Harris returned to the supply hut where the others were gathered for a lunchtime meal. "I just dropped Milos back into hibernation. Asked him a few questions about who owns this space before toggling the switch. He says this is Burrell space, and if we want to control it we'll have to defend against them."
Tawn replied, "Huh. That's exactly what Bax did."
"Excluding here and Domicile, this is all Bax's space. She controls it. Wish we knew if the Burrell were coming or just writing this place off."
Gandy said, "Didn't the AI on Gondol tell you they were coming last time?"
"Yeah. But we can't get back there. Bax has the Burrell workers imprisoned there."
"What about Beckland? Doesn't it have one of those AIs?"
Harris stood. "Genius, Tawn. Grab us a couple meals for the ride out."
"What am I, your servant?"
"Yes. Now hop to it. We don't have all day."
Twenty-four minutes later, the Bangor was landing at Beckland.
Tawn shook her head. "We aren't getting in there. That's three kilometers of water and mud we're looking at in that shaft. And with this hurricane raging up here? Those rains won't be letting up anytime soon."
"Forgot it was exposed. You think we could raise that AI on the comm?"
Tawn chuckled. "Never could before. What would have changed?"
Harris frowned. "I bet Milos could have answered that for us."
"Let's go wake him up."
Farker spoke: "Harris, you have a recording of the AI’s message going out to the Burrell from Gondol. And you have the response coming back. Could we reverse engineer those comms to determine if we could do the same?"
Harris stared. "You sit silent for days on end and now you speak?"
"It seemed like an appropriate time."
Harris looked at Tawn. "I'm a little shocked. That's not something our AIs have done in the past—offered solutions that were unsolicited."
"He's different from them. Alex said he developed and programmed that core personally. Farker if I provide you with each of those comms, could you determine if we might be able to communicate with that facility from here?"
"I would be delighted to try."
— Chapter 11 —
* * *
An hour passed while Farker worked on cracking the AI message. Tawn and Harris consumed their meals and slumped back in their chairs.
Harris said, "Sitting in a ship on a planet being terraformed, in a sector of the galaxy controlled by a maniac, while surrounded by seemingly hostile aliens… isn't life grand?"
Farker spoke: "I believe I have a solution."
Harris sat up. "Give it a try."
Seconds later, a comm request came to the console.
Harris answered. "Yes?"
"This is terraform station three-eighty-six. How may I be of service?"
Harris grinned at Farker. "Nice work. You... uh... is there a schedule for your Burrell masters to arrive? Are there more ships on the way?"
"Yes."
"How many and when will they be arriving in this sector?"
"A force of eleven thousand, two hundred and fifty-six will arrive at terraform station three-eighty-two in six days, seven hours."
Harris turned to Tawn. "Well, there we go. We're on the clock again. And this time it may be against an enemy that can come right to Midelon."
"Let's get back and figure out how we're gonna deal with this."
"You do realize we have to clue Bax in on this, right?"
"Why?"
"Because I would rather be ruled by a Human emperor than an alien species. She wants Humans around so she can rule over them. The Burrell might decide they don't want that hassle."
The Bangor landed in its usual spot. Tawn followed Harris into the lab, where the others were gathered, looking over Alex's shoulder.
Tawn asked, "What's the hot topic?"
Gandy replied, "Idiot just sent over some design updates for the Bangor and the Hailstorm. It updates the drives for each so you can make use of the short-hop wormhole travel the Burrell use. See this box? It's a mini boson field generator. Idiot patterned it after the one on the Grindle. If we bring the bots back, we can have both ships outfitted with it in about four days."
Trish added, "And he has a design for adding one of their lasers. It combines one of our plasma cannons with their laser design."
Alex nodded. "The power output per square centimeter, when running simulations, is a near match for what we just saw from the new Burrell ships, only on a much smaller scale."
Tawn asked, "Smaller scale?"
"The beam coming from the Burrell warships is nearly two meters wide. This will be two centimeters. The intensity is a good match, the area of damage will be reduced—the good news being that we can fire it more often. If you noticed from the fight with Miss Rumford, the bursts were nearly fifteen seconds apart. I suspect they must store up energy in a well before releasing it all at once."
"So we should be able to poke pinholes in our enemies?"
"Precisely."
"I was making a joke."
"I attempted to follow with my own, but was apparently unsuccessful. Perhaps I've been around Mr. Gruberg too long?"
Harris slowly shook his head. "You two should go on tour with one another. But you might want to pick venues where the patrons are too drunk to throw rotten fruit at you, because they would if they could."
Tawn asked, "How long to install the laser?"
"Three weeks to build a turret. Another week to integrate it with the ship."
"Three weeks? What's going on with that?"
"These will be constructed on a manufacturing line so that more can be produced. Idiot has identified nearly a hundred fifty locations on the Hailstorm where a turret can be placed. The three weeks will be required to build them all."
"What about our two Banshees?"
A comm was opened. "Idiot, do we have a laser design for the Banshee?"
"I am sorry, Alex, there is no room on a Banshee for the laser power generation and storage equipment. It would have to be constructed as an external unit that would be almost equal in size to the ship itself."
"Would it be worth doing a redesign? Maybe make the Banshee larger?"
"Any major change would be a major disruption to our current manufacturing."
Tawn said, "If the Hailstorm can carry a hundred fifty of these, I'd say we might do well to build more Hailstorms."
Harris shook his head. "We don't have the means to do so in any type of timely manner. If we still had the colonel at the Retreat, we'd have a number of these we could outfit. Right now we're stuck with one."
"Maybe we have an option."
"What?"
Tawn replied, "We now have the ability to make the short wormhole hops like the Burrell. That should make the run into Domicile relatively easy and quick."
"They still have the negation field running. We can't jump."
"Have we tried? Alex, you've seen the simulations. Does this method of wormhole jumps work the same way?"
Alex opened a comm. "Idiot, do an analysis of the Burrell short-hop wormhole travel when going through the negated boson field."
"This may take several minutes."
Harris said, "Make it a top priority."
"The short-hop drive as you are calling it, should not be affected by the negation field. Since the ship is generating its own local field, it would be free to continue."
Tawn grinned. "That right there. We can go to Domicile right now."
Harris nodded. "Good call. Hey, wait, if we can do this, so can the Burrell. And not only that, if Bax attempts to use this to stop the Burrell's jumping, she's gonna be in a bad way when it does nothing."
"Let's just get to Domicile and see if we can break a few dozen ships away from them for retrofit."
The Bangor was boarded. A run to free space was followed by a jump to the edge of the negated boson field surrounding Domicile. The drive software was switched to use t
he newly installed short-hop method. Repeated jumps saw the Bangor race across the half-light-year of negated space.
As they entered the atmosphere, Harris turned toward his partner. "Didn't think this was possible."
Tawn opened a comm to the military and was soon patched through to the President.
An image of the new President, Hansel Armstrong, came up on the display. "Mr. Gruberg, Miss Freely, how is this possible?"
"It's a drive system the Burrell have. For the time being you're still protected from Baxter Rumford, but the Burrell can come whenever they want. I'm certain you haven't heard, but there was a confrontation between the Burrell and Baxter. She annihilated a small fleet and took their repair crew hostage."
"The Burrell are here?"
"Were here. Or I guess they technically still are. They sent in a force of repair ships that were accompanied by five cruisers. It was a mission to repair the facility at Gondol. Bax was there waiting. They demanded surrender. She demanded surrender. She allowed their repair crews to continue to the surface and then obliterated their cruisers."
"So she's started another war?"
"A new fleet, a much bigger fleet, over eleven thousand ships, are only days away. Which is why we're here. We need at least a dozen cruisers or destroyers... or even freighters. We have a laser turret we want to add to them."
"Is that something we can do here? Can we add it to the Banshee design? We have a hundred a day rolling off the assembly line now. These are piloted units. We're having trouble training the volume of pilots we need."
"The laser generation unit is too big. But your ability to make or update ships here brings up a good option. I can bring you back the designs for the turrets. Put as many as you can on each of your big ships. How many warships do we have now?"
"Two hundred eight cruisers, four hundred twenty-six destroyers, and just over three thousand Banshees."
"Three thousand? Wow. You've been busy."
"They lack the upgraded rails of your ships."
"I'll bring that design as well."
"This coming fight with the Burrell, what's your assessment of how Miss Rumford will fair?"
"Five ships took out two hundred of hers. I think she's gonna be outgunned this time. The bots are good fighters, but they lack that strategic leadership that comes from experienced Humans. They are slow to make adjustments."
"A curse we sometimes have as well."
The Bangor made a run to collect and deliver the designs. Tawn and Harris transferred them straight to the Hosh-Morgan headquarters, where a busy Bannis Morgan was doling out commands to his staff in a seemingly endless stream.
Harris grinned as he stepped forward for a handshake. "Mr. Morgan, looks like you're right back in the thick of it here."
"Has been a busy few months. Keeps a man young."
"You look good. Arthritis still at bay?"
"Joints never felt better. Muscles are slow to recover, and I fatigue easily, but I suppose that comes with the territory. You look like you're putting pounds back on."
"One-fourteen now."
Tawn said, "He hasn't been running lately."
"You look to have lost a few. Back to your fighting weight?"
Tawn nodded with a half smile. "One-oh-eight. Lowest weight in a dozen years. Only three kilos to go."
"What brings the two of you here? Wait... how'd you get here?"
"We've adapted some of the Burrell technology. Using short wormhole hops and our own boson generator, we can move at just over four thousand times the speed of light. That includes through space outside our sector. We can now travel about twelve light-years’ distance a day."
"Phenomenal."
"We're here to bring you not only that drive design, but also the design of our rails for your Banshees, and a new laser weapon we also adapted from the Burrell. The President wants the first to be added to all ships, and the laser to be added in quantity to all cruisers and destroyers. The design is for a turret. Add as many as possible to each of your ships."
Tawn said, "We have some other news for you as well. The Burrell sent a repair fleet to Gondol. Bax was waiting there for them. She allowed the repair ships and crews to land on the planet and then opened fire on the five escort cruisers, annihilating them."
Harris scowled. "And a second Burrell fleet will be here soon. This one with eleven thousand ships. And the Burrell ships are much more deadly than the Denzee or Hoya were. Those five cruisers took out over two hundred of the captured Hoya ships."
Tawn added, "And to make things worse, that fleet can be here at Domicile in under an hour if it wants. You'll have no choice but to surrender."
"Then why do we want to scramble to update the current fleet?"
"If Bax fights them and loses, depending on how many ships the Burrell have left, we might have a force that we can defend ourselves with. If Bax wins again, we might end up facing a force that can be handled. Either fleet as a standalone, we wouldn't have a chance."
"So we need Miss Rumford to mix it up with the Burrell. Do we have a plan in place to make certain this happens?"
"Well... no."
"Does she know this new fleet is coming?"
Harris replied, "We would have to assume so. She has access to the Burrell there at Gondol. They would have that information by now, and she would know it."
Tawn said, "What she doesn't know is the Burrell ships can still travel with their short hops inside the negated field. She may be planning to deploy boson bombs, which would be to her own detriment."
"I see." Bannis pressed a button on his desk. "Mr. Corso, please come in here."
The office door opened. "Yes, sir?"
"I've just loaded several new designs along with instructions into my queue. See to it they are expedited as a top priority."
The aide nodded and the door closed as he left.
Bannis sighed. "Updates will be underway shortly. How's everyone doing out there?"
"Same I guess. Trish misses having you to boss her around. Probably takes that out on poor Garvis."
"She's a hard worker. They still an item?"
Tawn nodded. "He's been good for her. Gives her confidence as well as support."
"And the other two?"
"Same as they were. Gandy chases and she doesn't know what she wants. Kid has the patience of a stone statue. I'd have given up a long time ago."
"That's because you're not in love, Miss Freely. It changes one's perspective in ways that are hard to imagine. You'll laugh and point at others and the ridiculous things they sometimes do for it, while deep down you know you'd probably do the same. How's Dr. Gaerten?"
"He's tireless like you. If he's busy, he's happy. And he's been plenty busy of late. We're still trying to adapt to the Burrell tech we've come across."
Harris cut in. "Speaking of that... we entered the door in the cave. After a long trek down, we came across the equipment that supposedly generates the boson field. And we entered the underwater facility. Three Burrell were in stasis there. We brought one of them out, quizzed him for a few days, and sent him back under. There's a small cargo ship in a bay inside there. Much bigger than the Bangor, but maybe only an eighth the size of the Hailstorm. That's where we acquired the laser tech."
"I sometimes feel like I'm living in a silo here, not having news from the outside."
"There’s more. Bax took the colonel and all the Biomarines from the Retreat. She had the bots build a prison on Helm. That's where they are now."
"Helm? Why there?"
"She said if they try to escape they'll be dead in a week. I think it was more of the shock value of going back to Helm, given its history."
"But we won there. You won there."
"We did, but at a high cost. Anyway, she's made the Retreat her home base. And a large number of her bots are operating on New Earth, gathering raw materials for more ship construction."
"Has she been able to get the core processor station up and running?"
Tawn
replied, "Thankfully, no. She's stuck with the number of bots she has right now, which I know drives her nuts. We can build more, but we're lacking the materials to do more than a few at a time. We have our own bots out trying to harvest materials, but so far the payoff has been minimal."
"Bring me one of those stations. I'll see to it personally we get it up and running here."
Harris winced. "Not certain I'm comfortable with that, Mr. Morgan. That's tech we want to keep an extremely tight grip on."
"I understand. You do realize we're fighting a war for freedom here, right?"
"I do. I just don't want those AIs to be used against us."
"You already have that condition. Look, either we exploit this advantage or accept what comes our way. Imagine our reaction time for constructing warships if we had a million of those bots operational. We might become the unstoppable force that I know we could be."
Tawn nodded. "I agree with him. It's time we let go of this stuff, Harris. The pacifists are no longer in control. We have good people running this planet. We swore an oath to protect her. Maybe this is how we make that happen."
"We'll make another run and bring a couple of those stations with us. Do everything you can to protect them, Mr. Morgan. This is critical tech that we can't let the Burrell or anyone else have."
Bannis asked, "Didn't this tech come from the Burrell?"
Harris shook his head. "The AI it's based on did. Our friend Alex and his team designed that processor, enabling the unit to go mobile. The original AI at Midelon took up an entire room of computers. The AIs at Gondol and Beckland are the same. That tiny core you can hold in your hand is a Human development, so guard it well."
A run was made back to Midelon to collect the stations. After delivery, the Bangor returned home. The team had settled in the supply hut. Harris paced back and forth as Tawn stood in front of the wall display.
"We need ideas. How do we protect our facilities here? How do we keep our manufacturing running?
Trish shook her head. "I don't see how we can. Maybe we should start scouting for an alternate site. If the Burrell come here they will easily take full control. If Bax gets a hold of their short-hop tech, she'll be able to come here too."
ARMS Helm's End: (Book 7) Page 10