James Doohan - Flight Engineer Volume 3 -The Independent Com

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The Independent Command:

Volume 3 of The Flight Engineer

by James Doohan and S. M. Stirling

Fout! Onbekende schakeloptie-instructie.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or

incidents is purely coincidental.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-671-31951-5

Cover art by David Mattingly

First printing, November 2000

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Doohan, James.

The independent command / by James Doohan & S.M. Stirling.

p. cm. — (The flight engineer ; v. 3)

ISBN 0-671-31951-5

1. Space warfare—Fiction. I. Stirling, S.M. II. Title.

PS3554.O566 I54 2000

813’.54—dc21 00-058664

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The FLIGHT ENGINEER series:

The Rising

The Privateer

The Independent Command

BAEN BOOKS by S.M. Stirling

The Draka series:

The Stone Dogs

The Domination

Drakon

Drakas! (anthology)

The General series with David Drake:

The Forge

The Hammer

The Anvil

The Steel

The Sword

The Chosen

The Reformer

With Jerry Pournelle:

Blood Feuds

Blood Vengeance

The City Who Fought (with Anne McCaffrey)

The Ship Avenged

The Rose Sea (with Holly Lisle)

Snowbrother

Saber & Shadow (with Shirley Meier)

PROLOGUE

Excarix entered the presence of his queen with terror thrumming in his thorax. Like all

queens Syaris was easily twice as large as he was, her pedipalps capable of severing his head

from his body in one neat snip, her temperament such that this was an all too likely

conclusion to any interview. Therefore the abject fear instinctive in a male of his species

when approaching the most puissant female of the clan was greatly increased.

Over time he had, perforce, learned to ignore his feelings. But a private audience, like this

one, arranged for a male of no consequence, like himself, strengthened his terror almost to the

point of pain.

Yet no sign of his turmoil was apparent. He moved with solemn dignity, holding his

pedipalps in a position of worshipful subservience.

Syaris seemed unaware of him as she idly stroked a writhing, silk wrapped bundle

suspended from the ceiling. That she was not hungry was apparent to Excarix by scent. But

not to the bound prey that mewled in terror as she tapped its cocoon to make it spin.

As he drew near to her desire grew in him and added its own rhythms to the disturbance

within.

So beautiful, he thought as the power of her pheromones began to work on him.

It was not merely the influence of her scent that made him find her ravishing. By the

standards of his species the young queen was indeed very lovely. The exquisite shape of her

head at the end of her unusually long and graceful neck, the subtle shadings of her gleaming,

reddish-brown body, the slender length of her legs, the charming placement of her eyes—

especially the anterior dorsal pair, the “gates of the soul” as the poets put it—all this made her

a bewitching sight.

At this point he would have found it very difficult to withdraw from her presence, even if

he were actively threatened.

She wants me, he realized in dawning joy, and felt distant surprise. For he knew that she

had been trained by her mother queen to have great control over the passion inducing

secretions. The release of these particular pheromones implied permission to approach the

queen and receive one of the highest honors a male could achieve.

The simple privilege of mating with a female so beautiful was worth aspiring to. But to

deposit his seed with the queen! He had plans and hopes, of course he did, but there was no

reason at this juncture for her to anticipate and agree to them. Even in his own somewhat

arrogant estimation he had not earned such an honor.

And yet . . . by his own unmistakable reaction she was deliberately arousing him.

Excarix struggled to maintain his impassive appearance even as her scent caused his throat

sac to swell with sperm. He struggled to resist the urge to stroke her slender body and to spin

silk around her delicate limbs.

Excarix stopped at a respectful distance from the queen and lowered his fore-body

submissively.

After a few more spins of her bundled prey she turned her gleaming eyes upon him.

“Yes?” she asked in a voice both musical and indifferent.

Excarix rose to a speaking position.

“It has begun, my queen,” he said, noting with dismay the lustful depth of his voice.

The queen’s chelicerae adopted a position of pleased amusement.

“Our forces are . . .” he said, his voice trailing off helplessly. He struggled to maintain his

focus, to dispense his message with appropriate dignity.

“Come closer,” Syaris purred. “I would see you better.”

He approached, embarrassed to hear his breath hissing audibly. Inhibition slipped away

like illusion. Without her permission he reached forward and stroked the delicate down on

one of her legs.

She made a pleased, sighing sound. “Closer,” she invited.

With a nimble leap Excarix found himself upon her back, stroking her abdomen with all of

his limbs. All thought of restraint was forgotten as his spinneret whipped back and forth,

spinning strands of silk to bind her to him.

“Bold,” she cooed and fell onto her side, allowing him freer access to her larger body.

Disbelief prompted him to caution and he rose over her, slowly, so as not to startle.

Carefully, carefully Excarix stroked her tender underside, moving ever closer to the dainty

hairs of her genital opening, just below the juncture of her last pair of legs. Syaris hissed her

pleasure and with this encouragement he moved forward. Using the very points of his clawed

hand he traced the outline of the inviting, forbidden zone. Boldly he reached out and sank the

sharp tip of one claw into the tender inner flesh.

The queen’s legs thrashed helplessly, then began to stroke his back as she encouraged him

with a wordless murmuring. He continued to stroke and tickle her as he gathered a droplet of

his sperm in his chelicerae. She opened to him and he leaned forward, intoxicated by her

scent.

Excarix struck the wall with great force. For a stunned moment he feared that he might

have cracked his chitin. Then she was upon him, his slender neck held in her powerful

pincers.

“Ambitious!” she sneered, her chelicerae still showing pleased amusement. “But as yet

you’ve done nothing to make you worthy of such an honor, have you, Third Minister?”

“I . . . I apologize for offending your majesty,” Excarix stammered. “I misunderstood.”

“Y-esss, you did misunderstand, Third Minister.” She straightened, lifting the smaller male

by his neck. “You were being invited to give me pleasure. And you gave me precious little of

it before you made a grab for what you wanted, didn’t you?”

“I was foolish, Majesty, I am truly sorry to have offended you.”

“You have done worse than offend me, worm.” She dropped him in contempt. “You have

disappointed me.”

She slashed him several times with her tailwhip, each strike depositing a healthy dose of

acid on his chitin. The humiliation was worse than the pain.

“Leave me,” she said, turning her back on him. “I don’t want to see you again until you are

whole.”

Excarix slunk from the room, smoke writhing around the holes in his carapace. It would be

months before he would be allowed into her glorious presence again. And he had not

delivered his message.

CHAPTER ONE

Commander Peter Ernst Raeder gazed contentedly at the scenery flashing by, sipped his

perfectly chilled champagne, stretched out his long legs and crossed them at the ankles.

The mag-lev train on which he was a passenger was an antique, a feature of travel on Come

By Chance, and the most luxurious method of travel he’d ever sampled. The extra cost of

first-class private accommodations was well worth the money. The seats were wide and

comfy, the leg room ample, the windows enormous and the company . . . Raeder glanced at

Lieutenant Commander Sarah James and caught her watching him instead of the lush

mountains they traveled through.

He smiled, she smiled; warm, fuzzy, blissful, idiot happiness infused the air. Raeder could

care less about anything just now but the rightness of things as they currently stood between

him and Sarah James of the rich russet hair, the smooth lips, the . . .

They clinked glasses and gave each other the conspiratorial grins of people in love. The

glorious forest-meadow-mountain vistas of Come By Chance came in a poor second to the

limitless horizons they saw in each other’s eyes. The scent of pine and spring flowers went by

unnoticed.

Suddenly Peter began to chuckle.

“What?” Sarah asked.

“Oh, it’s just that this,” he gestured around him with his glass, ended by tipping it in her

direction, “is a switch.”

Sarah gave him a look of smiling confusion.

“A switch from what?” Her eyes betrayed the flash of thought, Us?

“I’m not under suspicion, on suspension or awaiting trial.” He leaned in closer. “Or alone.”

Her lips twitched in acknowledgement. “In fact,” Peter continued, leaning back with a

slightly smug smile tugging at his lips, “everything is going incredibly smoo—”

There was a jerk, and the ear-torturing, inhuman screech of metal scraping against metal

with phenomenal force. Raeder and Sarah were shaken and tossed like dice in a box, flung

back and forth against each other and the sides of the compartment. The bellow of ripping

steel struck the ear like a blow; so loud that Raeder couldn’t hear his own voice when he

shouted Sarah’s name. . . .

Things are back to normal, he thought. All screwed up. And here I thought the gods had

relented.

Memory scrolled through his mind. He hoped it wasn’t the end-of-life flashback you were

supposed to get; at least it wasn’t his whole life. Just the start of his latest planetside

leave. . . .

Raeder gripped his carryall a little tighter and squared his jaw. He exited the tiny shuttle to

find himself at a landing area so small it barely existed, just a circle of cerement large enough

to hold the shuttle and a few antennae. He walked towards the security shack, which was no

more than a roofed cubicle for the soldier on duty, and handed over his ID and Dr. Pianca’s

invitation. With a wordless salute the soldier took them and began inputting a query.

It had been a brief and uneventful trip from Marjorie Base, on Come By Chance’s lone

moon, to Camp Seta, Star Command’s hospital/convalescent center on CBC itself. Raeder

would have welcomed a delay somewhere along the line, but wheels had turned with

miraculous smoothness and here he was in incredibly short order. Luckily, he was completely

superfluous on the Invincible while the dockyard crews worked her back up—a fact that

they’d made abundantly plain.

The guard in the security shack handed back Peter’s documents with another salute and

Raeder walked out into the open. The warm, moist air held a delicate scent of spices and

flowers, making it a pleasure just to breathe.

Peter gazed about himself. The camp was set in a verdant valley cupped between craggy,

snow-capped mountains, under a clear sky full of wings—most too far away to show that

they were scaly leather instead of feathers—and it had an aura of serenity about it. The

buildings were sleek and modern with large windows and colorful native woods bright

against the white stucco architecture. Each ward-complex had its own unique fountain and

brightly flowered courtyard. The foothills beyond were lush with tropical vegetation; many of

the trees were a species of giant bromeliad and the colors varied from a green so deep it was

almost black to hot pink, deep red, rusty orange and good old Earth green. Beyond the

buildings, just visible between two low, green hills, the hint of a lake sparkled, fed by a

waterfall that leapt from stone to stone down a tall, narrow cliff in a glittering white cascade.

As though resisting the charm of this place a vague anxiety stirred within him concerning

duties left unfinished on the severely damaged Invincible. Belay that, he ordered himself.

You’ve left Main Deck in very competent hands. Now what did he do about his anxiety in

regard to this visit?

Sarah James’ doctor, Regina Pianca, had called and invited him to visit her. “She says she

misses your sparring matches,” the doctor explained with a smile.

The physical or the verbal ones? Raeder had wondered.

But just the idea of visiting Camp Seta, universally known in the service as Camp Stick

’Em Together Again, gave him the collywobbles.

Spent too much time getting repaired at one of these myself, he thought.

Which was true, but unreasonable in this case. He wouldn’t be visiting Sarah in the burn

ward, covered with pink, regenerating goo. He wouldn’t see her in the reconstruction section,

struggling to master a new electronic limb. He’d be visiting her in the psych unit.

Well . . . maybe that’s what really has me scared. The doctor hadn’t gone into detail

regarding Sarah’s problems. But the fact that her physician was making the invitation seemed

ominous to Raeder.

When she’d shipped out for Camp Seta Sarah was holding herself together by sheer

willpower. The Mollies hadn’t had her in their hands long, but it had been more than long

enough to torture her.

Raeder remembered the last time he’d seen her—she’d smiled at him, her voice had been

controlled, her hand steady as she saluted the captain. But her eyes had told a different story;

wide and shocked and wild. It made him glad that Star Command policy was to send anybody

recovered from Mollie captivity for psych evaluation.

He looked forward to seeing her; he dreaded seeing her.

Dr. Pianca had told him that they’d taken Camp Seta over from a very exclusive spa. “No

sense in trying to keep it open with the wartime travel restrictions in place,” she’d said. “The

environment is wonderful for the patients, and the Commonwealth is paying the owners a

pretty good rent.”

Raeder noticed that each building was so positioned that it would be difficult, if not

impossible, to see into another’s windows.

Leave it to rich people to insure their privacy, he thought.

“Commander Raeder?”

Peter turned to find a young medic at his elbow.

“Warren Bourget,” he said and held out his hand. “Welcome to Camp Seta.”

Civilian, Raeder thought.

“Where’s Doctor Pianca?” Peter asked, shaking Bourget’s hand.

“Unfortunately she’s been delayed by an emergency, Commander. I’ll show you to your

quarters and give you an escorted tour, if you’d like, while you’re waiting.”

Raeder struggled against imagining the type of emergency a psych specialist would have.

“When do I get to see Lieutenant Commander James?”

“Ah, well, Dr. Pianca would prefer to brief you before you actually see the patient,”

Bourget said with a smile.

Raeder’s features hardened.

“Why, is there a problem?”

“No, no, Commander. I should more properly have said, debrief you, sir. Then, when

you’ve spoken to the lieutenant commander, the doctor will want to interview you again. It’s

standard procedure, nothing more, I assure you.”

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摘要：

TheIndependentCommand:Volume3ofTheFlightEngineerbyJamesDoohanandS.M.StirlingFout!Onbekendeschakeloptie-instructie.Thisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisbookarefictional,andanyresemblancetorealpeopleorincidentsispurelycoincidental.Copyright©2000byBillFawcett&AssociatesAllrights...

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