Call to Arms (Black Fleet Trilogy, Book 2) (28 page)

Jackson was vaguely aware of both the CENTCOM Chief of Staff and the President of the Terran Confederacy yelling over the com channel for him to respond. He set that surreal, insane part of the situation aside for a moment and focused on the scenario directly in front of him. Not having any performance numbers on the
Dreadnought
-class battleships was a serious hindrance when it came to devising a workable strategy, but he had to assume that a ship with nearly ten times the mass of the
Ares
would at least be half as quick to accelerate. He hoped.

“Helm, fire the auxiliary boosters,” Jackson ordered. “Maintain current heading. Nav, standby to begin giving us course vectors for a warp transition. It will be fast and furious when I call for it, so be ready. Mr. Keller, go ahead and kill that channel.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Keller said. “Closing the channel the
President
and
Chief of Staff
are still talking on, sir.”

Jackson didn’t miss the inflection in his voice.

“Those of you that have served with me before will find this situation somewhat familiar.” He raised his voice to be heard over the harsh rumble of the mains at full power and the auxiliary boosters firing. “As you heard, I’m about to disobey a direct order from both the President and his Chief of Staff. Anyone not comfortable with that may leave the bridge with no chance of reprisal no matter the outcome. You are not under arrest, you may simply return to your quarters as conscientious objectors. For those who choose to stay, rest assured, I will not open fire on a Terran vessel… even one that fires on us first.”

“Permission to return to duty, Captain,” Davis said from the XO’s station, a small smile playing across her lips.

“Granted, Lieutenant.” Jackson nodded.

Lieutenant Keller looked like he was about to get up, looked around, and remained seated although not appearing to be entirely happy about his choice. The rest of the crew were staring at him with a mixture of resolve and, alarmingly, not a little bit of adoration and hero worship. When he’d put them in the same impossible situation before, his chest had swelled with pride. This time, his guts churned as he risked the careers and freedom of his people on something that he might be gravely mistaken about.

“We’re with you, Captain,” Master Chief Green said simply from his customary spot by the hatchway.

“Very well.” Jackson returned to his seat. “Helm, maintain max burn for another ninety seconds, and then kill the auxiliary boosters and throttle the mains back to within the normal operating range. If we haven’t given ourselves enough of an edge by now, we never will. Nav, I want a course for a warp transition along our current heading, one light-week… I know we’re still deep in the system, so we’re just going to have to play the odds. OPS, inform Engineering we will be deploying the warp drive momentarily.”

The crew quickly went to work preparing the
Ares
to perform a warp transition out of the system along an uncharted, unapproved path. The risk was minimal, despite how hard Fleet beat the drum about the hazards of straying off the warp lanes. Space was very, very big, and the
Ares
was comparatively very, very tiny. The odds of their warp fields encountering anything with enough mass to destabilize them was incredibly remote, and he was taking extra care by having them enter warp at a downward angle off the ecliptic to avoid most of the perimeter debris that was left over from the star system’s formation. The forward distortion field pushed most of the smaller stellar debris out away from their flight path before the ship came through.

“Lead battleship is firing, sir!” Barrett said. “Forward laser battery. Thirty seconds to impact.”

“Helm, roll to starboard one hundred and five degrees,” Jackson assumed this was a low-power warning blast, but he didn’t want to take the chance that they’d targeted his port main engine, so he rolled the ship to let the blast hit the
Ares
on the belly where the thermal shielding and ablative layers had the most coverage. Thirty seconds later, there was a clap and a slight shudder as the laser shot impacted them cleanly.

“No damage,” Hayashi reported. “Heat absorption on the hull indicates the shot was less than five hundred terawatts.”

“Warning shot then,” Jackson said. “Nav, do you have my course?”

“I will in fifteen seconds, Captain!”

“OPS, deploy the warp drive, and handoff command authority to the nav station,” Jackson said. “Helm, zero thrust and secure main engines from flight mode. Nav, you may transition us out of here at your discretion.”

“Zero thrust, aye,” the helmsman said.

“Engineering is securing main engines,” Hayashi said. “Plasma chambers purging now.”

“Standby for transition!” the nav specialist shouted, triggering an automatic alert that was heard throughout the ship.

A few seconds later, the main display dimmed, and the
Ares
shuddered slightly as she vanished from the system.

****

“You told me he was controllable,” President Caleb McKellar said, practically spitting the words out at the display.

“A miscalculation, sir,” Joseph Marcum said. “After his experience aboard the
Blue Jacket
, I really didn’t think the man would even want back on the bridge of a starship. I figured we’d parade him around to increase recruitment and public support for CENTCOM’s budget, but it didn’t work out that way.”

“I noticed,” the President said dryly. “What matters now is what we do next. What options do you have?”

“I need to get in touch with the director of the CIS and find out why a Broadhead was snooping around out here and then we try to track down the
Ares
,” Marcum said. “There’s little damage he can do at this point. He’ll likely return to Haven to make a report to Pitt, and then we can have him apprehended and recall the rest of Ninth Squadron.”

“What about the report I’m looking at from Podere?” McKellar looked away from the screen, appearing already bored with the matter.

“I saw that too, sir,” Marcum said. “It’s as we feared.”

McKellar sighed. “Intellectually, I understand and agree with the choices we’ve made, but that doesn’t make it easy when it actually happens.”

“I feel the same way, sir,” Marcum said. “But the choice was made because it had to be made, horrible as it is.”

“Just go get Captain Wolfe, and do whatever you need to do,” McKellar said. “There’s too much happening now to have a single Fleet officer being such a large distraction.”

“I understand, sir,” Marcum said. “I’ll handle it.”

Chapter 16

The
Ares
slammed back into normal space after the short warp flight. So short, in fact, that the opposing fields hadn’t fully stabilized before the computer had to begin the very careful process of collapsing them in such a way that they didn’t tear the destroyer in half.

“Report.” Jackson seemed to ignore the fact that his coffee mug had gone sailing all the way past the tactical station.

“Confirming position now, Captain,” the chief at nav said.

“Minor damage reported in Engineering,” Hayashi said. “Water leak on reactor two’s secondary cooling system. Repairs are already underway, and it won’t affect ship functions.”

“Let me know when it’s been repaired,” Jackson said. “I’m assuming there were no injuries as a result of the rough transition?”

“None reported, sir.”

“Position confirmed. We’re almost exactly a light-week outside of the previous star system, sir.”

“Good job,” Jackson said. “Now, get me a course that intersects the Ark-Columbiana warp corridor. We need to get back to Haven at best possible speed.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Won’t they be expecting that, sir?” Davis asked.

“This isn’t about doing the unexpected, Lieutenant,” Jackson said. “They’d have an impossible task in trying to track us down out here in interstellar space, and Marcum knows that. He’ll have a com drone heading back to Columbiana now to begin disseminating the order that we’re to be apprehended on sight. Our only goal right now is to get back to Jericho as fast as we can and let Admiral Pitt sort this out.”

“What if we were wrong?”

“Then I’ll be arrested, and hopefully someone will be put in command of the
Ares
that can get her to the Frontier and do some good.” Jackson shrugged. “This also isn’t about individual careers anymore. Things are happening fast now, and if the Phage aren’t stalled or stopped completely by the time they reach Nuovo Patria, all of Terran space is at risk.”

“I understand, sir,” she said.

Jackson glanced over at her and could see her face pinched into a worried expression.

It was a few hours before the ship was cleared for warp flight by Commander Singh and Navigation had a course that would allow them to ease into the warp corridor without another short jump that the new-generation drive seemed to hate so much. Jackson took the time to walk down to Engineering and inspect reactor two, making sure the coolant leak hadn’t posed any health risks to the crew. By the time he’d left, Singh was already opening the bypass valves to recharge the system and test all the pumps.

He’d also stopped by his office to take a peek at what Pike had transmitted to him before the Broadhead and slipped out of the system, but the entire contents save for a plaintext message had been locked down with an encryption he didn’t have the key for. He tossed around the idea of giving it to his com department to try and crack, but the accompanying message gave him pause.

Senator, suspicions confirmed. Worse than expected. Data package contains as much detail as I can get. Ares has appeared in-system, so I will use the distraction to bug out.

Jackson assumed the message was to Senator Augustus Wellington, Aston Lynch’s boss. He’d never fully understood if Agent Pike worked directly for the Senator, still reported to CIS, or was just a wild card that seemed to appear in places where he was least wanted. Either way, he would not be adding to his list of impressive offenses on this cruise by trying to force his way into a com package that was intended for a powerful senator.

“Captain, our course has been verified and entered, and the warp drive has been cleared for operation,” Lieutenant Davis said as he walked back onto the bridge.

“Bring the mains online,” Jackson said as he sat down. “Helm, you’re cleared for maximum acceleration once main thrust is available. I want transition velocity as quickly as possible.”

“Aye aye, sir,” the helmsman said. “Mains going hot now.”

“Is the plan still the same, sir?” Davis asked.

“Affirmative, Lieutenant,” Jackson said. “We’ll hop in and out of the Columbiana System and be on our way to Haven just as fast as she can take us.”

“Engaging mains now,” the helmsman said. “Answering ahead full.”

****

“The man is worse than you when it comes to getting himself into trouble.” Senator Augustus Wellington snarled, pacing in the cramped main cabin of the Broadhead. “What in the hell was he doing there in the first place?”

“As best I can tell, he’d received intel directly from Dr. Allrest before Tsuyo’s personal goon squad snatched him off Jericho.” Pike lounged in a chair as his boss paced back and forth like a caged animal.

“Yes, but
why
was he there?” Wellington snapped. “He get’s intel reports every time that ship enters a system. Does he chase every single one of them?”

“I couldn’t say, sir.”

“It was a rhetorical question, you jackass,” Wellington said. “So he goes blazing in there and blows your cover. Now McKellar and Marcum know that
we
know about their dirty little secret.”

“Not necessarily, sir.” Pike yawned. He’d been unable to get any sleep since as soon as the Broadhead entered the system, the Senator lit up his com panel with orders for him to dock and take him aboard. Apparently Wellington had been waiting for some time for him to show up.

“They have no idea which Broadhead this is. There are seventeen in operation and only ten belong to the CIS… For all they know, it could have been a civilian spy. Either way, it was unlikely I was going to sneak out undetected. Once I landed, they activated an orbital LIDAR array and had space pretty well blanketed. I think one of those new boomers might have observed my entry.”

“I guess it’s all academic now,” Wellington said. “I’m surprised we haven’t seen a general alert go out for the apprehension of Wolfe. Marcum must be playing this very close to the vest.”

“Or they haven’t decided the best way to go about it,” Pike said. “They know Wolfe is very single-minded about rallying a sizeable force to the Frontier to try and stop what looks to be a significant Phage offensive. He’s not stupid enough to let them board the
Ares
and he may decide to just let them play their games while he goes directly to Admiral Pitt to lobby for more ships.”

“He did manage to secure the release of both Black Fleet battlegroups,” Wellington said with a nod. “He’s been rather aggressive in his attempts to stay out of the politics on Haven. McKellar may be of a mind to just let him go and hope anyone he raves to will just ignore him. Despite everything he’s done in the last few years, the old resentments don’t die easily—there are still a lot of people in the Fleet who aren’t too fond of Captain Jackson Wolfe.”

“He’s not unaware of that fact,” Pike said. “But he doesn’t care. He’s been looked down on his entire time in service to the Confederate Starfleet. He’s quite an odd man in that he’s fighting harder than everyone else to protect a group of people who couldn’t care less that he even exists.”

“Takes all kinds, I suppose,” Wellington said with forced disinterest. He seemed to take any mention of the blatant bigotry within the Confederacy toward Earth as an indictment of him personally. “Has the director stopped bugging you about reporting on me now that you’ve been officially detached to my office?”

“He’s not happy about the posting, but he’s a political animal. He’ll honor the agreement. When I’m sent back to the CIS, however, I’m likely to be thrown into a cell for prolonged interrogation,” Pike said. “I’m actually only half-joking about that.”