Captains resolve, p.1
Captain's Resolve, page 1
part #1 of Luke Sky Series
Odyssey of the Gamer Gate
Captain’s Resolve
By Jamison Hutchinson
Other books in the Spineward Sectors
Admiral Series by Joshua Wachter
Admiral Who?
Admiral’s Gambit
Admiral’s Tribulation
Admiral’s Trial
Admiral’s Revenge
Admiral’s Spine
Admiral Invincible
Admiral’s Challenge
Admiral’s War Part One
Admiral’s War Part Two
Admiral’s Nemesis
Admiral’s Nemesis Part II
Admiral’s Fall
Admiral’s Throne
Admiral’s Lady: Eyes of Ice, Heart of Fire
Admiral’s Lady: Ashes for Ashes, Blood for Blood
Spineward Sectors - Middleton’s Pride by Caleb Wachter
No Middle Ground
Up the Middle
Against the Middle
McKnight’s Mission: A house Divided
Middleton’s Prejudice
Lynch’s Legacy: A House Divided
The Middle Road
A House United: A House Divided
The Forge of Men
Other books by Jamison Hutchinson
Undertown
Plastic Odyssey (Pen name J.N. Drifter)
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental. Respect my electronic rights because the money you save today will be the book I can’t afford to write for you tomorrow.
Contents
Chapter 1: Now What?
Chapter 2: Boredom & Banter
Chapter 3: Timing Perfection
Chapter 4: A Lancer Dance
Chapter 5: Tour of Resolve
Chapter 6: Of Ages Past and Present
Chapter 7: Three to Tango
Chapter 8: Armor Competitions
Chapter 9: The Long March
Chapter 10: Captains Bridge
Chapter 11. Gunners vs Engineers
Chapter 12: A Wild Dance
Chapter 13: The Trials of Victory
Chapter 1: Now What?
Miles Archibald, Captain of the Confederation Multi Sector Patrol’s Heavy Cruiser Gamer Gate, sighed in sheer frustration.
Here in front of him, he had massive amounts of information from two different information networks, and he couldn’t figure out his next move! It wasn’t like he had no options though. There were pirates running amuck, ones not connected to the Arms Dealer Lynch’s old organization and network that Archibald now controlled. Alternatively, there were hostile Droid Tribe remnants sighted tearing up whole chunks of the Borders where there was still little to nothing opposing them, and those were just two of the highlights from a stack of highlights!
On top of that, he still had to repair his ship from the last fight they’d been in; crushing the Raubach forces that were looking for something, though he’d never actually been told what. However, given all the ancient tech they’d been after, including the leftover junk of two different hyper advanced alien races, he was pretty sure the answer would terrify him. And that didn’t even take into account all the AI Wars era tech that was on display in that battle either.
He really wished that McKnight had explained what that whole war had been about before she left for her next secret mission, leaving him holding the bag on their original mission.
Still, he was now awash in success and spoiled rotten for choices, which was the problem! This would be so much easier with orders from someone, or even just some damn goal or guidelines! He thought darkly, scrolling through the list of problems, disasters, attacks and sightings of everything under the stars scattered across whole Sectors.
We got the information network that the Admiral wanted, and then some. Archibald thought, sighing again as he scrolled through several screens of Intel reports, some backdated by years just so he could have some context. We even crushed the traitor Imperial’s mucking up these Sectors while we did it too. So, now what?!
He still had time before the scheduled rendezvous with the Heavy Freighter that was assigned to his unit, the Choice Selections, and Archibald wanted to try and establish an actual patrol route. Problem was, with just the one ship, and most of Sectors 24 & 23 still in ruins from the Droids and Imperials, he could literally point his ship anywhere and run into trouble of some sort. But any direction he chose meant other people wouldn’t be getting any help for a long while, if ever.
Thus, his dilemma while they sailed through a uninhabited star system on the way to a cross-roads system, where he would have to make a choice one way or the other for his route.
At this point, it’s really just a choice of droids or pirates. Archibald decided, forcing his mind to focus and look at the problem from a simplistic angle. Both are pretty destructive, and leave lots of ruin and corpses in their wakes. Both are enemies to us and everyone and everything we swore to defend, but I can only handle one of them at the moment, and both are on the rampage in chunks of this area of space. So, now it’s down to this; which one do I go after first?
“Trouble Captain?” Asked Commander Madeline Estrella, his ships XO. Short, slight, with light brown hair, actual freckles on a doll-like face and green eyes, most would be inclined to call her cute or adorable. Right up until she shot them, or decked them, considering she was handy with blaster pistols and trained in hand to hand; focusing on quick suppression to accommodate her small frame. She was generally well tempered though, and an excellent First Officer, even with the playful sarcasm she had in private or off duty.
It had taken him awhile to get used to her, but he was glad he had.
She, like most of his crew, were largely Border World recruits, with only a small clump made up of the ‘Tracto Settlers’ group; Caprians, Promethians, Belters, or actual Tractoans. So far as Archibald went he didn’t much care, but some of the Border World’s recruits had been very culturally diverse; meaning several cultures were much more largely opposed to each other on major founding principles. Much more so than most of the original Caprian or Promethian recruits. The Belters tended to be the same wherever you went while the Tractoan’s were basically old school Viking style battle hungry nut cases, but he’d gotten used to all of them.
The recruitment effort Admiral Montagne had put together had brought in large amounts of people from a wild range of diverse cultures.
Estrella’s culture was largely patriarchal, with some odd kinks, such as all women on her world apparently had to know how to kick ass, and they had little, or no, respect for a man who they could beat up, but respected ones who could fend them off, or straight up defeat them in a fight, just fine. She’d been perfectly fine with a male captain, but she’d insisted they spar with each other before they got under way, and that had turned into a rowdy, knock down drag out fight, one which Archibald had managed to win, but it had been a close thing, and ended with both of them in the Med Bay.
She’d also been perfectly respectful and obedient to the chain of command ever since, with no issues with him that he could find. Which wasn’t to say they hadn’t had debates or arguments in private, but in the end, Archibald was the captain, and his word was law as far as she was concerned. And unlike some ‘tough women’ that Archibald had met or worked with, that didn’t offend her in the least. So far as he went, she had proven herself a fantastic first officer.
Even if his jaw still ached whenever she glared at him for something.
“Just trying to decide on our next move,” he sighed, pointing at the various Intel reports scattered over the table they were both going over in his office. “We can go anywhere and run into trouble, help people out and put down threats to civilized space. But the problem is…”
“Is which threats do we focus on?” Estrella finished for him, looking over the reports and frowning. “There are arguments to be made for any route we take, and arguments for the ones we don’t, such as the fact that we only have one ship at the moment, ever since McKnight left on that secret mission after her original ship was destroyed.” She started ticking off the various points off as she went through them.
“The fleet Lynch put together to stop the Raubach’s has dissipated, and best we can tell they’ve mostly retired, returned home, taken on security work or are pirating in area’s that we don’t hear about. So now we can go after the one’s who never showed up, aren’t ostensibly connected to us as agents and are still attacking shipping routes, or go after the remnant droid tribes that never allied with the MSP, lost their war with us, and continue to go after civilians.” She sighed as she came to the nub of it.
“Basically.” Archibald briefly wondered how McKnight was doing, and that prompted some very nice, if inappropriate memories to bubble up, but he pushed them back down to focus on the task at hand. Glancing at the Intel reports, he looked over the list of damages, devastation, and dead or missing from various ships, stations and planets, and finally reached his decision.
Droids it is then. His resolve hardening as he made his choice.
“A decision, sir?” Estrella asked, though from the sound of it, she was stating a fact.
“How’d you know?” Archibald asked, curious, as she seemed to know what he was thinking or about to say what he was going to do before he did it, and while that was a handy skil
“Your face took on a serious, stubborn cast,” Estrella shrugged, like it was obvious. “The same look most men get when they look at a mess of work and finally decide on where to start.”
“Uh, right,” Archibald replied, not really sure how to reply to that. “Well, the answer is yes, and my decision is droids. Simply because they’re leaving a much larger body count wherever they go.”
“Understood Sir.” Estrella nodded, looking over the table covered in data sheets before looking back to him. “Any targets in mind?”
“Maybe,” he replied while he cued up the most recent Intel reports on droid attacks and sightings, looking for locations and possible targets. A couple looked promising, but one had stood out to him when he went over it earlier; a shipping route, plagued by droid attacks, but their behavior seemed dependent on the target.
A ship mostly full of human food, or humans, they seemingly ignored, but a ship full of equipment or mechanical spare parts?
They happily captured it and disappeared.
“This one caught my eye earlier,” he handed the data tab with the relevant reports over to Estrella, and waited while she paged through it.
“They’re hunting cargo,” she whispered, skimming through the reports quickly.
“We could lie in wait and ambush them while they’re in the middle of a raid, since they’re likely to only bring the amount of force they need to win, and nothing more.” She looked up at Archibald with an excited gleam in her eyes, but did her job as Devil’s Advocate. “But can we find a decent place to ambush them, after they’ve already ambushed someone else, and can we do it in time? Besides, won’t others be wise to what the droids are up to by now?”
“The attacks have been spaced out over months, and frankly I doubt anyone else has noticed the trend beyond droid attacks and lost ships.” Archibald replied, pointing to dates of the various attacks. “It’s obvious to us because we have all this information at our fingertips, but for most of the other powers out here?” He shook his head. “I’m betting that right now, the ones who know don’t care, and the ones who care don’t know. Which gives us an opportunity, one I want to take advantage of.”
He briefly skimmed over the reports of cargo manifests of the ships and convoys that the droids actually took, and it told a very frank story. These droids are hunting cargo alright, a very specific cargo; they’re after spare parts. Scrolling through both networks reports, he found a recent one that gave him a sharp smile.
“Seems that another convoy, a medium class one with escorts, is scheduled to pass through there in the next week, which would give us enough time to get in position and hash out a plan of attack.” He handed Estrella the report in question. “And it seems that someone noticed the attacks themselves, at any rate, since they’re sending some escorts from a couple of nearby worlds to make sure this stuff gets through.”
“Which means that there’ll be a battle, and we can assist in crushing this particular menace, and maybe get some fresh information, leads, and publicity all at once.” Estrella replied, smiling an equally shark like smile.
“Given how most people are inclined to treat the MSP, I won’t bet on that last one,” Archibald replied darkly, having gotten ahold of some MSP fleet grey market bootleg copies of the sheer arrogant vid calls several political leaders had given Admiral Montange before he set off. For research purposes of course, and the occasional fit of laughter at the looks on their faces when the Little Admiral finally ran out of patience with them. Then the memories of Aqua Nova came back, and Archibald had to work to keep from feeling a boiling rage at that mess all over again.
“Still, if we can help restore trade, that’s good, but the primary purpose of this is information.” He continued, letting the memories and old anger pass by. He had other things to focus on than the past.
“Sir?” Estrella asked, confused. Archibald was thankful McKnight had been after him to learn the bigger picture style of thinking, though he still privately found it daunting as hell.
“These droids are after lots of equipment and parts, industrial grade, which can be used for a variety of things, but can most easily be adapted to ship repair or construction.” He explained, quickly highlighting the manifests of the ships taken instead of destroyed, and watched as his First Officers eyes narrowed quickly as she focused on them.
“They’re trying to build something.” She looked up with a hard face, and Archibald’s jaw suddenly gave a brief twinge. “Or else trying to repair something, something big given how much equipment they’ve already stolen. We can’t let them succeed.”
“No, we can’t,” Archibald agreed, his face getting serious as well. “But first we must find them. So, Commander Estrella, inform the helmsman to make our course for this system.” He pointed to the system suspected to be the main staging area for the ambushes. “It’s time for a hunt.”
“Yes sir.” Commander Estrella replied, smiling darkly.
Chapter 2: Boredom & Banter
Six days later.
Waiting.
Waiting had never been Archibalds best skill, since as the Captain, he usually had to wait quietly in a chair, projecting strength, when all he wanted to do was pace, move around, spar, something. They’d made it to the system where most of the attacks tended to happen, had entered from a non-liner vector and taken up position in the shadow of a moon orbiting a gas giant. The system was largely empty; a few barren planets, and a few gas giants, both with lots of moons.
Worthless to live at, probably some good mining opportunities if anyone cared to bother with it, but near priceless for ambush purposes.
Archibald suspected the droids were here as well, waiting for the convoy. He didn’t know which Tribe was doing this, but he suspected it was Harmony through Specialization; the deadliest of the known droid tribes when it came to space combat, or combat in general really.
Archibald had a Heavy Cruiser, but the Harmony Tribe always attacked with a small squadron, at least, one usually composed of Destroyers and fighters, all fast and maneuverable. He’d fought them before, knew how they operated, and was a little worried he hadn’t brought enough to the party, hence why he planned to wait for them to engage the convoy’s escorts before moving in.
He wanted them bogged down and out of position, thinking the fight was largely in hand, before he came burning into the fray, guns blazing. It was a cold way of treating the convoy and its defenders, but he only had the one ship, and he wasn’t willing to get his crew killed just for manners. Thinking about it, he realized that he’d gotten a bit harder since his days in a Cutter.
