Skirmishes (26 page)

Everything Boss had worked for—everything he had worked for in the past few years—would get destroyed.

Coop frowned at the three-dimensional screen in front of him, wishing he had studied Empire tactics more.

He had gotten lax in his years here. He had ignored most of his training, concentrating not on how to work with the existing cultures, but on how to find the Fleet.

Maybe his decision had been a mistake.

If he had followed his training, he would know whether or not this kind of behavior—a splitting of an armada—was a common tactic for an imperial sneak attack.

“Anita,” he said, “Lost Souls monitors the area around it, right?”

“They do,” she said, “but for ships off course, someone who doesn’t belong, stuff like that.”

He cursed silently. He had always monitored the surrounding area when the
Ivoire
was docked at Lost Souls—he always monitored the surrounding area, period. And he knew that Lynda did so as well.

But neither of them were at Lost Souls.

He said to Anita, “Contact Lost Souls. Make them expand their sensor range as far out as it goes. And make sure they’re monitoring for cloaked Empire ships.”

“That’ll scare the hell out of them,” Anita said.

“It should,” Kravchenko muttered.

Coop nodded. He couldn’t agree more. He had tried to get Boss to think about defending her borders, but she believed she would know if Empire ships invaded the Nine Planets. Her replacement, Ilona Blake, was even more lax.

“Coop,” Anita said, “they’re reporting nine ships, all cloaked, not far from the Lost Souls. The ships’ll probably arrive within the hour.”

He straightened. The tactic was smart if this Trekov woman believed that the Lost Souls only had two Fleet ships. Keep the big ships busy on the border, and invade the Lost Souls, steal what it had, or destroy its research facility in retaliation for all the facilities Boss, Squishy—and Coop—had blown up.

“Mavis,” Coop said to Kravchenko, “we still have some former tactical people on Lost Souls, right? Retired?”

He had to ask because he knew a number of his people had given up the search for the Fleet, started a new life either in the Nine Planets or on Lost Souls. But he hadn’t kept track—he couldn’t keep track; it broke his heart—of where they ended up.

“At least a dozen,” Kravchenko said.

“Get them into what passes for command at Lost Souls. I want them to fire whatever weapons we have there, not the stuff Boss cribbed from the Empire, but ours.”

“I don’t know how quickly we can get them into position, sir,” Kravchenko said.

He shrugged. “The Empire ships believe we don’t know about them. We probably have thirty minutes. Get someone in command as fast as you can, someone who knows what they’re doing.”

“All right, sir,” she said.

“I’m going to give the word from here,” he said. “And our folks need to be in charge of the defense of Lost Souls. I don’t want the amateurs there in charge. If Ilona Blake has a problem, have her contact me, but tell her to be damn quick about it. Because she’s about to get blown off the grid.”

“Got it, sir,” Kravchenko said. “I’ll be as plainspoken as I can.”

He smiled again. He’d had her do a lot of the interaction between Lost Souls and the
Ivoire
in the past. He hadn’t much liked Blake when he first met her, and he liked her less now, even though he knew why Boss had put her in charge. Blake was exceedingly competent. She just had her own agenda, and her agenda was never the same as his.

Except right now.

“No problems from Blake, sir,” Kravchenko said. “She asked what she can do to help.”

Yep, competent.

“Make sure whoever is in their command center does
exactly
what I say,” he said. “And give me visuals from Lost Souls, would you? I want to see what they see.”

The images from Lost Souls bounced up on his screen almost immediately. The imperial ships were still fifty minutes out, and still cloaked. The cloak made them appear gray on the Lost Souls feed.

“We got our people in the command center yet?” he asked.

“Coming now, sir,” Anita said.

“Let me know when they’re in place.” He turned to Perkins. “How’s the chatter?”

“If they’re monitoring the internal activity at Lost Souls,” Perkins said, “I can’t tell. Chatter remains heightened, but no different than it was when we started.”

“So they’re not monitoring our communications,” he said, more to himself than to the others.

“I think they’ve been trying, sir,” Perkins said. “But I’ve been scrambling everything with Lost Souls, and then scrubbing it. I’ve also been keeping up our communications on normal lines with the Nine Planets vessels.”

He noted that she used the word “vessels” too. No one on the
Ivoire
wanted to give that decrepit group the title “ships.”

“Good job, Kjersti,” he said.

“We’re ready,” Kravchenko said. “And we have some good people on weapons. They shouldn’t have retired, sir.”

“Well, they’re not retired now,” he said. “Put me through.”

“You’ll be talking to Jason Xilvii,” Kravchenko said.

Coop remember Xilvii. He’d been a junior officer, working weapons and tactical five years before. Coop had been keeping his eye on him before they came here, thinking Xilvii would work his way up the ranks fairly quickly.

Instead, Xilvii had left the
Ivoire
, deciding it was easier to acknowledge just how much his life had changed. He’d actually told Coop he believed there was no future on the
Ivoire
—for anyone, not just for him.

Coop hadn’t known how to respond.

“Captain?” Xilvii appeared in a small square on Coop’s screen. Xilvii looked older than Coop remembered (didn’t they all?), his face thinner and lined, with a sad downturn to his eyes. “We have a situation.”

“We do,” Coop said. “Does the Lost Souls have enough weaponry to take out these imperial ships if we want to?”

“I’m more worried about our so-called shields,” Xilvii said. “They won’t hold.”

“It’s not going to come to that,” Coop said. “Can you—easily—take out those ships, considering we have the advantage of surprise?”

“Yeah,” Xilvii said. “If they’re not firing on us at the same time. And we’ll only get one try at this.”

“Then we’ll do it in one try,” Coop said. It was probably better to be surgical anyway. He had a backup plan, but if executed wrong, it would have terrible implications for Lost Souls.

“Just give me the word,” Xilvii said.

“Monitor those ships,” Coop said. “If they notice what you’re doing, if they power up, then you fire immediately. Otherwise, fire everything you’ve got in five minutes.”

“Got it, sir.” Xilvii said. “Thank you, sir.”

Coop monitored everything from his station. He didn’t see any other Fleet vessels near the Lost Souls except the ones that had been there before he left.

Boss wasn’t back yet.

He hoped she wouldn’t arrive in the next ten minutes, because that would throw everything off.

FORTY-TWO

ALL TWENTY PEOPLE on the bridge of the
Ewing Trekov
were busy at their stations. Commander Willem Sherwin immediately vacated his captain’s chair as Elissa Trekov entered the bridge. He was a slender man whose close-cropped hair had gone gray. It only made him look older than he was.

She waved him back into his spot and took a secondary command chair near the back.

It wouldn’t fool anyone. They all knew that she was the one who was truly in charge.

“Status?” she asked.

“We’re forty-eight minutes out from their research facility,” Sherwin said. He sounded both formal and nervous.

She understood the formal. She hated the nervous, although she accepted it. It was the price she paid for her hardassed reputation.

She had made it to the bridge just in time, then. The attack would begin within fifteen minutes.

“Commander?” one of the line officers said.

“Yes?” Sherwin said.

“I’m sorry, sir, I meant Commander Trekov.” The officer, a woman, sounded even more nervous than Sherwin had. “A man from one of the ships on the border says he wants to speak to you.”

“Commander Sherwin is in charge,” Trekov said, hating to explain how command worked sometimes. These junior officers sometimes got confused when the enemy asked for the person in charge.

“No, sir, ma’am, I’m sorry,” the officer looked quickly at Sherwin, then at Trekov. “He specifically asked for Commander Trekov.”

“What?” Sherwin asked. “Are you certain?”

Trekov felt cold. She let out a small breath.

“Yes, sir,” the officer said. “He asked for Commander Trekov, said they’d met before…?”

“They’re monitoring our communications,” Trekov said to Sherwin. Her tone was crisp, but she was certain he heard the accusation in it. He should have been using protected channels. “There’s no other way anyone would know that I’m here.”

“Unless it’s a guess.” Sherwin said. “If they knew how our systems worked, then—”

“Forgive me, sir,” the officer said. “It’s no guess. He said he knew that Commander Trekov was here, and she needed to talk to him within two minutes or they would relive their first encounter.”

Relive their first encounter.
Trekov ran one hand over the new skin on the back of her other hand, then realized what she was doing. Son of a bitch. If this man was the person she thought he was…

“Put him through. I want a visual.”

She wasn’t going to talk to this man in private.

“We can’t get a visual, ma’am.”

“Then on speaker,” Trekov said.

The officer nodded as the channel opened.

“This is Group Commander Elissa Trekov. Identify yourself.”

“
Group
Commander.” The man spoke with wry amusement. “And here I thought you were just a lowly soldier when we first met. Surely, you weren’t a Group Commander then.”

The voice made her throat go dry. She remembered every inflection, every nuance. The strange accent seemed fainter now, but it was still there.

She made herself take a deep breath before she answered him. She didn’t want to sound nervous or unsettled when she spoke to him.

“It would help if you identified yourself,” she said, and was relieved to hear that she sounded like her usual commanding self. “Maybe then I could place you.”

“Ah, commander,” he said. “You haven’t forgotten me. No one forgets the person who nearly kills you.”

She felt the color drain from her face. Everyone on the bridge looked at her. The junior officers looked startled. Sherwin’s expression held compassion and worry at the same time. Those farther up in the ranks knew how close she had come to dying and some of what had happened.

“I’m quite impressed you survived,” the man was saying. “That was not luck. That took skill. Let me salute you.”

“You still haven’t identified yourself,” she said.

“So,” he said, with that wry tone, “a lot of people have tried to kill you, then?”

She wasn’t going to dignify that with an answer. She waited in silence.

“We met at the Room of Lost Souls,” he said.

“And I seem to recall you didn’t identify yourself then either,” she said. It was him. The betraying bastard. She had known it, but she had hoped, somewhere deep down, that she was facing someone else.

She hadn’t realized until now how much he frightened her.

And how badly she wanted to kill him right now.

“All this concern with names and identities is simply wasting time,” he said. “Because my people have orders to destroy the nine ships you’ve sent into Nine Planets in less than three minutes unless I tell them otherwise.”

Sherwin’s gaze met hers. Now he had gone pale. The bridge remained silent—well disciplined to the last.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I want you to leave and tell the Empire to leave the Nine Planets alone. In fact, I want you to guarantee that the Empire will never encroach on Nine Planets’ space.”

“And in return?” she asked.

“We won’t destroy every last one of you.”

He’s bluffing
, Sherwin mouthed.

She shook her head. The betraying bastard wasn’t bluffing. But she couldn’t do what he asked. Even if she had the authority, she wouldn’t.

“You have the ability to negotiate for the Nine Planets?” she asked.

“Of course I do,” the betraying bastard said. “I’m the one with weapons trained on your ships.”

“I need more time,” she said. “I have to contact my commander. I am not authorized to speak for the Empire for anything past this matter, and even then, they’d have to know who they’re dealing with.”

“Ah, names again,” he said. “For a woman who is amazing in a crisis, you’re quite focused on protocol, Commander Trekov. You have less than a minute.”

“You’re a soldier,” she said, remembering the man from nearly four years ago. She’d recognized him from his bearing even then. “I know that the Nine Planets have no formal military. I know you can’t be representing them. So tell me who you are, and I will work with you.”

He sighed audibly. Then he said, “Maybe the next time I give you a warning, you’ll heed it.”

And then he severed the connection.

“Check our ships,” she said to Sherwin. “
Now
.”

He whipped toward his command post as everyone on the bridge bent over their consoles.

“Get that man back,” Trekov said. She figured if he was talking, he wasn’t doing something untoward. “And tell me what those ships on the border are doing.”

“Ma’am,” one of the junior officers spoke. Dammit, she should have bothered with names. This one was a middle-aged man whom she knew she had met before.

She didn’t like his tone.

“What, Officer?”

“Um, our ships, ma’am. The ones we sent to the Nine Planets? To the research facility? They’re gone.”

“Gone?” she asked. “What do you mean ‘gone’?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said, his voice shaking. “They’ve been destroyed.”