Honor Bound

his army with an air of satisfaction long delayed. They were seated on dozens of benches, row upon row, in a square half a kilometer long by half a kilometer wide. Each of them was in simple, unmarked grey body armor and each was hooked up to feeding and waste removal tubes through hookups in the armor.

They sat motionless and silent, thousands of them, like a high-tech terra-cotta army in the harsh, sharp- edged shadows cast by the industrial lighting of the old warehouse. Here and there, human technicians walked among their ranks, tending to the feeding machines or emptying the waste disposal tanks; here and there one would pull off a helmet and make an adjustment to the hookups.

Antonov watched them for a moment more, then hit the control to darken the window that looked out from the office to the main floor of the warehouse. He looked over to Kevin Fourcade, who stood by the utilitarian metal desk, still watching over Brendan Riordan. The executive was no longer blindfolded, but his hands were still cuffed in front of him and his expression was sullen and fearful as he sat quietly in a chair much too small for his bulk. Every so often, he glanced almost unnoticeably at the handgun Fourcade kept trained on him.

“I have to thank you, Mr. Riordan,” Antonov said in a booming voice, smiling broadly. “None of this would have been possible without your limitless ambition and hunger for power. I can respect that.” He stepped over to the man, grabbing the square chin in a hand and turning Riordan’s face toward him. “The difference between us, tovarisch, is that I want power for the good of the oppressed people of this world, while you want it merely for your own glorification.” He let the man go, shrugging expressively. “Still, you may yet be of use to me… perhaps, if you prove yourself able, I can find a place for you in my new government.”

Fourcade cocked his head to the side as a call came in over his ‘link. He spoke softly to the caller for a moment, then turned to Antonov. “We can find a use for him right now, sir,” he said. “The vehicles are ready to ship out-all we need is his authorization.” Fourcade pulled a tablet from his jacket pocket and touched it to his ‘link, syncing their settings, then put it down on the desk next to Riordan.

“If you would be so kind, Brendan…” Antonov nodded towards the tablet.

“And you will be so kind, Brendan,” Fourcade said softly into the big man’s ear, “because I have worked for you for enough years to have many reasons to want to kill you even if he didn’t order me too.”

Riordan glared at him for a moment, but then nodded curtly. He placed a thumb on the tablet’s side and winced as it pricked him, drawing blood for DNA analysis. When it confirmed that his DNA sample had been confirmed, he leaned over its audio pickup and spoke slowly and clearly. “Riordan, Brendan Jacob. Authorization E- 98.”

“Authorization confirmed,” the tablet announced.

“And there we go,” Fourcade said with satisfaction, snatching the tablet back. “The vehicles will start staging here in a few hours. It shouldn’t take more than a day to get them loaded.”

“It will be more difficult without the Colonial Guard troops to support us,” Antonov mused, “but with McKay and Stark out of the way, and the military’s space assets distracted, it should be enough. By the time our forces break through their ships, we will have the orbital defenses under our control.”

“Even if you win,” Riordan said slowly, his indignation finally overcoming his fear, “you’ll have wrecked everything.” He shook his head in disgust, his matted, sweat-soaked hair flopping limply. “Why bother? You have resources, you have your own worlds, we couldn’t have reached you… why not just leave it alone?”

The good-natured smile never left Antonov’s face, but his gaze went cold as he took a step toward the corporate executive. Riordan flinched instinctively as the Russian’s hand raised, but Antonov merely patted his cheek as one might a toddler who’d said something amusingly naive.

“Because it is my world,” he told the man, his voice at once warmly condescending and yet as coldly lethal as a blade. “And I will rule it, finally, as is my destiny.” He laughed softly, an unholy sound that sent shivers up Riordan’s back. “I will rule it, Mr. Riordan, or I will watch it burn.”

Chapter Thirty-Six

Drew Franks emerged from the access tube into the engineering section of the RFS Bradley, pausing for a moment to let his head stop spinning before he moved into the chamber. The Brad had been in zero g for over two days now and it was starting to get to him. Staying still until he was sure he wasn’t about to throw up, Franks finally pushed off into the chaotic turmoil of activity that filled the chamber.

Spools of superconductive cable were stretched out across the chamber ready to install, while engineering crew ripped charred lengths of it from burned-out conduits leading to the main trunk line from the fusion reactor. Scorched carbon streaks lined the deck below where the conduits had exploded under stress, filling the chamber with deadly shrapnel that had sent a dozen men and women to the medical bay. On the central station display, he could shuttles hovering near the midsection of the ship, using loader arms to insert antimatter fuel pods into the heavily armored ports there, while other technicians in vacuum suits oversaw the seating of the pods into the evacuated portion of the engineering bay.

Radio traffic filled the air, a cacophonous racket of overlapping conversations as dozens of men and women worked at a dozen different major tasks. In the center of it all, maintaining a Buddha-like calm in the eye of that storm, was Lt. Commander Maria Infante, the ship’s Chief Engineering Officer. As he watched her, Franks was amazed at the way she seemed to be able to keep track of all those separate conversations and respond to each question while still monitoring the various displays at her station.

He was loath to disturb her when she was obviously insanely busy, but he had a job to do as well, and this wouldn’t wait. He pushed off from the wall and floated across the chamber, twisting in midair to avoid being sideswiped by a preoccupied technician, then stopping himself against the side of the engineering control center console.

“Commander Infante,” he interjected and she looked up at him, still droning orders to three different people.

“Yes, Lt. Franks?” she said, automatically muting the audio inputs to the microphones at her station.

“You’ve seen the effects of field intersect now,” he said, trying to be quick and brief. “I need to know if you can come up with any way we can do it repeatedly without almost destroying ourselves.”

“Why?” she cracked, “Are you planning on making a sport of it?”

“Ma’am,” he went on seriously, “I don’t think the Protectorate is going to quit at two of those things. Eventually, they’re going to throw everything they have at us, and we can’t be knocking a star cruiser out of commission every we have to take out one of those ramships. I need to know how to take them out.”

“Lieutenant,” she said soberly, shaking her head, “there is no way we can harden the power systems on this ship enough to survive multiple field intersects. We can jury-rig it to barely make it through one, but that’s it without access to a full dry-dock. The gravito-inertial feedback is just too intense. I’d need a whole secondary power trunk, and we just don’t have the equipment to build one… or the time, most likely.”

Franks scowled, wondering what the hell Colonel… oops, that’s General now… McKay would do. He was still wondering when Infante spoke again, her head cocked thoughtfully. “You know, though, Lieutenant, there is something else we might try.” She tapped her chin with a finger, forehead scrunched up. “I’ll need to have a little talk with Lt. Bevins…”

The words were barely out of her mouth when a klaxon began sounding over the ship’s speakers, accompanied by the announcement: “All hands, battle stations!”

Franks saw Infante’s eyebrow raise, her mouth quirking in what might have been annoyance.

“Better have that talk now, ma’am,” he suggested. “It looks like we’ve run out of time.”

* * *

“Are we certain they can’t see us, Commander Witten?” Captain Minishimi asked quietly, staring at the Tactical display, watching one icon after another appear out of the wormhole gateway only a few thousand kilometers away.

Witten glanced at her, feeling a rush of gratitude that she was on the bridge and in charge instead of him. She still looked a bit pale, but her voice was strong and she didn’t seem to be in pain. “Fairly certain, Captain,” he responded. “We’re running cool… minimum reactor output, minimum thermal signature. We should be