“You’ll find out. Come on, let’s go.”
When they left the wardroom, one of
“Sit!”
Armstrong looked right at Michael while he gathered his thoughts. He had been a cop for a long time. He had more experience than he cared to think about, and every bit of that experience argued that the business at hand was a goldplated crock of shit. Sadly, for the moment at least, his hands were tied. There was a process to follow, even if that meant trampling all over two officers who by all accounts had always tried to do their duty and-in Helfort’s case at least-had the scars to prove it.
“Right, then.” Armstrong’s voice was flat, unemotional. “I’m going to comm you a document. It’s a preliminary charge sheet alleging that you and Lieutenant Commander Fellsworth entered into a conspiracy to mutiny.”
Michael looked stunned. “What?” he finally stammered. “Mutiny? I don’t understand.”
“Just read the charge sheet, Helfort.”
Minutes later, Michael looked up, his pain and confusion plain to see. “Sir,” he said, shaking his head, “I’ve read this thing five times over, and it still makes no sense, none at all. How can developing a COMEX be construed as mutiny? This is a complete load of crap-”
Armstrong’s hand went up, stopping him in his tracks. “Now’s not the time to respond, so-”
“Sir!” Michael protested. “It’s wrong. It’s-”
“Stop right now! Goddamn it, Helfort! That’s an order!” Armstrong barked. His voice softened as he continued. “Now. Listen to me. This is what’s going to happen. You’ll be confined to your cabin until further notice. You’ll eat there, have an hour’s exercise twice a day under escort, and be able to have visitors at my discretion. Maximum two at any one time. The ship’s legal AI will act as the accused’s friend, and let me tell you it will do a better job of it than anyone I know, so don’t waste your time looking for any amateur lawyers on board. When I have the brief of evidence, I’ll pass that to the AI, and it’ll tell you what it thinks of the case against you.” And what a no-brainer that’ll be, Armstrong thought savagely.
Michael sat openmouthed, obviously not taking any of it in. Armstrong felt for him. The whole business must be like a bad dream, some dreadful black comedy, a bizarre tale of a mad captain crossing swords with a young officer too dumb not to know when to keep his head down.
“Helfort! Are you listening to me?”
“Sorry, sir.”
“Hmm,” Armstrong grunted. “Okay. Where was I? Oh, yes. Accused’s friend, use the legal AI, brief of evidence. I think that covers it all, so that’s it for now. Any questions?”
“Fellsworth, sir. Has she been charged, too?”
“She has.”
“Can I see her?”
“No, not at the moment. If I decide both cases can be dealt with jointly, you will. Be patient.”
“Not much choice there, then, sir,” Michael muttered with a twisted half smile.
“No, I suppose not. Right, let’s get you to your cabin. I’ve got work to do. Lance Corporal Johannsen!”
Friday, August 27, 2399, UD
Hammer Warship
Commodore Monroe sat oblivious to the usual postdrop buzz of activity around him in
In front of him, the plot showed the merchant ships making the six-hour crossing of the Xiang, a confused mass of orange vectors turning to green as ships were downgraded to no threat. When the command plot stabilized, Monroe grunted in satisfaction. Things were as they should be.
The plot in front of him matched the ship and vector data that had streamed in from the Hammer pinchspace comsats standing off Paderborn Reef to the north and Vijati Reef to the south. More reassuringly, the comsat data were consistent with the traffic schedules broadcast by an ever-helpful FedWorld traffic coordination center on Terranova.
Monroe smiled broadly. He liked what he saw. To make sure that no witnesses were left behind, what he now called Force Quebec would attack when Xiang Reef was clear of all but transiting FedWorld merships. There could not be too many merships, either; Force Quebec had to be able to eliminate every mership crossing the reef in a single brutal strike. Nor could there be too few to make an attack profitless. In a concession to the bleeding hearts-even the Hammer had a few of them-Xiang Reef had to be clear of passenger liners. Operation Cavalcade’s rules of engagement were very clear. They prohibited any attacks on liners, FedWorld registered or not.
Most important of all, there had to be no chance of running into a passing FedWorld warship. The thought of a FedWorld heavy cruiser doing to him what he was about to do to the FedWorld merchant ships made him shiver.
It had taken some doing, but finally his staff had identified a number of windows in which all the mission constraints would be met. Based on the traffic reports, the earliest was in seven days’ time, but he had to be sure. Each attack depended on all the conditions being right. It would take only one Fed heavy cruiser to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Operation Cavalcade would be over before it had started. To make sure that did not happen, he had to get a better handle on what the Fed starships were up to.
Thus far, the indications were good. It was beginning to look as though the monotonous grind up and down the trade route was taking the edge off the Feds. In fact, things were beginning to slip to a point where few of the patrolling ships were making random changes of vector, and even then not as often as they should. Things had gotten so bad that predicting where individual warships would be was getting easier and easier. It was sloppy stuff, Monroe thought, and not at all what he had come to expect from the Feds.
Even as he congratulated himself on his good fortune, Monroe gave himself a mental kick. No Hammer commander ever won an engagement by underestimating those Kraa-damned Feds, and he was not going to start now.
Until he was sure that he had identified the right time to strike, Force Quebec would sit and wait and watch.
It had been a long three days since Constanza had ordered his arrest, and the bulkheads of his cabin were beginning to crowd in on Michael.
At first, being confined to his cabin had not been so bad-the exact opposite, in fact. It had been wonderful. For one thing, he had been able to catch up on some badly needed sleep; like every other junior officer on board, Michael had been running a serious sleep deficit. For the first day and a half, he had been so tired that he had slept more than he had been awake. But with the problem of sleep deprivation overcome and with him unable to concentrate on the entertainment accessed through his neuronics, boredom had set in, made worse by the nagging, stomach-churning worry that Constanza might get away with her lunatic proposition that Michael and his boss were part of some conspiracy to mutiny. Early on, the idea of a conspiracy had sounded so far-fetched that he’d laughed
