“Are you listening Alice?” Was the question simply written on her wrist unit. It was sent directly to her comm address, the origination point was the Clever Dream. She just stared at it.
“Are you all right?” Stephanie asked under her breath.
“I think we just got our response,” Alice replied just as quietly as she scrolled back up to the beginning of the message. There were pictures of Jake, Jason Everin, Terry Ozark McPatrick and a woman who looked much like Ayan Rice all running towards the hold of the Clever Dream with a veritable stream of haggard refugees behind them. Their condition told her much of the story; as bad as it was in orbit around Pandem it was worse on the planet surface. There were few wounded.
She read the rest of the message, encoded in an encryption she shared only with her former artificial intelligence; Lewis. “I'm unclean but making all the right calls. I've seen hell but found my way back up. I've changed but not so much that I've forgotten you.” Read the caption. They were the lyrics to Around and Back, one of her favourite songs. The message was clear; Lewis had somehow overcome the viral infection and the Clever Dream was operational.
The next image showed Jake, Jason and Ayan in the cockpit, getting ready for takeoff. There was a prompt to play a clip from her own command unit following it and she activated it. The image of Derek Graves, the main character in her favourite western appeared and asked; “We can run like hell or turn and jump off that cliff boy, but no tellin' whether that water's deep enough to keep us from breakin' when we hit.” He asked around the rough rolled cigarillo in the corner of his mouth.
There was a map of Damshir with the spaceport shaded blue. That, combined with everything else told her everything she needed to know.
She looked at the tactical map, aware that Stephanie was keeping one eye on the bridge and the other on her directly. “Jake is down there, I just got a direct reply.”
“What's his status?”
“They're on the Clever Dream, ready for takeoff. They just need to know how to proceed,” she whispered.
“The Clever Dream? Are you sure this information is good?”
“It came through on the rolling encryption that I shared with Lewis, and he used references that only he and I would get. We just need to give them some direction.”
“You're positive?”
“Listen, I know you don't trust me yet, that's one of the reasons why Jake gave you the command override chip you've been keeping under your vacsuit, but you don't want to second guess me, not now, not about this.”
“If this is a trap, you'll be letting a large gunship within striking distance of us. For all you know it could be loaded with explosives or an EMP bomb and if it were big enough it could disable us long enough for-”
“Do you trust me to bring them home or not? If you do, let me finish the job. If you don't you can activate that command chip, take over and do it your way while I take a fighter and try to make my way to them myself,” Alice said in a rushed, angry whisper.
If Stephanie was taken aback at all by the other woman's response, she didn't show it. Instead she kept calm and clear as she looked the Acting Captain directly in the eye and replied; “You I trust,” she flinched her gaze towards the helm for just a second, only long enough for Alice to see.
It donned on Alice then; she really did have Stephanie's trust. The security team wasn't some kind of insurance against her and Stephanie's objections were only a First Officer's reflex to invite the Captain to consider other options before committing to an act.
A further realization sunk in bringing on a wave of momentary dread. Whoever the heavily armed security team was there for was most likely at the helm or at the operations station past the main pilot's console. The question of who exactly that was burned in her mind for a moment before she got back to the matter at hand.
She input the coordinates she wanted the Clever Dream to find it's way to, encrypted the tiny data package and sent it directly to Chief Frost's comm address. “Gunnery, I want five shells fired with that message, understand?” she asked.
“Aye, thirty seconds until it's away,” Frost replied.
“All right Ash, get us moving as soon as the shells are away. After the last volley they're probably looking for us.”
“I'm ready,” she replied.
“After you have us clear of our launching point I'll need you to stand ready to manoeuvre. I'll be giving you specific coordinates and you'll only have a few seconds to get us there.”
“Yes ma'am,” Ashley replied with a professionalism that would have been surprising if she wasn't at the controls.
“Gunnery reports the transmitters are away and their gun ports are sealed,” Agameg said quickly from his tactical station.
Ashley fired the main engines as hard as their cloaking systems would allow and started to guide the ship out of the area when several beam weapons took aim and began to fire in their general direction. One struck their shields and it was joined by several others, all tracking their movements.
“Dammit! They've got us! Bring our defensive systems up to full power and begin evasive action!” Alice called out.
In the space of a second the quiet, subdued environment of the bridge burst into a commotion as everyone worked as quickly as they could to shore up defences, bring weapons to bear and inform the entire crew that Triton had joined the fight whether she liked it or not.
“Cynthia, try to make contact with the Carthans. Tell them we're on their side,” Alice ordered. “Tactical, only fire on West Watch and Regent Galactic vessels that have fired on us and reserve a portion of our guns for anti-starfighter fire. Use the heaviest weaponry in our arsenal.”
“Does that include-”
“Nuclear, cluster explosives, timed munitions, torpedoes, EMP flak, throw everything we have at them,” Alice interrupted Agameg.
“Helm, show the biggest ships our thinnest profile. If we keep them to port or stern they won't be able to hit us as easily and we'll have torpedo ports pointed in their direction at all times. Remain ready to receive pickup coordinates.”
“Aye!” Ashley called back as she worked to manoeuvre with the constant advice and input of her navigators. Anyone else would be confused by the pair sitting to either side of her, sometimes they offered completely different options, momentarily disagreed on their best course but in the end Ashley used the information to make the best decision for the ship. Second by second she absorbed information from her console, the tactical display, status panel, course advisory hologram and her navigators.
“Flight deck, get ready to retrieve the Clever Dream. She's space worthy but I don't know anything else about her condition, so have emergency crews ready and have people with medical training standing by. They have refugees with them,” Alice called down to Chief Vercelli.
“Aye, Captain. My people will be standing ready.”
“Now we just have to keep it all together until the Clever Dream can get to us,” Alice said as she looked at the Triton status screen to one side of the command seat and watched the larger tactical display at the front of the bridge. The shields were holding, the gunnery deck was already firing a mixture of heavy seeker shells and electromagnetic pulse flak while the torpedo bays were loading high speed fusion torpedoes with simple guidance systems. The ship's shields were down to ninety three percent and recharging, drawing on four of the ships massive fusion generators but there was an entire squadron of fighters on their way, and several West Watch and Regent Galactic destroyers were bringing weapons to bear. “Hurry the hell up Jake.”