Battlecruiser Alamo: The Price of Admiralty (9 page)

He fixed it to the wall, locking its magnetic clamps down, then stared at the picture. He looked for copies of the worry lines he was sure were in his face, tried to find a glimmer of indecision in his expression, but couldn't find anything. He couldn't blame the Patrolmen for their doubts, not when he was feeling them himself.

"I just hope I'm not screwing this up too much, Dad." He turned back to start unpacking another pocket, stacking a couple of cases on the desk, then looked back out at the stars again.

Chapter 7

The bridge was a hive of activity, Marshall attempting to conceal his enthusiasm as he waited for the clock to count down the seconds until their departure. It was surprising how many people had managed to find excuses to be around; Caine was at the Tactical station, ostensibly monitoring defensive system preparations, and Zakharova had stolen the Watch Officer's station, relegating the recently arrived Sub-Lieutenant Kibaki to hanging around by the forward stations, looking over consoles and pretending to be busy. Mulenga at least had an excuse to be up at the astrogation station, running his plot of the path to Lalande 21185 for about the twentieth time, hopefully coming up with the same answer each time.

In a bid to look busy, Marshall scanned through the report his Exec had handed to him a few moments before. It read more like a massive personality clash than a bid to determine the identity of the group that had stolen Alamo's spares; to be fair, they didn't have much material to work with.

The potential conclusions seemed to range from a Lunar Republic plot to lure the ship into a trap to a couple of unfortunate gunrunners caught by surprise; he dropped the pad into his lap, shaking his head. Caine rose, walking to stand behind Marshall's chair.

"This is all a bit low key, isn't it," she said.

He craned his neck up to look at her, "What do you mean?"

"First launch of a Triplanetary ship? There should be flags, salutes, a bottle of champagne smashed against the hull. A speech from the President of the Confederation. Instead we're sneaking out like thieves in the night."

Marshall chuckled, "You sound disappointed."

"We're missing out on what by all rights should have been a hell of a party."

"Sure. Lots of dignitaries making interminable speeches and hogging the canapes. You'd have been trying to sneak out after half an hour."

She smiled, "Hey, a party's a party."

Marshall tapped a button on its workstation. "Bridge to Engineering."

"Quinn here, skipper," the tinny voice echoed through the speaker.

"Is our FTL drive fully operational again?"

"Purring like a kitten, boss." Marshall looked up at Caine, who smiled and shook her head. "We're all set to go down here."

He turned to face his Exec, "Lieutenant Zakharova, is the ship ready for deep space?"

After a quick glance down her status board, she replied, "All stations report condition green. Ready for deep space, Captain."

He took a deep breath, then turned to the communications station; Weitzman was still on duty. "Spaceman, signal Mariner Station docking control and request permission to depart."

The young technician turned and smiled, "Aye, sir," before returning to his station.

"Sub-Lieutenant Franklin," he address the officer sitting at the Guidance station, "prepare a least-time course to take us to the point of gravitational stability."

"Aye, aye, Captain," she replied, hunching over her station – though Marshall knew full well that she'd had that course prepared for hours. He'd sat at stations like that often enough to know the usual pastime when at station-keeping – plotting courses to somewhere more interesting. "Course computed and ready, sir."

"We have departure clearance, Captain," Weitzman said.

Marshall sat back in his chair, smiling. "Sub-Lieutenant, by all means, take us out."

She manipulated a series of controls, and the feel of the gravity changed as the ship began to slowly accelerate, the rotation dampened automatically as the engines took over gravity
provision
.

The biggest headache of long-duration space travel; half the crew would be quietly swallowing their garn pills in the next few minutes. With a couple of button presses, a holographic projection of the ship appeared in front of Marshall, slowly beginning to move down a long red line towards a final point. The captain turned his head back to look at the astrogation station.

"Lieutenant Mulenga, are you ready?" The Titanian officer turned, nodded once, then returned to his station. Marshall turned back to face the viewscreen, continuing, "Then the call is yours, Lieutenant."

The only evidence that the ship was moving at all was Mariner Station slowly moving away in the background. A countdown clock began to run, Mulenga counting down to his planned transition to hendecaspace.

Without realizing it, Marshall began to tense up as the minutes ran down, the bridge crew working around him. He'd never realized just how much and how little the captain actually did; a part of him wanted to push Franklin out of the way and take over Guidance Operations himself. Not really the right thing to do, though. For a second, he contemplated going back to his office, or heading down to the mess deck or his quarters – quarters that aside from slinging a couple of bags into, he had yet to visit.

"Attention all stations," Mulenga called from the astrogation station, "FTL transition in one minute. Stand by."

No time to leave his chair now. He looked out at the viewscreen again, the attention of everyone in the room somehow focused on it. Even Zakharova, who must have done transitions on this ship a dozen times in the past, seemed enraptured. Thirty seconds to go, then twenty. The clock continued to inexorably count down, until there was a brief, blinding flash of Cerenkov blue, and the stars disappeared as the viewscreen clicked off. No-one could look at hendecaspace and remain sane.

"Transition successful, Captain," Mulenga reported. "Emergence at Lalande 21185 in nine days, ten hours."

"Thank you, Lieutenant. Excellent work, everyone," Marshall said.

Zakharova stood up, then looked down at her watch. "Sub-Lieutenant Kibaki, I rather think that Alpha Watch has been on duty long enough. Signal for shift change at midnight."

The graying sub-lieutenant looked disappointed; he'd only been on board for a couple of hours. His technicians, on the other hand, had mostly been on duty throughout the entire preparation for departure and more besides; Weitzman looked as if he was ready to fall asleep in his seat now the pressure was off. "Aye, Lieutenant."

Marshall likewise stood up, looking around the bridge, "I think I'm going to go and get something to eat. Care to join me, Lieutenant?" He turned to his exec, who shook her head.

"I've still got a lot of paperwork to catch up on, Captain. Perhaps next time."

Somehow Marshall got the idea that despite their recent detente, 'next time' might be quite a while away. He walked into the elevator, pausing briefly as Caine dashed in to join him, then stabbed a button for the mess deck. The elevator began its passage back down the length of the ship.

"I really get the idea that she doesn't like you, Danny."

"Noticed that, huh? We had a little talk, thought we might be making some progress."

"Then you assigned her to work with our surprise mystery guest. You should have heard Quinn when he saw that shuttle."

He smiled, "Look of a kid with a new toy to play with?"

"More like the kid about to disassemble his father's vidphone."

The doors opened, and the pair walked over to the food dispensers, grabbing a plastic tray. The menu selection was the usual rudimentary mix of foods; Marshall selected for 'Chicken' and Caine for 'Pork'; that the resultant slabs of meat looked almost identical didn't come as any real surprise. The deck was fairly empty, only a few of the tables occupied. Marshall frowned as he looked around the room.

"Problem, skipper?"

"We've somehow managed to get segregated seating. Martians in one corner, Titanians in another, the Patrol mob over there."

She shrugged. "Only to be expected. No-one knows each other yet." She looked at him again. "Relax, it's just going to take time. Unless you want to institute some sort of a seating plan?"

Marshall launched at that, "That's what Colonel Duncan would have done. I swear that's about the only thing he didn't do."

"Wasn't he the one who tried to introduce mandatory musical theater?"

"His idea of occupying the crew on a long patrol. Crazy."

The two of them grabbed a central table, taking seats opposite each other. Marshall took a forkful of his carniculture-bred food, adopted the expected grimace, but was pleasantly surprised at the taste of the food. Strong odor of garlic, but not actually overpowering. And the sauce was actually edible, rather than just coming out of a packet. He looked up to see his counterpart similarly surprised.

"Should have joined the Patrol instead of the Service if this is the food they're serving."

"I'm enjoying this," Caine said, shaking her head in disbelief.

"Complements of the Triplanetary Espatier Corps," said Esposito, clutching a tray with her hands, hovering around the table. "Mind if I join you?"

"By all means," Marshall waved her towards a chair. "I didn't know you'd brought a dietary chemist with you?"

She smiled, "I didn't. One of my guys found a crate of spice and herb concentrates, and thought it was wasted where it was."

"Man ought to get a medal," Caine said.

The three of them settled down to enjoy their dinner as the mess hall filled up; it seemed that everyone had been waiting for the ship to make the hendecaspace transition before coming down to eat. Most of them appeared to be pleasantly surprised by the food, but they continued to sit in their segregated stations.

"Interesting," Esposito said.

"What is?" Marshall replied.

The young espatier gestured around, "It's like a little sociodynamic experiment. Look over there – Dietz at the head of his table, everyone else lined up by rank. Then the group from Titan just clustered around randomly. Everyone's just dropping back into their old habits."

"That's what you were studying, wasn't it?" Caine said, chewing a chunk of nearly-pork.

She nodded, "Graduated three months ago. I did my thesis on
e
arly space colonization, and the blending of the different cultures into the Confederation. That's why I wanted to join the Triplanetary Fleet; we're going to put all of this into practice."

"Funny," Marshall said, "I thought we were in a combined military service, not conducting a sociological experiment."

Esposito opened her mouth for a second, looking nervously around, "I'm sorry, sir, I..."

Caine and Marshall exchange a quick glance before Marshall started to chuckle. "Relax, Ensign. I'm just pulling your leg. Commanding officer's prerogative."

"And one I remember you complaining about more than once," Caine volunteered.

"True. Are you concerned by this?" He gestured around the clumps of crewmen around the room with his fork, sending a sliver of meat flying onto the deck. "If this crew doesn't work together properly, we're sunk. I know there was some talk about staffing crews by planet, but it didn't make it past the Formation Committee. Not enough volunteers, for one thing."

"I don't think you can force it. You've already mixed up the duty rosters, which would have been my primary recommendation. Aside from that, I reckon you need a crisis. A battle would be excellent."

Caine's eyes bulged, "You want a battle?"

"Preferably one we win." She looked at the two of them, then broke out in laughter. "Sorry, I couldn't resist."

The three of them laughed together, when another figure appeared at the table. Marshall looked up to see Lieutenant Mulenga standing next to him, his tray full of assorted leaves and some sort of vile-smelling liquid.

"I was wondering if I might join the three of you."

"Certainly, Lieutenant," Marshall said. "I'd rather not have an all-Martian table. Too many of those in this hall as it is."

"To be expected. I must admit to being hungry; this is the first meal I have eaten since I was placed in detention."

Esposito almost choked taking a swig of her drink, "You were in detention?"

The dark-skinned astrogator nodded, "I have prepared a report for Sub-Lieutenant Tyler.
I had several opportunities to make an escape during my incarceration.
My recommendation would be that he makes increasing security in the detention block an early priority."

"You were sitting in a detention cell and your only thought was how to boost the security?" Caine asked.

"Certainly, Lieutenant. I knew that Captain Marshall would secure my release in relatively short order. I must say that the ship's cuisine has improved since then." He took another bite of salad. "This is excellent. My complements to the food processors."

"How did you two know each other, anyway?" Esposito asked, looking at Marshall and Caine.

"We flew together during the war. Tenth Interceptor, based out of Phobos for a couple of years. Fun times. By then it was dragging down to a series of skirmishes, all the big battles were over."

"Spent most of it listening to broadcasts from Vesta, waiting to hear that the war was over.
By the end
I swear half the pilots were spending more time sending out job applications than they were in the cockpit. Our Captain, I hasten to add, was not one of them."

Mulenga crunched through his salad, "I was on frigates during the war. Eight years and I managed to avoid any of the battles. Just one convoy run after another, hoping we'd have sufficient delta-v to avoid interception. I did manage a couple of hops out-system; those were rather more interesting."

"I've never even left Mars-space," Esposito said, wide-eyed.

"I never went any further than Barnard's Star," the astrogator said. "Two trips to Proxima, one to Alpha as well."