Starship Eternal (War Eternal Book 1) (24 page)

Mitchell was standing in the shower, leaning against the wall and letting the hot water run down his face and over his chest, when Millie arrived. She didn't announce herself. She didn't call out to him or say anything at all. Instead, he heard the shower head next to him begin sputtering water, and he glanced over to see who was there.

"Captain," she said, smiling at him as though none of the bullshit in the hanger had just happened.

"There's a free head down there," he said, pointing to the furthest part of the shower. He did his best to ignore her nakedness, finding it half-easy, and half-hard. He decided it had to be the drink still messing with his brain.

"I thought we could talk for a minute," she replied.

Mitchell took a deep breath, ready to use it to scream at her. The action made his entire gut throb. At least one cracked rib, he guessed. He needed to get down to medical and have the bots fix him up.

"I've got nothing to say," he replied quietly.
 

"It was nothing personal," she said. "I had to do it. The crew expected it."

Mitchell was silent. He stared at the drain below him, collecting the water for recycling.

"This ship isn't like any other ship in the galaxy, Mitchell," she continued. "I have to somehow keep control over a crew of rapists, sadists, pedophiles, hackers, mad scientists..." She trailed off.

"Murderers?" Mitchell said.

The anger flashed across her eyes. "Yes. These are tough men and women, people who fall outside of what anyone would consider social norms. You might think there's something to your rank, but not here. Their pecking order has nothing to do with the bars on your shirt. If you want respect, if you want them to follow you into a dogfight, you need to earn it."

He turned his head towards her again. "By putting me at a massive disadvantage? By setting me up?"

"Yes. They had to see what you're made of for themselves. They don't give a shit what your duty record says." She reached out and put a hand on his arm. "What you did down there? You bought yourself the respect of every one of the crew. You showed them that you don't give up, you don't give in, you keep fighting. In ten minutes you taught every single member of this squad that if they mess with you they're going to find themselves bloody and beaten."

He pulled his arm away. "And you had this whole thing planned out the whole time? You were sure it was going to end the way it did?"

"Not at all. I couldn't be sure you would win, but if you didn't... Then I would know something about you, too, and your place on Riggers would have been set. It didn't matter if you won or lost, it was how you played the game."

"You have some crazy ideas on how to run a ship, Captain."

"I've learned the hard way. It wasn't always like this, Mitch. When the project first launched, I tried to be fair and honest, stern yet lenient. It was a nightmare. A total nightmare. I had no authority, no power. There were three murders and two rapes in the first week, and General Cornelius was threatening to can the whole thing before it could become enough of a disaster that the rest of the brass would ask questions. I need this ship, this gig. It was either this or execution. Them or me. I did what I had to do, and figured out how to make it stop in a hurry. The new recruit gets tested, the crew gets out a little extra energy, the hierarchy is organized, and we all go on living as cautiously normal as any powder keg family like this one can."

"Including Anderson?"

"The bots will patch him up. It's all no hard feelings."

"No hard feelings? That works for your crew?"

"So far. I lost ten people in my first month as the head of the project. I've only had to put half a dozen to death in the years since."

"You've killed six of your own soldiers?"

"Do you think I'm happy about it? Pleased with myself? Every single one of them would have killed me or anyone else here if they had the slightest inclination. I have to be the strongest, the meanest, the coldest. If I'm not, if I show one thread of weakness, it's all over for everyone here."

Mitchell kept his eyes down, thinking about what she had said. He had underestimated everything about this ship. "Fine," he decided. "You say it's over? Then it's over. I have to tell you, I'm not a fan of your methods."

"Understood." She put her bionic hand on his shoulder again. It purred against his skin. "Let me make it up to you."

She softened when she said it, just enough that there was no question as to what she was suggesting. The still-tipsy part of him was tempted, very tempted. He took her hand away again and stepped out from under the water. "No, thanks."

"Are you sure? No commitment, no emotional garbage. We don't get too many opportunities out here, and to be honest, the rest of the crew is too unstable to trust. You? You aren't like the rest of us." Her eyes fell to his midsection again. "I can see at least one part of you is saying yes."

He shook his head. "I think that part has gotten me in enough trouble already. Maybe some other time." He checked on his p-rat. Oh-three-hundred. "Briefing in three hours?"

"Yes, Captain," she said.

"I need to head down to medical, and then catch some shuteye. If you need to wake me up, do me a favor and spare the wire ties."
 

Mitchell grabbed a towel and left.

Mitchell arrived for the briefing at exactly oh-six-hundred, dressed in his grays, his body still recovering from the beating he had taken. The medi-bots had put his two fractured ribs back in place and injected him with painkillers, but there wasn't much they could do for the smoldering anger he was still feeling. He had accepted what Millie had said about how things worked on the Schism. That didn't mean he liked it.

The briefing room was located next to the hanger, across from the armory. It was a standard setup - enough chairs for a hundred people, a podium, and a holographic monitor up at the front, a UPA flag hanging in the rear. It was nowhere near full when he arrived, though he thought most of the souls on the ship were present save for Watson and Singh. There were still a number of faces he didn't recognize, and a few he had seen at the fight but not met.
 

He could feel their eyes on them when he stepped into the room. He could sense the hush in their conversations. He fought against the renewed feeling of embarrassment, pausing in the entrance and scanning them deliberately, making sure they knew he was sizing up every last one of them.

"Captain on deck," Cormac shouted from his place near the center of the room. There was a uniform thump as the entire room shifted to attention. For a second Mitchell thought it was for him. Then he felt a hand on his arm.

"Ares," Millie said. "I'm glad you could join us."

Mitchell looked at her over his shoulder. She was dressed in her full uniform again, her hair and makeup just so. Anderson was trailing behind her, his face bruised but otherwise intact. He caught Mitchell's eye with his own. There was no malice there, no anger. Maybe he had been hoping to win the fight, to prove something, but he had also accepted that he lost.

"Captain," Mitchell said, coming to attention.

"There's a seat next to Rain," she said, pointing over to the front corner where the other pilot was sitting.
 

"Yes, ma'am." Mitchell bowed slightly and took his place. Ilanka flashed him a smile as he sat.

"I'll keep this simple because I know your little brains can't handle too many big words," Millie said, gaining the podium.
 

Her left eye twitched, and the holographic projector switched on. Displaying on it was an image of a stardock - a massive, ringed and spoked station where starships rested at measured intervals like knobs on the wheel of an ancient sailing ship. It orbited a massive red and brown gas-giant as a world unto itself, an entire ecosystem devoted to the economy of starships, be it in refuel, repair, trade, or providing for the needs of the thousands of hands on board.
 

"This is SD Nine-Three. Also called Calypso, after the planet that it's orbiting. We're currently about three hours away from dropping from FTL nearby." A bright dot showed where they would fall out of hyperspace, a few hundred AU from the dock. "As you know, we undertook a small mining expedition about a week ago, in order to gather enough ore to pass a routine inspection and get the Schism cleared for hookup with the station."

The image on the projector faded out and was replaced with a new visual. Mitchell recognized the face immediately.
 

"This is the target," Millie said. "Alliance intelligence has it on good authority that Chancellor Ken and his retinue are scheduled to be carrying out an inspection on the dock, in preparation for its conversion to a military platform. Our mission is to make sure that doesn't happen."

Mitchell sat up straighter in his chair. Chancellor Ken was one of the top leaders of the Federation, famous for his aggressive rhetoric and war-mongering. If he was visiting the star dock, that mean the Schism was going to be falling out of hyperspace in Federation territory.

Millie seemed to notice his new level of alertness. Her eyes passed over him, and the hint of a smile played at the edge of her lips. "Command has ordered that we're to make an initial effort to capture the Chancellor. I don't think I need to tell you how valuable he would be to the Alliance as a hostage. Failing that, our objectives are, in order of value: assassinate Chancellor Ken, destroy his personal cruiser, disable the dock."

The image of the Chancellor was replaced with one of the Federation cruiser, a pill-shaped starship bristling with weaponry. While destroyers were more heavily armed, they were brawlers. Cruisers were quick and dirty, their usual assault vector being a drop from hyperspace to unload their heavy ordinance, and then a massive thrust to clear their initial drop location. Once the warheads hit their targets, the cruiser would go back into hyperspace and either rendezvous with the formation point of the attack group, or move away and return for a second run.
 

It was the starfighters that would work to keep the cruisers in line, using probabilistic models designed by top military intelligence to calculate the most likely assault vectors and arrange for a squadron or two to intercept the cruisers when they fell out of FTL. A starfighter at existing velocity could easily outpace a cruiser that had to thrust from "hyperdeath" - the relative standstill required before and after hyperspace travel. This allowed the pilots to fly rings around the cruiser, weakening shields, inflicting damage, or forcing it to launch its own smaller ships, which in turn served to prevent them from leaving the field.

"Sunny, you'll be leading the ghost team onto the station," Millie said. "I'm transferring your specific mission orders and data now." Mitchell glanced back, finding the petite woman with the black hair. She nodded almost imperceptibly, and then put her hand on the arm of the person sitting next to her, an unassuming, younger man with a mop of blonde hair and a sharp face. Was she Sunny, or was he?
 

"Shank, your grunts will be on standby for extraction, full exo. If things go bad in a hurry, you need to make sure the ghosts get back alive."

"Yes, ma'am," Shank said. Mitchell saw he was the big black man from the fight.

"Rain, you and Ares will be suited up and running hot. If this thing blows up, you can bet we'll be hit like a hornet in a beehive. The Schism only has a few fixed projectile positions, a couple of laser batteries, and minimal shields. We won't last two minutes against a Federation cruiser."

 
"Yes, Captain," Ilanka said.

"I'm transmitting mission data to the rest of you now. Most of you have done this before. You know the stakes." She turned her head, looking directly at Mitchell. "To be clear for the benefit of our newest member: my direct orders are to vaporize the Schism and send kill signals to all of the crew the moment I believe mission secrecy has been compromised. Remember, we don't exist, and nobody will miss us when we're gone."

Mitchell stared back at her, keeping his expression flat while he shivered on the inside. The truth of his situation hadn't truly hit him when M had removed his helmet and showed himself a clone. It hadn't struck him when he spent eight days in confinement. It hadn't sunk in before, during, or after the initiation. Only now, only after hearing those words, did his mind finish the calculation.
 

This was his life for the rest of his life, for as long as it lasted.

What surprised him was that after everything that had happened surrounding the Shot, he was almost happy about it.

"Yes, Firedog?" Millie said, looking back at Cormac. The private must have knocked her p-rat with a question.

"I couldn't help but notice we're launching this little bit of mayhem on a Federation dock. I know Sunny looks just like one of them bastards, but Shadow is going to stand out like a boil on my cock. How exactly are they going to infiltrate security to get a shot at the Chancellor?"

"Shut it, Dog," Shank said, turning towards his soldier. "You know that's need-to-know, and you don't."