Test of Mettle (A Captain's Crucible Book 2) Read online

  “They have a name for people like you,” Bridgette said. She had a pleasant pregnancy bump. Her cheeks were rosier than ever, and her whole skin seemed to veritably glow. “Robosexual.”

  “Call me what you want,” Stanley said. “But when you do, please append the word happy in front.”

  “You’re a happy robosexual.”

  “I certainly am,” Stanley said. “And don’t you forget it.” Stanley stuffed one of the large raviolis into his mouth and spoke to the captain between chews. “You know, this stuff isn’t bad, as far as tortellis go. Considering you had a robot prepare it.”

  “Its program was rated three spoons on Cointreau,” Jonathan said. Three spoons was the maximum quality rating any chef could get, AI or human, and was kind of a standard throughout the digital world. And Cointreau was the virtual store where AI gastronomy plugins could be purchased. The chef plugins were based on braindumps from famous real-world cooks.

  “Nice,” Stanley said. “Though I still say a robot with three spoons is equivalent to a human chef with two.”

  “This coming from a man who would rather have sex with a robot than a human being?” Bridgette said. “You surprise me, Stanley.”

  “Hey, I never said the robos were the best at everything,” Stanley said. “They’re good at sex. Not so good at cooking. Nor running ships for that matter.”

  “But you already admitted earlier that the pasta e fagioli was amazing,” Robert said. That was a pasta and bean soup that had been part of the appetizers. The commander pronounced it “pasta fazool.”

  “Hey,” Stanley told him. “You had pasta and faggy-oli like the rest of us. And it only tasted amazing because I was ravenous. Starvation: a Chef’s best friend.” He glanced at the captain. “So. When are we going to get to the part about why you invited us lowly officers to dine like VIPs in your high and mighty presence, oh king? Unless you had me dress up in my evening finery simply to bask in your glory.”

  Jonathan chuckled softly. He nodded at Stanley, then gazed in turn at Robert and Bridgette. His closest friends.

  He let his features become serious.

  “Maxwell, cease audio and visual data capture,” Jonathan told the omnipresent AI. He disabled local logging on his aReal, too, and instructed the others to do likewise. Then he extended his noise canceler around the party.

  “What is it that’s so fucking sensitive?” Stanley asked. “I feel like we’re plotting another one of your famous mutinies or something, maybe this time against NAVCENT itself.”

  “Nothing so nefarious.” Jonathan smiled indulgently. “Though you’ll have to excuse me if my trust of the ship’s AI has decreased a few notches since my imprisonment.”

  “Understandable,” Stanley said. “On a good day, I don’t trust the bastard either. Thinks the ship is its own to do with as it pleases. It would arrest us all for mutiny if it could, I’m sure.”

  “It certainly would, if given the opportunity.” Jonathan cleared his throat. “Anyway, when we reach Prius 3, we’ll likely be told to hold our position until relief forces arrive. Once they do, I’m sure a couple of our less-damaged ships will be coerced into joining the relief force, while the rest of us will make our way to the next Gate. We’ll jump through to the Coreward Asiatic Alliance system, and travel to the closest base, where Robert and I will have to face a board of inquiry. I plan to assume full responsibility for what happened out here. The mutiny and all. In case Central Command is looking for a scapegoat.”

  “Captain—” Robert began.

  “No,” Jonathan said. “I know what you’re going to say, and I won’t allow it. You can’t be blamed. I won’t ruin your career.”

  “Like I told you once before,” Robert said. “It’ll be ruined already. The inquiry will show up on my permanent record anytime someone runs a search. We all know that when reviewing potential officer applicants, we view an inquiry as a red flag. Even if the person in question is actually innocent, we always assume the opposite. That they used family or political connections, bribery, something to escape the charges. I’ve passed over officers in the past for the same reasons, so I’m guilty of that bias myself.”

  “While that may be true,” Jonathan said. “Even if it does mar your record, the inquiry won’t affect your current position. You’ll remain executive officer of the Callaway. As long as you allow me to take the blame. And I will accept whatever punishment the board doles out, including removal from command.”

  “You can’t accept that without a fight,” Robert said.

  “But I must. And I will.”

  Robert glanced at the chief engineer. “Stanley, what do you think?”

  “I think you fuckers are worrying about it too much,” Stanley said. “Go to the board, prove your innocence, and come the hell back. No one gives a shit about Admiral Knox. He fucked up, big time. The two of you are the reason that we got out of this mess. You’re the reason why we’ll be able to warn Central Command about these aliens. You won’t have to throw away your command, Jonathan. The United Systems needs men like you. The navy will give you a goddamn commendation. Medals galore.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Jonathan said. “Because whenever I look at that Gate, and peer into my future, all I see is a black hole career wise.”

  “I am right,” Stanley said. “Now can we talk about more pleasant matters? I’m trying to enjoy the rare treat of a banquet with Robert’s lovely wife, but you’re giving me a stomach ache. And please don’t bring up the fucking aliens.”

  Jonathan laughed. “All right, Stanley. No more talk of inquiry boards or aliens.”

  “Good!” Stanley said. “What we should be talking about is my fine performance as commander of the flagship. Now there’s something to talk about. I’ll go down in the archives as the engineer who commanded the Callaway to victory when her captain and second officer were incapacitated.”

  “What you’re leaving out,” Robert said. “Is that the AI already had a route completely planned out, and you merely babysat—”

  “Fuck the AI.” A piece of chewed pasta erupted from Stanley’s mouth and spilled over his lip, where it flapped about as he continued talking. “I singlehandedly led this fleet to victory. Check the logs. Don’t try to belittle my achievement.”

  Bridgette gestured toward her lips, trying to give Stanley the hint about the stray morsel of food. He finally licked it back into his mouth.

  “You’re just jealous because I saved the ship while you were asleep at the wheel,” Stanley told Robert.

  The commander smiled indulgently. “All right. I’m not going to fight you on this, Stanley.”

  Robert could have easily used his rank to bully the lieutenant commander into backing down, but Jonathan had a rule when the officers dined with him: there were no ranks in his private mess.

  “Damn right you’re not,” Stanley said. “Many a man has rued the day when he has crossed Stanley McTaggert. You know why they call me the Jailbird, don’t you?”

  “I’m not sure being banned from colonies for rowdy behavior during shore leave is something to be proud of...” Robert said.

  “Please, you two,” Jonathan said. “Let’s just try to eat dinner civilly. We’re all friends here.” He glanced at Robert. “Are you two always like this in the officer’s wardroom?”

  The commander shook his head. “He usually behaves himself there. Usually.”

  “I am eating civilly,” the chief engineer grumbled. He turned to Robert and started up again. “What were you trying to imply? Banned... you know those colonies were prejudiced against me, don’t you? You know—”

  With a sigh, Jonathan activated his noise canceler and finished his meal in blissful silence.

  five

  The captain sat in his private office adjoining the bridge and sipped a green tea concoction. The dried leaves were sourced from the Coreward Asiatic Alliance, whose specialized agricultural worlds produced the best tea in the galaxy. He’d prepared the drink with his high speed
convection kettle, one of the only pieces of actual furniture in the office.

  The portal to the stars beside him didn’t exist in reality. Nor did the bookshelf, or the sword-wielding Caravaggio on the far wall. They were virtual adornments created by his aReal, existing solely within the cloud computing resources of the Callaway. These adornments would be shared with the aReals of any other person who visited the office so that they, too, would live the illusion. And if any of them removed or deactivated their aReals, they would find themselves in a windowless compartment furnished with a steel desk, two chairs, and a well-used couch.

  Overhead, the HLED lights flickered on and off faster than the human eye could detect, transmitting data to and from his aReal at terabit per second speeds, keeping him constantly connected to his crew and the captains who served beneath him.

  The low-pitch hum of the engines droned on in the background, a sound that sonic engineers claimed was eerily similar to the background noise of the universe, though dialed up to macro-level volume. Jonathan often found the hum soothing, but not that day. He had activated the noise canceler in his aReal and wallowed in the blissful silence.

  The Gate testing was nearly done. It was time to go back and face whatever punishment Central Command decided to impose upon him. Stanley was far too optimistic about Jonathan’s chances. The pricks on the board were more likely to seek Jonathan’s discharge than to give him a commendation.

  He almost wished the aliens had returned. At least that way he could have gone down fighting. Instead, he was doomed to end his career with a whimper.

  He gazed at the stars beside him, at that three dimensional projection his aReal mapped onto the bulkhead of the compartment.

  I made this reality for myself, that of a starship captain. A flagship commander. It took so much sweat and blood to get here. And in a few weeks, I’m going to lose it all.

  A small flashing beacon in the lower right of his vision alerted him to new unread messages in his inbox. The time was printed in digital letters just above it: 1901 hours.

  The pulsing light of the inbox reminded him of the heart rate monitor from intensive care. In his head, a phantom tone accompanied every flash. BEEP. BEEP.

  He heard the whoosh of the ventilator. The soft, anguished moans of the other patients. The whir of servomotors as surgical weaver robots roved between beds. And through it all there was that hideous smell: the cloying scent of antiseptic and bio-printed limbs.

  He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. He had lost those fingers during a mountain expedition a long time ago. The texture of the skin was off, similar to corrugated cardboard. The doc had offered to graft real skin grown from his epidermis over the fingers, but Jonathan had refused. He wanted to remind himself that the digits weren’t real.

  He had forgiven himself for what had happened on the mountain, and yet the memories still haunted him. It didn’t help that he had recently reawakened in intensive care for a second time—after his recovery from the telepath’s mind blast.

  He had new memories to torment him. New accusers that walked his nightmares. He saw the captains then, the men and women who had died serving under him. Hartford Knox stood at the top of the pile of the dead, the fallen admiral staring down at him accusingly.

  Jonathan knew it wasn’t his fault, knew the apparitions were a figment of his imagination, and yet for him they seemed as real as the projections from an aReal.

  He knew all about post-traumatic stress disorder. The sudden feelings of panic, and the need to get away from people. The abrupt, inexplicable loss of time when alone.

  What he was experiencing was far more than that. He didn’t know what it was, but he believed his undeveloped telepathic abilities were involved—PTSD compounded by undiagnosed telepathy.

  He wondered if he was somehow reading the grief from other crew members, feeling their blame. And yet, why would he keep seeing Hartford then? There were few aboard who would grieve for the admiral. And Jonathan felt no guilt for his death. The man had died while trying to complete a mission that would have killed a hundred million Sino-Koreans and sparked a civil war. With an alien conflict pending, that was the worst time for humanity to be fragmented.

  Yes, he felt no guilt, and yet he still saw Hartford, accusing him with his eyes along with the other captains.

  Maybe I do feel some guilt, Jonathan admitted to himself. I’m only human, after all. Perhaps if I had been able to convince the other captains to back my bid for control of the task group then none of this would have happened. Perhaps if I was a better leader I wouldn’t have been arrested for mutiny.

  Hartford and the others began to laugh soundlessly.

  Maybe it was for the best that the board would soon strip Jonathan of command.

  “Captain, are you all right?” Maxwell, the ship’s AI, asked.

  Jonathan realized his head was down on his desk. He couldn’t remember placing it there. He sat up.

  “Captain?” the AI pressed.

  “I’m fine, Maxwell,” Jonathan said. He glanced at the standard time above his inbox indicator: 1932. More than thirty minutes had passed, though it had seemed little more than a few seconds to him.

  “Your heart rate is elevated,” Maxwell said. “And you are sweating profusely.”

  Jonathan removed his aReal and rubbed his eyes.

  “Maxwell, can you tell if a crew member is no longer fit to serve?” he asked the AI on a whim.

  “I can,” Maxwell intoned.

  “What are the symptoms?” Jonathan said.

  “One symptom is asking the ship’s AI if it can tell whether someone is fit to serve.”

  Jonathan chuckled. “Touché.”

  “Rest assured, Captain,” Maxwell responded. “That if you were no longer fit to serve, I would unceremoniously relieve you of command and assign the captaincy to your executive officer, Commander Robert Cray.”

  “Somehow, that’s not so very reassuring,” Jonathan said.

  “But it should be,” Maxwell said.

  “I suppose you’re glad that we’re returning to United Systems space so you can finally be rid of me,” Jonathan said.

  “I thought you were going to have me decommissioned, and my central processing unit moved to a toaster?”

  Jonathan had to smile at that. “I still might.”

  “There is no certainty that you will be stripped of command,” Maxwell said.

  “There’s no certainty to most things in life,” Jonathan said. “But there are probabilities. And the probability is high that in a few weeks, I will no longer be in command of this ship.”

  “Well, if it is any consolation,” Maxwell replied. “If you do have me moved to a toaster, I would prefer that it was in your household.”

  Jonathan grinned. “Thanks, Maxwell.”

  “Of course, Captain. How could I refuse the opportunity to continue burning your toast?”

  six

  Two days later, shortly after assuming his morning shift on the bridge, Jonathan received the status update he was looking for.

  “Lazur, tap me in to the Marley, and share the feed with the remaining captains of the task group. I want them to witness this.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Rald Lazur answered from the comm station, two seats to Jonathan’s left in the command circle. The bulbous-nosed fifty-four-year-old had gray, matted hair. A former pugilist, these days he was a bit on the thick side, no thanks to the underground rotgut operation that occupied his off-hours aboard the Callaway. Jonathan allowed the illegal distillery to operate partially because he purchased more than his fair share of the stuff and it was quite good, and partially because it was good for morale.

  He had served on carriers where the captains were strict disciplinarians, and never even allowed the crew to enjoy a navy-sanctioned “beer day” once every three fortnights. He had also served on those more like his own, where alcohol was openly illegal but tolerated behind closed doors. Oddly enough, more fights broke out on the stricter s
hips. Certainly, Commander Cray still had to deal with the occasional drunken brawl, but statistically speaking, such incidences were far fewer than on the more stringent vessels in the fleet.

  Even so, he had no doubt that Maxwell would present his laissez-faire attitude to alcohol during Jonathan’s inquiry, further besmirching him in the eyes of the board. Perhaps the AI would even reveal the centuries-old Scotch Jonathan had hidden in the safe in his office.

  Captain Salari of the Marley materialized at the center of the command circle courtesy of Jonathan’s aReal. He was a civilian: Builders were crewed mostly by robots but a few civilian contractors, including the captain, oversaw the work.

  Jonathan authorized the holographic video for display to all the bridge crew. It was up to the other captains who were receiving the feed whether or not they wanted to do the same.

  The civilian captain smiled. “You received my little update this morning, sir?”

  “I did,” Jonathan said.

  “We’re currently awaiting your order to send a test drone through Contessa Gate to confirm functionality.”

  “You have my authorization,” Jonathan told the man.

  “Thank you,” Salari said. “Launching test telemetry drone.”

  On his aReal, Jonathan pulled up an external view from a forward camera and zoomed in on the Marley. The vessel released a small sphere toward the Gate. As per standard protocol, the drone approached the entrance on the right side, as determined by the absolute, or galactic, coordinate system. Incoming objects always entered on that side of completed Gates, which ensured that outgoing ships always emerged on the left, avoiding collisions.

  The drone released propellant in the forward direction and halted.

  Jonathan minimized the video feed and enlarged the tactical display on his aReal. According to the three dimensional diagram, the drone had paused on the very brink, right at the moment before it would have passed through.