Commandant (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 8) Read online

  “Yes, it is, it pains me to say,” the first minister answered.

  “The Brotherhood won’t stand for this, you know,” Ryck said, switching tack.

  “We’ve taken that under consideration, Ryck.

  “Look, put down the gun, and we’ll forget all of this happened. Come back here to Earth, and I give you my word that I’ll explain it all to you. You’ll see that this is the right choice, the only choice,” the first minister said.

  Ryck hesitated, the muzzle of his Ruger wavering ever-so-slightly.

  What if he’s right? What it there is something I don’t know?

  Movement caught the corner of his eye. Without thinking, he whirled and fired, sending three darts into the chest of Captain Lief Klinger, the admiral’s chief of staff, as the man rushed him.

  Ryck immediately swung back, his two darts zinging off the console stopping the admiral who had started to reach forward.

  “Ryck, this pains me. Really it does. But Admiral Kurae, do what you have to do,” the first minister said.

  “Marines, arrest General Lysander. That is a direct order coming from the chairman himself.”

  Lying piece of shit, Ryck thought. The chairman might want me arrested now, but he hasn’t given any such order.

  “I’ll kill you first,” Ryck told the admiral.

  “Maybe,” the man said with a laugh. “But that’ll only delay the inevitable. You’ve killed Captain Klinger, but with me gone, it will take, what, ten minutes to elevate Captain Jestonia to command? And you’ll be on your way to be hanged in disgrace.

  “Marines, I gave you your orders. Arrest the general.”

  He’s right, Ryck thought as he contemplated just shooting him anyway.

  He could fight, but to what avail? And he wasn’t going to kill a Marine just for obeying his orders.

  He stared at the admiral as he felt more than heard several of the Marines step forward. He waited for their hands on his shoulders. It was over, and there was nothing he could do, he realized in despair.

  “Sir, what do you want us to do?” Sergeant Parker asked him as the sergeant of the guard stepped beside him, shoulder to shoulder.

  “I said arrest him!” the admiral shouted, for the first time losing his composure. “That’s an order!”

  “Do you know what you’re doing,” he asked the sergeant quietly. “This is your career, and probably your life.”

  “We’re Marines, sir, and we’ve got your back,” the sergeant answered.

  “And your oath?” Ryck asked.

  “We swore an oath to protect the citizens, not sit back and let them get all blown up and like.”

  “You too?” he asked the corporal whose Ruger he’d taken, a Marine whose name he didn’t even know.

  “Me and the sergeant, and the rest, sir, like he said, we’ve got your back. You’re General Lysander, and that’s good enough for me.”

  “No!” Admiral Kurae shouted, wheeling to lunge at the planet buster’s trigger.

  Without thinking, Ryck fired off four quick shots, the hypervelocity darts reaching the man in an instant and piercing his body before the fins at the back of the dart twisted, causing horrendous internal damage. The admiral was dead before his body started to fall.

  Ryck didn’t watch the body slide to the deck. His eyes were on the rest of the men on the bridge. Most were in a state of shock, some were angry, and only a bare few seemed relieved. He half-lowered the Ruger, not pointing it at anyone, but still keeping it at the ready.

  “Well, gentlemen,” Ryck asked calmly. “It seems we have a situation here. Now what?”

  Chapter 2

  “We have to surrender. We can return to the Doughnut and turn ourselves in,” Commander Hector Bortello pleaded. “They’ll accept that.”

  The commander was not alone in his opinion among the staff gathered in the wardroom. No one there had wanted to interdict Ellison, but now that that threat was over, temporarily, at least, the realization of what they had done was sinking in. More than a few of the men wanted to return to Prometheus Station, the “Doughnut,” and the homeport for the ships in the task force.

  “Water under the bridge, Hector,” Captain Plummer said. “Or that saying about the horses and the barn door. We’ve already committed mutiny, and the consequences of that are death, whether we return the Kravitch or not.”

  “We didn’t commit mutiny! He did!” the commander continued, pointing at Ryck.

  Corporal Glukhov, the Marine whose Ruger Ryck had taken, took a step forward to stand at Ryck’s shoulder, hand on his holster. Ryck waved him back.

  “The general may have pulled the trigger, but not one of us objected. I personally applauded his action, something I hadn’t had the guts to do myself. But according to the FCMJ,

  [3] our inaction, much less sitting here discussing the situation, is compliance, and that is still a capital offense. Right, Commander Quintos?”

  “Right, sir. I’m afraid we are all complicit in this from a legal standpoint,” Lieutenant Commander Quintos, the task force staff judge advocate agreed.

  “Gentlemen, I appreciate the situation I’ve put you in. And if you arrested me,” Ryck said, as all six Marines converged behind him upon hearing that, “I would not resist. I may not be the expert that Lieutenant Commander Quintos is, but I imagine that would stand all of you in some good.

  “We have saved Ellison for now, at least. And as Commander Fields has told us, the Ellisonians picked up the emissions as the planet buster powered up and have raised a hue and cry to the Universal Assembly. I would have to think that an interdiction is off the table for the moment. So I’ve done what I needed to do and am willing to face the consequences. I can’t think of any reason why all of you should suffer the same fate as me.”

  A number of faces in the wardroom looked like they wanted to take him up on the offer.

  “Bullshit, General. You had the guts to do what was right, and I cannot stand by and let you hang for that. And I am not willing to accept that the hangman’s noose is, in fact, inevitable. We simply need to get to neutral space until this shakes out. You are a hero, and I, for one, am proud to be here with you now,” Plummer said, his voice heated in his excitement.

  “And if you are wrong?” Ryck asked, his voice calm.

  “Would you do it again, sir?” Plummer asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And so would I. We saved 12 billion people today. That’s 12 billion! And if I do have to hang for that, well, I swore an oath to protect the Federation, and that’s what we did. Not those politicians who ordered the interdiction, but the real Federation, the citizens.”

  “And for those here who disagree with you?” Ryck asked.

  “We’ve already got 14 men in the brig. If anyone else wants to join them, I’ll swear that they resisted us, and when we figure out how to transfer the prisoners off the ship, they can join them,” the ship’s CO responded.

  Ryck looked around the room. All eyes were on him, waiting for what he had to say. Ryck had been resigned to the fact that he would be arrested and ultimately executed. He’d committed the cardinal sin for the military: he’d mutinied. But now he’d been given a glimmer of hope. His mind churned with ideas on how he could get the Brotherhood involved, how he might save not only his skin but also the skin of the men sitting around him.

  Is it worth it, though? he wondered for a moment. What if things blow up and get out of control?

  His life, even the life of those here on the bridge, were really meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Yes, Hannah and the kids would grieve, as would the families of the men with him. They would all be branded as traitors, bringing shame on their families. But what were the lives of the 30 or so officers and senior staff gathered there with him? Were they worth the potential disaster of a full-fledged mutiny?

  Then he thought of those 12 billion people, and a government, his government, that was willing to wipe those people out of existence.

  Things need to
blow up, he thought with growing conviction. Something has to change.

  “I am willing to take this further, whatever that might be,” he told the gathered men. “But this is not my decision, nor yours, Captain. This is an individual choice, for each man, each officer, chief, petty officer, and rating. And Marine,” he added, nodding to the six who were still behind him. “So, for all of us here, who wants to join the prisoners? No harm will come to you, and we’ll get you off the ship as soon as possible.”

  The men looked at each other nervously. One hand went up, followed by three more. Ryck was surprised that Commander Bortello’s hand was not one of them.

  “Sergeant Parker, please escort these gentlemen to the brig. They are not prisoners, though, so treat them with respect,” he told the sergeant of the guard.

  Ryck didn’t resent the four men’s decision. It was asking a lot of all of them. And there was the matter of their oath. Frankly, Ryck was surprised that so few had taken him up on the offer. He watched as the men left the wardroom and the hatch closed behind them.

  “Well, Captain Plummer, the die is cast. We need a course of action, and we need it quickly if we are going to get out of this mess.”

  JULIETTE STATION 2

  Chapter 3

  “Did you get a hold of my wife?” Ryck asked as First Lieutenant Kerry Feinstein leaned over his shoulder.

  “Not yet, sir, but I’ve left several messages,” his junior aide answered.

  Hannah, Esther, and Noah were on Earth, and Ryck was beside himself with worry that they could pay the price for his actions.

  While a ship was in bubble space, its communications were limited to her hadron comms and message torps, but those were official Navy comms, and Ryck couldn’t use them for obvious reasons. As they left the Ellison system, he’d asked Kerry to try and contact his family any way he could the moment the ship emerged from bubble space on the other side and tell them to take the first transport off-planet. Now that comms were available again, he just hoped Kerry could contact Hannah before the government decided to act against them.

  At least Ben was still on Tarawa where he was finishing up his senior year at school. Ryck was pretty sure that no matter what he’d done, the Marines on Tarawa would not let Ben bear the brunt of any Federation retribution.

  “Keep trying, Kerry. I need you to get it done.”

  “Aye-aye, sir,” his aide said, straightening back up and leaving the conference room.

  “Sir? About Major Gustavson?” Captain Plummer asked after the hatch closed behind the lieutenant.

  Ryck turned back to look at the gathered men sitting around the large, ornate conference table. Like everything else on the Kravitch, it was over-the-top: five meters of expensive inlaid wood with gold trim. On other ships, meetings like this were held in the wardroom, a separate conference room being a waste of space. But this was a dreadnaught, the pride of the Navy.

  Captain Plummer had been requesting a decision on what to do with Major Gustavson and the 23 FCDC troops he’d brought along with him to the Kravitch. Before departing Ellison, the loyalist sailors who’d been put in the ship’s brig, along with more than 300 other sailors and civilian staff, had made the transfer to the Ballston Shore. Some 200-plus sailors and Genghis, along with 1,943 Marines transferred to the Kravitch to join Ryck. Only 19 Marines chose to stay on the Ballston Shore. Surprisingly, to Ryck, at least, Gustavson and his 23 troops had requested to join the Kravitch. Plummer was sure they were plants and should be held in the brig, especially as they approached Juliette Station 2.

  Ryck understood the captain’s concern. FCDC troops were noted for their almost fanatical devotion to the central government, and to the council in particular. The fact that any of them wanted to join what was essentially a rebel group was somewhat surprising.

  “They’re all snakes, sir. Every one of them, and you know it. They live and breathe for the council,” Plummer insisted.

  Ryck felt an urge to point out that the Navy itself was the long arm of the council, and more than half of its members were former admirals. But he couldn’t afford to alienate the captain. The Kravitch and the accompanying Temperance were all Ryck had to keep him, and those who’d joined him, alive. A dreadnaught and a frigate, along with 4,000 sailors and half that many Marines, against the entire might of the Federation.

  But he couldn’t just lock up men without cause. It wasn’t morally right, and Ryck’s only defense of his recent actions was that contravening the orders from the Federation had been justified on a moral basis. Ryck had to maintain the moral high ground, for both personal reasons and for justification of his actions.

  The thing was, the captain was probably right. Ryck didn’t doubt that at least one of the FCDC troops was a plant, and that could have drastic consequences down the road.

  “Captain, I understand your concern—believe me, I do. But we cannot go locking up men without probable cause. Let’s see how things shake out on the station, and meanwhile, let’s keep our FCDC guests away from anything vital.”

  “Aye-aye, sir, we’ll do it your way,” Plummer said, obviously not mollified.

  The authority of command still works, even among a bunch of mutineers, Ryck mused. And I hope it lasts.

  “So, Commander Bortello, nothing has changed from the station?” Ryck asked, changing the subject.

  “No, sir. Upon dropping out of bubble space, we confirmed with Meister Hendricks-Pata that we would be allowed to dock. We’re still to remain in the ships until given further notice, though. And we need to come in weapons cold.”

  Before leaving Ellison orbit, Ryck had ordered a tight-beam comms link with Juliette Station 2, an independent station out in the Far Reaches. Run by the notoriously dictatorial Meister Glenda Henricks-Pata, granddaughter of Juliette Hendricks-Pata herself, Ryck was taking a huge chance. Juliette Station 2 was heavily defended, and with the Kravitch and the Temperance coming in weapons cold, the station could easily blast both ships into their component atoms. Hendricks-Pata, though, hated the Federation (and the Confederation, and most of all, the Brotherhood, who she called medieval monks). Whether she would risk the might of the Federation or not over a dislike of the council was a good question, one for which they would soon receive an answer. But to Ryck, it was their best chance to regroup and formulate a plan.

  The problem was that what that plan might be, Ryck didn’t have a clue in hell.

  Chapter 4

  “Atteint!” Genghis said, slapping the five cards down on the table and raking together the chips.

  Ryck folded his cards in disgust and dropped them face down. They’d been playing for only a little more than an hour, but he was already down over a hundred credits to the other three men. Ryck didn’t even like playing cards that much. Hannah was into bridge, and he’d played with her, but he’d rather be kicking back in front of the holo with a Corona in hand. But with the Kravitch in a Mendoza Cage, there wasn’t much else to do.

  The Mendoza Cage was not a physical cage but rather an impenetrable array of pulsating electromagnetic waves that covered the ship. As long as the station provided power to the cage, the ship had no way of receiving or sending comms other than a single optical cable now connected to one of the ship’s docking hubs. When the station wanted to contact them, it would. Until then the ship might as well have slipped into an alternate, unpopulated universe.

  Only they were still in their universe, just blind. For all they knew, the Federation could be gathering a fleet of ships, ships that could be orbiting the station right then, weapons trained on the Kravitch and the Temperance. Not knowing what was happening was excruciating, and Ryck’s imagination had taken a turn to the worst possible scenarios.

  It wasn’t just Ryck. After the thrill of breaking away from the Federation, reality had begun to rear its head among the Marines and crew as the gravity of the situation sunk in. Men started thinking of home, of family. Thoughts drifted to the penalty for mutiny. And isolated, without knowing what was goin
g on, the negative thoughts fed upon each other, growing into a tsunami of self-doubt. Add the fact that it was crowded, with Marines and sailors hot-racking[4] it, fights broke out every few hours, and the chiefs and SNCOs had their hands full.

  With two days in the cage so far, Ryck was second-guessing himself to death. He’d hoped that Meister Henricks-Pata would grant them a safe haven, but the longer they were held in the cage, the more it seemed as if the choice had been a bad one. The Juliette Station 2 might be an amazingly powerful bunker in space, and the Juliette Group controlled important mineral resources that the Federation needed, but the station could not stand up militarily to the Federation. Self-preservation might be trumping the reasonable-to-expect kindred spirit connection Ryck was hoping to exploit.

  Ryck had accepted Genghis’ offer for a game of lances more just to be doing something, anything but the planning sessions that had taken up most of his time since arriving at the station. Along with Captain Plummer and Lieutenant Commander Xanci, the ship’s chaplain, the four went through the motions of playing. Ryck’s thoughts kept straying to Hannah and the twins, and his lack of concentration had cost him a full day’s pay so far.

  Shit. A day’s pay? Who do I expect to be paying me now? he asked himself.

  The dealer duties rotated to Ryck, so he collected the cards, fed them into the shuffle-master, and dealt them out to the other three. Lances was pretty much poker, to Ryck’s inexperienced mind, not much different than seven-card chutes or Texas hold ’em, but it was the current flavor of the month that periodically swept through human space, only to fade away as a new fad took hold. Ryck might not be as big a fan of bridge as his wife, but at least that game had remained basically unchanged for centuries.

  Captain Plummer took one look at his hand and immediately folded, a look of disgust on his face. Ryck took a peek at his; not bad, and something with which he could work. He hesitated only a moment before hitting the double-down button.