Christopher Nuttall - Barbarians at the Gates

Roman’s appointment to command her was a sign that some very powerful and well-connected people had a great deal of faith in him.

And yet, although he hadn’t wanted to admit it to Admiral Drake, he had his doubts about the mission. Not the part about sowing dissent between the two warlords—that clearly served the Federation’s purposes, although that alone suggested the enemy would know who was to blame—but raiding commercial and industrial starships like simple pirates. His parents had been killed by pirates, long ago, and he’d hoped to be assigned to hunt pirates. The Donna Noble had spent the six months before the Battle of Terra Nova escorting convoys and chasing pirates, and he’d enjoyed every last moment of it. It felt as if he were avenging his parents every time he killed a pirate’s ship.

But then, Federation Navy was tearing itself apart and, scenting an opportunity, the pirates had begun to press their efforts closer and closer to the Core Worlds. Roman hadn’t been allowed—officially—to see accurate figures, but the ones he’d obtained from an old friend suggested that pirate activity had increased tenfold over the last three years. It didn’t take much mental effort to deduce that their depredations were actually damaging the Federation’s economy quite badly, particularly when the Federation Navy couldn’t spare the ships to escort convoys and patrol the more vulnerable systems. How many more ships would be taken, their crews tortured and killed, before the civil wars ended and the Federation Navy resumed normal patrols?

“The sooner we win, the better,” Elf said when he put his fears into words. “If what we’re doing in this sector helps win the war, we need to do it. Besides, how many people legally visit The Hive anyway? The last I heard, the Senate had quarantined the entire system and banned all entry without special permission.”

“The pirates don’t pay attention to the Senate’s orders,” Roman pointed out. He threw back the covers and climbed out of bed, standing naked against the artificial starlight. Outside the hull, there was nothing more than the madness-inducing continuous displacement space. “I just wish I felt more comfortable with our orders.”

“I shouldn’t worry about it,” Elf advised. She picked up a pillow and threw it at him with devastating accuracy. “We do have a few more hours before we are required to return to duty…unless you intend to whine some more?”

“Fuck you,” Roman said without heat.

“You just did,” Elf reminded him. “If you want my advice, you ought to keep a closer eye on the Delta Commandos and not worry so much about the pirates—or acting like a pirate. They may have orders that you won’t like…”

Roman frowned. The Delta Commandos—Uzi and the nine enhanced soldiers along with him—had come on board just before Midway had departed the Boskone System. They’d been given a suite of cabins and kept to themselves, refusing to interact with the Marines or any of the other crewmen. If they were training behind closed bulkheads, Roman didn’t know about it—or anything else they might be doing. The file he’d been given on them had been surprisingly thin, merely a brief outline of some of their capabilities and an order to take their requests and suggestions into account, if any were offered. Roman suspected that was actually a way of saying to treat any suggestions from Uzi as orders.

He looked over at her and lifted an eyebrow.

“Are you saying that they can’t be trusted?”

Elf shrugged, which did interesting things to her breasts.

“I’m saying that they tend to do the dirty work—wet work—and that they have a very dark reputation among the Special Forces community. You cannot assume they will follow your orders, whatever regulations may say about a captain being the sole authority on his ship. Their superiors in the Senate may have given them specific orders, and told them to keep them from you. They report to the Senate Oversight Committee specifically.”

She frowned. “The Colonel told me once that a team of Delta Commandos arrived on Luton when the rebellion against the ruling caste was underway. The rulers had begged their allies in the Senate for help and they sent the Delta Commandos, who somehow got into rebel territory and butchered the rebel leadership, along with their families and friends. They then manipulated the rebels into fighting each other with a program of planned assassination and black propaganda. This whole plan—putting the warlords at each other’s throats—smacks of their work. God alone knows what they have in mind.”

“So they definitely can’t be trusted,” Roman said. “Are they actually good fighters?”

“Individually, better than most Marines,” Elf admitted. Roman could tell that that admission had cost her. “Their enhancements—each of which cost ten billion credits, by the way—make them formidable in any combat zone. On the other hand, they don’t always play well together. And an enemy who refuses to panic, or assume that she’s automatically beaten, is going to have a fair chance of defeating them.”

She grinned. “But they’re damn hard to kill. You could toss one of them into vacuum, and it wouldn’t do more than piss him off.

“Anyway, enough doom and gloom.” She reached for him and pulled him towards the bed, pushing him down and straddling him, her hands running over his chest and up towards his neck. “If you’re not going to sleep, I have something else for you to do…”

“Long night, sir?” Commander Janine Trojanskis, his executive officer, said as she offered him a mug of strong coffee.

Janine was several years older than Roman, and by all rights should’ve had her own command years ago. Yet a black mark on her record prevented her from being promoted past her current rank. Since her file was sealed, Roman had no idea what Janine might have done to annoy the Admiralty. It couldn’t have been gross incompetence; she was a good officer, he’d seen that already. Roman’s best guess was that she’d insulted an admiral in some way, and that personage must have decided that forcing her to serve under a younger man was sufficient punishment.

“Of course not,” he said, knowing all the while he was lying. Elf had told him he needed to go see the doctor to get a sleep aid, but he’d declined; the story of Captain Trautman who’d accidentally slept through the Battle of Prince’s Burg due to taking a drug to get to sleep was still well known throughout the Federation. “Ship’s status?”

“All systems functioning nominally, sir,” Janine assured him as he took the command chair. “The Midway is fully at your command. I stand relieved.”

“I relieve you,” Roman said, settling down into the command chair. “I suggest that you get some sleep. We’ll be in the Tranter System soon enough, and I’ll need you on the secondary bridge.”

He settled back into the command chair, took another sip of coffee, and considered the engineering reports. Janine was right—they were all nominal—but he always checked them himself. After two weeks of travel—first through three Asimov Points, and then crossing the inky darkness of space—it paid to be careful. If the stardrive broke down while they were traveling between star systems, they would be stranded in interstellar space. It was a spacer’s worst nightmare, apart from the Slowboaters—and they were just plain weird.

The hours ticked by slowly until Midway reached the mass limit and dropped down to Slower Than Light speeds. Roman knew the odds were vastly against an enemy picket ship having the sheer dumb luck to be lurking anywhere near their arrival point, but he launched a pair of stealth drones and kept Midway under cloak until he was sure. The Tranter System was effectively enemy territory, and discovery would force them to retreat into FTL and come at the target from another direction.