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

  Admiral’s Revenge

  by

  Luke Sky Wachter

  Copyright © 2013 by Joshua Wachter

  All rights reserved.

  V5.02 — Re-edited 11/17/2013

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

  Five books into the Spineward Sectors Saga…wow. If you had told me two years ago that I would have six novels — and that most of them would have been about our Little Admiral — I really doubt I would have believed you. But here we are, and I’m beyond my ability to express just how appreciative I am for your continued support.

  My thanks go out to everyone who helped out with this book’s development, and trust me when I say that there is nothing usual or ordinary about the contributions which made this book possible. Special mention goes to paynesgray, Emil (my Number One European fan), and Ulrich (NOT von Lichtenstein!). I can’t always implement your suggestions, but I sincerely appreciate every bit of criticism and praise you take the time to make. I like to think that my ability as an author grows with each book, and it’s because of all the feedback I get from you, the people who love these stories as much as I do.

  If you have an interest in joining our beta reading or proofreading team, come to www.pacificcrestpublishing.com and sign up! It’s still in development, and an extra special round of thanks is owed to those of you who helped us through our first set of growing pains. You have our sincere appreciation for helping us to create a place where we can interact in new and exciting ways!

  Also, if you’re an aspiring author like I was not too long ago then I suggest you head on over and take a look the above site. He’s just getting started, but my brother is working overtime to come up with all kinds of author resources (such as blogs, a streamlined beta-reading program, and affordable artwork like the one on this book’s cover!) to help take your ideas and share them with the world.

  P.S. I hope you like your revenge served cold!

  Books by Luke Sky Wachter:

  As of 11-06-2013

  SPINEWARD SECTORS NOVEL SERIES

  Admiral Who?

  Admiral's Gambit

  Admiral's Tribulation

  Admiral's Trial

  SPINEWARD SECTORS NOVELLAS

  Admiral's Lady: Eyes of Ice, Heart of Fire

  RISE OF THE WITCH GUARD NOVEL SERIES

  The Blooding

  RISE OF THE WITCH GUARD NOVELLAS

  The Boar Knife

  Visit AdmiralWho.com or PacificCrestPublishing.com for more information.

  Be sure to stop by the blog at blog.admiralwho.com for updates.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: Tallying Resources and Counting Costs

  Chapter 2: It’s Time to Move On

  Chapter 3: Signing Up

  Chapter 4: Laying down The Law, Taking Stock

  Chapter 5: Pried from Reluctant Fingers

  Chapter 6: It’s a Spalding

  Chapter 7: Dealing with Brence

  Chapter 8: Druid Sets Out

  Chapter 9: The Commodore’s Riposte

  Chapter 10: Leaving the Friendly Confines

  Chapter 11: To Tracto!

  Chapter 12: Round Two, Harvester Style

  Chapter 13: Expecting Guests?

  Chapter 14: Upgrades Can Be Annoying

  Chapter 15: Brence reaches Omicron

  Chapter 16: Tis But A Scratch

  Chapter 17: Fix’ing the Game

  Chapter 18: Nervous Jitters

  Chapter 19: A Meeting To Remember

  Chapter 20: The Scouts

  Chapter 21: The Scouts Report

  Chapter 22: An Oath—and a Rebuke

  Chapter 23: Recruiting Issues

  Chapter 24: More Bug Scouts

  Chapter 25: Recruiting: The Drop-off

  Chapter 26: McCruising to the Rescue

  Chapter 27: Tough Decisions

  Chapter 28: Jean Luc vs. The Envoy

  Chapter 29: Recruiting: Some Real Issues

  Chapter 30: The Commodore Gets Swatted

  Chapter 31: Workplace Distractions

  Chapter 32: Cutters do the Cutting, McCruise does the McCruising

  Chapter 33: To the Armory

  Chapter 34: Agitation at the Armory

  Chapter 35: Nikomedes: The Building of a Legend

  Chapter 36: In Yagar, We Trust!

  Chapter 37: Thanks for the tribute!

  Chapter 38: The Furball

  Chapter 39: McCruising through the Bumps

  Chapter 40: The Silent Strike!

  Chapter 41: Conflict Resolution 101

  Chapter 42: Bugs, Bugs, Bugs

  Chapter 43: Not Quite Fix’ed

  Chapter 44: Spalding Reminisces on the Prince

  Chapter 45: Spalding Takes Over

  Chapter 46: Harbinger, Thy Name is Middleton

  Chapter 47: More Bugs and Mutinous Murmurs

  Chapter 48: Spalding tries to sneak away…

  Chapter 49: Spalding Comes for Brence

  Chapter 50: Tracking the Mother-ship

  Chapter 51: A Hero’s Welcome…or not

  Chapter 52: The Gathering Storm

  Chapter 53: An Impassioned Plea, part two

  Chapter 54: Planning to Offend

  Chapter 55: Reaping the Whirlwind

  Chapter 56: The Furious Phoenix

  Chapter 57: It really was the perfect plan, honest!

  Chapter 58: Fleet Maneuvers

  Chapter 59: On the Hunt

  Chapter 60: The Supplicant Seeks a Boon

  Chapter 61: Rumble in the Jungle

  Chapter 62: Going In

  Chapter 63: Under His Mercy

  Chapter 64: A Message in a Bottle? Could it be?

  Chapter 65: The Phoenix feels her fury

  Chapter 66: Always in Control

  Chapter 67: Seeing Red

  Chapter 68: The Phoenix In Flames

  Chapter 69: Helplessness

  Chapter 70: Riding to the Rescue

  Chapter 71: Clash of the Titans

  Chapter 72: It is, it is, a glorious thing…

  Chapter 73: Spalding Abandons Ship?!

  Chapter 74: Head to Head

  Chapter 75: Thunder and Fury

  Chapter 76: Rocket Man

  Chapter 77: The Final Approach

  Chapter 78: Hanging Tough

  Chapter 79: Rising from the Ashes

  Chapter 80: Complications

  Chapter 81: To the Locker, lad!

  Chapter 82: Staying in the Fight

  Chapter 83: The Davy Jones

  Chapter 84: Unexpected Difficulties

  Chapter 85: The Opening

  Chapter 86: The Worm Turns

  Chapter 87: Akantha On The Run

  Chapter 88: Snatching Victory

  Chapter 89: The Heart Stops…or does it?

  Chapter 90: On the Flag Bridge

  Chapter 91: The Perfect Opportunity

  Chapter 92: A little Marital Support

  Chapter 93: The Privilege of Rank

  Chapter 94: Deathly Determined

  Chapter 95: ‘Jason, I’m your _____’

  Chapter 1: Sweety…it’s time to wake up.

  Chapter 2: Meeting in Earnest

  Chapter 1: Tallying Resources and Counting Costs

  I studied the holo-screen in LeGodat’s office at the Wolf-9 Star Base—the office he’d loaned out to me temporarily until I got back on my feet—and raised my eyebrows.

  “We’ve got an assembly line able t
o produce…” I scrolled back down through the information, “just under one new fusion generator a month, a shipyard now capable of repairing vessels as large as the Dreadnaught class—up to and including full-blown refit jobs. And to cap it all off, thanks to Akantha we’ve got a new Dreadnaught class Battleship in the yard right this moment, back on Gambit,” I finished, completely blown away.

  “About ten fusion reactors a year, Sir,” Spalding corrected, looking insufferably pleased with himself. Even the Lucky Clover only had the capacity to carry five fusion reactors, and a ship like a Corvette or Destroyer, just one or two. “But don’t forget the Duralloy II smelter. Had to ram that project down the Space Committee’s throats, I did,” he capped it off with a derisive snort, to express his true feelings about space committees or just plain committees in general.

  “Yes, that,” I replied agreeably, still out to sea a bit. I wasn’t fully up on the differences between Duralloy II and the regular old Mark I material, but Spalding looked fit to burst with pride at mentioning the super-strong material—and frankly, everyone else was looking at him in pure, abject awe over the stuff—so I figured our more than slightly insane Chief Engineer had done it again. “Another miracle of engineering, Mr. Spalding; you are to be commended. Well done!”

  “Thank you, Sir,” Spalding smiled, and I had to suppress a wince at the way his right eye auto-adjusted for focus, first pushing the lens forward with a whining sound and then back again. Cameras were meant to move like that to achieve focus, but not something stuck inside a person’s eye socket!

  “All we need, Admiral, are a few more trained personnel to run things—that, and the time to set up a dedicated Factory complex. Then the Constructer’ll be mobile again,” Spalding continued, returning to the exact same subject he had been harping on for the entire duration of our trip from Central back to Easy Haven.

  “I understand, Chief Engineer,” I sighed, shaking my head from side to side.

  “No, I don’t think ye do, Sir,” Spalding said sternly, and then held up a thumb and forefinger, holding them less than a centimeter apart, “we’re the width of a witch’s secret hair away from a fully-functional, self-supporting, top-of-the-line shipyard! By the time we have those ships the Lady Akantha delivered in working order, the only thing holding us back will be a tragic dearth of warm bodies!!!”

  I was already shaking my head in negation. “We don’t have the men…I don’t have the men to give you,” I said sharply, “have you looked around here, I mean…at all? LeGodat’s running everything in Easy Haven at half-staff, and that’s just with the warships and critical systems they’ve brought back online. Anything non-essential’s lucky if it has a handful of watch standers. Where am I supposed to get these men for you?” I demanded hotly, more than a bit tired of this particular argument.

  “That’s not the kind of can-do attitude I expected from you, Admiral,” Spalding scowled, the weight of his look causing me to want to sink deep into my seat or run away and leave this Admiraling job to the professionals.

  “What do you want me to do,” I snapped, “wave my magic wand and make trained engineers appear out of thin air? There’s no one to send, Lieutenant Spalding!” I finished, breathing hot and heavily. I was glad to have finally got that off my chest. Up until now, I’d been humoring the old man because of his previous sacrifices, but it was time for a dose of hard reality.

  “There are ways and then there are ‘other’ ways, Sir,” Spalding retorted, an almost maniacal look stealing over his face.

  “What are you talking about?” I demanded wearily, leaning back in my chair. The way he was looking, I almost wasn’t sure if we were still on the subject of personnel. “There’s no magic wand to fix a lack of manpower,” my eyes widened as I once again took in his almost cyborg like appearance.

  Clearing my throat, I continued, “Besides, cloning has been illegal for a century and a half, and it takes entirely too long to raise and train one for such a thing to be practical, even if I was willing to countenance such an option. Which I wouldn’t,” I finished in a hard tone, desperately hoping my old Chief Engineer wasn’t about to propose we create some kind of Engineering Droid. I might have to send him in for psychological counseling and not only would that be a blow to morale, but I’d lose one of my most trained officers all in one fell swoop.

  “Oh no, Sir, nothing like that kind of malarkey ever crossed my mind. Why, I wouldn’t trust a sick dog to the care of that medical staff,” he sneered, and the tension in my shoulders instantly lessened.

  “I’m glad we have that cleared up, Lieutenant,” I said pointedly, before glancing over at the holo-screen again.

  Spalding looked completely disgusted by this response. “For a high and mighty Admiral, you can be thick as a board sometimes,” he shook his head and then belatedly added, “no disrespect intended, Sir.”

  “None taken, Junior Lieutenant,” I lied, but let it slip given the circumstances. This man—more than any other—had been responsible for actually busting me out of prison, mere hours before I was scheduled to be executed. I was willing to let a few jabs slip by. Then, deciding to extend an olive branch, I sighed, “I take it you have a few thoughts on the subject?”

  “Yer blasted well right I do!” he exclaimed, looking as excited as only an old, half mechanical engineer—who was none too stable ‘before’ he walked into an active power core—could be, “You said it yerself!”

  “And just what, pray tell, did I already say that will shed light on how to fix our current personnel shortages?” I grunted. “Central and the Core Worlds have poisoned the well. As far as every single one of their citizens is concerned, I’m not Jason Montagne, Confederation Vice Admiral. Instead, I’m the dreaded Tyrant of Cold Space.” I knew I should have been filled with a righteous anger after saying this, the way they’d trailed my good name through the mud—Sir Isaac, in particular. But all I could manage was a kind of hollow despair. I knew that I was never the fire-eating, genius, hot-headed Admiral my men seemed to believe in…and truthfully, I was even starting to wonder if I’d somehow lost my nerve.

  “Those Core Worlders are a bunch of namby-pamby bilge mice,” Spalding scoffed, “you said it yerself: the Border Alliance is the only place to get the kind of tough as nails recruits we’re going to need.”

  I blinked, as I replayed what he said in my mind. “I’m afraid you don’t understand, Chief,” I replied evenly, “as I already mentioned, the Border Worlds Alliance is nothing more than a myth—a creation of the moment, and one I used to good effect,” I added proudly, “but its existence is nothing more than rumor I created. There is zero substance to it,” I finished glumly. More’s the pity, I thought. If there had been even a shred of truth to it, I wouldn’t be sitting here taking up LeGodat’s desk and trying to figure out my—our, next step. I had to periodically remind myself that I was an Admiral again. I had come to learn that a couple of months under the executioners axe will do strange things to a person’s attitude.

  “All’s the better!” Spalding exploded with such force I was left gaping, “So long as there’s no actual Alliance to be undermined, it’s impossible for Central to destroy it before we can begin recruiting!”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, closing my previously gaping mouth.

  Spalding got a sly look on his face. “The Core Worlds may have been convinced that Admiral Montagne is really the burgeoning, ineffectual ‘Tyrant of Cold Space,’ but remember this,” he said, and his right eye began to glow with an unholy light, “there’s no Com-Stat network left for them to listen to.”

  My brow furrowed as I tried to figure out his point. Like a dog suddenly catching a whiff of a scent, I knew something real was lurking out there in the bushes, but I just couldn’t see it yet.

  Stamping a foot loud enough to cause metal to clang—and the floor underneath him to vibrate slightly—the ornery old Engineer shook his head sadly. Clearly, to his engineering mind, I was too dumb to wait on any further.
<
br />   “Meaning, Sir,” he said the last word with a snort, “that a slow civilian freighter, carrying any record of your hearing—and the accusations of the politicians, pundits and talking heads of Central that you failed to stop those pirates—is going to arrive right on the heels of word that your forces took the Omicron and handed the pirates a defeat such as this Sector hasn’t seen in two generations. In some cases, our version of events will have already have been playing on their local planetary networks for weeks!”

  My eyes widened. “How the blazes would they know anything about…” I trailed off at the sight of the Chief Engineer’s smug grin. “You didn’t,” I breathed.

  “When the blighters took our Clover,” the old Engineers face darkened thunderously, “I knew it was time to get out the word of all our good deeds. The court o’ public opinion’s a fickle beast, and I figured it could help us maul our enemies. I was aiming more at the politicians of Capria and the Assembly, but me arrow struck home in the Border Worlds instead…” a dire smile crossed his face and an insanely murderous look glinted in his eye, “you can still use it, Sir.”

  “Interesting,” I muttered as my mind raced with the implications.

  “Who cares if we can’t recruit in the Core,” Spalding growled stomping from one end of the room to the other before throwing up his hands. He leveled a finger at me, the tip of which popped off and a plasma torch ignited, “forget them bloomin’ idjits! As Murphy is my witness, we’ll sort them out later. After we’ve run a recruiting drive all the way from one end of the border to the other, and filled both my shipyard and every ship in this fleet with hard-hitting, Core World-despising, Fleet Recruits—wily old veterans like we got off those settlement ships at AZT, as well as greenhorns like as we’ve trained before—we’ll keep sending out ships until this organization’s practically bursting at the seams with warm bodies!”

  My eyebrows climbed for the rafters. When he put it like that, it almost sounded like a recruiting drive might actually work. “But when the news finally does get out there…” I muttered, deep in thought.