The Terran Privateer Read online

  “Why?” she replied flatly. “I’m not coming back, Admiral. You don’t have enough money.”

  “Commodore of a survey flotilla?” Jean observed. “Yeah, I wouldn’t want to miss that either. Elon is supposed to be helping me, the little brat.”

  Bond glared at him in silence. Jean had been glared at by heads of state who had less weight behind their anger than she did, and he sighed.

  “You are, I should point, a Reserve Space Force officer,” he pointed out gently. “You’ve taken the deposit every month for five years; we pay that so we can recall when we need you.”

  “That’s meant for war,” she told him. “Peacetime is just a financial penalty.”

  “And one Casimir would probably pay for you,” he agreed. “Hear me out at least, Captain Bond? I’m asking. You don’t owe me anything.”

  “No,” she confirmed. “I don’t. But Casimir clearly wants me to listen, so talk.”

  She obviously had no intention of even looking at the flimsy, so Jean drew it back to himself and glanced down the text, making sure he remembered the offer correctly.

  “We both know you’d have made Captain at least a couple of years ago if Bowman hadn’t been an epic piece of scum,” he noted. “So, the offer is to bring you at full Captain, with seniority based on your years wearing the title for Nova Industries. Much the same for your people: everyone comes across at an equivalent rank to what they’ve been doing and with appropriate seniority.

  “You keep Tornado,” he pointed out. “You get the full privileges and authority of her Captain, including veto right on the officers and crew we’ll need to fill in around the cadre you already have.”

  “And the rest of the Captains will treat me like something they’d scrape off their boot,” Bond replied. “You tried, Admiral, and it’s not a bad offer—but no, thanks.”

  “They won’t be able to,” Jean told her with an exasperated sigh. “You will command the single most powerful ship in the Space Force. A ship that could single-handedly destroy the entirety of the Space Force in an afternoon.

  “A ship we will be acquiring more of as fast as possible,” he continued. “Commands for those ships will be assigned based on experience with a brand-new class of vessels with completely different performance parameters.

  “Damn it, Bond, I’m handing you a chance to make those idiots obsolete and choose our next generation of Captains. I need to break that club as badly as you want to,” he pointed out, “or I’ll just leave this problem to the next Chief of Operations. I can’t micromanage who ends up on Tornado—but I trust you to pick men and women I’d be proud to pin oak leaves on.

  “What else can I offer you?” he asked.

  Finally, finally, he got a crack of a smile.

  “John Bowman’s head,” she noted. “But you gave me that already.” She shook her head. “All right, Admiral. I want your promise that you’ll back me to the hilt—I don’t trust your Captains.”

  “Some of them are actually decent people,” he pointed out. “But I promise. I’m not going to bring you back in and cut you off. If you take the eagle I’m promising, I’m behind you all the way.”

  “This ship will still need work,” she pointed out. “I don’t know how much of our…shortfalls Casimir has told you about.”

  “He basically told me you could fly and shoot,” the Admiral replied. “I was honestly surprised you had a conference room.”

  Chapter 4

  “I’m sorry, Captain, but it will simply not be possible to meet your requests.”

  Annette leaned back in her chair and eyed the man sitting across from her with a self-satisfied smirk on his face. Commodore Joseph Anderson was a heavyset man with tanned skin, and the current head of logistics for the United Earth Space Force.

  They both wore the dark blue service dress uniform of the United Earth Space Force, a general requirement aboard Earth’s military orbitals, but where Annette Bond now wore the silver eagle of a Space Force Captain, Anderson wore a single silver star of his senior rank.

  They’d last met when Captain Joseph Anderson had stood as Captain Bowman’s defensive character witness during Bowman’s trial. He’d made it very clear that day that he regarded Annette’s pursuit of her Captain as a betrayal of the Force.

  “Which part of my requests is a problem, sir?” she asked, keeping her voice level and cold. “Was it the supply of interface drive missiles that were specifically manufactured and delivered for Tornado’s use? The seventh fusion power generator core that was also specifically built for Tornado, and whose absence means I have an open core installation in my engineering section?

  “Or was it the food and other logistical supplies standard for the commissioning loadout of any United Earth capital ship? Supplies you have known would be required since Tornado was brought into United Earth service a month ago?”

  The smirk remained constant.

  “All of these pose issues,” Anderson noted. “IDMs are a scarce resource in the Space Force right now. Other ships have needs as well, Captain. Yours has no special priority. The core has not been delivered, and we are having issues with the supplies. Your requests will take several weeks to complete.”

  Several weeks that Annette would have to delay the formal commissioning of Tornado in Earth service. She smiled coldly and pulled her official communicator out of the jacket of her undress blues. It slid apart with ease, the two scroll-like ends separating and providing the data feed to the e-paper screen between them.

  “I’m sorry, Captain, but making calls in your superior’s office is rude,” Anderson snapped. “You may have been able to get away with that in civilian service, but you are back in the Space Force now!”

  “You have a choice, Commodore,” Annette told him flatly. “In about a minute, I am going to call Elon Casimir, and you can explain to him where the missiles and fusion core his people delivered thirty-six hours ago have gone astray to. I’ll note, for your benefit, that the interface drive missiles used by Tornado are a completely different design from the stopgap design used to provide some usable firepower to the rest of the Space Force. No other ship currently in commission can fire a properly sized IDM.

  “Once we’re done explaining your misplacement—or potentially grand larceny,” she observed, “to Mister Casimir, I will call Admiral Villeneuve, and you can explain to him why you are intentionally stonewalling the commissioning of the only warship worth the name in the UESF.”

  “I will not be threatened,” Anderson snapped, lunging to his feet.

  Annette remained sitting, looking up at him as she tapped a button on the communicator.

  “Hi, Michelle,” she said brightly to the middle-aged woman who appeared on the screen shortly. “Can you get Elon for me? It’s a bit of an emergency; logistics is telling me that we have a foul-up here.”

  “Of course, Annette,” Elon Casimir’s personal assistant replied. “He’s in a meeting with the Russian President; it will take him a minute or two to get free. What can I tell the President Sokolov is going on?”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” Anderson hissed.

  “Let me conference in Admiral Villeneuve,” Annette told Michelle. “I’d like him to at least know what I’m doing I if have to inform a member nation’s head of state that the UESF is being obstructive.”

  “Shut that off,” the Commodore ordered. “Fine. I’ll make it happen.”

  “Do you still need me?” Michelle asked, with an arched brow.

  “Let Elon know I called,” Annette said calmly. “Play him the recording; he needs to know what’s going on.”

  “Of course. Luck.”

  Annette slid the communicator closed and looked back at Anderson.

  “So, I will have my missiles, my power core, and consumables aboard by twenty hundred hours?” she asked calmly.

  “I can’t make that happen in twelve hours!”

  “Those deliveries were scheduled for twelve hundred hours,” Annette pointed out. “I’m giving
you eight hours of grace, Commodore. Anything beyond that, and the Governing Council will know you’re impeding Earth having a real defense.”

  She smiled coldly.

  “I’m sure you’ve seen the recent reports from Dark Eye?”

  #

  A month’s worth of work by Nova Industries main shipyard platform had filled in many of the voids inside Tornado’s hull, but there would always be certain oddities of her layout that grew from her being an experimental ship.

  The interior of the ship was still very modular, and while the combat information center and many other sections had been filled in, other parts were still empty. Tornado didn’t have the external hull space for, say, more weaponry—but she had internal modules and power generation capacity to spare. The cruiser really didn’t need the seventh fusion core she’d forced Anderson to turn over—she only operated on three. Annette had insisted on it because the design called for it and Anderson had pissed her off.

  The entire crew quarters had been built into one module, inside a second layer of armor and buried at the core of the ship, which led to some oddities in the layout. One of them was that Annette Bond’s executive officer’s quarters were directly opposite hers.

  Since Anderson had managed to come through only twenty-two minutes after her deadline, she’d been able to inform Admiral Villeneuve that Tornado would commission on schedule, which meant that she and her XO were due on the main deck in full dress whites in just under an hour.

  Annette took a moment to be sure her own long tunic, with its high collar and stiff shoulder boards, was straight and properly buttoned, then rapped sharply on Kurzman’s door.

  “Commander? Is there a problem?” she asked through the hatch.

  “Give me a moment,” the newly commissioned officer replied. A few seconds later, he opened the door and looked up at his taller captain helplessly. Kurzman was a short man, stocky and well-muscled but without the height needed to carry off the tunic.

  Worse, he clearly had no idea how to wear the tunic, the shoulder boards, or the associated cobalt-blue tie. He’d misbuttoned the tunic, only one of the two shoulder boards was properly fastened, and he’d used a type of tie knot that just did not work with the cut of the Space Force tie.

  “How?” he demanded as he saw her perfectly turned-out uniform.

  “Maxwell Base OTS,” Annette told him crisply. “Plus two years of Space Force Academy.”

  “They covered the tie?”

  “They covered the uniform,” she replied crossly. “Now hold still.”

  Obedient to a fault sometimes, Kurzman complied.

  It had been years since she’d helped fellow cadets put the uniform on at the Academy, but she wasn’t surprised to find she still remembered it. In under a minute, she’d rebuttoned and straightened her executive officer’s tunic, reattached his shoulder boards, and tied his tie.

  “There,” she concluded. “You’ll embarrass me less now.”

  Kurzman relaxed slightly and nodded his thanks. She’d half-expected the problem—Kurzman was a merchant spacer who had spent his career as an officer aboard the big transfer ships running between Earth and Mars. Merchant spacer uniforms were much less demanding than the Space Force’s.

  “I checked in with everybody before I started dressing,” he told her after a moment. “We are fully stocked on munitions, fuel, food, and all other consumables. Core Seven is online and has been tested up to one hundred and ten percent capacity.”

  “I assume we’re not running at that now?” she asked.

  “No,” he confirmed. “We’re running all seven cores at less than fifty percent capacity. All systems are showing green, Tornado is ready in all aspects to be commissioned, ma’am.”

  “Thank you, Pat,” she told him quietly. “It’s been one hell of a month. Glad to have you with me.”

  Kurzman appeared unsure how to respond to that—and settled for a safe silence as Annette led the way toward Tornado’s outer hull.

  #

  To a fanfare of trumpets, Morgan Casimir—a golden-haired cherub of three years old held in her father’s arms—pushed the button that fired a bottle of champagne into Tornado’s prow. Cameras zoomed in on it, showing it as it shattered and sprayed broken glass and golden bubbles across the armored prow of Earth’s newest warship.

  Everyone applauded the little girl, who turned a beaming bright smile on the crowd, and the commissioning ceremony itself was over. Annette remained standing next to the platform, allowing herself a rare full smile at Morgan—the little girl, for whatever reason, seemed to adore her. She heard her XO sigh in relief and saw him visibly sag from the unfamiliar parade rest.

  “We still have to circulate,” she murmured to him. “Separately, at that.”

  “I can glad-hand, boss,” Kurzman whispered back. “I just can’t do this god-awful uniform.”

  “Get used to it,” Annette ordered. “If I’m reading the cards right, we’re going to be doing a lot of full-dress affairs. Tornado is the Force’s newest and shiniest toy.”

  “Wonderful. I’ll go say hello to the natives, then,” the man replied in an exaggeration of his natural British accent.

  Kurzman glanced around, set his eyes on a cluster of civilians, and sauntered away from Annette. She, despite what she’d told him, remained standing next to the dais where she’d read her commissioning papers, formally taking command of Tornado as a United Earth Space Force officer.

  “Auntie Annie!” Morgan squealed, providing Annette about half a second’s warning before the girl torpedoed her way into the Captain’s midsection.

  Annette gently and awkwardly patted the child on the head, looking around half-desperately for Elon Casimir. She liked Morgan, inasmuch as she liked any child, but this was not the place for it.

  “Come here, Morgan, or you’ll muss Captain Bond’s uniform.” The older Casimir thankfully arrived to her rescue. The blonde child detached herself from Annette—only to attach herself to her father like a limpet.

  Casimir simply smiled and ruffled his only child’s hair as he met Annette’s eyes.

  “The uniform looks good on you,” he said quietly. “Better on you than a lot of these twits.” He gestured to the gathering with his head. Roughly a third of the UESF’s ninety-four Captains were in the room, at least pretending to like their newest compatriot.

  “To be fair, most of these ones are decent,” she admitted. “I had a veto on the guest list—not a perfect one”—her gaze touched on Commodore Joseph Anderson and she barely concealed a snarl—“but enough to weed out the true scum.”

  “Villeneuve needed you for this more than I did,” Casimir told her. “You were never comfortable commanding anything without guns, either. Made you feel vulnerable.”

  He met her responding glare with a disarming smile and shrug.

  “You belong here,” he finished. “And you are the woman of the hour. It’s your ship, which makes all of these people your guests.”

  “And I should be talking to them and not my old boss?”

  “Pretty much,” Casimir agreed with a wink, reminding her of other things he’d been at one point. “I’ll always back you, Annette. You may not work for me anymore, but that ship is still my baby and I trusted you with her from the beginning.”

  “I appreciate it,” she told him. “But I believe I see an Admiral approaching, and in this new job, stars trump even you.”

  Casimir gave her a wave that vaguely approximated a salute and swept Morgan away into the crowd. Annette took a moment to relax from what had been a friendly chat, and then turned to face an older woman she didn’t know with the tripled stars of a Space Force Vice Admiral.

  “Vice Admiral Katherine Harrison,” the tall white-haired woman introduced herself, offering her hand. “We’ve never actually met, though I spent several days reviewing your reports on Captain Bowman prior to the Admirals’ Board a few years back.”

  Annette felt the cold mask settle over her face. While the Admirals’
Board had voted to prosecute Bowman in the end, she hadn’t been privy to their discussions and doubted the margin had been broad—the Captains’ Board had voted ‘lack of evidence to charge,’ after all.

  “Bad memories, I apologize,” Harrison said after a moment of awkward silence. “Between you and me,” she murmured, glancing around to make sure no one overheard her, “let’s just say that I think it’s about damned time we found a way to put you back in uniform. Whole thing was a mess and you deserved better.”

  “If you say so, ma’am,” Annette said flatly, and the older woman laughed.

  “I do say so, Captain Bond,” she replied. “Someday, you’ll believe me. Until then, just do the job.”

  “That’s what I do,” she said. “That’s what I did that cost me the job.”

  “Yes,” Harrison agreed flatly. “And that’s why you had your pick of enlisted spacers for Tornado. Some Captains tried to hold their people back, but there wasn’t a Chief in the Force who wasn’t going to back the woman who saved Bowman’s people from that sick bastard.

  “I don’t know if you’ve been advised, but my Alpha Squadron’s battlewagons have picked up the first wave of stopgap upgrades,” the Admiral told Annette. “I’m going to need to pick your brain on interface missiles and compressed-matter armor when you have a free hour later. I’ll even buy the beer.”

  “I don’t drink beer,” Annette pointed out. Certainly, after everything that had happened, she wasn’t going to drink with Space Force officers.

  “Then I’ll buy tea,” Harrison said calmly. “We’ll talk later, Captain. I hear a buffet table calling my name.”

  With a firm nod, Alpha Squadron’s Admiral moved on, leaving Annette Bond gazing after her in confusion. She didn’t know any of the Force’s Admirals except Villeneuve by anything more than reputation, but Harrison was not what she’d expected of the Canadian contribution to the UESF Admiralty.

  If she hadn’t been distracted by Harrison’s surprising charm, she’d probably have been able to dodge the reporter. As it was, she turned around and found herself facing down the stereotypically perfect, immaculately coiffed features of a tall black-haired woman in a long black dress and a media headset.