Prisoner's Hope (The Seafort Saga Book 3) Read online

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  Prisoner’s Hope

  The Seafort Saga, Book Three

  David Feintuch

  PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF DAVID FEINTUCH

  THE SEAFORT SAGA

  “A delightful book, intelligent and carefully written. Discerning SF readers will devour it and wait impatiently for its other volumes to appear. Feintuch’s book, depicting a stellar navy of exacting brutality and devotion to duty, possesses much the same flavor as C. S. Forester’s Hornblower novels. Hornblower fans will probably toast Feintuch in their wardrooms.”—The Washington Post Book World on Midshipman’s Hope

  “Science fiction fans who love exciting action and adventure shouldn’t miss [it].”—Lansing State Journal

  “An excellent entertainment.”—Analog Science Fiction and Fact

  “Wonderful reading and nonstop enjoyment.”—Raymond E. Feist, author of the Riftwar Cycle

  “An excellent job of transferring Hornblower to interstellar space. Plot, characters, and action make this a thoroughly enjoyable read.”—David Drake, author of the Hammer’s Slammers series

  THE RODRIGO OF CALEDON SERIES

  “This complex, unconventional fantasy is a strong recommendation for Feintuch’s skill as a novelist. Readers who may have let a distaste for military SF prevent them from checking out Feintuch’s work should reconsider; this is an interesting writer who isn’t afraid to take risks.”—Asimov’s Science Fiction

  “Popular SF author Feintuch (The Seafort Saga) makes his fantasy debut with this adept tale of sword and sorcery . . . Compelling and charged with plenty of action.”—Publishers Weekly

  Dedication

  To Rick, Betsy, John and Beth Grafing, friends, to Ardath Mayhar, for unstinting support, Betsy Mitchell, for her sagacity and nearly infinite patience, Don Maass for helping a miracle come to pass, and as always, Jettie. Especial thanks to the staff and musicians at Ragtime Rick’s of Toledo, Ohio, for serving and sustaining that odd character in the corner booth tapping at the keys of his computer.

  Contents

  Part 1 April, in the year of our Lord 2200

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  Part 2 May, in the year of our Lord 2200

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  Part 3 March, in the year of our Lord 2200

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  Part 4 May, in the year of our Lord 2200

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  Epilogue

  PRISONER’S HOPE

  Being the third voyage of Nicholas Seafort, U.N.N.S.,

  in the year of our Lord 2200

  Part 1

  April, in the year of our Lord 2200

  1

  ADMIRAL TREMAINE DREW HIMSELF up, jowls pursed in indignation. “Who would you believe—this young scoundrel or me?” Ignored for the moment, I held the at-ease position.

  “That’s not the issue.” Fleet Admiral De Marnay gestured at the holovid chip I’d brought on U.N.S. Hibernia across sixty-nine light-years of void. “Captain Seafort is but a messenger. Your recall was ordered by Admiralty at home.”

  Through the Admiral’s unshuttered window, the late afternoon sun of Hope Nation illuminated his Centraltown office with dazzling brightness. A muted roar signaled yet another shuttle lifting off to Orbit Station from the spaceport behind Admiralty House.

  I sighed; I’d docked Hibernia at the Station just hours before, and my trip groundside was proving no respite from the tensions of the bridge. I’d had no idea Geoffrey Tremaine would be in the office when Admiral De Marnay received my report.

  “Messenger, my arse.” Tremaine swung toward me, glowering. “You arranged it!”

  I decided it was a question, so I could respond without fear of contradicting my superior. “No, sir, Admiral Brentley made the decision and I wasn’t consulted.”

  “A patent lie.” Tremaine dismissed me with an airy wave and turned back to the Admiral Commanding. “Georges, be reasonable—”

  “It is no lie!” The savagery of my snarl startled even me. The two Admirals glared, astounded at such an interruption from a mere Captain, the youngest in the U.N. Navy. I rushed on, abandoning the shreds of my discipline. “Mr. Tremaine, Lord God knows that if anyone should be removed from command, it is you. But I say again, I had no part in it. Admiral De Marnay, as my verity has been questioned, I demand truth testing!” Drugs and polygraph would quickly confirm my statement or expose my lie.

  Georges De Marnay got slowly to his feet. “You demand, Captain?” His tone was glacial.

  “Sir, I have never lied to a superior officer!” It was the one remnant of honor I’d retained in my slide to damnation. “Three times he’s accused—”

  “Seafort, get hold of yourself. Be silent!”

  “Aye aye, sir.” Midshipman or Captain, there was no other possible reply to a direct order.

  Admiral Tremaine’s choleric face shook with wrath. “You see the insolence I had to put up with, when he had Portia? He—”

  “Before you stole her from him.” De Marnay’s acid reply sliced through Tremaine’s diatribe.

  “Stole her? What are you saying?” Before De Marnay could answer, Tremaine rushed on. “The facts are clear from Portia’s Log, which you reviewed when I docked. I had to threaten to hang him before he’d transfer to Challenger!”

  Better had he done so. Many would live who now were lost.

  De Marnay said nothing.

  Tremaine’s voice took on a wheedling tone. “Recall or no, you’re the Admiral in theater. Those bloody aliens of Seafort’s may strike at any time. You need a commander groundside as well as aloft, and Admiralty didn’t appoint my replacement. As Admiral Commanding, you could reconfirm me until my tour’s up. Or try me yourself, for that matter.”

  “Yes, I could well do that.” De Marnay swung his chair, fingers tapping at the edge of his desk.

  I closed my eyes, my jaw throbbing with the effort to hold it shut. My commander had ordered me to be silent, and silent I would be. In any event, nothing I said could prevent Admiral De Marnay from reinstating Tremaine, the man who’d taken my Portia. His own U.N.S. Challenger had been disabled by the huge goldfish-shaped aliens that I’d discovered three years before on my first interstellar voyage. Tremaine transferred his flag, leaving me, as well as the aged and infirm passengers and the young transpops he loathed, drifting on Challenger, deep in interstellar space, unable to Fuse.

  After he fled, the fish had come again. We’d been testing the fusion drive, and they seemed to sense the N-waves on which our ships traveled the void between stars. Over and again, they’d Defused alongside Challenger to hurl their acid tentacles at our hull.

  I took a sharp breath, realized I was clammy under my stiff jacket.

  “After all, Admiralty is far from the scene, eh, Georges? They don’t know—”

  Admiral De Marnay said, “I could reinstate you, Mr. Tremaine. But I won’t.”

  Tremaine said slowly, “You’d believe that”—he spat out the words—“that trannie Captain over me?”
r />   “I believe the evidence in the Log, and in your conduct, sir.” De Marnay’s tone was icy. “Admiral Tremaine, you are relieved. Mr. Seafort, you may go.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” I saluted and quickly made my escape.

  I trudged across the back yard of Admiralty House to the spaceport perimeter and the terminal building seventy yards beyond. Other than the hum of a distant engine, all was silent.

  At the far end of the tarmac, freight was piled high. My Hibernia’s cargo would soon be added to the supplies and equipment stockpiled here for the U.N. forces defending our colony from the aliens.

  When last I’d seen Hope Nation I’d been so young, and innocent of the shattered oath that damned me.

  Though I was fully recuperated from my physical ordeal on Challenger, my appalling misdeeds left me subject to fits of black despair. On our long journey to Hope Nation my companion and lover, Annie Wells, had done her best to allay them in the solitude of our cabin.

  I wondered if Annie knew how I relied on her ministrations. Now even she would soon be gone. I’d come to know Annie on Challenger; she’d been among the transients from the slums of Lower New York bound for faraway Detour as part of a foolish social welfare program. After Challenger’s ill-fated voyage, we’d sailed again on Hibernia.

  We’d made the sixteen-month cruise in one interminable Fuse, with a tiny corrective jump at the end. I’d docked at massive Orbit Station, taken the shuttle groundside, reported to the now bustling Admiralty House, Admiral Tremaine’s recall orders among the packet of chips in my case.

  Now I looked around, wondered what to do with my day before going back aloft to Annie.

  I wished I could talk over the morning’s encounter with a friend like Midshipman Derek Carr, one of the officers I’d forced to stay behind when I was transferred to Challenger. But Derek was stationed on U.N.S. Catalonia en route to Detour, and not expected home for months. So I was alone, on my mandatory long-leave, free of responsibilities. I had time to look up Vax Holser and the others.

  As I crossed the terminal a whoop split the air; I turned to see Lieutenant Alexi Tamarov bounding after me. “You’re here! Thank Lord God, you made it!” He snapped a crisp salute, grinning with pleasure. Then he saw my face and blanched. “My God, what happened, sir?”

  My scar had that effect.

  I offered him my hand, relieved beyond words to see him safe and well. “A laser, on board Challenger. It’s healed.”

  “You look—” He remembered his manners and bit it off. Friend or no friend, I was Captain.

  “Awful. Yes, I know.” I deserved a ruined face. Lord God in his time would do worse. An oath is sacred.

  “Well, er, different, sir.” He quickly changed the subject. While he chattered I reflected on all that had passed since our days as midshipmen in Hibernia’s wardroom, when Alexi was a young fifteen and I, at seventeen, struggled toward manhood.

  After Hibernia’s officers had been killed and I was catapulted to Captain, I’d left Alexi in the wardroom. We’d shipped together afterward on Portia, but since then we’d gone our separate ways for two long years. He was—what? twenty-one?—and I was tired and numbed at twenty-three.

  “God, I’m glad I ran into you, sir. I’m off duty today, but tomorrow it’s back to Admiralty House.” He shrugged and smiled wryly. “They have me working in Tactics.” Like any lieutenant, Alexi wanted ship time, which would give him a leg up toward promotion. His grin faded; his eyes drifted from mine. “About what I did on Portia, sir, I’m so—I’m ashamed.”

  “Did?” I tried to remember what he might be ashamed of.

  “I wanted to volunteer for transfer, sir. I meant to ask the Admiral, but I couldn’t. I sat in my cabin for hours before I gave up pretending. Now I know how cowardly I am.”

  “Stop that!” My anger thrust him back a step. “I told you then I wouldn’t accept you on Challenger under any circumstances. You’re no coward.”

  “I should have volunteered.” He turned away. “Whether you took me or not. You had the courage to go.”

  “You fool!” I spoke so savagely he winced with the hurt. “If Amanda and Nate hadn’t died, perhaps I’d have wanted to live. I wasn’t brave, I was running away!” His look of dismay only goaded me further. “If I’d died I wouldn’t have become what I am now.”

  Alexi’s eyes met mine, troubled. What he saw there made him shrug and try a tentative smile. “Whatever our motives, sir, we’ve done what was in us. I won’t let you down again.”

  “I absolve you, for what it’s worth.” To distract him I said, “They’ve relieved Tremaine.”

  “Thank Lord God, sir. But what about your challenge?”

  “You heard about that?” Livid with rage when Geoffrey Tremaine had off-loaded Portia’s transient children before fleeing to safety, I’d sworn an oath to call challenge upon him, to fight a duel that would destroy one of us. Now that he was relieved it was legal for me to do so. But what did that oath matter? I’d already forsworn myself.

  “Yes, we knew,” Alexi said. “The Admiral wasn’t alone on the bridge when you radioed. And Danny recorded. He’d have told us if we hadn’t already heard.” Portia’s puter liked to gossip, no doubt to ease his loneliness. What a joy it would be to visit with Danny again, as on so many deadened days on the bridge after my wife’s death. We’d become friends, if such a thing was possible between man and machine. But I didn’t even know where in the galaxy my old ship had been sent.

  “I suppose I have to call the challenge, Alexi.” At the time I’d yearned to cast my life against Tremaine’s. Yet, Philip Tyre and the rest were dead, and nothing would bring them back. With an effort I thrust recriminations aside. “What happened to Vax?”

  Alexi bit his lip. “He’s here, sir. They have him running back and forth between Admiralty House and the Station.”

  Lieutenant Holser was alive and well. My old rival, once my enemy, now my friend. Twice he’d saved my life. “It will be good to see him.”

  After a moment Alexi spoke of other things. Restless, I invited him to wander Centraltown with me. He accepted with delight, and proudly led me to the electricar he’d managed to acquire. They were in short supply thanks to the population increase. I stared out the window as he drove downtown along Spaceport Road.

  Centraltown had grown since my last visit, but the town had no sights I hadn’t seen before, and what I saw reminded me of Amanda. For Alexi’s sake I fought my depression, and eventually settled with him in a downtown restaurant. He respected my lapses into glum silence, and the evening provided more companionship than I’d had in many months. When finally we left, Minor was full overhead, and Major, Hope Nation’s second moon, was just over the horizon. I looked up, imagining I could see Orbit Station passing above.

  “Have you a place to stay, sir?”

  I shook my head. “I’ll bunk on the ship for a few days, I suppose.”

  “I meant tonight. Would you—” He hesitated. “Sir, would you, ah, care to stay with me this evening?” I understood his unease; the gulf between a lieutenant and a Captain was normally unbridgeable.

  “Annie is waiting on Hibernia.” Still, it was late, and I had no idea whether another shuttle would lift tonight; if not, I’d find myself sleeping at the terminal or in Naval barracks. “Well...for the night. I’d like that.” I was rewarded with a shy grin of pleasure.

  Alexi’s flat was in one of the dozen or so prefabs that had sprung up along Spaceport Road since my last visit. Sparse, tiny, and clean, it reminded me of the middies’ wardroom I’d once occupied on Hibernia, though it was far larger.

  He said, “The bedroom’s in there, sir. I’ll take the couch.”

  How could I have not realized he’d have but one bedroom? “I prefer the couch.” My tone was gruff.

  “You can’t!” He was scandalized.

  “I won’t take your bed, Alexi.” Rank or no rank, I wouldn’t put him out of his home.

  “Please, sir.” He patted the couch. “I
t’s comfortable; I’ll be fine. Anyway”—he rushed on before I could object—“I won’t sleep at all if you’re bunked here while I’ve got the only bed. Please.”

  Grumbling, I let him persuade me, wondering if his respect was for my rank or for myself. Then I marveled at my foolishness. I was Captain, and he was but lieutenant; what else could he do?

  In the morning Alexi dropped me off at the spaceport and I handed the agent a voucher for the early shuttle. Two hours later I was back on Hibernia. I debated whether to check the bridge.

  By naval regs, all crew members were entitled to thirty days long-leave after a ten-month cruise or longer, and during that leave only a nominal, rotating watch was kept, in which no one was made to spend more than four days aboard.

  Nonetheless, my footsteps carried me along the Level 1 circumference corridor, past my cabin to the bridge beyond. The hatch was open; normally, under weigh, it would have been sealed. Lieutenant Connor, in the watch officer’s chair, was leaning back, boots on the console. Her eyes widened in alarm as I strode in. She scrambled to her feet.

  “As you were, Ms. Connor.” Had I found her lollygagging on watch while under weigh I’d have been outraged. Moored, it didn’t matter.

  I glanced at the darkened simulscreens on the curved front bulkhead. Normally, they provided a breathtaking view from the nose of the ship. And under our puter Darla’s control, they could simulate any conditions known. My black leather armchair was bolted behind the left console, at the center of the compartment. Lieutenant Connor, of course, was in her own seat. No one dared sit in the Captain’s place.

  “All quiet, Ms. Connor?”

  “Yes, sir. The remaining passengers went down on last night’s shuttle, except for Miss Wells.”

  There was nothing I need do. “I’ll be in my cabin.”

  “Yes, sir. Miss Wells, ah, seems to miss the other passengers, sir.” She looked away quickly, as if she’d gone too far in speaking of my personal affairs. She had, but I let it pass.