Spitfire Station: Triple-Cross by Richard Tongue

Author:Richard Tongue [Tongue, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-06-21T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

 Logan tugged at the sleeve of his recently-fabricated dress uniform, trying to straighten out the creases. It felt surprisingly comfortable, and he rather liked the cut. Someone had even made sure that it would still look smart in zero-gravity, practicality that he found rather surprising. Ryder stood on his left, Melissa his right, and the espatiers – all four of them – were forming an honor guard outside the primary airlock. Over his furious objections, he’d forced Volski into an Ensign’s uniform – there didn’t seem much point in making it obvious how feeble the station’s defenses were.

 “What’s the angle?” Ryder asked.

 “Dignified opposition. They’ve got a ship powerful enough to reduce this station to its component atoms, but we can’t afford to let them think that has us scared.”

 “It scares the hell out of me,” Melissa said.

 “Well, me too, but we can’t show it. Act as though we have cards we haven’t played yet.”

 “Have we?”

 “He doesn’t need to know what our hand looks like, does he.”

 “Poker faces all round, then,” said Ryder. “Great.”

 While he was waiting, Logan pulled out his datapad and flicked through the file on General Bryce. Fourth-generation military brat, and two out of his three ancestors had been Generals in their own right, one of them during the war. Young for his rank, but in a service where nepotism had an increasingly greater role, that wasn’t surprising.

 His service record was fairly bland, actually. Some military service in the second half of the war, but most of it spent on deep space assignments, patrol and escort work – he rather suspected that Daddy had gone to some lengths to keep him out of the way, but whether that was to keep him safe or because of concerns over his competence was an interesting question.

 Since the war, his career had been almost exclusively political. Assignments as aids to Assemblymen, commander of the United States Astronautical Guard, then a tour as military attache to the Lunar Republic. Rather little time actually spent commanding ships. An interesting choice for an assignment such as this.

 As for the ship he was commanding, that was a different proposition. The Dreadnoughts had been the United Nations response to losing the Interplanetary War; each of them could hover over a colony and keep it under control by the exercise of raw fear. Missiles designed for orbital and planetary bombardment, marshals to enforce the law, even a pair of fighter wings for patrol. On paper, one of them could take out every battlecruiser in the Triplanetary Fleet, though with officers like Bryce commanding them, Logan suspected it would be a different story.

 A series of loud clangs came from the airlock, heralding the arrival of the shuttle. Offers to use the elevator airlocks had been rejected; perhaps the General was hoping for a quick getaway. The hatch slid open, and Bryce clumsily pushed himself out, flanked by a tall, dark skinned man wearing marshal’s uniform, and a diminutive aide with a mess of gold braid on his shoulder.

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