Months Previous...
The bridge was bathed in a smoldering crimson gloom, lit only by the glow of Semiramis' distant, dying star. The Almalexia was running silent, power levels just barely adequate to keep the oxygen circulating and the AI online.
The crew did not speak as they waited and watched, their vessel hidden in the tangled circle of hulks and debris ringing the pirate-world. Their prey was not far away, the wreck of the heavy cruiser Tartarus, turned by the planet-side regime into an orbital fortress bristling with fire power, its huge engines re-purposed to power a crude- but effective- plasma canon. A ship killer likely to make the UNSF's planned invasion of this planet too costly to bother with.
Naval command had shelved the taking of Semiramis indefinitely. Naval Intelligence had noted the pre-war data banks on the pirate-world, and decided to lend their colleagues in the admiralty a hand.
"Commander," said Lieutenant Uled, "Unscheduled patrol, closing on our position. At current speed and trajectory, they'll be in sensor range in 15."
Athanasius Love was standing to the left of the unoccupied captain's chair, hands clasped behind his back, cigarra smoldering in the center of his mouth. One of the few sources of light on the bridge.
"All power to stealth generators. Boarding torpedo status?"
"In the tube sir, marines and bots are locked and loaded."
"Give us a boost to coordinates A209B33. Get us in the shadow of that smelting station."
"Sir, that will take us directly across the Tartarus' gun line."
Commander Love gave the lieutenant a chilly glance, "Let us hope the stealth capabilities of this frigate are as good as the engineers say they are, Lieutenant. Now fire the engines."
There was a muted flash across the bridge view-ports as the stealth generators came online, and a slight vibration along the decks as the engines fired once, hurtling the Almalexia through the void, away from the approaching pirate patrol and free from its cover in the debris field.
It took only twenty minutes to cross the open space between the ship's previous hiding place and its destination. Twenty minutes in the open, in full view of the enormous, twisted metal hull of the Tartarus, bristling with heavy batteries.
No one spoke. At a signal from Love, the lieutenant launched the single boarding torpedo, a tiny speck hurtling through space towards the monstrous cruiser-turned-battle station, protected only by its own stealth emitters.
The mission hinged on a single piece of intelligence, leaked by a slaver-captain to a Naval Intelligence operative in a bar light-years away. The Tartarus was barely crewed. The day to day operations left to the AI.
A surprise strike by a handful of marine platoons could take the whole station. The slaver captain had planned to do just that, in fact, and force the dictator of Semiramis to ransom back his own defensive station at enormous cost.
The Directorate of Naval Intelligence had killed the slaver captain, but his plan to seize the Tartarus with a surprise boarding action was very much alive.
The Almalexia reached the smelting station, forward thrusters firing to halt her further progress.
Sensors from the Tartarus picked up the stealth-ship. It began to swivel, alarmingly fast, to bring its ship-killer to bear.
Comms crackled to life "Declare yourselves! In the name of Otho Katolicus III, Dictator and Master of Semiramis. You are in a restricted zone, declare yourself!"
Alarms pinged across the bridge. "They're locking on," said the lieutenant.
Commander Love snuffed his smoke out, his face expressionless. His eyes narrowed as he stared down the immense, weaponized engines of the Tartarus, cycling up to obliterate him.
"When they fire," he said, as though he were discussing the weather, "the plasma-bloom will take 1.5 seconds to reach us. Lieutenant, in that 1.5 seconds you will make a micro-jump to their blind spot."
The lieutenant paled, "Yes sir."
"You will wait until they fire."
"Yes sir."
Then, the Tartarus' ship-killer exploded. A blinding azure bloom filled the view ports of the bridge, blotting out everything else.
"This is boarding team Lupine," came a voice over the comms, "Mission accomplished, Lexia. Come get us the hell off this thing before the rest of it blows."
Present Day...
In his dream, he is twenty-eight and sitting outside his family's house, on the pale stone balcony far above the azure waters of Lake Augustine. Mountains thick with dark blue pines rise all around, capped with white. The sky is a swirl of pinks and reds and greens as the sun sets behind the jagged horizon. The view is spectacular, but he is looking only at her.
She stands at the balustrade, taking in the glorious evening. She's in the uniform of a naval lieutenant. He thinks that's a shame. He has old fashioned, if weakly held, views about women in the military... and he knows what she looks like in a dress.
He lights a cigarette.
"Those'll kill you," she says for the ten thousandth time. She doesn't bother turning around.
"Probably not," he replies, for the ten thousandth time, taking a long drag. He exhales with relish and ice tinkles in his glass as he sips his whiskey.
A bell tolls somberly somewhere on the grounds. Evensong in the chapel.
"I hate to leave this place," she says.
"I hate for you to leave it," he replies, "Navy's no kind of life, Alexa. Stay here with me."
"Hunting, drinking, politics, ordering the servants around," she says, "In ten years you'll be bored, begging to join me in a life of dash and adventure. By then I'd so far outrank you, though, it would be embarrassing- to have to serve on your wife's vessel, under her command."
"All the more reason for you to give it up," he says, "You can teach flying to cadets at the Academy. Or not. We can just be a pair of epicures, indolent and sated."
She turns to him, her smile slightly sad. They both know it's all banter. He needs her in the Navy if he ever wants a shot at Planetary Governor. And she loves him, but she loved the Navy first and maybe still loves it more.
He looks at her, standing there in the mountain twilight looking like something out of a dream... and remembers he's dreaming. Remembers that this is the last night they'd ever spend together.
It's like having something torn out of him, the realization.
He blinks open his eyes to the darkness of his quarters, just as a chime dings signalling translation to realspace. He wipes at his eyes with the back of his sleeve and sits up. The lights in the room brighten automatically, revealing carefully hung artwork and rather non-military polished wooden furniture and appurtenances. A book- bound with real paper- lay on his bedside table. The leather cover reads Paradise Lost in archaic script.
He is lighting a cigarette as Friendly comes in to pour his coffee.
"Pleasant dreams, sir?" asked the automatron in its clipped, Albion accent.
He lets out a short laugh, only a little bitter. "Sort of, Friendly, sort of. How far out are we?"
"We'll be docking with the Apollyon in less than two hours, sir."
"You'd better get my uniform ready then. I'll have raptor eggs for breakfast I think."
"Very good sir."
Marrone
josephb
