Badger (29 page)

On the wake of the hostility he felt, Jacob’s thoughts drifted to Al-shira. He wondered where the
Badger
was and if it was still in the Celostia system. Would she have been reassigned after the disaster at Wayward, or would she have remained untouched by the scandal of the court martial and the costly victory that had caused it? He didn’t think she could have been blamed for anything, not in her current position, but there was always the possibility.

He realized that until his orders carried him home again, he probably would never find out. It was a little frustrating. If she remained as the communications officer of the
Badger
, she’d see the message he’d sent for the High Admiral, as well as the one for Michael, and would probably be able to guess the reason for it. Al-shira would know more about his situation and problems than he would of hers, and given how much she had helped him in Reefhome, she’d have some solution already prepared for him, but wouldn’t tell him unless he dug for it. Unfortunately for him, she was nearly a week away by riftjump, which meant any attempt to dig it out of her was going to fail.

Still, an attempt was better than admitting defeat. Jacob sighed and picked up his reader again. He started to write the next message, explaining his dilemmas with the ships and his thoughts on the obstacles he faced. As he neared the end of his description of the problems, he paused. It truly wasn’t fair she would get to learn so much about his problems, and she wouldn’t tell him anything. A little spark of resentment burned there; he tried to convince himself it wouldn’t matter, or that he didn’t care.

He failed. With a sudden burst of furious typing, Jacob pounded out a few questions, mostly the kind of query that would help him know she had made it through the ordeal on Celostia unharmed, and then decided his message was done. She might be infuriated by his attempts to pawn his problems off on her, and maybe even angrier over his questions, but she’d asked for him to write, hadn’t she? Or at least she’d been angry about it then. Who knew what she’d be angry about now?

Nearly throwing up his hands in frustration, Jacob turned to lie on the cot he had been provided. It was no captain’s bunk, but it would do. Exhausted from his journey and still thinking furiously away on the problems he faced, he drifted off to sleep. The project to restore his squadron would begin tomorrow, and he would need every ounce of energy to face the task.

A week after he had sent his message, Jacob awoke to a pounding on his door that sounded far, far too familiar. He was slow to wake; the schedule he was attempting to keep had taken its toll. Every day started with a worker’s meeting, followed by another meeting with the staff Yorkshire had chosen to prepare the warships for their reconstruction. They had still not developed a final plan for the design, but that wouldn’t matter for the first few parts of the process, which mostly involved clearing debris and identifying problem spots. Unfortunately, the fourteen hour days had been rapidly grinding down Jacob’s reserves, and he was starting to doubt his sanity due to sleep deprivation.

Which was why he doubted his sanity when he checked the time. He blinked at the clock, nearly swearing when he realized how early in the morning it was, and then he pushed himself up out of the narrow cot he’d been given. Stumbling over a poorly placed chair, he launched himself at the door. Jacob tapped the combination into the keypad and triggered the mechanism that allowed the portal to slide open.

He yanked the door open and blinked as the light from the corridor flooded in. “Yes? Who is it?”

The figure standing at attention beyond his doorway was familiar. Isaac smiled, his teeth flashing white as he saluted. “Lieutenant Isaac Bellworth reporting for duty, sir.”

Jacob grunted. “Isaac? About time you got here.” He turned and stomped back into the room, leaving Isaac standing in the hallway. When he glanced back, the Gunnery officer was staring at him. “Well, come on in.”

Isaac crossed the doorway carefully, as if trying not to step on a landmine. “Jacob? You feeling okay?”

“Yeah. A little tired. How was your trip?” Jacob fell into a seat and waved for Isaac to take the other one. The other officer slid the chair around and sat, his expression still confused.

“It was all right, I guess. How’d you know I was coming?”

Jacob spitted him with a glare. “Over the past two years, the Bureau of Personnel has transferred nearly every one of my former crew to different commands at least once. The only exceptions have been you, Leon, and Laurie.” He shook his head. “Leon I could explain because of his father’s connections, but you two? You’ve had a few backdoors in the Bureau’s transfer systems for a while now. It was only a matter of time.”

Isaac shrugged. A hesitant grin spread over his face. “I can neither confirm, nor deny any of that. Of course, you probably shouldn’t be surprised if either of those two shows up in the staff the Navy sends you. In fact, Laurie arrived here with me and the others today.” He winked. “While I was making my…arrangements…I also caught a hint of the ruckus Leon was making, and it looks like you might have another one of us hanging onto your coattails soon.”

“Oh really.” Jacob sat back, folding his arms. “Do tell.”

Isaac’s smile grew huge. “No, I don’t think I’ll ruin the fun. Let’s just say things will be getting rather interesting soon.” He glanced back toward the corridor, his grin fading. “So why don’t you tell me what’s been going on with our ship? After all, if I’m going to be serving here as your aide, I should probably know what’s taking so long.”

“An aide? You? I’ll have to work extra hard to keep you out of trouble.” Jacob smiled in spite of himself, and he stood up. He started rummaging around on his desk for his reader. “Things are going well so far, but we’ve got a few problems we’re still figuring out.”

Isaac tilted his chair back and put his feet on the edge of the desk. “Why not run it by me? I could let my unrivaled genius take a whack at it for you.”

Jacob snorted and turned back to look at Isaac. Obviously his idea of military discipline had slipped during Jacob’s brief absence. “All right. You know these ships were wrecks to begin with right?” Isaac nodded. “So far we’ve just been cleaning out debris. We’re doing well, but we’re going to hit a wall once we get everything ready for the refit work. Between all the damage they took and…” Jacob glared at Isaac as the lieutenant yawned. “Am I boring you, Lieutenant?”

“Oh, never, Captain Hull.” Isaac grinned. “It is kind of late, so why don’t you sum things up for me.”

Jacob rolled his eyes. “Fine. To keep it brief for the peanut gallery, we don’t have enough guns, our ships are banged up, and the press might blow the cover for the operation. Any ideas?”

The chair’s front legs hit the floor hard. Isaac leaned forward, his eyes intense. “Not enough guns? What are you talking about?”

Glad he’d finally caught Isaac’s attention, Jacob leaned back against the desk and crossed his arms again. “The Navy’s provided us with the bare minimum of material and monetary support, and apparently railgun mounts are in short supply. If we try to fit up the destroyers like they were before, we’ll run short of what we need to finish the job.”

“That’s terrible.” Isaac came out of his seat and plucked Jacob’s reader from the corner of the desk. He tapped a few buttons, and the reader activated—without, Jacob noted, the need for his password. Isaac paged through a few directories, and his expression grew more and more grim. “It looks like most of them have their long-range guns at least, but without the rest, we’re going to be hurting.”

“I know. Turley said it’d be easier to break up the whole lot of them and make one functional destroyer. Looking at the kind of work we’re going to need to make them spaceworthy, I almost agree with him.” Jacob shook his head. “So you can see why I’m a little grumpy at the moment.”

“Yeah, I can.” A speculative look crossed Isaac’s, and he set the reader back on the desk. “Hey, when you mentioned making a whole new ship. Why don’t we do that?”

Jacob blinked. His mind was still clouded with sleep, and he didn’t grasp Isaac’s meaning right away. “What are you talking about? We need a squadron of destroyers to work with, not one ship.”

“Maybe we’ll get a squadron of those after all.” Isaac smiled. “So we don’t have the exact railgun mounts the Navy originally gave us. Why not shift around what we have and modify the armament plan for the destroyers? It’ll leave us with a different loadout for each ship, but we might be able to work around the limitations we’re stuck with. I might be able to divert a few weapons shipments for us as well, if they haven’t changed the systems around a lot.”

Jacob stared at Isaac. “You’re serious. The Navy wouldn’t stand for something like that. Each ship has exactly the same load of weapons as the rest of its class for a reason. A warship with specialized weapons designs usually has a glaring weakness that can be easily exploited. Besides, how are we supposed to plan tactics around a complement of non-standard ships?”

Isaac grimaced. “So the Navy doesn’t like individual load outs for ships. Why do we care? The ships we’re building already run contrary to what their typical ship designs anyway.” The corner of his mouth twitched into a half smile. “Maybe instead of designing them to act individually, we can have ships built around a squadron formation instead of individual units. Kind of like a pack instead of a lone wolf.”

Jacob opened his mouth to shoot the idea down, and then paused. The image of a group of destroyers acting in concert to bring down a larger target appealed to him, as did the chance to use a formation of ships to blow through groups of smaller targets. How might Wayward have gone if the
Terrier
and
Beagle
had been designed to work together instead of separately? He nodded slowly. “All right. What kind of designs are you thinking about?”

Isaac shrugged again. “I’m not sure yet. I still need a bit of time to work on it, but I can tell you our destroyers aren’t going to be toothless when I’m done with them.” Isaac smiled, and the twist of his lips turned it almost feral. “I can pretty much guarantee we’ll make just as much of an impact on them as we want.”

“Good. Let’s get started then.” Jacob started toward the door, and then a yawn forced him to stop. The fact that he was still in sleepwear penetrated his weary mind, and he turned back to Isaac. “Better idea. You get started, and I’m going to finish my little nap here. I’ll see you in…” He checked the clock and grimaced. “Damn it. Four hours? Goodnight, Lieutenant.”

“Goodnight Captain. See you when you’re human again.” Isaac tossed him a casual salute, which Jacob returned, and the Gunnery officer retreated to the doorway. Jacob turned back to the cot and had already collapsed into its warm, inviting embrace when a thought occurred to him. He twisted and saw Isaac opening the doorway and spoke up quickly before the other officer could leave.

“Isaac?”

His friend paused, looking back with eyebrows raised.

“Thanks for coming. I needed you out here.”

Isaac smirked. “Of course you did, Jacob. You’d have been lost without me. And I mean that literally since you would have still been wandering around Graveston Station, wondering where the briefing room is.” They both laughed, and Isaac backed out of the room. “See you in the morning, Captain Hull. Sleep well, because the next few weeks are going to be busy.”

The door slid shut before Jacob could respond, but he did anyway. “I bet.” He stared at the ceiling for a few moments more, and then the weariness he’d felt dragged his eyelids down. Oblivion was waiting, and he escaped beyond the burdens of command and the guilt of survival into the bliss of sleep.

When Jacob walked into the conference room, he felt far more refreshed than he had the night before. For the first time in a long while, he had slept relatively undisturbed, with the obvious exception of Isaac’s meddling. It was wonderful to feel so ready and prepared to face the challenges of the day. The fact that the day was one of the few without a planned conference of some kind with the press or the workers only made everything that much better.

When Jacob entered the room, the officers and crewmen inside came to their feet. Jacob swept his eyes over the lot of them, smiling when his gaze rested on Isaac on one side of the table and Laurie on the other. Turley had joined the group for this meeting, though he stayed separate from the other military attendants. Then he came to the person at the head of the delegation and froze.

Commander Naomi Al-shira glared at him, her back rigid and her dark eyes hot with repressed anger. She led the Celostian officers in their salute, and Jacob was so surprised he almost forgot to return the gesture. “Commander Al-shira reporting for duty, sir, along with the rest of the Naval personnel assigned to your staff.”

Jacob glanced at Isaac. The other officer was grinning from ear to ear. Jacob put as much resentment and outrage as he could into that brief moment of eye contact, and then returned his gaze to Al-shira. “Thank you, Commander Al-shira. It’s a pleasure to have you all here.”

Al-shira nodded sharply. “Of course,
captain
. We’re all interested in how the situation will be handled here.” Several of the other officers began to look back and forth between Jacob and Al-shira now, as if realizing the two were not on the best speaking terms. Jacob felt his own lips twist downward for a heartbeat before he returned the nod.

“I’m glad to hear it, Commander.” He took his seat, and the rest of the officers sat as well. Jacob leaned forward and settled his arms on the table. “Let’s begin by reviewing our objectives here. Our orders are to restore the four destroyers here to working order and adapt some new construction in their design. Turley, if you would explain…”

The rest of the meeting went fairly well. Or at least, it had if Jacob ignored the fact that Isaac was half laughing the entire time while Al-shira glared daggers at him across the table. He had managed to get through most of the main talking points, however, and had assigned the various officers to their duties. Since the betrayals which had nearly sent
Wolfhound
to its doom more than two years ago, the Navy had been careful to assign naval officers to observe the workers refitting or constructing new warships—preferably those who would be serving onboard the very ship the contractors were constructing. Traitors like Morris and Schroder would have still slipped through, but having a portion of the engineering crew there early would make their influence far less effective. As a side benefit, the process helped the crew be more familiar with the ins and outs of their vessel in advance. Given Jacob’s previous experiences with a newly refitted ship, he couldn’t fault the Navy for their decision, especially if it prevented more Telosian agents from infiltrating the whole process.