Two Worlds – Chapter 166

Benjamin Gold

Location: CWS Abraham Lincoln, New Lancashire, United Commonwealth of Colonies

“You headed this way, Sir?”

Ben’s head was in his PAD and he wasn’t paying any attention to his surroundings, which was why LT Wentworth was able to sneak up on him. To his credit, Ben didn’t jump.

“Yes, Lieutenant. I have a briefing up on the flag bridge.”

“I’m headed to the flight deck. Do you mind if I walk with you?”

Ben only hesitated a moment. “No.” He put his PAD in his pocket without breaking stride.

He really needed to be studying the OPORD and forming questions for the meeting with Captain Jacobson. The Andromeda’s captain was the leader of the small strike force RADM Nelson was using to harass the Blockies in the sector. It was because of her the Blockies were scrambling. Not only had they lost a supposed ally in the Kingdom of Windsor, but now they’d had infrastructure hit all over the sector.

<The longer we can keep them off balance the more time we have to coordinate with Windsor and strengthen our own territory.> Even over the few days he’d been gone for the rogue asteroid mission, Ben had come back to new construction, and most of it was military.

York Sector looked like it was getting ready for a big push, and the Sector capitol needed to be ready when it did.

“That went well.” The LT broke his train of thought.

“Excuse me?” Ben asked confused.

“The training exercise. I thought it went well.” The LT smiled, and it was a nice smile. “I wanted to thank you again for allowing my Company to spend the day aboard your ship qualifying and training.”

“No thanks required,” Ben smiled back anyway. “You let me have Corporal Cooper for my mission. It’s I who should be thanking you.”

“I never got the AAR on that operation.” The LT looked a little ticked that she hadn’t been kept in the loop.

“I’ll forward it to you if you want?” Ben offered. “It’s pretty straight-forward. We found some black market dealers and pirates camping out at one of our abandoned asteroid storage centers. We went in and kicked them off the rock, and Corporal Cooper played a big part in that. If we hadn’t had the HI asset we would have lost more men.”

The smile vanished from the LT’s face and was replaced by a solemn expression. “Sorry for your loss, Sir. Losing good soldiers is always hard.”

“Yes,” Ben coughed awkwardly into his hand, and they walked the next fifty meters in silence.

“Do you mind if I ask a personal question, Sir?” The LT stopped walking and Ben had to double back.

“That depends, Lieutenant.” Ben was always hesitant when it came to personal questions, because they usually went one of two ways.

“Well, Sir. I was just wondering why someone like you joined the Fleet?”

<And there it is.> That was usually one of the topics of these personal questions: his pedigree.

His displeasure must have shown on his face, because the LT quickly put up her hands up defensively. “Sorry, Sir, that came out wrong. I just meant that you’ve got a Ph.D. from Oxford. That’s very impressive. I don’t know why you’re out here in the ass end of nowhere when you could be doing something…more.” Her face scrunched up, “But that’s really not the right word…”

“I understand, Lieutenant.” Ben gestured for her to relax. “And your answer is that I am trying to do something…more.” He shot her a grin and she laughed. “I’ve always wanted to be in the Diplomatic Corps, but to do that I need…”

“Grade and command experience,” she finished the sentence for him.

“Exactly.” He nodded.

“I’ve been applying to the ADSO program for continued education for years.” The LT’s expression morphed to frustration. “I got top marks for my associates degree back on East Newfoundland, which was enough to get me an officer’s commission, but I’ve been trying to finish my Bachelor’s Degree and go on to my Masters.”

“Are you looking anywhere in particular?” Ben was genuinely interested now. This walk had evolved from a chore to an intriguing conversation.

“My dream list would be the New Ivies on New Washington or the Old Ivies on Earth. Oxford is pretty good,” she shot him a sly smile, “but they really don’t have the best program for me.”

“Oxford has the best program for everything,” Ben replied in defense of his alma mater. “What are you studying?”

“Nanotech with a specialization in cerebral interactions,” she deadpanned.

“Oh…” Ben honestly didn’t even know if Oxford had a program for that. They probably did, he just never met anyone in it.

“Judging by your expression you can’t offer me any recommendations,” the LT laughed.

“No…well…yes, but I’m just trying to figure out why a person interested in advanced applications in nanotech is a ground pounder. No offense intended.”

“None taken.” The LT shrugged. “I still wanted my knowledge to help advance the military’s application of nanotech, so the officer commission was a must. Since the Infantry tends to get a lot of the enhancements I figured this was the best way to start and see the existing product in action. Eventually, I want mental enhancements on the same level as physical, because if we can advance the mind to such a degree then our potential as a species is limitless.”

“Interesting,” Ben mused. “I took you as a grunt lifer.”

The LT raised an eyebrow at his statement.

“Don’t give me that. I do my research on officers I’m going to let board my ship and pretend-kill my crew.” He shot back.

“And I do my research on the leader of my opposition force,” she returned fire. “Don’t think I don’t know you have a planet named after you.”

Ben was enjoying the conversation so much he let the quip about his privilege pass. In fact, it made him chuckle. “Ah yes. Benjamin Prime. It’s a desolate heavy-grav, ore-rich world. It has limited colonization due to the toxic atmosphere. My father did a cost-benefit analysis on the whole thing and decided it was too expensive to terraform, so the few work camps on the surface are underneath domes and workers spend their shifts in hardened, radiation-shielded suits. He also says I’m as stubborn as the planet’s tough crust and he’ll give it to me on my hundredth birthday when I finally join the family business.”

By the end of the statement both Ben and the LT had stopped walking and were laughing. A few enlisted were giving them a wide berth as they hurried about their duties.

“Well…this is me,” she pointed down the corridor. The briefing rooms were one way and the flight deck another. “It’s been good getting to know you, Sir.”

“You too, Lieutenant.” Ben smiled. It had been a while since he had a good conversation with someone. He forgot how relaxing and refreshing it could be.

“Please call me Jacobi, Sir.” She smiled back.

“Off duty please call me Ben.”

“Thank you, Sir.” The LT understood the chain of command and proper protocol.

She made the turn and started to walk away. Ben turned toward the briefing he was barely going to be on time for, but something in his gut told him to stop. He didn’t trust his gut enough when it came to certain things, so he turned back.

The LT was marching toward him with a determined expression. “Sir.” She stopped in front of him nearly at the position of attention. “I was wondering if you would like to grab some coffee or a bite to eat the next time you are down on the surface.”

“Yes, Jacobi, I would really enjoy that.”

For a second, Ben could have sworn a small blush crept onto the cheeks of the Infantry officer, but she was already whipping around and heading back toward the flight deck. “You have my number, Sir,” was the last thing she said before she rounded a corner and was gone.

Ben just stood there for a minute. It had been a long time since he’d been asked out. Because of his family and father, he’d been pestered most of his life from women interested in him. Some were much older than he was at the time. After a while, getting asked out became a turn off, but not this time. Ben felt a slight flutter in his gut that he hadn’t felt since his brief fling with Sarah.

<Don’t get ahead of yourself.> Sarah had ended up using him to get ahead. He hoped Lieutenant Jacobi Wentworth wasn’t doing the same. <But that’s a risk I have to take.>

Whenever a person like him opened himself up they were always taking a risk. It just depended on if she was worth the risk, and only time would answer that question.

He stood in the hallway for a moment digesting the whole situation before he remembered there was a place he needed to be. He ended up running the rest of the way to the conference room and arriving just before the Captain.

“At ease,” the stately woman in command of the task force waved for them all to sit down. “I see we’ve got some old and new faces here.”

Being one of the new faces, Ben didn’t feel like he knew the woman well enough to know if she was making a joke. The old faces laughed, so Ben allowed himself to crack a smile.

“Will all the new faces please stand up and introduce yourself,” she asked as she took her seat at the head of the table.

Ben did as he was told and quickly found out he was the youngest skipper in the room, so he did what any good young officer was supposed to do. He sat back, kept his mouth shut, and absorbed the experience around him like a sponge.

“This is our objective,” the holo-table hummed to life and the group found itself staring at a five kilometer-long silo with a handful of spokes sticking out of it at intervals. At the head of the silo was a large, thick cone, and that cone was bristling with weaponry.

“This is one of the Blockie’s Mobile Dockyards. It is one of two that we are keeping an eye on. It allows the Blockies’ ships a forward repair post, and handles everything from battle damage repair to routine maintenance. If we can take this out we’ll cripple the enemy’s ability to conduct offensive operations for the foreseeable future; thereby, allowing the Commonwealth to dominate the Sector.”

“You think they’ll see us coming?” asked another Captain, the skipper of the missile cruiser Deluge, and the second highest ranking officer in the room.

“Almost certainly,” CAPT Jacobson replied. “We’ve got reliable, nearly real-time intelligence on the dockyard’s location, which is almost too good to be true.” A small smile tugged at the corner of her cheek. “The Admiral shares your reservations Captain Kennedy, and that is why he’s assigned Lancelot, fresh out of our own yards, to this task force. Commander Peters, the former XO of Lancelot will remain in command until his replacement arrives from Asgard.”

A man in the back of the room with the two golden stripes of a Commander nodded to the rest of the officers. Despite the man’s subordinate rank to all the battlecruiser captains in the room, Ben knew it was a good idea to keep him in charge of the little task force’s largest ship. Lancelot had taken a pounding in the battle to secure System 1552, and members of other ships’ crews, plus replacements, had been cross loaded until the ship’s compliment could be brought back up to one hundred percent. With those changes, it was important to keep the remaining bridge crew as cohesive as possible, and that meant keeping the old XO in charge. Even though the battleship was bigger, tougher, had two and a half times the throw weight in missiles, and nearly double the energy number of energy cannons. In its current state, Lancelot wouldn’t perform much better than the smaller ships. It looked good on paper to have the battleship in the order of battle, but paper and reality were two very different things. RADM Nelson hoped this mission would help build cohesion in the battleship, so when a new CAPT did arrive, they would be in better shape.

“The battle plan is simple and to the point.” CAPT Jacobson turned her attention away from Commander Peters and Lancelot. “We will travel by Launcher from New Lancashire to System 1552. Once there, we will conduct a brief assessment of the picket force. Once we’re satisfied, and the report is sent to Admiral Nelson, we’ll push on to the Hahn System. Reports have the Mobile Dockyard orbiting the frozen moon of the system’s outermost planet. Enemy forces are unknown, but we expect a pair of battlecruisers for protection. On top of that, we can only guess at what the yard is actually servicing.” The holo-table expanded to show the officers a good view of the Hahn System and its planets.

It wasn’t much to look at: six worlds, the second and third being mapped for potential terraforming and colonization, with Hahn-Six being a gas giant. The frozen moon was small, only about seventy-five percent the size of Sol System’s Pluto. It had water reserves though, which was why it was important. A small settlement was on the ground to get that water up to the ships. The Mobile Dockyard probably wasn’t even a permanent fixture in the system. It was just passing through for resupply, and it looked like the Commonwealth was about to catch it with its pants down.

<It’ll be tough.> Ben recognized Hahn-Six wasn’t that far from the hyper limit. If the task force’s timing was off, the FTL-capable station would be able to escape.

“Lieutenant Commander Gold’s Argo will be the first to transition. You will be charged with preliminary scouting and assessment of the enemy’s disposition. The rest of the task force will follow thirty minutes later, receive your assessment, and close with the enemy to complete the mission. This will also give us the time to abort if we deem necessary. After what happened to that task force from Third Fleet at Rogue Island, we can never be too careful.”

Word of the disastrous defeat had reached New Lancashire not too long ago, and Captain Jacobson wasn’t going to get pulled into the same situation.

“The dockyard’s weapons systems are mostly defensive. They’ll want to maneuver to keep the defensive cone between us and them. That cone can take a hell of a pounding, so we’ll want our destroyer contingent to maneuver and take away that advantage. The battlecruisers and Lancelot will engage the main defenders, defeat them, and capture the station. Our orders are to board, obtain any intelligence and equipment we deem vital, and then scuttle it.” Heads around the table nodded at the last order.

“Lastly, we are honored to have our allies participating in this operation. Lord Captain Armstrong, Earl of Snowden, and the Royal Navy Cruiser Benjamin Disraeli, will be fighting alongside us again. Thank you, Lord Captain.”

The man in the foreign uniform had a confident smile, and his teeth gleamed from a fresh nanite scrub. “It is our pleasure, Mum. Alliances aren’t always as pleasant as having the occasional cup of tea together and swapping war stories.”

“Yes, Lord Captain, but we’ll have that peaceful tea eventually. Now, any questions?” There were none. “We set sail for the Launcher in T-minus two hours. Prepare your ships ladies and gentlemen.”

The briefing broke up and Ben was the first out of the room. Argo was taking point in this entire offensive, and he needed to make sure his people were ready for what that entailed.

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