Honor Bound

“After that, I got promoted and went for advance officer’s training.”

Oh, shit, Franks moaned inside his head, letting the high gravity force him deeper into the acceleration couch. What the hell do I do now?

“Two minutes till intercept,” the Helm officer announced. “I’ve got the vectors programmed… we’re in the pipe. Taking acceleration down to one gravity.”

The pressure pushing down on Franks’ chest eased to a normal level but he barely noticed: he was intent on watching Perez. As the seconds crept by, he saw beads of sweat rolling down the Captain’s forehead, saw the man’s face transform from intent concentration to agonized indecision as the moment of intercept approached.

He had a conviction deep in his gut that the Captain was being pressured by the conditioning he’d undergone on the Patton‘s ill-fated journey to Aphrodite, and that the man was going to crack and abort the maneuver at the last second. He didn’t know if he was being paranoid, but he knew what Shannon Stark or Jason McKay would say about that: the question was never if you were being paranoid, it was whether you were being paranoid enough.

“Captain,” he said firmly, leaning forward in his seat.

Perez’ face swung toward him, the movement furtive, like a cornered animal.

“Captain Perez,” he repeated, trying to keep his voice calm but firm. “You received the authorization from President O’Keefe placing this ship at my disposal for this mission, correct?”

In his peripheral vision, Franks could see the Tactical and Helm officers casting curious glances at the interplay, even as they tried to concentrate on their stations.

The Captain’s eyes flickered back and forth, but he nodded jerkily. “Yes, but…”

”Captain,” Franks emphasized the rank and leaned even closer, one hand loosening his restraints, the other falling on the man’s shoulder. “You said it yourself… we don’t have a second option and we won’t get a second chance. Right?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Perez admitted quietly, nodding but beginning to shake slightly, sweat now pouring down his face. “But there’s something wrong, I can feel…”

“Captain,” Franks hissed so quietly that no one else could hear it, directly into the man’s ear, “Republic Spacefleet Regulation 304.3 states that every Intelligence officer is required to carry a loaded sidearm at all times while on duty. I am currently acting in accordance with that regulation and if you try to countermand the orders to intercept these two ships, I will draw my sidearm and put a bullet through your head.”

Perez’ eyes went wide and he started to open his mouth, but Franks shook his head and raised a finger to his own lips in a shushing motion. “Captain Perez, I know you’re feeling panicked, like you have to stop this from happening, but I promise you, that will go away if you just let it happen, let your orders get carried out. Just keep your mouth shut for the next thirty seconds, and everything will be fine.”

Oh Jesus Christ, Franks thought, half-praying, don’t make me kill this guy…

“Ten seconds!” Helm exclaimed, and Franks head snapped around, his teeth baring as he saw the first of the ramships impossibly huge in the viewscreen.

He instinctively pulled himself back into his seat and began to tighten his restraint harness…

“Five seconds!” Bevins called. “Four…”

Franks’ eyes were glued to the screen, but he saw out of the corner of his eye Captain Perez clawing at his own safety restraints. “Captain!” he exclaimed. “No!”

“…two, one, impact!”

Franks had gone bungee jumping once, during a summer leave from the Academy, off a bridge in Oregon. It had scared the shit out of him and he’d sworn never to do it again, but now he felt as if he were falling once more, not into a river gorge but instead into the holes between bits of space-time; falling forever until the bungee cord of reality snapped him back, slamming him into his seat with terrifying authority.

His vision swam in a sea of smoke and flickering lights, and his ears were filled with the distorted tintabulation of multiple alarms sounding, while his stomach did flip-flops from the sudden return of zero gravity. He beat a fist against the arm of his acceleration couch and bullied his brain into action, forcing his eyes to focus.

The viewscreen was flickering through a haze of smoke that was drifting across the bridge, rising from shorting relays at the communications station, and everywhere he looked the bridge crewmembers were floating against their restraints… except for Captain Perez. He’d managed to get his restraints undone just before the impact, and Franks guessed that the whiplash effect had slammed him into the hull. He was floating over the Helm station, his neck cocked at an unnatural angle and globules of blood beading up from his nose and mouth. His eyes were open and he stared lifelessly at Franks, sending an electric chill up the young man’s spine.

“Aw, son of a bitch…” Franks moaned. That means I’m gonna have to do this… “Tactical!” he yelled hoarsely.

He saw Wolford shaking his head, trying to get it clear and he knew that the man would take too long. He pulled the emergency release on his restraints and pushed off, lunging for the Tactical station. The control display flickered fitfully twice more before it settled into coherence, to Franks’ great relief-the relay switches they’d put in place had kept the feedback caused by the drive field overload from shutting the ship down. He dragged every single one of the Shipbuster missile icons into the launch folder, then stabbed at the icon.

The ship shuddered as the missiles separated one by one and were accelerated outward by the electromagnetic launch racks before their fusion drives engaged and sent them rocketing away. There were six in all, but he saw with some annoyance that only four had launched: one of the launch racks was down, damaged by the feedback the drive field intersection had caused. Two of the missiles curled away, heading for the drifting shape of the ramship they’d intercepted, while the other two killed their drives and waited patiently, just as they’d programmed them.

“Helm!” He called, and Bevins looked at him, eyes clearing even as the smoke on the bridge began to clear, sucked away by the now-working ventilation system. “Reactivate the drive field now! Get us on course to intercept the second ship!”

“Jesus Christ!” Bevins bellowed, jerking against his safety harness reflexively as he stared with horror at Captain Perez’ body floating above them. “What the hell happened?”

“He’s dead!” Franks yelled, grabbing the man by the shoulder and yanking himself over to get in front and look him in the eye. Bevins’ doughy face was pale and he was close to hyperventilating. “Now get the fucking drive field activated or that ship is going to blow past us and slam into Capital City and kill everyone in it! Do you hear me?”

Swallowing hard, Bevins nodded and went to work at his sputtering control board. As he did, the others on the bridge began to come out of the shock of the field collision and he could hear a chorus of curses and exclamations as they saw Perez’ body. Muttering a curse himself, Franks grabbed Perez by the ankle and, anchoring himself on the Helm station, he pulled the man’s body back towards the auxiliary acceleration couch and strapped it down.

“Captain Perez!” Franks heard the voice coming over the intercom in the Captain’s station and thought he recognized the Chief Engineer.

“Goddammit,” he hissed, pulling himself into the Captain’s chair and strapped down. I am so going to get court-martialed.

He hunted for the intercom control as Wolford and the Communications Officer stared at him in disbelief. He ignored them as he found the right control. “This is Lt. Franks… Captain Perez is unavailable, give me your status report.”

“Uh, well, Lieutenant, we’ve got some major damage to the main power relays, and we’ve had to switch to auxiliaries. The changes we made managed to keep the reactor from dumping, though, and antimatter containment is still stable.”

“We need the drive online right now, Commander,” Franks told him. “We still have to take out the second Protectorate ship and we only have,” he checked the countdown on the display at his left arm, “eight minutes to get into position.”

“The drives are good to go for now, Lieutenant,” the engineer informed him. “But I have to tell you, the auxiliary power relays will overload when we intercept that ship, and the reactor will flush, We’re going to be without power or drives for a while, if this works.”