Battle for Poe

The Brad Mendoza Chronicles

Skyler Ramirez

Persephone Entertainment Inc.

Copyright © 2024 Skyler S. Ramirez

All rights reserved

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Cover design and illustrations by: Persephone Entertainment Inc.
Printed in the United States of America

Published by Persephone Entertainment Inc.
Texas, USA

Chapter 1

“Captain, with all due respect, you’re being an idiot.”

I regarded my executive officer with a raised eyebrow as she finished her statement, glaring at me across the desk in my small day cabin. I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “Come on, Kitty, tell it like it is. Don’t pull your punches.”

“How many times do I need to tell you to stop calling me that?” Commander Katherine Henderson fumed, the red flush in her cheeks showing up even against her dark complexion. “I haven’t gone by Kitty since I was a plebe at the Academy, and I hated the stupid nickname back then, too!”

I nodded and grinned at her. “Well, as I recall, you got the nickname from releasing a feral, flee-infested cat in the men’s dorm to get back at an ex-boyfriend. With a name like Katherine, you had to see the nickname coming from a parsec away.”

“And as I recall, you’re the one who managed to catch that same cat and set it loose in the bachelor officer quarters!” she shot back.

My grin got even wider as I recalled a few of my Academy professors scratching at the fleas in their hair days later in class. “I’m also the one who didn’t turn you in,” I reminded her.

“Likewise.” She was smiling now. Say what you will about Katherine Henderson’s temper—and it was often swift and epic—she also had a sense of humor, and we fit together well as captain and XO. In fact, we’ve gotten along pretty well since she was a precocious plebe at the Promethean Naval Academy and I was a firstie with one foot out the door on my way to graduation.

Then, her face turned serious again. “Listen, Brad, you’re going to make a fool of us. We’re supposed to be at Cillian Heights in four days. We do not have time for your little side trip.”

I raised an eyebrow at her, waiting.

“Sir.” She added the word begrudgingly.

“You’re right,” I told her, shrugging.

“I’m right?” She looked at me incredulously. “What do you mean I’m right? If you know I’m right, why are we going to Poe?” The name of the system came out like it tasted bad on her tongue, and I couldn’t blame her. Poe was a hole of a system, with only a single inhabited planet, barely even big enough to hold atmo. Most of the population lived out in the asteroid belt, where mining was abundant, but life was hard.

“Well, Kat,” I said, her eyes flashing at my casual use of my current nickname for her, but at least she didn’t yell at me this time. “We’re going to Poe because I think we need to be there.”

“Is this another one of your hunches?” she asked with a frown.

I shrugged. “Call it captain’s intuition if that makes you feel any better. But there have been rumors that Skalgan’s little fleet has been harassing the mining stations in this part of the Corpus Christi Cluster. Small stuff so far, but it’s been almost a year since His Majesty’s Navy has even visited the Poe system, and the last ship to do so stayed for a few hours and then turned and left right back through the same jump point. Didn’t even take the time for a proper system scan.

“We’ll stop in, cross the system, and get good scan readings. We’ll exchange a few friendly messages with the locals and then jump out on the other end. All goes well; we’re in Cillian Heights about a day late, within tolerances.” That was mostly true, except that Rear Admiral Norton wasn’t usually the forgiving sort who appreciated being inconvenienced by one of his battlecruisers showing up a day late.

She stood there, staring at me, and I thought she might argue again. Then, her shoulders slumped. “Fine,” she spat out. “You win. I guess we’re going to Poe.”

I smiled. “Of course we are.” I pointed to the four bars on my shoulder. “I am Lancer’s captain, last time I checked, so I do have the final word on where we go.”

She bristled at that but said nothing, mostly because I was right. As the captain of a King’s ship, I didn’t even have to consult my executive officer on decisions like this. Still, smart captains always did, even when their executive officer was as argumentative as Katherine Henderson—maybe especially when their executive officer was argumentative and called them on their crap.

“Besides,” I said, my grin getting wider. “This is probably the last time I get to boss you around.”

It took a moment for that to sink in, and then her brows furrowed. “What are you talking about?” she demanded sternly, reminding me of my mother when I tried to explain why I punched Ben Kittridge in the ninth grade after he gave me a wedgie in the bathroom.

I shrugged as nonchalantly as I could. “Never mind. Slip of the tongue, that’s all.”

“Brad…” Now, she really sounded like my mother.

“Fine,” I said, holding both arms up in surrender. “Well, it won’t be official until next week, but scuttlebutt is that HMS Wilkes needs a new commanding officer, and I may or may not have submitted your name and gotten a positive response.”

She stood there, speechless for the first time I could remember. Kat was many things, but circumspect was not one of them, at least around me.

“Brad, if you’re messing with me, I will murder you, and Carla will never find the body.”

I grinned. “Putting aside how happy that would make my father-in-law, I’m not messing with you. Congratulations, Captain Henderson.”

She started to tear up a little. I knew she’d wanted this and deserved it for a long time. Despite my flippant delivery of the news, I was overjoyed that I got to be the one to tell her. I had to call in a lot of favors to make it happen, and seeing her reaction was a small reward for my efforts. Seeing her succeed in the position, as I knew she would, would be the greatest reward of all.

“Now,” I said, putting a measure of fake sternness in my tone. “XO—for now—Henderson, if you will, prepare my ship to jump to Poe.”

Chapter 2

“Skipper, coming out of jump now.”

“Thanks, Brian,” I said to the helmsman as I took the cup of steaming coffee from my steward. Lucas knew I liked to have a good cup of coffee when I exited a jump. It helped to bring me back to full alertness after the dull monotony of jump space. Especially since I always burned my tongue with the first sip. Today was no exception.

“Let’s do a full scan, passives only to start,” I ordered as soon as the burning sensation stopped. “Helm, plot us a path across the system that gets us to the Umbra jump point in 24 hours or less but maximizes close passes of as many of the mining stations as possible. I’d also like to do a quick survey of the planet if the orbital mechanics allow.”

As my bridge officers jumped to fulfill my orders in calm efficiency, Kat stepped up next to my command chair. “Passives only?” she asked in a low voice so that only I could hear. “How strong is your intuition that there may be trouble here?”

I looked up at her and frowned. “I don’t know. This morning, I was reading a report from a freighter that came through here a few weeks back. And it was the most boring transit report I’ve ever read.”

She looked confused. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

“No, Kat. I mean it was really boring. As in, nothing happened. Routine report in all respects.”

“Except?” she asked, knowing me too well.

“Except that a closer look at their fuel usage and mass readings revealed that they burned far too much fuel for their transit time. All told, they should have completed transit eight hours faster than they did. And they entered the system with a lot more mass than they left it with, though the captain tried hard to hide that in how he wrote up the report.”

My XO shrugged. “So, they’re smugglers making an unscheduled drop-off in Poe. Not so abnormal.”

“That’s what I thought at first, too,” I admitted. “But the captain of this particular vessel is a retired member of the Layton System Patrol, as are most of his crew.”

Kat’s eyebrows shot up at that. Layton was a medium-sized system that happened to sit at the crossroads of multiple jump points, leading to much larger systems within the Promethean Federation. As such, it was the natural route for a lot of smugglers moving goods across our star nation. This meant, naturally, that it also had one of the largest system patrol fleets specifically to stop those smugglers. And given how often those stops devolved into shooting, the officers and spacers of the Layton System Patrol had what could generously be termed a healthy dislike—and more realistically termed a bitter hatred—for smugglers. Thinking that one of their former officers would turn smuggler was like thinking a member of the royal family would go work for the tabloids.

“OK, that does seem like something is off,” she admitted. “But how do we know it’s not just a malfunction or a loss the captain didn’t want to report to the insurance company? It’s not that unusual for a ship to have to dump some of its load to account for a drive sputter or something like that.”

“Well,” I admitted, “that’s where the unsubstantiated rumors of Skalgan’s gang operating in this part of the cluster come in. Skalgan has a reputation for threatening his victims with reprisals if they tell anyone what happened to them. My guess is he stopped them, took most of their cargo, and then let them go. The guy is unpredictable; sometimes, he kills everyone, and other times, he lets them go with nothing more than lighter pockets and some big threats. I’m willing to bet this was a case of the latter.”

She frowned. “It’s flimsy, but you’re the captain. And as much as I hate to admit it, your gut is right more often than it’s wrong. Of course, when it’s wrong…” She let that hang there, though I knew she wanted to bring up what had happened in the Apollo system a month before. I’m glad she didn’t; I was sure I’d get enough grief about that at the next family dinner with my in-laws.

I smiled. “Let’s hope I’m right. It’s been a few weeks since we got to shoot anything.”

Chapter 3

OK, maybe I was wrong. Because 16 hours into our transit of Poe, we hadn’t seen anything more exciting than a dust cloud. I had the sensor officer start pinging the system on actives a few hours into the journey, and still nothing. Just the normal in-system traffic you would expect for a place whose entire economy is based on asteroid mining.

I was about to order a comm call to the inhabited planet just to check in with the local governor when Ensign Bryson, one of the junior officers I was rotating through bridge duty just for the experience, cried out in alarm.

“Calm down, Ensign!” Lieutenant Commander Roberts snapped. He was filling in for Kat at the moment and was a little overeager about it. I shot him a mildly reproving look, and his tone softened. “Bryson, tell us what you have.”

“I…uh…” the boy stammered and then looked up at Roberts and me in chagrin. “I’m not sure, sirs. One second, there was nothing on my scope, and then I saw a group of blips out by the jump limit like they were headed toward one of the asteroids. They were moving too fast to be merchant ships, but they disappeared off the feed before I could get any more on them.”

I mulled this over for a second. “Is there a mining station on that asteroid, Ensign?”

“Y-yes, sir,” he answered. “One of the richer veins in the system, according to the latest reports.”

“Any unusual comm traffic?”

By his expression, he’d forgotten to check. I could tell Roberts was about to chastise him again, but I stopped him with another look. Rotating junior officers through bridge duty was supposed to be a learning experience, and mistakes were to be expected.

“Uh, I think we’re too far out to detect it?” Bryson responded, the question clear in his tone.

“Marcucci, can you confirm?” I asked the junior lieutenant on comms, part of the regular bridge crew.

“Confirmed, sir,” she replied in her usual crisp and professional tone. “There’s a solar storm happening now in the system’s primary, and it’s wreaking havoc on all the local comms. I’m getting some transmissions from the direction of that rock, but they’re pretty garbled. AI’s trying to clean it up, but it may take a while.”

I turned back to Bryson. “Good job, Ensign. Even if it turns out to be nothing, it’s still worth checking out. Helm, set a course for that asteroid…AB3264. Engines at two-thirds power.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Ensign,” I said, turning back to Bryson. “Halt all actives and go to passives only. If there are enemy ships trying to hide out there, no use giving away our position too soon.”

The young man bent back down over his console to fulfill my order. I looked up and met Robert’s gaze over the Ensign’s shoulder. The lieutenant commander nodded that he would keep an eye on the kid, but I motioned him over to my command chair anyway.

“Sir,” Roberts asked in a low voice, “do you want me to wake the XO?”

I considered that for only a moment. “No, let her sleep. This is probably nothing, but if things are going to get exciting, I want her well-rested. But,” I motioned for him to come even closer so that the rest of the bridge crew wouldn’t hear, “go wake up Chelsea. I want her in the CIC putting a second pair of eyes on those sensor readings.”

Roberts nodded, casting a glance over at Bryson. The kid had picked up the transient contact, though likely, it was nothing more than backscatter or a solar flare messing with the sensors. However, despite the glimmers of promise the young ensign had shown on this voyage thus far, I wanted my first-watch sensor officer looking over his figurative shoulder. Lieutenant Chelsea Zhou was a savant when it came to reading things in the sensor picture that most people would miss. By having her down in the CIC, I could leave Bryson in the primary chair and not let him know that his commanding officer was checking his homework. I didn’t want to undermine the kid, but I also didn’t want to miss anything.

Roberts scurried off to do as I asked, and I turned my eyes back to the plot on the forward viewscreen. As I did so, I felt an excitement rising in me. The chances that the kid had actually seen anything worth worrying about were pretty low, but something in my gut—the same feeling that made me come to Poe in the first place—was telling me that he was onto something. After a year on Lancer, I’d had more than a few scuffles with pirates and smugglers but nothing that could rightly challenge a battlecruiser’s raw firepower. The thought of finally putting my command to the test was invigorating, especially if the rumors about the size of Skalgan’s force were accurate.

Of course, an entirely sane and intelligent man wouldn’t yearn for a fight, but if I’d wanted to just fly through the stars in peace, I would have become a freighter pilot or maybe a garbage scow commander. No, like most of my crew, I’d joined the Promethean Navy because a part of me wanted the action. And my gut was telling me that we were going to find some.

Chapter 4

“Skipper,” the silent voice said in my implant so only I could hear, “I’ve reviewed the records, and I don’t think Ensign Bryson is jumping at shadows. I’d say there’s a 58 percent chance those ships are out there.”

I fought the urge to chuckle. Senior Lieutenant Zhou was very precise. She never talked in generalities. If she said there was a 58% chance that Bryson’s sensor ghosts were real contacts, then there was precisely a 58% chance: not 50-50 or 60-40, but precisely 58-42 in favor.

“Thanks, Chelsea,” I subvocalized back to her. “Keep your eye on things, and the second you see something, let me know. I can ask Bryson to focus his search on where you tell me, and he can make the discovery. Call it a confidence booster.”

“Aye-aye, Skipper.”

Ending the call with my sensor officer down in the CIC, I got up out of my chair and walked over to the comm station. We’d been burning at a fairly sedate pace for two hours toward AB3264 without so much as a sniff of anything amiss.

“Talk to me, Marcucci,” I told my comm officer, who was sitting with her eyes closed as she always did when trying to decipher a weak signal. Startled, she looked up at me.

“Sorry, Skipper, just trying to parse through a few overlapping signals. The AI can’t separate them yet, but I swear I’m hearing two distinct transmissions through the noise.”

“Anything I should know about?”

She frowned. “Not yet, but there’s a…a tone to one of the transmissions. Hard to say, but it just doesn’t sound all that friendly to me.”

I nodded. Marcucci had been with me only three months thus far, but I’d quickly learned to trust her instincts. Her first week on Lancer, she’d detected a distress call from a freighter in the Madras system that the AI swore up and down was only random noise from a nearby pulsar. The 14 spacers on that ship owed their lives to her keen ear.

“Keep at it,” I told her. “And let me know the second you have anything.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, closing her eyes and immersing herself again in the signals and noise.

I was turning back to go to my chair again when the bridge hatch opened, and Kat walked in. My XO caught my eye, and I could tell she wanted to talk. I changed direction, inclining my head toward the other hatch that led into my day cabin, indicating we could chat in there.

Once inside, with the hatch shut, I sat on the edge of my desk and raised my eyebrows at her.

“Captain, what are we doing?” she asked, her tone half curious, half annoyed. Kat got annoyed with me a lot.

“We’re chasing a lead,” I said, smiling as nonchalantly as I could in a way calculated to annoy her further.

She didn’t take the bait. Too bad; flying across a system chasing a potential sensor ghost was still relatively dull. A good fight with Kat might raise my spirits.

“I stopped in the CIC and talked to Zhou,” she said with a slight frown. “She said there’s only a 56 percent chance this is something real.”

“Huh. She told me 58.”

“She likes to round up with you, sir. She knows how excited you are to find some pirates.”

I shrugged. “You don’t agree with our course change?”

She thought for a moment and shrugged back. “No matter what, we’re already going to be late to rendezvous with Norton. I just can’t decide if that means we should hightail it to Cillian Heights so we’re a little less late or take all the time we want here because he’ll be mad either way.”

I shook my head emphatically. “Kat, you’re a good officer, but you’re thinking about this all wrong.”

Her nostrils flared, and for a moment, I thought she was going to yell at me. Kat was a good XO, and she’d been with me for two years now, first as my tactical officer on the heavy cruiser Queen’s Pride and now as my XO on Lancer. I’d actually fought hard to get the Navy Personnel Office to assign her to me here, but it was in spite of her strict adherence to the rulebook, not because of it.

When it became clear she wasn’t going to argue quite yet, I continued, “You need to stop thinking so much about what looks good in your next performance review and instead be thinking about what’s the right thing to do.”

From her expression, I could tell I wasn’t getting through to her. I sighed. “Think about it this way. If we get out to AB3264 and there’s nothing there, then all we’ve done is delay our rendezvous with Norton by another 13 hours or so. But if we find there are pirates out there, then we save a mining station and countless others from being preyed on in the future. Don’t you think that is a tradeoff worth making, even if it is only a 56% probability?”

Kat considered that for a moment. Then she grimaced. “I get what you’re saying, Brad, I really do. But the rules and regulations and schedules exist for a reason. Lancer isn’t your personal car you could take out on a weekend drive. It’s a multi-billion credit warship with 800 spacers aboard, and right now, it and those 800 spacers are supposed to be in Cillian Heights, not galivanting around the Poe system chasing momentary blips on a sensor screen. What happens if Norton’s task force is needed somewhere, but they delay because they’re waiting for us?”

“It’s a fair point,” I admitted, “but in a universe where our comms are still limited by lightspeed, the Navy trusts its commanders to make decisions in the field. There’s a reason for that; not everything can simply be done by the book. If all we did were follow orders and not think for ourselves, we’d be no better than…well, Horace Clarington.”

Kat actually snickered a little at that. Clarington was the idiot son of a vice admiral and was widely regarded as the illustrative tale of the evils of nepotism. The guy was dumb, but he’d still risen to command a battleship, even after graduating in the bottom half of my same class at the Academy—way down in the bottom half. It also didn’t endear the guy to me that, despite his stupidity, my father-in-law, Fleet Admiral Terrence Oliphant, made no secret of the fact that he’d rather see his daughter married to Clarington instead of to me.

“OK, Captain,” Kat said ruefully. “What will it take to convince you this is a fool’s errand and turn this ship back to the jump point?”

I considered my answer. “I’d need to talk to the administrator of that mining station. If he tells me all is well, I’ll turn Lancer around and apologize to Admiral Norton for wasting his valuable time. Deal?”

She smirked at me. “Well, guess I’d better go help Marcucci get a signal through as soon as we’re in range.”

Chapter 5

“Sir,” Lieutenant Marcucci called across the bridge, drawing my attention away from a conversation with my chief engineer, who had emerged from the depths of Lancer’s engine room to talk to me about some maintenance he wanted done as soon as we arrived at Cillian Heights.

I excused myself and walked over to her comm station.

“What is it, Kate?

“Those two signals I thought I was getting… Well, now I’m sure. I still can’t make out much of the wording, but from the little I’m catching, I’m almost certain that one is a distress call.”

I felt myself starting to get excited until she frowned. “Full disclosure, Skipper. The AI still thinks it’s just normal comm traffic or even interference. It says the chances of it being a distress signal are in the single digits.”

I smiled. “Good thing I don’t like listening to AIs. If you say it’s a distress signal, I believe you.”

Turning and walking back to my command chair, I sat down and pressed a key on my chair. Kat looked at me dubiously from her seat beside mine but said nothing.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” I said through the ship-wide PA, “this is the Captain. We have a probable distress call from one of the local mining stations on AB3264. As many of you know, Anton Skalgan’s pirate fleet has been reported to be operating in this area. Until we learn differently, we will assume that the threat is real. Silent and fast is the order of the day. Secure all loose articles and set Condition II throughout the ship. We are on strict EMCON from here on out. I don’t want any stray transmissions that will tell the pirates we’re coming. We’ll call General Quarters when we’re two hours out. That is all.”

“You’re sure about this?” Kat said quietly to me. “I mean, I trust Marcucci as much as you do, but are we jumping at shadows?

I grinned at her and winked. “Helm,” I said next. “Full military power on my command. Extend the wings and vector the nozzles; I don’t want them to see us until we’re right on top of them.”

Chief Donaldson at the helm acknowledged my order, and I felt a light vibration through the deck as a series of ‘wings’ extended from just forward of my ship’s stern, specially designed to block any view of the hot exhaust of our main drives from anyone looking at us head-on. Battlecruisers weren’t the stealthiest of ships, but the wings allowed us to approach most targets directly and get pretty close before they’d detect us on thermals. A set of long trailing radiators, almost like the tentacles of a jellyfish, would also be extending behind us to vent any of the ship’s excess heat aft of those wings as well.

In all, it was the best we could do to make a ship longer than five football fields and as wide as one disappear from the sensors of most non-military ships entirely. At least until we got close enough for them to pick us up on active sensors. But if we could manage to keep the asteroid between us and them for that last part, we might just surprise them completely.

Of course, navies, just like any other government institution, have their fair share of bureaucracy. By taking us to full military power, I’d just triggered at least a dozen reports I would have to write later to justify putting my billion-credit battlecruiser onto a war footing. And I’d always hated writing those stupid reports. I would just have to hope that my gut and my crew’s instincts were right on this. Because, if not, I’d have some real explaining to do to an already upset Admiral Norton.

An hour and a half later, I got my confirmation.

“Sir!” Marcucci called out. “We’re close enough now that I can hear most of the signal from AB3264. Definitely a distress signal.”

“On bridge speakers,” I ordered, and there was a burst of static from overhead.

“…day, mayday…this is…ning station 426…AB32…4. …are under att…pirates…ting aid. Six…stile ships, I rep…six hostile…on approach…manding our surrend…. …not have enough ships…evac…. Mayday, may…calling for any…in…area to assist…evacu…!”

As garbled as it was, the message was clear. And with it fled any doubt as to what was going on. Even Kat looked utterly convinced now.

“Mr. Roberts,” I commanded. “Load all tubes. I want a full loadout of ship-killers and ship-to-ships. Load a quarter of the rear and forward tubes with interceptors. I want to come around that rock fully ready to unload on the enemy.” I used my command voice. I usually only brought it out during serious situations. Outside of those, I preferred a softer touch…most of the time. Carla liked it when I used my command voice at home, so long as I didn’t use it to tell her what to do. But she loved it when I used it on hapless store clerks to get her refunds on clothes and shoes after the 30-day period.

“Yes, sir!” Roberts said a little too enthusiastically, but I let it slide. He was excited to finally put Lancer to the test, and so was I.

Of course, we both ignored one little inconvenient fact: Lancer was an advanced and powerful warship, but she was still only one ship. The distress message from AB3264 made it clear she’d be outnumbered at least six to one.

Chapter 6

Forty minutes later, we got a clearer recording of the other transmissions Marcucci had been tracking. This one was from the pirates, demanding the mining station’s unconditional surrender and threatening to destroy any ships that fled the asteroid.

That didn’t stop the station’s denizens from fleeing however they could. Passives showed heat blooms leaving the rock in all directions like rats from a sinking ship—I always thought that was a funny analogy; why would rats flee a ship sinking in water when all the spaceships I’d ever been on were airtight?

“That’s seven,” Senior Lieutenant Zhou, now on the bridge, confirmed from her sensor station. “But all those evac ships look too small combined to carry more than a quarter of the civilians on that asteroid.”

“I concur,” Roberts said. “And ship registries for this system show nothing armed beyond a couple of patrol cutters operating from the inhabited planet. No way will any of those fleeing ships be able to defend themselves if the pirates follow through on their threat.”

I frowned and quickly checked the vectors on my implant. We were two and a half hours away from the asteroid assuming we kept up max acceleration. But we probably couldn’t do that for fear of overshooting the enemy when we arrived. So, at some point, we’d need to turn over and decelerate, meaning we’d realistically arrive at the asteroid in three hours, maybe a little more. That would also give the pirates a view of our engine thermals and basically scream that the Navy had arrived.

There was no way those civilian ships could hold out for three hours. Unless…

“Marcucci,” I said. “What would be the chances of getting tight beam laser comms to those civilian ships without the pirates listening in?”

She shook her head. “It would be extremely risky, Skipper. We don’t know exactly where the pirates are yet, but pointing even a narrow comm signal in that direction from this distance would make it diffuse enough that they’d likely pick it up if they’re just on the other side of that rock.

I frowned and nodded. I’d been afraid of that. “What about flash code? If we can’t see the pirates, they can’t see us yet, right?”

The comm officer only considered that briefly before shaking her head. “The civies won’t see it at this range. Maybe if they already knew exactly where we were, they could pick out our running lights from the background of stars, but there’s no way they’d just happen to see them.”

“Actually,” I corrected her, “I wasn’t thinking about using our running lights.”

Next to me, Kat groaned; she knew me too well. “Skipper, are you suggesting…”

“Yep,” I said with a grin. “Helm, I want you to work out with Lieutenant Marcucci how you can turn the main drive on and off in a sequence she gives you. We’ll do it in the next 15 minutes, so be ready.”

The petty officer at the helm acknowledged the order but looked a little confused. Marcucci, however, caught on immediately. “Flash code with the main drive, sir? It might just work. Even the civies should be able to see that kind of heat bloom at this range. But what do you want me to tell them?”

I told her, and her grin got wider. So did Roberts’. Even Kat had to smile a little.

Chapter 7

My bridge crew may have been excited about my plan, but my chief engineer was definitely not.

“Captain, you can’t flare and cut the drives that many times in a row without risking burning out the impellers. Then we’ll be stuck making a two-hour repair before we can use the drive again, and that’s if we’re lucky!”

I looked at the red face of Commander Quincy Nielsen across my desk. He’d insisted on coming up from engineering when he got wind of what I wanted to do with his drives, and to avoid a shouting match on the bridge, I’d had him meet me in my day cabin. Kat was there as well, along with Marcucci, Zhou, and Roberts. Those four looked back and forth between me and Nielsen like they were watching a tennis match.

“I get it, Quincy, but how else am I supposed to get a message to those civilian ships?”

“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head, “but you can’t do it using my engines.”

We stood there, staring at each other for several seconds. Then I shrugged. “We’re doing it.”

“What?” he demanded.

“I said, we’re doing it. I understand your concern, but I can’t sit by and watch several hundred civilians die because we were worried about a little drive trouble.”

His face turned redder, and he opened and closed his mouth spasmodically for a few seconds as if the words just wouldn’t come. I took advantage of his speechlessness and turned to Zhou.

“Lieutenant, how confident are you that the bulk of AB3264 is directly between us and the pirates right now?”

“Eighty-four percent certain, Captain,” Chelsea Zhou answered crisply. “I was tracking their deceleration on passives until the asteroid occluded my view. If I can’t see them, they can’t see us right now. We should be able to make turnover without them seeing our drive plume so long as they stay on the other side of that rock.”

I nodded to her and turned to Marcucci next.

“Kate, I want those evac ships to change vectors together and fly head-on towards us. The faster the civies close the distance with us, the faster we can get them under our defensive umbrella. And if the pirates send something after them, they might not spot us among all the other drive thermals.

“What is the absolute shortest way we can tell them what we need them to do in flash code.”

She thought for a moment, her eyes going out of focus as she interfaced with her implant. Then she was back. “I think I can do it in eight drive pulses. Assuming we use one steady burn first to get their attention and then do the message only once.”

I turned to Nielsen. “Eight pulses. What will that do to the drive?”

He frowned and shook his head, but his eyes also went out of focus for a second. “I can’t say,” he said honestly. “Theoretically, it should be fine, but I’ve seen a sputter knock a drive offline for hours. So there’s a risk, and I can’t guarantee we’ll be okay. Call it 50-50.”

I sighed inwardly. Whereas Chelsea Zhou would give me the exact odds and stand behind them, Nielsen tended to hedge and avoid putting his own neck out. That made it tough to trust him in situations like this because I could never be sure when he was trying to cover his own butt versus giving me honest odds.

Kat caught my eye from behind Nielsen. She nodded just barely, but enough for me to see. That gave me some relief. While I hadn’t taken any engineering courses at the Academy beyond the most basic ones required for a command and tactics track, Kat had started out to become an engineer, only changing to command and tactics after her second year. She didn’t know nearly as much as an experienced chief engineer like Nielsen, but she could usually give me a pretty good assessment of whether he was feeding me crap or truth. And in this case, she was telling me to go for it.

“We’re doing it,” I said in my command voice, cutting off all argument. “We’ll turn over and burn bright for 15 minutes. That’ll shed some of our speed and hopefully be enough time for those civies to see us on their passives. Then, we’ll do the flash code once and see what they do. Like Chelsea said, if we can keep the asteroid between us and the pirates, hopefully, they won’t see it and clue in.”

I looked at each of them, not for agreement—as the Captain, it was my call, and I’d already heard their input—but rather to show them my resolve and ensure they knew their parts. Each gave me a nod, even Nielsen.

“Great. Marcucci, get with Chief Donaldson and get all this preprogrammed into the helm. Have the chief give Nielsen a two-minute warning before we execute. I want us turning over no more than ten minutes from now. Go, people!”

They filed out of my day cabin, leaving just Kat and me behind.

“Thanks,” I told her.

She nodded. “It’s still crazy, you know. The smart thing would be to start transmitting warnings to those pirates now and see if we can scare them away from the asteroid. You sure about this?”

I knew my answer before the question even left her mouth, but I still paused before responding. I didn’t want her to think I was entirely dismissing her point of view without at least considering it. When I finally replied, I kept my voice measured and calm.

“You ever go to a rodeo, Kat?”

She looked suddenly confused. “Uh, no…”

“Well, my mom took me as a kid. They have this one part where they try and rope a young bull. But to do it, they have to get the thing distracted enough not to see the cowboy coming because the bull is still a lot bigger than the cowboy and his horse. So they use these rodeo clowns to dance and run in front of it. The bull chases them, and they lead it around and around the arena until the cowboy can get in behind it and rope it from his horse.”

I stopped, looking my XO in the eyes and waiting to see if she understood. Her frown didn’t go away, and she rolled her eyes. “Brad, has anyone ever told you that you have the worst analogies? And why do so many of them involve clowns? Seriously, just tell me what in Hades you’re trying to say!”

Hmmm. I actually thought that was a great analogy. But anyway. “All I’m saying is that we’re about to take on a big bull. Six pirate ships, Kat! Messaging and threatening them now, from our one battlecruiser, isn’t going to do more than make them ready for us when we get there; it’s not going to save any of those civies. No, we need a clown—better yet, multiple clowns—to distract them, or a lot of people are going to die.”

“And you’re the clown in this analogy?” she asked deadpan.

I gave her a thin-lipped frown. “Very funny, XO.”

“So, you’re the horse?”

I shook my head and laughed. “Sure. But as my XO, that makes you its rear end.”

She sobered up and considered my words for a moment and then nodded slowly. “OK. Sold. Let’s go do something stupid and save those civilians.”

Chapter 8

Less than ten minutes later, after calling the crew to General Quarters, the main drive cut out, and Chief Petty Officer Donaldson flipped the ship end over end. Then, the drive kicked in on full military power for 15 minutes. After that, it flickered on and off eight times in a very specific pattern, and Donaldson flipped the ship back over so we could hide our heat plume again and better observe the results.

It took a little while for the light of our drive to reach those civilian ships and for the light of their response—or lack thereof—to reach back to us. I watched the countdown timer on the forward viewscreen anxiously, and when it reached zero, I turned my gaze to the sensor plot, hoping.

A minute passed with no visible reaction from the civilian ships. I told myself it would take them at least twice that long to compute and lay in their new course.

Two minutes passed. I expected to see their movement any second.

Three minutes passed. Maybe they were having internal arguments about whether to trust our message.

Four minutes. OK, now I was starting to get a little worried.

Five minutes. Really not good.

Finally, at six minutes past zero, one of the civilian ships tweaked its course to head in our direction. Thirty seconds after that, a second and third ship did the same. Two minutes later, all but one of the civilian ships had changed its heading to burn at full power directly toward my approaching battlecruiser. But any celebration we might have had over that was tempered by the reality of that one ship that either hadn’t seen our message or had decided not to follow it. We could do nothing for them. We just had to focus now on the people we could save.

“Sir, we have a heat bloom rounding the asteroid,” Zhou reported just under an hour later.

“More civilians?” I asked, though I already knew the likely answer.

“No, sir. Military-grade drive, destroyer size. I’d say we’re looking at one of the pirate ships. It’s on an intercept course with the civilian ships; that seventh ship, by the way, just saw them and turned toward us as well.”

“Roberts, can we hit that destroyer before they catch the civies?”

My tactical officer ran the numbers quickly. “For the six civilian ships that turned early, sure. We’ll be in weapons range in 40 minutes, and unless the pirates are hiding a bunch of added acceleration, our missiles will hit them before they get a chance to fire on the civies. But that seventh ship turned too late and is way behind the others. We won’t even be within weapons range before that destroyer can take it out.”

I swore. Next to me, Kat said grimly, “Your plan worked, Skipper. We can save six out of those seven ships. It’s a miracle that many even saw us and followed our instructions. This is a win.” But even her tone showed she knew that it was an empty one.

Chapter 9

“Enemy weapons range in 30 seconds,” reported Roberts.

We all watched the tactical plot on the forward viewscreen silently as the pirate destroyer neared firing range of the seventh lagging civilian ship, the one that turned toward us too late to do any good. They’d been broadcasting in the clear, begging anyone for help, for the last 15 minutes, and I’d finally had Marcucci cut off the audio on the bridge so we wouldn’t have to listen to the doomed ship anymore. I needed my people sharp for what was to come; hearing the deaths of the dozens of civilians on that ship would be a morale killer in the extreme. Watching those deaths from afar would be bad enough on its own.

We’d ramped up our main drive to full military power again, closing the distance with the enemy destroyer to eliminate any and all chance it could catch the other six civilian ships before we took it out. Roberts had already worked out a firing solution, and that destroyer was as good as dead. Especially since, with our head-on aspect to it and our heat plume largely hidden behind Lancer’s wings, they almost certainly couldn’t see us, especially around the drive plumes of the seven civilian ships between us and them. Our plan was working perfectly in that respect.

The counter reached zero, and we all watched as the plot showed three medium missiles launching from the pirate ship straight at the lagging civilian freighter. Another four minutes passed, and the dot representing that freighter winked out, an unceremonious end for all the lives aboard her. There were a few stifled gasps across the bridge, but no one said anything or broke their concentration from their jobs.

I turned my attention to a second counter in the other corner of the tactical plot, this one counting down our time to weapons range with the pirate ship, which was continuing to burn hard in pursuit of the other six civilian evacuation ships.

As soon as the second counter reached zero, I gave the order to fire. This was usually my favorite part of any mission where my ship saw combat. There’s something heady about having that much destructive power at your command and unleashing it at the enemy. But today, that feeling was more than tempered by the knowledge that civilians had already died because we hadn’t been able to save that seventh fleeing ship.

As our missiles raced toward the oncoming destroyer, we saw the moment it noticed them. It started firing its own interceptor missiles to try and take out ours. Then, when six of the 12 medium ship-to-ship missiles we launched got by those, it tried again with its laser clusters. In the end, three of the 12 missiles made it through, but for a ship the size of a destroyer, that was enough. What had likely been a surplus or mothballed warship bought or stolen by the pirates was now several separate chunks of twisted metal hurtling ballistic through space.

Chapter 10

“Sir, the probes are relaying an updated picture now. We have confirmations on the ship classes for all five remaining pirate ships. No indication they’ve seen us yet, but they keep trying to call that destroyer, so they’ve figured out something’s wrong,” Lieutenant Zhou reported from the sensor station. About two hours ago, an hour before we destroyed our first pirate ship, she’d launched a set of sensor probes toward AB3264 on angular courses in front and away from us, allowing us for the last 45 minutes to get a relayed sensor view at better angles around the asteroid as we approached it. Those same probes had also apparently been successful in jamming any distress calls the destroyer we’d taken out had tried to send back to Skalgan’s main fleet.

Of course, I didn’t yet have confirmation that this was Anton Skalgan’s fleet, but that was merely a formality at this point.

Lancer was now less than 30 minutes from intercepting AB3264 itself, and we’d already turned over to bleed off most of our speed, using the sensor imagery from the probes to do our best to keep the bulk of the asteroid between us and the pirates. This meant, despite being nervous about their destroyer not returning their calls, they had no idea that a Promethean Navy battlecruiser was about to rain fire on them.

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” I responded to Zhou. Then I turned to my helmsman. “Donaldson, execute turnover so we’re facing AB3264 and cut the main drive; let’s maintain enough velocity to keep our options open.”

“Aye, sir!”

“Henderson, Roberts, what do you have in the way of tactical options for me?”

“Sir,” Roberts reported, “we have three. First, coming around the bottom of the mining station at a high rate of closure and firing full broadsides as we pass; short engagement envelope, maximum damage, but we’ll need to decel and come back to finish them off.”

I shook my head. “If this is Skalgan, we know he’s apt to bombard the mining station on that rock just to spite us. We can’t give him the time to do that.”

“Roger that,” Kat replied. “Second option is to come around at a lower rate of closure and do the same thing but maximize the first pass engagement time. Upside is more shots at the enemy; downside is they get more shots at us. We might damage them enough to stop any bombardment of the asteroid, but we’re likely to suffer a good amount of damage ourselves.”

I frowned. So far, both of their options sucked. “And the third?”

“Broadcast a demand that they surrender; hope that they’ll run,” Roberts offered lamely. It was the plan I’d already shot down with Kat earlier. I knew just how unlikely a self-proclaimed pirate ‘admiral’ like Anton Skalgan was to run just because a single Navy vessel showed up. For a man who ruled his own crews by fear, showing even a sliver of his own would be a sure way to have his lieutenants nipping at his heels from here on out.

“Time to point of no return?” I asked.

“Five minutes before we lose the ability to accelerate long enough for option one,” Kat reported. “After that, we’re committed to options two or three. We won’t be able to build enough speed for anything else.”

I nodded and licked my lips, thinking hard. None of the three options appealed to me. But something was nagging the back of my brain, and…

I smiled. I’m sure it wasn’t a nice smile. In fact, I’m willing to bet I looked a little like a shark considering a diver for lunch. Or maybe I just looked like I had gas. Either way, I was smiling because Skalgan may have had more ships, but Lancer was a King’s battlecruiser. And battlecruisers packed a punch almost as heavy as a battleship but with 22% more acceleration and a lot more maneuverability. Sure, they also had 40% less armor to achieve said acceleration and maneuverability, but I wasn’t going to dwell too much on that right now.

I was also smiling because I had an idea. It was a crazy one, but it just might work. “OK, people,” I said, “this is what we’re going to do.”

Chapter 11

“Roberts, you have those firing solutions locked in?” I asked my tactical officer.

“Roger that, Skipper,” he replied, excitement coloring his tone. He’d faced pirates with me before, but this was the first time we were evenly matched, more accurately, outmatched.

“Helm, you ready?”

“Yes, sir!” Donaldson called back in the same tone.

“Kat,” I called down to the CIC where my XO had taken herself for the coming fight, “all ready down there?”

“Yes, Captain, though I must formally protest that your plan is still very risky.”

I smiled. “I prefer to think of it as brilliant and daring, but your protest is noted for the record.”

My gaze fixed back on the sensor plot. The timing on this had to be perfect. Like, Billy Firebrand perfect. He was my favorite book character from my childhood, a daring mercenary captain, and he always timed things just right.

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

“Chief, now!” I ordered Donaldson at the helm, and we all felt our stomachs churn and our safety straps digging into our shoulders as our ship took a nosedive that the inertial compensators and grav generators couldn’t quite account for right away.

On the sensor plot, the icon representing my battlecruiser was diving below the asteroid relative to the system plane. With any luck, we’d follow the contours of the rock and pop out right in firing range of the pirate fleet.

“Marcucci, broadcast it!” I ordered, and my comms officer triggered the command to transmit a pre-recorded message in the clear. Everyone within 30 light minutes would hear it, even if they weren’t really listening.

“All task force units attack on my mark; deadly force is authorized!” my voice cried through the bridge speakers.

A few seconds later, fake acknowledgments came back to us in the voices of Roberts and Kat, broadcast from the probes we’d launched earlier, mimicking an attacking Promethean fleet.

Then, the nose of Lancer shifted vectors again as we started to come around the bottom of the asteroid and pitched upward to directly intercept the pirate flotilla, the main drive burning to help the thrusters change our vector so drastically. On the camera views, I could now actually see the five—no six; there was a smaller one tucked in behind one of the heavy cruiser analogs that we’d missed—pirate ships reflected in the local star’s light. We were that close.

“Fire!” I cried, and Roberts fired six ship-to-ship medium missiles from our bow tubes, all aimed at the largest of the enemy cruisers, which I was very much banking belonged to Anton Skalgan himself.

I can only imagine what it must have been like on the bridge of that pirate heavy cruiser. I could picture Skalgan, probably dressed in something ridiculous like metal-studded black leather, his eyes wide as he saw the six missiles coming straight at him and heard me calling for a full attack by a task force that really wasn’t there. But he had no way of knowing that, and I was banking on the suddenness of our attack to disorient him and his so-called officers just long enough to make them do something stupid.

“It’s the Navy! All ships, full burn!” I heard a rough male voice scream through the comm as the pirate admiral didn’t even bother to encrypt his panicked transmission. “Head for the jump point!”

“But, sir! The landing craft!” a woman’s voice protested.

“Forget them and save yourselves!” Skalgan yelled back, somewhat predictably.

“Captain, they’ve lit up their main drives and are burning directly away from us,” Lieutenant Zhou reported.

“Roberts,” I said grimly. “Fox three.”

With that simple command, two things happened in quick succession. First, my tactical officer triggered a hard yaw via our thrusters from his station, presenting our starboard flank to the enemy flotilla. Second, he launched a broadside of three ship-killer, nuclear-tipped missiles, targeted directly at Skalgan’s flagship. Then Lancer rolled, allowing him to launch three more ship-killers from our port broadside toward the second pirate cruiser. It was overkill in the extreme, but we needed to ensure that those two larger ships were taken out as quickly as possible with no chance of survival.

Have you ever seen a ship-killer in action? Of course, you haven’t. Virtually no civilians ever have. In fact, that was my first time firing one in anger. Before, I’d only fired virtual ship-killers in simulations. But now, watching those six massive missiles blast out of Lancer and fly on laser-straight courses toward the two enemy cruisers was a thing of absolute beauty. At our range—barely outside the safe blast radius—and with the bright heat plumes of those pirate ships driving at full power to home in on, our missiles couldn’t miss.

Seconds later, several of my crew whooped in triumph as Skalgan’s two heavy cruisers, which could have taken Lancer out if they’d worked together, disappeared in a flash of nuclear fire so bright the viewscreen dimmed the external camera image to save our eyes.

But the triumphant cries only lasted a moment. Because despite Skalgan himself now being almost undoubtedly dead, all hell was about to break loose.

Chapter 12

“Sir!” cried Roberts, his voice rising higher than I thought the man was capable of. “Incoming from multiple vectors! The pirates are firing back with their chase armament.”

“Kat,” I said into the internal comm. “Full countermeasures and defensive fire, now!”

I waited as the eight enemy ship-to-ship medium missiles—not nuclear-tipped like the larger ship-killers but armed with enough conventional explosives to still put holes in Lancer’s hull—streaked toward us. I expected to see my ship firing smaller anti-missile interceptors and for our laser clusters to start spearing the space around us to catch anything that slipped past those.

I waited…but saw nothing but the missiles streaking toward us.

“Kat!” I yelled down to the CIC. “Now!”

“Firing!” called back a male voice, not that of my XO, and I watched with relief and bated breath as our belated defensive fire quickly took out six of the eight incoming missiles. Two got through, and I cringed inwardly and braced myself before a couple of laser clusters got lucky and exploded them just short of our hull. The blasts were still enough to rock the ship, but a quick check of my implant showed no damage reports.

“Returning fire!” yelled Roberts.

“Belay that!” I ordered.

“Sir?”

“Marcucci, broadcast a demand that the remaining four ships surrender and tell them that any ship that does not immediately power down its weapons is getting a ship-killer right up the kilt.”

“Yes, sir!” the woman replied and then got to work.

It took about five minutes for the commanders of the two remaining pirate destroyers and the one light cruiser to decide who was in charge amongst them. Finally, they sorted it out, and one of their captains—it turned out to be the same woman who challenged Skalgan about abandoning their landing craft—called to formally surrender to me and my ‘fleet’.

By that time, Major Gunderson already had his marines loaded into shuttlecraft and ready to go. As soon as the surrender call came in, they launched to board the remaining pirate ships. At the same time, we finally got a message from one of the administrators down on the asteroid’s surface, reporting that the pirate forces that had landed there were laying down arms.

I left Roberts to monitor the boarding actions and the situation on the ground, with orders to call me immediately if something went wrong, and I headed down to the CIC.

Chapter 13

“I don’t know what happened, sir,” Senior Lieutenant Tony Dean said in a low tone so the rest of the officers and enlisted manning the CIC couldn’t hear. “It was like she just froze up. I had to take over and authorize the AI to release the defensive fire, and luckily, we got them all, but…”

He trailed off, but he didn’t need to finish. In a close-in battle where seconds counted, Kat had almost killed us all. Even now, I could see her sitting at her station, staring vacantly at the console in front of her, her mouth moving but no words coming out.

“Is she going to be OK, sir?” Dean asked, casting his worried gaze at Kat.

I knew his question had a double meaning. He wanted my assurances that Kat would snap out of whatever fugue state she was in. But more importantly, he wanted to know if she had just ended her career. I didn’t know how to answer either question.

I walked over to my XO and crouched down next to her. Her eyes didn’t even shift to meet mine, but up close, I could see the trail of a tear running down her cheek. “Kat,” I whispered softly. “You still with me?”

Nothing.

“Kitty, you OK?”

Nothing, not even a rebuke for using the hated nickname.

“Commander Henderson,” I snapped, “report!”

She looked startled and turned to stare at me as if she were just now noticing I was present in the CIC. Then she looked at her screen. “Uh, all enemy missiles destroyed, Captain. I…uh…” Then she leaned over and threw up all over the deck and my shoes.

Chapter 14

“Doc, talk to me,” I ordered Naval Surgeon Commander Emmeline Foster.

She frowned in response, stepping away from Kat’s bedside and motioning me to do the same as if the heavily sedated woman might somehow hear us.

“Battle shock, plain and simple, Captain,” Foster reported. “Oh, sure, we give it a much more intelligent and academic-sounding name in the formal report, but it’s really just that she broke under the stress of the battle, probably triggered by the sight of those missiles headed toward us.”

“Was it a one-time thing?” I asked hopefully.

Foster considered this for a moment, her frown getting deeper as she did so. “I wish I could say yes, Skipper; there’s just no way to know until she gets put in that situation again. But…” she paused, and I could tell what was coming. Foster, like me, knew Kat well and liked her. This would be as hard for her to say as it would be for me to hear.

“But,” she continued in a lower voice, “I don’t think it’s an isolated incident. I’ve rarely seen it this bad. She can’t even remember what happened from the time the enemy fired on us until you came to the CIC. That’s almost half an hour just lost from her memory. In my professional opinion…she’s unfit for combat duty.”

My shoulders slumped. Kat was my friend. She’d been over to my home for dinner with Carla and me. She’d served with me for two years. I’d gone so far as to invoke my father-in-law’s name with the Naval Personnel Office to get her assigned as my XO on Lancer because I saw her tremendous promise as a command officer underneath her prickly exterior. I’d been so worried her next commanding officer wouldn’t see it the way I did.

Now, to see her like this…

“I’m sorry, Captain,” Foster said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “But it looks like a clear case for a medical discharge.”

I looked her in the eye and shook my head. “No. We owe her better than that.”

The doctor nodded sadly but just turned and walked away while my hands curled into fists, and I stood there in frustrated despair.

Chapter 15

“You can’t just leave us here!” the woman on the viewscreen complained. She was a sight; from her full-body leather outfit to her spiky purple mohawk and dozens of facial piercings, she was practically a walking stereotype. She’d even tried to stab one of my Marine gunnery sergeants out of sheer anger when she’d finally figured out my bluff and that Lancer was alone without a fleet to back us up.

“You seem to think you have some sort of say in how this all goes,” I said to her bitterly, having a hard time not blaming her and her people for what had happened to Kat, even though I knew that was irrational. But either way, I hated pirates. So, my sympathy in this case was nonexistent.

“But what if the ship malfunctions?” she whined.

“That’s kind of the point, pirate,” I said, putting all the vitriol I could into the statement.

Lancer didn’t have enough room in our brig for the 300-plus pirates we’d captured on the four surviving destroyers. Nor could we fit the additional 50 or so pirates Skalgan had abandoned on the asteroid surface when he’d turned tail to run.

So, instead of even trying, I’d decided the best way to deal with the pirate horde was to cram them all into a single one of their destroyers. But not before I had my Marines strip it of every weapon inside and out and basically take sledgehammers to the engine room. The ship’s main drive would never work again without a drydock. I mean, have you ever seen a Marine with a sledgehammer when you tell him to destroy something? It was like Christmas morning came early for them.

We then towed that mostly wrecked destroyer full of pirates to a semi-stable orbit around the system’s star and left it adrift.

“There are too many people on board; there isn’t even enough life support for us to survive more than a week!” the pirate exclaimed angrily.

I shrugged. “Well, then you’ll just have to hope I can convince the rest of my task force to come back here with me and save you. Or maybe you can convince the good citizens of Poe to send some rescue ships. Don’t hold your breath. Or actually, maybe you should; your oxygen will last a lot longer that way.”

I made a cutting motion to Marcucci, and she ended the call. There was a certain poetic justice to leaving the pirates helplessly marooned, given how they usually treated the crews of the ships they attacked. But we’d send rescue ships for sure, despite what I’d said to the pirate. We just might wait until the last possible moment to do so. The wait and the worry would be good for them: a real character builder.

“Helm, get us out of this Crown-forsaken system,” I said wearily. “Flank speed to Cillian Heights and the rest of the task force. We’re running a little late.”

Chapter 16

Shortly after entering jump space, I had a very unpleasant duty to perform.

Katherine Henderson stood rigidly at attention in front of the desk in my quarter’s attached outer office. Her eyes were fixed straight ahead, and her jaw was clenched so tight that I could see the muscles of her face trembling under the strain.

I wanted to avoid this conversation. OK, what I really wanted to do was maybe get drunk and just forget about the whole thing. But that wasn’t the way to solve problems, and I knew it.

“Commander, sit down,” I said.

“If it’s all the same to you, Captain, I’ll stand,” she replied, her voice scratchy.

I sighed. “Kat, would you please just relax for a second?”

She looked at me now for the first time, and I could see the despair behind her eyes. She was expecting the worst and wasn’t far off in doing so. As Lancer’s captain, I had to render an initial judgment about her actions during the battle, and my ruling, even an informal one, would be the anchor point for the subsequent investigation and ultimate decision the Navy would make about her future.

Part of me wanted to go easy on her, to sweep the whole thing under the rug as if I could somehow convince the 796 other officers and spacers on my ship to pretend they didn’t know what had happened. But even had that been possible, I knew it would be the wrong thing to do.

Because no matter how much I wanted to believe Kat would never freeze like that again, I couldn’t risk putting lives on the line like that. After all, she’d almost gotten a good portion of us killed. Next time, it might not be ‘almost’.

“Kat, listen, you’re not fit for combat duty. I’m confining you to your quarters and to the med bay for the rest of this cruise. When we get to Cillian Heights, I will have you transferred to a fast naval transport so you can return home for treatment.”

Her eyes welled up with tears. “I don’t want to go home,” she almost whispered.

“I know,” I told her soberly, meeting her gaze. “I know, Kat.”

Chapter 17

Admiral Norton was not happy when Lancer arrived at Cillian Heights two full days behind schedule. Nor was he overjoyed to see the paint damage on our outer hull from the two missiles that had been intercepted close enough to leave a mark.

However, once he reviewed the records of the battle, he was all smiles. Most admirals are when their underlings do things, even against orders, that they can take credit for.

Now, I was standing in his office onboard his battleship, HMS Fortitude, the flagship of Task Force 28, of which my own Lancer was a part.

“This was fine work, Captain,” he said. “Fine work indeed. I bet they’ll even make it into a case study at the academy. I’ve already prepared my report for the admiralty, and I’ve recommended you for another King’s Star. That will be your second if I’m not mistaken.” I didn’t reply; assuming they awarded it, it would actually be my fourth, but the events surrounding two of them were so classified that I wasn’t even allowed to talk about them.

“But this business with Henderson is ugly,” he said, his voice turning from effusive to somber. “Are you absolutely sure you want to stand by your recommendation?”

I looked him square in the eye and nodded.

He frowned. “I’m not sure I can endorse it, son. I know that freezing up in battle isn’t a crime, but longstanding tradition demands she be discharged immediately. We can make it a medical discharge so she still gets her benefits, but that’s the best we can do.”

It was my turn to frown, though so far, he might as well have been reading the script I envisioned for this meeting. Now came my lines.

“Sir. I must protest in the strongest terms possible. Commander Henderson has always served with distinction. It would be a disservice to her and the Navy to punish her so gravely for a mistake that lasted a few minutes compared to years of loyal and effective service.”

He shook his head. “Sorry, Brad. It’s my reputation on the line as much as yours. It’s a discharge, plain and simple.”

That was about when I wanted to leap across the desk, grab him by his uniform lapels, and shake the stupid out of him. But I could imagine just how happy my father-in-law, Admiral Oliphant, would be to see me brought up on charges of assaulting a superior officer, so I refrained. Instead, I gave Norton a melancholy smile.

“You know, Admiral,” I said as smoothly as I could. “The King’s ball is next month. Carla and I were invited. Will we be seeing you there?”

His face morphed from solemnity to a sort of hungry look. “No, uh, I’m afraid I cannot attend this coming ball.” He and I both knew that he wasn’t even invited. Not all the admiralty was—and Norton had a particular reputation as a bore in social situations. But, typically, as the son-in-law of a mighty fleet admiral, I was invited to pretty much all of the King’s balls. I hated going to them—my dress uniform always made my neck itch, and I always felt horribly out of place—but that was beside the point.

“That’s a pity, sir. I was going to ask if you could join us at our table.”

Norton licked his lips and broke eye contact. “Well, you see, I’m afraid that my invitation was…lost.” His tone was heavy with disappointment; being at Admiral Oliphant’s table was usually reserved for favored vice admirals and their wives, not rear admirals sent to operate out in the boondocks of the Federation like the Corpus Christi cluster.

I nodded knowingly. “Of course, sir. But I’m sure I could have a chat with His Majesty’s event planner and have them resend your invite.”

He looked back at me, and the hunger was back in his expression. “That would be most appreciated, Captain.”

“Of course, sir. Happy to do it for a man such as yourself, especially given how much you stand up for your people.” I said this next part slowly, hoping he’d be bright enough to get it.

To my relief, it was only a few seconds until his expression turned to a knowing one. But I was surprised, as well, to see a small smile forming on his lips. “You know, Captain Mendoza, I believe I will endorse your recommendation regarding Commander Henderson. Given her years of loyal service, it’s only right that we don’t put her out in the cold.”

I smiled. “I’m glad you agree, Admiral. I’ll look forward to seeing you at the ball.”

When I left his office a minute or two later, it was with a great sense of satisfaction for a terrible situation turned slightly better. Of course, that relief disappeared as soon as I realized that I was going to have to ask Carla to convince the King’s event planner to add Admiral Norton to the ball’s invite. And ask her to persuade her father, who hated Norton, to invite the man to his table.

That conversation was not going to go well. I would have rather gone back and faced twelve pirate ships in the Poe system.

Chapter 18

“You’ll be just fine, Commander,” I said in the most confident voice I could muster.

Kat Henderson looked at me, but I could see in her eyes she didn’t believe me. “Of course, sir,” she said solemnly.

“Seriously, Kat—Katherine,” I told her. “Station duty isn’t all that bad. Think of how nice it might be to work regular hours and actually have a life outside of work.” It was a weak attempt to paint a silver lining on a very dark cloud, but compared to what might have been, it wasn’t all that bad.

She frowned but then nodded. “I suppose I’ll just have to make the best of it, Captain.” There was an edge of anger to her tone; despite the reality that there was no way I could have kept back my report on her actions, she was still angry with me for it. But mostly, she was simply despondent that she’d lost command of the Wilkes before she even had a chance to start it.

I smiled at her as best I could. “Listen, folks have short memories. Maybe there will be an opportunity to get a ship down the road once you’ve got your head on straight. And if that ever happens, I’ll be the first to have you flying at my back.”

She didn’t return the smile but saluted wordlessly and turned to leave my office. Her posture was ramrod straight, and her steps were so measured she might as well have been walking in parade back at the Academy. I watched her retreating back and tried not to wince when she practically slammed the hatch shut behind her.

I doubted Kat would ever forgive me. Sure, she might one day realize that I had no choice, but I knew that would likely never void the emotional response that she naturally had at being ripped from command and essentially put out to pasture. And I knew I could never tell her how hard I had to fight even to get her that much; it would only undermine her confidence even more to learn just how close she came to a discharge.

The exchange with Kat and the emotions it left behind wholly wiped out any happiness I might have had upon receiving a note from Admiral Norton that the King had approved my fourth King’s Star. I’d trade all four of those stupid things if it would give Kat back her career.

A light knock on my office hatch pulled me out of my dark musings. It opened to reveal the face of Commander Roberts, my acting XO.

“Sir,” he said, stepping inside the room and saluting. “The courier ship brought a message from your wife.”

“Oh yeah? Any idea what it says?”

“Something about you’d better be on Prometheus in time for the ball, and you’d better be bringing home a lot of chocolate after she got, and I quote, ‘that horribly boring man’ an invitation. Do you know what she’s talking about?”

I smiled. “Roberts, you’re single, right?”

“Uh, yes, sir.”

“Good. Take my advice: whatever you do, don’t marry an admiral’s daughter.”

THE END

For the continuation of Brad and Kat's story, read, The Worst Detectives in the Federation, Book Five of Dumb Luck and Dead Heroes!

Books by Skyler Ramirez

Dumb Luck & Dead Heroes

The Worst Ship in the Fleet

The Worst Spies in the Sector

The Worst Pirate Hunters in the Fringe

The Worst Rescuers in the Republic

The Worst Detectives in the Federation

A Star Nation in Peril

Set in the same universe as Dumb Luck and Dead Heroes.

Rogue Agent

Suicide Mission (coming March 2024)

The Brad Mendoza Chronicles

Set in the same universe as Dumb Luck and Dead Heroes.

Saving the Academy

Battle for Poe

The Four Worlds

The Four Worlds: The Truth

The Four Worlds: Subversion

The Four Worlds: Wrath of Mars (coming 2024)

Revolution: A Four Worlds Story

About The Author

Skyler S. Ramirez

I just love writing. It's as simple as that. My goal is to write books that my readers enjoy and that celebrate everyday imperfect heroes. I want to show that everyone, no matter how life has dealt with them or how they've dealt with life, deserves a second chance and can go on to do amazing things. Just look at Brad and Jessica in Dumb Luck and Dead Heroes or Jinny Ambrosa and Tyrus Tyne in The Four Worlds.

It's important to me that everyone be able to read my books, including my teenage children, so I purposefully leave out any swearing or graphic scenes. In this, I follow a tradition set by many (far better) writers before me, most notably in my life, Louis L'Amour. I can only aspire to write even half as good as Mr. L'Amour!

As for the personal side, I live in Texas with my wife and four children (and often a revolving door of exchange students), and I work for a major tech company for my day job. But writing is my passion, and I often toil into the early hours of morning, especially on the weekends, and it's all worth it when I see people enjoy my books.

Thanks for reading.