Badger by Kindal Debenham

ignoring everything we did in Reefhome just to sweep the whole upgrade program under the rug.”
    Jacob grunted in agreement. He couldn’t believe what he’d heard, but it made far too much sense. A few other things started to make sense as well, and his jaw tightened. “That must be why they haven’t gotten Wolfhound and the others back online yet. They’re not sure they want to spend the money if they’re just going to decommission the ships anyway.” The image of Wolfhound being dragged from some dock for scrap flashed before his eyes. Anger started to burn in him, and he looked up to meet Leon’s gaze. “How likely is it that they’ll do it?”
    The other commander sighed and leaned forward, his hands clasped. “Just between you and me, it looks bad, Jacob. The fighting between the Federalists and the Independents has been worse than usual this year. Both sides are fighting tooth and nail over everything, including which ships get fixed and which do not.” He shifted his shoulders uncomfortably. “The Federalists style themselves as pro-military, but they dislike anything that seems too offensive-minded. You know how they keep trying to set up peace talks even while the shooting is still going on.”
    “Idiots.” Jacob shook his head, and his disgust with the politics grew that much deeper. “I always thought the Feds were blind.”
    “Not that the Independents are much better.” Leon raised an eyebrow at Jacob and snorted. “Come now, Jacob, you really think they’re any more behind the military than the Federalists are? One of the basic principles behind their platform is that the military is far too easily abused by tyrants looking to secure power. They almost always favor downgrading military funding to try all sorts of stupid projects like arming mechantmen and the like. They seem to want to revert back to the militias the Union used to depend on back when Maxwell was in charge.” He shook his head. “As if a bunch of merchantmen with a railgun mount apiece and a few missile ports could stand up to an Oduran destroyer. In fact, I think their representatives started the whole business to begin with.”
    Jacob shrugged uncomfortably. He’d heard of some of the more radical elements of the Independents express similar sentiments, but he’d always thought the rest of the party was less foolish. Apparently he had been wrong. “So both of them are after us now?” Leon nodded, and Jacob clenched his hands. “Damn it. If only we could outfit the destroyers with the armor setup we had on Wolfhound . That would give them something to talk about. The Odurans too.”
    “It definitely would. Those interior armor plates would have been useful in the last skirmish.” Leon shrugged. “Then again, we wouldn’t have been able to jump in with them, anyway. Not since we had to replace the Capistan with heat sinks.”
    Jacob nodded. Replacing a part of the riftjump engine with coolant tanks had been an emergency refit to the already wounded destroyer, but the extra armor had made all the difference during the final fight with Dianton’s pirates. Such modifications were unthinkable in any true Navy ship; without a riftjump engine the use of a warship was severely limited. Still, Jacob would have loved to have had that same armoring scheme for every Hunter class destroyer, if only to answer the accusations of flawed designs that his ships were receiving.
    More armor sounded especially good now, since it sounded like the remaining ships of the class were soon going to see some kind of action sometime soon. He glanced at Leon. “So, what exactly do you think your father is planning? He didn’t give me any details, but it seemed like he wanted to have as much support as possible going into this conference.”
    Leon bobbed his head. “You’re right about that. He wants to have as many of the officers in the room tomorrow already committed to his cause. The plan he’s going to announce will stir up enough