The Crypt: Shakedown: (A Military Sci-Fi Novel), page 1
SHAKEDOWN
©2023 SCOTT SIGLER
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CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Thank you for reading Shakedown
Glossary
Appendix A: Keeling crew list
Appendix B: Fleet Rank Chart & Insignia
Appendix C: Comm circuit labeling
Appendix D: Bibliography
Appendix E: Bitchin’ Movies Watched While Writing This Book
Acknowledgments
In memory of the 60,000-plus submariners lost in World War II.
They went where no man had gone before, never to return.
Susannah Rossi character developed with Phil Rossi.
Anne Lafferty character developed with Mur Lafferty.
Mac “Stone Balls” Cooley character developed with Paul Cooley.
Francis “Book” Sands character developed with Basil Sands.
1
Everything seemed louder. Everything seemed brighter. Everything seemed… more.
Boot heels echoed through the narrow, empty passageways, reverberating like rhythmic dark applause for Trav’s pending demise. The two guards escorting him wore battleship-gray LASH armor. Full armor, inside a carrier stationed well-clear of any combat zone. Opaque helmet visors hid their faces, giving them anonymity, even though magnetic patches on their left breasts revealed their names and ranks: massey, with the three chevrons of a sergeant, and ortega, with the two bars of a Spec-2.
At least they weren’t wearing TASH rigs. LASH rigs—Light Assault Suit, Hermetic were for duties inside a ship. The heavier Tactical version was for exterior duties. Like venting a prisoner into the void, for example.
Trav’s chains jangled in time with his steps. They weighed little if he didn’t count their overpowering burden of dishonor. Just as there was no need for combat armor, there was no need for the restraints. Where was he going to go? Where could he run?
It wasn’t about him being a flight risk.
It wasn’t about him being a danger.
It was about shaming him.
Because that’s what Fleet did to cowards.
The carrier’s passageways were empty. The guards escorted him past closed hatches. Maybe most of the Chimborazo’s crew of 5,000-plus was on liberty. Trav didn’t know. He’d never been on a carrier before. At 1,000 meters long, 167 meters high amidships, and with a beam of 190 meters, there was a lot of space in the PUV Chimborazo.
Trav had always dreamed of serving aboard a carrier, always dreamed of captaining one, of commanding the 200-plus voidcraft housed within its hull. He’d dedicated his life to learning all he could and moving up the promotional ladder to make those dreams a reality—but those dreams were dead.
Trav might soon be dead himself. It all depended on the court’s verdict.
“Here we are, Major Ellis,” Massey said. “You have fifteen minutes.”
Trav stood before the passageway’s only open hatch. Inside, a coffin of a comm-booth where the ’Razo’s crew could make calls to other ships, bases, or planetside when a planet was nearby. In this case, a call to married housing on Crindalon Base, to which the Chimborazo had docked.
Trav looked at his escorts—lifted his hands to show the restraints.
“Mind taking these off? I haven’t seen my wife in six months. This might be the last…”
The thought of losing Molly was a hand on his throat, choking off the rest of his sentence—the last time she sees me alive.
Ortega’s helmeted head turned to look at Massey. “Sarge, can we do that?”
Massey’s blank visor remained centered on Trav.
“My brother was on the Boudicca,” Massey said. “You can wear those chains with pride, Yellowbelly.”
Ortega didn’t seem to understand. Trav did. The Boudicca was gone. Massey’s brother was gone. Was that Trav’s fault? Maybe, maybe not. Too many variables in that battle to know either way.
At least that’s what Trav had been telling himself.
Yellowbelly Ellis. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard that insult since the battle. He suspected it wouldn’t be the last.
“Fourteen minutes and counting,” Massey said. “I suggest you get at it. Sir.”
Trav lowered his chained hands and stepped through the hatch. He sat on a hard seat bolted into the deck, a seat that had supported the behinds of countless thousands of crewmembers making calls to parents, siblings, friends, lovers.
In one way, at least, Trav was lucky—the Chimborazo happened to be stationed close enough for him to call his family.
He straightened and faced the blank screen. This unit was newer than the one he’d used on the Schild. Only the best for carriers—the Union’s castles in space. The screen had enough reflection for a quick look to make sure his dress-whites uniform was precise, that everything was perfect. While on trial, his appearance was the only thing he could control. Even in chains, he’d managed to keep himself inspection-sharp.
That’s what career-track officers did; they looked the part. They s
et an example for everyone.
Career-track officer. Not anymore.
Trav spoke the routing number to his home. He waited as the system connected, angry at every passing second, knowing those were seconds wasted.
The screen flashed to life.
“Hi, Molly,” he said.
His pregnant wife stared back at him, eyes puffy and bloodshot. She bounced little Aven on one knee, an automatic reaction a parent did without thought. Aven had one spit-gleaming finger in her mouth. She had her mother’s shiny blonde hair, not her father’s black curls. She had Trav’s amber eyes, though. The same shade that somehow made people think Trav was looking straight into their souls.
“Just tell me,” Molly said. “I can’t take this waiting.”
She spoke with the same guarded voice she used during intense arguments. She knew raising her voice sometimes made Trav do the same. Raised voices led to loss of control, to saying awful things to the person she loved more than any other, led to the person she loved more than any other saying awful things to her.
“The tribunal recessed to deliberate,” Trav said. “Nance made a great case. I’m sure I’ll be exonerated.”
In truth he wasn’t sure, but that wasn’t what Molly needed to hear. If he was found not guilty, he’d get his scheduled leave and be able to reunite with his wife. For ten days, at least.
A single tear ran down Molly’s cheek. She snarled, slightly, as she sometimes did during an argument or during sex. In that moment, Trav wanted her desperately. What he wouldn’t give for just one more chance to lay with his wife before everything was taken away.
“Trav, honey… did you cut a deal?”
He couldn’t answer her. He stared at his daughter. They’d already named her sister-to-be—Kinley. A lovely name. Trav knew she would be a beautiful baby, just as beautiful as Aven.
“We talked about this,” Molly said. “When you vid me into your talk with defense counsel. Remember?”
It had been a lecture, not a talk. Trav’s counsel, Lieutenant JG Kratos Nance, wanted to throw Antoine Williams—captain of the Schild—under the bus. Nance wanted to make a deal with the prosecutor that might let his client get off without so much as a slap on the wrist. Trav had asked Nance not to mention that possibility to Molly. Nance had ignored the request—he and Molly tag-teamed Trav, telling him in a dozen different ways the benefits of letting Williams take the fall alone.
Trav had ignored their pleas. Now he wished he hadn’t, but he’d made his choice.
“You know I wouldn’t do that,” Trav said. “I won’t betray my captain.”
“Betray your captain? Fuck your captain. Fuck your Fleet. The punishment for cowardice in combat is death, Trav. Death.”
That possible punishment had weighed heavily on Trav’s shoulders since the Schild returned, since he and Williams had been put into custody. Execution was the worst-case scenario. Williams might face that result, but not Trav. Williams had given the order to leave the battlefield. When Williams was injured, Trav became acting CO—he’d implemented Williams’s original order. If the tribunal found Trav guilty, it was far more likely he’d be sentenced to a stint in the brig or, possibly, a dishonorable discharge.
If Fleet kicked him out, would that be so bad? His lifelong dream to command was already shattered. He could find something else, something that would let him actually spend time with his family.
A life without Fleet, though? Almost unthinkable.
Fleet was everything.
Fleet had been his way out of the small town where he’d been raised by his crazy grandmother. She’d been a hoarder, filling every inch of their one-bedroom public housing apartment with knickknacks and smelly old clothes, with moldering books, with boxes of empty food containers. She had a hundred different collections of random things, from rocks to old coins to bugs to hundreds of empty jars of the sickeningly sweet skin lotion she wore—the kind that made her stink like funeral flowers.
Acceptance to Fleet Academy got him out of there, gave him a life that was more than thrift-store clothes, crushing poverty, and an old woman who called him Satan because he wouldn’t go to church with her. In the Academy, he’d excelled. The structure, the competition, the discipline. There, he wasn’t the smelly kid with no money. He was on a level playing field where his work ethic and his toughness were all that mattered.
After graduation, he’d made the most of every opportunity. In the Second Galactic War, he’d shone as head of operations on the PUV Ikhaka. Then, at Williams’s direct request, he’d been transferred to the PUV Schild. Williams had only one tour left before an inevitable promotion to Commodore. Trav was his hand-picked successor to take over the Schild.
Now, though, Schild was in the scrapyard. The CIC—combat information center—looked like Swiss cheese, if Swiss cheese were made of metal, plastic, blood, and bone. They were probably still scraping body parts out of the engineering section. Of the crew of 24 officers and 176 enlisted men, 90 had perished in battle.
Another tear trailed down Molly’s cheek. A drip of snot peeked from her left nostril. She didn’t seem to notice.
Massey leaned through the hatch. “Time’s up, Major Ellis.”
“But you told me I had fifteen minutes.”
“Your verdict is in,” Massey said. “Move it.”
Trav looked at his wife, his partner, the love of his life, the mother of his children.
“I have to go,” he said.
Her tears flowed. “Don’t go.” She squeezed Aven, too hard. The girl’s face wrinkled in surprise and discomfort. “Honey, please don’t go. Please.”
“I have to.”
“But you can still—”
Massey reached in, grabbed Trav’s chains, and yanked him out of the room. Trav caught his foot on the seat. He stumbled and fell to the deck, landing on his knee.
“Pick his ass up,” Massey said.
Hands grabbed under Trav’s armpits and yanked him to his feet. Those same hands stayed firm on his arms to both shove and pull him down the passageway.
“I can fucking walk, Sergeant,” he said.
Massey let go. “Then walk.”
From the booth, Trav heard his wife screaming at him to come back.
He turned, faced down the passageway, and marched toward his end.
It was all Trav could do to not look at his knee, at the smudge marring his otherwise-pristine dress whites. His jacket was rumpled, in a way he couldn’t fix because of the goddamn restraints. A sub-par uniform was low on the list of things to worry about, but the knowledge of it poked at him, tried to draw his attention away from the situation at hand.
Vice Admiral Pamelia Bartos smashed her gavel down on a wooden block.
“The defendants will rise,” she said.
Trav and Colonel Williams rose from their chairs. They stood ramrod straight: chests out, heads back, eyes forward. Nance also stood, as did William’s counsel, Lieutenant Hans Meissner.
