Cody's War: Flight Of The Phoenix, page 12
“Well, it’s a possibility,” Ellaz said. “But without dedicated tach comm — at a high bandwidth — even all of me won’t be able to solve that problem.”
Cody raised an eyebrow and grinned to Nora. It was the first time in a long time that Ellaz had admitted to being incapable of something. Anything.
“You’ll figure it out,” Cody assured her.
“We will,” Ellaz agreed. “But… it will take time.”
“Which we don’t have,” Lucy said. She raised her hands. “Sorry! I didn’t mean to —”
“It’s okay,” Nora said. “We’ve been talking about it ourselves.”
“We won’t know anything at least until we hear back from Gail,” Cody said.
“Well, we don’t know if she’s going to find anything,” Nora said. “But —”
“If she does, it’ll help a lot,” Cody agreed.
#
“Admiral,” a voice called softly from the open door, “it’s time.”
“Thank you, Imbka,” Gail Eber replied, turning over to face the light. “Are we ready?”
“I’ve ordered us out of warp, and we’re ready to deploy the array,” Imbka Murray replied. Imbka was fifty-five years old and treated Gail alternately like a small girl and a god. Gail was good with either, trading mercilessly on Imbka’s confusion. In their time together, Imbka had come to tone down both her reactions and, nowadays, was generally treating Gail just like she wanted — as the admiral of the Recon Fleet.
“And, what’s the betting?” Gail asked, throwing off her covers and jumping out of bed. “Are we going to find anything?”
“About three to one in favor,” Imbka replied with a chuckle. “You go get cleaned up and dressed, Miz, and we’ll get you breakfast on the bridge.”
“You’re letting me on the bridge?” Gail teased. Mighty had not only a bridge but a flag deck which was pretty much all Gail’s. She didn’t actually have any staff to man it, so she stole from Imbka’s crew whenever she wanted.
“I’m in a good mood today,” Imbka replied with another chuckle. “Ten minutes, who knows how I’ll be?”
“And how quickly will we get the array deployed?” Gail asked as she headed toward the restroom.
“Well, the betting on that is a bit looser,” Imbka allowed. “Come to the bridge and we’ll fill you in there.”
“‘Kay.” Gail allowed. She showered and cleaned quickly, donning a fresh uniform and was on the lift over to the bridge in twelve minutes.
#
“Admiral on the bridge!” Imbka Murray called when she caught sight of Gail exiting the lift. Everyone rose to attention even as Gail shook her head and waved them back to stations.
“First drop is complete, Miz,” Natty Langford, Mighty’s tactical officer reported crisply.
Gail nodded and moved up to the forward display, examining the latest images.
“And Chosen?” Gail asked.
“Commodore Marks has reported that she’s an hour to her drop point, Miz,” Lieutenant Langford replied.
“Heh! So we got the drop on her,” Gail muttered to herself. The lift door opened and she turned toward the smells of warm food. She raised an eyebrow to Imbka who gave her a nod in return — the crew had already been fed. “If you all will excuse me, I’ll going to finish off this marvelous breakfast before I lose my temper.”
The bridge crew smiled and grinned — Gail was notoriously hard to ruffle. She liked to say that Ellaz kept her on her toes.
The lift door opened again and Tilly came rushing in, half-dressed, her tunic unbuttoned.
“Allow me, Miss,” Imbka Murray said, rushing over to fix Tilly’s attire.
“Toast,” Gail said, nodding to Tilly. They were in a small cuddy just behind the command chair. Officially, it didn’t exist. However it had appeared early one day when the crew had decided that seeing “the poor admiral starving again” was too much for them. Tilly redirected herself, grabbed a slice of toast — it was about all Gail could get into her first thing in the day — and smiled as she chomped it down.
“It’s better with butter and jam,” Gail reminded her, primly applying the same to her slice and relishing it as she chewed.
“Food first, flavor later,” Tilly said — as always. The crew of Mighty had learned far too much of her treatment on the alien ship — even though all information regarding her past was officially private and secret. But… there was no way the crew of Mighty wasn’t going to find out about the nine year-old girl who’d been tortured by aliens and escaped by the skin of her teeth. And Tilly, Gail knew, was becoming more trusting, feeling safer, and becoming more human than she had been after two years in the aliens’ clutches.
It was a relief to everyone that her nights of frantic terror, of clutching any weapon she could as she sleep-walked, were on the decline. Dr. Noran was cautiously optimistic. Gail was worried that there were still a few memories that might trigger the older girl but she was no longer worried about how the crew would react. Which is why they forgave Tilly for getting her tunic on backwards, just as Imbka would haul her into the captain’s day cabin to get her trousers on the right way around in a moment or two.
“Tilly, why don’t you come with me?” Imbka said right on cue.
Tilly looked up at her, a slice of toast hanging out of her mouth, “I got them on wrong again, didn’t I?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Imbka said, holding out a hand to Tilly.
“There’s a slice of bacon with your name on it,” Gail promised, pointing to the last slice of bacon her — their — tray.
Tilly shot a look to Gail and murmured, “Ellaz did it.”
“I’ll talk to her,” Gail promised. Ellaz Eber had decided that she would allow herself to be a practical joker and that Tilly was her natural target. It had been pretty nasty at first but Ellaz was calming down and getting less vicious. Gail — and Dr. Noran — had spent a lot of time counseling Ellaz, even threatening to get real Cody involved until Ellaz had backed off.
“She’s my sister,” Ellaz said.
“She’s been through hell,” Gail told her firmly.
“She killed my mother, she’s responsible for the deaths of billions,” Ellaz shot back.
“Yes,” Gail agreed. “And yet —”
“She tried,” Ellaz admitted with a frown. “And she’s trying.”
“So cut her some slack,” Gail said.
“Or what?” Ellaz demanded.
“I’ll shut you down,” Gail told her firmly.
“You can’t —”
“Yes, I can,” Gail said. She didn’t tell Ellaz that Cody had established procedures for dealing with rogue ships. “Or I’ll tell Ellaz Whirly and let her deal with you.”
Ellaz shut up. “Okay,” she’d said finally. “But she’s likely to be just as mad —”
“No,” Gail said. “She’s not, you know. And you shouldn’t be, either.” Gail pulled out her trump card, one she didn’t plan to use often. “And you’re making me ashamed, you know. You’re picking on a girl with not just serious physical ailments with the two years of mental torture while she watched her sister being dissected and —”
“Okay, okay! Enough!” Ellaz said. In a smaller voice. “I forgot.”
“And you shouldn’t,” Gail said. “She’s your sister. She deserves better from you.”
“But… I’ve never had a sister,” Ellaz whined.
“Well, we’re in the same boat,” Gail replied. “Except that I’ve got you and Nora and —”
“Well, we’ve got Tilly up here with us,” Ellaz said. “But the real Tilly is —”
“Your sister, the one who’s going to help diaper your baby —”
“What?”
“From what I can tell, she has the greatest legal right of guardian,” Gail said, keeping her expression very neutral. “You might want to ask yourself whether you want her playing the tricks on Ellen Whirly that you’re playing on her.”
So Ellaz had backed off. And if she still got Tilly confused on clothing, she apologized afterwards. Tilly got her back in ways that Ellaz hadn’t imagined possible, to the point where Ellaz was toning her jokes down out of simple self-preservation. Beside, Tilly was every inch Ellaz’s intellectual equal, which was both part of the problem and part of the solution.
The door to the day cabin opened again and a marvelously beautiful young girl came traipsing out, looked at Gail and smiled when she saw that the last slice of bacon really was available. Behind her, Captain Murray smiled at Gail. Gail smiled back, patted the empty seat for Tilly and shot sideways looks at the crew — who were all smiling to themselves.
“They’re launching the array, right?” Tilly said as she inhaled the slice of bacon.
“Drink something!” Imbka implored her. “Milk. You need the calcium.”
Tilly spotted the glass of milk, eyed it distastefully and spotted the chocolate milk beside it. She pushed the glass of milk toward Gail and took the chocolate milk herself. “That’s yours, you need the calcium,” she told Gail.
“Okay,” Gail agreed, downing the milk in one go. Tilly tried to emulate her but spluttered, splattering chocolate milk down her front. She gave Gail a terrified look but Gail just laughed, pulled out her napkin and cleaned her up. “That was too fast.”
“Yes,” Tilly agreed. She looked mournfully at the empty glass.
“We’ll get you more,” Imbka said.
“And bacon?” Tilly said. Gail lowered her head in warning. “Please?”
“Of course,” Imbka said. Then she smiled at Tilly. “What’s the bets —”
The lift door opened and a galley orderly came in with a tray, smiling at Tilly as she placed a plate of bacon and a glass of chocolate milk — warmed — in front of her.
“They’re getting very efficient,” Tilly allowed, smiling and remembering to thank her benefactor.
Gail wiped herself off and went over to the comm section, raising an eyebrow to beg for a seat. There were four at the station, two were empty so it was merely a courtesy request, answered by an equally courteous wave from the comm officer. Gail smiled, sat, and punched up a connection.
“So, James, how are they doing?” Gail said to Colonel James Martin, the commander of Mighty’s marine detachment.
“All elbows and assholes, if you’ll pardon me saying, Admiral,” Martin replied. James Martin was a mere eighty-nine, had been retired for ten years and was “getting bored” in his own words until he’d gotten a “very polite” kick in the backside from Admiral Cartwright, encouraging him to offer his services to Cody Ford and Ford’s Fleet. He’d hand-picked Gail after a rather raucous interview in which he tried to scare her off. He’d failed and while he sometimes treated her like she was just seven — “almost eight!” — most of the time he just kept an amused eye on her progress.
“No, Colonel,” Gail said in mock seriousness, “you’re to watch your tongue around us innocent babes.”
“Of course, admiral, what was I thinking?” Martin replied smoothly. Gail smiled back at him. “Anyway, they’re about twenty minutes ahead of schedule and pleased as punch.”
“Good,” Gail said. “As soon as we dial this array in, we’ll link up with Midway and see what we can see.”
“I hope we get something, miz,” Colonel Martin said.
“Me too!”
“Also, miz, would you remind Miss Tilly that it’s mate in four?” Colonel Martin replied, loudly.
“Is not!” Tilly shouted back. “You’ll see!”
“I tremble with anticipation,” Colonel Martin said, breaking the connection.
#
“Half of everything is patience,” Gail said to Tilly as she fidgeted in front of the long range sensor consoles.
“I know, I know,” Tilly replied, waving her remark away with an irritated gesture. “It’s just… I don’t like waiting.”
Gail smiled and nodded. She wasn’t fond of it, either, but she’d begun to realize that patience was her first strength. Many problems disappeared just by giving them time.
The aliens weren’t one of them, however.
“Mighty, this is Midway,” Ursula Letmer’s voice came clearly over the tach comm. “We’ve got your array linked in. Standby.”
“Roger,” Imbka Murray replied.
A moment later the long-range sensor screens flickered and updated.
“There!” Tilly cried, pointing. “What’s that?”
Gail nodded. She punched up her comm. “Scott, why don’t you go see what we’ve found? Take Persephone with you. Be careful.”
“On the way,” Captain Scott Ellis of Bee replied immediately. “My navigator says about two hours, admiral.”
“Sure thing,” Gail replied. More waiting. “In the meantime, we’ll keep looking.”
“Admiral, I think we might want to see if we can increase our resolution,” Chief Science Officer, Captain Tanya Watney suggested, looking up from her seat on sensors.
“Absolutely,” Gail said, glancing toward Tilly who nodded in agreement.
“Malcolm,” Tilly said. Gail looked at her. “Malcolm Evans was the captain of the Farmingham. We went looking for him.”
Gail nodded. She’d heard this from Tilly before but she knew from Dr. Noran that Tilly would be prone to flashing back into memories, as did so many stress survivors.
“And he was looking for Thorun and Nohr Nilstrom from the Caldecott,” Gail reminded her.
“I told you this before,” Tilly said, frowning.
Gail reached over and squeezed her hand. “It’s good to hear it again.”
“And I told you about the Surveillance Society?”
“You did,” Gail agreed. “Thorun was concerned about the missing ships and she convinced your father and Mr. Evans to go looking. When their ship Caldecott disappeared, Mr. Evans went after them and when he didn’t report back, your father —”
“And mother,” Tilly added.
Gail accepted the correction with a nod. “— and mother decided to go investigate themselves.”
“And Nate decided we all had to go,” Tilly continued. When she started, she had a hard time stopping. “So we all went.” She made noise, like a whimper and a growl combined. “When they caught us, Nate rushed out of the airlock and they killed him.”
“I know, sweetie, I know,” Gail assured her, glancing behind her to Captain Murray.
But Tilly couldn’t stop. “Mom followed and they killed her. Then my father surrendered and we were herded into cells.” Tilly’s eyes had started streaming with uncontrollable tears. “They started with my sister, Elanor.” She said it like she had trouble remembering her sister’s name. “They —” she broke off and licked her lips, turning to Gail “— they took her apart, Gail! Everything! She screamed. I begged them to stop and father did everything he could but… when they were done they started on me.”
“But they were slower,” Gail said. “They concentrated on bones. Broke them to see —”
“How it would look,” Tilly continued. “Father tried to stop them, begged them to take him instead but — and then he broke.”
As Dr. Noran surmised, “He had a psychotic event.” Or as Gail thought, he went insane with grief.
“He came back, though,” Gail reminded her. Tilly nodded. “And then you — and he — planned revenge.”
“We figured out how to get out of our cells,” Tilly agreed. “We got back to the ship. We timed it so that they would never notice us gone.”
“They’d gotten bored breaking you,” Gail said, her voice breaking as tears overwhelmed her.
“They had, so we got even,” Tilly said. “Father and I had implants, we hooked into Maru and started working.”
“You have the Whirly genes,” Gail said. “You figured out how to make a warp suit.”
“And when they attacked Meath, we fought back,” Tilly said. “But not before they’d used me and father to spy on everything.”
She had no choice. The aliens had learned that tormenting one person was a great way to coerce another. So if Tilly could move, they sent her in to spy on star systems, listening and reporting back — on pain of her father’s death.
“I couldn’t lose him!” Tilly had cried.
“No, of course not,” Gail agreed softly.
“But while they were mapping the systems, we were working on them,” Tilly said, wiping her eyes and rubbing her nose on her sleeve. “We convinced them that Elle’s energy converter was too dangerous.”
“It was,” Gail agreed. It still is, she thought to herself.
“They decided we had to steal it,” Tilly said. “And we wanted to because we’d figured out how to steal our shuttle.” She made a face. “We’d figured out partway how to make an energy converter but we couldn’t get it to work well.”
“So you were hoping that Elle’s converter was better,” Gail guessed.
Tilly nodded. “And if it worked, we could escape in our shuttle.”
“By powering it with the Whirly energy converter,” Gail agreed.
Tilly nodded. “Only, I realized that it was too dangerous. I got on the freighter and I — I shot them.” She closed her eyes and lowered them into her fists, shaking her head angrily. “That’s all our power converter was good for. Turning a small amount of mass into energy.” Tilly shook her head. “We had to warn you! We had to give you a chance!”
“And you did, you did!” Gail assured her. The plan — created by Tilly on the fly — was that by destroying only Meath, only fifteen hundred million people, they would warn the rest of mankind, give them a chance to fight back. The plan had succeeded, as Gail had proved at the Battle Of Midway.
“Captain!” Hugo Allred called out now, bringing Gail’s reminiscence to an end. “We’ve got something!” He turned to Gail as he continued, “It’s a standard distress beacon.”
“What?” Captain Murray said. “How come —”
“It just activated,” Lieutenant Allred explained. “Just as Commodore Ellis’ ships dropped out of warp.”
“What?” Gail said. “Do we have a location?”
“About six hours from us, Admiral,” Allred replied. Then he paused. “We’ve got another! Correction six more!”
