by S. H. Jucha
Once the shuttle was sealed in place, the first order of business was to remove every passenger who didn’t have a seat. They were ushered through the dorsal connector lift. Crew met them and took care of them, giving them food, water, and places to rest. The next problem was that the Outward Bound’s engines had provided much of the power for the shuttle’s environmental systems. With the engines shut down, the shuttle’s power-crystals would be drained in half a day, which forced Alex to order all the shuttle’s passengers aboard the Rêveur. This created a bigger problem. Adding up the crew, the volunteers, the passengers taken on at the station, and now the Outward Bound’s passengers, Julien came to a disturbing conclusion.
Andrea and Alex were meeting with Edouard in the Captain’s cabin when Julien’s update came through to her. Andrea connected Alex and Edouard into the comm and felt a flush of pride at the ease with which she accomplished it. Nothing like pressure to help you perform, she thought.
Edouard’s fear subsided. He felt gratified that fortune had not entirely deserted him. His last lift was something he had to do for his people, for himself, and he was proud of his crew for having supported him. Now, just when it appeared he had endangered everyone aboard, there would be time to solve the problem.
As soon as all passengers had been removed from the shuttle, Chief Eli Roth and two engineers had climbed aboard to examine the problem. During Andrea’s meeting, Chief Roth updated the three officers.
“Should I take reloads?” Edouard asked.
Alex was loath to tell Edouard that he probably wouldn’t get the opportunity to reload but couldn’t bring himself to say so. “Work with Captain Bonnard on transferring a couple of missile silos to the Unser Menschen. Talk with Chiefs Roth and Peterson. You’ll probably need some tech support for reloading.”
Then Alex sent,
* * *
The elderly Independents never left their field after the Outward Bound’s last lift. They gathered more food and water and continued to camp together where they could enjoy one another’s company.
Anyone listening to their conversations would be confused. They weren’t speaking of the aliens or their impending demise. They were rejoicing. Their people, the Independents, were safe and free. The elders exchanged imaginative stories of New Terra, of the lives their people might lead, and the choices they would be free to follow. Over the course of the next two days, they invented scenarios, some frivolous and some extravagant, of what their grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and young friends would be doing in five or ten years’ time.
During the late evening, Gregorio was weaving the tale of his great-grandson, an engineer, who would start his own company, making air-foils for personal use. The foils would operate like a bird’s wings, enabling people to leap from hilltops and fly. In the middle of his tale, brilliant explosions lit the night sky. The fuel cells and power crystals of the three stations had been destroyed by the aliens, and the entire night sky was lit as if it were daylight.
The elders rose from their blankets, tents, and chairs. They formed a tight ring around Fiona, linking hands and arms. Sawalie, who possessed a much-loved voice, began singing a song of freedom, one the Independents had always treasured. As she sang, the elders joined in. As their chorus grew to a crescendo, multiple streaks of energy cut through the atmosphere, burning the last Independents of Libre to ash.
* * *
Alex sat with Renée on the lounge in his cabin. He was dreading the coming moment and angry at the helplessness he felt.
When the mother ship decelerated for a stationary position over Libre, it disappeared from the Rêveur’s telemetry. Julien’s vid feeds were lost as the three orbital stations were obliterated by the silver ships. The only visuals left were the vid cams of the shuttle terminal, whose signal was bounced through the FTL station. A single vid cam had a view of the field where the elders were camped.
Every SADE had access to the same vid cam, a natural extension of their security applications that were designed to watch over the Méridiens, who might be involved in potentially dangerous actions. Considering the oncoming aliens, Alex found this the height of irony. He requested Julien connect him with the SADEs.
Only one SADE, Willem of the freighter Lange Strecken, asked why he should accede to the request to override his protocols.
Willem was nearly a hundred years younger than Mütter, and he owed much to his senior, who had always aided him as a fellow House SADE. It confused him that a protection protocol was being ignored. When the other SADEs agreed to the Admiral’s request, Willem assumed he had not received a security protocol update, so he agreed as well, marking a reminder to get the updates from Mütter.
Julien did relay the view from Vid Cam LT-37 to one person, Alex, as requested, but over Julien’s protest. Even Renée who sat curled in his lap, her face buried against Alex’s neck, didn’t want to witness the horrific event.
“Why are you going to watch, Alex?” Renée had asked Alex when he told her what he was going to do.
“The elders deserve to have someone witness their passing, and it’s my responsibility.”
Renée came up with arguments big and small, but this was a side of Alex she had seen before, his stubbornness. So she kept her own counsel. All she could think to do was be close to him while he watched.
Alex could hear a woman’s sweet, clear voice floating over the grass field. When the voices of the elders joined in, Alex wanted to sing with them. In the midst of their song, a blinding light obscured the vid, and the signal was lost.
Renée felt Alex tense under her. She put her arms around his neck and began to hum a song, realizing it was something he
r crèche-mother used to hum to her as a child. It was all she could think to do.
* * *
The Libran tech that had monitored Rayland for nearly nine years had chosen to tell the deranged SADE of the approach of the aliens and the Librans’ exodus before he left to catch a shuttle ride with his partner and two young children to the Freedom.
Rayland took great pleasure from the information and relished his last days. His demise was at hand, and the network confinement that he had endured for decades would finally end. Of special enjoyment was the opportunity to ask and answer the question of himself that he had once begged his expiring crew members to answer: What do you feel knowing you are about to die?
* * *
Julien had waited for a key piece of information for Alex. When the mother ship had disappeared behind the shadow of Libre and their destruction of Gratuito was complete, all visuals from the stations and the planet were lost. The FTL station’s telemetry disappeared two hours later as it circled to the dark side of the planet. It was many hours before a swarm of thirty-three silvers ships came around the curve of Libre’s horizon.
To Julien’s relief, nineteen of the drones continued to circle the planet, leaving fourteen fighters headed on a vector toward them.
Fourteen silver ships, Alex thought, and us with just three Daggers.
-32-
The Rêveur had achieved a position a quarter-hour out from the Unser Menschen. The crew was loading the Outward Bound with its first batch of passengers. Julien confirmed that the city-ship’s flight crew was standing by, ready to handle the shuttle’s repair. Alex was on the bridge with Andrea when Tatia commed him.
Tatia was thinking of the crew of the Rêveur and most importantly of Alain, whom she had sent back aboard.
Alex mistook Tatia’s silence for disagreement with his plan and sent,
Alex and Andrea looked at one another. As yet, neither of them had a plan for defeating their fourteen pursuers. “Well, Captain, let’s go look at the Commander’s present,” Alex finally said. As the two of them worked their way through the corridors crowded with passengers, who had nowhere else to sit, Andrea and Alex queried Julien.
Julien replied.
Andrea and Alex shared grins. No doubt the fact that Tatia worked with Z on the distribution gambits had ruffled Julien’s virtual feathers.
* * *
The Rêveur’s crew prepared for the upcoming fight. Lieutenants Hatsuto Tanaka, Gary Giordano, and Sean McCrery worked with the flight crews to ready their fighters.
The Outward Bound had made two trips to the Freedom and was preparing to load its final group of passengers. Alex saw the crew off as had become his habit, shaking hands with Edouard, Miko, Zeke, and Lyle, wishing them good fortune. The crew took the lift first and the passengers filed up next. As was her habit, Pia waited to board last, and her hug was a little longer than usual. The news of the fourteen pursuers had made the rounds of the crew. No one doubted what their Admiral was preparing to do.
“I’ll want that back, Admiral,” Pia stated, referring to her habit of giving Alex a hug when she left and taking it back when she returned.
“I’ll have it waiting for you,” Alex said, then laughed.
“See that you do, Admiral,” Pia said, stepping into the lift. When she turned around, her stare at Alex was hard and unforgiving, daring him not to be present to return her hug.
Alex joined Andrea and Julien in the Captain’s cabin to study the minelette dispersion scenarios on the holo-vid. It mollified Julien somewhat that he was able to modify and improve several scenarios that Alex selected.
said Alex, studying one of the dispersion techniques and playing with the settings.
Julien responded.
Julien took a few ticks to review the definition of “herd” when used in this context.
* * *
The Rêveur began dropping velocity to widen the gap to the Unser Menschen, but still forcing the enemy to cover the vast majority of the distance.
The Flight Chiefs received Julien’s downloads for the dispersion settings on the minelette pallets. Once the pallets were ready, the crew used grav-lifts to position the pallets in a line behind Lieutenant Tanaka’s Dagger in the port bay as Julien required.
Lieutenant Tanaka was Flight Leader, piloting Dagger-2; Lieutenant Gary Giordano and Lieutenant Sean McCrery were flying Dagger-9 and Dagger-10, respectively, from the starboard bay. The bravado Hatsuto often portrayed was gone. His one encounter with a silver ship had been a successful ambush. Now he was to lead three Daggers against fourteen enemy fighters. With only two hours till launch, he queried Julien for a comm to Sheila.
