The silver fleet the com.., p.166
The Silver Fleet: The Complete Series, page 166
“No. Stephen, please,” she implored. “I don’t want to hear this.”
“We’re going to have to rely on old fashioned chemical rockets. It’s the only way to be sure.”
“Well, that’s ridiculous. Surely you can control this thing remotely. You don’t have to do this, Stephen. Get someone else.”
“This thing’s been thrown together so quickly, I’m afraid there’s only two people who have any idea how this works.”
“Well, who’s this other person, then? Why can’t they do it?”
“That would be one Finbar McNeill and I doubt very much that he’s done even the most basic EVA, let alone strapped himself to a rocket. I have to do this, Kat. Please. There just is no one else.”
“No, Stephen, no. I won’t let you,” she put a hand to her chest. “What am I thinking? I’m the senior officer here. I’m going to come down there right now…”
“And you’d still be too late. Listen, Katherine, don’t make this any harder than it already is. I just wanted a chance to tell you that I love you…”
“No, stop. Stephen, please don’t do this.”
Khan was finding it difficult to look into the camera.
“And I’m sorry that we never got to Nharani on honeymoon. Never got to see those waterfalls. I know you’d have loved that. But what we do have, thank God, is our son and if any good is to come of this then you can tell him that I did this for him. So that he can grow up free and strong and …”
“Brave?”
“Yeah, brave. That’d be good. I know you’ll love him and bring him up right, so I don’t want to weigh you down with lots of advice that’ll probably turn out to be completely wrong. I just know you’ll make an excellent mother.
“I’m sorry that I can’t say goodbye to you in person, my darling. That’s my one regret in all of this, truly. But I’ve been blessed to have you in my life, and I was a fool not to have married you that time in Ferrari when I had the chance. Total fool. Katherine, know now that I love you and that, whenever you look up to the stars, I’ll be looking down on you.”
“Oh, Stephen, I love you.”
“And I love you too. Goodbye, my darling girl!”
And, with that, he raised his fingers to the front of his helmet and blew her a kiss.
*
On the tactical display, Renheim and Thor were so close that their markers merged, though in reality they’d pass within thirty thousand kilometres of one another.
“Weps, are you ready?” Schwartz had re-taken her position in Tactical. If anyone had noticed she’d been crying they’d kept their thoughts to themselves
“Aye, ma’am. Bomb bay doors are green for go.”
“Everyone else?”
The main launch technician simply raised her hand.
“All systems operational.”
For a second, Schwartz hesitated, as the thought of what she was about to do started to sink in.
Faulkner leaned forward slightly, raising an eyebrow to enquire as to whether she was alright.
No one had planned it this way. It was just the way things had turned out.
She closed her eyes and nodded then realised that she’d been holding her breath. She breathed out steadily before re-filling her lungs.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of McNeill over on his highchair, reduced to a helpless observer in all this even though he’d been one of the main perpetrators.
“Very well, then,” she said. “Release ordnance when ready.”
The ship killer missile left the ship in one last desperate rush, and with it, went her future.
The main screen kept switching feeds in an effort to track the bomb as it fell towards its target and Schwartz stared at each image, hoping to see some sign of him, imagining Stephen sitting astride it. It was a ludicrous image and nothing at all like the black silhouette which fell towards its target.
There were no celebrations as the weapon’s chemical burners kicked in, no cheers as it straightened itself before surging on its way. The crew might not have known exactly what was going on, but they seemed to have picked up on the sombre demeanour of the senior team. They all watched as it dwindled in size before disappearing entirely as it plunged towards the other ship’s vast super structure.
Schwartz glanced around, daring anyone to return her gaze but fortunately that didn’t happen. Everyone appeared to have found something else to do and stood, hunched over their consoles as she prowled around uncertain now as to what she should do with herself.
In the interim, the rail gun had finished firing but when she went over and tried to review the damage, she found that, other than some debris venting into space, there wasn’t much to see.
Schwartz went back to her own console eventually, expecting to at least see the point of impact, but there was nothing. She couldn’t understand what was going on. It was the most terrible thing she’d ever had to do and yet there was no sense that anything of any note had taken place.
They were well clear of their target before anyone said anything.
“Mr McNeill,” Faulkner said. “Establish a new vector to bring us round so that we can run parallel with Thor.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Are we picking up anything?” she asked, unsure of what it was she wanted to hear. “Any hull damage.”
“I’m not detecting anything,” one of the comms officers said. “There are signs of power surges on a superficial level but nothing to suggest their field containment has been…”
Then a whoop of excitement went up and she spun around, desperate to see what everyone was looking at.
A bright white diaphanous bubble was emerging from a point just aft of the main dorsal fin. It grew exponentially until it finally dwarfed everything surrounding it. The sheer size of it stretched credulity, seeming to swell in size every few seconds while remaining gossamer thin.
Then everything was transformed as the white-hot sphere exploded in soundless fury.
“Brace, brace, brace!” a voice declared and immediately someone pounced on her, forcing her down to the ground, her face pressed up against one of the uprights.
The shock wave hit their aft section first, lifting the rear of the ship in a way that the inertia suppressors uniformly failed to control. Someone screamed as one of the security team pitched across the floor, in a thrashing mass of arms and legs.
“Sir, I’m getting some readings in,” McNeill had to shout to be heard. “Huge explosion. Huge. Six megatons and rising.”
For three solid minutes they rode the storm as Renheim’s vulnerable port side was hit with powerful after-shocks. Schwartz tried to picture the damage in the rest of the ship, for while they were safe enough up here cocooned within the bridge, she knew that many of her crewmates would not have been so lucky.
As soon as it was possible to stand, she left her shelter and staggered across to where Faulkner was clinging to the side of his command chair.
“It’s done then,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not. You planned all this, don’t pretend you didn’t.”
His head dropped at that.
“You’re right, of course. It was wrong of me. To keep you out of it, I mean.”
“Yes,” she said, finding it difficult to speak. “It was.”
He managed to bring his eyes up to meet hers.
“What are you going to do now?”
“Stephen’s family have been in touch. They run a small pharmaceutical company out of Lahore. They’re setting up an apartment for me and the baby.”
“You think you’ll stay?”
“Too soon to say,” she said. “But I do know one thing. I can’t stay here.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Faulkner sat at the main table in the briefing room surrounded by what remained of the senior crew. A second lieutenant had come up from Engineering in Khan’s absence, though he didn’t have much to say for himself. The loss of their team leader had hit them all hard.
Lieutenant Commander Schwartz was also absent, not that Faulkner would have wanted her there anyway. Not after everything that had happened.
They were all exhausted, most of them not having slept in days, but they were wary of retiring to their rooms for fear that they might miss something. They’d opened a channel through to the Serrayu but that was yet to yield anything worthwhile. They’d spoken briefly to a junior member of their protocol team but Sunderam had been noticeable by his absence and Faulkner was wary of starting any dialogue without him.
Renheim’s speed had taken them quite some considerable distance beyond Thor and it was only now that they were starting to come about. Thor was still following the self-same vector it had been pursuing earlier but that was mostly down to momentum now.
With her back broken, the chances of her maneuvering in any significant sense was no longer an issue.
With her long-range scans still not up and running, Renheim was too far distant to be able to scan the hulk themselves and so had to rely on the data coming in from the Serrayu. The Yakutian ship had overshot them some time ago but were now pursuing an aggressive deceleration in the hope that they’d soon be able to start back-tracking.
Faulkner had been expecting them to have deployed missiles at some stage if only for appearances’ sake but that hadn’t happened, inspiring in him a new respect for Captain Sunderam. It would have been all too easy for him to have fired off a volley once the Serrayu had been able to make use of their weapons systems. It would have been a simple way of justifying their own part in the action, but he’d chosen not to do so, effectively handing the victory to Faulkner and his crew.
For now, all that remained was for the two captains to agree what was to be done with what remained of the Da’al ship. Certainly, it couldn’t be allowed to continue along its present path unchecked. They were going to have to get it under tow as quickly as possible, the question being: who was going to receive that honor?
While Renheim had struck the killing blow, it was clear that Serrayu had been responsible for incapacitating Thor in the first place. As a result, it wasn’t completely certain who would end up with the salvage rights and Faulkner was keen for it not to develop into a major bone of contention.
Which was why he’d insisted on having members of the Renheim’s cross cultural response team present, to see if they might be able to pick up on any non-verbal cues their new allies might exhibit. He thought that it might give them the edge in the negotiations.
And it was one of these team members who gave him the nod when Sunderam finally decided to put in an appearance.
Faulkner got to his feet stiffly, attempting to smooth the creases in his uniform. One of the aides handed him his cap and stayed to make sure that it was correctly aligned before leading him over to the main screen.
After the normal pleasantries, they quickly got down to discussing their next course of action.
“We have to act swiftly,” Faulkner was saying. “We can’t leave this to chance. We have to get a line on that ship.”
“When you say ‘we’ I take it that you’re talking about a group effort?”
“Take it whatever way you like. That ship still poses a tangible threat.”
“Perhaps. But only to itself. It poses no further threat to the gate.”
Faulkner scowled back, “You can’t be sure of that.”
“Fairly sure. While the degree of drift in Thor’s vector is only slight, it’s far enough out that it has little chance of coming anywhere near its intended target. What we need to do is to agree which one of us is going to be tasked with taking her in hand. After all, what else is there for us to discuss.”
Faulkner adjusted the peak of his cap, unused to this level of clarity in diplomatic discussions. Normally, it would take several hours of sensitive negotiations just to get to this point. Not that he liked such a level of obfuscation, but it was traditional in negotiations like this to sound out your opponent in order to try and gauge what they were likely to accept. The drawback to going in unprepared was that you could too easily force the other party into an entrenched position which it was then very difficult to coax them out of.
“I must say, I appreciate your level of candor, captain,” Faulkner said. “No doubt you’ve given this matter much thought.”
He found that it was best if he stayed focussed on Sunderam. That way he couldn’t see the expressions on the faces of his aides who were no doubt deeply unhappy with the way the negotiations were shaping up.
“I would be re-miss not to. Even in its current state, Thor presents us with a unique opportunity. The level of technology we’d have access to would be quite remarkable.”
“You’re right,” he saw no reason to deny it. “And my people saw a little of it when they boarded that first ship. Though in the end we paid dearly for it. Still, that would pale into insignificance in comparison with having real tech at our disposal.”
“Which is true. So, how do you propose we go about this? You have to concede that without our intercession, this whole affair might have ended up looking quite different. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Faulkner didn’t trust himself to say anything and simply nodded. While it was true that the Yakutians had immobilised Thor’s shields they’d done so using stolen Confederation technology. Of course, he couldn’t say that and, even if he did, it would be too easy for Sunderam to deny the accusation.
“The day is won, captain,” Faulkner said. “We should celebrate that rather than getting bogged down in details.”
“I couldn’t agree more. With that in mind, perhaps I might suggest a simple trade?”
“A trade? What kind of trade?”
“Quid pro quo, I believe you call it. I take the salvage rights for Thor in return for something which I’m sure you’ll find equally valuable.”
Faulkner turned to his aides and laughed.
Surely, the man had to be joking?
“I can’t imagine what that might be,” he said.
Sunderam leaned forward and gave him a significant look before stepping away from the camera.
Faulkner just stayed where he was, his aides imploring him to pull the plug on the whole negotiation. They didn’t want any part of a deal which saw them surrender the rights to the richest salvage operation possibly of all time.
A few seconds later, another figure stepped into the frame and the whole room was plunged into silence.
“My God,” Faulkner couldn’t contain his surprise. “Elsbeth? Is that you?”
She was almost unrecognisable. She’d lost weight and her hair had grown long. She was also dressed in Yakutian clothing.
“Captain Faulkner,” she said and though her voice faltered, she managed to execute a simple salute.
“You’re alive,” Faulkner said. “I had my hopes, but I couldn’t be certain. Have you been well looked after?”
She nodded, struggling to find the right words. “I’ve been very well treated, thank you.”
Faulkner didn’t know what to say. He’d been trying to suppress these feelings about the fate of his crew for so long and now they looked to be about to betray him.
“And are there other survivors? From the Mantis?”
“Sixty-four to be precise, sir. Though I can’t tell you much more than that,” her eyes drifted towards someone just off camera. “We’re on a pretty tight rein here, as you can no doubt imagine.”
And then she was being bundled away again. When Sunderam came back on all thoughts of salvage rights had slipped Faulkner’s mind, though doubtless that had been Sunderam’s intention all along. Morton’s sudden appearance had triggered all kinds of questions. While she wasn’t wearing her USDC uniform, she also wasn’t dressed in standard prison fatigues. So, what was her current status?
“As you can see, Lieutenant Commander Morton is in good health, though I’m afraid the same can’t be said for all her compatriots. Now, if we could come to some arrangement, we could expedite this hand-over quickly and quietly. I’m thinking of the families. By side-stepping the official channels, I think we can save everyone a lot of frustration.”
Just the thought of who those other survivors might be sent a flood of familiar faces rushing through Faulkner’s head and he had to make a deliberate effort to try and block them out. At least for the short term. He had to think about operational integrity, and he couldn’t do that if he allowed himself to become emotionally compromised.
Sunderam was trying to rattle him, to win the advantage. They both knew that just because the prisoners were physically onboard the Serrayu that they weren’t any closer to being released. Sunderam could still make things very difficult for them if he wanted to. With the two sides still at war, he would be well within his rights to take his prisoners back to the Homeworlds until a formal peace agreement had been signed and that could take years.
Even then, the amount of Yakutian bureaucracy surrounding prisoner releases was colossal as Faulkner knew all too well from bitter experience.
Such a process was never straightforward and, if it suited the Yakutians, they could drag it out for years. But if he could agree a deal with Sunderam now, they could avoid all that bureaucratic nonsense in order that he might be reunited with his old crew as soon as possible. Because hadn’t they suffered enough?
He couldn’t afford to antagonise Sunderam now. He’d have to take a more measured approach.
“Thank you, Captain Sunderam, for everything that you’ve done for my people. You’ve acted with great tact and sensitivity under the circumstances and for that you have my eternal gratitude.”
“It has been my pleasure to provide your people with a safe-haven in what has been a difficult period for us all, captain. Now, before we go any further, how do you think we might best approach the thorny question of this Da’al ship?”
*
For all of Faulkner’s experience as a Confederation officer, it had been twenty years since he’d last set foot onboard a Yakutian vessel and a lot had changed in the interim. As well as his Marine guard, he was accompanied by McNeill and Ensign Smith, a female translator. As they moved up the access ramp and away from their shuttle, he was forced to re-evaluate some of his established thinking about the old enemy.
