The Black Hawk, Standard Year 403 after founding

  Alanna opened her eyes, staring at a gray metal ceiling. Careful not to move her head, she cast her eyes to her left. A flat metal wall looked back at her. She just knew moving her head would be a mistake. She carefully turned her eyes to the right. Bars. Of course. Tundrans did prison the old fashioned way. Stun rounds. The bastards loaded their drones with stun rounds. “Bloody hell.” She muttered under her breath.

  “Lieutenant?” A painfully cheerful voice came from her right. “Would you like some coffee?”

  Coffee? Was that a possibility? It had been years since she’d had coffee. She tried to form the words “yes please” but it came out as something more like a “yesh”. Stun round paralysis. The day just got better and better. She had been stunned a few times in basic training and knew that sooner or later, she would need to lift her head up in order to get vertical. It was excruciating and unavoidable. Alanna gritted her teeth and began the slow, painful process of dragging herself up. A minute or two later, she was leaning very carefully against her new best friend, the metal wall behind her prison bunk. Other than the splitting headache, she appeared to be in perfect health. Her heroic attempt to bow out gracefully had been an abysmal failure. These bastards really needed to be less efficient.

  “Here you go. Is it ok that I added milk?”

  “Um.” Alanna stared at the cup in her hand. The liquid was unsealed and exposed to the air. In her world, that meant risk of vibrio angerona poisoning resulting in a painful and exceptionally unpleasant death. On the other hand, the smell of coffee and hot milk hit her nose and she decided she didn’t care. It was, quite possibly, the best thing she had ever smelled in her entire life. “This is amashing. Thank you.” She touched her lips, noting they were still partially numb. The stun round must have hit her in the face.

  “My name is Clara. If you need anything else, just ask.” Clara was a tall, muscular woman with an open, friendly face, bright blue eyes, and an easy smile.

  Alanna risked another thank you, pleased that it came out relatively clearly. She sat and drank her coffee. It was the world’s most incredible coffee. Who the hell got this kind of coffee on a spaceship?

  “The captain ships it in special. The coffee.”

  Alanna started nodding but stopped just before disaster struck. Moving was a mistake, unless it was for the purpose of drinking the amazing coffee. About halfway through her cup, she managed to form another sentence. “That explains why the captain geths good coffee. Why am I getting good coffee?”

  Clara smiled. “You’re the reason no one died.”

  No nodding, Alanna reminded herself. She tried blinking in acknowledgement.

  “Once you’re feeling better, we have approval for you to use the shower facilities. I have some clean clothes as well. Just let me know when you’re ready.”

  “I’m good.” Alanna responded firmly. “No need for a shower.”

  ---

  Primary objective: take control of D12. Secondary objective: take D12 intact. No one was dead. No one had so much as twisted an ankle. Mission success, damn near off the charts. The hostage negotiations had been initiated and the Sarayans had provided their response overnight. Unsurprisingly, they agreed to the generous ten to one prisoner exchange. The short list of Tundran hostages to be sent home had been provided to central command. Four more Tundrans were going home to their families. The Sarayans’ response regarding Lieutenant Alanna Summers had been short and to the point. No trade would be offered. She was fully and permanently remanded into the custody of the Tundran military. Mission status: incomplete. One loose end. Captain James Hawk finished his morning reports and went to check on the loose end.

  “No need for a shower.” He heard her voice as he approached the cell. Any hope of the loose end being cooperative quickly evaporated. Lieutenant Summers started as he entered her field of vision, her striking green eyes following him. She was leaning her head against the wall behind her bunk as if it were her very best friend in the world. Having experienced a few stun rounds himself, he walked into her field of vision, rather than waiting for her to turn her head.

  “It’s not the right strategy here.” He said mildly. “Not showering.” He gestured at her lackluster appearance. “Hiding. It won’t work. Maybe it worked with the miners, but this isn’t the right audience for that. Clara, I need her presentable.”

  “Yes, Captain.” Clara responded without hesitation.

  The metal cot took up most of the cell, with metal walls flanking it on three sides. On the fourth side was about two feet of open space and metal bars, placing him less than three feet away from her. Alanna had to angle her head up to see his face. His ice gray eyes looked back at her, inscrutable. Apparently, she was about to get strategy advice from the captain of the Black Hawk. “Why is it a bad strategy?” She asked.

  “You’ll still get noticed. This just makes you less valuable.” He said simply. “Why did you reach for your gun?”

  “With such a bright future ahead of me, what was I thinking?” Alanna responded sarcastically.

  “I don’t know, what were you thinking?”

  “Mostly that I wanted to avoid this.”

  “Do you, by any chance, recall the instruction to evacuate, unarmed?”

  “I wasn’t planning to enter your ship with that gun and you damn well know it!”

  “I don’t know you.”

  “Oh, come on! Seriously?” She winced, realizing she had unintentionally jerked her head when she responded.

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  “What were you planning to do with the gun?”

  “Well I had planned on shooting myself in the heart. Which by the way is a damn messy way to go if you screw it up. Getting the angle right was going to be tricky. Again, the plan” she gritted her teeth “was to avoid this.”

  “Were you planning on shooting any of my people?”

  Alanna jerked her head again and immediately regretted it. “If I planned on shooting your people, I wouldn’t have surrendered. Or at least I would have made sure I wasn’t the only one armed, with literally every civilian on D12 standing between me and your crew. I mean for god’s sake, I’m not that incompetent. And you’re actually managing to make these questions” she winced “exceedingly painful.”

  “Do forgive me. Am I not perfectly fulfilling my end of our agreement?”

  Alanna opened her mouth. Paused. “I see what you did there.” Was it her imagination or did the corner of his mouth just very slightly twitch, as if he were stifling a laugh. Did captain James Hawk have a sense of humor? “Captain” she tried, “have you ever considered the value of good faith initiative?”

  All potential traces of humor dissipated. “No more initiative, lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir.” Alanna responded automatically.

  “I can see the vague memory of military discipline is returning to you. Very good. Clara, let’s aim for presentable, please.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  ---

  James walked back to his office to find Henry waiting. “You have the reports?”

  “I do, both recorded and in summary form. Want the verbal rundown?”

  James poured himself a second cup of coffee. “Sure, let’s hear it.”

  “To the question of why did you choose Lieutenant Summers as your leader, it’s a fairly consistent mix of ‘she’s competent’, ‘she has our back’, and a good sprinkling of ‘captain Mace is a goddamn moron’. There’s also a story from someone named Loel, who apparently owes her his life after she took the blame for a damaged gun turret. He cut the turret with” Henry looked at his notes “a stray diamond shard that took off during drilling.”

  “So it’s competence rather than a cult of personality scenario. I was already getting that impression after meeting the lovely lieutenant.” James said drily.

  “Did it have to be one or the other?”

  “For a unanimous mutiny? That, or a very effective form of mind control.”

  Henry nodded in acknowledgement. “To the question of why did Lieutenant Summers surrender, it was a fairly unanimous ‘to save our lives.’ To the question of what were her relations with other crew members, including friends, enemies, or lovers” Henry paused “this was not a popular question. There were twenty eight references to something along the lines of ‘you Tundran scum’, and twenty four people refused to answer,” he paused again “I think there was some overlap between those two groups.”

  “For the all time winners that called us Tundran scum and then refused to answer.”

  “Apparently so.”

  James raised an eyebrow. “Touchy subject.”

  “To the question of why did Lieutenant Summers negotiate a ten to one prisoner exchange when there were forty one people on the station, we have” he checked his notes “twenty eight ‘I don’t knows’, a handful of ‘none of your business’, with Tundran scum references sprinkled in across the board. The handful of substantive responses boil down to ‘she knew the Sarayans would not want her back.’ ”

  “The lieutenant proposed her terms before the transmission went out and the miners are unlikely to know the substance of what was sent.” James noted curiously. “I wonder why they are all so sure the Sarayans wouldn’t want her returned. Do we know?”

  “No. But it doesn’t matter, does it? We can’t send her back after the transmission.”

  “No.” James agreed. “Sending her back is no longer an option. And the last question?”

  “To the question of why did Lieutenant Summers pull out her gun, it’s also unanimous.”

  “Suicide?”

  “Yes. There’s also a ‘to save Captain Hawk the headache’, if that helps.”

  “I think you left out the Tundran scum references.” James said, amused.

  “Yes, copious references to Tundran scum on this one as well.” Henry paused.

  “There’s more?”

  “There is. You saw the schematics for the explosives?”

  “I did.” James nodded in acknowledgement. “They mined the station. Rather effectively, I thought.”

  “Well, there’s more. They called it Operation Cherry Pie.”

  James raised an eyebrow. “Classified?” He asked.

  “Not formally. And they were all more than willing to talk about it. At length.”

  “And what is Operation Cherry Pie?” James asked as he opened the relevant files on his computer.

  “It’s their defense strategy for the station. You can’t really call it classified military information. They’re all civilians and step one was locking up their Captain.” Henry paused, a slight grin crossing his face.

  James frowned, his focus intensifying. “She trained the civilians.”

  “She did. And James, I think she trained them well. They ran drills. Lots of drills, multiple scenarios. They couldn’t wait to tell us. They were proud.”

  “How long have they been training?”

  “About two years.” Henry responded with a wince. “There wasn’t a whole lot to do. So they trained.”

  “Weapons?”

  “Yes. They never received the support of military personnel, but they had guns. Most would have been armed. And from what I heard, better trained than some of the Sarayan troops we’ve gone up against.”

  James leaned back in his chair. “Some of ours, some of theirs.” He said softly.

  “All of theirs.” Henry reminded him.

  “That was what I said, wasn’t it? But no.” James said with a slight smile. “It would not have been all of theirs.”

  “James.” Henry shook his head with a laugh. “Really?”

  “We can’t afford to waste valuable resources, Henry.”

  “Your objectivity never ceases to amaze.”

  James shrugged, looking out the viewport past Henry’s shoulder. “She said ‘I want to speak to the captain of the Black Hawk.’ ”

  “She knew who we were.” Henry agreed.

  James nodded. “She surrendered to us, most likely because she knew we sent the Avalon Station crew home to Saraya. If it had been someone else…” James leaned back in his chair. “And when she chose to surrender, in contradiction of years of planning and preparation, they all fell in line. Did anyone blame her for the decision?”

  “No. At least, not that they voiced to us. I think they just wanted us to know they could have fought.”

  “Wanted us to know how big of a prize she handed us.”

  “Yes.” Henry agreed.

  “They are, of course, entirely correct.” James sighed, releasing his breath slowly. Up until that moment, he had not fully realized just how close he had come to disaster on this mission. Of course he planned for resistance. He always planned for the worst-case scenario. But the scale and competence of what had been planned on D12 was unexpected in the extreme. He winced slightly, imagining how he would explain why Captain James Hawk struggled to take a station with forty civilians and a grand total of two military officers. To explain why some of his people had been lost.

  “We can’t send her back, James. She’ll be charged with treason.” Henry spoke into the silence. “And the crew won’t like it.” He added.

  “As it happens, we’re not being given the option.”

  “The Sarayans are officially leaving her?” Henry asked with surprise.

  “They are.”

  “Saves them the cost of a trial, I suppose. Can you fix it?”

  James smiled slightly. “I can always fix it.” He said. “Please send in Tom.”

  “Yes, Captain.” Henry saluted with enthusiasm before walking out of the office.

  James watched his friend walk out, his steps somewhat lighter than they had been when he came in. Lieutenant Summers had handed him another great victory, with minimal effort on his part. He still felt disbalanced by the development, the unspent adrenaline that came with preparation for battle pumping through his system, leaving him restless. And beyond all that, far beyond the diamond drills of D12 and the four Tundran prisoners that would be on their way home, the Sarayan lieutenant may have handed him the answer to a problem that could shift the balance of power across their solar system. He took a quiet breath, preparing himself for the next step.