Vinium (The Silver Ships Book 10)
Page 27
Julien, Z, and Miranda calculated the new trajectories that were required to augment Reiko’s directive and signaled the warships’ controllers.
Tripping sat in his command chair and stewed. Decelerating the squadron, at this time, wouldn’t have been his call — attack would have been. He eyed the holo-vid display, which indicated that the squadron would reach zero velocity within two to three hours.
“Alex, the sphere is decelerating. I project it will soon come to a halt,” Julien said quietly.
Alex’s mind was in turmoil. A single thought kept circling through his mind. No sacrifice is too great. For all intents and purposes, the sphere was at their mercy, but those who thought that way about their adversaries were deluding themselves. An enemy always had a final resort.
“Commodore, the flagship’s signals are not being received by the New Terran Trident controllers,” Z explained.
“The admiral has activated his device,” Tatia added heatedly.
The flagship’s bridge personnel listened to Ellie attempting to get Admiral Tripping’s attention. She utilized her fleet channel so that the senior commanders could hear any communication she received from Tripping, but he was silent.
Captains Jagielski and Fillister were isolated from fleet command. They thought Admiral Tripping was relaying Commodore Shimada’s directives. It was their assumption that the admiral had been authorized to take independent control of their warships. Only Captain Jonathan Morney knew the truth. He looked at his sleep-deprived admiral, who was staring at the holo-vid, the small, controller device in his hand.
“New Terran Tridents, attack,” Tripping ordered his captains, after cutting their controllers free and silencing the Liberator’s comm channel. However, Tripping didn’t expect an Omnian captain, one assigned to the upper ecliptic with his forces, to attempt communication with him. It was a scenario he hadn’t considered, and it infuriated him the more insistent she became.
“Is Captain Thompson speaking to my ships?” Tripping asked, his teeth grinding.
Morney glanced at his comm officer, who pointed to a signal icon on his board.
“Captain Thompson is on the fleet channel, Admiral. All ships can hear her,” Morney replied.
“Shut her down, Captain,” Tripping ordered in a brittle voice. “I don’t want her talking to my ships.”
Morney glanced again at his comm officer, whose pained expression confirmed there was no way to accommodate the admiral’s request. Morney made a slashing motion across his throat with his hand and pointed to the admiral. The comm officer nodded, and ended Ellie’s voice in mid-sentence.
“Ah, that’s better,” Tripping said into the quiet.
Ellie saw her link to the Geoffrey Orlan drop off. Oddly enough, the other two NT warships were still connected to her.
“Captain Jagielski, what has Tripping ordered you to do?” Ellie said over her bridge comm. When she didn’t receive a reply, she tried again. “Alphons, talk to me. What’s happening?”
“We have independent control of our Tridents, Captain, and we’re under orders from Admiral Tripping to attack the sphere,” Alphons reluctantly replied.
“Alphons, if you break our blockade, you’ll offer the sphere an escape route, and the admiral can’t be sure that the sphere has no defenses. Your three ships might not have enough firepower.”
“I have no contradictory orders, Captain,” Alphons replied.
“Captain Jagielski,” Alphons heard. “This is Commodore Shimada. I’m relaying my signal through Captain Thompson’s ship. You’re ordered to cease your approach to the sphere and return to formation.”
Ellie winced at the hard tone Reiko had taken. She felt she had been reaching Alphons, but his reply indicated that Reiko had turned him away.
“Commodore, this is something that Admiral Tripping and your superior should resolve. It’s not right, nor fair, to place the captains in the middle of an authority fight between commanders.”
“Captain Jagielski —” Reiko said, but her words didn’t travel beyond the Redemption’s controller.
Alex found himself the focus of attention on the Liberator’s bridge. The ugly what if question Tatia had asked was suddenly a real situation. Tripping had taken command of his warships. Now the question was whether the Omnians stood back and watched or whether they would commit to supporting the New Terrans, regardless of the misguided judgment of their commander.
“Alex, we need a decision,” Tatia said. “Do we follow the New Terrans or not?”
“There are hundreds of good people aboard those ships, Admiral, led by one idiot,” Alex growled out.
“The sphere’s accelerating,” Julien announced. “It’s heading toward the New Terran ships.”
Reiko froze. She was ticks away from ordering Ellie to reform the square with Tripping’s Tridents. Instead, she asked quietly, “Why is it headed for our ships?”
Sacrifice, Alex thought, and the word echoed through his mind.
Reiko relayed the message with an urgency she had rarely felt. Whether it was the power of Alex’s sending that rocked her mind or the intense fear that accompanied his thought, she couldn’t tell.
The SADEs signaled the controllers of the five Omnian ships and the fighters. Courses were reversed, and power applied at maximum to put as much distance between them and the sphere as they could. On everyone’s mind was the question: What had happened? It was hoped there would be time later to learn the answer.
Julien, Z, nor Miranda questioned Alex’s request or sought to remind him of Admiral Tripping’s cut-out device. They divided the ships, Z taking the admiral’s flagship and attempting to find a way around his own creation.
Julien and Miranda managed to connect to Jagielski and Fillister’s Tridents and linked Alex.
“Aboard the Tridents Arthur McMorris and Lem Ulam, this is Alex Racine. Listen carefully. Your lives depend on what I’m about to say. As sure as I breathe, I’m convinced the Nua’ll aboard that sphere have decided that they will no longer attempt to evade our forces, nor will they surrender. That sphere is headed toward you for one reason and one reason only. The Nua’ll are determined to have their enemy join them in death. Veer off now and apply maximum acceleration.”
Jagielski’s bridge crew eyed him. They’d heard Alex’s message, and their faces reflected their anxiety.
“Comms, get me the Lem Ulam,” Alphons ordered.
“Captain Fillister here,” Bart replied.
“You heard?” Alphons asked.
“Loud and clear,” Bart replied. “I’m not fluent in the law in these cases. Is Admiral Tripping in charge of our ships or not?”
“Our oaths were to the New Terran constitution,” Alphons replied. “But Admiral Tripping signed an agreement with Omnia Ships to operate under Admiral Tachenko’s orders. And her boss is the majority shareholder of Omnia Ships, who just told us to abort the attack.”
“Putting aside the question of legality,” Bart replied, “I’m thinking about Alex Racine’s warning. You know the rumors about him, right?”
“Which o
ne of the few hundred are you talking about?” Alphons joked, which seemed out of place under the circumstances.
“Okay, forget that … what if he’s right?”
“Then we’re sailing two ships, hundreds of crew, and our sorry butts to join the galaxy’s collection of space dust.”
“I’m serious, Alphons,” Bart replied, throwing aside formality.
“I know, Bart, that’s why I called you. I think it’s high time to think of our people. We’ve been warned by the man who has been right about aliens more times than I can count, and our admiral is disobeying the rightful orders of his senior officer. I’m for abandoning this foolhardy attack, as ordered by Alex Racine.”
“Agreed, I’m reversing course,” Bart replied.
“Make for a rendezvous with Captain Thompson,” Alphons said.
“Alex, Captains Jagielski and Fillister are reversing course. Vectors will intersect the Redemption,” Julien announced.
“Two ships saved,” Tatia said in a soft exhale of breath.
If asked, Z would have declared that it was a SADE’s duty to create programs with a superior form. Privately, he was proud of his creations. But, in this case, he was disgusted with himself. He felt if he’d operated more like a human, he would have left a back door for unseen events like this. Instead, he’d ensured the program was sealed against intrusion by humans or SADEs.
“Captain, our sister ships are retreating,” the Geoffrey Orlan’s navigator reported to Morney.
“What?” the admiral yelled, jumping up from his command chair. He stumbled, his legs weak from spending too much time sitting, despite the efforts of the chair’s nanites to relieve the pressure in his lower body. Morney had extended a hand to help him, but Tripping angrily shook it off, after catching his balance.
Tripping glanced at the navigator’s board and looked over his shoulder at the holo-vid. “Cowards,” he muttered under his breath. Then he gathered himself, squared his shoulders, and announced in a loud voice, “Then the glory will be ours when we destroy this sphere, and two captains will face a Board of Inquiry when we return to New Terra.”
Rounding on Morney, Tripping, said, “Are our beams ready to fire?”
“Yes, Admiral,” Morney replied. “Safeties were released after the ship entered the system’s space.”
“Captain, I hope you will give me the honor of ordering the first beam salvo,” Tripping requested.
“Of course, Sir,” Morney replied. He had hooked his career to Tripping, despite the admonitions of the other two captains. They had repeatedly warned him about the admiral’s dangerous habit of grandstanding. But, it was his thought that the squadron would be doing nothing more than playing war games. How wrong you were, Morney thought.
“Weapons, targeting,” Tripping called out, standing with his hands locked behind his back. He’d seen some ancient vids of heroic captains of space and sea standing on their ships’ bridges in that pose and had always admired it.
“Locked on the sphere, Admiral,” the weapons officer replied.
“Time to firing?” Tripping asked.
“Four point six minutes, Sir.”
“Excellent, stand by,” Tripping ordered.
The time counted down. The bridge crew were breathing shallowly. Fear made their movements small and slow, and sweat formed on brows.
A part of Morney’s brain was screaming at him to confine the admiral to quarters and retreat his Trident, as fast as he could.
“Inside our weapons effective range, Sir,” the weapons officer said. There was a hint of sadness in her voice.
“Fire,” Admiral Tripping ordered, personal affirmation strong in his voice.
That was the admiral’s final word. The weapons officer tapped her board to release the tremendous amount of energy held in the ship’s power crystals at the same time the sphere detonated. Hundreds of millions of metric tons of hot metal and gas from the enemy ship expanded in every direction.
The Geoffrey Orlan’s beams managed to eliminate a few thousand tons of the dangerous mixture. But behind those vaporized quantities came a massive amount of metal debris that sliced the Trident into pieces. The warship’s power crystals were destroyed, and they released their energy. In the first moment, Tripping’s ship was torn apart. Then, in the next tick, it too was an expanding ball of metal, hot gases, and organic matter.
“The sphere and the Geoffrey Orlan are gone,” Julien reported.
“The Trident fired its beams,” Miranda added.
Alex snapped his head around to lock eyes with Miranda.
“Checking, Alex,” Miranda said, interpreting the reason for Alex’s anxiousness.
“Negative, Alex,” Miranda replied. “Telemetry data shows that the sphere’s detonation and the Trident’s firing of its beams were simultaneous.”
“The Nua’ll committed suicide,” Svetlana said, turning to stare at Alex.
“It was a sacrifice, not suicide,” Alex said quietly. “The Nua’ll were intent on taking some of their enemy with them. That’s who we face,” he added in a stronger voice and gazed around at the bridge personnel, one at a time, to drive home his point.
Renée sent to the twins, as she left the rear bulkhead to join Alex.
Étienne and Alain glanced at each other in surprise. As far as they knew, madman was their private name for Alex. That Ser knew their secret was a complete surprise to them.
-24-
New Terra
Moments after the sphere detonated, taking the NT Geoffrey Orlan with it, the fleet recorded a second, significant detonation. The bullet ship had self-destructed.
A search was conducted at the sites where the warship and the two fighters were lost. All three ships were utterly destroyed. There was nothing left to recover.
The fleet rejoined, but there was a small problem. They’d lost a Trident, which had accommodated four fighters. Lucia’s Judgment, having lost two ships, picked up two of the NT travelers.
Z determined there would be room to squeeze a third fighter in each bay of a Trident, if all ancillary material were removed. Svetlana ordered her crew chiefs to strip the Liberator’s bays. Afterward, the two remaining traveler controllers received virtual maps of the flagship’s bays and slowly eased the ships aboard to tuck next to the other two fighters.
“Well done, Z,” Svetlana complimented the SADE, when the bay doors closed. “We actually have centimeters to spare.”
The fleet began the long transit home. By the time they would make Omnia, they would have been gone for ten long months.
Alex spoke with Reiko after the conflict. He’d noticed she was withdrawn. It wasn’t the reaction he would have expected from her after a successful prosecution of her strategy.
“I lost a ship full of good people,” Reiko had replied, when Alex heard what was bothering her.
“And eliminated a sphere,” Alex had replied. “And here’s another way of looking at it, Reiko. Now that we know how the Nua’ll act when they’re cornered, who’s to say that if it wasn’t for Admiral Tripping’s foolhardy charge that more of our ships wouldn’t have been lured closer. We might have lost most or all of the squadron.”
The first evening after the encounter with the sphere, meals aboard every ship were subdued, more so aboard the New Terran Tridents. While many were relieved to be alive, survivor’s guilt was running rampant and arguments or recrimination occasionally broke out.
“Admiral, I’ll be traveling to New Terra with Captains Jagielski and Fillister. I can imagine the assorted receptions those two will receive when the full story gets out,” Alex said, as he sipped on his cup of thé.
“They did what was ordered of them,” Reiko said tersely.
“I don’t disagree with you, Commodore,
but that’s our viewpoint, and Alphons and Bart aren’t Omnians,” Alex replied.
“Alex, what ship do you want to take to New Terra?” Tatia asked, working on the last of her meal. Despite the unsettled emotions of the evening, she fell back on her old TSF habits. In this case, it was to eat when you got the opportunity, as you never knew when the next meal will come your way.
“I want to give the fleet a break. The Rêveur will have returned by now,” Alex replied.
“You can’t have my half,” Renée said quietly but with determination. She was seated across from Alex, and the two stared evenly at each other. The silence extended, and the table of individuals began glancing at one another.
“Well, I can’t take half a ship, can I?” Alex finally said. “What do you suggest, Ser?”
“I suggest, from now on, that you, Ser, ride in the most powerful ship you can find. And, I don’t care if they only have room on the deck to provide you a place to sleep. Your life has great meaning to me, but it has greater importance to the future of humankind, and you will be protected, whether you like it or not.”
At Renée’s conclusion, those at the table grabbed empty cups and pounded them or clapped and whistled, raising a huge ruckus that drew the attention of everyone in the meal room.
“I bow to my lady’s wishes,” Alex said gallantly and pursed his lips at Renée.
“You promise?” Renée asked. She was overwhelmed by the power of Alex’s emotions that flooded through her mind via her implant. Renée’s eyes closed, her head tilted back, and a warm smile formed on her face. “He promises,” she whispered.
“Alex, you wouldn’t be available to teach my partner how to do that, would you?” Tatia asked, which drew chuckles from the table.
“I noticed you clapping earlier, Captain, at the loss of my passenger liner,” Alex said to Svetlana. “However, you and your crew will have to forgo your vacation time. I’ll be taking the Liberator to New Terra.”
“Well, at least I get my ship back,” Svetlana quipped, eyeing Reiko.
“Not quite, Captain,” Tatia replied, with a grin. “I’ll be going with Alex.”
The table burst out in laughter at Svetlana’s crestfallen expression.