Command Decisions (Book 3 of The Empire of Bones Saga) (34 page)

She looked up at Talbot. “This armor is wrecked. Help me out of it so I can go see if Breckenridge is among the prisoners.”

“I need to get a bandage on this wound.” He motioned for some of the marines to come over. “Let’s get her out of this armor.”

They stripped her down to her skinsuit and Talbot tore it away from her thigh wound. He slapped a bandage on it and wrapped it tight. “I’d say you need to stay still, but I know that’s not happening. Come on, boys. Let’s carry her to the main cargo bay.”

As humiliating as that was, Kelsey chose not to argue with them. She did insist they strap on her neural disruptor. She wasn’t going anywhere unarmed. With a man on either side, they had no problem carrying her. It wasn’t as though she weighed very much.

The prisoners had been in the main cargo hold, which was empty of any actual cargo. It would’ve made this mission much simpler if they’d breached there.

Several weapons platforms had been guarding the prisoners. The marines had taken them out when they burst in. Unfortunately, some of the prisoners had died in the operation or from injuries sustained in their capture.

A casual glance showed that those present seemed to be officers of one kind or another. The marines had one group under close guard. At the center of them stood Captain Breckenridge.

“Put me down,” she told the marines carrying her. They didn’t argue. She hobbled over to the group.

Breckenridge bristled at her approach. “What is the meaning of this? I gave these marines direct orders and they refuse to obey me.”

“It’s called being under arrest. Wallace Breckenridge, I hereby place you under arrest for treason against the Empire. I’m revoking your command authority. Marines, secure the prisoner.”

The officers around him closed ranks, so she glared at them. “He violated his oaths. Do not make the same mistake. Stand down.”

One at a time, they reluctantly pulled away from their former commanding officer. He glared at Kelsey. “You’re mad! I am a senior Fleet captain! I’ll be a commodore next year! You have no authority over me.”

She drew her neural disruptor and shot him. He collapsed in a heap. “Secure the prisoner and add resisting arrest to the eventual list of charges.”

That had been far more satisfying that she’d imagined. She looked around for Commander Meyer. He wasn’t there.

When the crowd parted and Doctor Guzman forced his way through, she asked him. “Where is Commander Meyer?”

“They took him away with the rest. I don’t know where. Let me look at that wound.”

She shook her head. “I’ll live. Look at the other injured first. We have many wounded marines, some of them serious. Talbot, get the marines back here as soon as possible. The prisoners, too.”

Guzman scowled at her. “Where did you get your medical degree, Doctor?” He held his hand to his ear. “What? No medical degree, you say? Well, then, I guess I’ll take a look for myself.”

She gave in to the inevitable and lay down. The station was reasonably secure. He’d leave her be when the seriously injured began arriving.

They’d completed their part of the operation. Now she had to hope that Jared managed the impossible and secured the system.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Word came in from
New York
that the station was secure just as
Invincible
reached the flip point. Jared listened to the battle tally grimly in the relatively cramped operations center. Thank God Kelsey had made it, but they’d lost so many irreplaceable people. The number of dead sat at two hundred and thirteen, including all the marine officers. Including Timothy Reese.

The young lieutenant had been with Jared since he’d accepted command of
Athena
. His death was a tragedy in every way.

Talbot had assumed command of the marine forces and Kelsey was injured, but alive. Now it was his turn to pull off a win for the team.

Baxter had worked miracles in the last few hours. The battle screen was back up to full strength and they’d restored six missile tubes to action giving them ten. News from
Courageous
was a little less upbeat. Battle screen at seventy percent and only two additional tubes restored to service for a total of four.

With exceptional luck, they might be able to take out all the enemy ships before the enemy destroyed them. He couldn’t count on that, though. Time to look into plan B.

Since
Scott Pond
couldn’t flip and the enemy had ignored the crippled battlecruiser, Jared had sent it back to the station by a roundabout course. With operational grav drives and a functioning computer, the vessel might prove useful. He was glad it had survived.

Jared opened a channel to the main cargo bay. One of the scientists brought Doctor Cartwright to the communications unit. “Doctor, I need good news.”

“We believe we have one unit operational. Carl has hacked the controls and we should be able to activate it when the time comes.”

“The time is here. How long will it take you to deploy that thing?”

“Ten minutes. We need to evacuate the bay and get some men in place to eject it once we bleed off the atmosphere. After we flip, of course.”

Jared nodded. “Get ready. We get exactly one chance at this.” He cut the channel and opened a line to
Courageous
. Graves appeared on his console. “Charlie.”

“Captain. We’re not in as good a shape as I wished we were.”

“We’re not, either. I think we’re going to have to sucker them. Wait until they fire and flip just before the missiles arrive. We drop the flip disruptor on the other side and back off. If it works, great. If not, we shoot them up when they arrive.”

“And if they don’t all take the bait?”

“Then we’re screwed.”

Graves shook his head. “Admiral Yeats is going to ream us. If we live.”

“Something to look forward to. Hold fire and flip on my order.”

“Aye, sir.
Courageous
out.”

Jared watched the enemy fleet close with them on his implant feed. They had a tight formation and looked determined. They wanted to end this fight.

Well, so did he.

The enemy waited until they were well inside effective range to open fire. Twenty-eight missiles shot toward the two Imperial warships at maximum speed. Sixty seconds to impact.

Jared waited until the last fifteen to order the flip. The enemy launched a second salvo just as he lost sight of them.

“Flip complete,” Zia said. “Main cargo hatch opening.”

Jared waited impatiently for the device to drift free before he moved
Invincible
away from the flip point.
Courageous
had already taken up a position outside the flip point.

Passive scans of the system were coming in. No ships detected.

The hatch to operations slid aside and Doctor Cartwright came in with Carl Owlet at his side. He strode up to Jared and halted. “Everything is ready. I suggest you activate it as soon as practical.”

“Send the signal, Zia. Narrow beam.”

“Aye, sir.”

For a moment, nothing happened. Then he picked the device up on the scanners. It was as obvious as a ship flying fast on grav drives. He hoped the system really was empty. They couldn’t miss this.

“At the speed the destroyers were running, how long before they flip, Zia?”

“Five minutes, give or take.”

Jared turned his attention to the elderly scientist. “How detectable will this be on the other side?”

“Are we seeing anything from the flip point?”

Invincible
’s scanners didn’t show anything overt that he could see. The machine was showing up, but the gravitic field seemed normal. No, no it wasn’t. There was some kind of low-level fluctuation. He’d never seen anything like it, but it was subtle.

“Look at this.” He brought the reading up on his console.

The scientist looked closely at it and nodded. “Yes. Just about what we expected. Those fluctuations are almost certainly due to resonance inside the wormhole.”

“And it will stop any ship from successfully flipping?”

“We believe so.”

“Here’s to hoping, Doctor.”

They waited for the zero on the timer. A few seconds before it hit, Zia called out. “Contacts. Many small contacts. I think it may be debris.”

No ship flipped into the area, but quite a bit of junk did. It appeared scattered widely across the flip point. Something had broken up. He hoped seven destroyers had made a failed attempt to transit and been destroyed.

He launched a dozen probes to search the system, just to be sure. Either they’d still be here to get the data, or he’d leave a probe to collect it and flip back to Harrison’s World after they left.

Jared waited twenty minutes and gave Zia the order to shut down the flip resonator. It vanished from the scanners a few moments later. “The device is shut down, Captain. Shall I launch a probe to test the flip point?”

He studied the scanner readings. The fluctuations were still there, though they seemed to be growing weaker. “Give it a few minutes, Zia. Five.”

“Aye, sir.”

In the end, it was more than an hour before a probe returned intact. It reported no enemy ships on the other side of the flip point.

Jared gave it another half hour though Doctor Cartwright insisted it should be safe.
Courageous
led the way and he sighed in relief when a probe came through announcing their safe arrival.

They’d already picked up the flip resonator, so he gave the order to flip the ship. They appeared in the Harrison’s World system with a normal amount of nausea. A regular transition.

“Drop the flip resonator in the center of the flip point. After we get our probes back with the data from the other system, we’ll turn it on. If anyone else comes visiting, I want them to find the ‘not welcome’ sign.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Doctor Cartwright, how long can it stay activated?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

With his lack of engineering skills, he seriously doubted that. “Get with Commander Baxter and try to make some kind of assessment. And let me know how long it will take to get the other two back online. With two flip points in this system, I’m betting the plan was to have one in reserve to take them out of service for maintenance.”

“Of course. Right away.”

They set course for Boxer Station and he called ahead for their status. Captain Kaiser of
New York
appeared on his console. Kelsey stood beside her.

The dark haired officer nodded to him. “Welcome back, Captain. The seven destroyers flipped after you, so I think we have almost complete control of the system. We’ve evacuated Boxer Station.
New York
and
Ginnie Dare
are packed to the bulkheads with our rescued people and prisoners from the station.”

Kelsey spoke next. She looked exhausted, but otherwise in good condition. “It looks like the officers were kept on the station. The AI shipped the enlisted personnel to Harrison’s World. We still have some marines sweeping the station to be certain that we got everyone. Breckenridge is in custody and Commander Meyer was shipped to Harrison’s World.”

“Excellent work, Kelsey. I’m so sorry to hear about Reese. We’re going to miss him. Do we have any idea what the situation is like on the planet?”

Kelsey shook her head. “We moved a probe in close to the planet. The stations fired on it once it got inside their orbit. On a hunch, we sent a second one in, but kept it outside their orbit. None of the stations fired on it. Without the system AI around to alter their programming, we might be able to do something to clear the way for us to send small craft down.”

“Send one of the probes right up on top of one. See if it objects to being boarded from above.”

Captain Kaiser nodded. “Will do. I’ll send you a complete update. Shall we head toward Harrison’s World?”

He nodded. “Good idea. We’ll rendezvous an hour out. If the probe can determine anything about the internal layout on those things, we’ll make a plan to do something about them.”

“I have some ideas on that,” Kelsey said. “Let me think about it some more. I’m taking a pinnace over as soon as we rendezvous. We need to talk.”

“That never ends well.”

She gave him a tired smile. “I’m sure. Oh, one last thing.
Spear
isn’t repairable. Her engineering section is a wreck. Not even Baxter can put it back together. You’ll have to absorb her crew onto
Invincible
.”

“We have plenty of room and more work than we can handle. Once we’re in position, we can take everyone we need to. See you when you get here.
Invincible
out.”

Jared was too busy coordinating repairs to notice Kelsey docking a few hours later. He only realized she’d arrived when she walked through the hatch to operations.

He rose to his feet and she headed right for him. He started a little when she grabbed him in a hug, but held her tight a moment later. It had been one hell of a day.

His sister stepped back after a bit. “There’s something we need to discuss in private. Shall we go see if the admiral’s office survived?”

He nodded. “Zia, you have the ship. Call me if anything pops up.”

“Aye, sir.”

The two of them made their way to the admiral’s office. It was larger than his office on
Courageous
by several orders of magnitude. A suite of offices, really. The admiral’s staff surrounded him. It had no personal items, but someone had moved some nice furniture in.

Kelsey sat on the edge of the desk. “I’ve made a few decisions you won’t be happy with and I wanted to tell you in private so you don’t feel ambushed.”

“You mean as if you’d brought me to an empty compartment and just dropped it on me with no warning?”

“Should I send a note next time? It’s nothing awful, though you might not agree at first blush. Just a little bit of reorganization.”

His eyes narrowed. “Why does that set off alarm bells? What kind of reorganization?”

“Did you ever see yourself commanding a ship like this? Or a fleet in combat? Or did you imagine your career would end as soon as Ethan assumed the Throne?”