Méridien (The Silver Ships Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page B

would never have acceded to the request.
    Throughout the morning, Charlotte had flooded fans’ readers with announcements of a momentous By-Long program with none other than Christie Racine. To Charlotte’s fans, it was code for “Captain Racine and the Méridiens,” and they had plied their personal networks with announcements of a new Christie show.
    At 13.48 hours and with the Director’s approval, the station’s regular programming had been interrupted, announcing a special program with Christie Racine that had to be seen, despite the fact that no one knew the subject of the interview.
    Charlotte sat in her producer’s chair in over-watch of the broadcast tech, who rolled a hastily prepared vid introduction to their program. Charlotte added a voiceover, announcing Christie Racine with a “special guest.”
    In her bedroom, Christie’s vid app showed her on-air. She put on her best smile and welcomed the audience to her interview. “Good morning, New Terrans. I’m sure all of you are curious as to what has become of my famous brother and our distant cousins who left our system nearly a half-year ago. So I thought I would put many of your questions to rest by letting you share my conversation with my brother this morning.”
    Following Christie’s introduction, Charlotte’s ear comm and reader blew up with comms from the station manager and Directors. She blocked all of them to concentrate on the show. Suddenly her tech’s second monitor opened up with a vid feed of the famous brother, surrounded by associates and standing in front of an enormous wraparound ship’s bridge. Charlotte didn’t question how they were receiving the signal, but just urged her tech to ride with it.
    “People of New Terra, say hello to my brother, Admiral Racine,” Christie announced as the tech switched signals to broadcast Alex and company.
    “Christie, it’s wonderful to see you again,” Alex began.
    “So, Admiral, dear brother, what have you been up to and who are all your new friends?” Christie had printed out the questions she had received from Alex and had tacked them to the wall behind her vid cam. Her brother had coached her on the reasons for each question so she would understand the purpose. When Christie had reviewed them with her parents, she had realized the magnitude of what her brother wanted to accomplish. Alex truly did need her help.
    On his end of things, Alex felt proud of Christie. She was handling the interview as if they were enjoying a casual conversation, attempting to discover what her sibling had been doing, and Alex held nothing back. As he spoke on key points, Cordelia cut in vids under his words. Alex and Julien had spent a couple hours prepping the vids Alex wanted the populace to see, and they were getting an eyeful.
    In the middle of the interview, Christie dropped a tough question in the guise of some casual confusion she wanted to untangle. “Admiral, I don’t understand something. The Rêveur was damaged seven decades ago by one of these silver ships that have been destroying the Confederation colonies. Why didn’t you tell anyone about this last year?”
    As planned, Renée, standing beside Alex, fielded the question and said, “But we did, Christie. Your President McMorris required that we present our requests to your Assembly. During that presentation, we showed this vid.” Julien rolled a short segment of the attack on the Rêveur , while she continued. “All of your Representatives saw this and understood what had befallen our ship, including your Clayton Downing. He was one of the original visitors to our ship and saw the damage, up close and personal, as you would say.”
    “Oh, I didn’t know our Assembly knew about the silver ships,” Christie said, sounding so innocent. “So … are we in immediate danger from these aliens?”
    “No, Christie,” Alex replied. “They’ve invaded the Confederation’s Arnos system, and historic records indicate that they will be there