“Headache?” Micah asked quietly.
Tal dropped her hand from where she’d been rubbing her temple. “Big one. It’s not often I envy you your empathic rating, but I do right now.” Being around Lhyn and Captain Serrado in their current emotional state was getting tiring, but she could not afford to raise her blocks.
“Gehrain isn’t enjoying it either.”
She glanced up to see Gehrain giving every appearance of listening closely to Commander Baldassar’s explanation of how the ship’s magnetic lifts worked, but the squint of his eyes betrayed his discomfort. He felt her gaze and looked over, smiling slightly as he acknowledged their shared dilemma. Lhyn and Corlander were propped against the console next to him, watching the tour with equal fascination.
“Right now I’m fantasizing about a nice, empty beach,” she murmured. “Just me, the water, and the sand.”
“In that case, I’m almost sorry to be giving you my news. Colonel Razine has what you asked for and said there were no issues.”
Her chuckle held no amusement. “I didn’t think there would be. We probably could have gotten them retroactively.”
“I know. I also know you’re happier doing it the right way.”
“There is no right way, Micah.” She moved closer to the commander, who was explaining that the magnetic lift system meant that no point in the ship was more than fifty-five pipticks away.
“That’s what enables us to put the habitat ring in the center of the ship, where it’s most protected, while the bridge is up on the top deck.” Baldassar tapped the console and showed them a panning view of the bridge. “Well, we call it the top deck. Deck one is physically deck two, with the real top deck being the arboretum. But we don’t start numbering our decks until the bridge.”
“Does it take up the entire deck?” Tal asked in surprise. The bridge was far larger than she’d imagined.
“Much of it, yes. We use the domed ceiling as a tactical and navigational display. Up in the arboretum, it looks like a hill in the middle of the park.”
“You should show them the arboretum,” Lhyn said.
“I will, after the bridge.” Baldassar tapped again, and now the domed display was active, immersing the bridge in what seemed like the middle of space. Part of a ringed planet loomed off to the left.
“Incredible,” said Micah. “Not just three-dimensional, but covering all directions for a hemisphere.”
“Exactly. Flat displays are good at conveying information, but they don’t mesh well with the way our brains take in data. A visual representation like this is better for instinctual spatial understanding, and I can tell you from experience that the tactical aspects in battle are a tremendous improvement over any flat representation I ever used. And it’s not just one hemisphere, Colonel Micah.” Baldassar tapped again, and Tal watched in fascination as the raised central part of the bridge lifted itself higher, while the floor beneath it seemed to fall away. Toward the walls, transparent panels rose out of the floor to ring the room, separating the majority of the crew consoles from the main space. A moment later the floor had become a star field to match the one on the ceiling, with the circle of transparent panels seamlessly melded into the visual image. The ringed planet could now be seen in its entirety.
“The floor display is a little trickier, because it doesn’t have the same curve as the ceiling, but it doesn’t take much of a curve to enable the wraparound imagery,” Baldassar said.
“And this is what you were using when you fought the Voloth?” Tal asked. When the commander nodded, she stared at the image and imagined Captain Serrado in that center chair, fighting a battle in more dimensions than she herself had ever had to consider.
And winning, she reminded herself.
“Aha.” Baldassar had been hunting through a data list and now straightened. “Here’s the security log from what I think was our most impressive action last year. We were responding to a distress call from a freighter group and found a nest of pirates.” He activated the file and the static image abruptly changed to one of bewildering action. The empty bridge of the video tour was now full of crew, sitting and standing at consoles. Those ringing the edge of the room were barely visible, their bodies blocked by the vertical floor panels. The tactical display was showing small ships flitting in all directions while larger ships sat off in the distance, firing a steady stream of weapons. Bursts of light bloomed and faded everywhere Tal looked.
“That’s our defense grid taking out incoming missiles and rail gun projectiles,” Baldassar said as he indicated the lights. “We have shielding, of course, but we prefer to keep that as a secondary protection.”
Tal focused on the central dais, which held some familiar faces. It was arranged in two concentric rings surrounding the central chair, with four consoles on the higher inside ring and eight on the outside, one step lower. There was Candini in one of the inside chairs, her short red hair instantly recognizable. She was focused on her console, the fingers of one hand flying over it while the other gripped some sort of drive stick. To her left sat Baldassar, his console also flanked by a drive stick, probably a redundant system. Dead center on the dais, elevated above everyone else in the room, was Captain Serrado. Her armrests had a series of controls on them, some of which she was using to rotate and tilt her chair up, down, and around, always keeping what she wanted in view. She called out one order after another, her voice level and calm as if she were watching a harmless light show rather than a pitched battle with so many different ships that Tal couldn’t count them all. It looked effortless for her, and Tal’s respect for the alien captain grew into something more. Fahla herself would have to admire such a display of competence under battle pressure.
“Are all Fleet captains this good?” she asked.
Baldassar’s smile was proud. “They wish they were. Captain Serrado is one of the best.”
Tal didn’t doubt it. She returned her attention to the battle, but all too soon they were interrupted by a call from the room next door.
“They’re in!”
Baldassar paused the playback and led their little group out the door. In the next room, the captain and her chief of engineering had been watching a video feed from the fighter bay, waiting for Candini’s team to enter. They’d reached the interior door some time earlier, but hadn’t been able to open it because a decompression in the bay during the battle had set off emergency measures. Captain Serrado had explained that the procedure for breaking the seal normally didn’t take long, but very little in the ship was normal at this point.
Roris was currently speaking to the captain while Candini trotted toward the nearest fighter. The fighter bay was enormous, holding twenty-nine fighters in two rows facing each other across a wide track which led to the half-open bay door. The thirtieth space, next to the door, was empty.
“They look good from here,” the captain was saying.
“Yes, but Lieutenant Candini said the damage to her fighter was impossible to see at a glance. It took her some time to find it.” Roris glanced over her shoulder at the lieutenant, who was now pushing a portable stair over to the fighter. Turning back, she asked, “Are we going to check the starboard fighter bay as well? And what about the shuttle bay?”
“That shouldn’t be necessary,” Captain Serrado answered. “Neither of them was breached in the battle, so they can’t have been exposed to a Voloth weapon or anything on Alsea. But we’ll need to get our shuttle out later, and we’ll check it thoroughly. In the meantime, let’s see if we can find any remnants of the weapon that punctured the hull in there. Your team is the best qualified to recognize fragments. Use protection.”
“Understood.” Roris stepped away and vanished from the screen, leaving the group in the com room staring at a distant image of Candini on the stair, bent over one of the fighter’s wings.
“Chief, I don’t know how long this will take, so let’s get you started on scanning the structural integrity of the habitat ring and the routes to our quarters. I can handle the next relay with the Arkadia now that you’ve got it set up.”
Kameha nodded and went back into the corridor.
“Why are your fighters still here?” Tal asked. “I would have expected you to use them in the battle.”
“Because it was a battle of warships. Fighters are used against smaller ships or other fighters. Their armaments can’t do anything against the shielding of a large warship, and if we threw them out there, they’d be in as much danger from our weapons as they would from the enemy’s. The crossfire in a ship-to-ship battle is intense.”
That made sense. “And the reason they’re not guarding your escape pods now? Did you not have time to launch them in the evacuation?”
“Actually, we did. In fact we launched all of our shuttles but one. But a fighter isn’t an escape pod, and it’s certainly not a shuttle. They’re not stocked with emergency food and water supplies or even a toilet. They’re not designed to dock to an airlock, and the air scrubbers won’t last for days on end. The nearest base is too far away and so were reinforcements.”
“So if you’d launched them…”
“It would probably have been a death sentence, unless reinforcements were closer than I’d thought.”
And a slow death at that. Once again Tal was impressed with the captain’s competence, especially her ability to think quickly under pressure. It made what she had to do harder than it already was.
After a few ticks of watching nothing happen, she asked if she could see what the chief engineer was doing instead. “I’d like a look at your housing area. And I’m guessing this will be the closest I’ll get to it.”
“You’re right, it is. And the chief won’t mind a little company.”
Tal left the room and paused in the corridor for a deep breath. When she felt centered, she walked into the lab where Kameha was now working at a different console. “Commander Kameha, I hope you don’t mind if I watch.”
He looked up with a smile. “Of course not. Though if you think the view in here will be any less boring than the one over there, you’re probably mistaken.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back against the console, keeping the open door in her peripheral vision. “Is this something that requires a great deal of concentration, or can I ask you a few questions?”
“Ask away. The ability to do at least six things at once is one of the entrance requirements for engineers.”
“For Lancers as well,” she said. When he turned back to his console, she slipped inside a mind so unprotected that it felt as if she were taking advantage of a child. “You must have a way to self-destruct the ship to keep it out of enemy hands, correct?”
“Yes, of course,” he said without a trace of suspicion.
“How exactly does that work?”