Graham Paul - The battle of Devastation reef

The young lieutenant in charge of the patrol waved him over. “This lot yours?” he said.

“Some of them. Not all. Don’t know who they were, but they wanted a fight, they started a fight, so it’s a fight we gave them.”

“Yeah, yeah,” the patrol officer said wearily.

“Luckily, that’s what my neuronics recordings will show.”

“They all say that. One of my guys will take your statement. Who’s this?”

“Junior Lieutenant Ferreira, my XO. Sorry, my ex-XO.”

The patrol officer shook his head despairingly. “A joker. That’s all I want. I’ll need your statement, too, Ferreira. And you are?”

“Junior Lieutenant Sedova.”

“Ditto.” The patrol officer turned to survey the wreckage. “At least the officers had the common sense not to join in, which is more than I can say for this lot.”

“My guys were provoked,” Michael said, “and they sure as hell did not start it.”

“That’s mitigation,” the patrol officer said, waving a hand dismissively. “It’s not justification, and you know it.”

Michael nodded. The man was right; he did know it, but it was hard not to feel proud of the fierce loyalty and commitment the Reckless’s crew had shown. Not that loyalty and commitment would help much when the matter came to trial.

Giving his statement to the shore patrol, along with the records his neuronics had made of the incident, took an age, and it was almost midnight before Michael made it back to his cabin. The impersonal box-one of hundreds of identical cabins making up the transit officers’ quarters-was as uninviting as ever. With a groan, he toppled onto his bunk, doing his best to ignore the anger and resentment that still simmered inside him. He knew one thing for sure. Whatever humanspace lacked, it was not assholes, something Snow White and his seven pea-brained sidekicks proved. Sons of bitches, he swore silently. He hoped the provost marshal would throw the book at them; they deserved it.

Out of habit, he flicked on the holovid. When it lit up, he wished he had not; World News was running its breaking news segment, the ticker tape scrolling across the bottom of the screen with the words “Fleet Hero in Bar Brawl-Provost Marshal to Lay Charges.”

“For chrissakes,” Michael shouted, frustrated beyond belief. “The fucking bastards.”

He did not have to watch the story to know how World News would spin it. He had been on the receiving end often enough to know exactly how they would lay it out: heavy on the fight-no doubt using recordings helpfully provided by one or more of the bar’s patrons-but light on who had started it. With careful editing and without ever saying so, they would leave the viewer with two impressions: first, that he had been in the thick of the fight, fists swinging with the best of them, and second-picking up the idea sown by the ticker tape-that he had been charged. If they were feeling creative, they probably would find a way to blame him for starting it.

World News did that sort of thing all the time, and they were extremely good at it, which was why they were so popular and profitable. Worse, any corrections his lawyers forced out of them would be buried in a quick one-liner at the end of the news a week later, by which time millions of Feds would know-as certain fact-that he had been charged with brawling, their opinions immune to any evidence to the contrary.

Michael understood none of it. For some reason, he was well and truly in their sights, and presumably, he would stay there until they got bored with him or a bigger sucker came along. He would talk to Mitesh in the morning. Despite the fact that his agent was just another AI-generated avatar, he had a way of getting things into perspective.

Too demoralized even to get undressed, Michael lay there until sleep overtook him.

Offices of the fleet provost marshal, Space Fleet

headquarters, city of Foundation, Terranova

“For God’s sake,” Michael muttered, “how much longer do we have to wait?”

“As long as it takes, sir,” Ferreira said. “The staff captain is extremely pissed, and I imagine she’s had a lot to say. Not that I blame her. It’s not every day she has to deal with a heavy cruiser’s entire complement of senior spacers.”

Michael laughed out loud. The crew of a conventional heavy cruiser included hundreds of senior spacers; he loved the idea of all of them lined up in front of some long-suffering staff captain, though he knew the staff captain would not see anything even remotely funny about the whole business.

Finally, the doors opened, and Chief Petty Officer Bienefelt emerged, leading a line of spacers out of the Fleet provost marshal’s offices. Michael could not help noticing that not one of them showed the smallest sign of remorse.

“All right, chief,” Michael said, shaking his head. “Tell me how it went.”

Bienefelt smiled, a smile of smug self-satisfaction. “Justice prevailed, sir, as it should. Charges of common assault were dismissed, though sadly we were all found guilty of a breach of the peace.” Bienefelt even managed to sound hurt.

“Well,” Michael snorted, “what a surprise, considering the patrol used a stun gun to stop you from beating the crap out of … what the hell was the useless jerk’s name?”

“Leading Spacer Rasmussen, sir. Off Ebonite , which wasn’t within a hundred light-years of Operation Opera. Useless, scum-sucking toe rag.”

“Yeah, him. And the damage?”

“Fine, stoppage of leave, loss of seniority, and we’ve had to kick the tin to pay for the damage to the bar.”

“Oh,” Michael said, “so you’re still a chief petty officer?” He shook his head despairingly. “That’s a fucking miracle. I think you got off lightly.”

“Maybe so, sir,” Bienefelt said, looking not in the least apologetic, “but let me tell you this. It was well worth it, not that Rasmussen would agree. The provost marshal threw the book at him, big-time. He’s screwed, and his mates, too. My spies inside the provost marshal’s office tell me they are on their way to Fleet Prison 8 as we speak.”

“Good.” Michael paused to look at Reckless ’s crew. Excrew, he reminded himself. Reckless might be gone, but that did not diminish the fierce pride he had in all of them. “Well, boys and girls, I hope you’ve learned your lesson, though looking at you, I doubt it. I would buy you a beer to say a strictly unofficial thanks for standing up for Reckless and her sister dreadnoughts, but since you’re all confined to barracks, I can’t.”

“Short arms, deep pockets, sir,” Bienefelt shot back amid a soft chorus of boos and hisses. “Any excuse. Nothing changes.”

“Insubordinate rabble,” Michael said. “Give me a shout when they let you back into civilized society. The beers will be on me, though maybe we should try another bar. Now piss off. I’ve got work to do. Catch up with you later, Jayla.”

“Sir.”

Michael made his way through the labyrinthine corridors and drop tubes of Fleet headquarters. The place was huge, and his leg, for all the help given by the legbot, did not appreciate the workout. By the time he made it to his desk-cold-shouldered as usual by the rest of Warfare Division as he limped past-he could not have walked much farther.

He sat down, any enthusiasm generated by the unquestioning loyalty of Reckless’s crew evaporating fast. Updating the Fighting Instructions was important work, he knew, but only if Fleet continued the dreadnought experiment, something he had a feeling it would not. He had forced himself back to work when two pings in quick succession announced the arrival of priority mail.