Ships of My Fathers (38 page)

The shuttle ride over to the Naval station was longer than Michael expected, but it did give him time to tell the details of his adventure to his family and Collins. The shuttle had a large block of general seating filled with personnel of varying rank, but the four of them had one of the two private compartments to themselves.

Commander Collins listened quietly, only occasionally asking for clarifications on the names. Gabrielle on the other hand was quite animated, especially at first, telling Michael how foolish he had been, but after the third time, Hans told her to stop. “That’s quite enough,” he said. “It’s not your place to judge your cousin’s choices. You weren’t there.”

Hans’ reserve surprised him, so he took note of how quiet his uncle was being. In fact, his only other comment during the entire tale was during Michael’s explanation of how he was able to move through the walls of the
Jaguar
. Hans merely shook his head and muttered, “Shoddy construction. Fools.”

He had just gotten to Maya taking aim at Gabrielle for her mid-battle arrival when the docking notice sounded. “But why didn’t you shoot her?” Gabrielle asked.

Michael ducked his head in embarrassment. “I couldn’t figure out the safety. Tried pushing it, tried turning it.” He shrugged. “I never learned to use one, but I can throw pretty well.”

They made their way out of the shuttle and through the station with Collins as their guide. Michael was impressed at the size. It was perhaps as large as the civilian station. It had fewer rings, but they were much larger. “It’s for the carriers,” Collins explained. “They need more elbow room than even the
Heavy Heinrich
.”

At last they reached the Intelligence office, and Collins signed them in and handed them visitor badges. “Why here?” Michael asked. “I thought this was a records query.”

“It’s more secure here.”

He led them further down a corridor to a smaller lounge where a steward waited. Collins paused outside a door labeled “Projection Four” and turned to Michael.

“What I’m about to show you is from our archives, not part of the general record. I can get you a written report that offers more details than the public record, but we don’t release copies of these archives.”

“Are they classified or something?”

He shook his head. “Not in this case, but there are privacy matters, respect for the dead, that kind of thing. You made the request, so I’m offering them to you. Your family is only here as a courtesy. Whether they join us is up to you.”

“But—” Gabrielle began her objection, but Hans put a hand on her shoulder.

“No, dear, this is for Michael. We can wait out here.”

Michael thought about it a moment before answering. “No, I think I want my cousin with me.”

“Damn straight,” she said.

“As for my uncle,” he said, turning to face Hans, “Peter was his brother, and I guess he knew Sophia better than I ever will. He can join us if he wants.”

Collins nodded and opened the door. “Then let’s get started.”

The room had six seats arrayed on one side of a curved table, all of them focused in on a large screen on the opposite wall. Collins positioned himself at a podium at the far corner and motioned the others to the seats. The steward closed the door behind them, and the room grew dark but for the soft glow of the screen.

It lit up to read, “CasRb-733, Archive Compilation.”

“The review of ship-to-ship battles is a tricky affair,” Collins began. “There are multiple vessels with varying degrees of limited information. In some cases this limit is due to distance or interference, and in other cases, it is because the ship was destroyed. Ships often maintain a hardened records core, and after a battle, it is sometimes recovered, but not always. There are also ship-to-ship communications, and they can often shed additional light on the battle. Put it all together, and it can be mere wisps of information in some areas with terabytes of data in others. These compilations are how we tend to view them.”

Collins clicked the screen forward, and Michael saw the same summary page he had found months earlier. It presented two columns of ships. On the left were the freighters:
Vannover Markey
, damaged, five deaths;
Corey Tasha
, destroyed, all hands lost;
Kaiser’s Folly
, destroyed, all hands lost, updated 3381-183 to note four survivors. On the right were the combatants: the
Reilly
and the
Hammerhead
.

The
Hammerhead
had been Malcolm’s ship.

The screen advanced again to show a large tactical display with four icons: VM, CT, KF, and Rl. The
Hammerhead
was not represented.

“For the initial phase of the battle, our best records are from the
Vannover Markey
, but as you can see, she was quite distant from the rest.”

The VM icon blinked. While the others were hardly clustered, the distance to the
Vannover Markey
was easily triple the distance between any two others.

“The
Markey
reported falling out of tach after running afoul of a significant disturbance in the tachyon winds. This disturbance was not on the charts and was not subsequently observed, making it consistent with the use of one or more gravity mines to cause short-lived but intense tachyon disruptions.”

A soft glow appeared amidst the various icons. “Our best guess is that the mines were set off in this region, near the center of the Nasar approach to Ballison. The
Markey’s
port sail generator blew out on impact, and the resulting fire claimed five of her seventeen crewmen.”

The display began crawling forward, the timer showing minutes going by in seconds. The
Vannover Markey
continued to drift further away, while the
Corey Tasha
remained almost still. The
Kaiser’s Folly
seemed to have the greatest velocity, but it was heading more towards the
Reilly
than anything else. Collins froze the display temporarily.

“At this point, the
Markey
reported the automatic distress signals of both the
Corey Tasha
and the
Kaiser’s Folly
. The
Corey
was reporting multiple engineering fires and two hull breaches in crew areas. No voice call was ever received from the
Corey
, and it is possible that few if any of the crew survived the violent down-tach. The
Kaiser
was reporting a fire in her port engineering section, but she was otherwise operating well and thrusting at full acceleration.”

“But I don’t understand,” Michael said, raising his hand. “Why is she accelerating towards the
Reilly
? Was the
Reilly
one of ours?”

Collins shook his head. “Officially, yes, she was on our rolls as a privateer, but in truth, she was operating independently. As for the acceleration, it was a reasonable move on the part of Captain Schneider. The
Kaiser
had come out of tach with a fair amount of velocity, and by adding to that velocity, he most likely hoped to make it difficult for the
Reilly
to match course.”

“But it’s still taking her closer to the
Reilly
.”

Collins started the display again. “Regrettably yes, it took her too close to the
Reilly
.” He froze the display with a triangle highlighting the
Reilly
. “At this point, the
Markey
’s scopes detected weapons fire from the
Reilly
, specifically plasma cannons. At that range, they are not considered effective, but either their aim was better than normal or the damage to the
Kaiser
was greater than their automated beacon suggests. At any rate, at this point, the
Kaiser
stopped transmitting her automated beacon.”

Michael looked down at the table. “Then that’s it. Malcolm was never even there.”

“Actually, no, that’s not all of it,” Collins replied, starting the display forward again. The
Kaiser’s Folly
sped past the
Reilly
. Ignoring it, the
Reilly
closed on the dead
Corey Tasha
. It went on like that for almost twenty minutes according to the timer, and then a new icon appeared: Hh, the
Hammerhead
. It dropped out of tach about halfway between the
Kaiser’s Folly
and the
Reilly
. “As you can see, Malcolm Fletcher got there eventually, just not soon enough.”

The screen divided to show the status display for the
Hammerhead
: sail generators unstable but undamaged, thrusters at full, weapons ready. The timer slowed sharply, matching real-time, second for second. The
Hammerhead
’s display expanded to include a video display. A face appeared there.

It was Malcolm, except this was a Malcolm that Michael had never known. He was younger, not a wrinkle on his face nor a single gray hair in his beard, but more than that. His eyes were intensely wild, almost feral. “Damn you,
Reilly
. I knew you were bad. Either turn and present, or run now.”

Malcolm’s image turned, and he addressed someone else. “Put that on repeat until you get a response.”

An off-screen voice replied, “Aye, sir. I have a transmission from the
Kaiser’s Folly
, asking for you specifically.”

“
Kaiser’s Folly
, this is Captain Fletcher of the
Hammerhead
. What is your status?”

The voice came first.

“God, Malcolm, is it really you?”

That voice. Michael thought he had never heard it before, but he knew it immediately.

Mom.

It was strained. Clearly she was under stress, but even then, something lyrical rang through. The details of the room faded for a moment as memories of songs rushed through his mind. Soft hands. Lullabies. A kiss on his forehead.

“Where is your captain?” Malcolm’s voice interrupted, a harsh splash of aged reality.

“Peter’s dead,” his mother answered. Her image was now on the screen as well. She was as young and beautiful as he had always seen her, but her blue eyes looked out at them in desperation. “They’re all dead. Just starboard engineering left. We only got two pods away.”

“Sophie, listen to me. Our scopes show you have fires. What is your status?”

“The pods,” she went on. “My little Michael is in one of them. You have to get him.”

“I hear you, Sophie. My guys are scanning for them, but you have to stop the fire before it gets to your reactor. Do you have damage control?”

She shook her head. “You’ve got to get Michael. Promise me you’ll take care of him.”

“Yeah, of course. Can you vent the intervening sections?

“That’s not good enough, Malcolm. I need your word on this. Don’t let Hans take him. Promise me you’ll raise him yourself. Promise me you’ll be the father I always said you could be.”

The image of Malcolm grew still. “I promise, Sophie. I promise. Now, if you can’t vent—”

“I love you,” his mother said. “I’ve always—”

And that was it.

Sophia’s picture faded, her words left hanging in the years between them.

The
Kaiser’s Folly
icon disappeared from the display.

Michael looked down to the table, unable to make himself watch anymore. He felt a hand on his, gentle and loving, and he broke down. The tears came freely. He had never known his mother, or at least he thought he never had. But when he heard that voice, he knew. He did remember her. She had been real, not just a story Malcolm had told.

And she was gone.

She was gone almost as soon as he had seen her. And she was never coming back.

No song, no soft touch, and no sweet kiss.

He wept, for it had not been seventeen years. It had just happened.

Now.

Eventually, the lights came back up, and he saw that the hands that held him belonged to Gabrielle, and the images on the screen had faded to memory. He looked around. Commander Collins was quietly busying himself in the corner. His uncle was no longer in the room. A box of tissues had been placed nearby.

He reached for one, shedding Gabrielle’s touch in the process. He blew his nose a few times and wiped at his eyes. A small pile of crumpled tissue was all that remained of his grief.

Collins appeared before them. “If you will excuse us, Miss Schneider, I would like to have a private word with Mr. Fletcher.”

She gave Michael one last squeeze on the shoulder and left without a word.

Collins waited a moment after the door closed. “Do you have your answers now, Mr. Fletcher?”

He met the Commander’s stern eyes. “Mostly, I guess. What happened after…?”

“After the destruction of the
Kaiser’s Folly
? The
Corey Tasha
suffered a similar fate four minutes later, her reactor gutting the rest of the ship. The
Reilly
got enough distance from the tachyon disturbance to reengage her sails and left the scene.”

“Didn’t Malcolm go after them?”

Collins shook his head. “No, Michael. He spent the next three hours tracking down your escape pod. Then he spent another twelve on a search for more. By then, the
Vannover Markey
had gotten its damage under control and was requesting an escort for the rest of the way into Ballison.”

“So the
Reilly
got away,” he said, too drained to be angry. “Whatever happened to her?”

Collins’ face broke into a brief grin. “Well, it took him almost another year, but Malcolm did finally track them down.”

“And?”

“Well, Malcolm’s action report to the privateer board was… significantly less detailed in that incident. But as the stories go, he brought them down with an array of gravity mines so dense that it pulled the
Reilly
’s sail generators out through the hull before they could even blow. And then when he closed in, he opened fire with plasma cannons and gutted her from stem to stern.”

Michael looked away. The phrasing was eerily familiar. “Any survivors?”

“No,” Collins replied. “This is second or third hand, of course, but the rumor goes that he shot the escape pods as well. Seven pods, all told.”

Michael nodded, remembering Gabrielle taunting him with such a tale. “Merciless Mal.”

“Ah, I guess you’ve already heard the story.”