Living in Freefall (Living on the Run Book 1) (17 page)

Once settled into her room, Riley came to hers to watch Hammond’s
ship wide broadcast of the affairs of state. Ericca turned the volume up so she
and Riley could better hear. Hammond held negotiations on an open frequency.
Everyone who could listen did just that, which included the
Viper
crew.

Raising his feet to an ottoman, Riley leaned back and
chuckled. “Oh, this is going to be good. I wish we had popcorn.”

The rectangular holograph screen was split to display both
Hammond and his adversary. Ericca gripped the corner and the screen moved with
her touch. She turned it so both she and Riley could better see.

Admiral Hammond’s tone—
all business
—only hinted of
polite patience, but the look in his eye said he wouldn’t tolerate being
tested. “Before we can discuss terms you will surrender immediately and cease
fire.”

Talbot nodded to his communications officer. Instantly his
few remaining vessels ceased firing. The Providence fleet, in turn, followed
suit. Then Talbot looked at Hammond with dismay.

“I must admit, Admiral—I believed this day would never come.
We all know Providence will, one day, fall under the sheer weight of the
freedoms and liberties granted to its citizens just as the old world United
States had. I was certain it’d happen during my command.”

“There are considerable differences between the USA and us,
Talbot. Perhaps you should make note of them.”

Talbot knit his brow. “And what are those, Admiral?”

“For one, Talbot, we are a people with a government, not the
other way around.”

“And . . .?”

“And secondly, we in Providence aren’t about to turn our
backs on our Creator. Get that straight.”

Upon hearing that, Ericca winced, then rolled her eyes.

She’s not alone in her views
, thought Riley. He
considered himself more of a wait and see kind of guy. He knew some believers.
Some were good folk. Others, not so much. When he was younger one had caught
his attention. He found her shy smile captivating.
Ah, she probably doesn’t
even remember me
.

He sighed.
There’s just no going back to things since
lost
.

The following day after breakfast Ericca and Archer agreed
to split up. He’d see to
Viper’s
repairs while she paid her respects to
Admiral Hammond.

Torrington promised Archer all the materials he’d need to
get
Viper
flying again, as well as provide him a way to communicate with
Jordon Kori to help with the repairs.

The flight to
Noble Sun
—all military protocol and
business—in Ericca’s view was slow, uneventful, and, mind numbingly dull. The
shuttle pilot brought the small craft around the
Noble Sun
, requested
permission to come aboard, and landed in the aft bay. If only Ericca had had
the controls . . .

She stepped out first and looked around. Right behind her
came Torrington.
Noble Sun’s
large hanger bay was built to receive
several large transports or, if it had too, one ship as large as
Freefall
.

A young officer stepped forward. “Captain Torrington,
Captain Archer, I’m Ensign Smith. Please follow me to the bridge.”

Ericca considered the handsome young man for a lingering
moment. “Lead on, Ensign.”

The Ensign turned on his heel and led them out. As they
walked down the wide corridor, the Ensign glanced at Ericca. “Miss, may I ask
how you came by your ship? It has everyone talking.”

Ericca smiled. “I can’t say, Ensign.”

Ensign Smith stopped abruptly and turned to the young
captain. “
Can’t
, Miss, or
won’t
?”

“You’re out of line, Ensign,” Torrington scolded. “You have
your assigned task. I suggest you focus on it.”

“Sorry, sir.” Reduced to silence, he proceeded to the lift
and rode with them up to the bridge.

Ericca and Torrington stepped off the elevator together, but
didn’t go any further.

Silver-haired and stately Admiral Hammond sat in command.

Talbot, who was on the main screen, grudgingly listened to
the terms of surrender. His face was stone, but in it Ericca thought she saw a
heart as black tar. Clean-shaven, his jaw muscles were visibly clinched.

Hammond held a digital scriptboard. As he studied it, Talbot
shifted uneasily in his chair. Hammond purposefully made the man wait before he
finally leveled his gaze on his adversary. “Talbot, you will—”

“Admiral Talbot!” Talbot interrupted. “You will address me
with respect.”

Hammond lifted the scriptboard, and shook it. “These are the
casualty numbers—care to hear them?” Without waiting for a response, he
continued. “Providence 4th Fleet – 24 souls lost in battle this twenty-fifth
day of Omere, 2253. Confederation 3rd Fleet – souls lost . . . 3,254.”
Without lifting his head, Hammond raised his eyes toward the screen. “You’re
not an admiral, Talbot, you’re a butcher.”

Hammond brought his head up. “Understand this; I will afford
you every courtesy due a man of your character, every consideration due a
butcher. Am I understood,
Talbot
?”

The enemy admiral scowled. “Those numbers show that the
mercy shown you is greater than that which you’ve shown me or my men. Let us be
straight about that, Admiral.”

“These numbers,” Hammond said gruffly, “tell us you care
little for human life, even for the lives of your own men. You pressed your
ships headlong into my guns knowing full well what would come of it. Even at
the downing of your ships’ shields you pressed them forward. Mercy? You don’t
know the meaning of the word, so let’s be clear about that, Talbot.”

With a stone face, Admiral Talbot did not respond. What
could he say? What was there to say? He was a butcher and Admiral Hammond had
nailed that title to his forehead several times over—3,254 times to be exact.

Ericca exchanged a look with Torrington.

Even as each man on the bridge attended to his duties, grins
of satisfaction rose on every face. In short order, Hammond had put Talbot in
his place. The crew took clear, unequivocal pleasure in this; their disdain for
the butcher was evident.

Hammond handed the scriptboard to an aid before he once
again focused on Talbot. “Every man on the uninjured ships, Talbot, will
transfer to any wounded vessel that can still sustain life and move. On those
ships all weapons will be jettisoned along with each ship’s communications
array. Those devices we will destroy. The uninjured Confederation vessels,
including the flagship, will be surrendered and manned by Providential crews.
Then, and only then, will the wounded ships be allowed to return to Parandi.
All others will be left for salvagers.

“Otherwise,
Talbot
, every man will be taken prisoner.
You will be stripped of your rank and housed with the enlisted. The demise of
your wounded ships will be left to scrap salvagers. The choice is yours.”

Ericca was impressed. Clearly Admiral Talbot didn’t like the
terms given him but there was no way the man could get more than what had been
offered.

Hammond’s allowing Talbot the freedom to return home, though
in disgrace, was generous in the extreme.

Narrow-eyed and frothing, Talbot nodded. He was in no
position to disagree in any event. “You are letting us go then? I have your
word?”

“You have my word as an officer of the Providence Union of
Planets. But be warned, Talbot. You may not want to return to the company of
your own crew. In
their
hands, your life may be no better off than those
lives you’ve taken.”

Talbot’s dark scowl increased and he glanced back at his
bridge crew before turning disconcerted eyes back to the admiral. “Sir,” he
said, “what you say isn’t without merit. I request sanctuary.”

“Denied.”

Cut at Hammond’s end, the screen went black.

It was then that the ensign announced in a clear voice the
new arrivals, “Captains Torrington and Archer, sir.”

As Hammond signed certain documents, Torrington, with Ericca
stepped closer. When Hammond completed his tasks he looked up at them coolly, rose
to his feet, and took Ericca’s hand. The admiral was tall, and towered over the
twenty-year-old by almost a foot. “Captain Archer,” he said, dipping his head.
Then, turning to Torrington, he clasped the young captain’s hand. “Welcome
aboard
Noble Sun
.”

Ericca raised an obligatory smile. “Thank you, Admiral. We
were pleased to have found you and your fleet here.”

He smiled. “It is near suppertime. Would you care to freshen
up before joining me and my first-officer, or have you eaten?”

“I’ve already eaten, Admiral, thanks to Capt. Torrington’s
graciousness. I’m here to pay you my respects.”

“Your respects? Indeed. Captain Torrington has told me what
you did. I invited you here to pay you
my
respects and express my
gratitude.” He gestured to a door off the bridge. “Come. Sit. Have some coffee
with me and tell me how you’ve come to be here.”

She nodded, and, with Torrington, followed Hammond into his
quarters, which were comfortably dressed in modest tastes of creams and light
browns. Ericca eased into a well-cushioned chair. Torrington took another. And
the admiral settled onto the couch at the end nearest her.

Hammond’s personal attendant entered the room bearing a
silver coffee pot and china cups on a silver serving tray, He stooped to set
the tray on the center table, poured a cup, and cocked his head to address Ericca.
“How do you take your coffee, ma’am?”

“Sweet, a little cream.”

The aroma was magnificent. It brought back memories of
Reliant
to days when real coffee wasn’t so scarce. The attendant handed Ericca her cup
on a matching china saucer, then prepared the admiral’s and Torrington’s before
leaving the room.

Ericca took a sip. The flavor was every bit as good as the
aroma. She rested the cup and saucer on a knee. “We’ve spent the better part of
the last two days in
Viper
, sir, my brother and I. Getting an actual bed
to sleep in . . .” She laughed. “I think I may have overslept.”

Hammond raised a slight grin. “May I ask you who constructed
your ship?
Viper
, you called it?”

“I bought that little baby in Colchester on Coredei. It’s
since been modified. My brother and I now fly security cover for a freighter.”
She raised her cup to her lips to sip.

“Would what you’re calling a
freighter
be by any
chance
Freefall?
”

With a furrowed brow, she slowly lowering her cup, and
raised her head to meet his eyes. “You’ve heard of
Freefall?
”

“My dear girl,
Freefall
and Jordon Kori are the very
reasons we crossed the border.”

“Seriously? Why, if I may ask?”

“They sent for aid. We came.”

“You’ve crossed the border, sir. The Confederacy will see
that as an act of war.”

“That is true. Of late, they’ve been testing our mettle.
Tensions have been building between our two nations for quite some time now.
This war was inevitable . . .
is
inevitable.”

Ericca glanced at Torrington who was quietly sipping his
coffee. “Am I to understand that Jordon Kori is the cause of this war?”

Hammond took a moment to sip his drink. “In a sense, he is. Jordon
Kori was a Providence weapons engineer before—”

“Jordon was? My Jordon?” She chuckled. “We can’t be talking
about the same guy.”

“He disappeared almost seven years ago.”

“Seven?” Ericca scrutinized Hammond. “He was
fifteen-years-old. Are you saying he was a boy when he modified
Freefall
?”

“Fifteen? Oh, I see. I was referring to Jordon Sr. Aren’t
you?”

“I didn’t even know there was a Senior. Jordon Kori captains
Freefall
, sooo . . .”

Hammond thought for a moment. “So the son captains
Freefall
now?”

Ericca shrugged. “If you say so. Have you ever heard of
Reliant
,
sir?”

He nodded. “
Reliant
was a weapons test platform. Jordon
Kori Sr. modified an old freighter with his gadgets, and sent it into Confed
space to see how it would do. Your dad was to go in, aim for the far side of
their system, and return. The tech it was equipped with should have made that
easy. But we never heard from her again. Up until now we thought the test was a
complete failure.”

Ericca released a surprised breath. Hammond’s account didn’t
match up with that of her parent’s.
Reliant
wasn’t sent, it was taken
under extraordinary circumstances. Her heart suddenly throbbed in her throat,
and her jaw fell slack. So it was Jordon Kori Sr. who had built the ship that
killed her parents? Her mind raced. Now she knew and understood why Jordon Jr. had
hired her and Archer; why he made every effort to keep them safe. The man was
trying to assuage guilt for acts not his own; nothing more. Her cup fell from
her knee. Shattering on the floor, it startled her from her thoughts. With
trembling hands, she stooped to pick up the pieces.

“Leave it,” Hammond said. “I’ll get someone in here to clean
that up later.”

She leaned back and ran both hands down her face together. “Seven
years ago, Jordon would have been fifteen. Reliant would have been created when
he was born.”

“Jordon Sr. first modified that old freighter. Jordon Jr.
. . . your Jordon Kori, added to his own modification. He was just
nine when he began, a prodigy.”

“Nine?”

“Yes,” Hammond added. “Even then his work baffled his
father.
Reliant
had Jordon Sr. latest and greatest.
Freefall
has Jordon
Jr’s.”

“Jordon and my dad . . .”

“You didn’t know they were the best of friends?”

“No, wait! Who? Which, Junior or senior?”

“Senior. I don’t know if your parents ever met the boy.”

Images flashed across her mind—
brief, disjointed, vague
—of
when she was very young. There was another ship her parents sometimes worked alongside.
A boy. Redhead, freckle faced, and tripping all over himself. Was that Jordon
Jr.? Is that why he looked so familiar? She jerked her mind from those thoughts
and turned to Hammond. “So you know
Reliant
was my home?”

“I wasn’t certain. But after seeing
Viper
in action,
and discovering your last name was Archer, yes, that pretty much sealed it for
me. News of your father’s death came as quite a blow to those of us who knew
him and Lilia. Stanley Archer was our best and bravest test pilot. His family,
namely Lilia, Riley, and you, were Swift’s cover-story if he was ever caught.”

Ericca remembered that ‘Swift’ was her dad’s callsign. She felt
her anger rise. “Test platform?” she said with unbridled disdain. “Archer and
I—”

“Archer?” Hammond questioned.

“My brother,
Riley
, and I nearly died at Los Dabaron
because of that, so-called,
test platform
.”

“You call your brother ‘
Archer
?’”

“Yes, yes,” she said with growing irritation. “Forget that.
If not for Jordon Kori’s gadgets we would never have had to come so close to getting
killed. Those stupid gadgets ultimately cost my parents their lives.” She
looked at Torrington with hard eyes before turning them back on Hammond. “
Test
platform
? What were you thinking? There were kids on that
Test Platform
,
so-called!”

Hammond slid to the couch’s edge and set his cup in its
saucer on the coffee table. Resting his elbows on his knees, he interlaced his
fingers. “Miss Archer, I’m sorry Swift and Lilia were killed. I’m sorry that you
feel it was Jordon Kori’s fault. However, in truth it was those devices on
Reliant
that saved your life at Los Dabaron. Kori’s devices gave
Reliant
the
strength to take on an entire Confed fleet, and singlehandedly hold them at bay
long enough for help to arrive. The fact that a ten-year-old—”

“Are you people insane? I was twelve damn it! Just a kid.”