Admiral's Trial (A Spineward Sectors Novel:) Read online

  “Why not?” the Tracto-an asked, with equal parts demand and curiosity in his voice.

  “What if we killed someone critical? Personally, I like the ability to keep breathing,” Tremblay admonished.

  The Lancer looked skeptical and locked eyes with Tremblay, causing Lisa Steiner to cough scornfully.

  “This ship’s got a full crew now, or as close to it as makes no difference. After we rendezvoused with that pair of merchant conversions carrying the new crewmembers who weren’t needed while the Admiral…” she broke off, unable to finish. Before the mutiny, there had been something like three thousand original crew mixed with the new parliamentarian loyalists. Now, there were only about a thousand prisoners. Some had fled the ship in escape pods, and even more had died, turning the lower decks red with their passing. The Little Admiral had obviously neither needed, nor wanted, more Parliamentarian types than he already had at the time.

  “Right,” chimed in Mike, his eyes blinking rapidly, “there’s still no reason to run around killing people, but with a full crew you couldn’t really wreck the ship by killing a few people. You’d have to do something like, say…” he paused in obvious thought before his face cleared, “kill all of the Navigators. Or at least, you’d have to do something like that, before the ship would have a problem.”

  Tremblay gritted his teeth in consternation; these well-meaning—but clueless—royal sympathizers were just making things worse, with their almost criminal amount of verbal bumbling.

  “Where are these Navigators?” the Tracto-an asked quietly.

  “Right, we can just start killing people,” the little Com-Tech mocked jumping to her feet. Then the words of the man over twice her size sank in and she blinked, “Hey!” she whirled on the genetic giant, “didn’t they teach you anything in lancer school? We need a plan first!” She stomped her feet and glared at him.

  “They taught me much in Lancer ‘training’,” he emphasized the last word. “But I am a gunner now,” he said proudly, and then continued as if quoting some great scholar, “and we say ‘Blast the enemy Torpedo’s; give it to them with both broadsides!’”

  “Yeah, and look how well that turned out for your Department,” Tremblay muttered under his breath, causing the Lancer to turn slowly and face him.

  “Hey, look at me when I’m talking to you, not him,” Steiner said, reaching up and punching the Tracto Native in the arm.

  The Lancer, or Gunner, or whatever he claimed to be today, gave Tremblay a flat look before turning to tower over the little crewwoman.

  “Yes,” the Tracto-an said evenly.

  “What’s your name,” she demanded.

  “Heirophant Bogart,” he said.

  She opened her mouth to reply, but Tremblay was done humoring this little rigmarole. “Enough playing tea party,” he sneered, “it’s time to get down to brass tacks-”

  Faster than a space mirage the former lancer reached out and grabbed Tremblay by the neck.

  The former First Officer gurgled as he was lifted in the air, a hand as strong as an iron vice closed around his neck.

  The eyes of the two nascent little would-be royalists bulged and the System Analyst stumbled backwards against his jury-rigged work station.

  “Quiet while the Lady is speaking,” the Tracto-an glared at Tremblay before turning a slightly less murderous look back on the little technician.

  The little tech gulped, and Tremblay—finding he could no longer breathe—flailed is arms and legs, to no effect.

  Steiner gulped and then lifted her little chin. “The important thing isn’t killing as many of these mutineers as possible,” she said, starting out timidly, but her voice gained strength as she went.

  “If killing our enemy isn’t important, then what is,” demanded the Lancer. If Tremblay had not been strangling in the grip of this overgrown fruit picker, he would have rolled his eyes. As it was, he was starting to grow desperate from oxygen deprivation.

  “We couldn’t kill enough people all by ourselves to take back the ship! We have to be smart,” the little tech insisted, putting her hands on her hips.

  “The Admiral was smart, and now he’s in prison,” retorted the Lancer, “he was smarter than all of us put together.”

  “Captain Heppner and the rest of the mutineers weren’t just smart,” she declared imperiously, “they had an edge, and they used it to blindside the Admiral!”

  “Trickery and deception,” he growled, sounding disgusted.

  “Heirophant,” she said, stepping forward and hesitating before abruptly touching him on the arm. “Look, it’s no shame to use the weapons of the mutineers against them.”

  “Honor,” he rumbled, giving Tremblay a good shake as he did so.

  “Better a sneak attack, than trying to run around the ship playing assassin,” she said scornfully.

  Tremblay’s face, by this time, was turning purple and everything had gone hazy. He had even stopped trying to break free, in the interests of conserving his dwindling oxygen.

  “What’s your plan,” Heirophant asked, with doubt in every movement of his body.

  “Parliament offered to make Jean Luc Montagne—our new Commodore—the King of Capria, if he reinstates their power, and gets rid of King James,” she said.

  Tremblay’s eyes snapped open and if he had had the strength, he would have glared at the little minx. As it was, all he could do was stiffen and then sag, his tongue protruding from his mouth.

  “Mike broke their secret communications days ago,” she continued, with an audible sniff in the direction of Tremblay, “but I told him to hold back, since you can’t trust an Intelligence Officer like Tremblay. So we should save it until we needed something to get him off our backs.”

  Heirophant looked at her impassively for a moment, and then the faintest edge of one corner of his mouth twitched. Without warning, he threw Tremblay against the wall.

  “Good,” she said with a quick nod, “I don’t know how far in on the plot to take down the Admiral Tremblay was, but we still need him,” she turned and glared at the former First Officer, “for now.”

  The Tracto-an rumbled deep in his chest, but she placed a hand on his middle to stop him.

  “That’s why he’s going to do everything he can to convince us he’s on our side. We’ll suck him in so deep that if he dares go running to his superiors, they’ll have no choice but to execute him right alongside us,” she explained calmly, continuing to glare at Tremblay as she did so.

  “How is that possible, unless we make him kill somebody important, like one of his commanders or Captain Heppner,” asked the Tracto-an skeptically.

  “We don’t have to kill anybody to compromise him. If this is some kind of deep infiltration effort,” she said triumphantly and then gestured toward Mike, “he found it, so he should be the one to explain.”

  Mike gulped and then took half a step forward. He stopped, and then must have figured that was not quite far enough, because he took two steps forward and then half a step back, before stopping and coughing to clear his throat.

  “Just a second,” Mike said, rushing back to his thrown together work station and picking up a cup of water. After chugging the whole cup, which he held with trembling fingers, he hurried back.

  “Okay. Okay. Where do I start,” he said, almost as if speaking to himself. Tremblay was too busy taking in deep, cleansing breaths and scooting backward into the corner to say anything.

  “Tell them about the secret transmission,” Lisa said eagerly.

  Heirophant and Tremblay both picked their heads up, as if catching the scent of something attention-grabbing.

  “How many times do I have to tell you: it’s not a secret transmission, Lisa!” Mike scowled at her, before remembering to be afraid of the other two men in the room, and hurrying the conversation along.

  “Then what is it,” rasped Tremblay, unable to contain himself despite the direct peril he was in. Secret transmissions and intercepted communications were the lifeblo
od of an Intelligence Officer, and even six months standing beside the command chair of a battleship had not been enough to dull its allure.

  “Quiet,” Heirophant turned to stare at him like he was the dead rat in the corner. Tremblay wisely forwent the urge to rave at his code-breaking experts for holding out on him.

  “You see, when I copied the coded transmissions from Parliament in Exile, I also grabbed a whole bunch of unrelated files, because I was going to be off the main grid for awhile.” Mike said defensively.

  “No. No, it was good,” Lisa hastened to assure him and Tremblay shook his head fractionally, this was just typical programmer logic. Take everything you’ve always wanted to get your hands on, while you have the permission, and then ask forgiveness later on if the need arises.

  “I don’t understand how this helps us,” Heirophant said, and Tremblay smiled.

  The scab was just as clueless and technologically inept as he had always said. Did they listen to him though? Of course not. Well, what he saw as ‘magic’ had the brute befuddled and Tremblay got a front-row seat for his humiliation. It was a small satisfaction to take after the way this blasted native scab had manhandled and almost killed him. Twice!

  “On its own, it doesn’t,” agreed the System Analyst, “but! What I found buried deep in a trash file within the buffer does,” he said triumphantly, as if he had just bestowed a great revelation upon the rest of them.

  “What do you see in this, fool,” Tremblay demanded, genuinely curious what this other man had that could possibly attract the attention of a female—even one with obvious mental deficiencies, like Lisa Steiner.

  “Shut up, you…you,” she stomped her feet, “you big back-stabber, you!” Steiner glared at him.

  “No, I’m genuinely curious,” he insisted, taking a perverse pleasure in seeing her upset. Then Heirophant’s shin impacted the side of his face, and he went down for the count.

  When Tremblay phased back into the real world, Mike was continuing with his explanation. Shaking his head woozily, the former First Officer slowly reached down to the holdout he kept strapped to his ankle. No one’s attention was on him; this might be his only chance to keep on breathing!

  “For the past three months, twice a day as regular as clockwork—except for the first couple days right at the beginning, which were successful—there’s been a bad connection attempt from the Invictus Rising!” Mike said like an Evangelical preacher revealing Saint Murphy’s original sayings to the upturned faces of his space-based congregation.

  “What is this Invictus Rising, and why does it excite the two of you so much,” the former Lancer demanded, sounding genuinely curious. Tremblay was no longer curious; he was stunned. That little blighter Jason Montagne had been holding out on him! He had pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes—including his nominal First Officer’s—for months. His hand dropped off his shoulder holster, as the implications began to sink in.

  “The Invictus was the Medium Cruiser you boys took off the Imperials,” said Mike.

  “That ship was destroyed,” Heirophant said flatly.

  Lisa stomped her feet, and the native’s head swung around to track on her.

  “That’s just what the Little Admiral wanted us—and everyone out there who’s trying to work against us, like Heppner and his mutineers—to think!” Steiner was practically quivering with suppressed excitement as she continued, “That the Imperial Strike Cruiser and the Constructor were both destroyed in a bad jump gone wrong!”

  Heirophant’s nostrils flared, and for the first time, he looked like he was starting to get caught up in the emotion of the moment. His stoic native reserve—present only when not in the act of physical combat—was cracking.

  Jason, you really are a Montagne aren’t you? I never even suspected a thing, Tremblay thought, his mental voice tinged with respect and admiration for an almost perfectly executed gambit. Almost! It was nearly irrelevant, what these morons tried to make him do to prove his loyalty. If he could hand an Imperial Strike Cruiser, and an Imperial Grade Constructor that did not actually belong to the Imperials, over to Parliament on a silver platter…they had proven themselves willing to overlook almost anything. Why, just look, they were even willing to work with a Montagne of all things; how much easier would it be to forgive a loyal, junior officer like himself?

  Then all of his rising hopes took a crushing blow.

  “What’s even better,” said the System Analyst, “is that ever since its last good connection attempt out on the Rim, the Invictus signal has been too distorted to be traced. She’s letting us know she’s out there, but in such a way that even if someone knew to look, they still couldn’t track her down!” declared Mike appreciatively.

  "The Admiral could have even been in contact with them this entire time," Lisa nodded her head eagerly, "I came to him with a report of suspicious transmissions, not the other way around. He could have known all about everything I told him, or merely been surprised by Parliament using the hidden network!"

  Heirophant jerked, as if something had finally penetrated through his thick skull.

  “The Wizard Spalding could even still be alive!” he said, with a rising excitement of his own.

  “He did walk into a Fusion Reactor in the process of melting down,” she said doubtfully.

  Tremblay stiffened. If there was even a chance that Spalding was still kicking around, he knew the old Engineer would never rest until he was back on this ship. What was worse—assuming he was alive—was that he had been given months to put a brand new Imperial Cruiser through its paces, as well as repair the battle damage it had suffered in the fight at Easy Haven. Tremblay’s blood ran cold, as he realized that Jason Montagne was more cunning than he had ever considered possible.

  Then he took himself sternly to task. No one else would have needed to die, if the old crew had just done the logical thing and surrendered under Tremblay’s plan. Whereas under Jason’s plan, they had not one prayer of taking the Omicron, and they all would have died as a result.

  “We need to let them know what has happened, in case no one could send a message in time,” Heirophant said anxiously.

  Lisa and Mike looked uncertain. “We might be caught,” said Mike hesitantly, and Tremblay silently urged them to continue down this line of thought.

  “Irrelevant,” retorted Heirophant, crushing his hopes, “the Warlord personally told me that he was in the middle of speaking with his Uncle when he was shot. He didn’t know how the ship had been taken, much less have time to send a message.”

  “It’s all up to us then,” Mike said weakly, sounding completely overwhelmed, “how are we going to gain access to the Long Range Array, and then cover our tracks? It seems impossible, now that the new crew is up to full strength, and in total command of the ship.”

  “It’s difficult, but not impossible,” the little Com-Tech said, sounding uncertain. Mike, the infuriating System Analyst, put a hand on her shoulder, which she leaned into for a moment before shrugging it off.

  Lisa’s face hardened and the smile she produced sent a chill through the former First Officer.

  “Difficult, but not impossible,” she repeated as she turned towards Officer Tremblay, “and I know just the person we need to help us,” she said and all three of them turned their attention toward the fallen Officer.

  That was when Tremblay cursed himself for not cutting them down with his holdout blaster pistol while he had the chance—or at least, for not cutting down the Lancer. Instead, he had let himself be caught in the Intelligence Operative’s classic trap. He had been so focused on the appearance of new and critical information, that he had lost sight of the big picture; namely, keeping one Raphael Tremblay alive and breathing and—of increasing import—free of outside influences.

  Now, and for as long as he was under the watchful eye of the Tracto native, he was going to have to go along with whatever half-baked plan they came up with on the fly. This was not going at all how he’d planned when he woke up in t
he morning.

  “But Lisa, my darling, how can we break into a secure system with at least a dozen live analysts watching its every data twitch, ready to track us down as soon as the Long Range Array is activated…assuming we even get that far,” Mike moaned, sounding more depressed, the further he talked about the matter.

  “Honey, we don’t have to break into their system,” she assured Mike, patting him on the shoulder, “there’s too much risk that we’ll be caught. That’s why we’ll just build our own program, and go out onto the hull to insert it directly. If we can hijack the Long Range Array directly, we’ll only need to keep hold of it until the message is sent, and then we can disappear back inside the ship.”

  “What about the cameras in every airlock on the ship,” Mike protested, but he sounded more than a little interested.

  “That’s what we have an Intelligence Officer for,” she said triumphantly, “he can override them, while we go out on the hull.”

  “If he betrays us, the message will still be sent,” Heirophant said grimly, and then he narrowed his eyes and turned them on Tremblay.

  “I have a better idea,” he said, “since I would be like a child trying to help you out on the hull: I will stay with the First Officer, to ensure our line of retreat.”

  That was when Tremblay knew he was sunk. The fools had come up with an almost idiot-proof plan. The only kind of plan a group of thickheaded royalists too dumb to realize their side had already lost, would be able to pull off.

  Worse, other than the risk of being caught…it was actually a good plan, the longer Tremblay had to think about it. Even worse, with his own neck on the line if this little cabal was rolled up, he was going to have to figure out a way to spoof the ship’s cameras long enough to get away clean.

  This was going to take some thought.

  “But what are we going to tell them? We have to keep it short if we’re going to make our getaway, but there’s no point in sending a message they won’t understand,” said Lisa.