Exiles

by Richard Alonzo

  Chapter 5 Secrets

  They deactivated the cloaking field as they swung around the dark side of the moon and into its sensor shadow. Jay peeled away to give them both more room for manoeuvre amid the collection of salvaged hulks, still in various states of repair from the battle of the three fleets or yet to be broken up for salvage. The moon itself was a high-tech forgery. A hollow ball that concealed a vast shipbuilding complex, that like Gaia and the Ark, had been left behind by the ancients.

  Lucky weaved carefully through the shipbuilding minefield, adjusting speed and course to compensate for the Phoenix's all too frequent proximity alarms. She cast a brief sidelong glance at Ford as they banked sharply to the right to dodge a large wormhole generator waiting to be reattached to a partially rebuilt battleship.

  “You know it’s only a matter of time before one of these work crews grasses us up and lets the planet know we're hiding up here.”

  “We’ll be long gone before that happens.” Ford reassured her. “Now see that capital class carrier off to our right? Swing us around that and let’s take a look at what’s behind it.”

  He gesture to one of the Vesperon ships the Fury had split in two with its Armageddon Array four years ago. Vaporising its reactor cores, shattering its fighter decks, and venting the crew into space. A huge construction collar hung around the ship stapling the two half’s back together. Hundreds of suited figures stung out around it and along the hull, as the collar rotated slowly around the ship. One full rotation every twenty-four hours, heating, melting, moulding the hull, suturing and sealing the wound to make the ship whole again. The back of the rear hull section had been opened up to space. It‘s eight massive engines, mounted in a three, two, three, configuration, removed and parked in a gigantic, shielded, zero-g scaffold to contain any residual radiation. A small fleet of tugs were delicately aligning the reactor cores from two shattered Haldyne batter cruisers. In preparation to slide them slowly into guide rails that would carry them into the reconstructed reactor housings that had been rebuilt deep inside the Vesperon ship.

  “I think they’ve got more important things to worry about, don’t you? Besides you’d have to be pretty stupid to start a shooting match in the middle of this.”

  “Well if there’s one thing being Head of Security has taught me, it’s never too under estimate the stupidity of anyone, especially your superior officers.” Bryson interjected unbuckling himself from his seat and standing between them in the cockpit.

  They contoured along the side of the ship past the collar and towards it's muscular, heavily armoured, prow. As they swept around the reinforced and fortified bridge they could see that its former name and Vesperon insignia had been obliterated and it had been given a new name, 'Liberator', alongside the marker of the Free Forces of Anobar. A simple black and white representation of the planet they’d called home inside a white triangle. The corners of which had each been intersected by a thin white line, to form three smaller triangles inside the larger one, each containing a single capital letter. The apex contained an A the lower two corners F’s.

  As they swung around the far side of the Liberator, something all together more awe inspiring grabbed their attention. A vessel unlike any other they’d seen before, hidden behind the hulking, muscular mass, of brute force the former Vesperon vessel represented.

  A thing of unmatched beauty, its seamless, shimmering golden skin, flowed in long elegant organic lines around its superstructure, as it hung motionless above the moon that had spawned it. A princess amongst paupers, beside whom all the other hulks around it looked crass and clumsy by comparison. It was as if the other ships had been designed in a kindergarten where as this had been conceived and sculpted by a true artist. Shaped like a giant elongated teardrop the widest, deepest point, forming the rear, housed five massive engines in a pyramidal formation. A slight bulge near the rounded apex of the teardrop appeared to indicate where the bridge was housed. Although it was impossible to be certain as the skin of the ship appeared to ripple periodically like a flexing muscle. Reconfiguring what they thought or imagined were barely discernible gun ports, weapon mounts and sensor arrays, dotted across the ship’s hull, into seemingly random, constantly changing patterns, as they watched.

  “It’s beautiful, just beautiful. What’s it called?” said Lucy quietly in an awe struck voice, as she brought the Phoenix to halt in front of it. Jay’s fighter hovering beside them at a discrete distance.

  Ford pushed his eponymous silver rimmed antique spectacles up onto his forehead his deep blue eyes twinkling mischievously. “It most certainly is, it most certainly is, although you haven’t seen the half of it yet, just wait till you see what she’s like on the inside. We’ve called her Themis.”

  Bryson cocked his head to one side, raised an eyebrow and stared him in the eye as the others tried to crowd into the cockpit for a better view. “Whose we?”

  “The ‘we’ I referred to is Gaia and me and we’ve agreed to call her Themis because she was one of Gaia’s children in ancient earth mythology. The goddess of divine law and mother of justice.”

  “Works for me.” said Bryn from the back of the cockpit. “So are we going aboard or not?”

  Ford dropped his spectacles back onto his nose and opened a channel to Jay. “Jay We’re about to engage the docking web care to join us?”

  “It would be a pleasure sir, see you in the docking bay.”

  “I hope this ship of yours has got a brig, because that’s where he going when I get my hands on him.” Lucy muttered under her breath as she relinquished control of the Phoenix’s to the Themis docking web.

  They slid silently under the smooth golden belly of the ship, dwarfed by its massive bulk. Just as it looked like they were about to hit the hull, its golden skin shimmered and shifted to reveal an opening that swallowed them up, before closing behind them in the blink of an eye. Docking clamps attached the vessels to a section of hanger floor, suspended over the opening that had engulfed them, before it was lifted smoothly upwards and locked into place on the main hangar deck forming a hermetic seal.

  “The hanger decks pressurised.” said Lucy making one final check of her instruments before powering down the Phoenix and unbuckling herself from the pilot’s seat.

  Ford opened the cabin door and jumped down on to the immaculate, unblemished, hangar deck of the Themis. He strode purposefully across the short space that separated the Phoenix from where Jay was climbing out his Mark III Rapier class fighter. Ford waited for him to step down onto the deck and disengage his helmet. He studied the fresh faced young pilot, a couple of years her junior, he could have been Lucy’s younger brother. Which told him at once all he needed to know about their stormy relationship. He had the same brown hair and blue eyes coupled with a slender, yet powerful, athletic build to his wiry frame. The same rebellious fire burned in the back of his eyes. Ford smiled and held out a hand. He grabbed it and shook it firmly. It was a strong, confident grip, one of which Ford and for that matter Gaia approved of.

  “Welcome aboard Jay, I hope you’re going to stay and join the crew.”

  Jay released his hand looking over Ford's shoulder to catch Lucy scowling at him menacingly. “With all due respect sir I don’t think that’s a view shared by your entire crew.”

  Ford put his arm around his shoulder and turned around to lead him back towards the rest of the group. “Lucy? She’s fine once you get to know her and something tells me you two will get on like a house on fire. Just remind me not to get between the two of you when you decide to burn it down.”

  Jay nodded nervously. “She not really going to put me in the brig is she?”

  Ford winked at him and tapped the side of his nose knowingly “Don’t worry, I’ll put in a good word for you, and see what I can do.”

  Ford turned his attention to the small band of friends and comrades standing beside the Phoenix “Ladies and gentlemen say hello to the latest edition to our merry band, Jay the finest pilot this side of t
he Sol system.” Lucy folded her arms and glared at him. “I mean of course the second finest pilot this side of the Sol system, Jay.”

  There was much back-slapping and hand shaking apart from Lucy who stood aloof from the proceedings. Ford put his arm around her shoulder. “Give the kid a break he’s cute on you, you know.”

  She shrugged his arm off her. “Doesn’t matter, it against all protocols for an instructor or superior officer to have any emotional involvement with a crew member.”

  “Not on my ship.” said Ford. “If we don’t have the freedom to express our emotions, the feelings that make us human, then what the hell are we fighting for? We might as well be dead.”

  “How about survival?” she replied coldly. “And that’s the problem isn’t it? If we let our feelings for each other get in the way of doing our jobs, let our emotions and concern for each other cloud our judgement, we won’t survive. Not me, not him, not anybody and I don’t want that on my conscience.”

  “Well I guess you’re going to have to work that one for yourself, but I won’t stand in yours or anybody else’s way of happiness with petty regulations.”

  He turned to the rest of them and pointed to a technician in green overalls, who’d appeared unnoticed on the deck behind them. “Okay everybody Arty here is going to show you to your quarters, assuming your coming along for the ride of course, so you can freshen up. I‘ll see you all on the bridge in twenty minutes. If any of you manage to get lost along the way, I’ve instructed the ships AI’s to guide you, just look for the blue arrows and follow them.”

  He watched Arty escort them off the hangar deck, then, checking he still got Ocoto’s package tucked safely inside his cloak, made his way to the captain’s ready room located behind just the Bridge.