Swords and Saddles (17 page)

Freya regarded him gravely. “May the Light ease the burden of your grief and the stars shine in memory of the one you have lost.” The words sounded ritualistic, but she said them with real feeling.

“Thank you. What about you, Odwan Freya?”

She made a sad sound. “I had a man who died nearly half my life ago, in battle. He stays young in my memory. Now I am bound to my duty as Odwan. There has been little room for anyone else. You understand?”

“Yes, I do. I’m sorry for your loss. I’m grateful there is room in your life for my friendship.” It felt both comfortable and strange to be speaking so with a woman, one who truly did share so many things with him, who also knew how the burdens of command could force out personal wants and needs. The only thing standing between them like a wall was a truth which Benton hadn’t yet shared with her. “I need to tell you where we actually came from, Freya.”

She shook her head. “Whatever led you from there is nothing I need know.”

“Yes, I think you do.” He explained his world, the storm, the changed world they’d found afterwards, and Lieutenant Garret’s theory. “We have no idea how to get back, but if we ever found a way, we’d have to use it. I have a duty to fulfill.”

To his surprise, Freya didn’t express any disbelief, instead nodding knowingly. “The lightning. Its ancient name is the fire-writer, that which the Light uses to cast messages in the sky, messages whose meaning we often cannot read. The lightning brought you here from the world you knew, but the reason may never be clear.” She sighed. “Your cavalry has saved Astera not once but twice and guaranteed our safety for years to come. You have already done so much. Yet, you may also help us and other cities build peace in this part of the land again, the type of peace no one has seen since the days of the fallen empire. But our debt and our duty is clear. If Astera, if I, can ever help you reach your home again, we will. But the lightning never repeats the same message twice.”

“We say much the same thing,” Benton replied, turning away from the darkness where his duty had lain, turning to face Freya.

She smiled and touched his face gently with one hand. “No matter what the lightning does, you will always have a home here.”

Postscript:

Though historical memory of the Benton Massacre has been eclipsed by the Fetterman Disaster in 1866 and Custer’s Last Stand at the Little Big Horn in 1876, it attracted considerable attention for a brief period and remains an enduring military mystery. On October 4
^th
, 1870, a company from the 5th Cavalry Regiment under the command of Captain Ulysses Benton left Fort Harker on a routine training patrol of the area south and west of the fort in preparation for campaigning later in the season. The company of cavalry did not return as scheduled, and every attempt to locate Captain Benton or any of his men failed. Nearby tribes all denied knowing what had happened to the cavalry unit, but an official investigation concluded that the only plausible explanation for their disappearance had to be a massacre of the entire company and the concealment of their bodies and equipment. No trace of Captain Benton’s command has ever been found.

Author's Note on
Failure to Obey

My second series of books featured the exploits of a new officer in the space Navy who has the misfortune to be appointed the legal officer on his first ship. While handling all of the other duties of a shipboard officer, Paul Sinclair also has to give his commanding officer advice on legal matters based on a four-week-long school. (Yes, the Navy does that kind of thing to you. The Navy did that to me.) After four books, Paul’s saga went into temporary hibernation while I worked on the Lost Fleet story, but people kept asking what happened after the end of that fourth book. One of my own real jobs in the US Navy had involved anti-terrorism, so I had learned a lot about how terrorists work. However, I couldn’t use that knowledge in stories because I didn’t want any real terrorists getting any good tips from whatever scenario I used. It finally occurred to me that I could set a terrorist attack on a space station, using a method of attack that wouldn’t work on Earth, and tell a story about that. And one of the main settings in the Sinclair books was a US Navy space station. Paul had been sent off to Mars at the end of book four, but I still had his partner Lieutenant Jen Shen on that space station, as well as Paul’s old Master-at-Arms Ivan Sharpe. This is what happened to them.

Failure to Obey

Perhaps it was some instinct born of experience that made Lieutenant Jen Shen jerk awake in the middle of the night, the voices of dead shipmates echoing in her fading dreams, and lunge for the survival suit kept in a ready locker right next to her bunk. She was halfway into the suit before the structure of Benjamin Franklin Naval Space Station shuddered twice, and fastening the last seals before the blare of the general quarters alarm began resounding urgently.

No one was in sight as Jen slammed shut the door to the closet-sized room that made up her personal quarters and began pelting down the passageway toward main engineering control. Heading in toward the hollow center of the vast rotating disc which was Franklin, Jen was going uphill against the rotation-induced gravity, taking ladders two steps at a time as she tried to cover ground before airtight hatches closed and made progress much slower. As she approached the armored survival bulkhead between her and engineering control, the massive hatch at the end of the passageway began sliding shut as its own warning alert added to the clamor. Jen managed to slide through sideways just in time, feeling the station jerk several times again as unknown forces slammed the structure.

Another ladder up, then another hatch loomed before her, this one sealed tight. She rammed her palm against the reader next to the hatch, punching the “open” button repeatedly as Jen waited for the reader to identify her from the chip embedded in her hand.

The hatch swung open, Jen hurled herself inside, and the hatch slammed behind her. It took two more passageways, ladders and hatches before she reached her objective.

She finally paused, then, to take in the scene in main engineering control. At this hour, only the watch standers were present, five enlisted sailors led by Chief Petty Officer Carreras, all of whom were already in survival suits as well. “What’s going on?” Jen demanded.

Carreras looked at her, his expression impossible to read through the face plate of his suit. “Damned if I know, lieutenant. We’ve got system failures cascading through part of the station inboard from here and it feels like there’s explosions in that area, but the sensors are dead. We’ve all been ordered to stay here while command central tries to find out what’s going on.”

Typical. Too many people depended on remote sensors for information and didn’t know what to do if those sensors failed. Eventually command central would order investigators into the area, but experience had proven to Jen just how critical time was in responding to emergencies. “I haven’t been ordered to stay here.” Fighting off a flashback to the devastating explosion on her old ship the
Maury
, Jen punched open the hatch leading toward the affected areas.

She ran again, up a ladder and down the narrow passageway leading to the area of the station where supplies and the water tanks were warehoused near the hollow core, yanking open the hatch at the far end. Once again, some instinct made her pause before dashing through, and she saw two figures in survival suits moving toward her from the damaged area. Wind whistled past, warning of breaches in the hull where atmosphere was venting. “What’s –“ she started to ask them.

Both of the figures raised weapons and began running toward her. Jen just stared in disbelief for a moment, then slammed her fist onto the “close” button as one of the figures opened fire, metal slugs rattling off of the closing hatch in a deafening hail. Punching in a code, she locked the hatch against anyone without the proper access. She had a sinking suspicion that anyone who had blown their way inside the station could also get through interior hatches, but it might slow down whoever the attackers were.

This time Jen ran even faster, half-sliding/half-falling down the ladder and reaching the hatch to engineering central as Franklin’s structure shuddered again. Looking back, she saw the hatch she’d sealed falling inward, its edges glowing with intense heat, figures in survival suits coming through quickly, all carrying weapons.

Jen sealed and locked this hatch, too, calling out orders to the watch standers in engineering central. “We’re under attack! Notify command central! It’s people wearing survival suits like ours. Numbers unknown.” As a stunned Chief Carreras called command central, Jen rushed to one of the control consoles. “Shut everything down! Shift all controls to secondary stations! Do it now! Those guys are right behind me!”

The enlisted hesitated only a second, then frantically began following Jen’s orders. As Jen worked, she heard command central’s response to the chief’s message. “Understood. Presence of armed attackers inside the station is confirmed. We’re deploying the emergency response teams to counter them.”

Despite her urgency, Jen spun to glare at the screen. “Masters-at-arms carrying light weapons? This isn’t a riot, central! These guys are heavily armed!”

The commander on the screen visibly wavered. Jen understood why. Over-reaction would make him look ridiculous, and nobody wanted to admit they couldn’t handle a situation on their own. But she knew they’d need help. “
Belleau Wood
is inport, right? She’s got Marines aboard. Call them out.”

“Marines?” The commander hesitated again. As he did so, a series of shudders rolled through the space station’s structure, making everyone waver on their feet, followed by an odd groaning sound from the metal and composites making up the station, a noise which made Jen’s hair stand on end. The sensation of gravity wobbled erratically. That seemed to make up the commander’s mind. “Yes. Marines.”

“The attackers are heading this way and can blow through hatches. We’re shutting everything down and evacuating now.” As her console and the comm screen went dark, Jen glanced at the locked hatch, seeing the edges starting to glow. “Get out! Everybody out! I’m right behind you, Chief.”

The enlisted watch standers bolted toward the hatch that Jen had originally entered through as Jen ran from console to console to confirm they were shutting down. She paused for a moment at one, viciously punching a confirm command on one console which hadn’t accepted its shut down orders yet, then leaped toward the safe hatch as the glowing hatch failed and fell inward.

Chief Carreras and the others pulled her through, slamming the hatch shut behind Jen. Metal slugs impacted against the closing hatch and the bulkhead around it, then the hatch sealed and locked. Everyone paused for a moment, staring at each other. “They going to come through here?” one of the watch standers asked.

“They wanted engineering central,” Carreras answered, looking to Jen for confirmation.

“Yeah.” With all control systems active, anyone in charge of engineering central could have caused havoc throughout the station before control could be remotely switched to secondary systems. “It won’t do them much good now, though. How the hell did they get inside the station?”

Another enlisted had broken open the damage control locker in this compartment and was hefting a pry bar. “Maybe we can stop them from getting any farther.”

“We can try,” Jen agreed. Pry bars and other damage control tools against slug throwers was crazy, but they might have a chance as the attackers came through the hatch. “Get into position on either side of the hatch while I call command central.”

The comm screen here cleared to reveal a captain this time, who was staring from display to display in the command central compartment as the commander they’d seen earlier spoke quickly to him. “They’ve taken engineering central,” Jen reported. “We’ll try to hold them here.”

The captain nodded jerkily, his eyes on the displays. “Confirm all system controls were shifted to secondary control stations.”

“Affirmative.”

“Good work. The masters-at-arms are engaging the attackers and the Marines are on their way. Retaking engineering central will be a high-priority task for the Marines. Stand by for them and let us know if the attackers try to come through where you are now.”

“Understood. Stand by, hold position and wait for Marines.” Jen slumped for a moment as the screen blanked, swallowing to moisten a mouth dry from recent events. But she was in command here, with no time for letting the situation get to her. She turned toward the enlisted. “You guys heard? We hold here.”

The petty officer with the pry bar hefted it, smiling in a way that betrayed fear as well as determination. “We’ll damn well try, ma’am.”

They waited for minutes which seemed to drag for hours. The station trembled and vibrated at odd intervals, the majestic rotation of its huge mass being affected by whatever the attackers were doing. Occasionally they could feel gravity oscillate as if they were riding a roller coaster. Jen thought about the ships mated to the berths lining the top and bottom of the station’s disc, wondering if they were executing emergency breakaways to keep themselves safe, or staying attached to the station to keep its mass distribution from fluctuating even worse than it obviously already was.

The hatch behind them shot open with shocking suddenness and Marines boiled into the compartment. Jen stared at them. She’d seen Marines in combat armor before, suits whose bulk and strength far surpassed the survival suits worn by sailors, but now Jen fully understood just how menacing those Marines could be on full combat footing, their weapons questing for targets.

One of the Marines focused on her. “Lieutenant Shen? I’m Lieutenant Yohl. They’re on the other side of that hatch?”

“They were,” Jen confirmed.

“Is the equipment in there hardened?”

“Against radiation? Yeah. There’s back-up circuits running through vacuum tubes. Extremely limited capabilities reducing our read-outs to blinking lights and a few plain text messages on a CRT.”