Frontline sf-4

by Randolph Lalonde

  When Nora's quakes and sobs stopped some time later he drew back from her and looked into her eyes. They were glazed, tears were starting to dry. “Come back to us, it's not time for that,” he said quietly.

  Her eyes focused on him again and he offered her the soft white cloth. She took it and wiped her tears away. “Sorry,” she muttered.

  “How do you feel when you're connected?”

  She regarded him with mild surprise and thought before answering. “Normal.”

  His heart sank at the answer. “There's no emotion there, is there?”

  She shook her head. “There's noise everywhere but it's all the same. No one's angry or sad.”

  “Or happy,” Lister finished. “That's what I want for you Nora, and I know it won't be easy, but anything that's worth having is worth working for. Would you like my help?”

  “Help with what?” She blew her nose, filling the small compartment with the sound.

  Hampon couldn't help but smile. “I want to help you be happy, in the most human sense. When you're ready you can choose your own road, but I'd like us to be friends for a start. Would you like that?”

  She nodded.

  “All right, I'm going to have to leave but I'll be back soon.”

  “There's a battle going on, I understand.”

  “In the meantime, would you like to move to better quarters? These seem small and drab.”

  “I saw some on deck twelve, section B I liked in the system, and they're empty.”

  “Then they're yours. That's not far from mine either, but you probably already knew that,” Lister teased. “Well then, Mia here will help you with your things. If you can stay focused on just being yourself, on not connecting to the computer system she'll even help you decorate if you like.”

  “All right,” Nora beamed.

  “But Mia will stop helping if she sees you're not paying attention. She can be your personal assistant all the time if you like, and I think you'll get along well, she's a nice young woman. She's brought a present for you as well,” Lister directed the aide to give the box to Nora.

  She took the long lid off and gasped as she moved the thin white tissue paper aside. “Oh, it's beautiful,” she said in a hushed whisper as she drew the upper half out carefully.

  “Mia can help you get washed and dressed. You can talk to her, she's here to help you with whatever you need,” Hampon nodded at the young woman knowingly. He had opened the door as per Mia's instructions, and as she had predicted the whole experience was an emotional one for him as well as Nora. Mia would have her work cut out for her, but as the best qualified therapist in her age group amongst the West Watch, he expected her to do well.

  “I'll be around to see how things are coming along in your new place,” he offered a hug and Nora took it with vigour.

  “Thank you so much, I'll try to stay out of the system.”

  “Good. Make sure you eat regularly and get plenty of rest. I don't want to watch you wither away like Gabriel,” he stood and was just about to leave when Nora stopped him.

  “Lister, where's Gabriel? I know he left the main fleet but couldn't find out where he'd gone.”

  He offered her a comforting smile; “He's on a mission to spread the word of the Order of Eden. Don't worry about him right now, you could concentrate on your own happiness.”

  Emergence

  Captain Alice Valent was still reading after action reports from the various section commanders aboard Triton when the door to the ready quarters chimed. She stood up, put her eye patch on and moved to stand in front of the desk. Somehow it just didn't feel right to have people see her sitting behind it. “Come in,” she called out quietly.

  The Heavy armoured hatch was drawn out of the doorway by thick arms and Chief Grady stepped inside. The thick block of dense metal that kept the ready quarters secure was pushed back into place behind him. “I'd hate to have to use the manual cranks to get that open,” he commented quietly as the seals squeaked against each other for a second. “I'll send someone up to fix that noise.”

  “Thank you Chief but I think you have bigger fish to fry. What can I do for you?”

  “You can relax for a start.” He was amused by her demeanour, and as he folded his hands in the sleeves of his robes she realized she was practically scowling. “There are five chairs in this room and you're leaning.”

  “I'm sorry,” she said with a sigh, sitting more comfortably on the corner of the desk. “There's just so much going on. I don't know how Jake did it.”

  “He delegated part of the workload to you and all of his department heads.”

  “I know, and I've been trying. You, Stephanie, Shamus, even Price and Finn have been great, but there's always something left. Medical is still a mess, thank God we didn't have many wounded, most of our fighter pilots didn't come back, and Jake's ship is ready for the scrap heap.”

  “You mean the Samson.”

  “What's left of it.”

  “That's all taken care of. Once we know what's going on in orbit around Pandem I'll be able to send some engineering staff to help Frost and the deck crew make improvements and repairs.”

  “He's still down there?”

  “No, actually. I heard he was back on the gunnery deck.”

  Alice sighed and nodded. “I still need him there. He's good at what he does, his people look to him and removing him, even if he did tell his people he was stepping down willingly, has caused an even larger divide between the gunnery crew and security. We can't have that, not now, so he's running things up there again.”

  “And after this engagement?”

  “Well, I'm not reinstating him as Chief, I don't think he'll ever have that title again, but to be honest I don't know what to do past that. I'm hoping Jake can make a decision.”

  “Here's hoping. Captain Valance will be pretty pleased at the ship's condition considering what she's gone through. He might not even notice that the gunnery crew and security staff have taken sides.”

  “So the repairs on Triton are complete?”

  “They are. I had modified ergranian metal ready to patch her up and now the few holes we earned have nice thick grafts of the stuff.”

  “Grafts?”

  Liam smiled and nodded. “Laura gave me access to the copy of the Freeground development database she brought with her and after a little research I was able to figure out a way to add ergranian steel to damaged sections of the ship so it would bond with the metal surrounding it.”

  “What about the light shifting layer? Will those sections bend light around them like the rest of the ship?”

  “Everything will happen under the light shifting layer that runs on top of the hull, so there won't be any problems there. If anything the new metal should be dense enough to disguise any thermal or electromagnetic signatures even better than the existing hull. Eventually those grafts will replace all the metal around them, consuming the matter as they grow, I'll keep an eye on it.”

  “This ship isn't your Petri dish Chief, we can't afford to have problems with the hull.”

  “Don't worry, most of the research has been done, the only new aspect to this is the idea of stimulating the metal in such a way that it will very slowly consume other metals and replace them. It'll happen gradually enough for the ship to adjust to the mass differential automatically and we'll be stronger in the long run, starting with the dorsal gunnery deck where we need the most armour.”

  “I just don't think right now is the time to begin new things, I mean Jake is still out there and we're-” she checked her command and control unit and verified with the count down she had running there. “-nineteen minutes away from emerging from a wormhole we generated using stolen technology that we're not sure we can shield enough so our cloaking systems will work.”

  “I'm sure.”

  “That's something, but will it even work again? I saw what you had to do to jury rig that thing to work for us.”

  “A lot of what you saw was redundant cabli
ng. Even with the damage the Samson had to do to capture it that hypertransmitter is still in fine shape. The ion cannons they used to disrupt it long enough to take it didn't do much damage, and considering that the device is made to survive solar winds and direct cosmic interference I'm surprised they did any damage at all.”

  “So you didn't think the plan was going to work?” Alice asked quietly, her frustration coming to a boiling point.

  “I had a group of volunteers ready in the hangar to receive the hypertransmitter when it was pried free of the Samson just in case it was about to right itself and turn back on. If there were any problems they would have shut it down if Finn didn't do it himself first.”

  “That's a long answer, Chief.”

  “I gave it fifty-fifty.”

  “But you let me go ahead anyway.”

  “Captain Valance left you in charge for a reason. He could have left me in charge, or Stephanie, or Price, or even Frost for that matter, but he left you in charge because he believed in you. As it so happens, he was right,” Chief Grady said with a warm smile.

  Alice just lowered her face into her hands and sighed. “What'll I do if I can't find him?”

  “We'll find a way to go on. You have the crew's trust, that's the hard part.”

  She looked at him, stunned with his reply.

  He laughed softly. “You were expecting something like; 'oh, you'll find him' or 'you know him, he can take care of himself.' Well, I wouldn't insult the woman in command of nearly three thousand souls by offering empty reassurances. We both know Pandem is huge, at least a billion people live there from what I read and if there's trouble it's big, especially if he's calling for help. He just doesn't seem the type to admit he needs any.”

  “You're just a ray of sunshine,” she smirked, shaking her head. “But you're right, the Jake I know wouldn't admit he needed help unless it was serious.” Her remaining eye looked at him straight on as she asked; “Do you have any real advice?”

  “Do it your way. I know you were following the Captain's plan for that last mission, and it turned out brilliantly but I don't think there's a plan on file for him being captured or lost.”

  Alice laughed, shaking her head. “I don't think he thought picking up a couple of friends would turn out that way, no.”

  “So do things your way. Our pilot roster may be filled with people too green to trust in a real conflict but there are so many other options, especially with everything at least temporarily repaired. Start with the ones you're familiar with and branch out from there and trust your instincts. Captain Valance may have put that plan together but you finessed it into working when the details changed.”

  “You're the most confusing monk I've ever met. One minute you're sending me the most real lowdown on the situation I could imagine, the next you're the most encouraging, trusting soul on the ship. How do you do it? Are there two of you in there?” Alice laughed.

  “Well, first of all I'm not a monk, and second of all, I've been around a little.”

  “Well, that explains everything. You're right though, I should trust myself. I got along on my own in solar systems where I was being chased by more than one badge at a time and I know pretty much everything Jonas did.”

  “There you go. With the ship fit and the crew in line behind you you're ready for practically anything.”

  “Oh, let's not go that far. I'm not ready to think that we won't find Jake, so let's just keep that possibility in the closet.”

  “All right, but before we close the door on it-”

  “I didn't come here to take command of a carrier filled with refugees, deserters and mercenaries. I came here to meet him, to find my place.”

  “I just wanted to say that you'd do fine as the Triton's permanent commander. You'd be surprised to find out how many people are finding their place on this ship. Maybe yours is to keep her in one piece until he comes back, maybe it's to find a way to take charge with our help. I know you'll do well either way. By the same token I know you'll do your best to find him, so I bet he'll be back before you know it and you'll go to your quarters and get two day's sleep,” Chief Grady said with a shrug. “You'll wake up fresh and ready to move on to the next crisis.”

  Alice couldn't help but laugh. “There's always something, isn't there?”

  “It's a big ship, she draws a lot of attention and carries a lot of personalities around.”

  She nodded as she looked back to the counter on her arm. “I have to get to the bridge, the next crisis is coming up. Thank you Chief. Sometimes I think you keep the crew together as much as the ship.”

  “I met someone who was just like that on Earth and one day I told him the same thing. You know what he said to me?”

  “What?”

  “Go where you're needed and you'll never wonder why you're alive.”

  “Smart man. Who was he?”

  “Neil Vernon, one of the Cincinnati Monastery gardeners.”

  As Alice walked onto the bridge and took it all in she was almost stunned with the very fact that she was still in command. The upper command center was abuzz with activity. There was a reserve officer standing by for every station in case one of the three or more people manning navigation, operations, engineering, tactical, field control, security or any of the other stations had to attend to something else or were injured.

  Stephanie had a squad of fourteen soldiers spaced out along the bridge walls between stations in full black combat armour and sat to the left of the Captain's chair. As Alice made her way through the dozen or so officers on the bridge walking between stations, checking displays, calling out statistics reflecting slight changes that were made in the ship while repairs were performed and ensuring that the bridge systems were up to date with the latest information Agameg Price moved from the Command seat to his position as the lead tactical officer. “Chief Frost reports that the last of the replacement turrets are in place and they're ready for another round. That is the last of the repairs. All departments report ready,” he told her in a pleasant tone.

  “Thank you Agameg. How is our flight deck?” Alice asked, settling into the captain's seat. It adjusted to her proportions as she looked down through the transparent sections of the floor to the equally bustling flight control deck, where they managed everything the bridge didn't; flight crews, any related vessels other than the Triton herself and how ships moved around in nearby space. Angelo Vercelli looked up at her and spoke in a normal tone, knowing that his voice would be transmitted straight to the captain's chair from his pedestal. “Everything's locked down, fabrication has been taken offline, we have four fighters ready to launch and our main hangar is ready to take care of any emergency landings. I even have an energy capture web ready in case we have to yank someone as they pass within a few kilometres.”

  “Thank you Chief.”

  “My pleasure Captain.”

  “How is our new emitter array?” Alice asked as she looked through the list of changes that were made while the Triton was being repaired. She couldn't help but be surprised as she read that eight hundred and nine repair team members worked on the ship and there were over two hundred volunteers on top of that. The repairs that were made were beyond extensive, even systems that were damaged years before the battle they had just engaged in were taken care of.

  Finn cleared his throat before answering; “Chief Grady didn't tell you?”

  “Never answer a question with a question on my bridge, Finn.”

  “Right. It didn't look like it was going to work until we bypassed most of the power generation systems aboard the hypertransmitter, but then we had a break through and were able to just build it into the ship.”

  Alice turned towards him and looked at him straight on. He looked up but his gaze flinched back to his station in the next instant. “Build it in?”

  “He really didn't tell you,” Finn said, half to himself. “We cut off the wireless receivers and wired it right up to one of the ship's main data lines and power systems. N
ow it's operating behind eight meters of armoured hull with cloaked emitter rods sticking out of an airlock.”

  “Is that the permanent solution?”

  “No, but it'll work without burning out. Wiring things up while it was already generating a wormhole was a little tricky.”

  “Good work,” Alice said with a smile.

  Finn nodded, smirking a little. “I broke the last main emitter systems, only makes sense that I install a new one.”

  “You and your people deserve a day off after this.”

  “I'll pass that onto my team,” he said, glancing at Angela, who playfully nudged him with her elbow from where she manned a damage control post beside him.

  “Captain, I'm in main engineering and can confirm that everything's set down here,” Chief Grady said through her personal communicator.

  “Thank you Chief.”

  “Exiting the wormhole into regular space in five, four, three, two, one,” announced Larry, Ashley's main navigator.

  Ashley unlocked the controls as they emerged and listened to Larry and Henrietta, the navigators who sat on either side of her as they took turns in telling her about their situation in the arrival point. She also viewed the quickly populating tactical map of the area around them.

  Pandem was still minutes away at full thrust, but there was a veritable gauntlet between the Triton and the green and blue planet. Ashley jerked the controls, sending the ship several degrees to port, towards one of Pandem's outer moons. “Oh my God,” she whispered under her breath as she watched the tactical map light up.

  Alice stared at the main holographic tactical projection in the center of the bridge and her spirits dropped. Without realizing it, she found she was slowly standing to get a better look.

  There were hundreds of destroyers, corvettes, battle cruisers, carriers, several larger combat platforms and at least five command carriers at a glance. Their markings were clear, there was no long range signal jamming in the battlefield, and Regent Galactic, the Order of Eden as well as the Carthan Defence Fleet were represented. As the tactical display continued to populate with thousands of fighters, gunships and other medium sized close combat vessels appeared between the furious juggernauts that had joined the fray that extended past Pandem's outer orbit and all the way down to the upper atmosphere.