demanded it-had been broken, perhaps irrevocably.
Holding his breath, he forced the anger down. Their day will come, he vowed; their day will come.
Friday, February 23, 2401, UD
Vice Admiral Jaruzelska lifted her glass of wine and toasted each of the dreadnought captains in turn. “Well done, all of you. You did well,” she said.
“Thank you, sir,” Michael said, returning the toast, horribly aware that he might be toasting the success of an operation that had killed Anna. “Always good to remind those damn Hammers they don’t own all of humanspace just yet.”
“Wasn’t the toughest operation of all time, though, was it, sir?” Kelli Rao said.
“No, it wasn’t,” Jaruzelska said, “but you guys had to start somewhere, and Salvation was as good a place as anywhere.”
“Ironic,” Machar said, “rescuing a bunch of lapsed Hammers. Never expected to be asked to do that.”
Jaruzelska nodded. “It’s one of the stranger missions I’ve been involved in, I have to say, but not the strangest. That would have to be the time I was sent to assist a ship attacked by pirates. It was one hell of a shock when we boarded the ship to find that the pirates had released the stars of Mister Almaghedi’s Amazing Alien Circus before they left. All three hundred of them. It was absolute chaos.”
The table erupted in laughter, and Machar launched into an account of one of his father’s trips to an obscure fringe world 300 light-years beyond the Delfin Confederation.
Michael let the conversation flow on around him, content to let Machar make the running. Ironically, the Salvation operation was one of the best things to happen to them. The chances of the dreadnoughts surviving everything the Hammers would throw at them while they fought to keep the Feds away from their precious antimatter plant must have improved now that his captains were blooded.
Or so he hoped. Apart from Fleet’s stupidity in sending Commodore Kumoro’s task group in early, Salvation had been a simple operation, an operation that should always have gone the way of the Feds.
Operation Opera would be an entirely different matter. Facing a dangerously resurgent Hammer, only a fool would try to predict how it would go, so he had given up trying. There were simply too many unknowns. Michael watched Jaruzelska, her face animated by the simple pleasure of listening to a good story well told. Assuring the security of the Federated Worlds decades into the future was a responsibility few Fed military commanders had ever been given; he wondered how she coped.
He had enough trouble coping with the demands of each day, his mind endlessly distracted by the ghost of Anna reaching for him out of a nightmare of smoke, flame, fear, and panic as
When the dinner broke up, Jaruzelska waved Michael to stay behind. “I’ve just had a com from Fleet,” she said.
“Sir?”
“It’s good news, Michael, the best,” Jaruzelska said, her face split by a huge smile. “The International Red Cross has just supplied us with the survivors list from Salvation-”
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Michael hissed.
“-and Anna’s on it. She’s alive, Michael, slightly wounded but okay.”
Michael lay in his bunk, unable to sleep, struggling to accept the fact that Anna really was alive. He had been so sure that she had not made it off the doomed
But survive she had, one of only eighty-nine spacers to make it, a desperately small fraction of the heavy cruiser’s complement. The Hammers had reported through the International Red Cross: She had been captured, her status reported to be “Wounded-OK.” The problem, as Michael knew all too well, was how the Hammers treated prisoners of war, fit or not, and if she had fallen foul of DocSec for any reason …
He sent that awful prospect back where it came from. He had to stop thinking that way; if he did not, it would drive him over the edge, an edge he was already far too close to. He had to take each day as it came, live a normal life, and hope that Anna would get through. She was tough; provided that she was in a prisoner of war camp run by the Hammer Fleet and surrounded by hundreds of Fed spacers, she would survive.
After all, he had.
Monday, March 5, 2401, UD
Reckless,
“Well, folks. This is it. It’s come a bit later than we expected, but I’ve just received the warning order.”
A ripple of nervous excitement ran through the spacers and marines sitting in front of Michael.
“Operation Opera is on. There are no major changes to the operation order, so the mission time line stands. A few minor alterations, of course-there always are-but nothing significant. Jayla?”
“Sir?” Ferreira’s face flushed with excitement.
“Battle Fleet wants us to increase our holdings of regen tanks. I agree with their thinking; if there are casualties, and there will be, we may end up carrying more than our fair share given that dreadnoughts’ chances of surviving are that much higher. The authorization is on its way, so make sure Comdur’s logistics people get on it right away.”
“Sir.”
Quickly Michael ran through the rest of a long list of things the admiral’s staff wanted finished before departure. That done, he paused, eyes scanning the faces of the people he was responsible for.
“I don’t think,” he said at last, his voice somber, “that there is much more I can or need to say, apart from this. I give you my word that I will do everything I can to make this mission a success. We all know how important it is that SuppFac27 be destroyed. The future of the Federation rests on taking away from the Hammers the one thing that can beat us: their antimatter warheads.”
An angry murmur ran through the room.
“I cannot lie to you,” he continued. “Doing that may cost some, even all, of us our lives, and if that is what it takes to get this job done, so be it. But let me make this clear to you. My job is to do two things at once if I can. One, to destroy SuppFac27. Two, to bring you all home safely. And that,” he said softly, “is exactly what I intend to do.”
Michael paused again.
“Are there any questions … no? Good.”
Not a word was said. The faces of some betrayed that curious mix of fear, apprehension, excitement, and anticipation common to all about to go into battle; others showed a stony indifference. Then they were all on their feet.
“Remember Comdur!” they roared, the battle cry of the Federated Worlds Space Fleet.
Tuesday, March 6, 2401, UD
