Libre, A Silver Ships Novel (The Silver Ships Book 2)
Page 12
Alex cut the comm and turned to Andrea. “Captain, we’ll let Julien collect the data and find us a good suspect. I’m headed for midday meal.”
The meal room was full, but the crew, especially the pilots, didn’t appear to be hungry. Nerves were tight. Capturing the first alien ship had cost them, and that had been with four Daggers. Now there were only two. More than one crew member eyed the Admiral as he dug into his plate with his usual gusto. As they watched Alex, they slowly regained their confidence, and most were able to finish their food.
* * *
On the bridge, Julien projected the Bellamonde system and ships—the Rêveur, the Stern Licht, the giant spherical mother ship sitting outward of Bellamonde, and the silver ships that orbited the stricken planet, the mother ship, and patrolled the system.
The Stern Licht’s passive telemetry data of the silver ships ranged from hours to more than a day old. After their active comms with the Stern Licht, Alex had ordered Julien to return the Rêveur to passive mode, shut down the engines, and cold-coast upward toward the ecliptic, attempting to observe the enemy fighters before being spotted. The maneuver became more dangerous the deeper the Rêveur entered the system’s gravity well, where a quick exit to FTL would be impossible.
To Alex, this unorthodox approach was a calculated risk, doing something unexpected based on the historic data collected by the Confederation Council’s monitor ships. The thought occurred to him that if Julien was correct about the enemy’s gravity drives, then the silver ships might not be able to travel too far above or below the ecliptic. Of course, Alex berated himself, since you don’t know how gravity drives work, how would you know what they could and couldn’t do?
Andrea, Tatia, and Sheila joined Alex at the holo-vid. Andrea felt it was time to broach a delicate subject.
Alex looked up from the holo-vid and eyed his Senior Captain.
Andrea had considered the possibility that Alex might think her request out of line. As Alex quietly stared at her, Andrea decided she had been right on that point. She shook her head in negation. Her intent had been to protect Sheila, but all she had done was demonstrate a lack of confidence in her Squadron Leader. Andrea squared her shoulders.
“Captain, we aren’t going to have any time to lose once we spot a target,” Alex said. “So have your pilots board your fighters. This is going to be a fast and dirty attack.”
Andrea nodded at Sheila, who saluted and sent a comm to Lieutenant Tanaka to join her in the port bay.
Alex had been informed that Sheila’s choice for wing was Lieutenant Tanaka, who had been acting as a training instructor at Barren-II, and Alex had asked after Robert again.
“Admiral, Robert’s had enough,” Sheila had responded. “I can see it in his eyes. On the other hand, he’s a tremendous trainer. The Libran volunteers love him. By that, I don’t mean he’s easy-going, friendly, that sort of thing. Robert pushes them hard, but they see that he cares. They see he wants them to be successful, to survive. And for that, they work even harder. We have to order the volunteers home at the end of the day. Lieutenant Tanaka, on the other hand, is a terrible trainer,” and Sheila had grinned at some memory she kept to herself. “I thought because he was a great flyer that he would be a great trainer. But his flying ability is instinctual. It’s a lot like Jase’s style, and that’s what I need out there—not the attitude, but the skill.”
“You’re Squadron Leader, Sheila,” Alex had replied. “It’s your choice and your rear end out there he’s protecting.”
“Don’t I know it, and I like my rear end just as it is. Thank you very much,” she had said, her laugh dying off at the thought of their next encounter with a silver ship.
* * *
Chief Peterson’s port bay flight crew prepped the two remaining Daggers. The crew signaled Stan that the fighters were ready as Sheila and Hatsuto crossed the bay’s deck.
“Chief Peterson, we ready to go?” Sheila asked.
“They’re up and ready, Squadron Leader,” Stan replied. “Julien’s confirmed the fighter controllers are online.”
“We’ve got orders to fly at a moment’s notice,” Sheila announced. “Ready the bay and the crew.” While the Chief urged the crew to prepare for liftoff, Sheila turned to her wingman. “The most important piece of advice I can give you, Lieutenant—don’t think. You don’t have time. Execute the game plan; keep moving at all times; and let your controller take the lead. The silver ships are faster than your reactions could ever be. Good hunting, Lieutenant.”
As Sheila climbed the ladder to her Dagger’s canopy, she paused to regard the image of the silver ship painted beneath her canopy. Sheila had shared with the crew the story of the Earth Captain’s jet and how his wins against the enemy had been painted on his craft’s fuselage. The next day as she entered the bay to check on her fighter’s repairs, Sheila found the crew proudly posed beside her Dagger. Her name and an image of a silver ship were emblazoned under the canopy just like that of the Earth Captain. Well, not quite like the Captain’s. His name and the jet fighter silhouettes had been in flat b
lack. Her name shimmered in Méridien blue, light dancing across it. And the silver ship blazed across a field of stars, its beam illustrated by a flare of white light from its nose. It was a work of art that had brought tears to her eyes.
Sheila patted the silver ship before climbing into her canopy. “I’m going to go get a friend of yours to keep you company,” she whispered.
Hatsuto wasn’t pleased with Sheila’s directive to let his controller lead, but he was reminded of one thing—four pilots had gone out to capture the first ship and only two had returned flying their Daggers, and the rescued pilot now preferred to train rather than fight. Since his Leader was one of the successful pilots, Hatsuto decided to follow Sheila’s orders to the best of his ability.
As Sheila and Hatsuto settled into their cockpits, the flight crew readied the bay, depressurizing it and opening the giant bay doors. The pilots donned their helmets, established connections with their controllers, and settled in to wait.
* * *
Julien signaled that the Rêveur had achieved Alex’s requested position, inside the ecliptic only 3.2M km from Bellamonde. Alex nodded to Andrea.
“Julien, active telemetry, please,” Andrea requested.
Tatia warned the crew that they had gone active. In response, the pilots signaled their controllers into active telemetry mode as well.
Julien refreshed the holo-vid with his FTL telemetry scan. Several silver ships were orbiting Bellamonde in line with the ecliptic. “Intercept, Captain,” Julien said, much more excited than the crew had ever heard him. “A silver ship en route to Bellamonde is diverting from its vector toward our position. Intercept is in 0.28 hours.” He added the silver ship to the holo-vid, which in its present configuration seemed to appear next to the Rêveur.
“Admiral, your thoughts,” Andrea requested. The chronometer was ticking down, and this scenario was not any of the ones that they had planned.
“Captain,” Alex replied, “that silver ship is coming for us and we can’t outrun it. And we can’t bargain with it. So let’s play ignorant.” Alex stared at the holo-vid for a protracted moment, finally sending Andrea an outline of his plan.
Immediately Andrea began coordinating with Julien and Tatia, all the while wondering about Alex. Julien’s announcement of the nearby enemy ship had frozen her, whereas Alex had examined the vectors and solved it like some puzzle, accepting his solution without a second thought. I have got to find a way to understand how he does this, Andrea thought.
The Dagger controllers updated their pilots on the approaching silver ship and displayed the attack plan. The flight crew released the fighters’ skids, and each controller guided its craft out of the bay. As the Daggers cleared the Rêveur’s space, the pilots went to full power on a vector directly opposite that of the oncoming enemy fighter.
The bridge crew waited anxiously for the Admiral’s plan to unfold. Andrea and Tatia were in the midst of sharing a private comm. So they were caught off guard when Alex asked them if they had an opportunity to visit Cordelia’s display on the Freedom yet. Both of them acknowledged that they had heard of it but hadn’t taken the time to view it.
“When we get back,” Alex said to them casually, as if their return was a done thing, “you should really take the time. People were so enchanted with the displays that they were staying for hours. It necessitated the viewing time be limited. We added a controller in the display room so Cordelia could hand off some of the program’s basic functions. Otherwise she wouldn’t have had enough processing power to manage the continuous displays and accomplish her ship duties.”
While Alex talked, Sheila and Tatia focused on the holo-vid updates. Julien was timing the movements of the three fighters. On his cue, the Daggers flipped end over end, retracing their original vector. The silver ship stayed on course, closing in on the Rêveur.
“I wonder if it’s arrogance … or simply following tried-and-true methods that have worked for who knows how long?” Alex thought out loud as he examined the holo-vid. No other silver ships had detached themselves from the mother ship or Bellamonde’s orbit. Only the one ship had changed course to attack them. “We know they’re organic. That’s been proven to us,” Alex said, continuing to muse aloud. “And they operate advanced ships … or do they?” he asked, his voice trailing off as a thought occurred to him.
“Perhaps, we don’t need to know, Admiral,” Andrea responded. “It’s important only that we know they have these attributes.”
“I wonder about that, Captain,” Tatia argued. “If it’s a short fight, one quick, giant battle that we win or lose, you might be right. But what if this fight turns into a decades-long war? The more you know about an adversary, the more likely you are to predict what they might do. I’ve found that in unarmed combat against a larger and stronger adversary, the longer a fight lasted, the more likely I was to win.”
“Wouldn’t the odds favor you losing, the longer the fight went on?” Andrea asked.
“Yes, Captain, if I fought as my opponent did, and that’s the key. Fight using your assets; observe your opponent’s methods; and use their weaknesses against them. If you can survive the initial rounds, you just might win the war.”
“Well, if we survive the next few moments …” Andrea began, and then heard her Admiral’s warning on a private comm.
“What I meant to say,” Andrea corrected herself, “was, after we defeat this silver ship, Commander, I would like some hand-to-hand combat lessons from you.”
Tatia threw her Captain an evil grin. “It would be my pleasure, Captain.”
“I bet it would be, Commander,” Andrea replied, twisting her lips in a sour expression.
In moments, the enemy fighter would be within beam range of the Rêveur. On the bridge’s central view screen, the Daggers, which had been mere pinpoints, suddenly shot past the Rêveur. They emerged over the Rêveur’s relative bulk like carnivores ambushing prey.
Julien had armed two warhead missiles on each fighter as they had approached the Rêveur on their reverse course. The instant the fighters cleared the Rêveur, four missiles launched and streaked across the intervening distance to the enemy ship. The closing speeds of the Daggers and the silver ship amplified the relative velocity of the missiles.
The silver ship lost precious ticks of time as it switched priority from the large ship to the two smaller ones honing in on it. Then more time was lost as it switched priority again to the four even smaller objects racing ahead of the two closing vessels. By the time its beam weapon lanced out to destroy one of them, the other three had exploded into twenty smaller units each. After recharge, its beam cleared away twenty of the tiny heat-generating objects. The silver ship might have done better had the two attacking ships been closer together. Instead one attacker had appeared over the bow of the large ship and the other from under its stern. The forty remaining objects struck its hull, and it disappeared from space.
As the silver ship winked off her fighter’s telemetry, Sheila commed the Rêveur.
Sheila and Hatsuto signaled their controllers and their fighters dove back down below the ecliptic. Julien reversed the Rêveur’s course to do the same. The rendezvous with the Daggers would initiate in 0.52 hours and attaining a safe jump point would take another 6.53 hours, calculations Julien sent the Admiral and the Captain.
As the vids of the defeat of their second silver ship circulated on implants and vid screens, the crew began cheering. Chief Peterson interrupted the celebration of his flight crew, ordering them to ready the bay for recapture of the fighters and their pilots.
Suddenly Julien announced to the bridge, “Contact, Captain. Four silver ships are exiting Bellamonde orbit and are headed for interception. A fifth contact, outward of system, has turned to intercept us as wel
l.” Julien immediately updated the holo-vid.
“Julien, estimate the intercept time relative to our FTL escape point,” Andrea ordered.
“Captain,” Julien replied, “the ships are still accelerating as are we. Estimates will not be accurate until their top speed is reached. However, Confederation monitor records show the ships achieving a velocity of 0.91c. Assuming that this is their top speed, if we expend the time to recover our Daggers, then interception will occur 0.28 hours before we can safely exit the system.”
“Who intercepts us first?” Tatia asked.
“The four Bellamonde ships, Commander. The fifth ship will not reach us before the exit point.”
“Interesting,” Alex mused out loud as he studied the holo-vid. “The fifth ship is attacking despite the fact that it can’t get to us before the others do. Like kicking over a nest of biters,” he said, referring to the ant-like New Terran nest builders. When the biters were crushed, the pheromone release enraged the entire nest, and an enraged nest was dangerous to both humans and animals.
Tatia asked the tough question: “And if we don’t wait to pick up the Daggers, Julien?”
“We would achieve FTL safe distance with 0.17 hours to spare, Commander,” Julien replied, sadness underlying his words.
Andrea and Tatia turned to regard Alex. As Admiral, it was his call whether to sacrifice the Daggers and their pilots.
Andrea and Tatia exchanged a private comm full of New Terran expletives. Advanced technology was a wonderful thing until it told the people you cared about things you would rather they didn’t know.