Listen Carefully. Young Defenders Book 2: Tress's Story: Young Defenders, #2

By Michelle Levigne

Tress Lore, daughter of the chief engineer and chief linguist, was born on the Defender. Only nine years old, her life is about to change.

 

While exploring the space station where their ship is undergoing upgrades, she overhears people saying things that frighten her. Threats against her friends, and even the ship. But when she tells the adults, nobody else has heard what she heard. Tress is confused. What is wrong with everybody?

 

When she hears Lt. M'kar wishing to play a nasty trick on some people who are giving her trouble, Tress breaks some rules to try to help. When she is caught, the captain and her parents begin to understand what is happening to her. She isn't hearing people's voices, but their thoughts.

 

As she starts training to use her new Talent properly, Tress starts to understand what her parents have been teaching her: Enlo gives gifts for a reason. And the reason for her Talent appearing far too soon may already have arrived.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ye Olde Dragon Books
• Release date: Jul 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781952345708

Michelle Levigne

On the road to publication, Michelle fell into fandom in college and has 40+ stories in various SF and fantasy universes. She has a bunch of useless degrees in theater, English, film/communication, and writing. Even worse, she has over 100 books and novellas with multiple small presses, in science fiction and fantasy, YA, suspense, women's fiction, and sub-genres of romance. Her official launch into publishing came with winning first place in the Writers of the Future contest in 1990. She was a finalist in the EPIC Awards competition multiple times, winning with Lorien in 2006 and The Meruk Episodes, I-V, in 2010, and was a finalist in the Realm Award competition, in conjunction with the Realm Makers convention. Her training includes the Institute for Children’s Literature; proofreading at an advertising agency; and working at a community newspaper. She is a tea snob and freelance edits for a living ([e-mail] for info/rates), but only enough to give her time to write. Her newest crime against the literary world is to be co-managing editor at Mt. Zion Ridge Press and launching the publishing co-op, Ye Olde Dragon Books. Be afraid … be very afraid.  www.Mlevigne.com www.MichelleLevigne.blogspot.com @MichelleLevigne

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Copyright © 2022 by Michelle L. Levigne

ISBN 13: 978-1-952345-70-8

Published in the United States of America

Publication Date: July 15, 2022

Cover Art © Copyright Ye Olde Dragon Books 2022

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Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author's imagination, or are used in a fictitious situation. Any resemblances to actual events, locations, organizations, incidents or persons – living or dead – are coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.

Meet the Young Defenders

Tie-In to the AFV Defender SF series

BEHIND EVERY LEGENDARY ship are the little people who make the incredible discoveries possible.

In the case of the AFV Defender, they really are little: the children of the crew, growing up below decks, learning lessons on faith, honor, loyalty, and what it really means to be a hero. No matter what it costs.

Cadets long before they go to the Fleet Academy for official training, they are preparing for the day the fate of the Alliance, and maybe the Human race, lies in their hands.

Jorgan: a new kid on the ship, an orphan adopted by Fleet doctors, with a talent for gizmos, and secret fears.

Tress: leader of the gang by default, with Talents ready to bloom, and a gift for attracting trouble, no matter how hard she tries to be careful.

Elli: raised by her older brother and tormented by a new crop of bullies just when she's earned her place in Tress' gang.

Bo: musical prodigy with brittle bones and unsure if the Fleet or Enlo can use a boy without real legs.

Dafna: her love of solitude and dark, hidden places becomes an advantage when the Defender is threatened.

Kati: her Talent isn't cool like everyone else's, and she needs to learn the hard way that Enlo gives gifts to those who are willing to obey, no matter what.

LISTEN CAREFULLY

Young Defenders, Book 2

Tress’s Story

The people:

The Lore family:

Tress; age 9

Treinna and Jasper; Tress’s parents; Communications Chief and Chief Engineer on the AFV Defender.

The Pace family:

Jorgan; age 10

Tila and Ben; Jorgan’s adopted parents; Fleet medics assigned to the planet Vayaneer, to find a cure for the spotted flux

Shayn; age 15

MAENTA; Le’ankan Master; teacher, transferring to the AFV Defender

E’bett; head teacher

Captain Genys Arroyan

Lt. Chief of Talents M’kar

Security Chief Decker

Sh’hari; security crew

Plover; security crew

Jayna, Kati, Dafna, Ricard, Rand, Rona, and Bo; children on the AFV Defender

Locations:

Sheffroab Station

AFV Defender, E&D (exploration and diplomacy) ship

Chapter One

Tress Lore sighed, half-happy and half-sad.

Happy that she and Dafna, Jayna and Kati, what her parents called her gang, were in the first group of children to go onto Space Station Sheffroab for a field trip with their teacher, E'bett. Happy and proud to be wearing the uniform that proclaimed her a cadet, aiming for Fleet Academy, even though she was only nine standard years old.

Sad that she couldn't hold hands with E'bett. Cadets were expected to act with dignity and self-control when they were off the ship. Dignity meant they didn't let anyone know they were nervous, just as much as they were excited. Sheffroab was the biggest station their ship, the Defender had stopped at for as far back as Tress could remember.

Last night when the Defender reached Sheffroab, she and her parents had had dinner with Lt. Commander Kayree, who was an old friend of her father's from the Academy. Tress wasn't surprised. Her father was Chief Engineer on the Defender, and he knew all the really good, smart, inventive engineers in the Fleet. The commander had offered to give them all a tour of Sheffroab, and Tress liked that because she knew she would get to see lots of places that none of the other children on the Defender would ever see. Unless maybe they were old enough to prepare to go to the Academy, and they were helping with the repairs and upgrades to the Defender. The problem was, Tress knew that tour wouldn't happen until all the work planned for their ship had finished. The Defender had come to Sheffroab for upgrades and expansions, and to take on new crew.

So, exploring the station right now with her friends and the ship's teacher might not take them into all the cool, dark, slightly scary, usually-off-limits places Tress hoped to see, but it would still be a lot of fun. For now, anyway.

Except Sheffroab was huge. The umbilical tube connecting their ship to the station was twice as long as any tube she or her friends had ever walked through. Tress wished the tube had viewing ports, so she could see just how far the Defender was from the station. The tube curved, so it was hard to guess the distance. Too late, she thought about counting her steps to help her calculate the meters. Tress knew some reasons why it wasn't a good idea to insert a transparent panel in the flexible tube that connected a slowly rotating space station with a starship that was maintaining orbit around the station. Her father knew how to explain engineering principles in very simple ways so she understood. At least, so she thought she understood.

One of those principles came to the front of her thoughts as she walked sedately along beside E'bett. Tress grinned, and suddenly she was glad she wasn't holding E'bett's hand. Taking a deep breath, she stepped extra hard with her right foot, stepped with her left foot, stepped extra hard again with her right foot.

You need to be twice as heavy as you are now, Tress, to make any ripples in the material, E'bett said, and gave her a sideways glance. The corner of her mouth curved up just a little. While the construction of the umbilical is flexible and stretches to accommodate slight differences in orbiting speed and distance, it is also more than half a meter thick, with reinforcements coiled throughout. You could run, all of you, she added, glancing at Dafna on her other side, and then over her shoulder at the other two girls who walked behind them, completely out of synch or in perfect rhythm with each other, and you wouldn't make the material ripple.

We can't run, Jayna said. She stomped with her left foot. The plates in our boots won't let us.

The magnetic plates are to help keep you anchored to the floor of the tube, but they aren't so strong you can't move. I think if you pushed off hard enough, and then kept your feet up in the air, you could navigate quite well. Their teacher winked at them, and her smile curved up a little more. I've seen you rascals in the zero-g chamber, remember. You're quite fearless enough, bouncing around, I'm not surprised you're not allowed to play zero-ball just yet.

Yeah, my brother says I'd break everybody else's neck, but not my own, Dafna said with a giggle.

Could we do that now? Kati asked. She pointed at the safety straps evenly spaced every half meter down the sides and the ceiling of the umbilical tube.

Maybe next time. E'bett pointed ahead of them as they came around the curve of the tube. The framework of the hatch and airlock connecting the umbilical to Sheffroab came into view.

As they stepped through the hatch, a scanning beam passed over all of them. Tress held her breath, waiting for the beam to change colors from pale green to something that would indicate a problem, such as an illness or something that shouldn't be allowed into the environment of the station. Each of the girls passed their identification wristbands through the scanner that would link with the monitor chips and keep track of their movements throughout the station. While Sheffroab was one of the largest servicing stations for the Alliance Fleet, it was also a hub for trade and travel. That meant it wasn't a station solely for Fleet use. Ships from governments and planets that didn't belong to the Alliance were allowed to dock here, make repairs, and conduct trade. That meant ships from planets that didn't particularly like the Alliance could dock here. While the cadets wore uniforms when they left the Defender, to make sure people knew they belonged to the ship, those uniforms could also make them targets of people like the Ankuar or Gleaners or Gatesh. Those races might ignore other children, but they would pick on children who belonged to the Fleet.

So even though she was nine years old, and Lt. M'kar had taught all of them self-defense tricks used by cadets at the Academy, Tress still wished she could hold hands with E'bett. However, there were four girls and E'bett only had two hands. They had to rely on their self-defense lessons, the trackers in their identification bands, and each other to stay safe.

Turning and going the other way when they saw Gatesh or Ankuar would be a smart thing to do, too.

Once they had all gone through the routine of pressing their identification bands to the security portal, they were cleared to officially step foot on Sheffroab. From now on, when they went from the ship to the station, and back again, they wouldn't have to do more than pause and let the bio-hazard scanner flash over them. They were registered with the security system.

Now, where exactly are we? E'bett said, without looking at any of the four girls gathered around her.

Immediately, the other three girls looked around for the identification panel that designated what docking arm they were on, the level, and the access iris the Defender had linked into. Tress didn't look because she knew they weren't on a docking arm for the station at all. She had been allowed to sit in the safe zone of Engineering when their ship docked at the space station, with a dozen other, older cadets, who had all chosen engineering as their specialty focus when they would go to the Academy for Basic in another year. The safe zone was the place where cadets could come to watch and listen to the engineers work, as long as they stayed in their seats and kept their mouths shut. The rest of the Engineering deck was off-limits to them, which was only smart, because Engineering could be a dangerous place.

So Tress saw where the ship had docked. It was in the Fleet service arm of the station, most often referred to as space dock, where the expansions and upgrades of their ship would take place for more than a lun. Tress couldn't imagine sitting in one place for that long, not moving, traveling through space. It seemed even longer to her when she learned that days on Sheffroab were more than an hour longer than the standard days used by Fleet to mark time on board ships. One dec on board Sheffroab was equivalent to ten days and eleven hours on the Defender. The rule was that if a ship stayed in orbit around a planet or space station for more than a dec, the ship adjusted its shipboard measurement of time to match the planet or station. At the end of a lun at Sheffroab, the crew of the Defender would have fallen more than two days behind their own chronometer measurement.

Tress wondered if that was why most of the other members of the command crew weren't really excited about spending so much time in space dock.

Tress? E'bett touched the girl's shoulder. The other girls have guessed. Where did your mind go just now? She smiled, meaning she wasn't irritated or even disappointed that Tress hadn't been paying attention.

Why is time different on Sheffroab than on Fleet ships? Tress asked instead. Her face warmed. Sorry. That's what I was thinking about. Time difference.

Let me guess. The Gate team was grumbling about making double calculations for all the work they'll be doing, and the need for margins of error when they're upgrading and expanding their systems and equipment, and you overheard a lot of that. She chuckled when Tress just shrugged. Then their teacher's gaze went distant with thought for a moment, before she glanced around at the other three girls. "Consider this, girls. One of the major arguments against allowing children to be born on a starship, much less raised by parents on duty, is that adults don't realize just how much children overhear. We don't fear you will touch the wrong access panel or cause a chain reaction of accidents that will lead to the ship blowing up. We worry about you learning information that could be dangerous to you.

To keep you from being exposed to sensitive information, many portions of the ship are off-limits to anyone who isn't crew and isn't in their final year before applying to the Academy. We want to keep you from being tempting targets of our enemies. If they can kidnap you and apply psionic interrogation to your tender young minds, they could learn dangerous information that could threaten the security of the whole Fleet, not just your parents' ship. Information that you picked up and don't even know that you know it, and your parents didn't know you heard. If our enemies do take you and search your minds, the hope is that once they know you don't know what they want to learn, they will let you go.

They won't catch us. Aunt M'kar teaches us good, Tress said, and nodded twice, for emphasis.

E'bett chuckled once. Yes, she does. And don't forget Security Chief Decker has been teaching all of you very clever defense tricks. Anyone who comes after you children, thinking you are vulnerable, easy targets, will have quite a nasty surprise. Now. She turned to look around the entry area in front of the iris hatch, and the doorway on the far side of the bubble-shaped room, leading into the station. Back to my question.

We don't know where we are because we can't see any signs. Dafna's eyes narrowed and she bit her lip for a moment. I bet the sign is on the other side of that door. She pointed to the far side of the room.

Correct, but still not the answer I wanted. Think, girls. What was I just talking about?

Hearing things we probably shouldn't. Jayna rolled her eyes and then turned to look at Tress. Oh, I know. You think Tress should know because ... Oh! Her face lit up. We're here for Tress's daddy and the engineers to make the ship bigger, so we're in the space dock, not the docking arms.

Correct. Keep this in mind, girls, no matter what service area you choose when you go to the Academy. Your success will depend more on the things you aren't officially taught than the lessons and lectures they assign you. Quite often, the things that make the difference between just surviving and succeeding are the extras. You need to see and hear and think and remember beyond what's expected of you. Then E'bett tipped her head back and laughed. Oh, dear, this is supposed to be a fun trip, just getting oriented to the station, and here I've filled your heads to the bursting point with philosophy. She gestured at the door out of the entry room. Let's go. I hope you studied the map of the station, because I am seriously in need of a treat of the cold and sweet and creamy variety.

I know! Kati said, raising her hand like they were in class. She darted ahead, through the access door.

Tress expected E'bett to shout for Kati to stop, they were all supposed to stay together. When the rest of them stepped through the door, Katie was waiting for them, her face a little pink from embarrassment. She had remembered that rule in time. Their teacher nodded satisfaction, winked at Kati, and gestured for her to take the lead.

Kati and Jayna now walked in front of E'bett, with Tress and Dafna on either side of her.

E'bett tested them on what they remembered of the map of the station, and how well they memorized it. First Jayna had to guide them down a maze of branching corridors to get them out of the Fleet service level, to the main shaft of the station. They took a lift, and Dafna was responsible for knowing which code to press into the controls to get them to the main marketing concourse of the station.

Once they stepped out