I found the Duchess over by the first frigate, which I assumed meant that she had already looked over the cruiser and the two destroyers. I walked over, planning to get her attention, but she preempted me by spinning around as soon as I got close.
“Ah, Jared,” she started, her face brighter than even her normal smile. “Excellent timing, we will soon prepare to fly the ships out of here to various locations around the planet.”
I blinked a little at that, surprised to hear that she was distributing them so early. “You aren’t just taking them back to somewhere in your province?”
“No,” she responded with a shake of her head. “As much as I might like to claim them all for myself, this is far beyond just my province. For now, they will be situated at various military bases or civilian spaceports. Wherever we can fit them, really.”
“So you're not trying to keep them secret,” I responded at hearing she would use civilian locations, wondering why they would give up the advantage of having a hidden fleet.”
“If only we could,” she laughed, though it was tinged with a hint of sadness. “Even if we could hide the ships themselves and ensure the silence of everyone involved, the amount of resources and personnel that we will have to funnel toward them would be impossible to cover up.”
“I have spoken to the King, and he has instead decided that we will make a bold statement with them. Declaring to all our subjects that we have new ships that will ensure their safety and re-open the trade routes in time.”
Ah, so they're using this to help with their public image and to calm down the population, I can see that. While things had been getting better in Elendes over the last few months, that was only a single city on the planet. I could only imagine at least some places had it even worse.
It might even make the pirates back off a bit if they heard we had more ships now. Even getting a couple of trade ships through would help stock up on the innumerable little things that still weren’t being produced locally.
“Now,” she continued, pulling me from those thoughts. “Which frigate have you chosen?”
Gesturing toward the corner, I led the way over to my frigate. We passed the small collection of ships on the way and while she raised an eye at them, she didn’t push the fact that I had chosen which of the smaller ships I wanted as well.
Upon reaching the frigate I had chosen, I was shocked to feel her using Technokinesis to examine the ship. I had known she was planning on using the ritual chambers, she had told me as much, but it still felt very odd for someone else to be using my ability.
“Interesting,” she muttered a few seconds later. “I can’t feel anything behind the outer hull.”
“Yeah,” I responded with a nod. “I think it’s a stealth ship, designed for long-term travel behind enemy lines without detection.”
“A stealth ship?” She said, turning towards me. Her mouth quirked in a way that I couldn’t quite interpret before she continued. “You must think quite highly of yourself, Count Hope, for you to pick the most valuable of the frigates here.”
Fuck, I thought, stumbling mentally as I tried to work out if she was seriously annoyed or just messing with me. I hadn’t considered that picking the best ship might be seen as greedy even if I had secured the right to pick first.
It was hard to come up with a response to that, but luckily I had spent enough time looking over the other ships to have an idea. “I don’t actually think it is the most valuable,” I said, gesturing toward another one further back.
“That frigate over there is some kind of specialized communications and control hub. I think that’s more valuable to the fleet at large than a single stealth ship.” There, I thought as she turned to focus her senses on it. Hopefully, that will work regardless of if she was really mad or not.
Once again I felt her senses sweep out, this time taking much longer as she could actually get a reading on it. Then she let out a small laugh and turned back to me.
“You are right, of course, secure communication has been one of the greatest problems we have faced. Even if we had a bigger fleet than our neighbors, it would matter little if they can intercept every order we give.”
“Frederich will be most happy to have that ship,” she finished with a genuine-looking smile, one that differed from her usual ones.
I relaxed a little, as it seemed that I had navigated whatever that was. Some kind of test, perhaps? To see if I would put the planet first or would focus on getting as much as I could for myself?
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Luckily, I had been focused on what I actually needed rather than the raw value of the ships or the level of prestige they might bring me. Otherwise, I might have taken the communications ship instead.
I was curious to know who this Frederich was, though I wasn’t about to risk asking. Instead, I tried to turn the conversation in a different direction.
“How are we getting the ships out of here?” I said, tilting my head toward the mass of them behind me.
“An excellent question,” she said, seemingly happy to move on. “I have brought pilots with me, one of which we will temporarily assign to you. They will fly the ship back to Elendes, for now, before moving on to your lands in the next day or two.”
“After that, you will have to find a pilot of your own,” she finished with a smirk.
“Understood,” I responded, “I’ll see about loading our smaller ships onto the frigate then.” We would need to get them back somehow, and that would be the easiest way with only one pilot.
While I was sure Linnea would be happy to try flying a fighter back, I figured it was probably best she had a few lessons first.
“Excellent,” she said as she turned to leave. “My men have already loaded most of the other fighters and we will move the first few ships shortly. Given its positioning, yours will be the last to leave.”
I nodded again, though I didn’t think she saw before I moved back over to Linnea and Elana. From the way Elana looked to be bursting with questions again, I figured they had heard our conversation. Even Linnea looked extremely interested, breaking her professional facade.
“Did she call you a Count?” Elana almost shouted before I was even in comfortable speaking range. “You didn’t say anything about that!” Linea nodded along beside her, her face almost looking hurt.
Great job social skills, I thought with a wince, before deciding that being honest was for the best. “Ah, sorry about that,” I started. “Yeah, it was in exchange for the rest of the ships.”
“They didn’t want to pay for them, so I got a noble title and a bunch of land instead. It also gets around the whole ‘not being able to own military ships’ issue. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything earlier, I didn’t want to sound like I was bragging and I just wanted to get everything sorted here.”
Turning to Linnea, I continued. “I was going to tell you after we got back and I figured out how to word it.”
Her face cleared up at that, and she gave me a nod that I took as everything being OK.
Next to her, Elana was nodding as well. “Cool, so you might actually have a way to fund fixing up the ship. I was wondering about that.”
“Yeah,” I chuckled awkwardly. “I still don’t have many details on it, however, I know the Duchess expects me to man and deploy the ship. I’m sure she’s sensible enough to know I’ll need money to do that.”
Focusing on Linnea, I continued. “I’ll have to come up with a loophole of some kind, so you're allowed to keep the fighter as well, hopefully, the title will help with that.”
She tilted her head in thought before her face brightened into a smile. “Well, it’s a feudal system, right? You can probably have retainers or something like that who would count as being part of the military.”
“Yeah, something like that,” I responded with a nod, though internally I was grinning wildly. If she was considering something like that, then it sounded a lot like she was planning on sticking around which was something that I was extremely happy about.
“Anyway,” I said with a gesture toward the ships beside them. “There will be plenty of time to talk about that later when I know more. In the meantime, we need to figure out a way to load these up before the frigate gets flown back.”
“I found a cargo hold inside, it should be able to fit these if we can get it open.” I turned toward the ship as I finished, planning on moving back inside so I could use my senses on it.
“You got it,” Elana responded. “We’ll get these ready to move, and I’ll try to figure out if they have some kind of docking mechanism. Wouldn’t want them to be thrown around mid-flight after all.”
“Thanks,” I responded with a smile over my shoulder, before continuing on to the ship. It turned out to be pretty easy to get the cargo hold open, though I had to focus on routing some power to it.
After getting the ships situated and locked down in a magnetic docking mode, we brought the pallet of fuel up into engineering and loaded it into the fabricator.
This was hampered somewhat by Elana almost passing out in excitement at the engineering bay, and at the fabricator in particular, however, we managed it in the end. This brought our fuel tanks up to just under a quarter full, enough to power the ship up to normal levels.
By the time we walked back out of the ship, a man dressed in a military uniform was waiting for us. He introduced himself as our assigned pilot, before asking to be led to the bridge. After introducing us, I led the way to the bridge and focused my powers on getting it ready for launch.
The AI was silent as we entered, which I was rather thankful for, given the outsider present, and I made a note to follow up with it later, in private. That was something else I hadn’t told the sisters about and something that I should do sooner rather than later.
By the time I had everything powered up and the main view screen activated, the hangar was almost empty. It seemed that the Duchess hadn’t had any serious issues getting the ships out, which made sense given that they had managed to fly back to the planet from wherever they had been fighting.
We all strapped in before our pilot gingerly lifted us off the hangar floor. We wobbled a bit, however, we were airborne. Then we shot out, flying across the landscape at astonishing speed.
“Wow,” the pilot cried in shock. “You’ve got a fast one here, I’ll have to dial it back so I don’t overshoot the spaceport.”
It was a good thing too, as I could feel the ship shuddering around us. We would need to fix up as much of the structural damage as we could before trying that kind of speed again.
Then we were settling down in the spaceport, the trip going faster than I could have believed before. If I hadn’t talked to the Duchess earlier, I would have been surprised at how public our landing space was, instead, I knew it must be part of their attempt to reassure the populace.
“Now that was a rush,” the pilot said with a laugh as he powered down the console in front of him. “I was told to send you to the palace after we arrived, I’ll be taking lodgings nearby for when you want to move on.”
Nodding in thanks, I unbuckled myself and left the ship in the direction of the spaceport exit. Hopefully I could now get some clarity on exactly what I had signed up for as a Count.