First Command (29 page)

      
Sally taught One-Eyed Pete early on that her not having a day off resulted in a drop in the quality of food served in the restaurant.
 
Complaints from customers made the point to Pete that Sally deserved a day off.
 
Sally made sure that all the staff shared in this day of rest.
 
Pete made the mistake of holding Russell back one First Day to help him with inventory.
 
The next day saw so many complaints on the quality of food that he never made that mistake again.

      
Before Russell literally fell out of the sky, Sally had spent her days off in her quarters reading or working on odd bits of needlepoint.
 
She had been mightily bored.
 
Now that Russell was in her life, First Day took on a whole new meaning.

      
Plain old Sally had never thought that romance would ever intrude into her life, but Russell dispelled that silly notion.
 
When Sally was with him, she didn’t mind she was a captive.
 
She didn’t mind that another had bought her life and she was merely property in many people’s eyes.

      
She was doing what she loved–cooking.
 
She was the head chef in the best restaurant on the planet.
 
The most important people on the planet respected her, so much so that she was almost offered her freedom.
 
All of that paled in comparison to the love she felt from Russell.

      
Theirs was not a great passion.
 
Sex was not a great part of their love.
 
Russell realized early on that Sally only engaged in sex to make him feel better, not because it gave her any pleasure.
 
Russell soon figured this out and though he was gentle and patient, she never felt the pleasure he did.

      
Russell couldn’t bring passion into her life, so he worked hard to keep romance in their relationship.
 
He wanted to marry her, but marriage between captives was forbidden.
 
He made sure she had flowers in her quarters at all times.
 
He always treated her like a lady.
 
When he was with her, she was the only woman in existence.

      
Their main activities were walks in the parks and quiet times reading together.
 
Theirs was a quiet, but intense love.

* * * * *

      
Steven Maynard had concluded his visit with the Debran women.
 
He was conferring with the House staff and enjoying the view of the two younger Debran women lounging by the pool below the housekeeper’s office window.
 
He advised the housekeeper that in the future the Debrans would eat meals from the house pantry and there would be no more take out.
 

      
His communicator went off and a text message appeared, informing him that one of the perimeter warning sensors activated.
 
His Defense HQ requested permission to send Torpedo Squadron Six to investigate.
 
Steven mentally reviewed which one was Torpedo Squadron Six.
 
He remembered that Six was the squadron with six Scylla and six Charybdis.
 
Yes, that was the one he would choose.
 
He authorized the action.

      
Maynard had been expecting this.
 
He guessed now was as good a time as any to see if his plans for the defense of Barataria were any good.
 
He jumped into his ground car and hurried to his defense headquarters.

Chapter Eleven

      
Twelve pilots and twelve torpedo men raced to their ships.
 
They strapped themselves in, ran system checks, and reported their ships ready for take off.
 
The squadron commander split the squadron into two sections, one he led, and the other by his XO.
 
He gave three Scylla and three Charybdis to his XO’s section and kept the remainder under his control.
 
He led the take off and ordered his XO to concentrate his initial attack by his section to the right and above the approaching target and he would concentrate on left and below.
 
After the first shots were fired the two sections were free to engage as the situation warranted.

* * * * *

      
Kelly was seated back on the bridge as sensors reported a second laser burst transmission ahead of them.
 
Kelly ordered gunnery to take out the early warning satellite, and then watched with pride as one of the turret gunners put his first burst into the center of the target.
 
The satellite exploded into pieces that hurtled off into the depths of the star cluster.

      
Kelly was about to direct sensors to identify any further early warning satellites early enough to destroy them before they reported, when sensors informed them they had twelve hostile ships inbound port bow and starboard bow, high and low.
 
Kelly authorized the gunners to engage all targets.

      
Chief Johnson reported twenty torpedoes inbound in the forward hemisphere.
 
The gunners expertly destroyed all these targets as they presented themselves.
 
More torpedoes appeared on the sensors.

      
Kelly noticed that three of the torpedo ships were bunched up and arrayed almost dead ahead of the Vigilant.
 
He ordered gunnery to use the nose rail guns to take out these three ships.
 

The gunner sitting in the bridge gunnery position lined up the cross hairs and took out the closest ship.
 
In quick succession, he shifted point of fire and took out the second ship.
 
The third ship turned away, but not in time to avoid the next rail gun burst.
 
That made three down and nine more to go.

      
There were still ten torpedoes inbound, although the gunners were doing well against them.
 
Kelly was absorbed watching the battle unfold, occasionally redirecting fire or having the helm adjust the course and speed.
 
At no time did he have the urge to grab the helm or take over the gunnery controls.
 
His crew was doing their jobs extremely well; none of the ships or torpedoes got within his safety concern bubble.

      
Kelly was watching his monitor and counting the torpedoes being destroyed when it dawned on him that one of the torpedo ships had disappeared from his scope.
 
He called to Sensors that one was lost and to find out where it went.
 
Gunnery reported they didn’t shoot him.
 
Sensors was slow to find him.
 
On a hunch, Kelly looked at the rear view and saw the ship trying to fly up their exhaust.

      
Rather than hit one button and take over gunnery control for the rear firing guns, he ordered the bridge gunner to take it out.
 
It only required a minute change in their course to line up the rear crosshairs on the target and there was one less bandit inbound.
 
The top gunner and starboard gunner got one each and the port turret gunner got two, one cleanly and the second that flew into the debris of the first and took itself out.

      
Kelly was getting tired of this game, as occasional plasma charges rocked the ship when they hit the Vigilant’s shields, and he thought he saw a way to bring it to a speedier conclusion.
 
A brown dwarf was ahead to port.
 
Kelly knew his engines could keep them from being caught in the gravity well of the dwarf, but bet the torpedo ships weren’t so well off.
 
He ordered the helm to head directly for the brown dwarf.

      
The torpedo ships, smelling blood in the water, followed, firing all their remaining torpedoes.
 
There were now 31 torpedoes and eight torpedo ships in tail pursuit of the Vigilant.
 
Kelly watched his gravimetric sensors, the gravity force numbers climbing higher as they neared the brown dwarf.
 
This stillborn star with insufficient mass to ever erupt into a sun would be their masterstroke or their tomb.

      
Kelly kept his eye on the gravity gauges, as he waited for his gut to tell him when to sheer away.
 
The gravity gauges climbed until Kelly finally gave the order for the helm to slingshot around the brown dwarf.
 
The helm matched velocity with the centripetal pull of the brown dwarf’s gravity.
 
The Vigilant swung around the double Jupiter-sized dwarf and came back pointing the way they came.
 
The torpedoes, way ahead of the torpedo ships, had engines too weak to pull away from the brown dwarf’s gravity and spiraled into the dwarf.
 
The eight remaining torpedo ships suddenly found themselves in a head-on collision course with a very angry Vigilant.
 
Six of them broke right and left, only to be taken out by the turret gunners.
 
Two held their course straight at the Vigilant, firing their secondary nose guns to little effect.
 
The Vigilant’s shields easily absorbed the hits.
 
The bridge gunner lined up his cross hairs twice and the torpedo ship threat was no more.

      
LTJG Cortez ordered all sections to report battle damage status.
 
Negative reports came in from all sections, except engineering, which reported a minor temporary loss in shield strength.
 
Kelly had just successfully prosecuted combat against a superior foe with no loss of life and no damage to his ship.
 
He felt pretty good.
 
He did feel bad about the torpedo ship crews, who were brave, but had picked the wrong occupation.

      
Kelly looked around at his bridge crew and realized everyone was hunched over like they were expecting an explosion.
 
He realized he was hunched over his console and straightened up.
 
As he did so, he bumped into Alistair Bennett, who had been leaning forward over him watching Kelly’s monitor.

      
Kelly smiled up at Alistair and asked him if he enjoyed the show.

      
He replied, “In my ship, I don’t get shot at.
 
This was a novel experience for me.”

      
Kelly and the bridge crew laughed, breaking the tension.
 
The crew sat up and stretched.

      
Alistair let the laughter subside and then said, “They came at you uncoordinated except for the first salvo.
 
You may have killed their leadership when you took out those initial three ships with your nose guns.
 
The attack lost cohesion at that point.
 
They still could have killed you, but they were firing their torpedoes almost at random, except for the end, where they salvoed their remaining torpedoes.
 
I think you rattled them when you came right at them, but they rallied when they thought they had you on the run.
 
Remember, these people are only in it for the credits.
 
Dead men don’t get paid.”

      
Kelly pondered Alistair’s analysis of the battle and admitted he agreed with him.
 
He ordered the helm back to their position before the attack started and put them back on the base course.
 
He thought about his order and lessons he had been taught back in the Academy.
 
He remembered one of his instructors saying, “The easy path is always mined.”

      
Kelly ordered the helm and navigator to plot a course along the 3G gradient toward their first target planet.
 
That should get them some maneuvering space that wasn’t so well protected and covered by sensors.

* * * * *

      
Steven Maynard arrived at Defense HQ to find the place in a state of chaos.
 
No one knew what had happened.
 
The torpedo squadron commander had made no contact report.
 
All they knew was they had engaged a single ship and been destroyed in total.
 
Maynard’s HQ staff had no idea who or what had destroyed the sixth squadron.

      
A number of close explosions had knocked out many early warning satellites and a recon patrol of four torpedo ships could find only wreckage floating in the vicinity of where the battle took place.
 
They found only debris of Torpedo Squadron Six.
 
No wreckage could be found suggesting that any hostile ship had even been here.
 
Maynard was on the comms, demanding that they find the ship or ships that had destroyed the torpedo squadron.
 
In response, they made a maximum power active sensor sweep all the way back to Barataria and found nothing.