He keyed his intercom, unlocking the privacy shields. “Gary,” he said when he was linked to the CIC. “I want you to find Commodore Arunika, wherever she is. When you find her, tell her to report to me in my cabin. I need to see her as soon as possible.”
“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Owen said. “Fleet Com shows her on the fleet carrier Helena Cain. She should be with you within an hour.”
“Thank you,” Marius said. “I’ll wait.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Marine contingent on a Federation Navy starship reports directly to the ship’s captain or acting captain. Junior officers are not entitled to issue commands to Marines, regardless of rank. This ensures that, if worst comes to worst, the captain has a loyal force at his disposal. However, friendly relationships between Marines and Navy crewmen are not unknown and there is a considerable amount of fraternisation.
FNS Midway, In Transit, 4095
“I noticed that you can’t sleep,” Elf said in the half-darkness of the captain’s cabin. The artificial starfield thrown over the bed shone upon her, lending her features an otherworldly air. “The responsibilities of command pressing down on you?”
Roman nodded without moving the rest of his body. The captain’s cabin onboard Midway was huge, far larger than anything he felt that he had a right to expect—or needed. Three years of service since graduating from Luna Academy hadn’t left him with much in the way of possessions, although one wall was covered with some old-style printed books he’d picked up on shore leave. Admiral Drake, he’d been informed, was a keen book collector and so Roman had attempted to follow in his mentor’s footsteps in that regard. He’d soon discovered that books were an overpowering habit and, somehow, they bred on his shelves.
“Yeah,” he said after a long beat. “I don’t want to fuck this up…”
Elf was now his best friend and his lover. But no one knew about it outside his cabin. Whenever she was on duty, most particularly when she was surrounded by others, she was all Marine. Their relationship didn’t quite break any regulations, but if it became known, people would talk.
And he didn’t want that for Elf. She was a damned good Marine. She’d earned every promotion she’d ever gotten.
So he kept it quiet. And hoped no one would figure it out, because there were times that Roman thought that the Federation Navy ran on chatter and rumors.
Elf snorted and poked one of her fingers into his stomach. “And when was the last time you fucked something up?”
“I wasn’t in command then,” Roman said. “I mean…I didn’t know I was going to wind up in command of the Enterprise, so when I did, I hadn’t had any time to think or plan. Here…the buck stops with me.”
“And you know what you are doing, you know that it needs to be done, and you know that the Admiralty has faith in you,” Elf said dryly. She poked him again, harder. “And if they didn’t have faith in you, they wouldn’t have given you the Midway. How many of your graduation class have their own newly-constructed assault cruiser to play with?”
“True,” Roman agreed. He reached out and touched the bulkhead, marvelling at the faint vibration he felt as the ship’s stardrive drove her on into the endless night. Only three of his fellow year-mates from Luna Academy had been promoted to captain—two of them, like Roman himself, originally had been forced into a dead man’s shoes. Several others had been killed in the incessant wars tearing the Federation apart. “Of course, we are also the test-bed for the whole concept. We fuck up, and the whole construction program goes to hell.”
Midway was the latest design of assault cruiser, a cross between a heavy cruiser and a battlecruiser. She was fast enough to catch almost anything in known space—apart from a starfighter or gunboat—and armed to the teeth. He couldn’t take her into battle against a battlecruiser or anything heavier, but Midway would have no difficulty evading anything powerful enough to punch her out. The designers had talked about using her as a fast scout, but the Admiralty had marked her and her sisters down for commerce raiders as soon as the potentials had percolated through their collective heads. And then there were the prospects for covert insertion missions and other interesting tasks.
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.