Destroyer (Expansion Wars Trilogy, Book 3) Read online

  "Commander Michael Barrett," she said, smiling warmly and embracing her former brother-in-arms from their days serving on the Blue Jacket, an antique Raptor-class destroyer where they had both served under a then-obscure Captain Jackson Wolfe. They'd also both served aboard the Ares, Wolfe's second command and a ship that was a major player during the Phage War.

  "It's actually Captain Barrett now." He beamed. "My promotion was made official last week and I'm to be given command of the Aludra Star now that Captain Wolfe has been put back on a destroyer where he belongs. What brings you to New Sierra?"

  "I was giving a presentation to the CENTCOM Fleet Acquisition Office about the training programs we've developed for the Gen IV starships," Jillian said. "I made sure to coordinate my trip with Celesta's promotion ceremony."

  "Seems strange … she's not that old and she's a rear admiral while your husband is still a senior captain," Barrett said as he fell in beside his friend. "That probably came out wrong."

  "I know what you meant," Jillian laughed. "Celesta had a lot of time in grade and CENTCOM is taking advantage of all the confusion within the civilian leadership to get her confirmation rammed through Parliament before someone realizes that she's being promoted above a few dozen qualified senior officers.

  "As for Jackson … well, you know him as well as anybody. He's taken on this last mission to serve out the remainder of the extension Marcum forced on him, but he wants to be retired before he wants a star on his collar."

  "How is he doing?"

  "I couldn't tell you," Jillian said. "I know the Nemesis has passed her last set of flight qualification tests in record time, but during the next few months of crew training, communication will be few and far between."

  "Did he tell you he stole an officer right out from under me?" Barrett asked. "Lieutenant Idris Accari was promoted to Lieutenant Commander ahead of the rest of his class thanks to having enough time in service from when he was an enlisted spacer. Captain Wolfe grabbed him before the Icarus even made port … I was hoping to put him on the bridge with me aboard the Star."

  "He did mention something about that." Jillian had stopped in front of a bank of lifts. "So will you be shipping out soon too?"

  "No … I'm working with Fleet R&D to try and use ships like the Aludra Star as more than just cargo haulers to deploy drop shuttles onto the surface," Barrett said. "The broad strokes are that we want to make the Vega-class assault carriers more versatile than just moving personnel and material to a planet's surface."

  "Intriguing," Jillian said. "If you're going to be around for a bit, we should try to get all the old Blue Jacket crew together one night. Maybe even Agent Pike." She was moving to call for a lift car and Barrett took the hint.

  "Of course," he said. "I'll try to organize something."

  As he turned to walk away, he saw a young ensign scurrying down a side corridor and could only chuckle. When the hell had he become the "old man”? Hell, even Jillian Davis—Jillian Wolfe, that is—was heading up a major training program for CENTCOM. Celesta Wright was a damn admiral, he was sitting in the command seat of his own starship … the young officer he'd just seen hardly looked old enough to be a first year cadet.

  His next thought was far less jovial. When he was a fresh-faced lieutenant junior grade serving aboard the Blue Jacket, there had always been many layers of officers over him, a security blanket that, despite his fears, someone above him knew exactly what to do. Now they were the ones in charge and he didn't feel like they'd learned nearly enough to be relied upon to do the right thing. It was a sobering thought, but one that only made him that much more determined to do it right and not make any foolish mistakes that led to lost lives and ships.

  2

  "Goddamnit! Cut power! Heave to and let her drift!"

  "Zero thrust, aye!"

  "That's part of the problem right there," Captain Jackson Wolfe said, straining to get himself under control. "Nemesis doesn't use thrust."

  "Yes, sir," the helmsman said emotionlessly, but Jackson saw his shoulders bunch up. He regretted the loss of composure, but he had to snap his crew out of this inexplicable lethargy and fast.

  "This is the fourth miss in a row," Jackson said, forcing a calm tone as he stood up and smoothed out his uniform. "These target drones don't have half the capability of the ship we'll be facing, yet we can't seem to knock one down once we get in close. Our kill ratio in simulations was eight-two percent. What the hell is the problem?"

  When nobody answered, he continued. "If anybody has something, speak up. This ship is slated to be fully activated within the next two months and we're being tasked with a seek and destroy mission against one of the sneakiest, toughest targets the Fleet has ever seen. Not to belabor the point, but this isn't good enough. That Darshik ace will not hold still for us like the target drones that we've not been able to hit."

  The TFS Nemesis had just entered active service six months prior and the accelerated training schedule his crew had endured was nothing short of brutal. His first and second watch bridge crews were stellar performers with the new ship, so he was now running the backups through a grueling set of live fire exercises before they were ordered to begin their mission. At first he thought it was just a bad case of nerves from having him on the bridge with them, but after repeated failures he suspected that they just didn't have enough reps to be proficient.

  "Nav, are we heading towards anything?"

  "Negative, Captain," the specialist third class at Navigation said. "The sky is completely clear, no course corrections needed."

  "Take a break, everyone," Jackson said. "Safe all weapons and call up second watch. Tell your backshops to stand down and we'll come back at this tomorrow."

  The crew quietly climbed up from their stations and, looking completely dejected, filed off the bridge as their relief watch came in. None of them met Jackson's eye as they walked out.

  "A word in private, Captain," Lieutenant Commander Idris Accari said quietly. He'd been on the bridge as an observer as per Jackson's request.

  The young officer had been an enlisted navigation specialist aboard the Ares, Jackson's second command, and had been recognized as having the raw talent and potential to make an outstanding officer. After he'd served with distinction aboard the Icarus as Celesta Wright's OPS officer, Jackson had swooped in and snatched him to be his tactical officer when he'd learned the older ship was being decommissioned. Other than the well-earned reputation of not being able to keep it in his pants, Accari had been a near-model young Fleet officer. Jackson was happy to see that his instincts had been proven correct when he recommended him for an Officer Candidate Training slot.

  "This is private enough," Jackson said. "What's on your mind?"

  "Captain, I—"

  "I know you feel personally responsible for the backups since you've been acting CO during their training sessions," Jackson said. "This isn't a misplaced apology for the performance I just saw, is it?"

  "Not exactly, sir." Accari didn't wilt under Jackson's intense stare. "I do think an explanation is at least in order, however."

  "Go on."

  "This backup crew never trained in scenarios where so much of the automation was disabled," Accari pressed ahead. "That's not an excuse for how poorly this run went, but I think that perhaps more of the blame should be shifted to me since I performed all their training scenarios with all the ship's avionics working perfectly."

  "Then what we have here is a learning experience for everyone," Jackson said. "You made a critical error in their training when you didn't take into account that any time we have to dig that deeply into the crew roster for replacements, it's almost guaranteed the ship has taken some significant damage and the automation will almost certainly not be fully functional. They need to learn the hard way just like you did way back when you were a navigation specialist. They've also just learned that I will not pull punches with them like their training instructors did in the simulators on Arcadia … time to find out who can hac
k it and who needs to be replaced."

  "Yes, sir," Accari said.

  "You're still responsible for them, Lieutenant Commander," Jackson said. "My advice to you would be to address them sooner than later and make sure they know that everything we do on this bridge is life and death. You know that better than most officers in the fleet. Our live fire trials are over in the next fifteen hours and we'll be given our orders, so the next time one of them has to sit in a seat up here it may very well be the real thing." He patted Accari on the shoulder as members of second watch filtered onto the bridge, including his brand new XO, Commander Chambliss.

  Jasper Chambliss was from a planet called Hermes in the New America enclave. He'd served as the Flight OPS department head on Jackson's previous command, the Aludra Star, and had also been the skipper on a light frigate as a young lieutenant before moving up into the larger mainline ships. Chambliss had proven to be a highly effective officer during the campaign to free the planet Juwel from the Darshik, so when he asked if he could transfer, Jackson had jumped at the chance. Chambliss was put on the short list of XO candidates during the first stages of crew training and Jackson quickly made his choice to make the move permanent.

  "I have the bridge, Captain," Chambliss said after checking the ship's log and taking status off the main display.

  "Very good, Commander," Jackson said. "Training schedule for the watch is at your discretion. Simulator mode only … I expect orders declaring us to be fully activated soon and then we'll be leaving directly from here."

  "Understood, sir," Chambliss said. "Enjoy your evening."

  Jackson walked quickly through the hatch before Accari could open up with another volley of explaining. If it were any other officer he would use the term excuses, but he knew that Accari's main concern was that Jackson not have a bad opinion of the junior officers he'd been in charge of. If they all learned something from the experience—other than to assume that their CO was a complete and unreasonable asshole—then it wasn't time wasted.

  "To the officer's mess, Captain?"

  "Sergeant Barton." Jackson nodded to his Marine escort. "Yes … I'm having dinner with your boss this evening."

  "Put in a good word for me, sir."

  "Why would I lie to the man, Sergeant?" Jackson asked with a smile the Marine couldn't see.

  Sergeant Willard "Willy" Barton had been a member of the expeditionary force that had been first sent to counter the Darshik troops landed on Juwel. Those Marines had been stranded and cut-off without most of their equipment and no relief as the Darshik blockade kept the Federation Starfleet at bay. It wasn't until Captain Wolfe had run the picket line and successfully deployed the drop shuttles from his assault carrier that the tide of battle had turned for the beleaguered Marines. Once they'd rotated back from the front, Barton, along with many of his fellow Marines from the Juwel campaign, had requested reassignment to Fleet detachments and service aboard starships … specifically, they wanted to fly with the captain that had hauled their asses out of the fire.

  While it wouldn't be a request normally taken seriously by CENTCOM, the Marine Corps handled its own assignments and the general in charge of Fleet Operations just happened to be Brigadier General Javier Ortiz, once Detachment Commander Major Ortiz that had served aboard both the Blue Jacket and the Ares with Captain Wolfe. When the general had heard of the number of transfer requests coming in for shipboard duty from a Marine frontline combat unit, he looked into it personally and, in a moment of nostalgic weakness, had granted most of them, assuming the Marine in question was qualified for detachment duty.

  General Ortiz had screened the officers carefully, still carrying the shame of the attempted mutiny on the TCS Blue Jacket that some of his men had been a part of. It was one of the main reasons he granted so many transfer requests amid the strident protests of the expeditionary force commanders; he knew that any man requesting a transfer blindly based solely on the commanding officer of that ship would be loyal to that captain and watch his back.

  When Jackson entered the officer's mess, Sergeant Barton discreetly took his post by the hatch and stood at a loose parade rest, scanning the room. The young NCO took his job very seriously, and while Jackson would have normally scoffed at his paranoia and dismissed him back to the detachment once the ship was underway, the Central Intelligence Service had already caught three Eastern Star Alliance infiltrators aboard Fleet facilities. A few had been interrogated vigorously enough that they'd admitted they were to look for targets of opportunity as well as gather intel. Jackson knew that his name had been thoroughly demonized within the ESA as the man that caused the Phage War. An operative could make a real name for himself in the old Asianic Union political circles by killing the captain that fired the first shots.

  "Sit down, Major," Jackson said as Major Lucas Baer climbed to his feet and stood at attention when he approached the table. "There's a standing order aboard to not render honors on the mess deck … no point in making people jump up and down while they're eating."

  "Yes, sir," Baer said, sliding back into his seat. "This is my first detachment duty aboard a Fleet ship and it takes some getting used to."

  "And each ship is different depending on her CO’s preferences," Jackson said. "So this is your first cruise?"

  "No, sir," Baer said, politely putting his dinnerware down until his captain had fully settled into his seat. "I flew two short cruises on Merchant Marine ships during the war until I transferred to an infantry unit. I have to say … if I had known what food was like on a mainline warship I'd have requested detachment duty much sooner."

  "The perks of rank, Major," Jackson laughed. "Your grunts don't have it quite so good. How is the training going?"

  "Very good, sir. My Marines will be more than ready to repel boarders should the occasion arise. We're staying out of the crew's way as much as possible, training in critical areas like Engineering during night hours when nothing more than monitoring is going on."

  "Excellent," Jackson said absently. "I also want you to add a new regime to your training: I want your people ready to board a Darshik ship if necessary."

  "Sir?" Baer stopped eating and leaned back.

  "I know that's not in our doctrine, but we have a valid translation matrix thanks to the Ushin, a ship that's capable of running down and grappling a cruiser, and the area to use as holding cells," Jackson explained. "This likely won't ever come up, but this mission will be full of first times for all of us, I think. Just flying around blindly trying to bump into something so elusive as this Darshik ace isn't much of a plan … we'll need intel and I'd prefer to be ready to execute a raid on one of their ships should the opportunity present itself."

  "We have detailed information on their ships' interiors thanks to the mostly intact hulks left in the DeLonges System," Baer said thoughtfully. "We'd need a place to train, of course."

  "Cargo Bay Four will be empty for the foreseeable future," Jackson said. "Use that space and tell Engineering I authorized any fabrication needed to create a proper training environment."

  "I'd need a simulated airlock and then the rest could just be mocked up using stacked cargo containers … the more I think about it, the less difficult this seems, sir," Baer said.

  "Like I said: It probably won't come up," Jackson said, now attacking his dinner in earnest. "But if we happen to disable one of their cruisers it's an opportunity I'd rather not pass up."

  "I'll get right on it, Captain."

  "Sir, com drone just entered the system … official order packet has come through as well as a priority message for you."

  "Send it to the terminal in my office," Jackson said. He didn’t recognize the voice of the relief com officer over the intercom.

  "Aye, sir."

  Within seconds, his terminal beeped to let him know that he needed to enter his credentials to access classified information stored on the secure servers. Recently Fleet had cracked down on the handling of classified material in the wake of so many ESA spies being
routed out of key positions within the organization.

  It depressed him that in the midst of a war with the Darshik they still had to worry about sabotage from within by another human faction, but it didn't surprise him. What did surprise him was that as far as CIS could tell, the ESA hadn't suffered a single attack at the hand of the Darshik. Given how intertwined ESA and Federation space was, that seemed almost statistically impossible given the systems that had been hit near the border.

  "Where the hell is it?" Jackson grumbled to himself as he navigated down through the multiple layers of security to finally get at the folder containing his new orders and personal communiques that had been flagged as sensitive. When he saw that his orders had been dated three weeks prior by Seventh Fleet's newly minted Chief of Operations, Admiral Celesta Wright, a wide smile split his face. He was enormously proud of her accomplishments and was happy to see she'd developed into a finer Starfleet officer than he would ever be. She was both a skilled warfighter and set the right kind of example for the younger officers coming up behind her. The memory of a too-young commander being forced onto the bridge of the Blue Jacket against both their wills was a stark contrast to the polished, confident flag officer she was today.

  His smile faded, however, when he saw that there was a flash intel brief in the folder also and it was signed by someone who was notorious for bringing trouble into Jackson's life.

  "Fucking Pike," he muttered, opening the brief.

  "Captain," Pike's voice came through the speakers when Jackson selected the file. The accompanying image wasn't of the agent's face, but of what could only be a deep space facility. It was one that Jackson had never seen before. "This is semi-off the record, but I just wanted to give you a heads up before it filters down through the official channels. This is the Feynman Research Outpost, or what's left of it. It's a deep space research station that's been instrumental in most of the advances we've made in gravimetric field generation and control.