by S. H. Jucha
“While I’m not sure of the first,” Renée answered, “I definitely know if you attempt to share your implant with them as you do with me, you might hurt the children.” She watched Alex’s smile fade. Something she had said had hurt him.
Alex and Renée were wandering toward an exit lift to return to the Rêveur when they received a signal from Cordelia.
Cordelia sent.
* * *
Cordelia’s holo-vid display-room door closed behind Alex and Renée. The bare room was a light gray with curves where corners might be. It allowed Cordelia’s projections a more realistic manifestation. The lights dimmed until they were fully extinguished. The music rose slowly. String and wind instruments rose in a mournful blend, peaceful and haunting at the same time.
The music lowered as the scene emerged. Absolute quiet blanketed a moonlight night. Trees and their branches were covered in thick layers of snow. The path in front of them looked pristine; no tracks marred its ice-crystal covering. Alex took Renée’s hand, stepping onto the path. The sound of crunching snow was enhanced by the feel of cool air on bare skin. Alex and Renée smiled at each other. Their walks through the woods behind his parents’ home had been an opportunity to be free of responsibilities, and there they had shared much of their lives with each other.
They stepped around the all-too-real tree trunks, guided along the path by Cordelia. Large flakes of snow fell, and Alex felt them on his face, cool and wet, and immersed himself in the illusion. Given the perfection of Cordelia’s art, it was easy to do.
Renée watched Alex smile as he turned his face up into the falling snow. She opened her implant fully as she had often done when alone with Alex. Since Renée had reached adulthood, Alex was the first human she had trusted completely. Renée stuck out her tongue and a wet, fat flake landed, delivering its icy touch to her tongue, and she giggled.
Cordelia had been waiting. If she had been human, she would have been holding her breath. Then to her great joy, the implant requests came swiftly as only the Admiral could deliver them, and she responded. The greater of New Terra’s two moons was enlarged, and dark clouds on a strong breeze now scudded past its face. In the forest, the breeze sharpened, and snow, still heavily laden on the branches, drifted to the forest floor. Cordelia hardened the top layer of snow, and the brittle surface crunched louder underfoot, accentuating the chill of the night.
Renée relived treasured memories of their walks together. One night, possibly this night, she and Alex had first spoken of the future—a future beyond the silver ships—a future that might include the two of them.
When both had experienced their fill, they turned to leave the room. This time and for this couple, Cordelia changed her standing protocols. She kept the suite’s imagery in play even as Alex and Renée opened the exit door. The immediate exterior lights had been lowered to allow a pleasant transition from her moonlit scene to the city-ship’s park. When the two humans paused in the open doorway to view her art one last time, holding still for several moments, it was a testament to Julien, who knew his charges so well. This scene had been his suggestion.
-13-
Alex waited until after morning meal and the ship readiness reviews from his officers before he contacted Julien.
Julien kept his own counsel. Automatic acknowledgement of the compliment definitely wasn’t appropriate, as his friend was a master of sarcasm, a trait Julien had studied well in New Terran vids and novels.
Walking in a crowded corridor, Alex stopped and burst out laughing. He was laughing so hard he had to brace himself against a bulkhead. His passing crew smiled at him. They had been aware of the Admiral’s quiet mood since some of the crew had left, and if they were going back to face the silver ships, they preferred their Admiral this way.
* * *
Julien and Cordelia were comparing the Freedom’s deliveries to the requested manifests, ensuring all supplies had been delivered for the fighter squadrons, when Z contacted them.
Z said simply.
* * *
Captain Manet guided the Outward Bound planetside. In addition to his copilot and crew of three, he carried two passengers, the Admiral and Étienne. Maria had requested a face-to-face meeting with Alex to consider Downing’s prosecution. The decision was mired in thorny issues. The proof of the ex-Assemblyman’s complicity in the T-1 theft and the disappearance of the engineer, Sebastien, stemmed from Julien’s research, which had broken New Terran laws at every turn. Furthermore, Julien’s activities had been at Alex’s behest. Prosecuting Downing had a certainty of leading to charges against Alex, which generated a most unusual question: Could a SADE be prosecuted?
That morning, Alex had exited his cabin for the starboard bay and the Libran shuttle. Since New Terran politics had taken a turn for the better with the election of General Gonzalez, Alex had decided to save the trouble of launching the Outward Bound.
Étienne had met Alex at his cabin door, and as they walked down the corridor, he had directed Alex to the lift for their armed shuttle. Before Alex could draw breath, Étienne said, “Captain Bonnard’s orders, Admiral, and she said that if you were to choose otherwise, it would be prudent of you to address your concerns to your Co-Leader.”
“Ah,” Alex had replied.
The Outward Bound was gliding toward Prima, still 950 kilometers out, when Julien’s urgent voice came through, linking several other people in his comm,
Alex’s officers—Andrea, Tatia, and Sheila, all listening to the exchange—were swearing enough to melt bulkheads. They had gotten complacent and instead of two flights of four Daggers, they had launched only the pair to watch over the Admiral. The question of how seven Strikers had been readied without any warning would have to be asked later. A second flight of Daggers couldn’t intercept the Strikers in time, but that didn’t stop Sheila from ordering the prep and launch of two full flights that she would command.
Unknown to Alex’s people was that a shuttle had landed yesterday evening on Barren Island. TSF troopers and Striker pilots, armed with plasma rifles, had piled out of the shuttle and descended on the Barren Island staff and crew. Within a short time, the T-Manager and Colonel Jameson were dead, and the flight crews were forced to work through the night to ready the Strikers for a morning flight.
Alex pulled Julien’s bio-ID of Ellie Thompson, the second Dagger pilot. She was a Libran pilot trainee, an Independent. Her crime was she raced atmo-ships, a sport considered dangerous to Méridien society. She will do nicely, Alex thought.
At Alex’s request, Julien fed him and his three pilots a view of ships’ positions, velocities, and altitude. As the two Daggers flanked the armed shuttle, Alex ordered all pilots to the deck.
Only Ellie, flying the second Dagger, was unprepared for the co-opting of her implant. The Admiral had transferred flight paths to both her implant and her controller, and the process had unsettled her, which left her unsure of her role in the upcoming fight.
The Admiral’s ships leveled off a hundred meters above the deck, sliding over calm seas with the Strikers closing from behind them.
Meanwhile, Lieutenant Damien Hunsader, the Striker Flight Leader, ordered his Strikers to fire a full salvo and fourteen missiles tracked the heat signatures of their quarry.
Ellie’s fingers itched to grab her stick. She had always depended on her own judgment to get by, which had landed her on Libre in the first place. Taking deep breaths and letting them out slowly, she waited as the missiles closed on their craft. Suddenly her fighter plunged seaward in close company with the other two craft. The bow view of water rushing at her fighter was frightening. At the last moment, her controller leveled her Dagger out, leaving her skimming the wave tops. She was thankful for mild seas. There would be no rogue monster waves to swat her fighter from the air. Switching her helmet to the aft vid camera, she thought to see missile tracks, indicating impact was ticks away, but her view was obscured. Ellie requested Julien’s view and received an image of their craft, flying flat against the ocean. Huge tails of water and vapor billowed behind them. Unexpectedly, explosions raised enormous geysers of water hundreds of meters into the air behind them.
