Spineward Sectors 6: Admiral's Spine Read online

  Admiral’s Spine Rejoined - A Spineward Sectors Novel: Book Six

  by

  Luke Sky Wachter

  Copyright © 2014 by Joshua Wachter

  All rights reserved.

  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.

  Thanks to all the other beta readers—Sandra did the heaviest lifting this time around!—for all your contributions. We’re getting better as a team, and I can’t thank everyone enough for their help.

  Enjoy!

  Other Books by Luke Sky Wachter:

  As of 08-04-2014

  SPINEWARD SECTORS NOVEL SERIES

  Admiral Who?

  Admiral's Gambit

  Admiral's Tribulation

  Admiral's Trial

  Admiral’s Revenge

  RISE OF THE WITCH GUARD NOVEL SERIES

  The Blooding

  The Painting

  RISE OF THE WITCH GUARD NOVELLAS

  The Boar Knife

  Books by my Brother: Caleb Wachter

  SPINEWARD SECTORS: MIDDLETON’S PRIDE

  No Middle Ground

  SPHEREWORLD NOVEL SERIES

  Joined at the Hilt: Union

  SPHEREWORLD NOVELLAS

  Between White and Grey

  SEEDS OF HUMANITY: THE COBALT HERESY SERIES

  Revelation

  Reunion

  COLLABORATIVE WORKS BY LUKE SKY WACHTER & CALEB WACHTER

  SPINEWARD SECTORS NOVELLAS

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

  Admiral's Lady: Ashes for Ashes, Blood for Blood

  Join the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet on our Facebook Group for upcoming news and discussions about all things Spineward Sectors, including free novellas and other goodies!

  Join www.PacificCrestPublishing.com if you want to be a beta reader for upcoming books.

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

  And we still make the occasional post over at blog.admiralwho.com.

  Contents

  Prologue: A Rude Awakening

  Chapter 1: Meeting in Earnest

  Chapter 2: The Devil in the Details

  Chapter 3: Meeting in the Middle

  Chapter 4: Diplomacy, Interrupted

  Chapter 5: The Laurent Report

  Chapter 6: Taking it Easy

  Chapter 7: Matrimonial Harmony

  Chapter 8: A Restful Repast

  Chapter 9: Fond Farewell & Man Talk

  Chapter 10: Are you Insane?!

  Chapter 11: Center of Power

  Chapter 12: The Emancipation Proclamation

  Chapter 13: Family Discord

  Chapter 14: The Girls are Back In Town

  Chapter 15: The Recruits

  Chapter 16: Casting Off

  Chapter 17: Spalding Eyes a Tool Belt

  Chapter 18: Jason and Spalding on Gambit

  Chapter 19: Operation: Evacuation

  Chapter 20: Spalding vs. the Voters

  Chapter 21: Back to Tracto

  Chapter 22: Tremblay-ing at the thought of a New Mission

  Chapter 23: The Service I need is one only you can provide

  Chapter 24: Spalding vs. Spalding

  Chapter 25: The Lost, the Forgotten, and the Lame

  Chapter 26: Leaving Tracto

  Chapter 27: No Respect

  Chapter 28: Akantha Hatches a Plan

  Chapter 29: Breaking the News

  Chapter 30: Close Encounters of the Droid Kind

  Chapter 31: In the Clinch

  Chapter 32: Spalding vs. Persus

  Chapter 33: Surprises at Aqua Nova

  Chapter 34: There’ll be no Tremblay-ing here!

  Chapter 35: The Battle for Aqua Nova

  Chapter 36: On the Gun Deck

  Chapter 37: The Hand Over

  Chapter 38: The Aqua Nova Blitz

  Chapter 39: No Escape in the Escape Pod

  Chapter 40: It’s a Spalding

  Chapter 41: For all the Aqua-colored Marbles

  Chapter 42: A Princess Never says ‘Die’

  Chapter 43: Shifting Blame

  Chapter 44: It’s a Spalding…or is It?

  Chapter 45: Hitting them Hard

  Chapter 46: Multiple Attack Vectors

  Chapter 47: Battle for the Moon I

  Chapter 48: On the Hull

  Chapter 49: Jazz to Moon Base II

  Chapter 50: Fleet against the Swarm

  Chapter 51: End Run

  Chapter 52: Akantha’s Inferno

  Chapter 53: Feel the Burn

  Chapter 54: The Gratitude of Planetary Leaders: Here’s your Hat

  Sneak Peek of Book 7: Admiral Invincible Chapter 1: Tremblay, Bethany, self-expression…and Bubble Gum?

  Chapter 2: Druid sets out from Gambit with the Power

  Prologue: A Rude Awakening

  You’d think the first thing a man should hear upon awakening, after being injured, should be something nice and pleasant and in many cases the voice of your wife would automatically be bumped up to the top of the pleasant list. Too bad mine didn’t even make the list.

  “When will he wake up?” it was the icy cold voice of my beloved, Sword-Bearing wife speaking.

  “He should be coming around just about any time now,” said the calm, soothing voice of a medical professional as she unknowingly betrayed me to someone with more ability and desire to damage my hide than any enemy. Enemies could be killed or otherwise gotten rid of, after all, but alas…

  However, eternal optimist that I was, I did note with some mixture of surprise—leavened with a dash of hope—that this particular medical professional was female. But this wasn’t the hope that would usually spring into the mind of a young, twenty-something man with a modicum of natural desire upon awakening to the sound of a pretty voice. Far from it in fact, and personally I’ve held to the axiom ‘the uglier, the better’ (especially with my bloodthirsty young wife back in the picture and standing over my bedside). Beauty was on my current list of extreme detractions, and frankly—at least in the privacy of my own mind—the homeliness of said professional would only save me a great deal of stress later on.

  Which was a longwinded way of thinking that the important thing here was that after dealing with the wishy-washy Presbyter, followed by the murderous would-be memory-wiping Torgeson, I was about ready to give up on male doctors. Maybe having a female medical professional in charge of my care would for once, yield less…stressful results.

  The fewer issues I had to deal with, the better.

  “Well?” Akantha demanded breaking the blessed silence wherein I’d begun to believe that maybe, just maybe, I could play possum until she left and thus avoid a reunion until after I’d composed myself.

  “Calmness, My Lady,” urged the voice of Captain Laurent. I had to suppress a groan; telling my girl to calm down when she was aggravated was the exact wrong way to play it. Things were definitely about to get worse. I desperately tried to return to a state of unconsciousness. If this were a simple case of ‘mind over matter’ then I was about to be knocked back out for the next several hours. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to project sleepiness upon myself.

  “Who are you to tell me to be calm?” Akantha said in a dangerous voice.

  Yep, I knew it—wrong way to go, Laurent, I silently commented.

  “I’ve been getting increased brain activity for the past half a minute,” said the doctor in a normal, professional voice.

  “Then when will it be?!” Akantha said soun
ding irritated.

  “He should be waking up any time now,” the doctor said in a slightly elevated tone of voice. I could tell that she was talking to me, and on the one hand I was more than irritated at her for forcing my hand. Yet at the same time I was strangely grateful that she hadn’t broken my cover. Maybe I could work with her?

  To keep the rabid wolves at bay for a few seconds longer, I drew in a breath and loosed a very audible groan.

  “Nungh,” I said trying to make the next groan into a partial moan, and hopefully send the new stressors in my life away until I’d had time to regain my wits, figure out where I was and what was happening and, most important, get some clothes on.

  “Jason,” Akantha said, her long, deceptively slender looking hands, reaching over and gripping my arm with punishing force. “Wake up,” she demanded, shaking me from side to side.

  I let my eyes flutter open. This wasn’t the reunion I’d been hoping for, that was for sure. But I still hoped to salvage something from the ruins of every romantic plan I’d concocted during our extended time apart.

  “Akantha,” I said, opening my eyes. Upon seeing her I let a big smile stretch across my face, and the funny thing was that it was only partially for show. I raised my arms for a hug. Hopefully I could defuse this thing, whatever it was, before things got serious and I got yelled at…again. “You’re a sight for sore eyes." A hug was definitely in order—maybe even a kiss, if she didn’t look like she’d tear my head off if I tried it. Wifely re-union, here I come, I thought with rising hope.

  Akantha gave me one more shake and then deftly stepped out of the reach of my arms. The warning look she gave me clearly indicated that I had a lot to answer for. Probably including—if not centered around—the fact that we hadn’t exchanged so much as a com-message from the moment she got in system until right before I threw my uncle to the Bugs.

  “We have much to discuss, Protector,” she said sternly.

  I let my arms drop. “Have we dealt with the Bugs yet?” I asked hopefully.

  “They are not yet destroyed,” Akantha informed me archly.

  I grunted and it felt like all the wind had been taken out of my sails. Not another death ride; I was still in my sick bed, dag blast it!

  “Okay,” I said steeling myself as I got an elbow underneath me and started for the side of the bed. I ignored a twinge in my side, where I vividly recalled my dearly departed uncle had stuck a vibro-knife. Everyone was always going on about their backstabbing relatives, but it looked like I had more to fear from the megalomaniacal side-stabbing ones.

  “Stay,” my beloved wife and merciless Hold-Mistress instructed laying a hand on my shoulder and pushing me back down.

  I looked up at her in confusion.

  “I said ‘not yet destroyed’,” she informed me, “I did not say not being dealt with.”

  I looked at her and then over curiously at Captain Laurent, who gave me a nod.

  “We parked every ship in the fleet with a working turbo-laser outside of Bug beam range and are firing a broadside every minute, right up its backside where the engines used to be. It’ll probably take us the better part day to finish gutting her from stern to stem, but she’s not going anywhere in the meantime. We’ll only have to maneuver to avoid previously launched boarding parties lying doggo; point defenses can take care of the rest,” Laurent reported with a reassuring expression on his face.

  “Then why am I up?” I asked curiously and while Akantha and the rest of them were still gathering their wits, I saw my chance and I shamelessly took it. I quickly slithered a hand over the other arm and placed my hand on Akantha’s. When she didn’t immediately resist—probably from surprise—I quickly entwined our fingers while giving her a hopeful look.

  I freely admit to being shameless. As they say, ‘all things are fair in love and war,’ and I wasn’t about to let this opportunity pass me by. On the one hand I could use all the maneuvering room I could get, and on the other…I looked up at the icy eyes of my wife. We had been apart for several months at that point and, strange as it was to say, even at that very moment I missed her.

  Some of this must have shown through because instead of smacking me upside the head, braining me with her fist, or stabbing a knife through my hand, I saw her hesitate and then give my fingers a slight squeeze. It was so slight I think no one else would have noticed, even if they were looking for it, but it was there and something inside me unclenched slightly. Maybe our reunion didn’t have to go completely sideways after all, I thought, amorous visions dancing through my brain.

  Oh, I knew my Sword-Bearer was still one violent girl and none of that was in the past—it was still, and always would be, very much in the present—but I at least felt some reassurance that, after whatever crisis of the moment we had to deal with, I would still have a marriage to go home to. I might not have planned, or wanted to be married to the woman who had become my wife. But at some point I’d moved past reluctant acceptance into missing and now even wanting her back in my life.

  Don’t say it; I knew myself for a complete and utter fool. I would suffer greatly for such thoughts as these, but there I was all the same. I was a fool for her. And then, of course, her expression had to harden and I knew that, fool or not, it was time to get out of the line of fire.

  “We have much to discuss—” Laurent started diplomatically.

  “Okay…” I said questioningly, glancing back and forth between him and my wife mainly because I didn’t like the expression brooding on Akantha’s face.

  Then finally the dam burst. “How could you, Jason?” Akantha smacked me in the back of the head and then snarled.

  “Ow!” I exclaimed more in surprise than pain. “What was that for?!”

  “We haven’t even finished the re-conquest and liberation of my Hold and home world—to say nothing of the enemies you’ve left behind us in the heart of this Sector,” Akantha glared at me, “and yet you’re already planning another war!”

  My eyes bugged out, “A war?! You’ve got me all wrong,” I declared as quickly as I could, “I plan to finish dealing with Tracto first!" I hesitated wondering what events had ‘mistakenly’ forced my hand, “I mean, don’t get me wrong…I intend to deal with Central and those politicians in good time but—” Akantha cut me off.

  “I know the truth,” Akantha glared at me, all feelings of home coming and lost star-crossed romance apparently forgotten, “you can’t hide it from me, although why you’d try is beyond me right now." She took a deep breath while I stared at her in continued lack of understanding as she shook her head, “And I thought that the warriors of my people were overly prone to leaping into battle without a moment’s notice,” she said as her face turned hard, “but now I find that the star-born are just as bad, or even…worse!”

  I shook my head in disbelief and continued lack of comprehension. “Pretend that I’ve been hit in the head a little too hard and need reminding,” I said plaintively, “and just tell me what you’re going on about.”

  Frustration clear as day on her face, Akantha looked down at me with concern that quickly morphed back into outrage and disgust.

  “Do not play with me, Protector,” she said leaning down and projecting menace to a man still in his sick bed, “I have been speaking with Kong Pao and—”

  “Kong?” I blinked. “Who in the world is this ‘Kong’ and why have you’ve been listening to him over the words of your own Husband?!" My mind flashed with instant jealousy. Who was this Kong person that he thought he was free to try and mess with my marriage and slander me like this, I silently fumed, getting angrier and angrier by the second.

  “Kong,” Akantha repeated and when I was still giving her the blank, yet still jealously fuming, stare, she gave a sound of pure feminine frustration, “Representative Kong, the Ambassador sent from Sectors 23 and 24, who arrived in my Star System asking for your help in saving his world, alliance, and Sector from the Droid Tribes who are even now overrunning those very Sectors—that Kong Pa
o,” she snapped at me.

  My mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water.

  “You mean…the Representative who arrived with Middleton?” I asked meekly, praying inside and hoping against hope that I was wrong.

  “The very one, Sir,” Laurent hastened to assure me.

  I gave him a very dark look, one that promised retribution for his less-than-helpful attempt to throw me under the hover bus that was the rampaging Hold Mistress, my wife, Akantha.

  Then what had just been said sank in.

  “There are Droid Tribes overrunning Sectors of the Spine!” I said, bolting upright in my bed and ignoring the sudden pain that lanced through my chest and side as I did so.

  “Do not play dumb. This can’t be the first you’ve heard of this; he came in one of your medium cruisers, Protector,” Akantha said drawing herself up into her best frigid, icy self and stared down at me imperiously, “as I have told you before, it doesn’t suit you.”

  “Oh blast it, blast it straight into Murphy’s darkest pit,” I snapped, then shot a hard look over at Akantha, “I haven’t heard anything about any droid invasions,” I said, and then raised a finger before she could intervene, “I specifically ordered Middleton and that Representative to keep quiet until after the Bugs were dealt with since I didn’t have the capacity to deal with any more problems,” I most specifically didn’t add, Like you have so helpfully brought to my sickbed despite my very strict instructions to every single other of the parties involved.

  “World of Men,” Akantha cursed, “it doesn’t matter what I say; I know you. You are a man,” she declared, as if that explained everything—and maybe in her home culture it did. “That is why you will charge into another war despite anything I say." She finished looking down at me angrily, “My Hold bleeds; you will suffer for this.”