Sol (The Silver Ships Book 5) (39 page)
Read Sol (The Silver Ships Book 5) Online
Authors: S. H. Jucha
“That’s the idea,” Reiko replied. “If I hit that weakened central structure of the
Guardian
just right, I should be able to separate the wings and impart enough inertia to shift them onto trajectories that will miss the station.”
Reiko was waiting for Franz’s response when his traveler disappeared from her bow view. It bothered her that Franz wouldn’t be staying around for the end, but, in a small way, she understood. Reiko eyed her telemetry data every few moments. Her young pilot was excellent, and she had placed the destroyer dead on target.
* * *
Franz slipped his traveler into the destroyer’s open bay. A shuttle was closing its hatch and preparing to launch, and he edged his fighter to the far side of the bay and settled it to the deck. One more shuttle remained inside.
After checking his environment suit, Franz cycled through his airlock, an upgrade to the travelers by Mickey’s engineering team, three years ago. Exiting the traveler, Franz hurried across the bay to an airlock, which more of the crew was cycling through. It dawned on him that the damage to the rear third of the destroyer had taken out a good number of emergency pods, and the crew was using the shuttles to evacuate the ship.
When the officers and crew piled out of the airlock, Franz’s arm was yanked on by a female officer, who was struggling to pull him inside the airlock. He barely cleared the airlock’s doors, when the officer smacked the actuator to close the bayside doors and cycle the airlock. When the corridor-side doors flashed green and opened, the officer snapped up her faceplate, revealing a youthful face.
“The commodore’s this way, Sir. I’ll lead,” she yelled and took off at a run.
Franz pounded after her, grateful for the guide. With the twists, turns, and level changes, he would have been still searching for the bridge about the time the two ships impacted each other.
The bridge door opened as the pilot neared it, triggered by her ID implanted under her shoulder’s skin.
“I said evacuate, Lieutenant —” Reiko yelled, but the next words died on her lips when she saw Franz run in behind her pilot. “You … you can’t be here,” Reiko said in a whisper, tears beginning to blur her eyes.
“Are you on course?” Franz demanded, his chest heaving from the exertion.
When Reiko failed to answer, the pilot leaned over her panel. “Dead on course, Commander,” she replied with a grin, proud of her work.
“Time to go,” Franz announced. He didn’t have to tell the youthful lieutenant twice. She bounded off the bridge, intent on making the bay and an exodus before the impending crash. Reiko drew breath to say something, and Franz never gave her the opportunity. He slung the diminutive commodore over his shoulder and chased after the lieutenant, who was getting too far ahead for eye contact, so Franz concentrated on her footfalls.
“What if there’s no one to correct our trajectory?” Reiko yelled from Franz’s back. Her mind was racing to decide whether to fight to go back or stay across Franz’s shoulder and possibly live. In an odd tangent, the thought crossed her mind that the commander could move extremely fast for such a huge man.
“You’ve been underway for about half the distance you have to close. You like your trajectory; your pilot likes your trajectory. I don’t think another asteroid storm is expected any time soon that might throw you off course, Commodore,” Franz yelled through ragged breaths.
At the airlock, the lieutenant was holding out the lower half of an environment suit, and Franz neatly dropped Reiko’s feet into the suit’s legs. After that, Reiko was all business, strapping into the suit as fast as she could. The three of them closed faceplates, cycled the airlock, and dashed across the bay toward Franz’s traveler.
Reiko was out of the airlock first, but both Franz and the pilot beat her to the traveler. The lieutenant scrambled up the short, steep stairway into the ship’s tiny airlock. When Reiko arrived, Franz grabbed her and launched her up to the lieutenant, whose grin he could see through her faceplate.
The fit in the fighter’s tiny emergency exit airlock was tight. Both women were squished tight against Franz while he signaled the airlock cycle. His controller was relaying the countdown to him, and it was this SADE technology that saved them. While in the airlock, Franz signaled the controller to exit the bay and depart at max acceleration for the station.
The airlock’s inner door opened into a dimly lit interior, and both women stared at Franz as he took his time extricating himself from the airlock. He stepped into the corridor, sank into a passenger seat, popped up his faceplate, and dragged in huge breaths.
“Uh … Commander,” the pilot hesitatingly began.
“We’re good, Sers,” Franz replied. “We’re on auto-pilot, so to speak.”
“The auto-pilot launched us out of the bay and determined the proper course?” Reiko asked, sinking into a nearby seat. “Sit down, Lieutenant,” she added.
“If we’re going to be technical, I gave the orders and the fighter’s controller followed them.” Franz tapped his temple by way of explanation.
“That would be so great to have one of those,” the pilot enthused.
“And the plan … did it work?” Reiko asked, trying to act casual, but a knot was forming in her stomach.
Franz closed his faceplate, viewed the telemetry in the display, and popped it back open. “The destroyer hit the battleship … perfect placement. Cleaved the wings in two.”
“Yes!” the pilot shouted. “Um … sorry, Commodore.”
“No need, Lieutenant. You set a good course. What about the aftereffect? Did we move the wings far enough?” Reiko asked.
Franz closed his helmet again. His telemetry was unable to define the vector change, at this time, so he commed for Julien and Z, getting both, and Julien linked in Cordelia.
’s wings will miss the station.>
Franz closed the comm, opened his faceplate, and removed his helmet. “Success,” he announced to the women.
The pilot cheered, and Reiko smiled warmly at Franz.
“Pilot, why don’t you check out this fighter’s cockpit? It might be your only chance,” Reiko said.
The lieutenant grinned and hurried up the aisle, and Reiko stood up and came over to Franz to settle herself into his lap. “Too bad about these suits,” she said, staring at Franz with soft eyes. “You’ll just have to settle for a more cursory thank you for now,” she added and kissed him.
* * *
Reiko’s anger at Portland for his fixation on destroying Idona and the Harakens dissipated on the flight back to the station, especially while enjoying Franz’s attentions. However, knowing Portland’s final moments might have gone a long way to relieving her anger.
Anchoring himself to the emergency cabinet with one hand, Admiral Theodore Portland’s stare was fixed on the twinkling lights of Idona Station as they drew slowly closer. A gleeful smile was painted on his face, but his eyes appeared blank. It wouldn’t have surprised observers if they saw the admiral begin to drool. Suddenly, a huge, dark shape loomed out of the void headed directly for him. “No,” was all Portland had time to utter before Reiko’s destroyer slammed its millions of metric tons of mass through him and his battleship’s central fuselage.
As the battle raged, Alex, Renée, the twins, Cordelia, and her orphan band of children chose to sit around the planning holo-vid. The winking off of the ships’ icons meant little to the younger children, who were preoccupied by Cordelia’s lovely voice as she sang song after song to them. Edmas and Jodlyne would glance at Alex, whose stolid expression would be broken by a small wince when the icons were representative of Haraken fighters. There was no need for the teenagers to look Alex’s way when Shimada’s destroyer was hit and her wing ship exploded. Even Cordelia’s song faltered.
After that loss, Alex slipped Renée off his lap and hurried to the holo-vid, enlarging the image until the admiral’s battleship stood in relief against the stars. He shifted the holo-vid’s viewpoint continually until he recognized the danger to the station from the battleship’s dead hulk. The four destroyers returning to the station confused him until he saw Shimada’s tortured ship turn slowly toward the
Guardian
and Shimada’s people begin to evacuate.
’s helm, Mr. President.>
There were moments of silence as Julien and Z shared their data.
Alex shifted the holo-vid to the myriad ships that were stationed at the staging point and gauged the distance to the station, comparing it to the
Guardian
’s distance to the station. His groan was heard by the SADEs, who were monitoring his efforts.
Julien, monitoring Reiko’s destroyer, sent
Alex began pacing and the children’s eyes intently followed him. Renée and Cordelia, who moments ago enjoyed a small moment of celebration, now traded worried looks. Inside, Alex wanted to scream for a status, but he knew the SADEs would need time to collect the data.
“Well, children, who’s hungry?” Alex announced swinging his arms wide.
Edmas and Jodlyne whooped in joy.
“We’re save-ed?” Ginny asked when Cordelia picked her up.
“Yes, we’re save-ed, little one,” Cordelia said hugging the child. Tears weren’t incorporated into a SADE’s avatar, but that didn’t mean Cordelia’s emotional algorithms were processing smoothly as she smiled at the children, chatted with Ginny, and shared her happiness with Julien.
* * *
The Harakens’ travelers returned to their carriers, which had made for the station — all but fourteen of them. Seven pilots and their fighters were lost. Seven more pilots were headed away from the ecliptic in damaged shells, which couldn’t charge the drives sufficiently to return.
Captain Cordova and Mickey were standing by during the battle and lost no time in pursuit of even the first lost traveler, zeroing in on the controller’s signal. Fortunately, every pilot obeyed the standing order to dive below the ecliptic if in danger of losing charge, which foreshortened the collection distance for the
Rêveur
.
Strangely, the time-honored passenger liner resembled its original derelict appearance when it returned to the station. There was room aboard the
Rêveur
’s double bays for only three travelers, which necessitated the last four fighters, in some cases just half a ship, to be tethered outboard of the bays by the beams. One young New Terran pilot, comfortable in his environment suit, whose half-ship was tethered with its aft end facing toward the
Rêveur
’s bow, sat in the aisle of his traveler, staring out at the deep dark and the twinkling lights of Idona Station, never so happy for the view.
* * *
The station celebrated for days following the defeat of Portland’s fleet. Stationers and visitors aboard various liners, freighters, tugs, haulers, and yachts poured back into the bays and docks of Idona from the staging point.
Julien connected Brennan and Reiko to Woo and Chong to share the news — the last of the judicial forces was no more. Woo directed Shimada to round up the able, enemy destroyers and have her squadron accompany them to Mars.
“I want the commodores and captains under arrest aboard your destroyers, Commodore,” Woo stressed. “Put lieutenants in command. And, as for you, Commodore, stay put on Idona. Captain Irving of the
Challenge
will be promoted to acting commodore to escort the group back to the inner zone.”
Reiko’s confusion must have been evident, wondering what she would do without a ship and what she had done to deserve the loss of her destroyer.
“Remove the sad face, Commodore,” Chong said. “The cruiser,
Daedalus
, your new command, is on its way to you with a pair of escorts, newly commissioned destroyers. You keep that new experiment of ours safe.”