by Michael Orr
Madam Durra beamed up at DeVonne, but her joy dimmed at the tear rolling down DeVonne’s cheek. She collected herself and turned back to Trisha, perhaps for DeVonne’s sake.
“Would you like ta learn how t’dance, Trisha?” She leaned in, making sure DeVonne could hear everything. “Really dance?”
The little girl’s grip tightened and she shot urgent eyes up at DeVonne, who was just wiping her cheek.
She smiled for Trisha’s sake and aimed her eyes back to Renée. The girl followed suit, trembles racing through her grip. DeVonne had never felt this from her before. Sheer exhilaration.
It lasted only long enough for the girl to take Renée’s hand, and Madam Durra straightened up as much as the toddler’s reach allowed.
“Come in, sweetheart,” she said to DeVonne, who shook her head, fighting back the flood.
“Please...” The woman laid a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t go like this.”
BOOK III
* * *
12
* * *
EARTH ORBIT – MAY 7, 2368
This was a red-letter day. Commander Viktor Ionescu sat at the controls of a shuttle, ferrying himself up to his new ship.
However much he appreciated skippering a corvette, those days were done. The third full stripe on his sleeve saw to that. No longer a junior skipper still proving himself, he’d finally earned a frigate. A journeyman command. Now, he could settle in and just keep going.
“Lancet Actual, this’z command shuttle Visconset bearing Commander Ionescu. Requesting a boarding vector.”
#Acknowledged. Pattern is clear and you’re approved to land starboard, pad Two. Welcome home, Captain.#
It was unusual for a skipper to fly himself out to his own new command, but Viktor wanted this particular shuttle in his inventory, and he sensed his new commodore would look the other way.
His lowside approach gave him an opp to inspect Lancet’s belly. After five years, he was so used to corvettes that a frigate struck him as foreign. His eyes sparkled at the sight of her...the rugged, industrial lines and all the hull clutter.
Lancet was sturdy and a hundred percent military. Battle was the only aesthetic for a frigate; and if you liked that kind of thing, it was exactly what you expected from a warship (only fools would call an EarthFleet frigate anything else). Vik could’ve popped like a cork for all the fizz in his belly.
“One-point-six kilometers, stem to stern,” he recited the specs. “One old-world mile.”
Now broadside to Lancet, he nosed left toward the glowing bay that tunneled through every frigate’s midships. As with any arrival, the bay’s triple-layer enviroshields crackled around his shuttle when he passed into the ship’s atmosphere. Then he was down, settled on pad 2 right at the foot of the gaping 8-story maw that yawned open to space.
He stood in the shuttle’s open hatch and saluted the OOD. “Permission t’come aboard.”
“Permission granted.” The sublieutenant stepped back in deference. “Welcome home, Captain.”
Viktor stepped down onto the bay’s glossy black deck and breathed in the manufactured air. His air. From a military perspective, he owned this vessel.
“Mister Gambala’s coming, sir. He was called to Engineering on the way or he’d’a been here t’meet you in person.”
“Not a problem, Lieutenannnt...?”
Yost, sir. I’m the flight line coordinator. First-shift.”
“Sounds good, Mister Yost. Carry on.”
Now that he was finally here, the moment shifted from thrill to gratification. There would be no loftier command beyond this. Cruiser command fell to a different career track, so Viktor Ionescu knew himself to be squarely at the pinnacle of his career.
This and everything that had come before was exactly what he’d signed up for, and exactly what those two lieutenants promised in that pub almost two decades ago. He’d been recruited just like Jonnar said, and he was damn glad of it.
Best decision of my life, he smiled, strolling unhurriedly across the bay and acknowledging salutes from deckhands. It gave his absent exec time to catch up with him, which made no difference to Vik, but might to the guy who’d be his right hand.
“Captain...”
Speak a’the devil...
“My apologies, sir. I had–”
“s’Fine, Mister Gambala.” Vik waved away the concerns as he took a mental snapshot of his new first officer. “How’s Engineering. Any trouble?”
“Not anymore, sir. We’re shipshape ’n ready for your inspection.”
“Oh, that’ll wait until after the transfer of command. I’d rather hear from the section heads first. Give everyone a chance ta peacock.”
Gambala’s attentiveness went lopsided. “That’ll be a welcome gesture, sir. I’ll call ’em together.”
“Gimme twenty minutes,” Vik told him. “I’d like ta scout my new digs first.”
Gambala nodded and made his way to a forward exit. It was five years since Vik had served on a frigate, but he still had a general map of the mover layout in his mind. Gambala was probably heading for something unrelated in the bow works.
“So be it.” Vik left the bay through his original target and stepped inside the guts of his new ship, noting the black-and-yellow caution stripes that dominated the décor just outside any landing bay.
He guessed his way to a mover, and then it was onward to the captain’s quarters.
“My quarters,” he said aloud, tracing the mover’s horizontal progress to where it stopped and went vertical. The doors opened onto the colors and carpet of the command crew’s section. This was a two-deck complex at the very base of the superstructure, making the bridge a straight shot upward.
He found his door and went in, admiring the spaciousness. On a vette he always kept a cot in his ready room, which he preferred to the studio that passed for his cabin below decks. There’d be no such need here. Lancet provided her captain with a spacious living area, a separate bedroom, and even a cozy nook that would serve as a fine den or study. Plus, his viewport aimed forward rather than broadside, offering him a useful live view of whatever his ship was heading into.
“This’ll do nicely,” he decided, conjuring a mental image of his fearsome new vessel. After this long as a skipper, it was high time he gallivanted around the Alliance in style.
“Shame that such a capable weapons platform’ll spend its days sightseeing,” he said, still pleased as punch to be the one ordering it around.
SOCAL MEGAPLEX – EARTH – MAR 13, 2370
Reaching the end of her routine, the girl arched backwards and followed through with an effortless up-and-over sweep of her legs. Her face paralleled the floor in defiance of gravity like a stationary pivot point. It was all done in the slow, elegant rhythms of the light percussion she’d chosen — an unusual accompaniment absent the melodrama preferred by her peers.
Madam Renée Durra looked on with mingled critique and pleasure as the girl’s feet arced behind her and came to rest on tiptoe, one behind the other. Then, an immediate repeat of the final move. She drifted through the air more like the scarves of a ring dancer than the ring dancer herself. Even on a G-tech stage, the ease of movement was a quality unique to this one performer.
At the end she lighted back on the stage, perched on her toes with her body backswept, arms akimbo in the required victory pose. It was a decisive display of low-G mastery and the audience rose in a standing ovation — something they always did when Trisha Thierry took the stage. But Renée caught the storm in her protégé’s eyes as the girl took her bows.
ALLIANCE OUTSKIRTS – MAR 14, 2370
“Thoughts, Mister Dunriley?”
“Thoughts?” came the shock of a human gaping at the unbelievable. “I’m beyond thinking. This is...”
“A gift from god.” Lup Juuli studied the human. Dunriley was American in the colonial sense, tracing his ancestry back through a state of ‘texas’ (from the sounds of it, a condition of pride or supremacy) to seminal
moments involving rocks with names and overlarge tea parties.
Juuli had been to Earth and met scores of humans. Difficult creatures to assess. This one was of the age in their males when the appearance remained the same for several decades, making it impossible to discern his experience level. Juuli guessed him at sixty-something and not quite halfway through a lifespan. But what kind of life had it been? Sixty years of sameness were less use than ten or twenty years of variety. But pessimism was ill-suited to the moment.
“Providence.” Juuli decided to re-emphasize his recent comment.
Dunriley looked away from the mothballed alien fleet for the briefest of moments to gauge his guide’s mood. Inhuman, multilateral and off-beige, this Thuvian made a strong case for the jihad merely by his presence. From Dunriley’s perspective, humans had no business out here where such beings thrived. But his quick glance detected no hints of deception or mockery in the Thuvian’s expression, inasmuch as Dunriley could read it. Could this alien appreciate something as provincial as faith?
“Why?” he asked, eyeing the warships — all larger than EarthFleet frigates but utterly alien and sturdier. Probably deadlier.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Juuli probed, certain the human was sapient enough to grasp his intent. Then again...
“You believe the human race should be evicted from god’s heavens. Many in the Alliance agree.”
Dunriley guessed his new benefactor’s mindset. “What better way than to unleash us on ourselves. The convenience of civil war.”
“So long as it’s someone else’s.” Juuli’s twin smiles hinted at strong disagreements within the Orion Alliance over permitting warlike humans into space. From his perspective, a human faction working to keep its own race out of the way meant fewer problems for the Alliance. Eventually, the Orion Spur would return to a relative normal.
Dunriley finally tore his attention away from the waiting fleet to face the alien directly. “And we owe you...what, Vier Juuli?” He chose the Thuvian formal title, understanding it to be akin to ‘esquire’.
“Fortunately for both of us, I have neither need nor use for your soul.” Juuli’s smile faded and he gestured at the fleet. “And as these’ve done no one any good for such a long time, simply put them to worthy use.”
“But no Alliance targets. Just Earth ships.” The human reaffirmed their agreement.
“A fledgling rebellion needs room to grow, Mister Dunriley,” Juuli advised. “There’s nowhere left to go when you start from ‘up’.”
Dunriley accepted the wisdom. Whatever company God wished to keep, humans weren’t on the guest list. Not in this life. How God felt about the Alliance races was out of Dunriley’s purview for now, and he was prepared to take things one step at a time, waiting on signs. If the Almighty wanted His neighborhood cleansed of aliens as well, He would provide the means.
“So, what comes next?” he asked Juuli.
“Four ships have been refitted so far, and the remaining eight are on an accelerated schedule. Most systems are functional — although there’s no predicting the toll eight hundred thousand years have taken.”
“Eight hundred THOUSAND?!” the human gasped.
Juuli smirked at the Terran sense of time. Most of Earth’s history had been erased by its Alliance overlords, leaving it with less than ten thousand years of its own past. Barely a teaser.
“The Alliance has had its moments, just like Humanity,” Juuli admitted. “But there’s no better preservative than hard vacuum. These should still serve your jihad well.”
Hope surged within Dunriley. For the Crusade’s father, there could be no surer sign of divine charter than this windfall, seemingly from out of thin air. He drank in the sight of his ready-made fleet with reverence.
The Texan looked out from the bridge of Lup Juuli’s civilian yacht onto an armada of brutal dreadnoughts floating side-by-side in the hollow of a moon carved out just for them. The oblong cavern housing them was roughly five kilometers high, ten wide and fifteen long, accessible only through an obscure entry point in one of the moon’s many crevices.
Held stationary within the cavern by a web of flexible tethers, each ship had a wide, flat body tapering to a narrow vertical bow. Six diagonal sensor fins sprouted like legs from the broad central hull, three on each side, giving an insectoid impression to the ships’ solidness. They were more than just battle ready; they’d been positively built for war. And here they’d waited, silent for the better part of a million years and safe within this tomb from everything but time. After so many eons, it was unlikely any Alliance officials even knew of them. There would be records, of course, but no one would be looking through those. Dunriley could’ve drooled.
“When do we begin?”
“The challenge,” Juuli warned, “will be transporting your people off world unseen. And provisioning. The Alliance is poorly stocked for Terran needs, as you can imagine.”
“That’s no concern,” the human said lightly.
Juuli kept his thoughts to himself, but he was versed in the politics of civil war. Such off-world enterprises required well-positioned on-world sympathizers to bribe port authorities and secure necessary approvals. Dunriley’s casualness spoke volumes about the jihad’s backers, which pleased the Thuvian to no end.
“In that case, my Terran friend, we’ve already begun. Let me give you a tour of your flagship.”
SOCAL MEGAPLEX – EARTH – MAR 14, 2370
“All of us’re good. Maybe even great. Why can’t that be enough?”
Renée studied her young savant with the same enduring patience she’d always shown her favorite. Dealing with Trish sometimes demanded more than a normal dose of the stuff.
“Competitions are how you prove yourself.”
“Prove myself against what?” Trish was ramped up. “We’re artists. Can’t we be appreciated on our own merits?”
“The world doesn’t work that way.”
“Then it needs ta grow up. Fighting the people around you like it’s a war just makes us all mean. Haven’t we outgrown that yet?”
The sentiment caught Renée off guard. There was some sense in what she was saying, but when did the world ever change itself for one person?
“I don’t wanna beat anybody,” Trish argued, fresh from her sweep of the latest tourney. “Or be beaten by anybody. These’re my friends. My family. We just wanna make art. s’What we do.”
“I can pull you from the competitions,” Renée sighed, “but it’s gonna hurt you. No one’ll remember you. How’ll you get your name out there?”
Trish shrugged. “By dancing?” Made sense to her.
“Where?” Renée countered. “When? Competitions are where you show what you can do. How many art exhibits d’you see floating around? Only the big names, right? That’s how it works. And guess how they got there...”
“But how can I pour my heart into a dance if I’m tryin’ ta beat everybody?” Trish swallowed her gripe. Brought out her softer self. “Part’a me’s always gonna be focusing on getting the award. The dance is gonna suffer.”
There was no out-arguing Trish when it came to things she felt deeply about. She saw a bigger picture that hit the world at odd angles.
Renée agreed to let it be an experiment. Pulling Trish from the tournament roster was a risk. She was a crowd favorite, and big audiences kept the SoCal Conservatory well-funded. But maybe Trish would hear the fallout and reconsider. Or maybe she really would find a new way. Not yet sixteen, she still had time to figure out her path.
“Thank you, Renée!” Trish gave her a bear hug.
“I don’t think I’m doing you any favors.” Her mentor worried. “I’m afraid you’re gonna fall into obscurity. And you’re way too good for that.”
Trish gave her a peck on the cheek and tripped away like sunshine, commanding all attention from a nearby group of boys.
Maybe if you’re that exceptional, competitions don’t matter, Renée mused. After all, a phenom like Trish could hardly be ign
ored.
ALLIANCE OUTSKIRTS – JUL 24, 2370
Dunriley struggled against the gnawing uncertainty in his gut. Not anything about the jihad, of course. That was righteous. This was about his own ability to lead an armada. He had a few command rank ex-EarthFleet officers at his disposal, but they were on ships of their own. Here on Crusader One he’d be relying on his own grasp of military tactics and strategy, both of which were rather undeveloped for an admiral.
That aside, he felt intense pride at having a fleet with which to do the Divine’s bidding. These were devastating ships, fit to be the hammers of God. According to one of his experienced commanders they were superior to Earth’s frigates in most ways, not the least of which was armor. They’d be able to withstand far more than their opponents. And corvettes? Such engagements would be comical.
The only real threat was the cruisers, and since those never traveled without a task force, Dunriley’s first standing order was that no cruisers or task forces were to be attacked except by a majority Crusader armada, and then only at his express command.
Such ambitions were out of reach for the moment. Each Crusader ship needed a number of engagements and victories to its credit before it would be considered ready for large-scale actions. This was a fleet of novices needing time to come together. God willing, they’d get that time.
“Come about,” he told his navigator, then watched through the bridge’s viewport as the stars outside whirled into a new configuration.
Revealed astern of him was a squadron of Crusaders waiting in the lees.
“Battle Stations. Battle Stations. Prepare to engage,” he announced through the ship. For now, drills and mock engagements were the rule until they all knew how to handle their calling.
13
* * *
ALLIANCE SPACE – FEB 8, 2371
Lup Juuli looked on from a discreet vantage as one of Dunriley’s dreadnoughts moved in on a lone corvette patrolling the Antares system. There had been few engagements so far, but the Crusaders were proving themselves capable, one EarthFleet ship at a time.