Honor Bound

“Commander,” Franks instructed him, “contact the XO in the auxiliary control room and give him a quick update. Tell him that Captain Perez is incapacitated and he needs to get to the bridge and take over after we intercept the second ship. Not before, though… it won’t be safe to move until then.” Franks disconnected, not waiting for a reply. “Lt. Wolford, what’s the status on the first ship?”

“Still not moving,” the Tactical Officer reported. “The Shipbusters are a minute out. No countermissile fire that I can detect.”

“Drive field is up,” Bevins announced. “Prepare for two gravities acceleration.”

Franks felt the pressure pushing him back into the Captain’s seat and tried not to notice the pitter-patter sound of Perez’s blood raining down on the deck, some of it hitting right at his feet. He concentrated on watching the icon that represented the Patton on the tactical display jump forward, on a course to intercept the second ship.

“We’re in the pipe,” Bevins said after a moment. “Three minutes at current velocity. I’m taking it back to one g acceleration.”

Franks turned to the Communications station, trying to remember the man’s name and failing. “Commo,” he said instead, “tell all hands to secure for impact.”

The Communications officer glanced briefly at him, then at Captain Perez’ corpse, before he nodded and turned back to his station to issue the warning. Franks was trying his best to not look at the man… the body was slumped back in the seat, hanging limply against the straps and the head seemed to keep turning towards him… He’d never seen anyone killed before and somehow hadn’t imagined it being like this.

He shook his head and made himself stare at the oncoming Protectorate ship. It was looming before them on the viewscreen, wedge-shaped and featureless, lacking any weapons ports.

“We have detonation on the first ship!” Wolford reported excitedly. “Both missiles hit it, it’s gone!”

“It never tried to use its conventional drives?” Franks asked, grateful for the distraction.

“No, just drifted,” Wolford confirmed.

“Then they’re probably uncrewed,” Franks deduced. “And apparently their AI isn’t that bright… or else it got fried by the field collision. So if we can pull this off, our Shipbusters can take care of this guy whether we’re around to see it or not.”

“Well,” Bevins snorted, not looking back at him, “aren’t you Lieutenant Sunshine?”

“Sorry, sir,” Franks said with a nervous laugh. “My job is to save the Earth… it’s up to you guys to save the ship.”

“Thirty seconds to impact,” Bevins said in a clinically neutral voice, as if he didn’t trust himself to say anything else.

As the image of the second ramship grew in the viewscreen’s display, Franks sat back in the Captain’s seat and closed his eyes for a moment, wondering briefly if he had any regrets.

Never got to any of the star colonies, he acknowledged, ticking that off on an imaginary counter.

“Twenty seconds.”

Never asked out Lara from Communications. He saw an image in his memory of the perky, dark-haired Lieutenant smiling her pixie smile and he grinned.

“Fifteen seconds.”

I wish I’d been there for Brian’s wedding.

“Ten,” Bevins intoned, “nine, eight…”

Not too bad, Franks shrugged inwardly. Of course, my biggest regret is that I won’t live long enough to have more regrets…

He opened his eyes and felt a spike of fear as he saw the ramship huge on the screen, barreling toward them so terrifyingly close… things in space weren’t supposed to be that close to each other, he thought absurdly. It wasn’t natural…

“…impact!” Bevins cried, voice quavering with a note of fear that he couldn’t quite disguise.

The universe twisted around Franks, and he felt as if he, too, was being spindled and stretched for an interminable eternity… and then he snapped back with an incredible violence and everything went dark.

Chapter Thirty-Four

“Charlie Gulf Niner-niner,” Shannon Stark spoke calmly into her helmet pickup, “this is Charlie Gulf One, do you read? Over.”

There was a pause and then a crackle of static. “Roger, Charlie Gulf One, this is Charlie Gulf Niner-niner, what’s your situation? Over?”

“We have the target secured, Niner-niner, and are ready for pickup, over.”

“Good to hear, ma’am,” the voice of CG99 sounded relieved. “Any casualties?”

Shannon opened her mouth, then closed it again, swallowing the reply she wanted to give but couldn’t. “Negative. We have four to pick up at the hangar elevator exit… just follow my homing signal. The load will consist of myself and three Priority Targets. The rest of the unit will be staying to secure the complex. Over.”

“Roger that, Charlie Gulf One, I’m on my way, over.”

“We’ll be waiting for you. Charlie Gulf One, out.”

Shannon looked over to Sergei Pavlovitch Antonov, who stood watching her with arms crossed, eyes squinting against the morning sun, the warm New Mexico wind tugging at his grey-streaked beard, looking like Moses in the desert.

“Very nicely done, Colonel Stark,” he said genially. “I wonder… since you are now a Colonel, is my old friend Jason McKay a General?”

“Yes, he is,” Stark replied, her voice quiet and neutral, without a hint of feeling. “The President promoted us both yesterday.”

Antonov laughed, looking over to Fourcade. The slick-backed lobbyist was grinning himself, as he held a gun on Brendan Riordan, conscious once more but securely handcuffed, with a burlap bag pulled over his head. “I wonder, Kevin, if General McKay will find out about his promotion.”

“I suppose that depends on your feelings about the existence of an afterlife, General Antonov,” Fourcade cracked, chuckling.

“You know,” Antonov mused, running fingers through his beard thoughtfully, “it is very pretty out here.” He nodded towards the red-hued rolling hills in the distance. “I will have to have a ranch built for me in this place, once I rule this world.”

“There’s the aircraft, sir,” Fourcade told him, looking northward.

Antonov followed his gaze and saw the black shape in the impossible blue of the clear desert sky, curving around a stand of low hills as it approached. “Time for a bit of maskirova,” Antonov said, placing his hands before him. Shannon wrapped his wrists with the plastic band of a flex-cuff, then did the same for Fourcade, taking his gun and shoving it in her belt.

“Now, remember, Colonel Stark.” Antonov told her quietly as the assault lander came closer, its deadly, angular lines coming into clear focus, “once we are on the lander, you will have the pilot fly directly to the coordinates I gave you. No unnecessary talking, no radio communications whatsoever. Do you understand?”

“Of course, General,” she said with the same, calm tone, eyes fixed on the lander. The attack craft descended on a column of superheated air funneled through its reactor and directed through rotating ducts on its belly, the roar of the engines making the ground beneath their feet tremble from nearly a hundred meters away.

A sandstorm of red dust lashed at them as the lander came to a rest, and Fourcade and Antonov turned away to shield their eyes from the blast, while Shannon watched impassively from inside her helmet and Riordan stood in numbed silence under his hood. The lander touched down on heavy-duty retractable skids, the roar of the jets dying down to a high-pitched whine as the turbos spun down, and a boarding ramp lowered from its curved belly.

A lone figure stepped down the ramp, dressed in standard, sanitized Intelligence combat gear with no