"Don't get into too much trouble, and take good care of the crewmembers who don't want to go with me. I'm pretty sure Ute could use a pond in her quarters, but she'll be too polite to ask."
"I'll make sure she gets your quarters," Jake teased.
"Oh, and do I have to call you guys Founder Admiral Mom and Founder Admiral Dad now?" she teased.
"No, actually. That's sort of like saying; Admiral Admiral Valent, since the military title of Warrior Founder is synonymous with admiral in my culture. We only use Founder and Admiral together when we want to say that they rank in the Nafalli part of the fleet and the rest of Haven Fleet," Nimeen explained.
"I don't think she was serious," Ayan explained.
"Oh. I don't always understand sarcasm, my tribe's not good at it."
"Seriously, it's about time you guys were at the head of this thing," Alice said, looking at Ayan, Oz and Jake. "I can't wait to get back and see what you do together."
"Thank you, Alice," Oz said with a nod.
"Wish me luck. Now, go pretend we just had a brutal argument, round up a few of your crew and run off in the Clever Dream. We're crafting high end scuttlebutt here."
"Yes, Father," Alice replied with a crooked grin and a sigh.
"Oh, do I get to be angry too?" Iruuk asked as they turned towards the door.
"Sure, why not?"
Iruuk growled, his head low, hands balled into fists as he stomped out of the room and down the hall beside Alice.
Thirty-Five
Trimming
* * *
The round seating in the habitation section of the Clever Dream was filled with the crew that Alice felt she was still just getting to know. They were curious and concerned about her well-being. Jessen, who hadn't spoken to her since she objected to having an empathic captain, was being ruled by guilt, which Knud shared even though he had no reason to.
Ute was more difficult to read, but for the first time Alice could sense the small Mergillian. There was a mixture of hope and sadness, less so the latter. The Nafalli were easy to read. Woone, Noro and Krooke were getting impatient, probably wishing they could get a mission off ship soon but they were also concerned like Faloo, Callum and Yawen. Theodore was a blank as always to Alice, but he sat down around the table at the rear of the Clever Dream with everyone but Iruuk, who stood beside Alice.
"I'm sorry for everything I put you through while I was recovering. I took on more than I can handle, made a mistake or two, and suffered the consequences, but it's not fair that you had to suffer with me," Alice said. It was an apology she composed over the last few days between sessions with Quan and time hanging out with Theodore, Yawen or Iruuk.
"Never you mind," Faloo said first.
"It's all right," Woone offered, the rest of the Nafalli nodding with her.
"No harm done," Callum offered. "Well, except for Ute, maybe."
"No, what happened to me wasn't harm," Ute said, her voice squeaking. "I'm going to have my first…"
"I think they call them tadpoles in English," Theodore whispered.
"Tadpoles, thank you Theo," Ute said. "And I'll spend the next year taking care of them while I tell the stories about what I've seen, done and where I've been. Well, to anyone with clearance, anyway. I'll be returning to my people as a hero explorer, the first to visit another dimension among other things. The adventures I've had will provide days of storytelling, and I'll be called on to tell them over and over again. It's such an honour. I have nothing but gratitude for you."
"Well, I stand corrected," Callum chuckled.
Alice wished Ute was staying aboard, but was happy to see and feel that she was overjoyed. "Good, well, I hope you keep in touch," Alice said. "I'm leaving in a few minutes, so you'll be staying aboard the Merciless. I'm taking the Clever Dream out on personal business. It could take a few days, it could be for a few years."
"Oh, I didn't expect to say goodbye so soon," Ute said sadly. She stepped forward and Alice leaned down so she could hug the best pilot, and one of the kindest people she'd ever met. "Good luck, Alice. I will call you, you know that. You can navigate through a field few understand, an emotional one. Trust yourself and don't be afraid to use all your talents."
"Thank you, Ute," Alice said. "I hope you and your children stay safe and happy."
Ute went around the two-tiered seating saying her goodbyes and dispensing hugs to everyone who wanted one. Meanwhile, Jessen approached Alice quietly, Knud was right behind her. "This trip could get us black marks on our record if it goes wrong?" Jessen asked.
"No. I'm your Captain, I'll be fully accountable. Don't break regulations on your own and follow orders, and you'll be fine," Alice replied quietly. She was surprised to feel the disbelief in Jessen and tried to turn her empathic ability off, but it wasn't happening.
"This has nothing to do with you being an empath," Jessen said, but it was a lie, Alice could feel it. "But I'm going to stay aboard the Merciless. I think I know what this mission is. Noah deserted, you're going after him."
"You're right," Alice replied. "You shouldn't be here then."
Jessen nodded. "My things are already off the Clever Dream. Good luck, Alice." She walked past her Captain into the hallway beyond and was half way to the small lift that would take her to the main ramp leading off the ship when she stopped and looked at Knud. "Are you coming?"
Knud looked at her, then Alice, and finally back to Jessen. There was a rigidity and a feeling of doing the right thing when he said; "I'll see you when our paths cross again. Good luck, Jessen."
After a moment's hesitation, Jessen continued towards the lift. The hurt Alice felt in her was deep. That was mirrored to a lesser degree in Knud, who took consolation in feeling he was doing the right thing. "I'm sorry," Alice said quietly to Knud.
Knud only nodded and sat back down beside Krooke, who was adjusting his goggles after hugging Ute. The Mergillian turned to Alice, gave her one more brief embrace and left with a wave over her shoulder. "Um, she forgot to clear her quarters out," Callum said. "I mean, I don’t want to see her go either, but she should have her stuff."
"I'll do it before we leave and make sure someone gets her things to her," Faloo said.
"So, all of you are staying?" Theodore asked.
Nods and short statements of confirmation followed and Alice was surprised. Faith in her crew wasn't in question, but she thought there would be at least a couple more taking their leave. She looked around the circular room at Callum, Knud, Yawen and Krooke who were on the lower tier of the sofa. They were confident in her, ready to hear about what was coming next. Woone, Faloo, and Noro lounged on the upper tier with growing eagerness that didn't show on the surface at all. They relaxed in place like they were watching a holomovie. If it weren't for her gift, Alice would have completely misread them, missing their internal excitement at the prospect of going along with their Captain's personal adventure. "So, uh, where are we going?" Noro asked.
"Ute and Jessen are off the ship," Lewis said over the ship wide audio system. "Would you like me to activate security lockdown while you give us the details?"
"Go ahead," Alice replied as she checked her com-con for Noah's destination.
* * *
SOLAR SYSTEM: DOXAN
PLANET: DOXAN III
SETTLEMENT: THESS CITY
PRIMARY INDUSTRIES: MINING [FMR], BIO CULTIVATION [FMR], MILITARY MANPOWER DEVELOPMENT [FMR]
* * *
"All those industries are marked as defunct," Woone pointed out. "It sounds like a hole."
"It probably is," Callum said. "But you know what they say at the academy;" He, Yawen and Knud said the last together; "Save your questions until the end."
The image that came up of Thess City was so dark that she thought it was taken at night, but the details revealed that the sun was high in the sky. Some of the tall buildings were almost finished but work was abandoned, most of the others in the city were blackened, even the tall environment processing towers near the
centre of the vast metropolis. She looked to Theodore then, who smiled at her a little. "Is this one of the destinations the Order thought Mary might have in mind?"
"One of ninety-one, yes," Theodore replied in a whisper. "I would put the chances of Mary Reed being there at four-point two percent, rounding up. Those are good odds for someone who moves around so much."
"Can you review all the files on Thess and correct me if anything in my briefing is wrong?" Alice asked in a whisper.
"If you haven't reviewed the details regarding our destination, the chances of you being wrong about it are very high. Why don't I do the briefing?"
"I won't be talking about it much," Alice replied, turning back to the rest of her crew. "We're going to the Doxan System. Everything is settled here, the Pelican is safe along with as many people as the Fleet could save."
"And the Order of Eden didn't fire a shot," Callum said. "That's strange, right?"
"Yeah, unless there was something holding them back. At the same time, we haven't interfered with the work on the Lance, the battlecruiser they're refitting in the system, either. Whoever's in charge doesn't think the same way as the rest of the Order's leadership. Anyway, we're leaving," Alice said. "We came here with the best intentions and I screwed it up. The political and ecological fallout will last decades, and I can't be sorry enough for how badly I represented this ship or you as a crew. Your names will be attached to mine when people review what happened here, no matter what I do or say. That's why I want to give you one more chance to leave before I make another big mistake, even though I think I'm about to do the right thing."
"We're not goin anywhere," Yawen said as Callum and most of the crew nodded. "You're stuck with us."
"Okay. Before the Merciless and Rassaaga leave the area, we're going our own way. The Admiralty is having a shakeup that started early this morning," Alice started to say, aware that she was about to present the truth in her own way so she could avoid lying to her crew at all. They could keep secrets, they were smart enough to see why her mission wasn't entirely misguided, and she trusted them. The last thing she wanted to do was lie. "My Father and Oz, I mean, Commodore Terry Ozark McPatrick, have been promoted, skipping the rank of Rear Admiral and going straight to the top. The Nafalli have recognized them officially as well, making them two of three human Admirals with confirmed rank on all sides of the fleet. That affects us right now because they don't approve of a secret mission that Noah Lucas was sent on."
"Oh, so he didn't defect?" Noro asked. "I heard he defected this morning, I have a second cousin on the Triton," he explained to everyone else.
"He pretended to. It's a little complicated, but the important part is that we're going after him. I just found out he's on his way to Thess, a city in the Doxan System that has been mined out, cultivated until it was dead, and was once used for military training and testing. Now it looks like most people have abandoned it, and they don't have any affiliation."
"That is all correct," Theodore said proudly.
"I hope he's well-armed," Yawen said.
"He's flying a new Clever Class Corvette that he's named the Corsair. The cloaking and spoof systems are better than the type installed on the Clever Dream."
"Really?" Lewis asked. "These were just installed, and I've kept the firmware up to date. His are better?"
"Not by much," Alice replied reassuringly.
"Keep in mind, newer isn't always better. Maybe you just meant to say they were newer?" Lewis asked.
"Maybe," Alice replied, rolling her eyes.
"I saw that," Lewis said. "Rolling your eyes at me, bah! If I had eyes to roll, I'd roll them at you too, but…"
"Lewis," Alice interrupted. "Can I finish this?"
"Oh, right. Go on."
"The Corsair isn't set up the same as this ship, it has fighter launch systems and an extended fabrication bay. His original mission was to pretend to be an arms dealer who broke away from Haven Fleet so he could meet leaders from organizations who the Fleet may want to recruit in the future. We're going to rendezvous with him, make sure he's safe, the technology he has is secure and then join his mission. We'll make contact with Command shortly after."
"So, we're not actually following you on a personal mission?" Woone asked, a little disappointed.
"That was what I wanted anyone leaving the crew to believe, because this mission is classified. The new leadership wants it to look like we took off on our own."
"In case they think that mission could use two ships and more excellent crewmembers," Callum added. "That's how I see this going."
"That's a possibility," Alice confirmed. "That's why I don't know how long this mission will take."
"We could be out there for years, dealing with the criminal element," Woone said with excitement, "selling weapons to the highest bidders, separating the scumbags from the rebels."
"Or we could pick up Noah and tow his ship back to the Fleet," Faloo said with a shrug.
"You are so boring," Woone told her, disappointed. "I can't… it's just… so boring!"
Faloo and most of the crew laughed. To Alice it felt like a weight had been lifted off all their shoulders. "All right," she said as it petered out. "We're leaving in ten minutes, so let's get through the ship checklist. If you left anything on the Merciless, tell Theo and he'll note it in the log so you get it back next time we link up with the fleet."
Thirty-Six
Death
* * *
It was easy to grow complacent when you were flying something that could hide in plain sight. That was one of Minh-Chu's fears when he discovered that the new Uriel fighters had cloaking systems. Mastering them was easy as long as you were used to looking through checklists, and his pilots were. Even still, he didn't want any of his pilots to grow accustomed to cloaking systems. That was a technological race that cost the loser dearly every time.
Only five people knew about his mission. It was a full test of the cloaking fields. His fighter was outfitted with a bigger power reserve for his shields instead of a jump drive and there was an indent along the bottom where he carried a piece of technology that he wrote one simple word on in white grease pencil: DEATH.
It was a modified Hammerhead Torpedo. It had its own stealth systems but they worked with the Uriel fighter's to make a seamless field around it and his ship. The torpedo had internal shielding that hid the large antimatter reservoir and the system that generated the stuff. If he wasn't sure that the cloaking system hid that and everything else better than anything they had in the fleet, he wouldn't have let anyone launch with the payload or get near the Order of Eden Super Cruiser called the Lance. It was the best cloaking system the fleet had according to all but the most important test, the last one. The one he was flying.
The Merciless, Pelican and Rassaaga were allowed to run rescue operations near Nuaji, but they knew they were being watched. There was no doubt. Jake and Minh agreed: The Order were trying to see whatever they could as the rescues went on. There were scan waves, evidence of highly sensitive detectors a few hundred thousand kilometres away from the planet, a scan array functioning on the Lance, and who knew what else. It was easy to destroy the detectors, a simple long range shot took them out, they were disposable tech. The array aboard the Lance was becoming a problem, though. It had heavy defences and its range was growing every few hours. He was also asking himself if the unspoken truce was their way of seeing how close they could get a ship to the Merciless or Pelican without being detected? A shiver ran down Minh-Chu's spine and he turned his attention back to the matter at hand. His tactical scanner still showed only four destroyers around the Lance, his kilometre-long target. Its outboard systems were fortified, heavy armour plating was still being placed between them, and the launch bays had the same new shield technology that Haven Fleet was installing. Its scanners pulsed three hundred times a second. The stealth systems on his fighter made it look like they weren't there at all, judging from the lack of response from the Cruiser's perimeter guns
. He glanced at his relative distance indicator as he closed to within thirty thousand kilometres.
"You're clear so far, Ronin," Jake said. He was on the bridge of the Merciless, probably in that classic pose where he was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, fingers knitted together as he watched his tactical hologram. He most likely didn't realize he was doing it anymore. "You can drop the torpedo any time now."
Ronin looked at the ship, it looked large, but he knew it was still quite far away, over twenty-five thousand kilometres. He couldn't respond to Jake, it might be enough to break his stealthy approach. His communications systems were muted, so nothing he said would be broadcast, but he answered anyway; "Up to one litre of liquid anti-hydrogen. I bet that would make a huge mess of that thing, but I want to make it gone, and to finish testing these cloaking systems. They're our best, so I'm going to get close enough for their collision alert scanners to hit them. Let's see how good they really are."
The throttle was set perfectly, he was moving at the right relative speed to maintain his cloak, not too fast, and not too slow. Normally that didn't matter much, there was a wide margin, but the collision scanners near the Lance's hull were many times more sensitive than its normal combat scanners. They were made to fine tune the aim of the countermeasure systems so rapid-fire weapons could destroy missiles, meteorites, even small projectiles an instant before they struck the hull. It was an old system, but a good way to have redundant scanners built into a ship. He closed to within ten thousand kilometres of the Lance. At two thousand he'd be close enough for the collision scanners to test his cloak. That was when he'd deliver Death, too. There would be nothing they could do about it. If he detonated it at his current distance, most of the Lance would be destroyed. The display of his fighter in the lower left of his HUD drew Minh-Chu's attention. He got a bad feeling and shook his head, returning his attention to his instruments. Almost five thousand kilometres away. He couldn't shake the feeling of dread creeping up on him. It wasn't his cloaking systems that made him wary, it was that thing strapped to the bottom of his fighter. Death. "I don't trust it," he breathed to himself. The math of dropping it within two thousand kilometres of the enemy ship, passing over the Lance, then having it go off behind him precious seconds later added up fine in Minh-Chu's head. There would be enough time to get clear of the worst of the explosion, his shields would protect him from the rest easily, but he still didn't trust it, so he dropped the torpedo and sent it on its way. "Lost my nerve at three thousand, three hundred and twenty-four klicks. We'll let the torpedo test those scanners."
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