by Saxon Andrew
Ka took a deep breath and said, “We’ve just attacked and destroyed sixty Brotherhood Warships.”
Ryshana looked her straight in the eyes, “Then you’re on the right track.”
“You might find it interesting that there were more than a thousand survivors in the wreckage and a Brotherhood Fleet blasted the wreckage killing them all,” Tal added.
Ryshana shrugged as she tilted her head, “Please don’t tell me you find that surprising. If you do, then you really don’t know your enemy.”
Ka smiled, “I believe I’m learning about them now.”
Ryshana blew out a soft breath, “I’m sorry. I get worked up when someone doesn’t see them for who they are. I want all of them to die as painfully as my mother did.”
Tal wondered how a woman as beautiful as this one could hold such anger. He glanced at Ka and had his answer. He married one just like her. He turned to Jab, “When do you want to be married?”
“NOW!”
Ka stood up, “That isn’t going to happen!”
Jab jerked his head to her, “Why not! We’re ready.”
“She will not be married in this office. She will marry you in a proper ceremony with friends to witness the occasion.”
Tal turned to her, “Ka, she doesn’t have a dress to wear!”
“Then she can wear mine. We’re about the same size.”
Tal’s head went back, “You have that dress with you?!”
“Where I go, that dress goes. Of course, I have it with me. I’ll take Ryshana with me and you can set up the place where the ceremony will be performed. We’ll need about four hours, so you need to get Jab proper attire.”
“How am I going to do that.” Tal turned to Jab, “Do you have formal attire?”
“No, Admiral, I do not! And this is a waste of…”
“Jab!” Jab’s mouth shut, and he turned to Ryshana. “Does this thing you call marriage usually take place in a ceremony?”
“I guess.”
“Then we should do it the proper way, don’t you think?” Jab lowered his eyes and nodded. Ka pulled Ryshana out of the room and they started talking animatedly as they left the office.
Jab picked up the clear case with a data cube in it, “Those are the recordings I made.”
Tal pressed a button on the table, “Captain Wolfe, report to Commodore Sager’s office.”
“What’s going on?” Jab asked.
“I’m inducting you into the military and I believe one of Indie’s dress uniforms will fit you.”
“OH-NO YOU’RE NOT!”
“Sorry, Jab. You are my resident expert on the Brotherhood and you will be inducted.”
“I don’t have any desire to be in the military!”
“It’s not optional.”
“I’m not an Earth Citizen. You can’t make me do it!”
Tal smiled, “One of the items in the file I received on you was a legal document from the President of the Colonies authorizing me to do whatever I chose with you, up to killing or making you join the military. Welcome to the fleet, Jab.”
“I’M GOING TO APPEAL THIS!!”
Tal smiled, “To who?” Jab glared at Tal as Indie opened the door to the office. “Indie, I’ve just inducted Jab into the navy at the rank of Captain. Please take him to your quarters and see if one of your dress uniforms will fit him.” Indie looked at Jab and opened the door further. Jab was hot, but he followed Indie out of the office. Tal leaned back and heard another knock on the door. “ENTER.”
Captain Gibbs opened the door and said, “Commodore Talent asked me to wait until the meeting was over, then to take you with me to the simulation room.”
“What’s going on, Gibbs?”
“I’ll have to show you, Sir.” Tal hesitated, and Gibbs added, “She also requested that I tell you to order Jee to stop his fleet and remain stationary until you have an opportunity to see what I have to show you.”
Tal stood up, “Is it that serious?”
“Yes, Sir.”
Tal activated his subvocal module, “Katy.”
“Yes, Admiral.”
“Send a message to Jee to stop his squadron and remain in place until I get back to him.”
“Yes, Sir.”
• • •
Jee looked at the stars ahead of him on the viewport and heard, “Admiral, I have a message coming in from fleet.”
“Send it to my console.” Jee looked at the unassigned monitor and saw Katy appear, “Katy, what’s up?”
“Sir, Admiral Talent has ordered me to contact you and to order you to stop where you are and remain there until he contacts you.”
“Do you know what this is about?”
“No, Sir. I do not.”
“Tell the Admiral I acknowledged his order.” Katy smiled and disappeared from the monitor. Jee tapped the general frequency, “Attention all ships. You will stop where you are and form up with your unit.”
Rachael instantly appeared on Jee’s monitor, “What’s going on?”
“Tal has ordered us to stop our forward progress and remain here until he contacts us.”
“Did he say why?”
“No, Rachael, Lt. Montana delivered the order.” Rachael’s brow furrowed and Jee tilted his head, “I don’t know what’s going on, but it has to be serious.” Rachael nodded and disappeared from his console.
• • •
An hour later, Gibbs appeared on Jee’s console, “Gibbs! You’re back!”
“I am, Sir. We arrived this morning.”
“Did you bring Jab with you?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Can you tell me the verdict?”
“Yes, Sir. It’s us or them and there’s no middle ground.”
Jee’s eyes closed slightly, “Well, so be it. Do you happen to know why I’ve been stopped?”
“That’s why I’m contacting you, Sir. On the way back from picking up Jab, my crew found some things out about our consoles that were unknown to us before. I’ve sent you recordings of how those discoveries were made and recordings of the simulations where they were used. Admiral Talent has ordered me to tell you that every ship in your squadron must view those recordings and go through the five-new simulations included with the data. He says once all your crews can make it through the simulations to contact him immediately. You will remain where you are until that happens.”
“Why didn’t he contact me, Gibbs?”
“The woman that caused us to find these new discoveries is getting married this evening and he’s officiating the ceremony.”
“Who is she marrying?”
“Jab, Sir. She came from one of the Brotherhood planets.”
“What’s that all about, Gibbs?!”
“I wish I could explain it, Admiral. But she may be the best thing that’s ever happened to us.”
Jee nodded and saw the recordings arrive on his console. “The recordings just arrived. I’m going through them before I send them to my ships.”
“I think that would be wise, Sir.”
Jee smiled, “Stay safe, Gibbs. I miss having you here with me.”
“Me too, Sir. Stay safe.” Gibbs disappeared and Jee opened the file. After he completed reviewing it, he contacted Rachael and had her view it before they discussed what they saw. It was the next day before they had their meeting; Rachael went through the simulations before she contacted him. Three days later, the crews were still working to complete the simulations when a devastating threat came out of the cosmos unnoticed.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Mamani was standing next to Jee’s chair discussing the new simulations. Jee was laughing and suddenly, a strange voice came over the loudspeaker on the wall, “I’m wondering why you chose to stop.”
The bridge grew silent and Lt. Appelt instantly hit the record button on her console, as Mamani rushed to her station. Lori turned to Jee, “I’m not detecting any communication stream, Admiral.”
“Of course, you can’t detect us. Now te
ll me why you stopped,” the speaker blared out.
Jee knew something important was associated with the place he stopped the squadron. He saw Lori twisting buttons on her console and staring at her monitor, as he replied, “It seemed like a good place.”
“You must have a better reason than that!” The voice remarked.
Jee thought furiously and answered, “We know that an advanced civilization was located in this direction and we came looking to find it in hopes of communicating with it. The aliens called the civilization Cyrens.”
“And just how did you know that?”
“The Crayen civilization that fly the blue warships sent a message out on this line.”
“Those fools. They talk too much!” the voice said forcefully.
“Yes, they do. We’ve been listening to them.”
“And we’ve been listening to you.” Jee’s eyes squinted slightly. This wasn’t good.
“Why does my stopping here make any difference?” Jee asked.
“You would have entered our domain in another thirty miles. If you had done that, you would have been destroyed. We find it odd that you stopped so close to our border. Did the Crayen tell you about it?”
“No, they didn’t. I had some issues with my software and we stopped here to resolve it. It’s purely coincidental we stopped outside your borders.” Jee paused, “Why would you have attacked us and not communicated?”
“There’s nothing you can say that would be of interest. We know all we need to know about you.” Jee was silent and the voice laughed before saying, “You are the same species as the invaders and you’ve colonized more than a hundred planets on the other side of this galaxy.” Jee’s eyes widened and he heard, “That surprised you!” Jee and the crew realized the one speaking could see them. Jee glanced at Lori and saw her looking at him. She nodded slightly and had four fingers on one thigh and her thumb and index finger together on the other. Good, she was detecting the ship and it was forty miles away.
“Yes, it did surprise me. However, we are not part of the Invader’s civilization.”
“I must say that we were wondering about that. You were scouting them and the other civilizations attacking them. It made no sense that you would be scouting the Invaders if you were a part of their civilization. It became clear you weren’t when you attacked those sixty ships trying to trap the Crayen formation.”
“Then that should tell you that we don’t represent a danger to you,” Jee responded.
The voice erupted into loud laughter. After a moment, it asked, “Do you think you could do anything to cause us concern?! You don’t understand what you’re up against here. Observe and know you’re little more than a nuisance to us.”
Jee then saw something coming into view on the forward wall-monitor; a shape was emerging out of empty space. He stood up from his chair and saw a warship emerge into view that defied description. Huge or gigantic did not do that ship justice. The Sha Class of warships were much larger than the Epy Class, measuring 400 yards long. This ship made his squadron look like a school of minnows beside a whale. Its hull had three colored bands rotating continuously around it, yellow, blue, and purple. The bands were flashing as they rotated and Jee didn’t have to ask Lori to know they were being produced by a powerful energy source.
Suddenly, the vessel fired a blaster bolt above his squadron that was twenty miles wide and it continued to fire for twenty seconds before disappearing. The Voice spoke again, “You are nothing to us.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t destroyed us anyway,” Jee said softly.
“I thought about doing that,” the voice replied. “However, doing it outside our borders would send the wrong message to those civilizations currently fighting the Invaders. Those loud mouth Crayens have told everyone that will listen about your ships saving them.”
“So, you want the Invaders destroyed?” Jee asked.
“Yes, we do.”
“With warships like that, you could do it without needing anyone else.”
The voice chuckled, “You’ve not seen the Invaders at their finest. They crash their large and small ships into any vessel they can’t defeat with their weapons. We see no need to incur any damage, since we have other civilizations, and now you, doing the job for us.” Jee was silent and the voice added, “We will wait to decide what to do about you until after the Invaders are defeated.”
“What happens then?” Jee asked.
“We’ll decide if you live or die. You have one minute to remove your ships from here and at that time, I will open fire on any that remain.”
Jee punched the general frequency button on his console, “ALL SHIPS! FULL REVERSE AT MAXIMUM SPEED!!”
Mamani jerked the gravity-thruster handle fully to the rear and the Black Hills seemed to disappear instantly. “Keep that ship on the monitor, Lori!!” Jee ordered. The ship reappeared and a Jee saw it fire a blaster toward Rachael’s unit…but they were out of its range. The voice laughed again and said, “Ahhh…now that was surprising! I intended to make an example of some of your ships, but you can fly faster than I anticipated. I won’t make that mistake aga…” the alien’s voice was cut off.
“We’re out of communication range, Sir!” Lorie announced.
“Lori, please tell me you can detect the presence of those ships?”
“I couldn’t before it arrived, Sir. But once they started speaking, I ran a scan of every possible energy frequency my scanners are capable of detecting. The energy being used by that ship is like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s located outside the normal energy pattern but once I found it, I’ll be able to detect them from extreme distance. Damn that thing is huge!”
“Run a scan and make sure there aren’t any more ahead of us!”
“Doing that now, Sir. Nothing so far.”
Rachael appeared on Jee’s console, “Ain’t we got fun!”
“That was not fun, Rachael. That ship could have destroyed all of us!”
“Lt. Orta has done an analysis of the blaster they fired and, you’re right; it could have blown through our force fields and melted the phase metal in our hulls. However, from his analysis, the blaster that fired that beam had to be locked down to fire it. It can’t be swept or swiveled around once it discharges. I suspect the power is too much for the blaster mount to handle. All we need do is keep at least a twenty-mile separation between our ships to insure they can’t take us all out with one shot.”
“RACHAEL! DID YOU TAKE A GOOD LOOK AT THAT BEAST! IT HAS MORE BLASTERS ON IT THAN I COULD COUNT!!”
“Yes, Sir. I did. There’s huge numbers of them but they are separated by large distances. That ship’s size deceives our eyes into thinking the blasters are close together; they’re not. Rudy also tells me that he can program his console to lock in on that ship and see any blaster that might be pointed directly toward us. We’ll avoid moving in front of any that are and if one moves to lock on us, we’ll immediately move once the blaster’s housing locks down. It won’t be easy, but we can avoid them. Perhaps the scientists can develop the software to do it automatically.”
“That’s some good news in this. Did you hear that voice?”
“Sir, everyone heard that voice, but it was only responding to you.”
Jee raised a shoulder, “It determined my ship was in command.”
Rachael nodded, “That’s why it fired at my unit when we left; it wanted to make sure you made it back to scare the wits out of everyone else.”
“They certainly got my attention, Rachael. Get Rudy to contact Lori, she’s been able to detect them.”
Rachael smiled, “That’s more good news, Sir! What now?”
“I’m sending the recordings of this confrontation to the Admiral and we’re headed back to the Brazil.”
“We need some way to see if they send a ship out in our direction,” Rachael quickly added.
“Stand-by.” Jee made a connection on his console, “Captain Smythe, do I understand correctly that you have one of t
he new Ninja Scouts fleet delivered on your ship?”
“Yes, Sir. I just had enough time to bring one on board before we shipped out.”
“Does it have the new scanning system installed.”
“It does.”
“Dorman, I want you to drop it off here and have it hold its position on this line. Lori can send you the means of detecting those ships and she says that we’ll detect them long before they can detect our scans.”
“How long will the scout remain here, Sir.”
“Two weeks. We’ll come pick it up at that time and drop another one off.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Jee ended the contact, “Did you copy that, Rachael?”
“Sir, are you sure the new scout won’t be detected?”
“No, but it has to be done.”
Rachael eyes softened, and she raised a shoulder showing her agreement; Jee ended the contact. After some time had passed, he tapped a button on the side of his helmet, “Mamani?”
“Jee, that was frightening!”
“Yes, it was. We need to change our plans.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. We aren’t going to wait until the Brotherhood is defeated before getting married; we need to do it now.”
“I agree, Jee. We can’t afford to waste what time we have.”
“I love you, Mamani!”
“It thrills me every time I hear you say it! I love you, too!” Jee sat back and lowered his eyes; these aliens knew the location of the new colonies.
• • •
Tal sat at his console and stared at the front wall-monitor. It was three AM ship’s time and he was tired, but he couldn’t sleep. Tal lowered his eyes; the wedding went off without a hitch and he remembered Ryshana entering the huge cafeteria wearing Ka’s wedding dress. He decided at his wedding that no woman could ever be as beautiful as Ka in that dress. He still believed it…but Ryshana came close. Her long black hair, with flashes of scarlet, and her hazel eyes were extraordinary. He smiled as he remembered Jab’s expression as she entered the room with Ka handling the long train behind it.
Jab told him afterwards that he was so thankful that Ka insisted on the ceremony. Tal smiled; now Jab had a memory to last him a lifetime. They were destined to be together. He caught himself and shook his head. He still had difficulty with this destiny thing. But it was obvious they belonged together.