Alpha One - Chris Burton [73]
The reunited family took tea on the terrace, the weather still good even for December, and Jake’s mother and father both talked at some length about what they had been doing for the last three months. Jake managed to avoid discussing what he was doing, while he listened intently to his parent’s news. He knew it wouldn’t be long though before the inevitable cross examination started.
A news update from the Ionian Front on the holoscreen, in Jake’s parents’ drawing room, brought the subject of jump ships close to home. The news was bad. The Sentinels had somehow managed to use atomic missiles at close range and destroy a chunk of the Alpha Fleet. The headlines were dramatic, the by-lines reported the total losses to date of some five hundred jump ship. Equally dramatic, but more specifically, this allowed Jake’s father to jump straight to his pet subject.
“I wonder how many of the pilots were new Alpha Graduates? Probably some of them from South Downs.”
Jake agreed and said the news was horrendous but would improve as the Fleet made headway into the Sentinel ranks. His father would not let it drop.
“I’m going to take Barrat in the garden and take a Spa. If it’s okay with you?”
“Now, Jake,” said his mother. She knew this was a blatant attempt by Jake to move the subject on, but she let it go. There was plenty of time to discuss these matters and Jake did come here to relax.
* * * *
The Spa room was adjacent to the pool and tennis complex, which his parents had built ten years ago. They was frugal with their money over the years, with Ros’s earnings more than sufficient to cover monthly expenditures, meaning Simon’s salary was used almost exclusively for investment. They were able to pay for the entire complex and the Space yacht outright without the need for credit. Jake had developed his love for tennis here, but it was the Spa which evoked the most vivid memories. Mostly of times he spent with various girlfriends in the sauna and the steam bath.
The complex included an interactive modular game console and a pressurized anti-gravity chamber, the use of both of which made Jake a popular friend to have when he was a teenager.
Jake headed for a sauna first, before a brief steam bath and a quick swim. His father then joined him in the game room, where they used the gaming console briefly before his father suggested that they use the gravity chamber.
Simon Carter was a youthful fifty-five and, like his son, was fit. He had opted for early retirement from active duty five years previously to take a staff post at Alpha One’s EMEA Operational HQ in London. His job was to facilitate and co-ordinate the development of the new class of high-velocity stellar drive mechanisms’ that would see velocities exceed SD10 in the medium-to-long term. The project was successful, and Commander Carter’s team of engineers had just released the first prototype Type R Hyper Stellar Drive mechanism. It was hoped that star ships would be powered by this new drive system within five years.
As such, the project was more than successful, and Simon Carter anticipated that his long awaited 4th Star was just around the corner. He would retire in five years in the knowledge that he had achieved; he became an elite commander and he had served both Alpha and his planet well. He was content. Content because his life was good, and he no longer placed his life and the lives of others under constant threat every time he issued an order in anger. Now, though, his concerns lay elsewhere, with his son’s career and his son’s life. He knew how much danger this chosen career path would place on his son, and he would do everything possible to minimize that danger.
Father and son entered the anti-grav chamber through a pressurized vault. Weightlessness was instant and as enjoyable this time as it was the first time. They both took five minutes of anti-grav exercise before the pressure automatically equalized and the chamber’s gravity returned to normal.
Dinner was taken at 6 p.m., and after coffee and biscuits, Barrat brought