Birthright: Battle for the Confederation- Consequence (20 page)

              "That's the rub, Senator," Admiral Bak said with a barely-suppressed grimace.  "We were on station to support a covert op; the kind of mission that can change a war.  I need to give the other party some time, preferably hear from them myself, before we move."

              Thyatt shifted a bit to look at the admiral.  "But won't this right here change the war?  We have the Senate, we have this ring data you told us about, and we have a loyalist fleet to take us home.  Isn't that everything you could ask for?"  The senator's tone, while neutral, left little doubt what he expected of the situation.

              "We can get our own house in order, yes.  But what about the Primans?  Nothing will have changed there, and they might even escalate the conflict when they realize we removed their ally at the top of our government.  We need something that will change things on their end as well."

              "Such as?"

              Admiral Bak looked away from the senator before answering.  "An operation that nobody can know exists, at least at present.  I'm running it myself with the full knowledge that it might end my career, but Senator, this is the sort of thing that will change the
entire
war, both sides.  It has to be done, and done right."

              A pause.  "And how much time do we spend here, waiting?"

              "I don't know.  I was prepared to wait for weeks if need be.  Your arrival changes everything, and I admit right now I don't have much of a plan.  That needs to change."

Eleven

              Loren and Velk were working on their own plan.  They needed to alert Confed, give the rest of the Priman fleet a chance to catch up in order to have Tash removed as Commander, and preferably disable the ship they were on so as to make the Commander a nice, juicy target to anyone with torpedoes to spare.

              First, they needed to do two things: figure out where they were, and find a way to make contact with Avenger, which Loren assumed would be following.   He knew his ship had been out-system in Callidor, and with the Primans' home fleet suddenly mobilizing, he hoped Captain Elco would have given chase. 

              "We cannot do any of that from this room," Velk stated.  "There are any number of places on this ship where we can access telemetry and communications, including maintenance spaces and locations the crew wouldn't think to look.  The problem is getting out of here."

              "I think I can fix that.  You have any problems knocking out a fellow Priman?"

              "Incapacitating, no.  Injuring or killing, yes."

              "Just making them sleep for a little bit is all we need.  Please, lie down by the far side of the table there and follow my lead.  You'll need to make like I just gave you a beating."

              Velk's eyebrow shot up, a look of annoyance on his face.

              "For the good of your people," Loren said in as close a scolding tone as he dared, pointing with his index finger.  Velk was, after all, bigger and stronger than he was.             

              With a low grumble, Velk lie down on the deck.  Loren grabbed one of the chairs they'd been using and without hesitation hit the display panel next to the hatch frame as hard as he could.  He was rewarded with a crash as the panel shattered, chair leg separating from the rest of the piece.  There was even a wisp of smoke snaking its way towards the ceiling from a mangled gap in the frame.  He hoped he didn't start an electrical fire that killed everyone; that would seriously dampen his escape plan.  He yelled once at the hatch and then raced over by Velk, vaulting and sliding across the surface of the table to get on the other side.

              No sooner had he landed than the hatch slid open revealing two armed guards.  Their surprise turned to anger as they saw Loren standing over the inert form of Velk, chair leg in his hand held high as a weapon.  Whatever they might have known about Representative Velk and his reason for being held in this room, they didn't take kindly to having a human attacking one of their own.

              They raised their rifles at him.  "He started it!" Loren yelled as he dropped the chair leg and hit the deck.  The guards advanced, one stopping to take a knee and check on Velk. 

              Velk, in turn, grabbed the front of the man's uniform and drew him closer as he used his other arm to deliver a vicious elbow to the face.  The man was down for the count.

              The other Priman, seeing Loren on the ground with hands on his head in a submissive gesture, turned his head to see Velk hit his comrade.  The guard swung around and pointed his rifle at Velk, who was now standing.  "Representative!" he yelled before Loren grabbed him from behind in a sleeper hold.  The Priman tried to spin and dislodge Loren, but it wasn't working and all he did was use up the little oxygen he had quicker.

              The guard sunk to his knees, look of confusion on his face as he stared at Velk.

              Velk, in turn, got to his knees in front of the soldier who was about to lose consciousness.  "You know the Commander is going to destroy this entire galaxy, and our people with it?" He said it softly, as one would to a child who couldn't understand a difficult situation.

              "Perhaps," the man muttered, and a second later he went limp as he passed out.  Loren gently lowered him to the deck, gasping for air and leaning back on his hands. 

              "I have to stop getting into messes like this," he said as he tried to get his breathing under control.

              "It's not what
you
want, Commander Stone," Velk admonished as he rummaged through the soldier's web gear for restraints.  "It's what is needed of you.  One day you shall rest.  But this is not the day.  Tomorrow does not look good, either."

              Loren almost passed out at that.  Did Velk just make a joke?  He must have been hanging out with Loren too much.

              On the bridge of Tash's flagship, which he had named Harbinger, things were quiet and orderly.  Tash had been on Velk's command ship at times during the conflict and had seen the room bustle with activity; Tash wanted quiet, order; the tasks of organizing information for the Commander was, in his eyes, best done in another location and made available through aides and Representatives; a calm place was required for him to lead effectively. 

              To that end, his bridge was staffed like any other ship in the fleet.  He had a captain who ran the vessel, and Tash's command dais at the back of the bridge was where he held court.  One level lower in the ship, in a layout which Tash would be pained to admit was a close copy of Confed's C3 design philosophy, was where all the information came in and was catalogued.

              Tash now stood by the captain's chair, waiting for confirmation on data from the long range scanner station. 

              "There it is, Commander," said the captain, a confident woman named Sohk, "a Confed fleet.  And a big one at that."

              Tash looked at the large display where she was pointing and saw it all.  Priman sensors were still better than Confed's, and they had a good ten minutes before the Confeds would see his own forces coming.  The Confed fleet was outnumbered better than two to one, while their treaty would require their commander to stand down and answer hails from Tash and his fleet.  Right about then was when his ships would open up on the Confeds and begin the process of smashing these upstarts once and for all.  After that, Delos.  Later, the entire spiral arm.  Yet today would be the day people associated with the beginning of the final cleansing in this galaxy. 

              Tash smiled as he looked at Captain Sohk.  "You are familiar with the plan, Captain, so I leave it up to you.  We will establish communications, and when the time is right, annihilate them."

              Aboard Ravine's ship, Scythe, she was having a similar strategy conference with Captain Vol.

              "How far behind Tash's fleet are we?" she asked again.

              "Less than five minutes, Commander," Vol replied, "but the Confederation forces will allow Representative Tash's forces to get in the first blow.  Our sensor operators estimate thirty ships in the Confed formation; combined with our fleet, that still leaves us with only fifty hulls.  Representative Tash will have the advantage at all turns."

              It was not what Ravine wanted to hear, but they'd have to make due.  She needed to stop Tash from his rogue rampage; Representative Velk held such convictions that this war could end short of all-out annihilation that she wanted to give him the chance to make that happen. 

              "I will use a bridge station to attempt to communicate with the Confed forces once we arrive," Ravine stated.

              "My ship is yours, Commander."

              Bak was still attending to the senators, though he'd recently brought in a number of crew to hand off that process.  He was not going to spend his afternoon trying to coordinate wardrobe requests and repeat the same briefings over and over.

              He had almost made it to the hatch leading out of the main guest tactical plotting spaces when one of the senior senators had stopped him to ask one more question.  At about that time, his com link chimed and he heard a shipwide page through the address system.

              "Captain Montari to Admiral Bak," was the call.

              "My apologies, Senator," Bak said without really meaning it.  He reached for the panel alongside the hatch and tapped in his code to call Captain Montari on the bridge.

              "Admiral Bak here," he stated.

              "Admiral, our long range scanners are picking up a large Priman fleet headed our way."

              "On an intercept course?"

              "It appears so.  We can't trace them much farther back than they are right now, but their course has been unchanged since we logged the contact."

              Bak's mind started racing.  The treaty required him to heave to and make contact with an approaching Priman force.  But this force was about to cross into Confed space.  Still, that was allowed by Dennix's ridiculous pact as well.  He didn't have any real options other than to comply, but couldn't think of anything near the Vesta System, the location of their vigil for Avenger, that would warrant a Priman fleet.

              Admiral Bak turned to the senator.  "My apologies, but this requires my attention."  He turned to the panel and continued.  "Captain, I'm on my way to the bridge."

              Admiral Bak was on the main bridge at the captain's station on the starboard forward side.

              "How long until we merge, Captain?" he asked.

              "About ten minutes, give or take," the Trin captain replied.

              "Send the tenders and auxiliaries away," Bak commanded.  "If we stay here long enough, we'll call them back, but our ships are topped off right now, correct?"

              "Yes, Admiral."

              "Alright.  I'll make contact from the Flag Bridge then.  Make sure our formation looks nice; we can at least impress them with our ship handling skills even if we can't fire on them."

              Loren and Velk were in a dim maintenance crawlway at a computer terminal.  Velk had scanned the compartment logs and discovered nobody had even conducted a maintenance inspection in over two weeks, which elicited two responses. First, it was shameful that Tash wasn't keeping his 'flagship' in top condition, evidenced by the fact that his crew wasn't even surveying the compartments aboard.  Second, that they had a very realistic chance of nobody disturbing them, especially with the ship now rigged for combat.

              There was a barely discernible kick that rolled through the ship; Loren and Velk turned to look at each other.

              "The hyperdrive has disengaged," Velk stated.

              "I guess whatever Tash's plan was, this is the spot," Loren confirmed.  He tapped in the commands Velk had told him to use, and was rewarded with a screen full of data.  First was a top down view of the local sensor take; the seventy ships of Tash's fleet arranged in combat formation.  Loren worked to enter the comm frequency of Avenger in another window on the screen and heard the digital chirp of a data system handshake.

              "Commander Stone to Avenger," Loren said softly.

              There was a pause during which Loren rechecked the frequency.  He'd long since committed Avenger's discrete code to memory, but at times like this even the most confident thoughts were shot through with doubt.  While normally communication with a ship in hyperspace was slow or almost impossible, Loren also knew that if Avenger was as near as he was hoping then they'd be close enough for a normal conversation.

              "Avenger here," came a stern reply through the speakers after what seemed like an eternity.  "Captain Elco speaking.  Loren, that's really you?"

              Loren showed a relieved smile, a genuine one as opposed to the semi-fake ones he'd been putting on the last few weeks as the strain of war and this mission wore him down.  "Sure is, Captain.  I'm initiating visual."

              At that, Captain Elco's face appeared, rest of the bridge in the background behind him.  He peered at his screen, probably trying to figure out where Loren was.

              "Interesting accommodations," Elco replied.

              "There's a great story that goes with it, Captain, but I figure I'll get right to it.  The former Priman Commander, Tash, took off with his entire home fleet of around seventy capital ships, and he's planning on an end run right through the Confederation to Delos.  I don't know that we can stop him."

              Elco's expression sagged as he digested the news.  "We're a few minutes behind another Priman force, which is a few minutes behind Tash's fleet.  They're headed up by the new Commander, the former Representative Ravine.  She only has about twenty ships, though.  The Council has relieved Tash temporarily; I assume you two had something to do with that?"

              "We were removed as prisoners before any resolution was made," Velk commented, entering the field of the camera's vision.  "If she is in charge, she is the moderate influence we need in order to seek another option over simple annihilation for all parties involved."

              "Well, I'm all for not being annihilated," Elco said with a straight face, "but I don't know what help we'll be.  Still, we'll revert guns blazing.  Do you have a target for us?   Perhaps a ship that has somebody like Tash aboard?"