Elvians (The Silver Ships Book 18)

by S. H. Jucha

  ELVIANS

  A Silver Ships Novel

  S. H. JUCHA

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by S. H. Jucha

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Published by Hannon Books, Inc.

  www.scottjucha.com

  ISBN: 978-1-7344707-2-7 (e-book)

  ISBN: 978-1-7344707-3-4 (softcover)

  First Edition: October 2020

  Cover Design: Damon Za

  Acknowledgments

  Elvians is the twenty-second novel in the interwoven series of The Silver Ships and Pyreans, which tell the stories of Earth colonists and the spread of humankind throughout a galaxy filled with alien races.

  I wish to extend a special thanks to my independent editor, Joni Wilson, whose efforts enabled the finished product. To my proofreaders, Abiola Streete, David Melvin, Ron Critchfield, Pat Bailey, Tiffany Crutchfield, and Gerry Hartman, I offer my sincere thanks for their support.

  Despite the assistance I’ve received from others, all errors are mine.

  Glossary

  A glossary is located at the end of the book.

  CONTENTS

  1: Stealthy Survey

  2: Seedlings

  3: Enticement

  4: Intrusion

  5: Deloy

  6: Core and Arches

  7: Interventions

  8: Unavailable

  9: Core’s Reps

  10: What Happened?

  11: Citizens

  12: Vyztram

  13: Z’s Search

  14: Conversations

  15: Interrupted Meeting

  16: Life Givers

  17: Waiting, Waiting

  18: Reset

  19: Reinforcements

  20: Compromise

  21: Time to Decide

  22: Adjustments

  23: Opportunity

  24: Two Waves

  25: Thirteen Drones

  26: Who’s in Charge?

  27: Reconstruction

  28: Projects

  29: Visitors’ Surprises

  30: Greetings, Vyztram

  31: Amazing World

  32: Various Sentients

  33: We Need One

  34: Sentient Females

  35: Transit Tripper

  36: Transfers

  37: Courtesies

  38: Goodbye; Greetings

  39: Agreement

  Glossary

  My Books

  The Author

  1: Stealthy Survey

  Genoa sent. She was the lead SADE of an Omnian scout ship, which surveyed the Ollassa system’s far belt.

  For the scouts, this was a return to the system of the flora symbionts, the Ollassa. During the first visit, Killian, Bethley, and Trium aboard the scout ship Vivian’s Mirror were interdicted by Ollassa warships, which necessitated an intervention by Alex’s fleet. The SADEs had named the system Vinium before they understood the local race’s term for themselves.

  Beryl added, who was the lead in a second scout.

  Then Linn, a third lead SADE reported,

  Julien shared with his audience aboard the city-ship Freedom.

  Alex Racine, the Omnian fleet’s co-leader asked.

  The SADEs’ pauses were atypical, and it didn’t bode well for the news. Beryl sent.

  Cordelia asked. She was the captain of the city-ship and a rear admiral, who held responsibility for fighting the Freedom and protecting the freighter fleet that accompanied the warships.

  Beryl and Genoa responded.

  Fleet Admiral Tatia Tachenko inquired.

  Genoa sent.

  Beryl added.

  Renée de Guirnon, the fleet’s co-leader, sent vehemently. The peaceful Ollassa held a special place in her heart.

  Alex sent gently and privately to his partner.

  Renée blew out a harsh breath. she replied. This wasn’t the time to inject her anger into the discussion.

  Cordelia supplied images to the city-ship’s holo-vid. The scouts had captured telemetry of the vehicles involved in the mining and processing operations.

  Z commented. He was a SADE and Renée’s protector.

  Cordelia, who was the fleet’s premier imagery artist, used Z’s observation to break up the gigantic machines that crawled across the asteroids’ surfaces.

  Miranda purred. She was Z’s partner, and she, like the others, had watched Cordelia dissociate the machines and find multiple common elements.

  Franz Cohen, the fleet’s fighter rear admiral, commented.

  Alex commented.

  Julien sent. Then he connected to Beryl’s controller and directed the telemetry input. he sent.

  The holo-vid displayed the passing marks of a monstrous machine. Julien adjusted the input, and the tracks led to an intricate structure, which had been scooping frozen gases, processing them, and offloading compressed blocks of purified material. However, it was no longer moving.

  Z commented.

  Vice Admiral Reiko Shimada suggested.

  Cordelia interjected.

  Thoughts of Artifice shot through the minds of those on the bridge.

  Julien asked.

  The bridge audience watched a new conveyance unit role out from a pile of spares. Using a combination of wheels and treads, the spare drove around to the front of the disabled machine. Then the upper section of the machine rolled forward to combine with the spare. Then it traveled onward,
continuing to mine and process resources.

  Another machine hurried to the disabled section and began diagnosing the problem by attaching sensor lines to connections available on the side of the unit.

  Z commented.

  Tatia asked, seeking confirmation of the SADEs’ earlier assumption. was what she heard from Julien, who’d handled the SADEs’ opinions.

  Tatia found the lack of information frustrating. Something had destroyed Ollassa warships before any damage could be done to the mining sites.

  Tatia surmised.

  Alex replaced the holo-vid imagery with that of the invaders’ ship. Unlike the system probe, which hadn’t been able to supply information on the monstrous ship’s size, the scouts provided detailed telemetry.

  Humans’ implants absorbed what the SADEs already knew. The huge ship possessed a central element four times the diameter of the Freedom. In addition, while a city-ship was ovoid, the invaders’ ship was a globe, of sorts. It wasn’t a solid sphere. Rather, there was a solid mass that comprised the center. A long buttress extended from the globe to provide a mount for multiple engines. Then enormous loops sprouted from the top of the globe and met at its bottom. Along the loops’ lengths, thin connectors linked the loops with the central mass. Tiny pinpoints of light shone along the loops, indicating residences.

  Renée commented sarcastically.

  Alex began pacing, and the audience made room for him.

  Julien offered.

  Tatia added.

  Cordelia said.

  Franz reasoned.

  Reiko agreed.

  Julien asked.

  Tatia warned, and she shifted the display.

  Several small transports had exited the bottom of the invaders’ ship and laid on courses for various excavation sites.

  Z commented in anticipation.

  The audience waited and watched as the transports neared various areas of the belt.

  Cordelia selected telemetry from Genoa’s ship that gave humans a good view of an asteroid that had accumulated blocks of frozen gases. Each block was a one-meter cube.

  A transport came to a halt overtop the stack of cubes at a distance of about one hundred meters.

  A compact machine raced out from the reserves. At the site of the frozen blocks, it unfolded until it resembled a crane, with its length bent in two. Then it gripped the uppermost block, made a slight adjustment to its position, and extended the crane arm with a snap.

  The block was launched at the transport’s bottom. It sailed upward, crossing the hundred meters, and disappeared into the transport.

  There were a few moments of the audience’s stunned silence, while the crane machine neatly and accurately delivered every block to the transport. When the operation was complete, the crane returned to its compact shape and hurried back to the pile of reserve equipment. Then the transport sailed on to the next asteroid.

  Alex had halted his pacing to stare at the holo-vid’s display of the transport’s collection of resources. A cold feeling swept up his spine. In his years, there hadn’t been a contact like this. A technologically superior race was collecting resources from a foreign system, effectively repelling resistance, and going about its business. While the hubris was galling, the potential for a calamitous encounter was more than significant.

  Alex sent quietly.

  The slow response indicated to Alex that the phrase indicate to them was too vague for the SADEs. It was understandable, considering the Ollassa communicated via ultrasonic frequencies that emanated from their blooms. Ship-to-ship communications for the Ollassa involved comm systems that could pick up, transmit, and broadcast the waves from the blooms.

  Alex sent, knowing that was another phrase that the SADEs would have to interpret.

  The bridge audience could hear an imitation of a human snicker. Its pitch perfect tones indicated a SADE was the source, and the comm ID identified it as emanating from Killian, the lead SADE of the fourth scout.

  Killian sent.

  Miranda enthused.

  Killian had taken Julien’s records from the Freedom. They were data files containing the SADEs’ first-contact experiences with the Ollassa. Julien had used a portable holo-vid to facilitate conversations. The holo-vid could emanate the ultrasonic frequencies that an Ollassa’s bloom could perceive. Miranda and Z had assisted in compiling the language translation.

  Now, Killian proposed using that same database to originate messages to the Ollassa ships. The SADEs would feed their communications to the sensors on the scouts’ shells, which would broadcast in frequencies the Ollassa could recognize.

  Alex’s deep chuckle resonated in the chests of the other humans, and Killian’s emotional algorithms rose in hierarchy.

  Alex sent.

  Killian sent.

  Tatia sent.

  Killian replied.

  Cordelia sent.

  Cordelia received affirmatives. Then the scouts dropped off the conference call.

  Alex frowned at Killian’s odd quip, but he noticed Renée smiling to herself. It pleased him to see that Killian had managed to divert her anger.

  Alex sent privately.

  Renée reached out and slid a hand into Alex’s. It was an apology for her earlier outburst. Then she sent,

  Alex received a link. A quick perusal of the data file revealed a black-and-white vid of a man adorned in an ancient costume. He was dressed entirely in black, which included his wide-brimmed hat. A belt with a holster held a weapon. Alex stored the link to view the file later.

  Turning to the inti
mate group, Cordelia shifted to voice and said, “I assume that the fleet holds its present station.”

  “Absolutely,” Alex replied.

  The manner in which Alex responded to Cordelia made the other humans nervous.

  “What’s wrong?” Renée asked gently. It was the question that everyone wanted to ask Alex.

  “It’s the combination of sophistication, obviously AI-origination, firepower, and indifference to confiscating systems’ resources that makes this race extremely dangerous,” Alex replied. “We’ve got to be careful in our approach to them. One misstep might result in a battle that sees our forces destroyed.”

  Franz let out a long, soft whistle. “We faced the huge swath of Artifice’s drone fighters at the system near the wall, and they nearly overwhelmed us,” he said. He had memories of his fighter’s remains tethered and hauled aboard a Trident. He’d ordered the chief to be careful about recovering the sister, who had been Miriamelle, in his craft.

  “I wonder how many fighters could reside aboard that ship,” Reiko mused.

  It wasn’t a question, but that didn’t mean the SADEs didn’t begin calculating the interior space of the ship’s central volume in an effort to provide an answer.

  “What’s the plan?” Tatia asked.

  That was the question that Alex knew was coming. He regarded Tatia and slowly shook his head. “Don’t have an answer, at this moment,” he said. “My first concern is to ensure that the Ollassa don’t send any more warships against this enemy. It’s obvious that the home forces are outmatched. After that, we need to devise a means to learn about these adversaries without exposing our forces.”

  “Every race has weaknesses,” Julien announced. “In time, they’ll be revealed.”

  “Of that, I’ve no doubt,” Alex replied. “We have to ask ourselves how much time we have before the race in that ship believes we’re an impediment to their resource collection and chooses to do something about it.”

  “Something to keep in mind, Alex,” Franz said, “is that the invaders’ fighters crossed the dark to interdict the Ollassa ships, engaged in battle, and then returned across hundreds of thousands of kilometers of space. Our travelers can’t engage those fighters unless we lure them system inward like we did Artifice’s drones.”