The Black Ships (12 page)

Lisbon, Portugal

March 28
^th
, 2026

F
rank jumped out of the way of a ground crewman racing to grab
mooring lines from
Red One
. Ed McAdam’s unimaginative name choices were
a not-too-subtle reminder that he expected to regain control over the airships
after the current state of emergency was put to rest.  The first of the
non-orbital ships was slowly coming down into its landing pit, her mooring
lines caught in a computer-controlled tether similar to the system employed on
frigates to reel in helicopters in rough seas.

“If you get killed, I’m just gonna dump you
in the harbor and claim I never saw you.” Caldeira stood grinning as he watched
Frank get in the way yet again.

“It’s not that dangerous, where I’m
standing ,” Frank protested.

“Then you don’t know some of my guys!”
Caldeira waved Frank over. “Seriously though, if Damiãno has to shove you out
of his way one more time, he’s likely to flatten your nose.” He was putting on
a brave show of indifference but he had to be a little nervous and it came out
in his next sentence. “We followed the drawings to the letter,” he stated
forcefully, his gravelly voice almost too deep for a man of his size. “If there’s
any problems with docking, it’ll be because of our friends in California.”

Let’s see what problems we have, if any,
before we figure out who’s to blame,
Frank thought
as the huge ship continued to lower itself. Tony’s comment revealed just how
much his nerves were wearing on him. If there was a problem on his end, he
would own it without argument. If there was a problem with the docking station,
or with the airship, he would throw his team at it and make the docking process
work.

Even if it took explosives – he really
liked explosives.

Red One
had
come down from cruising altitude by pumping huge quantities of helium from her
internal bladders back into compressed storage. The last few yards would be
completed by the tether system. Releasing some of the helium back into the
bladders allowed enough tension to prevent the wind from blowing it into the
sides of the docking pit.

Despite Tony’s advice, Frank edged forward
again as the last few feet shrank to inches and then, with a cheer from Modular
Marine’s ground crew, disappeared completely. He gave a sigh of relief as the
clamps engaged along the length of the vessel. Turning, he could see Tony
walking over while gesturing to the one photographer who’d been given
accreditation for this event. Frank watched as the photographer jumped down
into the first terrace of the docking pit, crab walking under the side of the
ship.

“Get over here!” Tony was standing on a
chalked ‘X’ and waving at Frank, who joined him with a bemused smile. “Look up
at the cockpit windows.” Caldeira struck a thoughtful pose and Frank was
dazzled by the bright flashes coming from under the nose of
Red One.
The
photographer shouted up at them in Portuguese and Tony shoved Frank gently to
the left a few feet. Another series of photos and the man climbed back out.

Turning to see what he had moved for, Frank
laughed when he saw the seaward end of Caldeira’s fabrication facility. In huge
letters a sign that probably still had wet paint proclaimed ‘Marinho Modular’.
“This is going out on the usual newswires?” he asked with a grin.

“What do
you
think?”

“I think I want some eight-by-tens for
posterity,” Frank answered. “And can you get me a couple in that old-timey
sepia?”

“Let’s get a module out of my yard before
we start picking out frames.” Tony spoke into his headset and a double-wide
flatbed on heavy-gauge rails began to shunt towards the transfer block as the
loading ramp of
Red One
started to lower. The huge flatbed carried the
first module for one of the smaller escorts.

Contrary to popular belief, this first
module was from the center of the ship. The decision to start in the middle was
almost overlooked until Frank had questioned the assumption that they would
start at one end of the keel. “We could start at the exact center of the ship,”
he had suggested. “We could build out from the middle and put four welding
crews to work simultaneously.”

Now, looking up at module A-5, Frank had a
hard time imagining how many lifts were planned for the project. This frigate
would require eleven modules but it was the smallest of the ships being built.
The cruisers were roughly six times the size of the frigates and the carriers
would be fifteen times the size of a cruiser.

Each carrier would be escorted by five
frigates and five cruisers. The planning committee had been shocked to hear
that each carrier group would need more than a thousand modules lifted into
orbit. An additional thirty pairs of orbital airships had finally been added to
the planning board and Frank had been given authority to enlist as many modular
constructors as he saw fit. Tony had laughed at hearing of his competitors
being press-ganged into building modules.

The cruise ship construction industry had
ground to a complete halt.

The flatbed slowed to a crawl, bumping
softly against the heavy, padded concrete transfer block and ground crew
swarmed both vehicles. Frank and Tony climbed the metal stairs to the top of
the three-foot-high transfer block where they watched the crew lock down the
flatbed and release the restraints on the module. The photographer continued to
circle, taking time exposures. “If this goes sideways on us,” Tony muttered,
“that photographer will have an accident with his camera.”

Happily, the rollers worked as intended and
the module made its slow progress across the transfer block and into the hold
of
Red One
. Frank held his breath as the leading edge of the module
approached the opening to the hold. Though there was over a yard of clearance,
it looked much closer from where the two men stood.

Finally, the huge collection of bulkheads,
decks, pipes and wires came to a stop and Tony turned to Frank, extending a
hand. “Congratulations,” he said as he pumped Bender’s hand enthusiastically.
“That roller idea was simple but effective - kind of like my brother-in-law.”
He cocked his head with a grin. “You don’t get many ideas but sometimes you
manage to surprise everyone!”

Frank’s cheerful reply made reference to
Tony’s ancestry and the dark haired-man roared with laughter, clapping him on
the back as they turned to face the photographer who had climbed onto the empty
flatbed. “He’s just taking stills, right?” Frank had no desire for his previous
remark to wind up on the nine-o’clock news.

“He knows better,” said Caldeira as he
looked over his shoulder to ensure that the occupied hold would be visible in
the shot. “Or he will when I’m done with him.”

Sixty
Meter Observatory

Mauna
Kea, Hawaii

June 7
^th
, 2026

J
an dropped a bag on her bunk and stopped to think through the items
that she would need for three days. Every couple of months, the staff were sent
down the mountain for a few days to clear their heads. It might have been more
enjoyable if they could all go together but that would have left the facility
empty and so groups of two were the maximum.

Jan knew that both Mike and Pete would have
liked to be the second in her group. She had been aware of their attraction
when she arrived and a casual mention of her recent bad relationship had been
enough to cool their ardor, but she knew it hadn’t been quite extinguished, at
least in Pete’s case.

Mike had changed in the last month. His
attitude towards her had relaxed, almost as if he had re-classified her as a
relative who might be attractive but who was definitely off-limits. She smiled
as she thought it through. In the last six weeks, the mountaintop site had
transformed into a small, green town. The terrain on the mountain slope was an
ideal analogue for the surface of Mars and it was NASA that had first started
using it to train astronauts and test equipment.

Now that the military was expanding the
training facilities, a service battalion had set up shop next to the large
telescope complex. They had brought along a field laundry, a mobile kitchen,
larger shower facilities and also a permanent detachment from a combat
engineering unit. The officer in charge of that detachment was a young
lieutenant.

Keira,
Jan
remembered the name as she resumed packing. The young woman had taken a great
interest in the workings of the massive telescope and Mike had been delighted
to show her around.
That’s why he’s so much easier to have a conversation
with.
Jan mused.
I wonder how far it’s gone.
She zipped the bag and
slung it over her shoulder. A helicopter was waiting to ferry her to Waikiki.

She was going alone. She didn’t want to
spend a long weekend fending off advances from the single men on the team and
she couldn’t go with her married colleagues because they always flew their
families in when they had time off. The only other woman she knew was the young
engineering officer but Keira had been a little distant since Mike’s new
relaxed attitude.

She was almost to the main door when it
opened and a small group of officers walked in. There was nothing uncommon
about that and she almost passed them without a word, but then she stopped and
took a second look at the group. “Liam?” she said in a quiet, shocked voice.

The man in the sand-colored beret turned
towards her, eyes widening as he recognized her. “Jan?” his reply was
surprised, almost a whisper. “What are you..,” he trailed off, shaking his head
with a grin. “Of course,” he said. “You were the one who made first contact. I
knew that, but somehow it got pushed to the back of my mind lately.” He nodded
assent to the other officers who were indicating that they would catch up with
him later.

They had met at London Metropolitan
University. Jan had been drawn to the school’s new science center, billed as
one of Europe’s most advanced science teaching facilities. Liam had chosen the
school primarily due to their lower tuition. His major was chemistry and,
though Jan was taking biology, the curriculum required several overlapping courses
and they had met in second year when she needed a lab partner for organic
chemistry.

Their flame burned brightly for almost two
years but, as it became clearer that Liam had no plans for graduate work, Jan
began to wonder what the future would hold for them. When she announced in her
senior year that she had been accepted to the Molecular Ecology program at
Queen’s University in Belfast, Liam had floored her with his plan to join the
army.

She had stared at him in silence for almost
half a minute, realizing that the end had come. She had wanted to be angry with
herself for choosing Queen’s; Liam had some distant relatives in Belfast and
she was secretly hoping it would entice him to go with her.

Liam or not, she knew that Queen’s had the
right program for her and so they had gone their separate ways.

Now, looking up at the face she had once
thought to see every morning, she felt that familiar old flutter in her chest.
Oh
God, that never happened when I looked at Edward,
she thought.
Has that
been waiting deep inside my mind all these years, secretly poisoning every
relationship I’ve had since?
She tore her eyes away from his face and took
a look around the room, needing time to compose herself, almost certain from
his expression that he needed a moment as well.

“So, what sort of exciting adventures did
you leave behind to come here,” she asked, raising an eybrow as she noticed the
badge on his beret. She knew what the winged sword stood for; her uncle had
served in the SAS over a decade ago, and the question provided a welcome
distraction from what was really going through her mind.
He does look good
in that uniform.

“I was captured in Afghanistan when a local
warlord shot down our Chinook,” he said dryly. “I spent the better part of the
last year in chains and, when I was finally released, I was more than a little
surprised to hear about our new neighbors.”

“Liam!” Jan was flooded with unreasonable
guilt that she had been free and relatively happy while someone who had been so
close to her had been in such peril. “Was it…” she stopped herself.
Of
course it was bad you bloody fool. He was in chains!
“I can’t imagine what
that must have been like,” she finally said.

He nodded. “I’ve had better
accommodations,” he said with a rueful grin but his expression quickly grew
serious. “Listen, Jan…”

Jan was feeling another tug in her chest
from the way he said her name and almost didn’t notice that he had stopped
talking and was looking over her shoulder. She turned, seeing a young soldier
trotting towards them.

“Dr. Colbert,” he began after saluting
Liam. “Your chopper needs to leave, ma’am.” He stepped back a few paces and
turned to face the center of the room, obviously aware that he’d interrupted a
private conversation.

She turned back to Liam, seeing the turmoil
on his face, and she spoke before he could say anything that might spoil the
potential of the moment. “Liam,” she began, reaching out to place a hand on his
forearm. “I have to leave right now for Waikiki.” She shrugged. “Bad timing for
R&R, I suppose, but I’ll be back in three days. You’ll still be here?”

He was visibly more relaxed. “My orders
have me here for training until we launch,” he replied with a smile, then, with
a glint in his eye, “I’ll look for you later.”