Jethro: First to Fight (69 page)

Gear was stacked everywhere in the ship,
in some companionways a person had to turn sideways to move through it.
Torpedoes and other weapons were even left on the wings of the birds instead of
in the packed magazines of the ship. They had no room and the Captain wanted
the extra ammunition. She accepted the safety violation filed in protest by her
deck officer and Firefly without comment.

Mayweather had stuffed the ship's magazines
as much as possible as well. Not only her magazines but her stores for
equipment and raw materials. They had already been over ten percent over
establishment, her people had squeezed in another fifteen somehow. She'd also
had them strap a dozen missile pods and one orbital weapons platform to the
hull of the ship. It was a dangerous gamble, the pods and the weapons platform
were inside the ship's shield but if a shot got through it could detonate the
warheads sitting directly on the ship's hull. Purple Thorn vowed to jettison
the pods before they came under fire.

Even the bunks in the brig were used.
The Marines joked about being locked in. They didn't joke about the tight
quarters and hot bunking however.

A few of the ratings joked about
sleeping on top of missiles or in the missile tubes. They were a little
dismayed and put out when the Chief of the boat actually made them do so.

...*...*...*...*...

Jethro woke up with nightmare, panting
heavily, shaking like a leaf. Despite the night lights, the dark of the bay and
his rack had his hind brain in a fright for a moment. He felt his heart
hammering in his chest. Something was there, lurking in his mind as well. A
virtual lip curled, he wasn't sure if the ghost was real. After a moment it was
gone.

If he'd been human he would have been
drenched, in his case he was panting almost to the point of hyperventilation.
The damn dream again, getting worse. Ever since that drop it had haunted him
when ever he had too much free time on his hands. Today they'd talked about
possible drops on Antigua in the contingency planning. That might have
triggered it.

Slowly he forced himself to calm down,
trying to meditate. When the mediation failed to achieve immediate results he
hit his pharmacopeia for a relaxant. Gusterson and Doctor Standish would be
alerted later, but he'd deal with it then.

He felt his body relax. He closed his
eyes for a long moment.

"Bad one?" a familiar chitter
asked softly. He opened his eyes and turned his head, then looked up to see
Panache's four eyes looking at him. He couldn't tell if the bug was concerned
or not, but he imagined so.

"Something like that."

"Heh, I had one as well. You need
to talk about it."

"It... it's not combat
related," Jethro said, trying to put it out of his mind. He needed to
remained focused, they had combat coming up.

"No, but it can be," the
Veraxin said softly.

"It's not."

"What's it about?" Panache
asked. His ears flicked as she climbed out of her rack and then clicked her
spike like legs over to his rack. The click click on the metal deck made his
fur stand on end a bit. Finally she settled down beside him.

He turned to look at her. "You
aren't going to let this go are you?"

"No."

He chuffed a half amused, half
exasperated sigh. He snorted at Sergei's loud snore. The Veraxin used her upper
claw arm to move the liger over onto his side. The move prompted him to open
his airway more and stop the snoring.

"Sergeant, if you don't want to
talk about it, it's not like I can force you."

"It's fine. Look, when I had that
drop recently it... brought back some things. When I was in F platoon Gunny got
a bit ambitious and tried a orbital drop sim. It... didn't go well. Even Deja
had issues."

"Oh."

"Yeah. Just about the entire
platoon, including the gunny ended up in the infirmary."

"It was a sim!" They stopped
when someone down the row grunted, got up from their rack, then muzzily made
their way to the head. Panache waited until the guy was back in his rack before
poking Jethro.

"Tell that to your hind brain,”
Jethro said with a sigh, picking up the conversation where she had left off.
“You don't get smell or taste, but you get touch, sound, vision, and well,
motion. That was the kicker. Throw in your imagination and it does the rest. A
lot of us had no idea how to deal with the inertia so they barfed into their
helmets and breathers. Which..."

Panache's mandibles clacked softly, her
people's version of a sigh. "Was bad for you. You breathed it in."

"Yes. Couple that with mental
trauma and well..." He shrugged. He had received training on how to
recognize and deal with mental trauma. Tricks and ways to minimize it. He
realized, he did need to talk about it, that did help. Facing his fear was
another way to put it to rest. He now understood the little Veraxin a little
better. She hadn't taken the easy way out, she hadn't run the bell and quit.
She was here, facing her fear every day. He chuffed and then returned to the
conversation. "At least we got bed rest for a day."

"Oh."

"We got right back into the swing
of things right off. We learned some important lessons, ones that the gunny
hadn't intended, that he too is fallible. They had us talk to the shinks
briefly, but I blew it off. I've learned since then that it's not good to show
fear or mistakes to boots."

"I remember."

"Right. But we learned that shit
can go wrong. We weren't prepared. We learned the importance of
being
prepared. It's not all having the right gear, you've got to have the right
mindset going in, know what to expect. I haven't taken the sim again yet, I'm
not planning on it anytime soon, but that little sled right sort of brought it
back."

"Oh."

"Yeah. I'll be okay. I just need to
get my subconsciousness in order."

"Easier said than done Sergeant,
trust me on this. It's been... hard."

"I know," Jethro said softly.
He turned, looking at her. His green eyes stared at her for a long moment.
Slowly her head fell and her eyes swiveled away. "I know. I'm glad you
stuck with us. You had no training going in."

"But now I do. And I'm glad I am
here too. Most of the time." She grimaced as Fonz let loose some trapped
gas.

Jethro chuckled.

Purple Thorn  worked with Janice to
calculate the least time and max time for when the pirates would hit Antigua.
There was a lot of guess work involved, a lot of variables and questions they
just didn't have answers for. But based on their numbers, Antigua was in for a
storm.

If they were lucky Firefly would beat
the pirate fleet there by a day, but they knew luck may not be on their side.
They still had over eight weeks to get to Antigua once they exited hyper in
Triang and skipped through the system.

“Captain, we're going to be on fumes and
overloaded when we get there too,” Janice said. “Which is a problem.”

“No helping it,” the Captain replied,
shaking her head as she went over their report. It was a very wide window. She
was glad they kept it wide, she didn't want to go in fat dumb and happy.

“Ma'am, if we go in we'll have enough
fuel for one jump. That is if we don't do any maneuvering or fighting in the
system. Our bunkerage is that low.”

The Captain looked up as Shelby sucked
in a breath. The Captain carefully set her tablet down. “So you are telling me
this is an all or nothing shot Janice?” she asked.

Janice slowly nodded, eyes locked on her
Captain. “Yes skipper. Once we maneuver off the jump point that's it, we're
committed. There will be no turning back, we'll have to refuel in the system or
be stuck there.”

“Great.”

“We tried to conserve as much fuel as we
could, using the hyper collectors. Deja is quite good for the skips. He's even
taken a hand at the normal jumps as well ma'am. He's a natural.”

“He's a Selkie, of course he is,” Shelby
replied with a nod. She'd seen how incredible the Selkie piloted her ship. He'd
shaved a good two weeks off their journey in hyper, not just when he skipped
through a system. There was no wasted effort with the Selkie, every move had a
purpose.

“I know. Once I was over my... trouble
with having someone I didn't know manning the helm, we worked together to find
the greatest pockets of electrons we could find,” Janice said, nodding to 
Rator'll the Veraxin sensor officer. The Veraxin waved his true hands.

“Finding pockets of gravitational flux
has aided the hyper-collectors Captain,” the Veraxin Ensign chittered.

“I see.”

“It is a differential ability we hadn't
considered until the Chief engineer asked that we try it. See we used the
gravitational differential much like you would a thermal differential with
Ni45Co5Mn40Sn10 does. The interaction generates electrons that we siphoned...”
the Veraxin stopped his diatribe and then signaled first level apology when he
recognized his Captain's facial expression.

“Thank you Ensign, we don't need to go
into quite that level of detail. And for the record, I do remember when the
Chief proposed the idea sometime ago.”

“Oh. Sorry skipper,” the chagrined
Veraxin replied.

“What bothers me the most, is based on
these numbers the pirates will have at least two weeks, perhaps as much as
three with free reign in the system. There is no telling what they could do,
the destruction they will unleash,” the XO said softly.

The Captain nodded. “And unfortunately,
there is nothing we can do about it. We can't change it, we can just do the
best we can with what we've got. It's a crap shoot, we don't know they're there
for sure.”

“And if they are? They'll hold the
system Captain. We'll be outnumbered and low on fuel.”

“They may have us by numbers, but we've
got a navy crew here. A cruiser, not a tin can, and we've got a lot of highly
trained, highly motivated Marines thoroughly sick of being housed in every nook
and cranny of my ship.” She looked at Captain Pendeckle who nodded wryly. “And
anything the pirates do will just be motivation for us to avenge,” the Captain
finished, eyes hard and cold.

Grimly the others officers nodded in
return.

...*...*...*...*...

At Triang Firefly made break out on the
edge of the system in record time, two and a half weeks out from Briev. They
didn't pause, just reoriented for the skip across the system. The sensor and
communication's officers siphoned off as much radio information as they could.

They reported that the planet's
occupants were okay, there was no sign of pirate activity, not that they
expected any. The pirates had gone through the empty jump line from Protodon to
Antigua, bypassing the Triang system altogether.

They fired off a message drone to check
the planet and system over and let them know they were there. The Admiral had
left a series of micro-satellites in orbit. They sent a signal stripping one
just before Janice finished her calculations for a hop. When no new intel was
found in the stream the Captain ordered them to ignore it and make the skip
jump. They had a date with destiny in Antigua.

...*...*...*...*...

Captain Daj Maul came into the bridge
and frowned ever so slightly. The admiral was there, no surprise. Fortunately
he was alone, his staff was most likely haunting CIC or stuffed in one of their
cabins. He didn't care, as long as they weren't here, cluttering up
his
bridge.

He wasn't sure about the wisdom of
having a rear admiral in charge of a fleet task force like this. This was the
first time outside of Horath that they've tried it, so far he'd had mixed
feeling about the whole thing.

For one thing it was a bit foolish to
have a flag officer, complete with staff on a destroyer like HMSS Cutlass. They
just didn't have the room. There were no flag quarters, and he resented losing
his Captain's quarters to the admiral and his pair of mistresses.

Secondly, he'd dispatched one ship, just
one with two platoons worth of fighters to take their secondary objective,
Kathy's World. That bothered him.

“Looking over the prize sir?” Captain
Maul asked.

The admiral turned slightly from the
main display. He for once wasn't seated in the Captain's chair, he was standing
in his favorite pose with his hands clenched behind his back. He had his
monocle in though, the gold chain that attached it to his pocket glittered in
the light of the bridge. So did the archaic blade the admiral insisted on
carrying with him. He twitched his stubby mustache, making Maul refocus on the
admiral's face.

“It's a little early to crow over the
spoils and count our shares,” the admiral said. He frowned. Rear Admiral
Cartwright of the Horathian Navy was old school, he'd come up through the ranks
and had not attained his present position through favors. Or so he'd like his
subordinates to believe. In truth he'd gotten to flag rank by stabbing anyone
in the back he could, then climbing over them to either take their position or
something better.

He was a real piece of work, not related
to any of the 'proper' families in the higher circles of the empire or the
naval families. He was an intel puke, but a fighter.

He was a big man, massive, with a blunt
face suiting his disposition. He had blond hair, but unlike some officers he
disdained the long haired look of the pirates they had pretended to be. He'd
kept with his buzz cut. His blond hair was a bit silver on the sides, but he
looked formidable in his uniform of black.

Captain Maul frowned. He was from the
proper families, but from the merchant side, not the military or political
sides. He'd joined the military to gain experience and a reputation, but he'd
stayed on past his first tour because he'd come to like the position. He'd also
come to like being a pirate, truth be told. He'd gained a nice hefty chunk of
change for his bank account, all from prize pay outs.

The admiral however had never been out
of Horathian space, he'd risen through the ranks in the defense fleet of the
home system. He was used to balls and court intrigue, gimme simulations and
touchy feel good exercises. Maul never let a touch of his disdain for that sort
of thinking touch him. He'd learned a few times not to underestimate the prey,
they tended to do desperate stupid things when they thrashed about before they
went down. If they knew what was coming even more so. He really couldn't blame
them. Turning the crew loose on them was good for his people, but lethal for
the new slave subjects most of the time.

The fleet was in tight, they had to stay
in tight to station, wear down her shields. “You'd think with this amount of
fire power we'd be through by now,” the admiral grumbled.

It was true on its face, but yet not
completely true the Captain thought. Had all three tin cans been able to use
their weapons, not just the turrets that they had functional but all of them,
plus their missiles, maybe. Of course had they used missiles it might have done
damage to the prize they wanted to seize.

The admiral was past the idea of a
simple plunder and run, there was just too much to take. Much of it, like the
industrial replicators and power plants on the station were fixed in place, far
too large to move by ship. That meant that they had to take the station intact
and keep it that way. Which led to their present dilemma.

They hadn't bothered negotiating at all,
at least not at first. A few warning shots had been fired, and a demand to
surrender unconditionally had been sent out, but the station had rebuffed them.
Of course the admiral's demand for a list of all non Terrans hadn't helped.
He'd also tried to get the planet to surrender as well, which of course wasn't
in the cards. They only knew this governor Randall by name, but already he was
turning into a thorn in their side.

Apparently stories had been told of what
happened to people who surrendered to pirates. Their identity had also been
exposed, from the unencrypted radio chatter CIC had picked up labeled them as
Horathians. Apparently the cover was blown.

“Sir, CIC confirmed Admiral Irons isn't
in the system. Intel states he left sometime approximately nine months ago.”

“Darn,” the admiral said mildly.

“But he is responsible for the space
station. That part was confirmed,” the Captain added.

“Ah,” the admiral said, nodding.

“Are you still considering an object
lesson sir? Or at least retaliation for Prinz Borneo?” the Captain asked,
arching an eyebrow in inquiry.

The admiral leaned forward, resting his
fists on the wooden railing around the central plot. He made a small sound,
something between a grunt of irritation and a hmm.

“No,” the admiral said slowly after a
long moment of thought. “I'm loath to destroy anything we don't have to, I'd
rather keep it for later. Spoils of war.”

“Ah,” the Captain replied neutrally. A
show of force might make taking the system easier, but apparently the admiral
was letting his greed rule him.

They had sent the gunship Prinz Borneo
to Agnosta to test the planet's alleged network of PDC's. The little ship had
been torn apart by fire from two PDC's before she'd made a stable polar orbit.
She had been high up, about a hundred and fifty kilometers up, but she'd still
been turned into tiny pieces of drifting debris.

“We could skip the planet, focus solely
on the station. It's the real prize after all,” the Captain mused.

“No, I want it all,” the admiral
grumbled. “But one thing at a time. We'll focus our efforts on the station, bring
them to heel, and once I have them tightly in my fist,” he raised a gloved hand
clenched tight. “Then I'll study the planet and find a way in.”

“Yes sir.”

“There may be a way in once we have the
station. Intelligence we don't have, they may break.”

“If they see what we plan to do to
their... scum,” the Captain said, wrinkling his nose. “They might be scared
enough to fold. Or they may not, they might stiffen and refuse to allow us
to... cleanse their world.”

“You aren't helping,” the admiral
grumbled.

“Sorry sir, just laying out all the
variables.”

“True,” the admiral said, turning away.
Admiral Cartwright was displeased by losing a ship, but glad it had been one of
the expendable ones.  He had honestly thought the little ship would have
been too small a target, or that the planet's PDC's had fallen to neglect... or
that they would have shorter range. The range alone was inconvenient. He had
been tempted to send something larger when the planet hadn't fired.

Supposedly the intel shop had operatives
on the ground that were supposed to disable the planetary defense centers. So
much for that theory. He'd have to do some careful probing to see what parts of
the planet were uncovered, and their best approach vectors. Missiles perhaps?
He frowned. It was possible, they were far cheaper than a gunship.

Of course the intel people might need
more time to get the sabotage done. That was always possible. He frowned,
staring at the plot.

Who knows? He might be able to get an
invasion force in from the right angle, maybe even taking the defense
instillation intact? But for now, time to point out the obvious and rub his
protégée's face in his mistake.

He curled his lip theatrically as a
thought came to him. “See? Planetary defense centers have their strengths. But
we've got an answer to that. We just need some rocks. Anyone up for a game of
billiards?”