by S. H. Jucha
* * *
Alex held a brief conference comm with his Captains, Directors, and Commanders.
* * *
Once the flotilla was underway, Alex decided a direct conversation with Downing might induce the man to change his stance. He made sure Andrea stood beside him on the bridge. “Do whatever you have to, Captain, short of making me look like a fool, if I begin to lose my temper with Downing,” Alex advised.
“Are you giving me permission to slap you, Admiral?” Andrea asked innocently, which earned her a scowl.
Alex expected Downing to play power games if he requested a vid comm, and he was right. Julien had to hunt the President down. Finally, when Downing sat down at his office desk, Julien activated the man’s vid comm.
“Good day, President Downing,” Alex said as respectfully as he could manage.
“Well, if it isn’t the self-appointed Admiral,” Clayton replied, acid dripping from his tongue. “They promote quickly in those alien worlds of yours, don’t they? Was my message unclear?”
“This is a courtesy call, President Downing. I just wanted to inform you that we’re coming to visit. We’ll be at New Terra in seven days, and we would appreciate it if you would refrain from sending your fighters against us.”
“For discussion’s sake, let me ask you why you bothered to come back,” Downing said.
“No choice, Mr. President. Circumstances forced us to come here. We have repairs to make and supplies to collect, then we’ll be out of your way. Can we agree on a peaceful solution?” Alex asked as pleasantly as possible.
Downing shook his head in bored negation. He clearly believed he had the superior position and owed Alex nothing. “I’ve already warned you, Mr. Whatever-you-want-to-call-yourself. If you cross the ice fields, our fighters will destroy your ships.” Then Clayton rose and hurriedly left the vid’s field of view.
“‘Mr. Whatever-you-want-to-call-yourself’?’” Andrea cried out as they heard Clayton’s office door slam. “Admiral, you should have given that cheap excuse for a politician a piece of your mind.”
“And exactly how would that have helped, Captain?” Alex replied, disgusted over the vid comm’s outcome.
“Well … if nothing else, Admiral, I would have had permission to administer a little discipline,” Andrea replied with a cheeky grin.
-4-
Alex and Andrea sat in the Rêveur’s bridge command chairs, reviewing the planets’ positions in the system and Julien’s projected course to New Terra on the holo-vid.
Andrea started chuckling. “It appears the imbecile-in-charge forgot to check the planet positions before he threatened us.”
“It does appear that fortune is on our side, Captain,” Alex replied, smiling.
Sharius, the moon housing the explorer-tug outpost and orbiting Seda, the system’s most outward planet, was forty degrees past them on the ecliptic and headed for a far pass around Oistos. This was the first fighter posting that the President probably believed would have stopped the flotilla. The second fighter outpost was based on the planet Ganymede, which was 152 degrees off from their approach, coming from behind the star. It was also too far for the fighters to reach them. Only Niomedes, the home of the Habitat Experiments, and New Terra itself could launch fighters at them.
Later that evening, Alex sat at his cabin’s desk, wrapped in the New Terran-style robe Renée had made for him, contemplating his holo-vid display, the same system image he and Andrea had observed earlier.
Alex considered his options. If the SADEs didn’t vigorously pursue the information he needed, he wouldn’t be able to force a change in the New Terran political environment that would be supportive of his mission to take the fight to the silver ships. On the other hand, the penetration of his world’s secure information repositories and the release of the data to the public to unseat Downing would make him and the SADEs personae non gratae on New Terra.
Despite his immense processing power, Julien couldn’t find a satisfactory reply. Alex had given up so much for the Méridiens, and now he believed his actions would cost him his home world. In the ancient novels Julien had come to love, his prized characters often spoke simply and from the heart. So he did.
* * *
Alex went to bed while Julien attempted to contact Duggan, Katie, or Christie. Apparently Alex’s parents and sister had gone to sleep and turned off their readers, having no knowledge of his return. Downing and company were keeping the news of the flotilla very secure, but that wouldn’t last long. Private telescopes would pick up the giant city-ships when they cleared the ice fields.
Early the next morning, Julien got th
rough to fourteen-year-old Christie. To wake Alex, Julien sent him a selection of Mutter’s orchestral music in softly increasing volume.
Violin strings accompanied Alex’s dreams when he finally recognized Julien’s signal. As he came fully aware, Alex chose to respond without leaving the warmth of his bed, since Renée was draped over his side, her head on his chest.
Julien replied and connected the two siblings.
“Alex, where’s here? Where are you?” a smiling Christie nearly yelled into her reader.
As Christie hurried upstairs to wake her parents, she wondered at the change in her brother. His words had become confident … authoritative. The grave error she’d made during Alex’s visit with René and Étienne, lying to them and her parents about Étienne’s interview, was a painful memory that had plagued her every day since Alex had left. That he wanted her on the comm with Mom and Dad was an opportunity to make up for her selfishness—an opportunity she promised herself she wouldn’t waste.
Alex began falling back asleep, lulled by the warmth of Renée, who disdained clothing in bed, when he heard his mother’s voice.
“Alex, it’s Mom. Where are you?” Katie said.
After a few polite words of greeting, Alex launched into a synopsis of the last half-year’s events from their arrival at Méridien to their escape from Libre to their return at New Terra. As the recollection of events piled up, Alex began to lose his family’s focus.
“Wait, who is the Admiral you mentioned?” Christie asked.
“And these people, Alex, how many were there on Libre?” his mother asked.
“How big are these ships, Alex?” Duggan asked.
“And you’re the Admiral because …” Duggan ventured.
Suddenly Alex’s family was talking all at once. Duggan attempted to confirm that the quarter-million people reported to Alex. Katie wanted to hear about Renée, and Christie’s voice got lost in the noise.
It was the question Alex kept hoping wouldn’t be asked, but now he couldn’t get around it.
He endured a few moments of Christie’s teasing and parental murmurs of appreciation; although he could tell they were confused by what his announcements meant.
If Alex had been able to see his family, the reader lying between them on his parent’s bed, he would have seen the huge grin on his sister’s face.
* * *
Before midday the following day, Alex had assembled everyone he required—Renée, his Captains and their officers, and his Directors—all outfitted in their best dress. The group arranged themselves around the Freedom’s semicircular bridge, facing rearward and flanking Alex. They formed a most presentable group to the vid cam mounted at the rear of the bridge.
At 13.50 hours, Cordelia activated the bridge cam and linked to Christie’s reader via the FTL station. Then on Cordelia’s cue, Christie commed the By-Long Media House, which last year had produced her historic and the one-and-only Méridien interview with Étienne.
Earlier that morning, Christie had called the By-Long Media House and had been instantly connected to producer Charlotte Sanderson, who sounded excited to hear from the sister of the famous Captain Racine. What Charlotte didn’t expect was to be asked for a half-hour of airtime with no conditions imposed by the station on Christie’s broadcast. If Charlotte hadn’t had such a widely successful program featuring Christie’s previous interview, she would never have acceded to the request.
Throughout the morning, Charlotte had flooded fans’ readers with announcements of a momentous By-Long program with none other than Christie Racine. To Charlotte’s fans, it was code for “Captain Racine and the Méridiens,” and they had plied their personal networks with announcements of a new Christie show.
At 13.48 hours and with the Director’s approval, the station’s regular programming had been interrupted, announcing a special program with Christie Racine that had to be seen, despite the fact that no one knew the subject of the interview.
Charlotte sat in her producer’s chair in over-watch of the broadcast tech, who rolled a hastily prepared vid introduction to their program. Charlotte added a voiceover, announcing Christie Racine with a “special guest.”
In her bedroom, Christie’s vid app showed her on-air. She put on her best smile and welcomed the audience to her interview. “Good morning, New Terrans. I’m sure all of you are curious as to what has become of my famous brother and our distant cousins who left our system nearly a half-year ago. So I thought I would put many of your questions to rest by letting you share my conversation with my brother this morning.”
Following Christie’s introduction, Charlotte’s ear comm and reader blew up with comms from the station manager and Directors. She blocked all of them to concentrate on the show. Suddenly her tech’s second monitor opened up with a vid feed of the famous brother, surrounded by associates and standing in front of an enormous wraparound ship’s bridge. Charlotte didn’t question how they were receiving the signal, but just urged her tech to ride with it.
“People of New Terra, say hello to my brother, Admiral Racine,” Christie announced as the tech switched signals to broadcast Alex and company.
“Christie, it’s wonderful to see you again,” Alex began.
“So, Admiral, dear brother, what have you been up to and who are all your new friends?” Christie had printed out the questions she had received from Alex and had tacked them to the wall behind her vid cam. Her brother had coached her on the reasons for each question so she would understand the purpose. When Christie had reviewed them with her parents, she had realized the magnitude of what her brother wanted to accomplish. Alex truly did need her help.
On his end of things, Alex felt proud of Christie. She was handling the interview as if they were enjoying a casual conversation, attempting to discover what her sibling had been doing, and Alex held nothing back. As he spoke on key points, Cordelia cut in vids under his words. Alex and Julien had spent a couple hours prepping the vids Alex wanted the populace to see, and they were getting an eyeful.
In the middle of the interview, Christie dropped a tough question in the guise of some casual confusion she wanted to untangle. “Admiral, I don’t understand something. The Rêveur was damaged seven decades ago by one of these silver ships that have been destroying the Confederation colonies. Why didn’t you tell anyone about this last year?”
As planned, Renée, standing beside Alex, fielded the question and said, “But we did, Christie. Your President McMorris required that we present our requests to your Assembly. During that presentation, we sho
wed this vid.” Julien rolled a short segment of the attack on the Rêveur, while she continued. “All of your Representatives saw this and understood what had befallen our ship, including your Clayton Downing. He was one of the original visitors to our ship and saw the damage, up close and personal, as you would say.”
“Oh, I didn’t know our Assembly knew about the silver ships,” Christie said, sounding so innocent. “So … are we in immediate danger from these aliens?”
“No, Christie,” Alex replied. “They’ve invaded the Confederation’s Arnos system, and historic records indicate that they will be there for eight to twelve years. But someday, maybe not too far in the future, they will come for New Terra.”
“What are your plans for all of those people with you, Admiral?” Christie asked.
“We left the Arnos system in a running fight with the silver ships, and one of our city-ships, the Unsere Menschen, needs to finish construction. The incomplete environmental systems are overloaded and are about to put its 122,000 passengers in jeopardy.”
Charlotte was on the edge of her seat, dying to ask some crucial questions when Christie began asking them for her.
“So, big brother of mine, you’ve saved a planet load of Librans from death. You’ve found a swarm of aliens devastating Confederation colonies, billions of people lost. And you’ve come back to New Terra to do what?”
“The docking and completion of the Unsere Menschen is an emergency. That’s the first step. Then I plan to outfit our ships to return to Libre to eliminate the silver ships before they can invade another human world.”
“Are you aware, Alex, that President McMorris is dead and Clayton Downing is our President pro tem?”
“Yes, Christie, I am. When we exited FTL outside the system, Sharius TSF contacted us and told us they had a message from President Downing,” Alex said without inflection.
“Oh, but we haven’t heard anything from our government about your return,” Christie replied, playing the naive teenager role to the hilt. “What did President Downing have to say to you?”
