Honor Bound

“Are you all right, Commander?” He asked her. He was worried about her obvious headache: she could still have a cerebral bleed or a major concussion from the gravito-inertial feedback.

“I think so, Admiral,” she said. “Sir, is Captain Nunez…” She trailed off, unwilling to say it.

“Yes, I’m afraid so,” he said with a nod. “I know I’m not technically supposed to be doing this, so if you want to take charge…”

“Sir,” she said slowly and quietly, “no matter what was done to you, I still consider you my commanding officer. If they want to court-martial me later, well,” she sniffed wryly, “I’ll claim head trauma.”

His mouth quirked in an almost-smile. “What’s our status, Commander?”

“We’re dead in the water,” she told him grimly. “No power to any of the weapons, about half our sensor net is down and of course we have no gravimetic sensors at all with the drive down. I’m surprised they haven’t finished us off with the planetary defense lasers.”

“There’s why,” he nodded towards the display on the screen.

It was difficult to perceive, at first, as if it were a ghost that wasn’t completely there, but the computer filled in the gaps quickly and they could see the old-fashioned bulk of the RFS Bradley sitting a few hundred kilometers away.

“Where’s the enemy cruiser?” Pirelli wondered aloud, typing search parameters into her keyboard.

“Try looking for gamma radiation bursts,” Ghent suggested, finally back to full alertness. “If she has her drive field up, it will be interacting with the magnetosphere and the upper atmosphere… you should get some anomalous radiation spikes.”

“Yeah, I’ve got her,” Pirelli said, and a command to the Tactical computer brought up a simulation on the screen. “She’s… yeah,” Pirelli sighed. “She’s heading right for us. Her drive field will hit us in about five minutes, give or take. But I think…” She checked her calculations quickly. “I think the Brad is moving to intercept.”

“Man,” Ghent said, swallowing hard, “if it does to them what it’s done to us…”

“Christian!” Patel called urgently, trying hard to ignore Estefan Nunez’ corpse at his elbow. “Lt. Christian, do you read?”

“Sorry, sir,” her voice came over the speakers in the headrest of the Captain’s chair. “Things are pretty fucked… err, messed up down here. I had to go grab portable air supplies for the wounded.”

“I understand, Lieutenant,” he said, “but what about the fusion drive?”

“The Bradley launched two Shipbusters!” Pirelli interrupted. “The missiles got out of range of the drive field perimeter then dropped thrust. They’re probably programmed to go for the cruiser after they knock out its field.”

“Sir,” Christian answered Patel’s question, “I can get the reactor back online in a few minutes… I’ve got the process started already. But with the power trunk as… messed up as it is, it won’t stay online for more than a few minutes before the electromagnetic bottle collapses. I don’t even think the lines are still intact between the reactor and the weapons pods.”

She paused, and he could imagine her shaking her head. “I can maybe get you a few minutes of thrust on the plasma drives, but that’s taking a pretty big risk too… if the bottle fails at the wrong moment, you could wind up with a catastrophic burn-through. It could destroy the ship.”

“Get the plasma drive working, Lieutenant,” he told her. “We’ll worry about how long it lasts when the time comes.”

“Aye, sir,” she said, signing off.

Patel fell silent for a moment as he watched the Bradley approaching the enemy cruiser on the Tactical screen. “Commander Pirelli,” he said, “Lt. Ghent, I want you two to grab Sgt. Elias,” he nodded towards the security guard, “and get to the life pods. Lt. Reno, sound the general evacuation order, then follow them.”

“Sir, are you sure?” Pirelli asked him, eyes wide.

“Commander, this ship is helpless and dangerous. Sitting here only makes us a bigger target for the defense lasers.”

“What about you, Admiral?” Ghent asked, yanking free his restraints.

“I’ll be right behind you,” he assured the man, “as soon as I make sure everyone else gets the word.”

Ghent looked doubtful, but he went over and helped Pirelli grab the security guard and they headed for the bridge exit, pulling the man between them. Patel waited for Reno to sound the evacuation alarm, then watched the man go before he pulled himself to the Tactical station and called Engineering once again.

“Lt. Christian, do you read me?”

“Aye, sir,” she responded immediately. “I heard the alarm… do you want me to proceed with the reactor re- start?”

“Yes, Lieutenant,” he told her. “Get it running, make sure I have control of the drives from the bridge, then get you and your people off this ship.”

“Sir,” she said hesitantly, “what do you intend to do?”

“Whatever I can, Lieutenant,” he said softly. “Whatever I can.”

Chapter Forty-Six

“I can’t believe they’re this fucking stupid,” Xavier Dominguez muttered to himself, staring at the scene unfolding before him on the cabin’s holographic display. He’d hooked his tablet controller up to the communications hub earlier, so Valerie could see the sensor simulation of the battle taking place in high orbit above them.

One of the Republic cruisers-the Sheridan, she thought from its profile-already had its field down and looked to be in bad shape: even as she watched, she could see life pods ejecting from it. The other, the Bradley she assumed, had its drive field up but was heading straight for the enemy cruiser, which was also shielded by its Eysselink drive.

“They saw what happened to the Sheridan when she tried the same thing,” Dominguez went on, glancing across the room at Valerie to indicate he was talking to her, “but they’re going to do it anyway. Morons.”

“They don’t have any choice,” she said, quietly but bitterly. “That’s how you planned it.”

“They could run,” he argued, seemingly rational once again, after several manic episodes that night… in fact, she reflected, he sounded almost sad about what he was doing. “They should run… they won’t accomplish anything… I’ll just burn them down once their drive field drops. Just like I’m going to do to the Sheridan right now…”

Valerie’s stomach clenched as she watched Dominguez-or whatever the hell he was, because he wasn’t the Xavier Dominguez she had known for years-pull up the targeting display for the planetary defense lasers, cycling through one after another until he found the one that could fire on the Sheridan, then locking it on to the crippled warship. She knew she should try to stop him somehow, and if it had just been her, she might have risked it, even knowing it meant certain death. But the shivering warmth of Natalia in her arms reminded her that she couldn’t afford to be a hero, so she just clenched her fists and tried to fight down the surge of nausea that she felt.

“Goodbye, Admiral Patel,” Dominguez murmured in an almost singsong voice as his finger hovered over the fire control, his eyes taking on a dreamy look. “Goodbye, Colonel McKay…”

Valerie’s eyes squeezed shut, not wanting to see it happen… and then flew open involuntarily at the sharp, harsh bark of gunfire. Dominguez was already on his feet, his head snapping around towards the front door of the cabin, where the dirt access road passed by it. The individual shots turned into a full-auto barrage and the mercenaries in the cabin moved behind cover.

“There are enemy troops in the tree line on the other side of the access road,” the woman who was controlling the biomechs told him. “We have two troopers down already but I’m having them take cover and return fire.”

“Get out there with them,” Dominguez ordered her. “Go out the back and take the guards from the dock with you.” He looked at the other three mercenaries in the cabin. “I’m heading out with her. The rest of you stay here.”