“Welcome back, Number One.” Corina Terrel flashed a smile at her bedraggled executive officer as he hustled onto the bridge. She turned away before the relieved expression on his face as he noticed over half the posts were empty caused her laughed outright. “Have a good shore leave, did you?”
“Aye, Captain.” She felt rather than saw him move up to his customary post behind her command seat to her right. “That I did indeed.”
“Oh come on, Gerald.” This time she couldn’t help laughing as she spun her chair around and looked up at him. “You were only down there for three days. You didn’t have time to fall back into any language habits. Besides, I happen to know for fact that the people of a New Harberdeen do not speak with accents from the old Celtic areas of old Earth.”
Gerald Forster had the good graces to turn a bit red from embarrassment. But when he opened his mouth to rally she held up a hand to forestall him.
“I lived on the southern continent of New Harberdeen for two years just before I entered the Academy and I visited just about every place worth visiting on the planet while I was there.” She told him. “Now I grant you that these people have done a wonderful job in resurrecting the feel, the atmosphere of both ancient Scotland and ancient Ireland. But accents?” She shook her head.
Her executive officer could only gape at her in astonishment. He had served under this woman for close to two years and yet she never ceased to amaze him or surprise him. She very rarely, if ever, spoke of her life before the Academy.
At first, when the previous captain was promoted and transferred, he had entertained some slim hope that he might be named the new captain of the battle cruiser Shrike. So when a freshly minted captain was named instead, he had been a bit resentful. Yet before she had even reported aboard to take command, he had already gone through her records and discovered that her command experience far exceeded his own. What had intrigued him were the locked sections of her records. Highly unusual. While a captain’s records were not generally open to the public, it was expected that his or her executive officer would have access to those records. Yet not even his clearance allowed him to probe any further than the names of her previous commands, her actions while in command, and her performance at the Academy, which was by this time several years of her past. But beyond that there was nothing. Correction, that there was information in those records was obvious. It was simply take someone with a higher security clearance than himself to access that information. Otherwise, as far as the records showed, Captain Corina Terrel’s life began when she entered the Academy, ended when she graduated, started up again with her first posting, and then ended again when that posting was completed. It was the same for every segment of her naval career. It was as if she ceased to exist in between assignments, only to pop into existence again when reassigned.
“Ah,” was the first brilliant comment to come out of his mouth. “Yes. Well, it has become sort of an inside joke. Sort of a bit of fun we poke at outworlders.”
“Yes, I remember that quite well.” Corina smiled. She spun her chair back around and pulled the swing away console she had been working on back to her. “Well you better make sure all our children are back on board and everything’s battened down. I don’t know what’s going on, but the comm message from Commodore Ryese was quite insistent that we get underway to rejoin the fleet as soon as humanly possible.”
“Aye Captain.”
She heard him move off to his personal station and felt a sudden slight pity for the section heads that were not getting their people back on board into their post quickly enough to suit him.
With a sigh, she turned back to the status report on a screen. She was just starting on the engineer’s report when the communications officer, seated to her left on the massive bridge of the cruiser turned to her with a perplexed look.
“Captain, we have another communication from fleet.” She exclaimed.
“Commodore Ryese, again?” Corina demanded.
“No ma’am,” the comm tech responded. “This is directly from the Flag, ma’am. From Admiral Aikens himself, ma’am. Designated for your eyes only, ma’am.” The comm tech paused and then shook her head. “Correction, ma’am. You are directed to view this in the presence of your first officer in your day room.” She paused again. “Prior to viewing however, you are directed to remove the Shrike from New Haberdeen orbit” she looked up from her board, confusion playing on her face. “But we’re to remain in system. The fleet is coming to us!”
Corina sat up in her seat, pushing the monitor her way. Now why in the name of the Empire… She closed her eyes, a cold feeling forming in the pit of her stomach.
She opened her eyes and turned to the right only to see that Gerald had moved from his station back to her side.
“Report, Number One.”
“With the exception of one shuttle, everyone is back on board.” He spoke softly. “That shuttle picked up some last-minute provisions and is on its way..” He glanced back over at the monitor at his station. “In fact, they are entering the landing bay now.”
“Comm, pipe that message into my day room, please.” Corina stood, taking a moment to make sure she was steady. “Number One, get Andrea up here to relieve you. If that shuttle gets docked and we’re buttoned up before she gets here, take us out of orbit and take a casual course to the outer system. If she gets up here before were ready to move, pass those instructions along to her and meet me in my day room.” She barely heard Gerald’s acknowledgment as she made her way to the rear of the bridge and the hatch that led to her day room.
When Gerald was finally able to get to the day room he found her sitting behind her desk staring at an empty screen.
“I admit I tried to cheat.” She said as soon as he walked in. “But it seems as if the Admiral took that possibility into account. The message is sealed with voice recognition. It won’t open up until both of us are present at the same time.”
She made no offer to get things rolling. Instead she simply looked at him. Finally she sighed again.
“Gerald, there’s not a lot I can say without knowing the exact contents of the message.” She paused again.
“But you believe that there may be something in this message about you personally that you would rather the rest of the crew not know.” He finished for her. She simply sat there gaping at him in astonishment. “It wasn’t that hard to figure out, Corina.” He said, using her given name for the first time ever since she had come aboard. “Not only were you not overly surprised that the Admiral of the fleet decided to personally communicate with the least senior captain in the cruiser squadron, completely bypassing Commodore Ryese, I might add. But you actually had the look of someone who could think of why one of such elevated rank would communicate with you.” He laughed and shook his head. “Are you afraid the crew is going to find out that you’re a member of the Imperial family?”
As he spoke, Corina simply looked at him in astonishment. At his last statement, however, she came halfway out of her seat.
“How did you…” She spat. She snapped her mouth shut and she felt her face begin to blush.
Gerald, for his part, was just as astonished by her reaction. As the truth dawned on him, he felt his own jaw dropped.
“My God, that’s it. That’s why parts of your records are sealed. You are a member of the Imperial family!” He breathed.
“Yes, dammit.” Corina looked away from his face, her fists clenching behind her desk. “Not the immediate family, but the Emperor is my uncle.”
“You’re Princess Altaira!” Gerald exclaimed after taking a few moments to put the pieces together.
“Princess Corina Altaira Terrel, to be exact.” Karen nodded. “By custom only the middle name of a child not in the line of succession is made public.” She had clenched her left hand into a fist and actually drummed the fingers of the right hand on the desk as she regarded her First Officer. “Gerald, I have gone to great pains to distance myself from the Imperial family. Not out of any sense of rebellion or such trite. Simply because I knew at a very early age that all I wanted to do was be an officer in the Imperial Navy. Very few people in the Navy, and fewer still in the Academy, were aware of my connections to the Emperor. I wanted it that way. I wanted everything I received to be something I had earned, not simply because I was Princess Altaira. And quite frankly I have no clue of how many people in this fleet know who I am. I’m pretty sure the Admiral and Commodore Ryese knew. But beyond that…” She shook her head. “We have been on this border patrol for over a standard year now. And not once during that time has the Admiral contacted me directly. That he’s doing so now makes me think this has something to do with the Imperial family. And the fact that he insists that you be here makes me fear that whatever it is, it isn’t good.”
“Well, rather than sit here and fret about it, why don’t we take a look at what the Admiral wants us to see?” Gerald offered.
Surprisingly, the communiqué was rather vague. The Admiral simply reiterated the orders to stay within the New Haberdeen system but did add that she should begin preparations to hand command of the Shrike over to her First Officer and prepare to repair aboard the Flag ship when the fleet arrived.
“They’re taking the Shrike away from you?” Gerald was aghast. Yes, he had wanted command, but not like this. Corina was silent for a long moment, staring at the now blank screen.
“Something has happened, Gerald.” She said, at last. “The Admiral wanted you to see those orders so that you would know that he is passing command to you. But that should have been Commodore Ryese’s job. Since when does a Fleet Admiral step in to micro manage a single battle cruiser?”
There was a long moment of silence and then Corina pushed away from the desk and stood.
“Well Number One, let’s get to it, shall we?”
To be Continued……..
-- Story written and copyrighted (C) 2014 by Clay Grayson
-- and may not be reprinted without permission.