm-um

  Chapter 33: All Things Messene

  Chapter 34: Queen's Knight to Queen's Rook Four

  Chapter 35: Lyconese Sensation

  Chapter 36: Argos in a Nutshell

  Chapter 37: Scream Like an Eagle, Drop Like a Rock

  Chapter 38: Separation Anxiety vs. The Circle

  Chapter 39: Jinx

  Chapter 40: Blow up any Mountains Lately? Nah, just an oversized mole hill.

  Chapter 41: Fireworks

  Chapter 42: Letter vs. Spirit

  Chapter 43: Irritation From On High vs. Boys Will Be Boys

  Chapter 44: Red Sky In The Morning...

  Chapter 45: ...Sailor's Delight?

  Chapter 46: The Mechanics Of A Miracle vs. The Shroud

  Chapter 47: Back in Orbit

  Chapter 48: Return to Easy Haven

  Chapter 49: Maneuvers for Advantage

  Chapter 50: Facing The Inevitable

  Chapter 51: Stabbed In The Back, Again

  Chapter 52: United We Stand...

  Chapter 53: An Impassioned Plea

  Chapter 54: Swallowing The Bitter Pill

  Chapter 55: Off A Sinking Ship

  Chapter 56: A Miracle Delivered, Complete With Shoddy Tools

  Admiral's Gambit - A Spineward Sectors Novel: Book Two

  by Luke Sky Wachter

  Copyright © 2012 by Joshua Wachter

  All rights reserved.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental. All events and characters depicted herein are the result of my imagination. Respect my electronic rights because the money you save today will be the book I can't afford to write for you tomorrow.

  For my son, who always believes.

  First thanks go out to my brother, without whom this book could have taken much longer to see Amazon e-print. Thanks are also in order for Paynesgrey, Carolkat, Temari, superpsycho and all the rest of the Beta readers who helped make this story as good as it is. You've been wonderful, guys.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: Catching Up

  Chapter 2: A Warped View

  Chapter 3: Not So Easy

  Chapter 4: Strategy Session

  Chapter 5: Into the Fray!

  Chapter 6: The Paring Knife

  Chapter 7: The Second Wind

  Chapter 8: Boarding Action

  Chapter 9: Easy Haven and Environs

  Chapter 10: Coping With Loss

  Chapter 11: The Departure

  Chapter 12: On the Gun Deck

  Chapter 13: Trouble in Paradise

  Chapter 14: Into the Great Unknown

  Chapter 15: Planetary Gratitude

  Chapter 16: Big Trouble in Little Tracto

  Chapter 17: A Morale Booster, And Other Violent Pastimes

  Chapter 18: Departure Is Bittersweet, But Arriving Is Always The Pits

  Chapter 19: Dressing-Downs

  Chapter 20: A Transfer Unwanted

  Chapter 21: A Little Glue Goes A Long Ways

  Chapter 22: Honing A Razor

  Chapter 23: The Interrogation

  Chapter 24: A Heart-To-Heart

  Chapter 25: Akantha in the Sickbay

  Chapter 26: Return to Tracto

  Chapter 27: A Royal Welcome

  Chapter 28: A Royal Pain

  Chapter 29: I Spy With My Beady Eye

  Chapter 30: To Rest or Not To Rest. Not To Rest.

  Chapter 31: On The Way Back

  Chapter 32: Expedition Infirm-um

  Chapter 33: All Things Messene

  Chapter 34: Queen's Knight to Queen's Rook Four

  Chapter 35: Lyconese Sensation

  Chapter 36: Argos in a Nutshell

  Chapter 37: Scream Like an Eagle, Drop Like a Rock

  Chapter 38: Separation Anxiety vs. The Circle

  Chapter 39: Jinx

  Chapter 40: Blow up any Mountains Lately? Nah, just an oversized mole hill.

  Chapter 41: Fireworks

  Chapter 42: Letter vs. Spirit

  Chapter 43: Irritation From On High vs. Boys Will Be Boys

  Chapter 44: Red Sky In The Morning...

  Chapter 45: ...Sailor's Delight?

  Chapter 46: The Mechanics Of A Miracle vs. The Shroud

  Chapter 47: Back in Orbit

  Chapter 48: Return to Easy Haven

  Chapter 49: Maneuvers for Advantage

  Chapter 50: Facing The Inevitable

  Chapter 51: Stabbed In The Back, Again

  Chapter 52: United We Stand...

  Chapter 53: An Impassioned Plea

  Chapter 54: Swallowing The Bitter Pill

  Chapter 55: Off A Sinking Ship

  Chapter 56: A Miracle Delivered, Complete With Shoddy Tools

  Chapter 1: Catching Up

  My name is Jason Montagne Vekna, although I’m not sure if my new wife agrees with that or thinks my new last name should be Zosime. It’s a long story. I never really cared for the 'Vekna' part, so it wouldn’t be any skin off my nose to switch it out but it might cause problems back on the home world, and we had plenty of those right now. So I was deliberately not asking her opinion.

  Anyway, I’m currently the Admiral of the ever-so-proudly named Confederation Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet, or MSP as I like to call it. Of course, I’m only an Honorary Admiral in my home world’s SDF or System Defense Force, and was forwarded to be the Acting Admiral of the MSP. But I try not to tell anyone about that little technicality.

  One week ago, the Imperial Admiral in command of the MSP resigned on orders from his Triumvir, and the Empire as a whole abandoned the eight Confederation Sectors comprising what we natives like to call 'The Spine,' or 'The Spineward Sectors.'

  Before becoming the official figurehead of the MSP nine months ago, I was a minor member of a nearly irrelevant Provincial Dynasty. The Royal Family on my home world answered to the Caprian Parliament, not the other way around, and the Parliament held our purse strings. So generally, we acted as some sort of glorified galactic butlers, wining and dining anyone Parliament needed to impress or fob off in an appropriately decedent style.

  Before leaving,
Rear Admiral Arnold Janeski of the Imperial Rim fleet turned command over to me and I proceeded to…well, I picked up a pirate ship or three - again, a long story.

  I also saved a beautiful native woman from horrible space-faring Bugs. Unfortunately, I was busy ogling her half-naked neighbor and there was a cultural misunderstanding. She thought that by giving her a sword with which to cut herself and the rest of the Bug prisoners free (coincidentally, including her busty neighbor) that I was proposing some form of shotgun marriage wherein if she didn’t take my sword and accept my offer of marriage, she and everyone else would die a gruesome death.

  I, on the other hand, had no clue about this and was only trying to do the heroic thing. In other words, I had given her my only weapon and, as a result, was being slowly overwhelmed by ravenous insects. The very same ones that were trying to eat us all alive, regardless of potential or real wardrobe malfunctions.

  It's safe to say that as far as romantic meetings go, it was hate at first sight. She wanted me dead, and as far as I was concerned, she had let other people die and even tried to kill me by deliberately not lifting a finger to help anyone, all after I gave her my only sword.

  A series of further misunderstandings followed, but when I found out that a quarter of a million settlers I had rescued couldn’t land on her planet without local permission, and couldn’t stay in orbit without dying of suffocation…well, let's just say I decided to go through with the marriage anyway.

  By this point, we were both generally aware of the situation, and still feeling things (if not each other) out. She was no longer trying to kill me, at least. Instead, she was now determined that I survive long enough to ‘fulfill my obligations,’ which I took to mean I needed to save the entire population of her world from being eaten by semi-intelligent (and officially non-sentient, according to the Empire's propaganda machine) space-faring Bugs in slow-drive ships.

  After that, I assumed she planned to dump me like a bad habit. I was just hoping it happened before she met my mother so I could sweep the whole thing under the rug. As it was, she had recruited around eighteen hundred super-sized native warriors to my 'banner,’ although they sure seemed to listen to her a lot more than me, and she was determined to stick to my side like glue at this point.

  In the meantime, I had a Fleet consisting of one ship because, as far as I knew, in the two weeks since everything else had fallen apart, the fleet had fallen apart too and returned home, each ship determined to protect its own home world rather than uphold its obligations to the Confederacy's charter of mutual defense. This mass egress left no one to prevent piracy, or protect merchants and other civilian ships. Like the ones carrying the quarter of a million settlers we had rescued from pirates.

  Chapter 2: A Warped View

  I was sitting on my bridge waiting as the time officially counted down to zero. This was the last point transfer, the final hyperspace jump to faster than light before we officially returned to civilized space.

  To say I was nervous was an understatement. I was petrified, which was a good thing because I couldn’t let any of the half-dozen interest groups on my Flagship sense weakness because as far as I knew, this was the only ship I had, other than a few small warships protecting my new wife’s world, which we knew as Tracto VI.

  I looked over at my First Officer, Lieutenant Raphael Tremblay. He was busy scrutinizing a bunch of old Royalists who were former members of my native Capria's System Defense Force and current members of my 'Confederation Fleet,' a fleet comprised right now of one Caprian Dreadnaught class Battleship. Confused yet? I know I was.

  He was one of the ship’s former junior Intelligence Officers. I couldn’t find anyone to make Captain in my stead, and I wasn’t about to put a Parliamentary man in command of my ship, so he became the First Officer, and I was currently holding down the Admiral and Captain hats with both hands. Tremblay thought we should make like a lightning bolt and head straight home for Capria, abandoning our duties to the Confederation, now that the Confederated Empire had been functionally dissolved. But while it was dissolved in The Spine, the Empire was still very much present in the rest of Human Space, as far as we knew.

  I, suspecting Parliament would be more likely to give me a chop to the neck than a pat on the head, was a little less gung-ho for the 'return to Capria, and do it right this instant' plan.

  Around the bridge was Helmsman DuPont, a man I’d had to threaten with death in order to save the settlers those pirates were attacking. We were unarmed at the time, so I guess I can’t blame him too much. Ramming is normally a very fatal event, so it's generally reserved for overly dramatic holo-vids.

  I’d never been to a military academy, and all my training was on the job, so ramming had seemed reasonable at the time. But then, like a lot of things in life, it had some unexpected consequences.

  The Navigator was present for this jump, sweating bullets, as usual. Our Science Officer, a civilian named Jones, and the whole host of the First Shift bridge crew were present for this particular jump.

  I had deliberately set the time for our point transfer into the new system so that First Shift would be on duty. Second and Third shifts used to be ghost shifts, but with the help of a serious recruitment effort initiated by my loving wife (who I sometimes thought of as a pit viper in human form when she was mad at me, or my blonde ice maiden when she was just disapproving), I had added my own personal touch and recruited some of my fellow Caprians who had been on one of the settlement ships we rescued. So now those shifts were no longer empty, but almost fully staffed.

  Her moves had provided me with a horde of enthusiastic, but relatively untrained Lancers and crew, but I liked to think that my recruiting drive, while not netting as many bodies, had more than made up for a lack of quantity by the quality of so many former members of the Caprian military.

  You see, despite being seconded to the Confederation Fleet (at least until Parliament got its act together and tried to recall us, now that everything was falling apart), this ship was Caprian built and, for the most part, Caprian crewed. Sure, there were several thousand natives of Tracto VI, the primitive world my lovely bride hails from, and even a few Promethean settlers looking to get some pirate blood in retribution for all of their dead relatives, but this ship was still crewed three fourths by Caprians.

  Anyway, I had gotten comfortable with First Shift, and wasn’t yet with Second or Third, especially with all that grey-headed wisdom watching me every second for the slightest mistake. I don't enjoy scrutiny. After all, I’m the Admiral. Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around, me watching them?

  So, First Shift had the con when the timer hit zero and space warped around us.

  Chapter 3: Not So Easy

  The Lucky Clover point transferred into a system named Easy Haven. It was the home of an old-style Confederation Star Base, Wolf 9.

  For some reason or another, it was one of the few original Confederation naval bases in the sector that hadn’t been scrapped or upgraded beyond recognition by the previously combined Confederated Imperial Fleet.

  I had taken some time to look the place up on our trip from Tracto to Easy Haven. Fifty years is a long time for a base to go without a serious upgrade, but to the best of my knowledge it was still an active fleet base. It was home to a squadron of older Confederation Corvettes stationed out of it, present more for ceremonial duties than anything else.

  This original, unmodified Confederation-issue part was critically important, because the Imperial Fleet had orders to destroy all of their equipment on the way out of the Spineward Sectors.

  “Extending baffling beyond transfer area and firing main engine,” declared Helmsman DuPont.

  “What’s the Point Resistance?” demanded Lieutenant Tremblay.

  “Engine at 20% of maximum,” said the Helmsman. “We still have a lock on the ship.”

  “Shields properly modulated for a Sump Slide,” declared the man at shields.

  “This should be an easy one,” said S
cience Officer Jones. “Resistance is really quite minimal when you compare it to many of our previous transfers.” Jones had a natural ability to keep his voice level and calm in even the most insane situations. I actually found myself envying him a couple of times.

  I was just happy there were no sudden lurches, jerks, crashes or slams this time, unlike many of our previous jumps. Ever since the former Caprian military crew had joined the ship, each point transfer had gone smoother and smoother, until it almost felt like the ship the Imperials had originally handed over to me.

  “I want figures, Science Officer,” the First Officer said exasperatedly. “How many times have I asked for our Point Resistance and you’ve given me a feeling or an interpretation?”

  “Maybe you need a new Science Officer, then,” snapped the other man. “I’m a Civilian with the University of Capria, here to study the cost/benefit of slave-rigging versus not slave-rigging this ship. I'm not here to act as some sort of military automaton.”

  “Just the facts, man,” retorted the First Officer, “or is that too much for your scientific brain to process?”

  “Alright, cut the chatter you two,” I said, hoping to keep the two senior officers from each other's throats. Inwardly, I enjoyed watching my bridge crew keep Tremblay on his toes, but I needed them focused at the moment. “Science Officer, prepare yourself so that next time you give us a proper report. Tremblay, focus on the task at hand,” I said, waving at the main screen, which was slowly being populated with system traffic.

  “Engines at 30% of maximum,” reported the Helmsman. “Lighting up both secondaries now.”

  “Shield strength at 98% and holding,” reported the shield operator. “Shield regeneration is keeping up with the sump drain. We could stay here for days,” he remarked.

  “Belay that chatter,” sneered Tremblay, “Only a fool would stay in an Inertial Sump left behind by a hyperspace point transfer if he didn’t have to.”

  “Engines two and three are lit. We’ve doubled our thrust… and there she goes,” reported DuPont. “We’ve broken the sump and are free to proceed throughout the system. Caprian Space Lines would like to thank you for choosing us this trip-”