Libre, A Silver Ships Novel (The Silver Ships Book 2)
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Hatsuto sent.
When Hatsuto finished his story, he heard the Squadron Leader’s laughter over the comm.
In an eerie coincidence of timing with Sheila’s pronouncement, Andrea was looking at Alex and asking, “Admiral, we need your decision.” The way Alex sat, regarding her, reminded Andrea of her earlier mistake when she had requested permission to fly with Sheila. Snapping into action, Andrea ordered, “Julien, we’ll rendezvous with the Daggers.”
“Yes, Captain,” Julien acknowledged. “Message relayed to Squadron Leader Reynard.”
“Commander,” Andrea ordered Tatia, “get your rear end down to the landing bay and make sure our Dagger recovery is the shortest in our short history.”
“I’m on it, Captain,” announced Tatia and her feet pounded out a tattoo on the deck as she raced across the bridge and down the corridor.
Andrea turned back to talk to the Admiral, but from the look on Alex’s face, he wasn’t available to anyone but Julien.
* * *
As Tatia donned her environment suit to cycle through the landing-bay airlock, she updated Chief Peterson on their predicament.
The Chief examined his bay, measuring the bay opening and the interior.
Tatia replied as she entered the bay.
The Chief’s idea had merit but was riskier than even he had warned her. Tatia decided to leave the final decision to the Captain and the Squadron Leader. Andrea listened to her and gave her approval, but only if Sheila agreed.
Sheila smiled to herself. He’s learning, she thought.
Tatia had already cleared the bay. She knew what Sheila would do. The only question had been whether Hatsuto would follow Sheila’s lead or panic. She signaled the Captain of Sheila’s decision.
Despite Hatsuto’s decision to follow Sheila’s lead, his mouth dried up at the thought that it might be his landing error that would cripple the Rêveur and allow the silver ships to annihilate his crewmates.
Julien monitored the Daggers as they closed, and he efficiently matched the Rêveur’s velocity to that of the fighters. On Julien’s signals, all engines, the Daggers’ and Rêveur’s, were simultaneously cut.
Lieutenant Tanaka went first, sliding his Dagger next to the bay’s opening with maneuvering jets. He ensured that his velocity matched the Rêveur’s, and then slid his fighter into the opening and forward, setting his Dagger down in one smooth movement. Hatsuto was extraordinarily grateful for his Méridien environment suit that sucked away the evidence of his fear.
Sheila watched Hatsuto’s fighter disappear into the bay and received the Chief’s go ahead signal. She matched velocity, easing her fighter into the bay’s opening. She fired her forward thrusters to arrest her forward motion and settled her ship to the deck. The moment Sheila’s skids touched down, Tatia signaled the Captain and Julien, who accelerated the Rêveur so quickly that Tatia saw Sheila’s fighter slip backward several centimeters since the Dagger’s full weight hadn’t yet settled to the deck.
“Julien, update me on our status,” Andrea requested.
“Intercept time before FTL exit has been shortened to 0.19 hours, Captain.”
The holo-vid displayed the Rêveur with a red arc scribed behind it. The arc marked the maximum beam range of the silver ships. The four alien ships were bright silver dots as they closed on the arc. Ahead of the Rêveur waited a bright blue dot, the FTL exit. The bridge crew was mesmerized by the subtly changing distances as the Rêveur raced for the blue dot and the four silver points closed even faster on the red arc.
Andrea regarded her Admiral, who was still deeply subsumed in his implant.
Alex had been running through the ship’s operation protocols with Julien, and he had hit on critical safety points that could be overridden. Alex broke out of his communication with Julien to call out to Andrea. “Captain, I need people at these two points.” Alex relayed to Andrea’s implant the Rêveur’s schematics with two tags. “Engineers are preferred or top-level techs. I need them there yesterday.”
Andrea sent a comm to Tatia, who recorded the urgent message and the schematics. In turn, Tatia grabbed Chief Peterson and raced at top speed for the engine control room. On the way, Tatia scanned the crew’s locations and picked up Claude near the second position that required manning. Tatia relayed Andrea’s message to the Méridien, who ran for a control cabinet located off a corridor on Deck 2.
Alex had discovered that Méridiens had built significant safety margins into their engine operations. It was their inertia compensators they were protecting, since the engines could deliver more sub-light acceleration than the compensators could handle. Alex had Julien override the bridge control programs. Now he had to deal with the physical blocks. The two locations his crew raced toward housed e-switche
s that communicated together to prevent engine output from overextending the inertia compensators.
The Méridiens were serious about their safety locks, as Alex had first learned when discussing stun gun controls with Étienne and Alain. Damaging or turning off either e-switch would result in the engines powering down. However, turning off both at once would interrupt the signals sent between the two switches, effectively removing them from the safety circuits.
Julien kept Alex updated with a time-acceleration curve. With every chronometer’s tick, the lost time meant a higher acceleration rate would be required to reach the FTL jump point before the silver ships caught them. And every increment of acceleration over the proscribed limits risked overburdening the inertia compensators.
If the compensators fail, we’ll all become red goo on a bulkhead, Andrea thought.
Alex said and commed both men, directing them to place their hand on their tool’s trigger, which would fire a signal into the e-switch. Then Alex cleared away the men’s comm security protocols.
Stan and Claude tensed their fingers on their tool’s trigger, ensuring the dual tip was firmly slotted in their individual e-switch. The two men had no more signaled their readiness to Alex when an incoming biometric signal raced through their implants and convulsed their finger muscles, firing their tools, and closing the e-switches simultaneously. Later, Stan, Claude, Tatia, and Andrea would compare notes with one another and discover that their Admiral had momentarily controlled the nerve pathways of the arms of both the Chief and Claude.
The instant the e-switches were removed from the control circuits, Julien surged the Rêveur’s engines.
Alex walked close to Andrea and said softly, “Captain, let your people know that our engine safety locks have been removed. This is no longer a race we will lose to the silver ships. We will win, or die trying by our own hand.”
Andrea could accept those two choices. It was the prospect of being destroyed by the silver ships that had felt like a waste of all their efforts. She threw Alex a sharp salute and forwarded his message to the entire crew.
“If you need me, Captain, I will be in the meal room,” Alex told her. “I am dying for a cup of Méridien thé.”
The bridge crew was torn between watching the race on the holo-vid and watching their Admiral calmly walk off the bridge.
Andrea realized she hadn’t thought through the next step. The Admiral planned on a positive outcome and so had Julien. It’s time to act like the Senior Captain, Andrea thought. “Julien, jump 1.5 light-years. Execute the same backtrack routine we employed last time. When we know we’re clear, you can make for Libre.”
“Understood, Captain,” Julien acknowledged.
Andrea returned to her command chair and began cleaning up her ship, ensuring the Daggers were locked down and the bay secured for FTL. She ordered the crew to Medical who would require desensitizing before the FTL jump and sent Tatia a request to question Claude—what was necessary to secure the e-switches? When Andrea finished, she glanced at the holo-vid. The Rêveur merged with the blue FTL dot as the four silver ships closed on the red arc. In a surreal moment, Julien announced FTL entrance, and the holo-vid, view screens, and plex-shield went dark against the transition.
The cheers of the crew could be heard throughout the ship. Comms were open, and messages and images flew back and forth. News of the quandary of recovering the pilots or racing for the FTL exit had spread through the crew. Opinions varied, but most thought they were doomed, knowing in their hearts that their Admiral would not leave his pilots behind if he had a remote chance of saving them.
Andrea eased back into her chair. “Well done, Julien,” she said, “absolutely well done.”
Julien basked in their success. Perhaps, most poignant, were the numerous congratulatory messages from the crew, messages specifically for him.
After the Rêveur entered FTL and the susceptible crew had their implant blocks released, Renée left her post in Medical. She checked on Alex’s location and was surprised to find him in the meal room. The room was empty, except for Alex, who sat at the head table sipping a cup of thé. She crossed to the back of the room and fixed herself a cup and sat down next to Alex, who didn’t acknowledge her but sat quietly, elbows on the table, supporting the cup at his mouth as he sipped slowly, lost in thought. Renée leaned her head against Alex’s shoulder for a moment before she began sipping her own cup, allowing him his silence.
A little more than a quarter-hour later, evening meal chimed in the crew’s implants. Sheila met Hatsuto on the way to the meal room. They hadn’t had time to talk since being released from their fighters, where Sheila had kept them seated until FTL transition, in case they needed to launch and make a last stand. Sheila grinned at Hatsuto as she walked up beside him.
“Yes, yes, you were right and I was wrong,” Hatsuto exclaimed. “Is that what you want to hear, Squadron Leader?”
“Absolutely, Lieutenant. You need to learn to listen to the voice of experience,” Sheila replied smugly. She didn’t bother with Hatsuto’s answer because she had just entered the meal room, which was nearly full as crew queued for food and carried dishes and pitchers to tables, and a round of applause had broken out for her and Hatsuto. He lifted his hands in triumph, while she simply bowed her head, acknowledging the applause.
Sheila glanced at the head table where her Co-Leaders sat. The Admiral held a cup in his hands, watching the crew talk, eat, and intermingle, a most satisfied look on his face. Sheila caught his eye, and she was damned if he didn’t throw her a wink. Coming from one of the more handsome men Sheila had ever met, but still her Admiral, it threw her off step, and she bumped into Chief Peterson.
Most of the crew had taken their seats by the time Andrea entered the meal room. She stood in the doorway taking in the relaxed and happy crew. Then she walked up to the Admiral’s table and rendered him a salute. Not the New Terran salute given to a senior officer, but the Méridien salute, recognizing those who must be honored. All around her, the crew, Méridien and New Terran, stood and faced the man who had chosen to retrieve their crewmates and still found a way to make the FTL exit. They, too, rendered honor in the Méridien fashion.
Renée stood as well and joined them. Everyone held their positions, no one moving until their salute was recognized. Honor was not fully rendered until it was acknowledged.
Alex stood and bowed his head, sending to all,
The crew broke from their Méridien salutes and began shouting and cheering for Alex.
Terese and Pia appeared at the head table, placing food in front of Alex and Renée.
Alex laughed at Terese and proceeded to enjoy one of the best meals he had ever had, except perhaps for his first meal aboard the Rêveur, the day he’d met the Méridiens … and Renée.
* * *
After the evening meal, Alex, Andrea, and Tatia worked to wrap up the day. The safety locks needed to be restored, and Alex once again provided the implant impetus that enabled Claude and Stan to pull their tool triggers simultaneously.
Andrea took the opportunity to tease Tatia. “So, Com
mander, how did that implant of yours work for you today?”
Tatia ruefully recalled her enlistment speech to the Barren Island recruits. She had regaled the volunteers with an imaginative story of how implants could be used in an emergency. Trouble was, for personal reasons, she was one of the slowest to adopt her implant. It had propelled her to invent the nightly implant games with Terese.
“Who knew I could be so prophetic?” Tatia replied, a sheepish grin on her face. “I was thinking myself about how those games paid off today.”
“Saved our rear ends is what they did, Commander. The Admiral may have invented the plan, but without your implant skills, we couldn’t have put the right people in the right place in time.”
Andrea and Tatia were still chatting when Alex passed them by. He wished his officers a good evening, stating he planned to retire early. While there was still much to do, Alex knew his portion could wait. The Rêveur had an eleven-day trip back to Libre—two days to check their back trail, five more for the FTL journey, and another four at sub-light to gain orbit around Libre.
Renée was curled on the suite’s lounger, using the reader Alex had presented to her when they’d gone planetside on New Terra. The reader contained New Terran dramas and mystery vids, which Renée had become addicted to viewing. This reader version had the enlarged screen, and Alex had Edouard install a chip on the reader to relay the audio to Renée’s implant. Alex sat next to Renée on the lounge, and she turned off her reader and snuggled next to him.
“Long day?” she asked.
“A scary day,” Alex replied, a deep sigh escaping his lips.
Renée didn’t respond, just snuggled closer to Alex, stretching a leg across his lap.
Renée asked, perking up.