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After the inspection, Devall led Dunmoore into Iolanthe, and once the honor guard was dismissed, her staff followed them.
They stopped at what Dunmoore remembered as the door to the VIP suite, which now bore the inscription ‘Flag Officer Commanding - RAdm S. Dunmoore.’ It opened at her touch, and for a moment, she was transported back in time. Little had changed in what was once hers as commodore. Her bags sat in a neat row in the middle of the day cabin, delivered while she was at breakfast.
“Gregor’s is next door — same configuration as yours, just a tad smaller. Chief Guthren’s is next to his, again, the same configuration, but smaller. Your staff gets suitable single occupant cabins in the officer and chief petty officer sections. Want to unpack now or visit your CIC?”
“The CIC, please. I have little with me to unpack, not even a rear admiral’s service uniform and accouterments, let alone a mess uniform.”
“What about your antique clock?”
“It’ll be on its way from Caledonia with the rest of my personal possessions once Gregor sends a message to our former outfit, but it won’t arrive before we leave on our first cruise.” She gestured at the open door. “Shall we?”
“Certainly.” Devall took her aft, toward the cavernous mid-ship hangar compartment behind which lay the Marine barracks but stopped at what she remembered as flex space her crew used for extra storage. “We couldn’t manage a set up like Salamanca’s, with a common conference room separating the ship’s CIC with that of the flag, but we’re still on the same deck, and you’re still within Iolanthe’s armored core.”
At his touch, the door opened, and Dunmoore entered a space almost identical to the one she’d occupied a short time before in the Reconquista class cruiser, including the same model of command chair occupying its center.
“Nice.”
“The supply depot techs did a bang-up job. You have direct and independent access to Iolanthe’s sensor feeds, communications array, computer core, databases, and navigation plot. If necessary, such as problems with the gunnery stations in both my CIC and the bridge, you can take control of her combat systems as well.”
“Slick.”
“That’s the beauty of building her from scratch according to the same modular standards as the Voivodes and Reconquistas instead of pressing a merchant ship into service and up-arming it — the 3rd Fleet supply depot carried the required parts in stock. Too bad she’s the only one in her class.”
“I understand lighter Q ships are in the pipeline though, based on the Voivode class frigate hull. But the speed at which procurement moves nowadays, you and I will be long gone from this business when they’re commissioned. Still, the current transports turned Q ships carry a hefty broadside compared to what the bad guys in the Zone and elsewhere use. Nothing beats reconfigured cargo holds stuffed with modular missile launchers for saturation salvos. Between them, Gondolier and Thespis, who we’ll join in a few days, can outshoot Iolanthe.”
Devall grinned at her. “Now there’s a terrifying thought.”
“Ah! Nice,” Pushkin’s voice said from the CIC door. “It gives me yet another eerie bit of déja vu.”
“This is basically a Reconquista class flag CIC just like the one in Salamanca.”
“Then we should feel right at home.” Pushkin and the rest of her staff, Guthren included, filed in and wandered around before stopping at familiar-looking workstations.
“Since we’re all here, please put out a call to Gondolier and Thespis. They should have received orders making them part of the 101st and dispatching them to Starbase 30. If they’re carrying wartime loads and are provisioned for at least two months in deep space, then I’d rather we rendezvous just short of the Protectorate Zone. No point in putting on extra light-years.”
“Will do, Admiral,” Pushkin replied. “Any part of the frontier you prefer?”
“What was the most visited port in Drex’s log? Abaddon?”
He nodded. “That would be the place — much deeper in the Zone.”
“Make it our provisional target until we hear from the Colonial Office.” When Devall gave her a strange look, she explained how its intelligence network in the Zone helped recover Athena. “I expect we’ll be fostering a close relationship between the 101st and the Colonial Office’s network thanks to whoever at Fleet HQ is schmoozing with the head of its Intelligence Service. Right now, our aim is finding those taken off Athena and terminating the organization that hijacked her with extreme prejudice.”
**
“Siobhan’s taken command,” Rear Admiral Kowalski announced when Commodore Holt entered her office. “I received a copy of the video made by 3rd Fleet Public Affairs of her flag being hoisted in Iolanthe. Want to watch?”
“Of course. I saw her broad pennant lowered in Iolanthe back when she stepped down, and this is vindication, even if it doesn’t quite make up for the wasted years.” He took a chair and turned it to face the primary display. “It should be immensely satisfying.”
“Oh, it is. As are the sour faces around HQ. Those attached to the toes she stepped on still haven’t forgiven her biting essays about wartime mistakes that prolonged the conflict. You can bet they’ll do everything possible to make sure she doesn’t receive any high profile assignments once her tour of command is over, let alone a third star.”
They watched the brief ceremony in silence, then Holt said, “That was nice. Devall did her proud.”
“He did that. Anything new from the SecGen’s office on the Athena matter?”
“No, though I don’t doubt strong words will be exchanged between Lauzier senior and his heir once she’s back on Earth, thanks to vague rumors — planted, of course — insinuating the disappearance of the thirty-six conveniently helps Sara’s rising ambitions. And I understand the SSB is in a minor uproar at the Navy not only stealing its thunder but finding Athena so quickly. There might also be a mole hunt in the offing since other vague rumors hint at the Navy reading the SSB’s most private mail. It would explain how we knew we’d find the purloined starship in the Galadiman system.”
Kowalski gave him a broad grin.
“Confusion to the enemy — my favorite toast.”
He smiled back.
“Disinformation campaigns are among our many jobs, and we do them well. The next steps will be increasingly delicate, however. Sara Lauzier must be led to believe we know what happened, even if you and I aren’t entirely sure — yet. Otherwise, as she becomes more powerful, she could present a clear and present danger because of a growing sense of impunity. Her father is probably a highly functioning psychopath, like so many powerful politicians and financiers. But Sara might well prove a real sociopathic piece of work who could precipitate a new civil war if we’re right, and she engineered Athena’s hijacking for political purposes.”
“It’s a sad state of affairs when the Fleet is forced to keep dangerous politicians in check.”
Holt shrugged.
“The Special Security Bureau won’t do so because it uses dangerous politicians or allows itself to be used by them in pursuit of more power. Without a proper federal police force, who’s left? Us, and not even all of us, because there are plenty of high-ranking people wearing a uniform who’ll prostitute themselves in return for wealth, power, and influence. Let’s hope Siobhan’s next expedition into the Zone gives us actionable intelligence so we can rope in the delightful Sara Lauzier before she makes more political enemies conveniently vanish at the hands of unidentified pirates while giving colonial independence ambitions the kiss of death.”
“If we’re right.”
He nodded.
“If. But I can feel it in my bones, Kathryn. Before the Navy let me return to space in Iolanthe, I was doing this sort of thing when they beached me after the loss of Shenzen. And I went back to it after leaving Iolanthe. The only difference between the corrupt admirals I investigated then and the corrupt politicians we’re looking at now is a matter of scale, both in venality and evil influence. Trust me when I say this. Sara Lauzier is into something that could get her a life sentence on Parth if she were anyone other than the SecGen’s favored eldest daughter and heir.”
“Fair enough. But it still shouldn’t be a naval officer’s job. Instead, the Commonwealth needs a true federal police, one with a professional standards branch that investigates malfeasance and corruption across the federal government, politicians included, police forces, and the Fleet.”
“No arguments here, but good luck getting the Senate to vote for its creation, let alone a SecGen signing off on the enabling legislation. So many people in this city would find themselves in the crosshairs of your professional standards branch, and they can’t allow that to happen.”
Kowalski gave him her sweet smile.
“Where there’s a will and all that, Zeke. First, we need a core of flag officers with the same vision making their way to the top. You, me, a few others, and Siobhan Dunmoore because we need a fearless, damn the torpedoes type who’ll stiffen backbones and terrify the opposition.”
**
With their armament hidden, the Q ships Thespis and Gondolier looked like innocuous, rather worn out bulk carriers in need of maintenance, the sort plying star lanes across the known galaxy. Though smaller than Iolanthe, one of the largest warships in the Fleet, they made Voivode class frigates look like corvettes.
Of different designs, both started life as armed commercial ships but were taken into the Fleet during the war. They emerged from their sojourn in a Caledonia shipyard with heavier guns, stronger shields, upgraded reactors and drives, complete combat system control suites, and cargo holds turned into missile launchers capable of overwhelming salvos. Their only true weakness compared to purpose-built warships lay in more lightly armored hulls.
Dunmoore was pleasantly surprised to see a third Q ship, the much smaller Pinafore, at the rendezvous along with her larger sisters. A pirate captured during the war, she’d been bought into the Navy and refurbished, though her chief strength lay in her speed, agility, and, like the others, cargo holds filled with modular missile launchers.
“We must have received our orders just after you went FTL at Dordogne’s heliopause, Admiral,” Lieutenant Commander Johan Darrell, Pinafore’s skipper, said. “Since we were in the general neighborhood, we booted the drives to eleven and arrived here a few hours ago.”
“Are you good for a two-month cruise?”
Darrell, a dark-complexioned man in his late thirties with hawk-like features, hooded brown eyes, and short black hair nodded.
“We are, Admiral. And carrying a full wartime load. We haven’t fired a shot in anger since our last resupply.”
“Excellent. Glad you’re with us.”
Thespis’ captain had been another pleasant surprise — Commander Thorin Sirico, her former combat systems officer in Iolanthe, still as piratically debonair as before, though with a few strands of silver in his mustache and goatee.
“I missed your class at the War College by one semester,” he’d said the moment they made radio contact. “You left for the Readiness Evaluation Division just as I arrived.”
“And how were the irregular warfare classes?”
Sirico had given her a sly grin. “I spent a lot of time running the seminars, Admiral. My course report made a special mention of it, recommending I return as an instructor after my tour of starship command.”
“And would you want to do so?”
“Perish the thought.”
Dunmoore had never met her third Q ship captain, Commander Adele Leung of Gondolier. She was in her early forties with a lean, narrow face, short dark hair, and watchful eyes. But she gave the impression of calm competence. The Fleet would not appoint questionable officers in Q ships — the consequences of a mistake in peacetime could be much worse than most of what a regular warship captain might experience.
“I’m sure you’re impatient to find out about our first target. You’ve heard of the Athena hijacking by now, correct?” All three, who’d joined Dunmoore, Devall, and Pushkin in the flag conference room via holographic projection, nodded. “What the official story has so far omitted is that I led the task force which brought Athena home. When we reached her, thirty-six of the Commonwealth’s leading citizens had been taken off by the abductors aboard three Arkanna-built sloops of human design who fled the moment we appeared at Galadiman’s hyperlimit. Our mission is finding those thirty-six and terminate the abductors who belong to a criminal organization made up of Fleet veterans calling themselves the Confederacy of the Howling Stars.”