Shadow of the Blue Ring (31 page)

“Juarez? You mean Marek Juarez of Suros?”

“Exactly,” said Kristea, “James, even if you can’t dissuade lord Artennes from launching the attack, you can at least appeal to the those leading the fleet. Juarez knows you and he respects you. In fact, most of the admirals in the alliance respect you for what you did during the revolution.”

“We’re still several hours from being ready to move out,” said James, “if Artennes launches the attack in just a couple of hours as you’ve indicated, we’ll be almost a day behind the fleet by the time we’re ready to move. That’s enough time for the Al’cari to wipe them out completely.”

“Then you need to hurry up whatever it is that you’re doing,” said Tasos, “I will do everything I can to try and make him see reason but I doubt he will listen to anyone. He is far too obsessed with the protection and preservation of the alliance that he is going to end up wiping it out by trying to defend it.”

“I’ll tell my crew to get a move on,” James said anxiously, “do what you can to slow the attack, I will be along as soon as I can. I didn’t go through hell six years ago to free the alliance just so it’s leader could tear it apart in one foolish move. Keep me updated.”

“Will do, Kristea out.”

James had hoped that they might have more time to prepare. Artennes must have had this planned right from the start, to be ready to launch an attack as soon as he and his crew returned from the Blue Ring with information on the enemy. His deception wasn’t going to have pleased the leaders of the council either, they would likely take action against him as soon as they could get hold of him.

“Loca, you need to get a move on,” James quickly said over the open channel, “I need us ready to move as soon as possible.”

“We’re coming aboard now,” Morelli replied over the comm system, “I’ll need to take a couple of systems down for an hour or two but if I have to, I think I can do most of the work on the way.”

“Good, we don’t have any time to waste.” While he was anxious to get them moving to intercept the fleet, he needed Iyacs installed into the ship’s VI core. He only hoped Morelli could work her magic as she had always done.

*     *     *     *     *

“Ok, lets try this in three… two… one…”

The whole crew had assembled for the defining moment. Morelli activated the newly modified VI core, now containing the Iyacs machine, and linked it to the bridge. While the effects could be unpredictable, there was no doubt that it would turn into a vital member of the crew if it worked. The integration took a couple of minutes but eventually, the VI system came to life, only it was not the old VI system anymore.

“Integration complete,” came the voice of Iyacs from the ship’s computer, “I believe I have successfully been transplanted into this ship’s command and control module. I am now a part of the ship.”

“It’s good to have you on the ship, Iyacs,” said James, “I trust you did not have any problems during the instalment?”

“I believe that I have one hundred percent functionality,” said Iyacs, “the engineering teams who worked on me did a very proficient job of combining my mechanics with the computer core of this ship. Having said that, I am reading a total of fifteen flaws across some of the ship’s minor systems and it may take me a few more hours to fully synchronise myself with all of them. Having said that, this is an impressive ship and I am happy to be a part of it.”

“I’m glad you approve,” James chuckled, “will you be able to access all of the ship’s systems once you have fully synchronised?”

“Yes, I believe so,” Iyacs replied, “I will have full access to propulsion, weapons, shields, navigation and tactical systems. Unless I am mistaken, which is a race occurrence, I will also be able to share much of what is in my databanks with the ship’s computer. As a result, there should be a full record of everything stored in my data core in your systems now. I also have access to the ship’s communication systems and it would seem that there is an incoming message from the planet Tolis. I believe it is from someone called Artennes.”

“I wonder if Tasos has an update for us,” James pondered, “can you put him through?”

“I do not believe that it is your former crew member, James,” said Iyacs, “the message is from a Jovan Artennes. Your databanks would suggest that he is the most important man in the alliance currently.”

“He was always going to figure out we sent him a fake in the end,” Ansare sighed, “he will likely order us to return to Tolis to stand down and to hand over the pieces of the weapon.”

“I have no intention of standing down, not with half the alliance fleet at risk,” said James, “Stevens, put him through, I want to hear what he has to say. Daniels, plot a course for Tolis. If we can’t talk Artennes down then we need to go after the fleet and try to appeal to them directly.”

James was prepared for whatever Artennes could throw at him. They were fifteen hours away in the Galante sector and out of reach of the council and any forces they might send to apprehend them. He was fully aware that going against the council could have severe implications for his career in the fleet but he was prepared to make that sacrifice to see the alliance survive, just as Kalmar had made the same sacrifice to protect his people. Once more, as the view-screen came to life, James found himself face to face with the most powerful man in the alliance. There was a few seconds of silence between them before he finally spoke.

“You are not making my life easy, captain Tavarez,” Artennes sighed, “I wanted to try and do this without complications and without causing an unnecessary friction between us but you are really testing my patience.”

“Lord Artennes, you have to understand why I am doing what I am doing,” James made the case for his defence although he did not think for a minute that he would get through to Artennes, “I know what you’re doing and it is a terrible mistake. Sending the fleet into the Blue Ring is suicide, you will be costing many hundreds of lives and throwing away ships that we cannot afford to lose.”

“Tasos had no right to divulge these details to you but I will deal with him later,” Artennes said sternly, “yes, it’s true that we are preparing an offensive against the Hunters. However, I can assure you that we are more than prepared to face whatever these Hunters can throw at us.”

“This is a huge mistake,” Kalmar insisted, “my people have been fighting against the Hunters for over three decades. They are more powerful than you realise. They will tear your fleet apart.”

“Lord Artennes, we have been to Raylia and we know who the Hunters really are,” James continued for him, “they are a race called the Al’cari. They are very dangerous and they have a serious grudge against the races of the old Antalaea empire. I beg you, give us time to find the last piece of the Shadow Bringer and let us deal with this situation without involving the fleets. If we fail, then you can turn to military action but please… let us do this.”

“I’m sorry, the decision has been made,” said Artennes, “the fleet has assembled and is undergoing a final mission brief. The campaign against the Hunters, or these Al’cari as you call them, will begin in six hours. You and your crew are ordered to return to Tolis to stand down and turn over the Shadow Bringer to the council. If you comply, no action will be taken against you or any of your crew and the situation will be considered resolved.”

James looked around at his crew. Each and every one of them had stood by his every decision throughout the mission in the Blue Ring, the revolution against the Vulians and on every mission in between. Each one of them was ready to follow him regardless of what course of action he chose, he could not let them down now by backing out on them and submitting to the poorly thought out wishes of the council. He knew what he had to do.

“No,” James said eventually, “I’m sorry lord Artennes, I cannot allow you to risk the alliance fleets like this. The Shadow Bringer stays with us and we will damn well do everything we can to end this threat without throwing half the alliance fleet away.”

“Think carefully about your next course of action James,” Artennes warned him, “if you go against the council like this, you risk your entire career and that of each and every one of your crew. Do not be a fool.”

“I know exactly what I’m risking lord Artennes,” said James, “I just wish that you knew what it was that you were risking. Stevens, cut the channel. Daniels, set a course for the Blue Ring sector.”

“James don’t do this!” Artennes made one final warning but it was in vain, James had no interest in hearing any more of his madness. He had always respected Artennes for the outstanding job he had done of rebuilding the alliance from the ruins of the Vulian occupation and for keeping things together so well for the years following. Recently, however, his decisions had become more and more questionable and it was concerning for many in the Earth Nations Fleet who were aware of the situation.

“Plotting a course for the Blue Ring now,” said Daniels, “is there any location in particular you want us to head for?”

“Just get us moving in the general direction,” said James, “we’ll track the fleet’s warp trail once we get close to Tolis and then we’ll follow from there.”

“Even if they don’t launch for another several hours, we’ll still be a long way behind,” said Ansare, “do you think we can reach them in time before the Al’cari find them?”

“We just have to hope,” said James, “right now, we’re the only hope that fleet has to survive. I just hope we get there in time.”

James sat back in the captain’s chair as Daniels hit the warp lever and sent them forward into hyperspace. From Raylia, near the heart of the Galante sector, it was a two day trip out into the Blue Ring sector. It would be an anxious wait but they just had to pray that the Al’cari did not reach the fleet before them and also that the admirals leading the fleet were more co-operative than the leader of the alliance council. Things were on a knife edge.

Chapter
Thirteen

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The hours passed like days. The trip from Raylia to the Blue Ring sector felt like it was taking forever. James had allowed his crew to pretty much do as they pleased in the time in between. He and Isha had taken a good few hours together in their quarters, finally able to speak openly about things again now that Isha’s big secret was out in the open. The initial shock had worn off and James had very much come around to the idea of becoming a father, it was something that he was actually looking forward to. It was exactly what they had needed, the chance to get away from the fleet and be a real family for the first time since they had been reunited. Even if the galaxy was always going to be in need of James and his crew to save it, he would now at least have something to come back to in between missions rather than simply living to serve the fleet’s every wish.

As for the rest of the crew, Morelli had been switching her time between helping Iyacs settle into the ship and visiting Saavoy in the medical bay. As far as they could all tell, he was doing well and he would be on his feet again in a matter of hours. Ansare and Kalmar had been in the briefing room with Lucy looking over strategies and tactics for potential battles against the Al’cari. Kosare, meanwhile, had been spending her time looking over the strange riddles and maps recovered from the underground hangar on Sharstrom and she had cautiously allowed Julio to help her out although she was still a little frosty towards him. His continued advances towards her made her a little unsettled when he was around although they were at least keeping it professional now.

The Evening Star was about four hours from reaching it’s destination in the Blue Ring sector. Daniels had set a course to follow behind the alliance fleet by following the warp trails it had left behind and they were hoping to intercept them directly before the Al’cari arrived on the scene. From what they could tell from their long range sensors and communications, no battle had yet taken place and they still had time in which to reach them. Without any bad news to speak of, James was happy to just relax alongside Isha in their quarters, their topic of conversation mostly concerning one subject…

“So we should probably start picking out names,” Isha said as the two of them lay next to each other on the bed in the captain’s cabin, “have you thought about what you might like to call it?”

“I guess I’ve never really had time to think about it,” said James, “I really don’t know. Do you have any ideas?”

“Well, our son or daughter is going to be a child of two worlds,” said Isha, “so I guess we need to decide if it’s going to be an Andurian or a Human name.”

“Oh yeah, I almost forgot,” such were the similarities between Humans and Andurians, it was sometimes easy for James to forget they were in fact from different worlds. He did not know that much about Andurian names though. They had jokingly looked through a couple of children’s names at a much earlier stage in their relationship but they had never seriously thought or talked about it. He did remember noting that they did have a lot of very pretty girl’s names on Anduria though.

“Maybe we could go for one of each,” he said eventually, “if it’s a boy, we go with a Human name, if it’s a girl, we go with an Andurian name.”

“Yeah, I can go along with that,” Isha agreed, “if it’s a girl, I quite like Aliona, or maybe Karyna, those are both popular names back home. What about for a boy then? What’s a popular name back in your home nation?”

“Well my parents were both from different nations,” said James, “my mum is from England but my dad was from Portugal. A good English name… maybe Thomas, or perhaps Stephen… no, doesn’t quite seem right. What about a Portuguese name… ? Hmm, my dad’s middle name was Luis. I quite like that one.”

“Luis Tavarez… I like it,” said Isha, “how about, Luis James Tavarez? Named for his father and his grandfather.”

“Sounds perfect,” James smiled, “you sure you don’t want to put an Andurian name in there to represent both sides of his heritage?”

“We’ll see what happens when we find out if it’s a boy or a girl,” said Isha, “you never know, we could have a girl and call her Luanna Ishamira Cavallera, from my mother’s middle name.”

“I like it either way,” said James, “it’ll change so many things once it does come though. I doubt you’ll be able to carry in serving in the fleet once the admirals realise you’re pregnant. They’ll probably put you on maternity leave as soon as the symptoms of the pregnancy start to show through.”

“I could use a little time away from the fleet actually,” said Isha, “I wouldn’t mind going and spending a few months sat on a beach in the sun somewhere. If Earth has one positive, it’s certainly the holiday destinations.”

“I certainly wouldn’t mind joining you there,” said James, “I’ll have plenty of time once this is all over, most likely because Artennes will terminate my career once we’ve finished out here. He’ll look to make an example of us all for defying him.”

“Artennes doesn’t have that authority,” said Isha, “no member of the council has any sovereign power over any other race, he can’t force them to throw you out of the fleet. I’m guessing you’ll just have to make it up to Jamerson or Sytchev somehow. I’m sure it wont be a problem.”

“I guess,” James sighed, “it’ll sure be a relief when all this is over though. Once this whole thing settles down, we can finally be a real family… it’ll be great to spend some real quality time together. Just you, me and…”

“I certainly hope I’m not interrupting.”

James almost jumped out of his skin as the voice of Iyacs sounded out in the background. James had almost completely forgotten that they had installed it on the ship in the time he had been spending alone with Isha.

“Please don’t startle me like again Iyacs,” James said, slightly annoyed at having been interrupted just as he and Isha had been heading towards an intimate moment, “and since when did you have access to my cabin?”

“I have access to both audio and visual sensors in every room on this ship,” said Iyacs, “you may call on me or access my database from any terminal aboard this ship now. Miss Morelli has done an excellent job of integrating me into the systems on this fine cruiser.”

“You may wish to turn off the visual sensors when we’re alone in here, Iyacs,” Isha said with a slight grin on her face, “you may be treated to more than you want to see.”

“Yes, I am fully aware of what organic beings do when two members of the opposite gender meet in a confined space,” said Iyacs, “just yesterday I noticed chief Connolly do the very same thing with ensign Pamela Davies from engineering. I especially approved of his method of inviting her over to discuss a refit of the ship’s main plasma coils, I was not aware that this was a euphemism for…”

“all right, I get the picture,” James cut Iyacs off mid-sentence, despite his slight amusement at his new AI’s revelations, “can I assume you have interrupted me here for a reason.”

“Oh yes, I believe miss Morelli was looking for you down in the medical bay,” said Iyacs, “there was a minor disturbance there two minutes and fifty-one seconds prior to this conversation. I recommend you make your way down there to check on the situation.”

“Ok, fine, I’ll go down and have a look,” James dragged himself off the bed and made his way to the doors to his cabin. Morelli and Saavoy’s relationship was still a little bit rocky and the disturbance between them was bad news for the crew, he did not need any infighting between them at this time. Arriving at the medical bay, he didn’t notice anything worthy of having Iyacs disturbing him in such a way, although once inside he did notice a very irritable Morelli.

“Loca, what’s up?”

“It’s Kasha. I told him to rest, the doctors told him to rest but he’s gone and done a runner,” Morelli was clearly unhappy about the situation but James was struggling to see how this warranted disturbing him.

“You interrupted my private time with my wife because you can’t find your boyfriend?” James said irritably.

“It’s more than that,” Morelli sighed, “he’s not been himself since he woke up. He’s distant, he’s looking pretty depressed. He wont talk to me or to any of the doctors so I was kind of wondering if you could talk to him, stop him from doing anything stupid. I’m really worried about him.”

“Fine, I’ll talk to him,” James reluctantly agreed, “whereabouts is he.”

“I don’t know, he disappeared off a few minutes ago and didn’t say where he was going,” said Morelli, “he was looking pretty down though, I hope he isn’t going to do anything stupid.”

“I’ll track him down,” said James, “Iyacs, can you locate Kasha Saavoy?”

“Admiral Saavoy is currently in the gym sparring room,” said Iyacs, who’s consciousness seemed to be able to watch every part of the ship simultaneously, “I believe he wishes to engage in some form of physical exercise.”

“The idiot,” Morelli grumbled, “he’ll do himself more harm than good, he is still nowhere near healed.”

“I’ll go and talk to him,” said James, “I’ll see if I can’t figure out what’s going on with him.”

Leaving Morelli to grumble to herself, James made his way to the gym and sparring room on the crew deck. He hadn’t had a chance to try out the fitness facilities that the admirals had provided for them on board their new ship, the mission had not allowed for the time. As he arrived, he noticed Saavoy on the far side of the room in one of the sparring rings. He had donned a pair of gloves and he was pounding away at one of the punch-bags.

“Come to check up on your wounded soldier?” he asked, seeing James approach the ring, “let me guess, did Loca send you?”

“She’s just a bit worried about you, thats all,” said James, seeing the continued ferocity at which Saavoy was striking the bag, “she thinks you’ll do more harm than good by doing too much too soon.”

Saavoy just continued to punch away, hitting harder and harder as he went. James was surprised the punch-bag was still in one piece. From the way he was hitting, James could see that Saavoy was clearly suffering more than just a physical injury. While the wounds to his body had been healed, the wounds to his spirit were not so easily cleansed. It looked as if his pride was the thing that had been hurt the most and this was his way of letting it all out.

“Not used to seeing this side of me huh?” Saavoy said, having seen that James had noticed the many scars he was carrying on his upper body. James noted the two fresh scars, one along his chest and one along his left arm, from the battle on Sharstrom but there were many others across his back and across his upper arms.

“I can get Doctor Markova to take a look at those scars if you want,” said James, “she can do a pretty good job of clearing up the skin with all the new tech in the med bay.”

“No thanks,” said Saavoy, now slowing down his continuous hitting, his body seemingly starting to tire, “I need my scars, they remind me of everything that I’ve had to go through to get to where I am now. These two and the one on my leg are just another reminder of how lucky I am to have survived so many close fights. You doctor informed me that the Al’cari blade was less than a centimetre from cutting my femoral artery. If it had done so, I would have bled out before you could get me on the shuttle and you would be taking my body back to Malorii for a memorial service rather than having this conversation. The margins between life and death are pretty fine are they not?”

“I suppose I can understand,” said James, “what about the others? Where did you get those?”

“The one on my right shoulder, that was from the battle with Sarkisian six years ago,” Saavoy had now stopped his incessant hitting and was now sat down at the edge of the ring to get his breath back, “the doctors back home offered to heal it and make it look as good as new but I declined. I wanted a reminder of that day to carry with me so that I will never forget how I felt in that moment when I finally avenged my family. These scars on my back were given to me in the first war against the Vulians before they conquered Malorii eight years ago. The command ship I was on took a lucky hit from a Vulian torpedo and it smashed through the bridge and buried all the senior officers under two feet of rubble. I was dug out two hours later when a rescue team came aboard after the battle to find survivors. My odds of survival were rated at less than ten percent but the doctors worked a miracle and somehow pulled me through. Five days later I was back on the bridge of my old command ship to lead the effort to retake our homeworld with the rest of the alliance fleets.”

“I guess I can’t properly imagine what you’ve been through,” James said sympathetically, “I’ve never known what it’s like to be so badly wounded, to be so close to death that I see my life flash before my eyes.”

“You’ve known you fair share of wounds James,” said Saavoy, “yours have been to the spirit though, you have suffered losses greater than most people your age and you have come through it stronger than before. Before Sharstrom, no opponent had ever bested me in close combat, I was unbeatable. After taking on hundreds of Vulian soldiers and even seven of their last blade-masters, including Sarkisian, I am bested by one Al’cari warrior and almost left for dead. I’ve never known what its like to lose before.”