Admiral Invincible (A Spineward Sectors Novel: Book 7) Read online

  “There’s more myths and secrets on this ship than you can shake a stick at, Mr. High and Mighty Chief Engineer of the S.S. Strictly Reality,” grated the old Engineer. “If you’d but open yer blinking eyes, you’d see the reality all around you, lad. It’s there for the taking if you would but grasp hold of it,” by the time he’d finished that last sentence emotion was starting to thicken the old Engineer’s voice.

  “Those droids will do their best to kill us when you double cross them. Not if, but when you cross them, if you hold fast to this story,” Lieutenant Tiberius said with real passion in his voice, and even I was caught up in the drama unfolding between them. “Sweet Crying Murphy, there is no Captain Moonlight, no secret Fraternal Order of Engineers and certainly no old Engineers well-past their retirement age cancelling fishing trips because of a suspected uprising of supposed droids from the Automated Underground—especially not ones hiding out in the maintenance crawlspaces and preparing to take over old ships stuck in ordinary in the orbital shipyard.” The young engineer thumped the table in return and locked his eyes with the older Spalding across the table, obviously daring him to gainsay him.

  A tension filled moment passed as neither man appeared ready to budge.

  Then Gants smacked himself on the forehead exclaimed, “So that’s what that cart was really up to? You didn’t tell me it was trying to take over the ship!” the former engineering crewman, and now Armsmaster of the ship, said with a look over at Commander Spalding.

  My eyes popped open and my brows shot up at this unexpected interjection.

  “Eh,” Spalding said, looking over and Gants, then his voice changed from anger-filled and ornery to the more usual, mostly instructional and semi-condescending, tone he usually use. “Oh lad, the one we tangled with wasn’t trying to take the ship; I’d already broken up that ring a few years back. It was just a sleeper agent I’d been having my eyes on for a while, and I assure you he won’t be—”

  Tiberius made an inarticulate cry of rage. “Sweet Murphy, do you pay them to back you up or do they just do it because of this cult of personality you’ve built up?!” he shouted.

  “We’ll have no more of that, Mister,” I said sharply, having had my fill of youthful bitterness, “as it is, I’ve let this go on for long enough. If our Chief Engineer says…I mean, if Commander Spalding says that he can produce this Moonlight—or a good approximation of him—along with whatever prisoners they’re looking for, then I’m satisfied.” Truthfully, I wasn’t entirely satisfied but Spalding had never let us down before, and even if he were about to start now…well, with Bethany and Tremblay’s lives on the line, I couldn’t think of a better time for him to prove himself fallible like the rest of us. And what was more, I wasn’t about to continue sitting there silent and allow any man—even his own son—to run my Chief Engineer, regardless of whoever actually had that particular title, down in front of me!

  “Don’t you see what he’s doing, Montagne?” Tiberius looked over at me beseechingly, desperation in his voice before he turned back to the Commander. “You’re not a superhero. Your Locker is just the old Intelligence half-deck, and your tall tales and the lies you tell children won’t save this ship when the droids come looking for a holo-vid character—a character that doesn’t exist! You can’t let them walk into a trap with the blinders on when dozens of worlds and billions of human lives are on the line. Can you really handle that on your conscience, Dad?”

  “I don’t think anyone here will be walking into anything that the droids set up less than prepared for a double cross, Lieutenant. Space gods, these are droids we’re talking about after all!” I said, taking silent note that he said ‘them’ and not ‘us’ when talking about our fleet walking into a trap.

  “Lad,” the old Engineer said, his eyes softening as he looked over at the younger man, “sometimes the truth hurts. I know that it’s easier to believe the lies your mother told than to open your eyes to what’s really been going on,” then the old man’s voice hardened, “but you’re not a child anymore. You’re a man now and it’s time to grow up.”

  “You old fraud,” Tiberius breathed, “you’re going to get us all killed. Your really would rather die than admit and own up to the truth like a man?”

  Spalding drew himself up majestically, “I am Captain Moonlight; I made those holo-vids so that you could see the truth of what I was doing. Everything I told you growing up was the truth, but I’ve been done trying to make you see that was true years ago. I can lead the horse to water but I can’t make him drink,” he turned away openly dismissing the younger man and looked me right in the eyes, “if they want a prisoner exchange, well then, Admiral, just make sure you get us a right good deal. I got me a hundred and seventy eight droid cores I transferred over from the Clover down in the Phoenix’s locker and I’ll be happy to get those angry blighters off my hands.”

  I blinked and then nodded. More upset and surprised at the fact that we had over a hundred—almost two hundred!—droid cores on the ship, than I was by the little tete-a-tete that had just gone down in my conference room.

  “You just tell them we can make the exchange whenever you’ve come to an agreement, sir,” the old Engineer said drawing himself up with quiet dignity.

  Tiberius made another cry of inarticulate rage.

  “Guards, if that man makes another ill-tempered outburst, restrain him,” I snapped, rounding on the young Engineer, “and then throw him in the brig.”

  While I had been speaking, Spalding had turned on his heel and stalked out of the room.

  I looked back and forth at the officers in the room and saw that many of them were looking alarmed and uncertain, which was just as much my fault as it was the two intemperate engineers’. Clearly the tendency toward histrionics ran in the family, although what that said about me, I decided not to pursue.

  “If Commander Spalding says he can do it then he can do it,” I said sweeping the table with my gaze to let them see how serious I was, “then it’s is a break for us. I don’t know how the droids knew what the Commander was up to and I don’t know how they broke our encryption but I can assure you,” I let my eyes bore into those of First Officer Eastwood, the most skeptical looking of the bunch, and then I gave Captain Atticus a sharp look just to show I hadn’t forgotten him, “we will turn this to our advantage.”

  “He’s a fraud, don’t you understand that?” Tiberius said in a much more respectful tone, even if the words themselves were less than so.

  “Even if that were the case, it doesn’t matter,” I said flatly, locking eyes with the young Engineer until the other man was the first to look away before continuing, “if the man says he can fix this deal for us, then after everything he’s done we’d be fools to take him at less than his word—doing so has blown up in our face too many times.”

  “I really don’t understand why you all think he walks on water. He’s a tired old man, who lies, and steals, and—” the young Engineer said with an obvious effort to control himself—an effort which, to my mind, had just failed.

  “Enough! That man saved the Clover by walking into the fusion core. He saved me, personally, by taking a medium cruiser into Central almost singlehanded. He decided to come get me, had organized the effort, and held that rattletrap together with duct-tape and spacer-wire. Then he launched another death ride to retake the Clover from Jean Luc using a shuttle. If he can do all of that, and then says he can do this, then he can.”

  “And if he can’t? If he fails because he’s in over his head?” asked Tiberius.

  I paused in contemplation and then shrugged. “In that case, I’d say he’s earned one fumbled pass from me. And if things really go in the pot, well…they are just droids after all.

  “But what about the Ambassadors?!” Tiberius cried. “You would just consign them to their fate at the hands of the machines?”

  I paused again in consideration, making sure to contemplate exactly how I felt about it. Then, with a nod, I smiled coldly and deliber
ately shrugged. “Too bad.”

  “You really are a Montagne,” Tiberius said, looking bewildered and then his face hardened as he glared at me.

  “It honestly couldn’t have happened to a more treacherous pair; I’ll lose no sleep over them, their fate, or any names you care to call me, as it’s nothing less than those two deserve. I mean, really, why do you think I sent them to the droids? They were carefully selected,” I said evenly, “and frankly, I wouldn’t have been willing to send anyone else.”

  Tiberius just shook his head from side to side and settled back into his chair, his shoulders slumping.

  “This is the big leagues,” I said, ignoring the young Engineer and meeting eyes around the table, “and I keep faith with those who’ve kept faith with me. Now back to the meeting. Especially in light of the breach in our communications array, I want us to go through all our encryption—both internal and external—as well as defensive plans for incase we are boarded. Remember that we’re going to be meeting a bunch of politicians, and I don’t want to pick up anything that will give us problems later. Hopefully we’ll primarily be dealing with our military counterparts, but a hostile SDF could be the least of what we have to deal with here. Everything from bribes to hostile programs inserted into our DI will need to be anticipated. My policy is going to be this…”

  I continued speaking for several minutes outlining my concerns and what I wanted before setting them loose to figure out how to make my vision reality. Aside from the usual back-and-forth clarification requests put forth by my department heads, the remainder of the meeting went essentially uninterrupted.

  Chapter 4: The Eggs are in the Basket

  I was aimlessly wandering the Flag Deck—or what passed for the Flag Deck, which consisted mainly of the Admiral’s suite, a pair of conference rooms, and a Fleet Intelligence ‘shack’ that was little more than a maintenance closet. The rest of the ‘Flag Deck’ was really just an overlap with the command deck, which itself wasn’t that large.

  I did so more because I needed to be moving so I could think straight, and didn’t really want to go all the way down to the exercise facilities for a full workout.

  This was one of the harder parts of the job. The meetings had been met, the ship was moving as fast as possible through the various systems between us and our target, and while I was waiting for my officers to get back to me with reports and recommendations there was really nothing to do. Nothing to do except wonder and worry and come up with increasingly paranoid reaction plans.

  Such as after coming to save them—having been invited to come save them, no less—I show up to do so and am immediately attacked. Or I could show up and the droids would already be there…or we arrive and the droids show up within the hour while we’re still in the early stages of diplomacy with the locals.

  I wanted to stop running through the myriad scenarios but my brain was churning too much to go lay down, since doing so would just give my darkest worries freedom to run rampant through my thoughts.

  At least while I was on the move I had the sensation of doing something, even if it was only moving around so as not to be a sitting target. Which was the height of unreasoning stupidity, as any outside forces that could attack me would have to destroy the ship first. Only an uprising…

  Footsteps sounded behind me just as I had that particular though, and I whirled around with my hand going down to the blaster I’d taken to carrying in a holster at my belt. I had barely reached it when someone came around the corridor I’d just walked by.

  Seeing it was Akantha, my heart—which had been pounding up into my throat—started to settle.

  “I knew you were around here somewhere,” Akantha said sternly as soon as she laid eyes on me.

  I cleared my throat and schooled my expression to neutrality. Suppressing any sign of the jitters I’d been feeling, I looked at her.

  “What do you want, my Lady?” I asked, falling back on palace training and noble courtesy.

  “Sword Bearer, please,” she said politely.

  “Of course, my—I mean, Akantha,” I stumbled, and that was when I realized how out of it I had become. I needed to get my wits back about me, and quickly.

  She looked at me and I could tell I was failing some kind of internal Akantha-, or woman-specific test.

  “So, Sword Bearer,” I said, working hard not to stumble over a very strange way to address your wife, “what brings you to this neck of the woods?”

  “There are no woods here,” she said, pausing and glancing at the duralloy walls long enough to drive the point home.

  “It was an expression,” I said wearily, fighting the urge to slump my shoulders. I really wasn’t in the mood or inclination for a fight.

  She sniffed.

  “What I meant was, is there something I can do for you?” I asked just looking at her, hoping that if I stared at her long enough she would eventually come to the point.

  She frowned.

  “Do you see something different about me?” she asked turning to the side.

  I looked but couldn’t see a thing. I even started to open my mouth to say so, when memories of girlfriends past came back to haunt me.

  “Did you do something with your hair?” I guessed.

  When the frown on her face stiffened, I knew I’d flubbed it and I also knew that if I failed my next guess I was going to have to pull out the big guns.

  “Hey! Are those new clothes?” I inquired, forcing excitement onto my face.

  If looks could deliver physical retribution, I knew for certain I would have been smacked in the face by now. I silently resolved myself to showing up with flowers and chocolates as a prelude for her taking me down to the gym to run me ragged for the next several days.

  She glared at me, but at that point I knew better and kept my mouth shut. Akantha huffed when it was clear I wasn’t interested in digging myself in any deeper.

  “Well since you obviously haven’t noticed, I thought I’d come down to tell you,” she leaned down and lowered her voice fractionally, but the obvious excitement she was feeling almost overwhelmed the lower volume, “that the eggs are in the basket.”

  I froze, wondering what in the world she was talking about.

  She stopped and was now looking at me, obviously eager for me to say something. Knowing I had to do something, I scratched my ear.

  “That sounds very…interesting?” I temporized.

  “Don’t you understand,” she hissed at me, obviously of the opinion that I had just lowered myself to the rating of one of the stupidest men in the universe, “the eggs are in the basket!” I started to nod and then, realizing just how helpless I was, I shook my head.

  But by this point, she was too swept up in the excitement and even the fact that I had barely any clue what she was talking about wasn’t going to stop her.

  “You know what this means, of course,” she said, looking, acting, and frankly sounding more like the little girl in her as she all but squealed out the words.

  I couldn’t help staring at her. “Who are you, and what have you done with my wife?” I said, suppressing the urge to chuckle.

  “Males,” she rolled her eyes before continuing right where she’d left off in the conversation—a conversation that was that I had yet to participate in. “Fortunately for you, I’ve taken care of everything…” she frowned and then as if offering me a great concession, “and, of course, your mother can help…if she wants,” she added as if hopeful such would not be the case, and yet also at least a little conflicted about the matter.

  “I don’t have a clue what you are saying,” I said, figuring being upfront and honest was my only hope of survival.

  She waved her hand as if waving away an irritating fly.

  “You’re main concern will be the challenges, anyway,” she said, dismissing my lack of understanding as irrelevant.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said, raising my hands, “challenges?! Explain—now. What’s this about me being attacked because of eggs and
a basket?”

  Glaring at me, she reached over and grabbed one of my uplifted hands.

  “What?” I asked with alarm.

  I started to try and tug my hand away but she gave a yank and placed my hand on her lower abdomen.

  “The eggs,” she said, speaking with excruciating deliberation, “are in,” she pointed emphatically to her lower belly, “the basket.”

  I stared at her open-mouthed.

  “You know…after a few weeks they start to kick, and months later out comes a little Lady or Warrior?” she demanded hotly.

  I stared down at my hand on her tummy with growing horror and a dawning understanding.

  “You mean…” I couldn’t even finish the sentence before I started spluttering. “But I thought we agreed to talk about this!” I yelped.

  “Shhh,” she growled at me before looking around furtively as if to make sure we hadn’t been overheard, “I don’t want to announce it until they’re further along.”

  “They?” I asked, a vague recollection of some kind of outrageous talk regarding the number of children we were going to have in the near future suddenly came to the forefront of my mind with vivid clarity.

  Akantha smiled, and it wasn’t one of those small, reserved smiles—it was ear to ear.

  “But…we agreed to wait,” I protested.

  “No, you agreed that I should think about it some more, and so I did,” she declared. “After thinking, I decided this is the perfect time to have my heirs.”

  “Sweet Murphy avert,” I groaned.

  “Now that that’s settled, I had something I wanted to speak with you about,” she said, bestowing an icy look on me.

  “Settled! How many children did…I mean, how many eggs are in the, erm, basket?” I demanded weakly.

  “Something like half a dozen, but we won’t know for sure until they get bigger,” Akantha said happily. “Just think about it: all of my heirs coming at once!”