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

  “Marbles?” the Tracto-an lancer, called Persus, wrinkled his brow.

  “Argh,” the old Engineer said, reaching up to grab at his hair but as usual lately his fingers skittered of bald skin and chromed metal. “Saint Murphy save me.”

  “You call on deity now?” observed the other man critically, the hand of his single, remaining, biological arm still tucked into his belt.

  “Hold yer tongue,” the old Engineer snapped and then looked down at Persus’ hand with calculation. “Doctors too cheap to fix that thing?” he demanded derisively.

  Persus’ nostrils flared and he pulled his hand out of his belt. “Old habit,” he declared shortly, moving his arm up and down and wiggling his fingers to show he was no longer all crippled up, before shoving it right back into his belt as if that arm were still gimped up.

  “Quacks are ruddy useless with just about everything,” Spalding grumped, “but I can’t do nothing with flesh and blood systems—I work strictly on the mechanical side of things.”

  With a slightly distrustful look, the Tracto-an followed him over to the work-bench and then placed his arm on the table.

  “Just a moment,” the old Engineer placed his tongue between his teeth and then reaching into his tool belt with one hand he used the other to tap out a simple code on the upper arm, near the shoulder section of the prosthetic arm.

  A small, metal hatch clicked open in the synth-flesh exposing the metal and wiring underneath.

  “Sickening,” Persus said, shaking his head as he peered around to look inside his arm, “do all you Starborn have the same disregard for such unnatural arts?”

  “Unnatural?” Spalding bristled. “What’s unnatural is some child with a virtual degree—likely earned at a University that graded on a blasted curve—hangin’ on his wall, cloning your flesh for days and weeks before cutting your chest open and replacing your heart. That’s what’s unnatural!” he shook his head belligerently and then pointed at the other man’s arm. “This is just a simple, straightforward, and utterly comprehensible ‘mechanical’ prosthesis. This is something a man can wrap his head around, unlike all that cloning, healing tank nonsense some doctor cooked up to keep those jobbers down in medical employed.”

  “I do not understand much of what you say,” Persus said in reply.

  “Just don’t let those short jobbers down in medical get under your skin,” Spalding advised kindly. He paused, realizing that the tool in his hand was not right for the task at hand. Setting it aside, he reached around to pull out a higher sensitivity diagnostic unit. “This won’t take but a light-second,” he assured the other man.

  “What are you doing?” asked the Tracto-an with a slight edge to his voice as Spalding stuck an adjustable screwdriver into his arm.

  “Eh?” the old Engineer looked up at him in surprise and then over to the small auto-wrench he’d just put down on the table. “Oh,” he continued with sudden understanding, “just makin’ sure to use the right tool for the job is all. Have no fear, Papa Spalding is here,” he said before leaning back down to focus on the job.

  The other man’s genetically-engineered jaw set.

  “No, I ask after what you are doing to my arm?” he demanded tightly.

  “Oh, that,” Spalding said looking down at what he was doing in surprise, then he tossed it off, “I’m just fixing you up for our fight is all. Don’t want you saying you were fighting with a handicap.”

  “You speak in riddles,” Persus sighed. “I don’t understand. Why would you do such a thing?”

  Spalding stopped and stared at him.

  “Why…I can’t have you claiming I only walloped you cause you were fighting injured,” he finally said gruffly.

  The Tracto-an gave him a level look and then shook his head from side to side as if bemused.

  “What,” the older man said with rising fire, “don’t think I’ve still got it in me do you? You think the radiation fried more than just me arms and legs!”

  Working furiously with renewed purpose, he finished fixing up the arm and, after a quick diagnostic check, prepared to close the cybernetic arm back up.

  “There you go,” he snapped, “come on then; let’s get this over with.”

  Like a cobra about to strike, Persus stared at him for along moment and then splayed his hands. “Perhaps we should eat first,” he said.

  “I don’t see the need to wait,” Spalding said, balling up his fists.

  “I have no wish for you to claim you were fighting without food,” Persus said after a moment and then switched tacks, “how long since you last ate?”

  The old Engineer glared at the warrior, but seeing the steel in the other man’s eyes he became even angrier. “Fine!” he growled, “we can eat first.”

  **************************************************

  “What kind of food is that?” Persus asked, dropping his plate full of food onto the table beside the old Engineer.

  Spalding frowned and looked down at his plate mulishly.

  “It’s a type of sustenance fit for neither man nor beast,” he finally admitted.

  “Then why eat it?” the Tracto-an asked with what sounded like genuine courtesy.

  “I got old,” he replied sadly, “just can’t handle the radiation like I used to I guess. That fusion reactor tore up my internals and now I’m stuck with what they call a ‘soft diet.’ It’s like eating baby food most of the time,” he confided bitterly.

  “Hmm,” the other man said, making an overtly interested sound.

  “Some of it’s not bad,” the old Engineer said, halfheartedly poking at the Jiggle-O on his plate and making it jiggle from side to side.

  “If the food is so terrible, why not have the healers work their magic and fix you? Or is that beyond their abilities?” asked Persus.

  “I don’t have the time to be laid up like they would want,” the old Engineer said shaking his head rather too quickly, “can’t risk the downtime. The Clover—I mean, the ship, needs me; knowing those doctors, first they’d knock me out and then they’d keep me stuck up in sickbay long after I was ready to go back to work. It’s just too risky.”

  “So it is not that they are unable to fix you?” Persus asked curiously.

  “Who knows,” Spalding said glumly, even though secretly he was pretty sure that they could. He just had no interest in going back under the knife anytime soon. For the time being, he’d rather take his chances with the spotty food.

  “You would really eat mush instead of being healed?” Persus sounded surprised.

  “It’s just this darned Lander I’m working on,” the old Engineer declared. “If only I could figure out how to make her work, maybe I’d have time for cosmetic changes. But right now I’m stuck, and being able to work is more important than fine galley steaks or whatever other off-brand, perma-frozen slop they’re thawing for us here in the mess hall.”

  “Problems?” Persus frowned.

  “I can’t get the ship to go fast enough. It needs to go really fast—and then slow down just as fast—if this plan is going to work. You can put all the stealth coatings on the exterior that you want,” he quickly raised a hand to cut off an interruption the other man didn’t look in any hurry to make but still it was the principle of the thing, “the Demon knows I’ve worked as many fixes and patches as I can on that front. But no, it’s the speed issue that’s the problem.”

  “You can’t ride your metal beast fast enough,” Persus asked skeptically.

  “It’s not the speed,” the old Engineer said waggling a finger at the Tracto-an, “I can remove the safety interlocks and the ship will get there in a hurry, but everyone inside will be dead from crushing acceleration.”

  “That would be bad,” Persus grunted, “so slow it down. Maybe add more armor.”

  “Armor’s not the solution; that would only slow her down more, and there’s no point in trying to armor a puny little lander like a proper warship. The whole point of the thing is to be quick and nimble and deli
ver her load of Lancers. She has to be able to get under the bigger ship’s shield.

  “Quick and nimble, stick and move…like a man with a dagger against a sword and shield,” Persus said contemplatively.

  “Right, only I can’t get the grav-plate to work good enough,” the Tracto-an cocked an eyebrow at him and he hastened to explain. “I can’t go fast enough; the grav-plates are slowing it down.”

  “So get rid of the grav-plates,” the warrior shrugged as if that answered the problem.

  “Without the plates we’d be even slower…or we’d all die,” Spalding said in disgust, and at the continued lack of understanding evidenced by Persus’ expression, he said condescendingly, “I can no more get rid of the grav-plates than you could…get rid of your legs in this supposed dagger fight of yours. Just ‘cause the legs aren’t quick enough doesn’t mean you can just chop them off!”

  Understanding dawned and then Persus peered off into space for a while. “If my legs were too slow and I needed to stab someone with my dagger, then I would have to use my arms to get under the guard. Bam!,” he gestured with an outstretched hand, “A lightning thrust at the last moment…perhaps I would also employ a cloak, to hide the dagger in my hand until it has struck.”

  “Yes, well, I’ve already got stealth material but a true cloaking field is out of the realm of possibility,” Spalding sighed and poked the Jiggle-O with his spoon again. He watched in abject misery as the green substance jiggled back and forth.

  “If you have longer arms, you can make up for bad legs and no cloak—if you’re lucky,” Persus shrugged.

  “A ship’s ‘arms’ are her weapons, and those don’t help you get anywhere,” he fudged, because at least that was true of the vast majority of ships out there, of which the little lander was included. He knew that the craft was all shuttle, really, and he sighed.

  The Tracto-an Warrior grunted and turned back to scooping large quantities of food down his gullet.

  Turning away, Spalding took a few bites of applesauce, followed by vegetables boiled to within an inch of their lives, to the point where they just about literally melted in his mouth. Space gods, they were so soft and disgusting they made him want to gag.

  Giving up on the foul stuff, he poked at his dessert again before taking a bite. He knew he just had to make up the difference somehow, and for a moment he chewed on the surprisingly stiff Jiggle-O. It wasn’t engines, and it was grav-plates, but somehow he had to be able to go faster—

  He paused. Well, he didn’t really need to go faster, per se. The lander could actually go a lot faster than the crew could survive, thanks to the improved engines he’d put in her. The problem was simply one of crew survival.

  “I need to improve the grav-plates, it’s the only way to keep the crew alive in that kind of acceleration,” he muttered to himself.

  “Is it?” Persus asked.

  “Is what, what?” the old Engineer asked irritably.

  “The only way the ‘crew’ can survive this,” he paused and sounded the work out, “ac-cel-er-a-tion.”

  The Chief Engineer opened his mouth to rebuke the Lancer for such a silly question when stopped, mouth hanging open as he actually considered the question.

  “Not for a long time, but there haven’t always been just grav-plates for this kind of thing…” he said slowly, but then with growing enthusiasm, “I’ll have to check the historical accounts. Maybe there’s something there!”

  It was a long shot but maybe he could find something that would help, if he just looked at it again with fresh eyes.

  “You know, you’re not so bad at this whole engineering business after all,” he magnanimously informed the Tracto-an.

  Persus rolled his eyes and kept eating, clearly expressing his opinion on the idea of him as an engineer.

  Lost in thought, Spalding poked at his food, moving it around on his plate from one place to the other as he focused on matters much more important than mere sustenance.

  There was something tickling at the back of his brain.

  ‘Jelly’ something-or-other came to mind for some reason, but he couldn’t figure out why. Maybe it was because he was just pushing around the only half-way edible portion of his meal, he wondered. Stopping to scoop up a bite of Jiggle-O. Jello and jelly are similar names for wildly different substances, he thought, staring at the green dessert as it wobbled from side to side, threatening to fall off his spoon due to the disharmonious frequency at which it jiggled.

  Clearly he’d been up for too long without enough food or sleep—even he realized he was starting to get loopy.

  Then he stopped and looked down at his Jiggle-O, with growing excitement he pushed on the gelatinous substance and watched as it moved absorbing the force of his blow before springing back into its former position unharmed.

  That was it! What he needed was something that he could fill the compartment with and absorb the shockwave.

  “Ballistics jelly!” he declared to all and sundry, standing up from his chair ready to march right back into his lab. He didn’t know if it would work or if working how he was going to get it in and then back out of the troop bay in anything like a timely manner so that the Lancers could offload and be ready to board the enemy warship, but those were just details. He actually had that most precious of things: a half-baked idea with which to spur his creative juices into action!

  “Where are you going?” Persus demanded, giving his plate the gimlet eye.

  The old Engineer stopped and blinked, having all but forgotten the other man in his excitement. Then his blinking turned into a frown and with a grumble he sat back down to finish his greens.

  Awful stuff that it was.

  Chapter 7: A rendezvous in Cold Space

  I stood on the bridge with my hands behind my back as I stared at the main screen and the hyper-wave that pinpointed the position of the recently emerged Droid Supership.

  “That sure is a big ship, sir,” a Sensor Operator commented to the Captain.

  “Mind your post, Spaceman,” I barked at the Sensor Officer.

  “Aye sir,” the Spacer said ducking his head.

  “She looks big, Tactical,” I said, pursing my lips as I looked at the very large ship that had just dropped into the Star System we were currently located within, “what can you tell me about her?”

  The Tactical Officer blinked and then looked back at me before nodding. Squaring his shoulders, he hunched back over his console once more before turning back to me.

  “She’s pretty close to the size of a Settlership, Admiral. Really massive,” the Tactical Officer said speaking quickly but firmly, “battleship level shields—strong ones, too, even for that class, and we can also confirm Heavy Cruiser level weaponry.”

  “Heavy Cruiser,” Laurent cut in incredulously, “that’s it?”

  And my own eyebrows lifted in surprise.

  “She may be hiding more, but so far that’s all we’ve spotted, sir,” the Tactical Officer said with a helpless look, as if he couldn’t believe it either.

  “So she’s big but lightly armed,” I cut back in and then added, “relatively.”

  The Tactical Officer blinked and then nodded as he turned back to me. I sensed a bit of reluctance or, maybe not reluctance, but perhaps surprise in his actions.

  My eyes narrowed and I wondered if I’d taken too much of a step back during the last battle. I was used to a more ‘hands on’ approach to running the bridge during combat. Right now the bridge was sprinkled through with entirely new people, and they weren’t as used to responding to me as my old stalwarts were. Did I need to make sure they knew where to look, or was I threatening to micromanage things because of my own insecurity?

  I had a new ship, new crew, or at least a lot of people who’d headed off with Akantha and who weren’t as used to my presence anymore. Maybe I did need to step it up, at least for the next little while.

  Still feeling conflicted I decided now wasn’t the time to be wallowing in self-doubt.
r />   “What else can you tell me about her?” I asked.

  The Tactical Officer frowned.

  “Her armor’s thin,” he said finally.

  “You mean for her size?” I clarified.

  “No, I mean for any size. It’s been reinforced in several sections but I’d say less than 10% of her hull has extra armor. If I didn’t know any better I’d say that hull is more civilian than military,” he paused in contemplation before sighing, “and I have to honestly say that I don’t know any better. It’s not like our files on Droid vessels are anything like complete.”

  “Good to know,” I nodded.

  “That droid ship also has a pretty power big source inside her, even for her size,” the Sensor Warrant cut in, giving the Tactical Officer an inscrutable look before focusing back on me.

  I’d begun to open my mouth but closed it again. Leaning back, I placed a finger over my upper lip as my mind raced. We were a medium cruiser on steroids—or, at least one with a reinforced hull. They had a super-ship nearly the size of a settler, sporting battleships shields, heavy cruiser weaponry, and a paper thin hull.

  To my mind, our weaponry was probably on par, our shields were close, if slightly lower, and our hull was definitely superior. However that would only hold true if our Imperial tech held the same advantage over the droids as it did over Confederation technology. Who knew what kind of tech advantages Droids might possess? For all we knew, they could be more advanced than the Empire in every way or, conversely, existing out on the Rim of Known Space they might only be able to use and acquire the sorts of aged designs and equipment the Pirates and other outworlders used. All of this calculation, of course, didn’t include the rest of my ‘fleet’.

  “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do—” I started, unable to keep a slightly grim cast from my voice, but I was interrupted.

  “Contact! Multiple contacts,” shouted a panicked sounding Sensor Operator.