WITH THE TERRIFIED YOUNG Lieutenant pilot still in tow, Rachel raced across the flight line to meet one of two Pirate Interdiction warships her family owned and leased back to the planet’s defense force. She ran toward the pilot who had just set foot on the pavement.
“Lieutenant! I need to take this ship out immediately!”
“But Captain, I need to do post-flight checks,” he stammered.
Rachel spoke into her comm. “Buddy! What is your flight status?”
“All systems nominal.” The ship replied. “Provisions for a crew of two for one week.”
“I didn’t know it could do that!,” the young man exclaimed.
“You still don’t!” Rachel glared at him. “You are hereby released from your obligation to perform post flight checks. If the Admiral gives you a hard time, tell him to talk to me.”
“Yes, Ma’am!” The young man knew that the issue was resolved. Even though they were technically adjunct to, and not part of, the defense force, the Solomon family was so well regarded that whatever they wanted they generally got. He escaped across the flight line and went to debriefing.
Rachel looked at the young woman she had dragged with her since leaving the party. “You had better be telling me the truth.”
Close to tears from fright, the Lieutenant replied, “As God is my witness, Ma’am.”
“Get in the back seat.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
When Rachel had finished her pre-flight checks, or rather when Buddy had finished them for her, Rachel spoke to the Lieutenant now strapped into the fire control seat behind her. “Call traffic control. Tell them who we are and where we are going.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
Buddy asked, “Rachel, where are we going?”
“We think Elizabeth is at these coordinates.” She keyed in the data.
Buddy may have been a sentient ship, but he registered no surprise.
When the protocols had been observed and the flight plan filed, the traffic controller responded, “Captain Solomon, have a safe trip and please bring Aida back in one piece. We are rather fond of her.”
“Roger that.”
“Oh, and Captain, please let us know what you find. We are anxious to know.”
“Roger that. We are off and clear.”
With more power than official documentation showed he was capable of producing, Buddy leaped from the flight line with his passengers securely strapped in. As soon as he was safely clear of other traffic he made the hyper jump to faster than light speed. Rachel had not made an acceleration like this in as long as she could remember. The Lieutenant, Aida, had never done one and passed out during the transition to hyper drive.
They had recovered in time for the transition back out of hyper drive. Well clear of the system’s defenses, in the dim illumination provided by their home star three light-days away, they saw a very strange looking ship. It had suffered immense damage. Parts of the armored mushroom shaped battleship portion that made up the forward most part of the ship had been blown away. The rest showed scorch marks on the heavy armor. The damaged structure of what had once been munitions storage and fire control areas protected by that armor could be seen clearly through the gaps.
“Buddy, can you verify the identity of that ship?”
“It’s Elizabeth. I could have told you that before we left.” Buddy had taken to using Greg’s voice. It wasn’t Greg’s current voice, which had grown gravely with age, but rather the voice Greg had used when he and Buddy had flown against the pirates.
“How did you know?”
“I heard the initial request for clearance. If that hot rock fighter jock you relieved hadn’t been such a bonehead, we would have been here already. And you wouldn’t have had to drag this panic stricken young lady all the way here to verify what I already knew,” Buddy sounded angry.
Aida, securely enclosed in the shell of the fire control displays, took a sharp breath.
Rachel paused. “Lieutenant, I am sure by now you have figured out that this ship is sentient.”
“Yes, Ma’am. I thought sentient ships were a fairy tale.”
Buddy laughed. “No dear, we’re not.”
Rachel said, “To the best of my knowledge there are only four sentient ships. Buddy here is one, our other Pirate Interdiction ship who goes by the name of Daisy is another. Our cargo ship, currently in dry dock…”
“And very angry he can’t be part of this,” Buddy interrupted.
“Goes by the name of Peter as in Peter Pan. He was the first. What you see in front of us is the fourth. Officially that is Federation Space Force Hospital Ship 28 Albert Schweitzer. Unofficially, that is Elizabeth named in honor of Queen Elizabeth of England. All four of these ships were sentient before the Federation asked us not to do that any more.”
“Elizabeth is calling.”
“Put her on speaker.”
“Rachel! I am so happy to see you!” Elizabeth was using the voice of one of the actresses who had portrayed the great Queen in the movies.
“That makes two of us! Have you uploaded your status to Buddy?”
“While you were explaining the facts of life to your dear Lieutenant, we were passing data.”
“Jump right to the bottom. Can you make the orbiting shipyard on your own power?”
“Yes, at one half light speed. But how will you explain a ship spending twenty years traveling on its own to this particular point in space without revealing my sentience?”
The complexity of the situation was beginning to dawn on Aida as she became less afraid and more amazed. “Excellent programmers,” she blurted out. “The Abrams family is known all over the system for their programming abilities. J T might have married into the family, but he’s a genius, too.”
“She’s a keeper,” Buddy enthused.
“Four years is plenty of time for them to have programmed an algorithm that would allow you to find your way home.” Rachel mused. “Dad did it to Buddy when he was still a non-sentient P I ship. No reason we couldn’t have done the same.”
“So what’s the plan, Captain?” Elizabeth asked.
“How much of your life support still works?”
“Only the hospital portion can hold an atmosphere. The hull has been breached in too many other areas to be safe.”
“What about the bridge?”
“Total vacuum. Some of the displays exploded when the pressure dropped.”
“Could I navigate from there in a flight suit? The new flight suits double as E V A suits. They can be used for work in a vacuum.”
“Yes.”
“What about provisions?”
“Too old to be safe.”
“Right. I’ll bring what I need. Buddy, please dock with Elizabeth.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“Lieutenant?”
“Captain?”
“After we dock, help me transfer the provisions to the other ship. Then you and Buddy find Daisy and Peter. Have them relay to the rest of the family what we now know. Tell my father we are coming in at half light speed.”
“Yes, Ma’am!”
“Alert the defense system that we are friendly and would appreciate an escort.”
After the transfer was complete, Rachel watched from the wreckage of what had once been her bridge as Buddy left to bring the help she would need if she was to resurrect this ship a second time. She did not need a view port or monitors to see the small warship depart. The gaping hole in the wall to the left of her command chair gave a clear view as the little ship diminished in the distance.
“Elizabeth, let’s go home.”
“Aye, Captain. We have much to talk about.”
“It is good to see you my friend. We do have quite a bit to talk about.”
“I don’t know if you already know this, but Stellar Interstellar Transport is the Third Force.”
“Are you sure?”
“While we were trying to kill each other, I monitored their transmissions. I learned
that the president of Stellar Interstellar was on the command ship. After I evacuated my crew, I went after their command ship thinking there was no way I would survive and at least this way some of my crew would have a chance. Did any of them survive?”
“One that I know of.”
“I knew the sentient small warships were already dead before I attacked the command ship. I took a lot of damage, but when I knew I had killed the control ship, I jumped directly to hyper to escape so I could bring you the news. I didn’t expect it to take twenty years to get here. Did any of the Stellar people survive?”
“None. When the Space Force arrived, they picked up a few of our people who were still alive, but I don’t know how many of them survived long enough to reach New St. Louis.”
“I did try to save my crew.”
“I know. No one can fault your actions. You thwarted what would have been a devastating attack on New St. Louis and put the Third Force out of action for years.”
“All because of a navigation error.”
“Yes. Chaos theory at its finest.”
“You know, had we been willing to reveal my sentience to the people who took me over, I would have corrected the error which I did spot. If I had corrected the error, I would have landed at New St. Louis and would have been transferring cargo when the attack would have happened. By not correcting the error, we happened to drop out of hyper in the middle of the formation and attack a major enemy force. Our sentient small fighter ships destroyed greater numbers of enemy ships than they would have if they had not been sentient, but they died just the same. For the past twenty years I have wondered whether being a sentient warship is a good thing or not.”
“I suspect we are about to find out.”
Rachel headed back into the ship to determine exactly how much of it would support life.
THIRD GENERATION - CHAPTER SEVEN
GREG HAD ASSEMBLED A SMALL FLEET at the spaceport and was preparing to depart when Buddy and Aida returned.
Aida and Buddy briefed Greg on what they had learned. Greg quickly changed the plan.
“Reuben, Rashi, go with Daisy and get a thorough assessment of the damage. Buddy, take Aida to Peter in dry dock at the shipyard. Download what Elizabeth gave you to Peter. The rest of us will meet you there. We will set up our command post on Peter’s bridge.”
Two days later, the entire extended family and friends who had been at the reception gathered in one of the shipyard’s larger conference rooms. A hundred people faced Greg as he started his briefing.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, the first thing we will have to do is put the Genie back in the bottle.”
Quizzical expressions were more prevalent than understanding ones. “It is important that as few people as possible know that Elizabeth survived the battle with the Third Force.”
Faye Anne stood. “It’s too late for that. A dozen spies have broken cover to get the word out that the ship is returning to our space. Secrecy is no longer an option. We must use disinformation.”
Greg took a deep breath. “Elizabeth probably knows who the Third Force is. When she arrives I hope she will tell us. It is possible that if the Third Force discovers that we know their identity, they will attack us here. They have never attacked us here. I do not wish to put this planet at risk of a Third Force attack.”
Greg paused again. “Therefore, as soon as Elizabeth arrives, we will move her to the third moon of the fourth planet in this system outside the asteroid belt. This is an airless moon, and we can park on the surface. It is large enough to have some gravity, but small enough that its gravity will not impede our work on the ship.”
“What explanation are you going to give for moving there?” Faye Anne asked.
“We can say that the ship is a derelict and unsafe to leave in populated space. We are moving it to someplace safe where we can evaluate the damage.”
Greg scanned the room to measure the reactions. The enormity and complexity of the situation was beginning to sink in.
“When Elizabeth arrives, we will hold her here just long enough for the spies to get their photographs. We will hold a press conference and publicly announce that the ship is a derelict damaged beyond repair. We will also announce that we will use the remaining parts of the ship for shipboard combat training exercises. In order to not tie up valuable shipyard space during the refit, we will be moving the ship to an undisclosed location while we make the modifications. This, of course, is all a smoke screen to mask our true intentions.”
Saul raised his hand. “Grandpa, if you aren’t really using the ship for training exercises, what are you doing with it?”
“Refitting it for its original mission as a combat worthy hospital ship,” Greg replied.
A collective gasp crossed the room.
Greg continued, “Only it won’t be a Federation ship. It will be an independent humanitarian operation unaffiliated with any political entity.”
J T stood. “Commodore Solomon, sir, do you realize how much this will cost?” Since his marriage to Mimi and the birth of their two children, J T had lost his stutter if only so he could get a word in edgewise in his very vocal family.
Greg paused before answering. “J T, this is a sentient being with more intelligence than any of us here in this room. This is not a horse we have to put down because it broke its leg. We have the same obligation to make it whole as we would any of the people in this room.”
“Sir, I disagree. This is a well programmed machine. It is not of itself sentient.” J T dug in his heels, which was something else he had learned from his wife.
Faye Anne interrupted, “Gentlemen, whether this is a well programmed machine that appears sentient or a truly sentient being is semantics. The fact is that we need this old ship working again. We know what caused the accident at the nuclear test facility that killed my father and husband. When we are securely on the ship, we will discuss what we found and what I think we should do about it.”
In the stunned silence that followed Faye Anne’s revelation, Saul raised his hand. He had clearly absorbed the implications of what Faye Anne had said. “Grandpa, if we are going to make this ship space worthy again, it will take a lot of money. I believe as a family we have the money, but all the money in the Federation won’t help without people. Where are we going to find enough workers to fix this ship that we can trust not to tell anyone what is really going on? Skilled combat personnel who can keep their mouths shut are hard to find.”
Avi broke her attention to her grandson long enough to shoot a quick glance at her husband and smile. Greg quickly grinned back. Moses had made his preference known that he was following his father to medicine, but Saul had just established his place as the prime warrior of the family’s third generation.
“We have all the skills we need right here in this room,” Avi replied. “Not everyone will work on the ship itself, of course. That is too dangerous for people who are not experienced working in space, but we will need people here to manage logistics and provide support.”
Abraham Abrams, Reuben and Rashi’s father and an acknowledged expert in spacecraft systems rested his hand on Greg’s shoulder. He touched the white board on the wall and started to draw. “We should start with an org chart until we have a better understanding of the ship’s condition.”
Chaos broke out immediately.
Elizabeth arrived accompanied by an escort of Eretz interceptors. An entire navy worth of pleasure craft and small ships watched the battered hulk make its way slowly to the orbiting shipyard.
Greg greeted the assembled members of the news media.
“Ladies and Gentlemen! Today’s meeting will be short because we do not have many answers. I will tell you what we do know. When we know more I will tell you. First let me introduce our attorney, David Shapiro, Esquire.”
David stood at the podium. “Legally, this ship is a derelict having been abandoned by its crew in battle. Under the rules of salvage, it may be claimed by the first person or legal entity that t
akes possession and properly establishes a claim. The ship is currently under the command of Captain Rachel Solomon Cohen. She is legally in possession of the ship. The claim has been registered with the Federation representatives here on Eretz. They have passed the claim to their superiors on Earth. There are precedents for this type of claim. I expect that the acknowledgment of the claim will be forthcoming without delay. Let me turn you back over to Commodore Solomon.”
“As you know, there are regulations regarding the qualifications necessary to own a spacecraft. Inasmuch as we currently own three spacecraft, our qualifications to own a fourth should not be an issue. However, until we determine the true condition of the ship, we are concerned that it could be a hazard here in the shipyard. Now that you have seen it and can attest to the severity of the battle damage it has sustained, we will move it to a safer location where we can properly determine what can be done with the ship. Are there any questions?”
“What restrictions are there on taking pictures of the ship?”
“I have no objections. I defer to the harbor master’s judgment.”
“What do you intend to do with the ship?”
“We don’t really know. We are thinking of a training facility of some kind. We need to see if the ship is safe. We may find that the damage is so severe we have to scrap it. None of the life support systems work. Anyone in the ship will need to stay in their space suit. Until we know for sure how bad the damage is, we won’t know what we can do, if anything.”
“Would you try to make it work for its previous mission as a hospital ship?”
Greg paused and smiled. “Grandma Rose would be proud of us if we did. I assure you that did cross my mind. I know that Rachel would love to have her old command back. Frankly, I don’t see that happening. What we already know of the damage makes that very unlikely.”
THIRD GENERATION - CHAPTER EIGHT
MAJOR EMERSON WINTHROP III reviewed the report from his spy on Eretz several times. He watched the ungainly, horrifically damaged warship pull away from the shipyard’s dock as he replayed the report over and over.
“They are coming to me,” he said half out loud. “They are coming, and I will be ready.”
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