The Privateer: The Flight Engineer, Volume II Copyright (c) 1999 CHAPTER ONE It's a formality, Commander Peter Raeder thought. The fix is in. It's not a real Board of Inquiry any more, much less a court martial. I'm the hero, not the goat. He supressed an urge to rub his midriff. Then why does my stomach still hurt? Of course, there was the previous visit to this self-same courtroom not so very long ago. Then his second in command, Second Lieutenant Cynthia Robbins, had been suspected of sabotage and murder, and he, too, was looked on with a gimlet eye. The look of the polished dark teak of the high table at the other end of the room, the scent of wax, and the ever-so-slight rustle of the crossed Commonwealth and Navy banners behind the senior officers spelled danger to his subconscious now. In fact, the sensation wasn't altogether different from the way he'd felt in a Speed when the compensator started going collywobble and the lock-on alert said a Mollie interceptor was targeting him. . . . Back before I lost the hand, he thought. Though there had been a lot more in the way of combat stress than he'd anticipated, when they made him a flight enginner. Raeder shifted in his seat. Just a few weeks later the room still boasted the same lustrous mahogany paneling, the same painting of a space battle on the back wall, flanked by the starred flag of the Commonwealth and the blue and black flag of Space Command. The row of stern senior officers seated behind the sturdy teak table in their comfortable leather chairs still faced the smaller table with its single unpadded seat. All too reminiscent of that previous occasion. Well, some of the faces have changed. And this time he had a personal reason for anxiety. After all, he had left his post in the middle of a battle with the Mollies and their alien Fibian allies. And you can never be too sure that the powers that be won't decide to make an example of someone, despite things turning out right in the end, Raeder mused. Someone like me, for instance. It wasn't that he didn't want to obey orders. It was just that he kept being the one on the spot who knew what his commanders didn't. . . . The fact that he looked a little like a recruiting poster-square chin, blue eyes that the newsvids insisted on calling "volcanic," black hair, pale complexion-didn't help either. He looked like a self-centered hotshot, you had to admit that. He'd left his post for the best of reasons, naturally; risking his life to save a precious five-month supply of enemy antihydrogen that would certainly have been lost without his interference. It was an open secret that the Commonwealth's supply of A-H was running perilously low. And without antihydrogen fuel, the Commonwealth couldn't continue to exist and the war with the Mollies would be over. And he'd saved what remained of the Dauntless, the ship transporting it, and the life of a very fine engineer. Which made him a hero. Bigtime. The captain had recommended him for a Stellar Cross. A corner of his mouth twitched up. Y'know Raeder, sometimes you worry too much. On the other hand, there was a nasty undercurrent here that kept him shifting in his seat no matter how he reassured himself. Someone in this room was going to be damn lucky to walk out of it with nothing worse than a reprimand. Of that he was perfectly sure. Because just now Admiral Einar Grettirson, the presiding officer, was grilling Captain Jill Montoya of the Dauntless with an attitude that raised the hairs along the back of Peter's neck. "Cap-tain Montoya," Grettirson drawled, thick gray eyebrows drawn down over ice blue eyes, "you lost a total of one thou-sand seven hundred and ten of your people, as well as twenty-five Speeds in this action. Did you not?" "Yes, Admiral," she answered stiffly. And no one could have tried harder to save them, Peter thought resentfully. Captain Montoya had actually carried one wounded crew-woman to the lifeboats on her back. But Grettirson was a well-known martinet, and a slave to the book; it was rumored that he slept with a copy of the Commonwealth Standard Manual of Operations under his pillow. Montoya had managed to get her crippled ship to the edge of Ontario Base's defensive perimeter, and with the antihydrogen. To me, Peter thought, that kind of a save says, "Wow! What a leader!" "And just how do you explain such cat-a-strophic losses?" Grettirson asked, his thin, ascetic face as cold as space. Clearly the admiral doesn't agree with my assessment. Peter shifted in his chair again, drawing Grettirson's glittering eye. He froze instantly, like a buck under the eye of a hungry mountain lion. Oops. Not that the admiral was a total monster; he was simply convinced that today's subordinates emerged from a very inferior mold to the one that had shaped him. Peter examined the other members of the board, trying to read reactions in their impenetrable expressions. Vice-Admiral Paula Anderson he knew from Cynthia's hearing, and he felt her to be intrinsically fair. Commodore Wayne Gretsky and Commodore Margaret Trudeau of the Intelligence Corps were complete unknowns. But Marine General Kemal Scaragoglu was a power, if not truly a known factor. Conspiracy, rumor and paranoia followed him around like besotted puppies. Scaragoglu was so Machiavellian that he even looked like an African copy of the sixteenth-century statesman. He had the same tight-lipped, sharp-eyed intensity, coupled with a high-bridged nose and sharp chin; some said it was biosculp. Raeder didn't think so; he figured the Marine general was more likely a reincarnation of some extremely successful condottiere. "And how is it," Admiral Grettirson was saying, "that neither you nor your chief engineer thought of Commander Raeder's rather simple fix for the damaged antihydrogen bottle?" "I'm not an engineer by training, Admiral," Montoya answered quietly. "As for Chief Casey, I cannot say. Perhaps it was the heat of the moment. But, of course, the flight deck had taken a direct and catastrophic hit. It was a shunt from a Speed's engine that Commander Raeder used to empty the damaged bottle. Such an item would have been unavailable to Chief Casey, even if he had thought of using one." "Have that checked," Grettirson said, and an aide in the audience spoke a reminder into a wrist filo. The interrogation of Captain Montoya went on and on, and Raeder cringed mentally. If this is how he's handling people who behaved like a perfect textbook scenario of responsible and heroic behavior, what's he going to say to me? As if he didn't know. His own captain, Knott, had torn a nice long strip off Raeder for, as he had put it, "Going off to perform one of the most harebrained pieces of showboating I've ever seen in my entire career!" At last the board was finished with Captain Montoya, which is to say that Admiral Grettirson had vented as much spleen as he possibly could on her innocent head. Paddy Casey, the Dauntless's red-haired and, at the moment, furiously red-faced, engineering chief was called. He lumbered up to the table, a solid six foot slab of heavy-world muscle, and sat, fixing the admiral with a glare that should have dissolved the strong, weak and electroweak forces maintaining the integrity of his atomic structure. He folded his big hands before him, the knuckles white from the pressure of his grip. Grettirson glowered back, but without nearly the conviction, making the staring contest a hollow gesture. The Chief didn't remain on the stand long, perhaps because every one of his quiet, polite answers sounded threatening somehow. And it was well known that Paddy was an impulsive man with a long and sorry history of physically attacking senior officers. Something to keep in mind, given that the admiral was far less fair to Montoya than he might have been, Peter thought. Fortunately for Grettirson, Paddy was deeply in love with Lieutenant Cynthia Robbins and was determined to get into officers' school so as to pursue their relationship. Otherwise the rule-bound Robbins would be forever beyond his grasp. "You-did-what?" Grettirson enunciated carefully. "I jury-rigged a magnetic bleed from a Speed's acceleration system and brought it over to the Dauntless in one of her abandoned lifeboats," Peter said matter-of-factly. "You abandoned your post in the middle of a battle?" the admiral asked slowly, in genuine horror. "I made certain that I had people in position to take over for me," Raeder assured him. "You are the senior officer in charge of the Main Deck, Commander! No one can cover for you!" A blood vessel in Grettirson's temple writhed. He glared over Peter's head at the audience behind him. "I shall have to ask Captain Knott why you were not put on report." He lowered his gaze to meet Peter's. "You may step down, Commander. But you haven't heard the last of this, I assure you." Raeder nodded and rose, giving a quick glance over the other members of the board. Gretsky and Trudeau looked at him in disgusted disbelief, Anderson looked disappointed. But Scaragoglu . . . Scaragoglu looked interested. Peter walked stiffly back to his seat, feeling the Marine general's eyes boring into his back. This is not a guy I want to take an interest in my career, he thought. Avert! Avert! Captain Knott came in for his own share of sharp questioning and blame, as did Squadron Leader Sutton and the captains of the Diefenbaker and the MacKenzie. But at last it was over and the board chairman made his summing-up speech. He ended it with remarks made directly to Commander Peter Raeder. "Recommended for the Stellar Cross, indeed," he sneered, giving Captain Knott a dismissive glance. "If you h...
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