Page 49 of Reformation
“Aye, sir!” People got to work, and Darrel’s hands itched with the urge to be doing something,anythingother than watching. On the other hand, seeing how hard Reyes was working just to get theTriumphgoing in the right direction, much lessresponding to commands from the tactical staff, he had to admit that he was probably doing more good by not doing anything at all.
“Connection holding, sir! We have theHammerfallon the comm.”
“Captain Uris.” Darrel shivered at the dark tone of the general’s voice. He’d first met the man as Cody’s grandfather, a kind, patient man. He’d gotten to know him better as a commanding officer, hard but fair. This tone, though? There was nothing kind or fair about it—he sounded coldly furious. “Why aren’t you covering your detachment?”
“I’m currently engaged with two separate warships, General,” Captain Uris snapped. “Forgive me if I don’t have time to pander to your urge to backseat command.”
“Your destroyer should have been at the front of your detachment, not cowering behind a Class-Five Skyblazer. You’ve been engaged with those two ships for half an hour. They’re a third your size. Why aren’t they destroyed?”
“Not all of us have your firepower,sir. My shields are at forty percent and dropping, I don’t have time to—”
“Captain Obede.” The general cut off the detachment commander, talking directly to her subordinate. “Status, now.”
“Shields at eighty-five percent, sir.”
“Why are you shadowing Uris instead of assisting thePisces?”
“Sir, I was ordered by my commanding officer to maintain a defensive position onHammerfall’s port side.” He sounded tense.
“Shut your mouth, Obede. That’s an order!”
“Ma’am, my general has asked me to report. I must comply with his direct order, the same as I did for you.”
“Open my comm to the rest of Uris’s detachment,” Miles directed his communications officer. When she nodded, he spoke with resounding authority. “Captains Obede, Kylal, andTerry, I’m reassigning you to my detachment. Disregard all former directives and protect the evacuation of thePisces. Kylal and Terry, for the time being, follow Captain Obede’s lead.”
“Aye, sir.” A chorus of what sounded like relieved voices echoed through the comm, and Darrel could see the ships begin to move away from theHammerfall.
“You can’t steal my detachment in the middle of battle!”
“You haven’t proven to me that you deserve them,” Miles retorted. “How many enemy ships have you destroyed, Captain?”
“I’ve been faced with a situation that—”
“None. And according to my engineer’s scan, your shields are over ninety percent. If you want your protective detail back”—and oh, the general sounded positivelyviciousnow—“then you’ll prove your mettle by putting your ship on the line for this fleet. TheHammerfallis the second-most-powerful ship we have. It needs to be doing the second-highest amount of damage.”
“You don’t understand anything.” Captain Uris was practically spitting into the comm. “This can only end one way, and I’m not going to drag myself and my crew through the black just so you can go down in a blaze of glory! I refuse to follow your immoral orders. We’re leaving.” And a moment later …
“Hammerfallhas entered liminal space, sir.” The communications officer sounded stunned. “She’s gone.” And all the enemy ships that had been closing in on her were suddenly free to target other, less-defensible vessels.
“ThePisces’ main engine has just blown, sir,” a tac officer added. “It’s completely disintegrated. Last evac numbers were at eighty percent safely away.”
“And Captain Himmel?”
“I believe the captain went down with the ship, sir.”
A moment of solemn silence reigned before Miles spoke again. “Pursue broadside engagement against the three nearest ships. Roll us if you have to; we’re playing a game of brute force now.”
Rolling them would expose the fragile dorsal shields. But theTriumphwas the only cover some of the smaller ships had and would make itself vulnerable accordingly.
Darrel gritted his teeth and took a deep breath as the ship began to twist.
Chapter twenty-eight
Garrett
It was amazing to Garrett how much authority was conferred by numbers. Population, mineral resources, planetary wealth, personal investments; it was a web that even a quantum computer had a hard time tracing, some lines thickly tethered together, others so thin they were barely visible but still vital at the same time. Numerical superiority in the Senate meant the difference between representation and willful ignorance, face time and brush-offs, dedication and criminalization. There were a few outliers whose policies were driven more on principle than profit, but they were few and far between.
Not for the first time, Garrett considered the merits of complete and total anarchy.
