Shall Not Perish (Lincoln's War Book 1) Read online

   “We’re in Andromeda,” Schneider said, eyes wide. “I read this book once...”

   “Will you shut up!” McBride barked. “Everyone!”

   “As to our location, that was determined relatively quickly. We’re at a world called Enkidu, a little over eight light-years from New Dover.” She paused, and said, “There’s no easy way to tell you this, so I’ll give it to you straight. And remind you once again that we have confirmed and verified this information.”

   “We have been thrown forward in time a little more than five centuries. It is April 20th, 2631. While we believe that the war with the Pacific Federation was won, the United States has not existed since the middle of the twenty-second century. Earth has been reduced to an uninhabitable wasteland by a conflict that took place two centuries later. Details on the history we’ve missed will be available later.”

   McBride looked around, a mixture of horror, shock and disbelief on the faces on the deck, few of them with dry eyes. He’d known what was coming, but hearing the Captain telling everyone so calmly made it real, and it finally began to sink in that he was never going home again, that everything he’d known, everyone he knew, was gone.

   “I know what you must be feeling. I went through the same when we finally had confirmation, a few minutes ago. I can’t give you any advice, and I can’t promise you that it will ever get better, but I will say that you still have a family. This crew is your family. And although our country might not exist on Earth, we are all still in the United States Space Force, and while we survive, our flag still waves.”

   There was a loud rattle from the wall, and McBride looked up to see Schneider’s hand outstretched, the servospanner that had been in his hand now on the floor by the nearest bulkhead. Lopez moved to put her arm around the young technician, but he shrugged her off, shaking his head.

   “While our war with the Pacific Federation is over, we are still at war. The planet below is controlled by a hostile government known as the Guild, one which has captured one of our own, Lieutenant Frank Romano, and seeks to control all of known space, including former American territory. They’ve turned Enkidu into a slave labor camp, attack civilian ships, and have taken control of many of the surviving interstellar civilizations.”

   “Old Abe is the most powerful warship in space. I have committed us to the fight, a fight against tyranny and oppression that I feel certain our people would have gladly taken part in. We still stand for something, something special. For freedom, for liberty, for justice. If we have nothing else left, then we still have that. And I mean to hold onto it, no matter what it costs.”

   “I am proud, very proud, to serve with each and every one of you, and I know that you will stand with me, and that you will continue to uphold the traditions of our country, of the service, and of our ship. We’ve already added another battle honor to her roster. Let’s add another one. Thank you all.”

   Silence reigned across the hangar deck, nobody ready to move, everyone lost in their own thoughts, thoughts of happier times long ago, places that no longer existed. Most of them had families, parents, partners, children back home. All turned to dust. Schneider turned, looked at the others, and broke the reverie.

   “To hell with it,” he said.

   “Spaceman!” McBride said. “You get back here, right now!”

   “What are you going to do?” Schneider asked, turning back to him, walking over to stand face to face. “What are you going to do? Court-martial me? Throw me out of the service? They’re all dead! Everyone is dead! Earth is gone, and none of this means a goddamned thing!”

   Without a word, McBride hit the crewman in the face, sending him sprawling to the deck, blood running down his chin. The gunner stepped forward, eyes wild, and looked around at the rest of the hangar crew.

   “Anyone else? Because if this uniform doesn’t mean anything, then I can do what the hell I want as well, and I’ve got a lot of frustration to work out today!” Gesturing at the half-built fighter, he said, “We were dead! We died! We knew that was going to happen, and we knew that was the price we might have to pay!”

   Lopez moved over to the fallen Schneider, and McBride continued, “I lost people too. I had friends on Saratoga, and she blew out of the sky, and there was no second chance for her. We’ve all lost people. But we’re all still in the Space Force, and we still have a job to do. Those fighters aren’t going to put themselves back together!”

   Valdez walked out of the elevator, looking up at McBride, and said, “We were dead, and now we are not. He’s quite right. We had no right to survive the battle we fought against the PacFed task force, and you all knew it. Would you be happier if you were dead?” He sighed, and said, “Perhaps some of you would be.”

   “How about it, Schneider,” McBride said, pulling out his sidearm, handing to the prone rating, butt first. “I’ve got a round chambered, and it’s got your name on it. So if you really want to check out, get it over with. We’ve got work to do.”

   “Suicide is a mortal sin,” Valdez protested, but McBride silenced him with a glare.

   Schneider took the pistol, held it in his hands, and shook his head, passing it back to McBride and saying, “No, you son of a bitch. I won’t do it.”

   “I didn’t think you would,” McBride replied, ejecting the cartridge and sliding the gun smoothly into his holster. “Somehow, you didn’t seem to be the type.” Looking around the room, he continued, “Get this into your heads. We are at war. It’s not the war we thought we were fighting, but we are still at war, and the bastards down there on the surface are every bit as bad as the Pacific Federation. Either we get ourselves into gear and prepare for battle, or we die. And this time, we don’t get another chance.”

   Slowly, sullenly, the crews returned to their posts, Valdez walking over to Schneider with an outstretched hand, refused by the rating who shook him off, making his way back to the fighter. The chaplain shook his head, then moved over to McBride, his face locked in a frown.

   “You took a big risk,” he began.

   “I don’t think so,” McBride interrupted. “He just wanted to vent. It had to come out. This isn’t the time or the place, though. They can save all that for their downtime.”

   Looking up at him, Valdez said, “You’re taking this well, but then you didn’t have as much to lose as a lot of them. Your records don’t show any really close ties back home. Parents, of course, but no visits back to Earth on leave for three years.”

   “You spy on everyone, preacher?”

   “To an extent, that’s my job. To know what’s bothering everyone, know who needs a quiet word, who needs help and who needs to be left alone. You’d be surprised how often someone in my position can make things worse instead of better. It generally requires a light touch.” Tapping McBride’s pistol, he added, “That’s a tactic they never taught me, either in seminary or Harvard.”

   “Harvard?”

   Raising an eyebrow, he replied, “I took a couple of years of psychiatry before deciding that my destiny lay elsewhere. It’s come in useful more than once.” He grimaced, and added, “Warrant Officer Ebbs didn’t make it. We’re going to miss him. If ever a situation required a real psychiatrist. I’m just an amateur.”

   “You expect trouble?” McBride asked.

   “I’m going to guess that similar scenes took place all across the ship. That’s not what worries me. The senior enlisted are good, and they’ll be doing pretty much what you did. Riding herd on anyone who might rouse the crew, might get them thinking a little too hard about everything they’ve lost. It’s the ones off on their own that bother me. Stuck in maintenance shafts, or down in lonely corridors. They’re the ones that might do something stupid.”

   “Maybe we could work out some sort of a buddy system.”

   Shaking his head again, Valdez said, “I already talked to the Chief. We’re short-handed as it is, with so many of the maintenance techs st
uck in Sickbay. Everyone seems to be forgetting that we fought a major battle less than a day ago.” Frowning, he added, “Though that we’re just pushing on regardless might not be a bad thing at that. This crew desperately needs something to focus their minds on, other than the obvious.”

   “Speaking of which,” McBride said, picking up his forgotten toolkit. “I’d better get back to work.”

   “As had I,” Valdez replied.

   McBride walked over to the fighter, Lopez still working with the balky capacitor. She looked at him with a frown for a few seconds before returning to her work.

   “Out with it,” McBride said, pulling out a microservospanner.

   “You shouldn’t have hit him.”

   “I didn’t think that giving him a kiss would have helped.”

   “What he’s going through...”

   “Is no worse than anything the rest of us are going through right now. None of us have time to be nice, and none of us have time to curl up into a corner and cry. You heard what Valdez said. We should have died. We didn’t. We don’t have any damned right to complain about how it turned out.” He looked at her, and asked, “Who was it?”

   “What?”

   “Who did you lose?”

   She sighed, and said, “My folks, back in Santa Rosa. Two sisters, a brother just about to go to college...”

   “And they all knew that you died a hero, and all praised your life and your death. That’s not bad, is it? For them to feel that way? And tell me something else. If your mother was here right now, would she be telling you to mope around, or would she tell you to get on with your life? Mourn them. Miss them, if you like. But don’t let it take over, or you’ll make the Captain a liar, because PacFed will have won that battle.” He looked at the capacitor again, and said, “Here, damn it, I’ll show you how it’s done, before you smash it to pieces.”

  Chapter 13

   Flynn walked into the room, his third stripe still fresh on his uniform, and looked at the sullen collection of crewmen sitting inside, only a handful snapping to attention, led by Mendez. He’d read their service records, many of them depressing reading. A collection of Flight School rejects, for one reason or another, and a couple who had relevant experience in civilian life. Four of them had temporary commissions, assigned by the Captain at his insistence.

   All but one of those standing to attention were from Saratoga. The only remaining one was a former Electrician’s Mate, a diminutive man with the unlikely name of Raul Tanaka, who had managed to crash out of Flight School during the first quarter, joining the Space Force several years later as an enlisted rating.

   “Maybe I should go out and come back again,” Flynn said, looking at the pilots. “Seems to me that it’s usual for the squadron to stand to attention when their commander comes into the room for a briefing.” Finally, the rest stood to a semblance of attention, and he moved to the podium. He paused for a second, looked up at the images displayed on the wall, then pushed the podium to the ground, the report echoing from the walls, all eyes suddenly alert.

   “I get it,” he said. “I really do. We all have the same problem, but we’ve all got to get through it, and we’ve got to do that right now. If anyone here doesn’t think they have what it takes, then get the hell out of here and back to whatever it was you were doing. I don’t need anyone who isn’t completely dedicated to what we’re trying to do. Got that?”

   “Sir,” Ensign Price said, standing in a corner, “It’s just...”

   Taking a deep breath, he said, “Seats, everyone.” As the pilots sat down, he stepped forward, and said, “With only a few exceptions, all of you thought that you’d never sit in a cockpit again. I’ve looked over your records, and I pretty much know why you all crashed out, and you know what? I don’t give a damn. Consider that you all have a clean slate. You get one other bonus as well, because although I’m going to be putting you all through some simulator time, this is a test that you aren’t going to fail. Short of shooting yourself in the foot, you’re all going to be riding fire the next time we face the Guild.”

   “And a lot of you are going to die. Better get used to that idea.”

   “He’s right,” Mendez said, nodding in agreement. “Most of you don’t have the experience you need to survive in a dogfight. Unless we all get really lucky, we’ll be flying Missing Man when we get back to the ship after our next battle.”

   “There’s an old saying that if you don’t think you’re the best fighter pilot, you aren’t,” Flynn said. “Right now, that doesn’t apply to you. If you have combat experience, if you have some idea what you are doing, then it might. For the moment, your main job in a battle will be to do exactly what Mendez and I say, and to gain the experience you’ll need to make a better contribution to the next firefight. With the exception of Armstrong and Drake you’re here to make up the numbers. That’s all. Now with that said, does anyone want to leave?” None of the pilots left the room, and he smiled, saying, “Chief Wong has the simulators lined up in the training room. You’re set for one-on-one dogfights with each other, random opposition. Go show me what you’ve got.”

   They filed out, the usual banter absent, as Mendez walked over to him, the monitors on the wall lighting up one by one to provide images of the battles that were about to unfold in the ship’s cyberspace, duels that might give the rookies at least a chance of surviving the fighting that was to come. She gestured at the nearest screen, Armstrong moving in at Tanaka, the latter executing a surprisingly nimble turn to dodge out of the way of her proton cannons at the last instant, able to get a well-aimed shot into her tail.

   “Damn, that’s not bad,” Mendez said. “Great speech by the way, and I’m not being sarcastic. For once. They needed to be taken down a few more pegs. Most of them probably spent the last few years convincing themselves that getting bounced was someone else’s fault, not theirs. Often the way.” She looked at Tanaka again, and said, “Though as far as he’s concerned, I might believe it.”

   Pulling up his file, Flynn said, “No other flight training. Nothing on his profile, anyway, though he’s got a civilian shuttle license.” Raising an eyebrow, he continued, “Which he has apparently had since he was fourteen, as a provisional rating. That’s got to be some sort of record.”

   “Natural talent, I guess. Why did he crash out?”

   “Just says something about a failed medical, but it is a bit vague.” Flynn looked up again, just in time to watch Armstrong’s fighter explode, Tanaka executing a perfect thruster turn to catch her by surprise, pushing the limits of his ship’s performance envelope. Shaking his head, Flynn walked over to the simulator room, in time to watch Armstrong climbing out of her cockpit, face red.

   “That was...”

   “Ensign!” Flynn snapped. “You and Tanaka go again. Best two out of three.”

   She nodded, sliding back into the simulator, and the lights snapped out once more as Flynn walked back into the briefing room, Mendez rapt in attention at the battles unfolding before her.

   “Wanted to make sure it wasn’t a fluke?” she asked.

   “Something like that.” He looked down at his newly-acquired rank, and said, “On that note, Lieutenant, about the command arrangements...”

   A smile crossed her face, and she said, “Promise me something, Commander. Don’t die on me until we get some real pilots. I don’t envy you playing around with these almost-cadets.” She winced as Price narrowly missed colliding with Drake, the two fighters passing each other with only inches to spare, neither taking the chance to get some shorts into their enemy.

   “Price is bad enough. Drake’s worse.” He paused, then asked, “How did they handle themselves during that firefight with the Guild interceptors? I was a little distracted at the time.”

   “To be honest, I kept them out of the worst of it. I figured it made more sense that way. Both of them followed orders, but they didn’t show any real initia
tive.” She looked across at Tanaka’s display again, and said, “That’s two for two, Commander. And in less time.” She paused, then added, “And Armstrong did better than the others. She’s the only one I’d really trust out there as it stands.”

   “Hmm. Go and give Armstrong a try yourself. Just in case we’ve missed something. I want to have a word with Ensign Tanaka. There’s something there that I want to figure out.” Gesturing at the monitor, he added, “I know damn well that he should never have been bounced out of Flight School. I’m not convinced I could take him.”

   “I am,” Mendez said. “But I know what you mean.” Armstrong was already rising from her simulator again, and Mendez said, “Back you go, Ensign. I’m going up against you myself this time.” A second battle ended, Drake finally getting a shot home, an audible sigh of relief coming from his cockpit.

   “Tanaka,” Flynn said. “I’d like a quick word in my office.”

   “Of course, sir,” the pilot replied, following him into the cramped annex, barely large enough for a desk, two chairs and a monitor. Flynn walked over to the coffee machine, managing to coax a couple of foul-smelling cups from it, and gestured for Tanaka to take a seat.

   “I’ve got to admit, I was impressed by your performance.” Looking down at his datapad, he added, “You had two months of Flight School before leaving. The record says that it was some sort of accident.” Folding his fingers together, he continued, “I must confess, I’m surprised you didn’t go back. They’re usually pretty good about giving people a second try if there are circumstances beyond your control. My roommate was on his second pass through after an eye injury took him out first time around.”

   Tanaka paused, looked at the door, then said, “It does not matter now, and you will almost certainly find out the truth of the matter at some point in the future in any case.” He smiled, and said, “It’ll be a relief to get it out of my system. I suppose I shouldn’t have volunteered for fighter duty, but I had the sense that this is where I was needed.”