The Commanders’ Mate

1 Commander Karter, Battleship Varsten, Sector 438 “You shouldn’t be here, Commander. I can take care of this.” My second in command, Vice Commander Bard, walked next to me, shoulder to shoulder, as he had for over a decade. We were both battleship-born Prillon warriors, and I counted on him to speak the truth when I didn’t want to hear it. Bard spoke the truth now. Being in this wreck of a battleship was not the wisest course of action I could have taken. Yet, I had no choice. I had to see the level of destruction for myself. Commander Varsten was an excellent strategist, a seasoned warrior, and he was missing. I could not quite believe that half of his battle fleet had been destroyed in a matter of hours. Battlegroup Varsten had been decimated. “The comm would not have done it justice.” Some things needed to be witnessed. Bard stepped over a pool of scorched blood on the floor, a frown on his usually blank face. “No, it would not.” When the comms came in from the survivors, I had not believed them, could not believe that nearly an entire battlegroup had been wiped out so quickly. Yet, here we stood in the scarred remains of a ship that had once housed nearly two thousand warriors, mates and children. Outside, three of Varsten’s support vessels had been obliterated, not much more than fragments left spinning in the deep black of space. The battleship itself now drifted toward the nearest planet, weak engines not quite able to resist the relentless pull of gravity with the main power source destroyed. The metal corridors creaked and moaned beneath our boots as we pulled the foul scent of charred ship and death into our lungs through our helmets. The devastation was vast. This section had a hull breach and our helmets, with supplemental oxygen, were required, as there was no air to breathe. Only half of the large vessel was still intact, and what was left was empty. A handful of dead were all that remained. Thank f**k we’d not come across a single murdered woman or innocent child in our search. It seemed the warriors who called this ship home had managed to get their families off the vessel but how that was even possible remained a mystery. f**k, this entire situation had endless questions yet to be answered. We walked the corridors of Commander Varsten’s battleship. Not my ship. Not my people. Not my sector of space. But they were all mine now. The dead lining these corridors and floating in the cold emptiness of space just outside the ship were my people. This barely-functioning craft was now under my control. They were mine. With their commander missing, the survivors who’d lived through the direct attack on this ship, as well as those in the battlegroup who’d been sent to safety, were my responsibility. And there were a shocking number of Varsten’s people packed into the remaining cargo and support ships hiding on the other side of the nearest planet’s star. It was as if Varsten had known the attack was coming and ordered all his people and half of his fleet out of danger right before the Hive could strike. But that made no sense. Why would he evacuate non-essential personnel and knowingly move an elite class battleship into a trap? Why sacrifice a battleship and multiple support crafts? Leave Sector 438 open to Hive occupation? This area of space was neighbor to mine. Varsten and I had spoken often over comms, discussed strategy and Hive activity. He had been a patient male with two decades more battle experience than I. A wise commander. He wouldn’t have done anything without reason. Finding out what had happened here was my first priority. As was hunting and destroying the Hive attack fleet that had caused such destruction. I’d been transported here from Battleship Karter, along with an entire squadron of medical, military and support personnel, after receiving the distress call from those sent to safety. But they had not called during the Hive attack, but after it was over. Hours after. We still had no explanation for that. Seven hours, to be exact. We’d received a comm call from those who had been hiding on the other vessels. Unfortunately, there were no high-ranking officers among them. No one seemed to know what had pushed Commander Varsten to make such radical and inexplicable decisions. Nothing made sense. Nothing. “Where is the command crew?” I asked. “We don’t know.” Our boots echoed with each stride as he answered me. “Those who are left of Varsten’s battlegroup remain on the other side of the star. The star’s radioactive field is interfering with our short-range comms and they are refusing to activate their quantum comm links.” “You’re telling me he cleared his entire battlegroup of people, minus the command crew, into hiding, into… what, safety?” He nodded. “It appears exactly that.” “Do we have ships in Sector 437 available to come here and escort them safely through a manual evacuation? The Coalition will not want to abandon these vessels.” The other cargo and support vessels—the ones that had remained clear of the attack—had transport technology, but they were not equipped to handle the transport of nearly five thousand people. The main battleship housed one-thousand four hundred warriors and family, as well as acted as the landing base for smaller assault ships. The ship itself was heavily armored and loaded with blaster technology in order to defend the smaller ships around it. Each commander of a battlegroup was in charge of one battleship and ten to twelve smaller support ships. Each group, referred to as a battlegroup, was named after their commander and responsible for one sector of space. Fully staffed, a complete battlegroup, all ships, held nearly five thousand people. That was too many to transport in a short amount of time. Short-range attack ships from Battleship Karter would not be able to make it all the way to Sector 438 without assistance, and the ships still here in the dock of Battleship Varsten were all but destroyed. The best option was to transport as many people as possible to Battlegroup Karter and send the remaining cargo and support vessels from Varsten’s fleet on a direct course to intercept with the Karter and her ships as quickly as possible. But that would mean the smaller ships from Varsten’s group would be unescorted and vulnerable to attack. And even that was assuming Prime Nial and the other fleet commanders would be willing to surrender this sector of space. Not likely. Odds were Prime Nial would command me to split my fleet and resources and hang on to both Sector 437 and 438 until Commander Varsten’s fleet and personnel could be replaced. Prime Nial would commission a new battleship and assign a new commander to this area. But that would take time. Time the Hive might not give us. Bard sounded as grim as I felt. “A few. If the survivors left now, they would rendezvous with our support ships in about thirty-six hours, but Varsten’s pilots are refusing to move. They said they are under strict orders from Commander Varsten not to move yet, but they don’t know why.” “And where the hell is Commander Varsten?” That was the question I most needed an answer to. Where was my old friend, and what the f**k had he been thinking? Bard’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Dead. They found his body in the pilot’s seat of an attack shuttle. He was flying support, protecting the main ship. And he was alone.” “No co-pilot?” He was dead, and so, it seemed, were my hopes of getting some answers. “No one. No navigation. No comms. He was running solo.” Another mystery I had no time to solve. Almost five thousand people were currently stranded on ships meant to sustain half that. And their battleship was gone. Well, we stood on what was left of it. Non-functioning and uninhabitable. Even if the rest of the Varsten’s battlegroup moved out from behind the star, they would have no battleship to protect them. If they returned… if we left them here, alone and unprotected, they’d be ripe for Hive capture. That would mean five thousand new Hive drones, soldiers, breeders. No. “How many survivors on the other forward ships? Do we have a body count?” I asked. Only a handful of dead warriors littered the corridors. I hated to think the Hive had taken the rest. It didn’t seem possible, but then, I’d seen worse things. Bard looked down at the tablet he carried. “Only three survivors so far. We’ve counted twenty dead, including Commander Varsten, but we haven’t searched the entire ship.” “What the f**k was he thinking?” Vice Commander Bard didn’t respond to my question. I knew he didn’t have that answer. Instead, he said, “Two members of his command crew have been transported to ReGen pods back on the Karter.” Gods be damned, maybe they would know what was going on here. “And the other survivor?” When my second didn’t speak immediately, I stopped walking, forcing him to do the same. He was a strong Prillon warrior, and I trusted his judgment and his instincts. In this instance, his silence sent alarms through my system. As if the annihilation of almost an entire battlegroup wasn’t bad enough. Battlegroup Varsten had been protecting Sector 438 since I was a boy. The devastation around me was unthinkable. As was Varsten’s death. “He’s I.C. and he’s not talking.” I closed my eyes for a moment, let that extra level of insanity sink in. I.C. Intelligence Core. The dark side of the fleet. “f**k. Where is he? I’ll make him talk.” Bard arched a brow. “Should we get a message to Commander Phan?” He grinned, his copper skin and bronze eyes narrowing with anticipation. “I’m sure she would love to take a pound of flesh from one of her own.” A few years ago, that would have been true. Now, the Earthling was a mother. A mate. And permanently under my command. She had saved my entire battlegroup not long ago, she, a human named Kira, and the contaminated beast she’d shown up with had worked together to dismantle a network of invisible mines the Hive had placed in space. Those mines had been trapping my entire group of ships. “She’s too valuable. I won’t risk bringing her here.” The hiss of burst vent pipes, the groan of metal as it shifted after the explosion, the deep command of voices in the distance delegating tasks to clean up this clusterfuck surrounded us. Destruction was nothing new to me, but this was… personal. Close to home, at least as close to a home one could have on a f*****g battlegroup. “You’re here,” he countered. “I am nothing,” I said simply. Bard opened his mouth to argue, closed it. He knew how I felt about this. I was a warrior first and always. I fought. I killed. I protected my people, the people who became mine through Hive destruction. And if I died? So be it. Another member of my military family, or another worthy Prillon warrior, would take command. I was a cog in the wheel of the Coalition Fleet. I was a warrior. Nothing more. “Chloe is I.C., Karter,” he continued. “She can take care of herself.” I often questioned the supposed intelligence of this group as they caused us more trouble than they were worth most of the time. But then, every once in a while, someone like Commander Chloe Phan came along and saved us all. I hated their secrets, but like all warriors, I recognized that spies and black-ops were a necessary evil. No battle commander could win a war without good intelligence on the enemy. And the hard-core bastards who served in the I.C. were the best. Including Commander Phan of Earth. But she was also mine to protect, a mate to two of my best warriors and a mother to their children. There was no need for her to risk herself out here in this chaos, especially when we had zero answers. I could beat the hell out of a tight-lipped I.C. commander all by myself. “She’s a mother,” I said. Bard grinned. “I’m going to tell her you said that.” “Why don’t you tell Dara and her baby brother that you risked their mother’s life for your entertainment?” It was my turn to smile, and I made sure to show every inch of my teeth—the better to rip Bard’s throat out with. “If you make my Dara cry, I will destroy you.” We walked on. Dara was beautiful, with black hair and green eyes, just like her mother. I loved her like she was my own. She was small, but fearless. And the moments she wrapped her small hand around mine were the only times I felt like more than a killing machine. I would do nothing to hurt her small heart, including risking her mother’s life when it wasn’t absolutely necessary. Her baby brother Christopher was full of fire and curiosity, a bright, daring child. But it was Dara’s sweet innocence that kept me sane, gave me a reason to keep fighting. Bard insulted me with laughter but kept further opinions to himself as he took me to the lone survivor on the command deck of the small cargo ship. We stepped over the dead as we went, a killing rage boiling hotter with each drop of blood that clung to my boots. “Why did they leave the dead?” Bard asked. Normally, a Hive attack resulted in a complete loss of all personnel. No bodies. No survivors. The Coalition Fleet had always assumed the Hive did something unpalatable with the dead, but I didn’t ask the I.C. and I had no desire to know the answer. What they did to the living was horror enough, and I struggled with my nightmares as it was. “I don’t know. Maybe the I.C. officer will have answers for us.” Answers I didn’t want. But want was a luxury I gave up years ago. Within a few minutes, we rode the remaining functional lift to the command deck of the battleship and entered through an emergency airlock set up by my crew. Once inside, Bard and I removed our helmets and looked around. A Prillon warrior sat in the navigator’s seat, head in his hands. His hair was golden and fair, as was his skin. He was large, his body a mountain in the small chair. But when he turned to face me, my body froze in shock.