The automatic door to the officer’s mess slid to one side and Captain Jason Hunter wandered in. Doctor Doverly watched him slouch to the dispensers and pour himself a fresh cup of coffee. With nothing alcoholic to add to it, the captain managed to gather two forlorn creamers and sigh his way to Annora’s table.
“I’m not being ordered to return to Vicksburg, but if I don’t agree to show the flag at the big wow-pow, then we won’t get what we need for the bigger pow-wow.”
“Isn’t that always the way of things?” Doverly replied as she made swirly designs in her own rapidly cooling coffee-like-beverage. Ajax’s mess crew insisted it was the best coffee in the fleet. Argent’s senior officers were withholding judgment.
Hunter laid flat on the cushioned bench, leaving his electronic folio and commlink on the table. He half-growled, half-sighed. “Sometimes I wish I had accepted command of a smaller ship. Seems like everyone in uniform wants to take a shot at us now that we’re flying a ship the size of Fort Worth.”
By now Annora was used to talking to an empty bench. It reminded her of all the times she had talked the captain down during one of his famous tequila-soaked strategy sessions. She could see the captain’s shoes, but the table concealed the rest. “Any official word on the Hughes inquiry?”
“Not a sound. Frankly I’d be happier if they were spitting poison,” Hunter replied. “Just remember we have the legal high ground. He wasn’t sent out here by accident, and I’m not buying the story of Admiral Custer vs. the ooga-boogas. Dunkerque was sent out here on purpose, and I want her evaluated from stem to stern before we’re ordered to surrender her to Skywatch Command.”
“Is that on the agenda at Vicksburg?”
“So far, no. Powers wants at least some cover for tossing me the keys to those Southern Banner extras. Fury needs to be re-supplied and Zony needs a look at Commander Walsh’s telemetry from the Bayone Seven engagement. Islington needs her new XO made official and we’re in the rack until I get Second Marines a new tactical officer. Yili’s officially getting her leaves and so is Rebecca. Still, I don’t like splitting up my forces like this. Not one bit.”
“Atwell isn’t ready either.”
“According to Atwell,” Hunter sighed. “I’d be happier if I was sure he wasn’t ready. Who knows where he’s going to pop out along Gitairn? We could be looking at strategic level engagements anywhere from X-Ray Tango to the Raleo frontier and everywhere in between. We don’t have anywhere near enough ships or crews to properly monitor all that real estate much less blockade it.”
“Wherever he starts, he’s going to end up on Bayone Three.”
“So far that’s the only good news, except for the fact I’ve got six marines down there now and five of them are missing. And now I’ve turned Commander Harcourt’s ship into a fully crewed Skywatch taxi because Powers doesn’t want to risk a line captain riding around in a shuttle.”
“I’ll perform the Hughes autopsy when we get back to Argent. Janice has been setting up a clandestine OR and equipping it for ‘no molecule unturned.’”
“Admiral Hughes taught leadership at the academy. The only professor that ever flunked me on a test. I was convinced I was right, and he forced me to re-think my position twice. And when I discovered I had been right all along he put a commendation in my permanent record. He was trying to teach me to question orders. To question authority. And now I know why.”
“I read your report. I have to admit I wasn’t prepared for the Admiral’s theories on Atwell’s motives.”
“Doctor, if it were any other man, I would have rejected his words out of hand. But no matter what those alien bastards did to his mind, I don’t believe they turned him against us. He may very well be right about the colonel. Atwell might be out here trying to use Ithis technology against whatever attacked Dunkerque. If that’s true, then he’s on our side, even if he’s going about it all wrong.”
“For all we know, Jason, they may have emptied his mind too. You remember all that nonsense about a new era. The man sounded like he had been turned into some kind of fanatic.”
“Maybe he was. Maybe his personality was split too. That’s been my theory on Hughes ever since we boarded his ship. The first time I saw the admiral’s face aboard Dunkerque, he was boasting about conquest as one of their warlords. By the time we caught up with him aboard Kingsblade, he was completely broken. Didn’t speak a single defiant word to me. In fact, he sounded like my old teacher again.”
“Maybe he was right about the Ithis. Maybe they’re too advanced for human minds.”
“That's what I want you to find out, doctor. I want to know what happened to Admiral Hughes. If you succeed, it could give us an edge when we face off against the colonel.”