by S. H. Jucha
Z replied.
Everyone sat quietly, thinking through what they had been told. The SADEs remained quiet. However, Cordelia and Z were lamenting the fact that the answers to so many critical questions had lain in their databases. If only someone had thought to ask the questions.
Eric Stroheim asked contritely,
Alex regarded Eric.
Eric felt his willpower to fight drain out. Too much was changing too fast, and he was aware that he might have become an impediment to the colony’s successful escape. It was he who had insisted on building the city-ships by well-founded Méridien methods. It had never occurred to him to ask if, under the present circumstances, it was the right method to employ.
The astonished looks Alex received from just about every Méridien answered the question for him.
Tomas reached across the table with his hand. he said.
Tomas placed his slender hand inside the wide, expanse of the Admiral’s. Tomas said, returning the Admiral’s smile.
Eric said with resignation.
Julien spent the next hour outlining the primary steps. The Rêveur crew would abandon all war preparations, except for the freighter’s conversion. That asset was considered too important to the future fight. Progress on its conversion was nearly 73 percent complete, with thirteen of the eighteen bay sections installed and their environmental systems operational. The Daggers would be transferred to the completed bays either assembled or, in most cases, in crates. The same would apply to missile carousels and their components. Whatever had been manufactured or was in production for the war effort would be crated and shipped to the freighter.
All Rêveur crew and Librans not involved in the freighter’s conversion would transfer to the city-ships and help accelerate their minimal flight worthiness.
Another key point: no shuttle would fly except when fully loaded, and that included the Outward Bound. It didn’t matter whether they were transporting goods or people or both. “Fly full” was the new mantra. In addition, the shuttles would alternate pilots to maintain a maximum operation schedule. Transporting goods and people from the planet to the orbitals was the biggest choke point of the entire schedule, and there was no way around it.
The priority loads for the shuttles would be equipment and working personnel. Whenever the shuttles had room to spare, they would load some of the general populace and transport them to the orbitals. The Librans would await a call from one of the city-ships, who would notify them when newly completed cabins became available.
The SADEs would take command of personnel scheduling, supply shipping, war equipment, shuttle scheduling and loading, and people transfer from the planet to the station and subsequently to the ships. In other words, all people—Independents, Bergfalk personnel, and the Rêveur crew—now reported to the SADEs, and all equipment was under their control.
* * *
Immediately after the conference, the Leaders set up a system-wide comm. They staged it from the Freedom’s bridge, and Cordelia managed the broadcast to the orbital controllers, the ship SADEs, and the media station on Libre, which had been forewarned of a critical announc
ement.
As planned, Tomas and Eric spoke briefly to their people, emphasizing the importance of the Admiral’s announcement. By consensus, Alex was elected to deliver the bad news. Tomas had been quite blunt in his opinion. “If there is one of us that the people will heed and respond to as required, it’s you, Admiral. You’re the scary one among us.”
So Alex delivered the bad news to hundreds of thousands of anxious people: “Librans, effective immediately, all schedules and timelines for the evacuation of the planet are canceled. We have become aware of information that requires we leave this system in approximately one hundred days. Analysis of data reveals the aliens will ignore Méridien and head here. If we work together and diligently employ the new schedule, we can do this, all of us together. Immediately after this broadcast, you will receive directives from one of three SADEs: Julien, Cordelia, or Z, and these directives carry the authority of your Leaders. Please follow them in a precise and timely manner. Any difficulty you encounter should be reported to the SADE who originated the request.”
* * *
Never had three entities worked so hard in their combined 400-hundred-plus years of existence as the SADEs did following the broadcast. They had detailed lists of every person in the Arno system, locator tags on every crate, and data entries of each completed job on the city-ships and the freighter. As fast as they could, they assigned workers, citizens, and equipment to shuttle flights, and coordinated the new job projects—essential systems first; there were no seconds. They organized multiple flight crews for each shuttle, enabling them to fly much of the day, except for minimal servicing overnight.
Most work crews were directed to the Freedom, slowing work on the Unser Menschen. The Rêveur pilots and flight crews, consisting of New Terrans and trainees, transferred to the orbital station to accelerate the assembly of the freighter’s bay sections.
Alex wanted to doff his uniform jacket and pitch in, but Julien convinced him that they needed an “efficiency inspector,” which Alex translated as troubleshooter. While the SADEs had a plan, infrastructure and people didn’t always support it. Bottlenecks soon formed. Alex found himself jumping onto whatever shuttle was available as he traveled from city-ship to orbital to planet and back. On one shuttle flight, he held a small boy in his lap, enabling a seat to be available for the mother holding the second child. The eight-year-old Libran initially was mesmerized by the huge man who held him. Soon after liftoff, his shyness forgotten, he was chatting away about aliens, fighters, and New Terrans. The landing at the orbital station could not have come any sooner for Alex as he handed the boy back to his mother, who wore a most apologetic expression.
A noticeable change in operational protocols was that neither Alex nor Renée were accompanied by one of the twins. In a heartfelt discussion, Alex explained to Étienne and Alain that it would do no good to be guarding anyone if the silver ships caught them unprepared. They needed everyone’s help to leave in time, and no one was excused.
-18-
One evening, Alex returned to sleep in his own cabin for the first time in twenty-eight days since the announcement of the flotilla’s accelerated timetable. The Rêveur held an eerie similarity to the first day Alex had boarded it as a derelict ship, except for the lack of debris and holes. Andrea was running a minimum crew. A small contingent of flight crew managed the arrival of shuttles and supplies. Alex had decided that the Rêveur should not attempt to take on Libran passengers, due to its primary purpose as the de facto fighting ship. It was the Libran volunteers who would have places on the Rêveur and the freighter, Money Maker, and would fill the crew requirements of the two ships.
With the future uncertain, the volunteers had been informed by Andrea that war preparations were suspended. These individuals were offered the opportunity to rejoin the city-ships as passengers. A good percentage took the offer, those who had spouses and children. The remainder of the volunteers formed the group that would crew the Rêveur and the Money Maker.
Renée played the same role as Alex, except as a troubleshooter for residency aboard the Freedom. Having done the same job during repairs on the Rêveur, she found herself an experienced hand at the job. She organized all the Medical Specialists under her as a team. While the SADEs were great at delivering supplies, work crew, and people to the ships, the passenger loading and distribution might have become a nightmare except for her team’s efforts.
Renée and Cordelia worked to identify the easiest sections of the ship to complete and then focused the efforts of their nontechnical workers there. As fast as cabins were completed, the Medical Specialists, directing passengers they had enlisted, moved in bedding, attached webbing, installed door actuators, and completed a myriad other small details to outfit the cabins. Then they ushered waiting passengers into their new home and added the names and cabin assignments to Cordelia’s database.
On more than one night, Renée, weary to the bone, was too tired to travel back to the Rêveur, and, with Alex rarely there, she often chose not to make the effort. Instead she would curl up on the nearest available bed and chat with Alex via comm. Renée often found Alex had done the same thing as her, finding a bed wherever he ended work. She would fall asleep in the middle of their conversations. Most nights, Renée never heard Alex wish her good night and tell her he loved her.
Julien attempted to keep track of his two most important charges. He assigned a sentry sub-routine to monitor their location, notifying him of any adverse situations they might encounter.
* * *
Some couples were quite pleased with their new work arrangements. Tomas co-opted Terese as his personal assistant, with Alex’s blessing. Tomas never realized the extent to which Alex was willing to go to keep his primary ally happy.
It was Tomas, though, who was the surprised one. He had hoped to find some productive work to occupy Terese to maintain a reasonable façade for her company. Instead she drove him. Terese requested Cordelia organize a list of Leader-level issues for Tomas and used it to organize their day. The problems ranged from simple to complex, but they often required a quick organization of individuals on site to clear the problem before allowing the people to go back to their assigned duties.
One afternoon, circumstances threatened to overwhelm Cordelia, and the first person she thought to comm was Terese. Something as simple as feeding new passengers required a complex orchestration of events: the completion of a new meal room with tables and chairs; the installation of the food processors, food stock tanks, and controller; and the transfer of food stocks to the storage room located directly behind the meal room dispenser bulkhead.
On this particular day, a new meal room had been completed for the 354 new passengers who had just arrived and as yet had no assigned cabins. Unfortunately the food stock for the meal room sat in a corridor outside one of the Freedom’s giant landing bays, with no more grav-lifts available. To solve the dilemma, Terese requested Cordelia send a map to each of the 354 new passengers of the route from the bay to the food stock storage room and open a comm for Tomas, who would request the passengers line the route. There were enough passengers to handle the job, including populating the two lifts that they would need to occupy.
Terese organized four of the passengers to break apart the crates, and the small drums averaging ten kilos each were passed along the line. Three and a half hours later, the huge mound of food stock had been transferred to the meal room’s storage center. Freedom’s meal room crew had been loading the newly installed food tanks since the arrival of the first drum along the daisy-chain. With the last food drum passing along the line, the tired passengers trooped behind it to the meal room, where they were able to serve themselves a hot meal. They would live in the meal room for the next several days, sleeping on the deck at night, joining ad hoc work crews during the day doing whatever was required, until they finally received cabin assignments.
After an especially trying day, during which Terese had successfully untangled a particularly ugly snarl of materia
l and people, she had commed Pia, sharing a thought:
Pia had replied with a disconcerting question:
Terese did find herself in an awkward situation during a lull in their hectic days. She was treating a Bergfalk female tech, Alia, for a broken arm, with a nanites injection. In appreciation for the medical service, Alia offered to share a vid with Terese that she had acquired. Alia and several other Bergfalk females had finished a late shift at 3 hours in the morning. They had walked into the women’s communal refresher to discover the Admiral. Alia expressed her disappointment that the Admiral had heard them coming and had time to wrap a garment around his waist before they turned the corner. They surmised the Admiral had been so tired that he’d mistaken the Méridien gender glyphs on the refresher doors.
“But as you can see, Ser,” Alia exclaimed, “there is still much to view! Can you imagine having a New Terran lover?” she asked. “What is most appealing is that while this is the warrior who attempts to save us, his blush is most visible. An odd mix of traits these New Terrans possess.”
“And we should be most grateful that they do, Alia,” Terese had responded. When the tech left, Terese queried Renée, sending her the vid.
replied Renée. Since the incident took place on the Freedom’s orbital station, Bau Zwei, where the female techs were working, Renée linked to Cordelia and Julien to make her request.