It was HMS Star Ranger I meant. I looked her and Blackstone up, and both were Star Knight Class, I had just looked them up before I wrote that section, and accidentally named the other ship by mistake. My bad
Worst Case Scenario
"My god." Rebecca stared in shock at the storehouse of weapons that had been stuffed into the prison's cargo holds. 12,000 missiles with destroyer weight warheads, the same number with cruiser weight ones, a thousand missile pods with the capital ship missiles, all with what were obviously two impeller drives. "Mesa is definitely gearing up for another push in this area. There's no way St Kitts brought them all."
"Our prisoners don't have a clue, not even Lieutenant Remington, the senior survivor of St Kitts. All she knew was that the ship was to wait for someone else, hand off the missiles and code, and their job was done." Chief Arthur Womack reported. "We've checked the missiles as best we can; there's a security code to arm the warheads, as you would expect. But according to Ensign Correia of the dispatch boat, it was passed verbally rather than added to the message queue aboard the Jesse Owens."
"A pity. I would have loved to see these fly in the hands of one of Mesa's enemies." She replied. "When Chief Lithgow gets done with 17521's message vault, I'll have him brought over here."
They walked from the cargo hold into the prison itself. The cell blocks were not that large; even in it's heyday there had been less than a thousand inmates. The cells were patrolled by grim faced Sidemorans, and the two man cells held only a single prisoner each. There were only 45 prisoners now; the fifteen from the two dispatch boats, and thirty Mesans, or rather Silesians taking their pay from Manpower. Again the slavers were using cut outs. If any had been captured, they could claim they didn't have a clue as to why they were here rather than home.
The last two cells held the two lieutenants; Carlos Remington and Svetlana Nathan of the Solarian Navy. "Lieutenant Nathan, I have heard of your problem with PFC Ryan." The woman sat silent. "Open the cell, Chief."
Womack nodded. "Open 41!" He shouted. The guard in charge of the cell block tapped the code, and the cell door opened.
"Lieutenant." Rebecca motioned. "If you would come with me, please?" The woman looked up sullenly, then stood, stepping out. They walked together, Womack a silent and lethal presence behind them. They didn't walk far; only far enough that their conversation would not be overheard. Rebecca stopped, hands behind her back, watching the woman silently.
"First, let me apologize for his physical attack on you. Before you think it now gives you the right to protest, if he had carried out his threat to send you on a Dutchman, I would have reprimanded him for doing it, but it might not have kept you alive. Sometimes men will do things they regret later. We are lucky here that it was not the case here.
"Second, I was not ignoring your demands. I was seeing to my ship's damages, as any Naval officer would. Legally you were in this system, possibly actively assisting a nation in violation of the Cherwell Convention As Chief Styles told you. Until your own actions in this are verified, you will be held. However if you will give your parole, and provide surety for your crew, you can have guest quarters instead of these cells."
"Will you promise to keep that barbarian away from us?" Nathan demanded.
"I will not let him near you or any of your crew."
She glared at the Manticoran captain, then nodded. "You have our parole."
"Excellent. Chief Womack, have Lieutenant Nathan transferred to Witch Maiden after she has spoken with her crew. Lieutenant, I would ask you to join my officers for dinner. I wish that you will assure that your crew is well treated during this. The shuttle carrying you there will stop at your vessel so you can have the effects of your crew brought here so they have what they might need. If there is anything you wish, please talk to one of my personnel, and if it can be delivered, it will be."
She walked on, swimming the tube to the cutter. Chief Styles nodded as she took the jump seat behind his command chair. "Take me to the Solarian boat, Chief." He nodded, and they cut loose from the prison. All those missiles suggested a major Mesan operation, but the only targets she could even imagine were the Maya Sector Capital on Smoking Frog, Torch, and perhaps Erewhon. That suggested not one operation, but two.
Revelations
Cao Mei worked, even though she wanted to leap across space to the ship. Francis wounded, Fengniao at his side. And she was here! Her fingers danced across the keyboard, then suddenly the mash of characters on the screen became clear text.
What few people realize is that when you delete a file, it isn't really gone. It is just marked by your computer as being a hidden file until some other file overwrites it. She looked at the index. Some of these were a year or more old, but what hadn't been overwritten was still there. She looked at the most recent. A message from... She turned, walking across the compartment to the communications panel. "Witch Maiden here."
"Get the Captain. I think we may have something here."
"She's enroute from the prison. I'll let her know."
"Skipper? Witch Maiden on the line." Rebecca snapped awake. Two whiskeys and little food had made her sleepy, and she snapped awake guiltily. "Put her through."
"Captain, Chief Dollaryde has broken the encryption on the Mesan boat's dispatches." Ensign Konagawa sounded better than Saya Gill had, but not by much.
"We'll stop there after the Solarian Boat."
"Yes, ma'am. I'll tell her. Witch Maiden out."
At first sight, Liam Lithgow looked to Rebecca as a malevolent leprechaun. Short, barely 1.5 meters tall, he had what would best be described as a monk's tonsure, red hair, and a wicked expression even when he was with friends. He was chortling as she came out of the entry tube, his fingers flashing across the keyboard. "Oh you poor benighted fools! If you want security, never put something you don't want to know in a computer where a master hacker can get to it!" He gave a few more licks at the keyboard, then leaned back, immensely satisfied with himself. "Gotcha!"
"Having fun, chief?"
"Oh loads and loads." He replied. His accent was pure Wishbone from her homeworld. "I found out what's happening, or at least what's happening on the Sollie front. He gestured like a stage magician, and she leaned over his shoulder.
SUPERDREADNOUGHT TASK FORCE 4175 ADMIRAL TREGASKIS COMMANDING WILL BE ENROUTE AFTER BEING JOINED BY THREE TARAWA CLASS ASSAULT TRANSPORTS. ESTIMATED ARRIVAL IN INFERNO the date given was eleven days away.
"Have you sent this on to the Witch?"
"Yes, ma'am." He replied. "This bucket of bolts doesn't have enough on the admiral or his task group to matter worth spit though." He shook his head. "Too many Sollie idjits with stars on their collars to keep track, really. The rest?" He flicked through a dozen pages faster than she could keep up. "Basic message traffic you'd expect, none of it worth a tinker's damn. The commander of this tub wasn't worth bringing in on any secrets. Her own logs have little or nothing beyond the fact that the Task Group is stationed in Nantucket. There are three of them aboard that keep personal logs, and there's nothing there worth mention except for some problems in the Pendergast Sector. Seems the people on the Verge aren't accepting the Mandarin's take on what's happening anywhere beyond the League itself. But that sector is to hell and gone to Galactic South, so no help there."
"So the crew is clean?"
"It would appear so."
She looked at him for a long moment. "How did someone this good with computers end up in JAG?"
He leaned back, and turned to face her. "If I wanted to 'blame' someone originally, I'd blame your father. When he took over, JAG was run by mainly bean counters and lawyers. Back when Captain Basfinch was crucified for the damage to his ship War Maiden, the powers that be, read the ones who got their slots from patronage, crucified him to rescue Elvis Santino from the beach. No one on the Court had served in combat, and they, with their infinite experience in it, determined that he risked his ship unnecessarily.
"Your father was furious because every one he had assigned to the investigation and the panel itself were rejected, and the ones sent were decided at the Admiralty, not even the senior admiralty rather than his office. So he decided to set up specialist teams who knew what goes where and why, and actually threatened to resign in protest, to be followed by public statements as to why; if it ever happened again.
"Every team has to have at least one officer who will eventually hold a command and one specialist in computers who can find any attempts to whitewash the incident. My last assignment was to the group that checked out Commodore Lanszecki. Talk about a snake pit!" He shook his head. "His request to resign was denied, and when he goes to the wall there'll be two Mps and three corporate reps who are going to get that chance as well." He grinned. "As for my career, every time they bring in a new officer to replace the one who sends teams, I get tagged first as an incompetent, but before long, I am suddenly 'vital to the department'. So while I have put in a request for transfer on the average of every T month, all I get in return is more stripes."
"So you were all sent because of that policy?"
"Yes. Sir Arthur called us in separately and pretty much threatened to destroy our careers if we didn't crucify you to exonerate Cathcart and O'Connor. Mr. De Frees said it best. 'We're hosed either way, but we're going to be honest if it kills us'."
De Frees had never mentioned that little fact. Her estimation of him as an honorable man leaped. "Have you met Ruth Winton? Or Anton Zilwicki?"
"No ma'am. We weren't in system long enough. Though I have met Queen Berry's father once."
"As Ruth Winton told me, Anton Zilwicki was beached because of the Manpower Scandal. When he met the Queen before they left on the mission that saw Torch established, the Queen applauded his decision to let his career go to hell to nail the upper class bastards that were working out of Chicago then. So if any of you need a patron after this mess is over, I will fight to save your careers."
"No thanks necessary. But if you can get me out of JAG..."
"I'll see what I can do, chief." She stood. "Well off to the Mesan boat. I'll have them come by and pick you up. Maybe you can crack the Mesan codes for arming those damn missiles. If you can, we can take them back to Torch and they can use them in their battlecruisers and SDs the next time something hits the fan."
He turned and gave her a look that made her think she had just given him an early Christmas present. "Mesan codes? Oh I do love a challenge!"
She was in a good mood enroute to the Mesan boat; by sending the dispatch boat to Smoking Frog with the information, they might be able to take away the lethal toys she had found. But the mood didn't last long.
Sit-Rep
What De Frees had not anticipated was the series of orders the captain rapped out as she came down the ramp of the cutter. Officer's call in thirty minutes, Division heads only, including a full damage assessment with options for what could repaired and how soon. Since except for the captain no one had even paused for lunch, she ordered the crew to have that meal, and he was to be in her cabin for a working lunch. But when he saw the message the Mesan boat had carried, he lost his appetite.
"It's... Monstrous!"
"I agree. I figured out the second target from the Operational name and the information given about it's defenses. But the other two..." She shrugged, leaning back and feeding Irene a sliver of cheese.
"We have to stop them!"
"This Tregaskis, he's one of the nastier Sollies. Hates us, and would be willing to do exactly what those orders tell him to. The fact that it violates the Eridani Edict is incidental. All he'll feel is the ship shuddering from the missiles he launches. He'll blow them to hell and pretend some pirate horde did it. As for stopping them, we can try. But all we can do is die gallantly. He has a full SD Task Force, that can be between 20 and thirty SDs with screen. We don't have enough missiles with us and the LACs combined to stop that weight of metal.
"Plus the fleet train, six to ten more ships, with three Tarawas. That gives him 30,000 Marines to dump on the two planets we haven't identified. After all 'Clean Sweep' won't have anyone left to guard." She finished bleakly.
"What are we going to do then, Captain?"
"We'll wait on that until after the meeting. See what we can do."
Ten minutes later, the Division head arrived. Oscelli brought out some nibbling food and beer, then retired to his pantry. De Frees took over as if he had done it all his life as Rebecca leaned back.
"Repair estimates, Lieutenant Murray?"
"Most of what's wrong with us can't be fixed out of onboard stores, captain." The woman look tired, not surprising. "The forward impeller room is back up, but we lost an alpha node and three beta nodes. One beta might be repairable, but we have other fish to fry. Without the alpha node, however, we're not able to form the forward sail which would make trying to get into hyper difficult, and very dangerous.
"But we lost the hyperdrive generator as well. We can't get into hyper at all." She paged down. "Four of the longitudinal beams were shattered. The least damaged of them can be braced, but the others are in shards along almost 25 meters of their length. If he hadn't been at all stop just trying to come to rest would have broken her back. We can get maybe 5 Gs acceleration out of her. Any more, and I can't guarantee she'll hold together."
"Mister Kyle?" As the senior officer with any connection to prifly, the young man nodded. "We lost almost half of the LAC magazine, and four of the slips are dead losses. Two more are 'iffy'. Since we can't bring the LACs back aboard, I have had my supply crews out in the remaining shuttles transferring stores to them; we didn't load the full perishable supplies before because 'obviously' they were going to be back aboard in a few hours. I have missile techs surveying the remaining missiles. We don't know for sure how many are usable, but some of the senior cargo personnel think they can physically deploy them as mines we can remote activate. Of maybe we can strip out the Mesan Pods and put ours in to be fired." He looked up. "Back in the 20th CE, according to some of our Sidemorans, there was a weapons system called Metalstorm that did just that, so we could pack them about five to a tube, and launch them all in one shot."
"Had you considered that with their limited range, we would have an enemy pounding us from 2 million kilometers further than they could reach even with Sollie technology?" Rebecca asked gently.
"No, Skipper. I hadn't." He admitted, deflating slightly.
"Don't take it so hard, Evan. We were all young once." There was some gentle laughter as he blushed.
De Frees looked at the pad. "Guns?"
"Except for Graser 13, we're all up, skipper. We still have a full load of pods. But if we can't maneuver, someone can take us with ballistic shots outside even our range. We could fire everything they have and all we could do is hope that we stopped them, and in her present condition, I don't know how many hits we can take."
"Comm?"
"My department is actually almost untouched, Skipper. We lost four, but they were stationed in areas that were pretty much destroyed. FTL comm is still operational, and we've taken control of the Sollie sensor web; they actually are like the old Argus arrays the old People's Republic planted, so we've primarily scattered what remains of our recon drones between them to make it thicker with collocated Hermes buoys to collect the take."
"Supply?" De Frees asked.
Kyle paged down. "We have enough stores for seven months. As an aside, having the number eight blast doors sealed before Fusion Two went up, we also have Mr Dollaryde's last batch of beer to drink. So we are good until the rescue arrives."
She had been waiting for this. No one else had mentioned when a relief force would arrive, and now she had to give them not the bad news, but the even worse news. "We may not be here when they do."
The junior officers all looked at her. "But captain, we have the two dispatch boats, and Smoking Frog is only what, four days away for one of them. Since we're not dealing with an Alliance system, they can be here in about two weeks." Murray protested. "I know it would be maybe three weeks for the other one to Torch, and about a month back, but we wouldn't have to wait much longer than that for someone to be here to take us out."
The captain shook her head. "There's other problems you don't know about yet, Hallie." The woman beamed at her. "Number One?"
He brought up the message, and tapped in a command. He then handed it to the senior officer, who happened to be Murray.
FROM: CONTROL
TO: TASK FORCE COMMANDER
RE: OPERATIONAL ORDERS
ONCE IN POSSESION OF MISSILES AT INFERNO, YOU WILL EXECUTE OPERATION QUORUM IMMEDIATELY. ONCE THAT OPERATION IS SUCCESSFUL, YOU WILL PROCEED TO EXECUTE OPERATION CLEAN SWEEP. NOTIFICATION OF A FLEET VISIT TO CLEAN SWEEP OBJECTIVE ALREADY SENT, THOUGH THE SIZE OF YOUR FORCE WAS NOT MENTIONED. SO THEY WILL ASSUME YOUR PEACEFUL INTENTIONS.
ADDITIONAL DATA ON POSSIBLE ENEMY FORCES: THEIR NAVY HAVE ONLY TWO OPERATIONAL HEAVY CRUISERS AND PERHAPS TEN FRIGATES. ALL OTHER UNITS IN ORBIT ARE AS YET UNMANNED. THERE ARE ALSO FOUR MERCHANT SHIP CONVERSIONS WHICH APPEAR TO CARRY 50 LACS BELIEVED TO BE OF THE REPUBLIC OF HAVEN CIMMETERRE TYPE, WHICH WILL NOT SERIOUSLY IMPEDE YOU.
YOU MUST STERILIZE ALL HUMAN SETTLEMENTS ON THE PLANET. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES WILL YOU ALLOW SURVIVORS TO REPORT YOU OPERATIONS IN CLEAN SWEEP.
ASSUMING YOU HAVE SUFFICIENT MISSILES REMAINING, YOU WILL THEN PROCEED TO OPERATION VALENTINES DAY. IF YOU FEEL THAT YOU CANNOT SUCCESSFULLY CARRY THIS OUT, SEND YOUR DISPATCH BOAT BACK TO NANTUCKET WITH THAT INFORMATION, AND FURTHER SUPPLIES WILL BE SENT FORTHWITH.
Murray handed it to Saya, who handed it on until all of them had seen it. When all had, Rebecca took the pad herself. "According to the last message in the Sollie dispatch boat's queue, they will be here in just over ten days. As you noticed, the Mesans have ordered Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius." She looked around the ashen faces. "An old quote from Earth history, the Albigensian Crusade. 'Kill them all, for the Lord will surely know his own'. And whether we like it or not, we will be part of that. There is no way this Admiral Tregaskis is going to let us live. He will be in violation of the Eridani Edict, and no one will be willing to cover his ass when it comes to light.
"Because Clean Sweep is designed to enter the Congo system, and kill every one of the inhabitants. And we are sitting on the missiles they intend to use to do it."
"No Sollie admiral would be this insane!" Saya protested. "The Sollies were the ones who created the Edict!"
"Oh I think this man is." She brought up her computer. "Admiral Goyaałé Tregaskis; for anyone interested, his given name is in an old Native American language called Apache and means 'one who yawns'. It was, according to ONI, the given name of a famous guerrilla fighter of the 19th century CE better known as Geronimo. The man is probably one of the few Battle Fleet officers that even Sandra Crandall and Josef Byng would not have wanted to admit to have as a friend. He has come close to being court martialed three times, each time when he was charged with crimes that had to be hushed up. His personal habits are reprehensible; He's one of those men who won't take no for an answer if he comes on to a woman.
"If there had been any justice inside the League and Battle Fleet, he would have been cashiered and sent to jail for what he did just to the last woman he mauled. Instead he had been sent off to the back of beyond with a verbal reprimand that if he treated anyone there in the same manner, they would just space him and have done with it. To, oddly enough, the Nantucket Sector where he commands a SD task force.
"Nantucket Sector is too deep into the League for us to have chapter and verse on everything they have, but a standard SD task force is between 20 and thirty SDs with screen. According to this message from the Sollie dispatch boat," She brought it up, and the pad went around again, "he was waiting for three Tarawa class assault transports. His own estimate is that he will arrive here in just under eleven days." She looked at Murray. "At least three days before we can expect any help to arrive.
"And we all know about the split between Battle Fleet and Frontier Fleet. Will a squadron of anything as small as battlecruisers want to go toe to toe with superdreadnoughts if they did arrive?"
Saya snapped her fingers. "Quorum! Julius Caesar! The men who assassinated him used the fact that the murderers were, by definition a quorum of the Roman Senate as justification!" She looked around. "Governor Barregos in the Maya Sector is one of the most popular OFS governors among the actual people he administers! Hell, in the League! He doesn't knuckle under to Mega-corps, treats the Cherwell Convention like holy writ. They're using the same technique the League did when they replaced the OFS hierarchy in, what's the name, Quartermain Sector about fifteen years ago. Instead of letting OFS deal with him, they sent in an SD squadron from Battle Fleet, and literally hung him from a lamppost. And Barregos is allied with Torch!"
"Valentines Day." Hallie pondered. Something about that..." Her eyes widened. "The St Valentine's Day Massacre!"
"What?" Rebecca looked at her.
"Thank your Sidemorans, Skipper! First half of the 20th century CE. Two organized crime families were at war over bootlegging, or something like that. One side arranged to have the boss of the other at a certain location, a warehouse on the North Side of Chicago, I think. While he didn't show up, five gang members and a couple of men who just worked for them were in the warehouse when two men dressed as policemen arrived, and ordered them against the wall. Once they had, two others arrived with sub machine guns of the period and opened fire. All but one was killed in the massacre." She looked up. "Wasn't Erewhon settled by old Organized Crime families?"
"More like their middlemen, but I see your point." Rebecca rocked her chair from side to side. "Of course they don't know about the pods we deployed, or it would have been in the download. I know 24,000 missiles will slaughter them. But that isn't the point. This-" she held up the pad, "says they've already arranged a fleet visit. If it were anyone but the old People's Republic, or the Sollies, it just means, 'hi, we're coming to pay a neighborly visit'. But the League procedures for Verge Systems is you send something the locals can't fight, and while you're being 'neighborly', you're also showing them they don't want to mess with them. So he comes over the hyper wall, and Torch is ready to fight, but not expecting one.
"That gives him time enough to get close enough to slaughter most of the people there, along with all of their warships, any merchant ships in the system, and the station. Of course they'll fire their missiles. Which gives us-" She tapped her own chest, "the burden of proving that the Sollies fired first!
"Even if they kill every one of the bastards in Torch, Maya Sector will already have a new, Mesa backed administration, and Torch will be badly damaged or even destroyed. They will also have some other 'neobarbs' getting uppity. The League is so much like a dinosaur, that we'll have fleets moving out to 'punish them' as they have tried to do with us, and I think that works out better for Mesa than for either us or the League. Hell, the League's spin merchants would never admit they were puppets of Mesa again. They haven't been willing to admit it up to now, why suddenly be reasonable?
"So the new administration sends in the Frontier Fleet units they have and occupy Torch, just like they've done whenever someone has something they want, and the goddamned Sollie public will cheer them on for their mercy! We have to derail their plans somehow."
The officers looked at her. "Skipper, all we can do is fight them, then die!" Carruthers said softly.
Rebecca sighed. "I know that, Abbie. But what all of us must realize is that we're dead. We just haven't laid down yet. But I for one do not want to die without striking back." She chuckled. "I understand how the captain of St Kitts felt. If I'm dying, I want to have my teeth buried in their throats.
"But we make sure the truth gets out. We send the dispatch boats out, one to Torch to warn them, one to Smoking Frog to warn them. Next, we use our remaining small craft. We get as many as we can off the ship. And the rest of us use what weapons we have to smash as many of them as we can."
"Captain." De Frees looked at the other. "We have 500 pods; 5,000 missiles. Maybe 300 more among the LACs, but it's not enough. If we fire everything we have, we can kill maybe 10 SDs, or a hell of a lot more of the small boys instead. Then the rest will walk right over us and get the missiles."
"Not if we destroy them before they get close enough to blow us away." She looked at them. "Number One, Abbie, start working on a fire plan. We're going to want to damage as many of the SDs and battlecruisere as we can. We can use the LACs to tear up the destroyers and fleet train. Work it out. But before you do, we are going to have dinner, then a memorial service."
Saying goodbye to the fallen
Hammerwell's Lament for Beauty Lost played as the crew snapped to attention. It had been commissioned by Queen Adrienne to honor Edward Saganami's sacrifice at Carson according to history. But those who had read up on the composer knew that one of Hammerwell's boyhood friends had died aboard HMS Nike with the Commodore. It was one of the pieces played at such times as this, and everyone stared at the large video screen that had been mounted on the massive hatch that led to space. In the distance was a pitifully small bundle of body bags.
As often as it was done in holo dramas, a burial in space was actually rare. When missiles beams and shattered hull shredded human bodies, most of the time you had something that looked as if it were meat being prepared for a meal. Not like the actors with the last dying words and the few artfully placed blood stains you would see. Even today, censorship would not allow them to show the true carnage of war. A lot of times, such as had happened in Fusion two, you wouldn't even have that.
But the reason it was rare was more the preferences of the deceased. Some wanted to be returned home to lie with their loved ones if it were at all possible. But some didn't get that choice. Heroes of Manticore had taken places in King Michael's Cathedral alongside the monarchs and consorts of the House of Windom. Of those eleven tombs, two were empty, because both Edward Saganami and Ellen D'Orville had left no body to be recovered.
Master Chief Corvu who had taken Bosun Sharps' place shouted, "Off, Caps!" Every hand including the Captain's snapped up, pulled off their beret, or in the case of the Sidemorans, their kepi, and tucked them under the epaulettes of their uniforms. "Parade, Rest!" Except for the captain, they all went to that stance.
Rebecca cursed her memory. Was it just a few months ago that she had considered this very page before the wedding of the Dollarydes? Her eyes burned as she thought of her casualties, and the courage some had displayed in their final moments. Chief Sisko, already mortally injured, found laying dead where he had been dragging one of the wounded that had survived out of Prifly. Yeoman 1st Cantrell of Sidemore who had gone back not for a body, but for Lieutenant Rubens' sword.
"Let us pray." She bowed her head, and began a simple prayer asking God by whatever name to watch over the fallen. When she reached 'Amen', all heads came up. She looked at her surviving crew, except for the wounded who could not be here, and the LAC crews that were unable to return. How could she tell them that this was only a preview of their own fate, and not that far away?
"Death is nothing at all - They have only slipped away into the next room. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call them by their familiar names, speak to them in the easy way which you always used. Laugh as we always laughed together. Play, smile, and what they have to say to those that remian is this; 'think of me, pray for me. Let my name be the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without effort'. Life still means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was; there is absolutely unbroken continuity. Why should they be out of your mind because they are out of your sight? They are but waiting for us, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner. All is well. Nothing is past; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before - only better, infinitely happier and forever..." She nodded.
One of the Sidemorans lifted his bagpipes, and as soon as the bag was full, the ancient 'The Fallen Soldier' echoed through the compartment. It died, and she opened her mouth to speak.
But one figure at the head of the Sidemore ranks snapped to attention, snapped and held a salute, and in a quavering voice, Jessica Riyal began to sing.
"Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen and down the mountain side
She started to falter, but another voice, Phiratcha Konagawa took it up as well.
"The summer's gone and all the roses falling
It's you, it's you, must go and I must bide."
Other voices joined in. Stacy DePuy of Azrael, who had announced just last week that she had accepted Phillip Zachary's proposal. Rebecca Huggins of the same ship, then the Sidemore LAC crews, the Graysons, the Manticorans, he own people here, and even she joined them.
"But come ye back when summer's in the meadow
Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow
It's I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow
Oh, Danny boy, oh, Danny boy, I love you so
"But when ye come and all the flowers are dying
If I am dead and dead I well may be
You'll come and find the place where I am lying
And kneel and say an 'Ave' there for me
"And I shall hear tho' soft you tread above me
And all my grave will warmer, sweeter be
For you will bend and tell me that you love me
And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me"
The song ended, and Rebecca was crying openly now as those who faced her broke from parade rest to comfort those beside them. But I'm the Captain. She told herself. There is no comfort for me this side of the grave. She nodded to Corvu. "Atten-tion! Hand, Salute!"
She lifted the pad once more. "We therefore commit their bodies to the deep, looking for the general Resurrection in the last day, and the life of the world to come, through our Lord Jesus Christ; at whose second coming in glorious majesty to judge the world, space shall give up her dead; and the corruptible bodies of those who sleep in her shall be changed, and made like unto his glorious body; according to the mighty working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself." At her last words, the LAC missile warhead buried in the pile of body bags fired, and they were gone in a burst of nuclear fire.
"To!" all hands snapped back to their sides.
"Parade, Rest!" She shouted. They went back to that stance. "At ease." A lot of faces were curious, but she merely tucked away the pad.
"You all know how badly we have been mauled. But there is worse to come. We have discovered evidence that those missiles are to be used by a rogue Solarian Admiral. He is going to go to the Maya Sector capital, and replace their government with a handpicked regime out of Mesa's pocket. Then they are going to Torch.
"His orders are to murder the population, and using a faked 'fleet visit', he will succeed in slaughtering a lot of them. The only thing that stands between them and that fate for billions in the Maya Sector, and millions on Torch, is us."
The crowd murmured at that.
"If I thought for a moment that surrender was an option, I would do so. But his orders preclude any survivors. 'Dead men tell no tales'. It would not help Mesa, or him, if we're alive to tell those tales. We can't just destroy that weapons store to stop him, he'll merely kill us, and a few months from now, he'll be back and there will be more missiles in a system we have no clue about to try it again."
"Then what are we to do?" Commander O'Malley her Navigation officer asked.
"We're going to send the dispatch boats, one to Smoking Frog, the other to Torch. We may not survive until a relief force arrives, but they will be warned. The crew of the Sollie boat are just messengers, and they had nothing to do with the attack on us, so I am splitting their crew between them, along with our wounded and three others per boat. It will overload their life support, but they will get there safely.
"Then we use our small craft to get what we can off the ship. There is one shuttle aboard the prison, our shuttle and the cutter. We're going to load them with extra air, water, and food, then what people we can aboard them so they can survive for a few days longer than the rest of us. That will save about fifty more. Two of the LACs will use their wedges to cover you, then come back in openly so hopefully they think they were just on patrol.
"The rest of us... Well we're going to hammer them when they arrive. We're going to damage or disable every one of those bastards we can before we die. And when they get close enough to hit us with their missiles, we're going to blow the prison to hell along with those missiles. They will kill us. But they will get nothing but pain and death in return."
She looked out over those faces. "If anyone wants to be aboard the small boys, let your division heads know. I will choose fifty of you to go. But I will tell you now, except for one officer to command the few who do go, and two to command the dispatch boats, the rest of your officers will be here when that enemy force comes.
"The last of Mr. Dollaryde's beer is waiting, and we will toast those who went before us before we get back to work. As you all know, he was injured. But he is not going in the dispatch boats. At his own insistence, he will be here to face what comes along with his wives. I was reminded by him of the saying the Spartan mothers of the ancient past used when they gave their sons their shield for the first time. 'With this, or on this'. Come back victorious, or come back dead. I can think of no more heroic stand to take, because I would have ordered him sent home. Attention!" They snapped back to attention. "Dismissed."