Libre, A Silver Ships Novel (The Silver Ships Book 2)
Page 20
After those at the conference table had received food, two of the smallest runners, who still held trays, stood by with uncertainty written on their faces. “Ser?” said one to Renée, indicating her tray with a nod.
“For the Admiral, little one,” answered Renée and watched the runner guide her tray onto the table beside Alex’s tray.
“And me?” asked the other little girl, who found the huge Admiral reaching for her tray. “For you too?” she asked. When the Admiral nodded and smiled at her, she shared a look of astonishment with her small friend. The two girls giggled at the thought of someone eating three trays of food. They were still giggling as Amelia ushered them from the room.
The trays were no sooner in front of Alex than he was devouring everything on them while Eric and the other Méridiens could only continue to stare at him.
“Sers, you might as well eat,” Renée told them. “We won’t be continuing the conference until the Admiral has finished.”
At the meal’s end, the empty trays were stacked aside, and the conference comm, including the SADEs, was re-initiated. And as Alex expected, it was Eric who was the first to find fault with the plan.
To the Méridiens, with their 200-year longevity and technically careful society, the premature loss of one life was harsh to comprehend. They could not contemplate the abandonment of thousands of lives.
Eric Stroheim contemplated sitting on a dead ship, waiting for the swarm to arrive, and the thought angered him.
Alex sipped on his mug of thé, which had been carefully refilled several times by Renée while he ate. A wonderful, but still strange woman, he thought.
Eric regarded the Admiral for a moment or two. Satisfied, he gave the Admiral a nod of recognition.
-22-
The announcement was made to the entire population of Libre on ships, stations, and planet.
“The alien ships have lifted, and if they come our way, we must be headed out of system before they arrive,” Tomas began. He attempted to describe the challenges they faced to launch the ships in time and transport the entire population. His words were not encouraging, and he tried to soften the impact by saying that fortune might still favor them if the silver ships didn’t come their way. But the more Tomas talked, the less sure he sounded and the more his emotions began to betray his words.
Alex finished the message. “Most importantly, Librans, we need your cooperation to complete the lift successfully. Every moment a shuttle sits on the runway ready to lift and isn’t full; every moment a shuttle sits at the station because the passengers haven’t disembarked … another person has lost their opportunity to get off the planet. And all of you should be aware that, on my orders, the safety protocols for shuttle engine operation have been removed. I did this on the Rêveur to escape the silver ships after I destroyed one of their own. I’ve ordered this so that each shuttle flight may carry more passengers off the planet. It’s dangerous, but it’s doable. May fortune guide us all.”
The SADEs immediately followed the announcement with a departure schedule for people, supplies, shuttles, and ships.
Eric Stroheim had underestimated the House Bergfalk pilots. Not one pilot asked to be pulled from the rotation. In fact, the two Bergfalk Dagger trainees volunteered to be on the shuttle rotation, but the schedule required that they continue their work for final preparations of the Money Maker.
The Bergfalk personnel were ordered to abandon Libre Station, the colony’s original passenger platform. The station possessed two small, aging shuttles that could no longer make planetfall, but could still maneuver between their station and the orbital platforms. It should have taken the personnel a single day to accomplish the evacuation, but it took them two days. A shuttle bridge computer reported engine problems during its second return trip, and it was abandoned at Libre Station. As the station personnel disembarked at Bau Ein, their implants triggered programs Z had prepared, and each individual was assigned work preparing the Unser Menschen for launch.
The Freedom’s critical systems were complete, most cabins were complete, if minimally so, but massive amounts of supplies had made it only to the station. Many shuttle flights had been directed there while the city-ships were still in early stages of construction. Some of the supplies required grav-lifts to move, but there was an insufficient number for the time at hand. Fortunately much of the pallet loads consisted of small containers, and as Terese had so admirably demonstrated to several loads of passengers, the human chain was an ancient and time-honored manner of moving supplies. The main corridors of the station and the Freedom were wide enough for three chains. Passengers, notified by Cordelia of the critical need to move supplies, lined up. Where a group of unenhanced people would have taken hours to form three chains to three different destinations averaging a kilometer in length, the enhanced Librans formed their chains on the fly. The first group, who arrived in the station’s bay, signaled Cordelia, and the SADE tagged the end of the chain for the others. Passengers, who had signaled Cordelia their willingness to join, now came from all over the ship and received the ever-changing locations of the ends of the chains in their implants.
In storage rooms and station bays, crews broke out the pallets and handed off the boxes or drums to the first people in line. Supplies began moving even while the chains were still forming and never waited at the dangling end of any chain.
Tomas, who monitored one of the chains to ensure the process wasn’t impeded, watched as crew began re-stacking food stock drums from the end of the chain into permanent storage containers.
Julien, linked as the SADEs had been, was party to Tomas’s statements to Cordelia.
* * *
The House Bergfalk liner, the Stern Licht, which had docked opposite the Unser Menschen days ago, had had the luxury of provisioning their ship without haste. But that had been for the expected 200 passengers. Now the liner’s crew hurried with grav-lifts to load supplies for an additional 150 passengers. Pallets were broken open in corridors, and the crew stored their contents wherever they could find space. Even the salons of the luxury cabins became storage spaces.
In the meantime, the Stern Licht’s passengers, who had recently moved aboard, dutifully packed up their belongings and caught shuttles to transfer to the Freedom. The city-ship, with her much slower acceleration, would be departing days before the passenger liner, which could afford to wait for the Librans aboard the last shuttles. Captain Karl Schmidt stood on his bridge and worked with his SADE, Dane, to manage the process, transferring out the passengers and loading the extra supplies. One shuttle would be dedicated to them late on day eight and all of day nine to deliver their passengers before departure.
The Lange Strecken’s freighter crew had been able to load its container modules within days after the Admiral’s first general announcement, and had joined the Unser Menschen’s construction crews. On day five of the countdown, the small crew of fifteen would make their way back through the station’s network of levels and corridors to rejoin their Captain. Within hours, the freighter would back out of its bay and begin a long, slow burn for their exit point. Captain Leeson Darden felt guilty. He knew they had one of the slowest ships and that they carried precious supplies for the flotilla, but leaving so many behind and being the first ship to get underway grated on his conscience.
* * *
At the close of the first day after the nine-day countdown began, Alex and Andrea met Lazlo and Ahmed at a meal station aboard the orbital station, Bau Zwei, late in the evening. Station personnel hurriedly brought a small late-night meal for the Admiral and his guests, remembering to bring extra food for the New Terrans.
“Captain Menlo,” Alex began, “have you spoken with any of my officers about our organization?”
“Indeed, Admiral. I’ve been learning about your military from Commander Tachenko. It is very …” Lazlo paused, searching for the right word, “… aggressive, but I believe that is what is needed if we are to defeat the aliens.”
Alex breathed a mental sigh of relief. Lazlo’s words saved him a great deal of explaining, time he couldn’t afford. “I need a Captain of the Geld Hersteller for House Alexander,” Alex said, emphasizing the nature of the association Lazlo would be accepting. “I think that person is you.”
“I would be honored to be that person,” Lazlo said, tipping his head and touching his heart.
“Congratulations, Captain Menlo, on your new position,” Alex said, extending his hand. “You report to Senior Captain Andrea Bonnard,” said Alex, nodding to her. “Mütter has already received information on our House: military organization, titles, reporting structure, and protocols.”
“It is my hope to have time to learn these things well, Admiral,” Lazlo said with a soft smile on his lips.
“Yes, there is that,” Alex said.
“Admiral, I see that Ahmed has been invited here as well,” Lazlo said, indicating his friend with a nod of his head.
“Yes, he has,” Alex replied.
Lazlo liked the Admiral. His people were exemplary and they believed in him. It reflected well on the man. When Lazlo was young, he would never have understood Alex’s unstated implication. Plain speech and thoughts were the order of his life. Decades later, most of the years spent as an Independent, these moments that required intuiting another’s intentions had become precious to him.
“I believe that in your organization, Admiral, I would need a Commander Tachenko, would I not?” Lazlo ventured.
“That would be an executive officer position, Captain,” Andrea said. “At this time, it would be a lieutenant grade.”
Lazlo signaled Mütter, who supplied him with the House Alexander officer rankings. Lazlo turned to Ahmed, who had just done the same thing he had and was now wearing an expectant look. “And I think you would be just the executive officer I need, Lieutenant Durak.”
“It would be my honor, Captain Lazlo,” replied Ahmed, dipping his head and touching his heart.
“Well, Sers, you have much to do,” Alex said, a smile on his face. One small item had been removed from his incredibly long to-do list. “We can worry about the details later. Captain, any questions and Captain Bonnard is your source. Understood?”
“Understood, Admiral, and I thank you for your confidence in me,” Lazlo replied.
“Safe voyage, Captain,” Alex said, rising.
Mütter sent the two new officers a short vid of Commander Tachenko saluting Captain Bonnard, courtesy of Julien. Julien always used this vid as his example. No one delivered a crisper salute than their ex-Terran Security Forces Major.
Alex noticed the mental pause and gave his two newest officers a moment. Then the two men stood up, straightened, and attempted to deliver salutes, at least their interpretation of a salute. It might have been humorous, except Alex was always a little sad when he enrolled Méridiens in his war command. He snapped a salute in return and shook each of their hands. Andrea followed suit and wished them good fortune and a safe voyage.
Alex may have been sad, but as he and Andrea cleared the restaurant doors, Lazlo and Ahmed were congratulating one another, smiles plastered across their faces. They might be dead in days, but they were free for good. They were no longer Independents.
* * *
Lazlo, Ahmed, Tatia, and Alain continued to drive the freighter construction and flight crews. The announcement of the swarm’s lifting had come as no real surprise to this foursome. When the SADEs’ projection of 90 to 120 days was made public, reality had struck home. They knew they would not get to finish the job they had hoped to accomplish. There would be no carrier assault against the alien ships. Now it was a matter of saving as much as they could, and they were a determined group.
Unfortunately no human chains were going to help them. It was heavy work—installation of the last two bay modules and their interior build-out with environmental systems. When the bays were completed, Tatia and Alain worked alongside their crew to complete the bays’ outfitting.
Shuttles delivered passengers to the Bau Ein station first. Then they flew to Bau Zwei, where Ahmed stood ready with flight crew to manage the offloading of crated Dagger parts, missile silos, and cabin outfitting. Stacks of pallets of fighter supplies, including the precious GEN machines, were loaded into the newly completed bays. As the bays filled up and were pressurized, flight crew moved into the cabins housed along the spine. The flight crew members, especially the pilots, were greatly disappointed that they were receiving their Daggers in crates. Only eight new Daggers had been assembled, all of which had been employed in training the new pilots.
Mütter did what she could to help her overworked crew. In addition to her flight duties, she created multiple channels of her music. Unfortunately the hectic pace of the crew required they keep their implants clear for comms. As an alternative, she notified the Flight Chiefs that their emergency speakers, installed along the bays’ spine-side bulkheads, could be programmed to receive her music channels. Soon music could be heard wafting or trumpeting through the bays, depending on the Chiefs’ preferences. It helped the weary crews to focus and keep pace with the loading.
Mütter was especially pleased when the Flight Chief of the last bay to be assembled and pressurized ordered the speaker system completed first, before the c
abins were even outfitted. Music had kept her company for the last 231 years of her existence as her freighter had plied the deep dark.
* * *
On the evening of day three of the countdown, Sheila, Robert, Hatsuto, and Fiona shut down Barren-II. All but seven of the remaining pilots caught a shuttle to the orbital to board the Money Maker. Sheila had offered Fiona and her family reserve seats on the shuttles, but the old engineer and great-grandmother would not hear of it.
In response to Sheila’s offer, Fiona had patted the Squadron Leader on the cheek, saying,
Before Sheila could reply, Fiona had turned around and was striding toward her great-grandson’s transport, warning her crew to hurry aboard or they would be walking home. Fiona had left as Sheila had first seen her arrive, as a human whirlwind of energy.
In the morning, Sheila, Robert, Hatsuto, and the seven remaining pilots fired up the ten Daggers, the two originals and the eight new ones. The Daggers charged down the short runway in pairs and made for vacuum.
It was a sad day for both Robert and Sheila. For Robert, it meant the possibility of another fight, which he dreaded, and for Sheila, it was an abrupt termination of her preparations to deliver the Admiral’s carrier squadron.
* * *
Captain Manet landed the Outward Bound on Gratuito’s shuttle runway. Despite the crews’ cell-gen nanites, Edouard and his crew were exhausted. Unlike the House Bergfalk and Independent pilots, Edouard had asked his crew to make extra daily trips ever since the SADEs had warned of the 90 to 120-day countdown.
With its complete retrofit in New Terra, the Outward Bound was the newest shuttle in the flotilla. Edouard knew it could take more stress than the other shuttles, and he had decided to take advantage of his craft’s power and pristine state. After the second day of exceeding the proscribed flights per day, Julien had contacted him.