by T. R. Harris
“Excuse me, sir, but we didn’t start this. We’re at war, and simply sitting back and waiting for the mane-heads to have a change of heart won’t help. If their pull back is to stop me from reaching Juir, what do you think’s going to happen if they succeed? Do you think they’ll leave everything the way it is now? No, they’ll pick up the war right where they left off and be back huffing and puffing at your door. Sir, we haven’t won anything. The Juireans aren’t surrendering. Maybe they know how timid we are, how we’d never risk moving into the areas beyond the Union, not with our current strength. Maybe they know they can regain all the territory they’ve surrendered after I’ve been taken care of. And if I did return to Earth, wouldn’t that take away the threat Synnoc’s feeling right about now? Wouldn’t that cause the Juireans to bounce right back? And what about Sherri and Arieel?”
The words flowed from Adam like a torrent. He was frustrated, not only at his current situation and how it had changed the dynamic within the galaxy, but also by his commander’s lack of vision and courage.
“Admiral, the only option is for us to win. The only peace we’ll find is when the Juireans are destroyed. We tried to play nice with them, giving them the benefit of the doubt that they weren’t our enemy, just pawns in the Klin’s galactic chess game, just as we were. But now we know their true colors. They’re a vicious, savage race who fear anyone that can challenge them. As long as the Union exits, the Juireans will be plotting our destruction. Sir, we have an opportunity to end this once and for all. Let me lead the way. We don’t need to conquer the Expansion, just Juir. There’s enough grumbling among their member worlds that I’m sure no one would mourn their defeat. And we don’t have to go back being the boss of the galaxy. Any number of other races could take over, or a coalition of them. We can still keep our identity, our Union. But don’t fall for the belief that this thing is over. It will never be over, not as long as the Juireans exist as a power within the galaxy.”
Admiral Hollingsworth stared back at Adam for several seconds before a thin smile stretched across his face. “Very passionate speech, Captain Cain. I see we have a differing of opinion.”
“Admiral—”
Hollingsworth raised a hand to stop him. “I’m not saying you’re wrong and I’m right. The difference between me and you is I have command authority and you don’t. What I decide affects millions, even billions of souls.”
“I realize that, sir. But either we fight the Juireans now or we fight them later. And if I’m right, that may be sooner than you expect. Like I said, this isn’t over. It’s just beginning.”
“And you’re the trigger point, Captain. You’re the person driving the agenda and the one Synnoc wants to kill above all others.”
“He didn’t declare war on the Union just to kill me. That came up later. He declared war to destroy the Union, to destroy all of us.”
The admiral looked to his right for several seconds as he considered Adam’s words. Adam Cain was not a patient man.
“If I am the trigger point, Admiral, then let me be the lightning rod. Let me blaze the trail. That’s what a scorched earth campaign is designed to do. Not only destroy the capabilities of the enemy, but to also open a breach for others to enter. I could plow the row, sir.”
“What do you have left aboard the Mark VII? I’ve seen the reports about Woken. With one torpedo used at Worak-nin and another six at Woken, you should only have two left.”
“That’s right, sir.”
“Hardly enough to plow the row with, wouldn’t you say, Captain?”
“Our laser beam weapons are fully functional.”
Hollingsworth raised his eyebrows. “Which is encouraging. It seemed like a valid method, but probably not enough to carry you all the way to Juir.”
Adam didn’t tell the admiral that the Juireans were programming into their defenses automatic responses to his jumps, firing salvos of flash bolts before he could even get his bearings. The laser weapon was effective, just not as effective as it had been at first.
“Where are you now?” Hollingsworth asked.
“We’re about a three thousand light-years beyond Woken, in Expansion territory. We’re having to zig-zag so our exact jump course can’t be plotted.”
“And what would you do if you run up against a wall of Juirean defenders?”
Adam smiled. “Go in guns-a-blazing and kill every alien in sight…sir.”
“That would be funny if I didn’t know you were serious.”
“I would be serious…if I knew the fleet was backing me up. Like I said, we don’t need to defeat the Expansion, just Juir. We’ve used this strategy before—or Admiral Tobias did. He called it the Medieval Method. Take the castle and you control all the lands around it without having to fight house-to-house. Juir is the castle we have to take.”
Hollingsworth nodded. “Let me take this up with my advisors. It makes sense, and I’ll be pushing for it.” Then the admiral smiled. “Believe it or not, Captain, I’m also the hard-charging, take-no-prisoners type. It’s just that I have others I’m responsible for.”
“If we maintain the status quo, the Juireans will always be a dark cloud hanging over everything we do. You have a responsibility to make that cloud disappear, forever…sir.”
The admiral’s thin smile turned into a smirk. “I’ll be in touch, Captain. In the meantime…stay alive.”
“That’s my primary mission, Admiral.”
“Somehow I doubt that, Mister Cain. Hollingsworth, out.”
The screen went blank.
21
Sixty million years before, a red giant star went nova and unleashed a cloud of dust and stellar debris that now stretched across forty light-years in the region of the galaxy known as the Dannon Divide. Over time, some of this stellar ejecta began to bind together in larger and larger clumps of material that would someday become stars of their own. To feed their growing appetites, these relatively tiny points of gravity gobbled up huge amounts of the red giant’s remains, and as the stellar winds continued to blow, long spires of shadowy dust, ten light-years in length, now dominated the landscape. There were four main pillars, resembling fingers on a hand, which gave this particular stellar formation its common name: The Hand of Creation.
The entire region was a star-birth factory, and the confluence of intense radiation, stellar winds and budding stars ignited space for a hundred light-years in all directions in an iridescent glow of red, green, yellow and purple—all the colors of the spectrum— representing the various temperatures and chemical composition of the excited gases.
The Hand was beautiful to observe, yet treacherous to navigate. Most star travelers skirted along the edge, content to experience this incredible wonder of the universe at a safe distance while pronouncing their admiration in a myriad of alien languages. Some enterprising entrepreneurs even took tourists to see The Hand, at least until war came once more to the galaxy
Located twelve hundred light-years from the planet Hyben—the new line in the galaxy separating the Expansion from the farside territories—a steady stream of Juirean warships now traveled the region, most bypassing the inner turbulence of the huge nebula. Once near Hyben, some continued farther in, to Sanias and Bondic-nur, while others journeyed all the way to mother Juir and the core stars of the former Seven World Common Alliance.
The dark, towering pillars—besides being beautiful and foreboding—were also perfect places to hide huge masses of starships. The radiation and near-constant eruptions on the surfaces of the newborn stars made energy signal detection virtually impossible. A thousand ships could be hidden without a trace of their existence leaking beyond the stellar interference.
Adam knew this as he maneuvered the Vengeance toward the gargantuan spires. But with time to kill before Sherri and Arieel arrived on Juir, he was looking for something a little more substantial to kill other than time.
He realized it could be a trap, but the small cluster of forty-one starships near the tip of the third fing
er was just too inviting to pass by. These ships had come in from the Fringe, so they had no first-hand experience with Adam and the Vengeance. Unless Fleet Command provided every Juirean ship with the automatic defense program to counter his dimensional hops, these ships might have to react the old fashion way, by entering in targeting coordinates and pressing buttons. If that was case, then most of them wouldn’t survive the next fifteen minutes.
With a nonchalant flick of a switch on his control stick, Adam initiated a short hop—only about a quarter of a light-year. When the screens shifted, the Vengeance appeared three hundred thousand miles from the first alien ship in the group. Tom Paulson was ready at fire control and Pogo had done his part to power the laser weapons. The first target would be in range in nine seconds.
To Adam’s surprise, none of the ships along the first line made the slightest attempt to evade the incoming vessel. Shields were raised…but engines remained dormant.
As Paulson’s enhanced laser beams burned through shields and hulls, something odd didn’t happen to the targets. They didn’t explode.
Adam knew only two things could cause this anomaly: Either all the atmosphere had been purged from the ships and the aliens aboard were in environment suits, or…there were no crews aboard, and the ships were decoys.
Pre-placed field dampeners came to life across fifty light-years, preventing any vessel within range from creating light-speed gravity-wells. Adam’s jump-drive wasn’t affected by the dampeners, not entirely—and the Juireans should have known this by now. Since the jump-drive produced a hybrid field disturbance, the Vengeance could still jump, but only about eight-tenths of a light-year at a time. In most cases that would have been sufficient to get them out of danger. But not when the field of battle was a ball in space fifty light-years in diameter—and the Vengeance was right in the middle of it.
Still he jumped, leaving the cluster of decoy starships far behind, not even visible by the most powerful telescopes.
But then things went from bad to worse.
A stream of hundreds of Juirean warcraft emerged from behind the vast, glowing pillars of gas. They came on maneuvering wells, just under light-speed, and in such numbers that their signals combined to form impossibly large blobs of white on the Vengeance’s threat screen. But it didn’t end there. This huge river of starships was soon joined by two more, these appearing from behind other fingers of The Hand.
Adam didn’t panic—at least not initially. Instead he set the ship at General Quarter—sealing compartments and dumping atmosphere from all compartments except the bridge—while he kept jumping, shifting his position within the huge gravity ball. Even with hops of just under a light-year at a time, the Juireans were filling the space within the sphere with more and more ships, giving him less room to maneuver as the minutes clicked by. It was as though the crew of the Vengeance was inside one of their nuclear spheres, only this one full of alien warships rather than radiation and clouds of deadly fire.
“They’re going through a lot of trouble to kill four people,” Adam said softly.
“Excuse me, sir,” said Sergeant Morgan. “I believe they’re going through all this trouble to kill only one of us—maybe two. Commander Paulson and I are just along for the ride.”
Light flashed through the forward viewport as Paulson fired on a couple of ships that were within range following the last hop. Flash bolts were launched at them, but Adam was gone before they could reach the Vengeance.
“I’m glad you can maintain your sense of humor, Sergeant Morgan,” Adam replied, “especially in the face of such imminent danger.”
“Captain Cain, sir, I’m not worried. I’ve been watching you long enough to know that you’ll save our asses. You always do…sir.”
“Oh no, not you, too? This belief in my abilities could get us all killed.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it, sir.”
Riyad tapped his screen, getting Adam’s attention. “You’re doing a great job of keeping us out of range of the enemy, but we’re rapidly running out of options.”
“Should we use the last torpedoes?” Paulson asked.
“Unfortunately, we’d be in range ourselves, and with no moon to hide behind this time. And the dampeners won’t let us jump the torpedoes more than a million miles away. Their drives aren’t as powerful as in the Vengeance.”
“We don’t have a choice, Adam,” Riyad said. There was no humor in his voice this time.
Adam relented. “All right. We’ll send them out along a line,” Adam offered. “It could break the sphere, but then well have to plunge right in after detonation.”
“Either we die here or we die there. There is farther away.”
“Tom, Pogo, prep the torpedoes. Stagger the jump range for maximum effect. Launch when ready.”
Twenty seconds later, a graphic on the forward screen—along with a slight bump through the hull—signified the weapons were away. The torpedoes would jump, appear and detonate—now!
The crew was disappointed. Except for computer indicators, there was no signs that anything had happened. That was because the light from the explosions was still several seconds away, even after a jump of only a million miles. The crew would have to trust in the computers and have faith that the torpedoes had detonated.
“Here we go. After this hop, we should be close enough to see something—”
—Adam pulled back on the stick, but it didn’t help.
The Vengeance was tumbling, riding the crest of a radioactive wave of nuclear fire as if she was a surfer at the North Shore of Hawaii. An ungodly eight seconds passed before Adam could jump again. He didn’t even know where they were going.
A split second later the men were thrown against their restraints, as an ear-splitting squeal sang throughout the ship, worse than the most-horrible fingernails-on-chalkboard scratch one could imagine.
The inertia compensators were no match for the sudden shift the ship experienced as it collided with the other vessel. Fortunately, since most starships didn’t have to withstand the same stress and pressure as rockets from a bygone era, their hulls were not as rigid. When the ships came together, their skin bent and then rebounded, propelling both craft away from each other.
Commander Paulson recovered before anyone else and fired his starboard lasers point-blank at the Juirean Class-4 warship. This time there was an explosion. Unfortunately it was right next to the hull of the Vengeance.
With his ship already moving away from the C-4, this new round of smaller explosions—followed a few seconds later by a much larger one—only helped to shove the Vengeance farther away, but not far enough to avoid showers of hull strikes from flying debris.
“Three breaches, Captain,” Travis reported. “Nothing serious with the atmosphere dumped.”
“Where are they?”
“Two in the service bay and one in the engine room.”
“Pogo, are you all right?”
The tiny orb appeared on the pilot’s console. “I’m fine. No vital equipment was hit,” Pogo’s voice announced from the speakers
Light filled the bridge again, as Tom targeted another nearby warship.
“All this jumping and laser firing is draining my resources,” Pogo said. “One or the other is going to have to be sacrificed.”
“Wrong choice of words, my friend,” said Riyad. “To do away with either would mean we sacrifice our lives.”
“Then I’m fortunate I’m not alive.”
“A battery with a dry sense of humor,” Adam said with a nervous grin. He jumped the ship again. “Tom, we may have to lay off firing for a while and rely on quick hops and fancy piloting.”
“I suppose that means you want me to take over the first chair?” said Riyad, smiling.
“Excuse me, sirs,” said Sergeant Morgan. “But when did we suddenly turn into Comedy Central? You know we’re all about to die?”
“That’s the best time to develop a sense of humor, Travis,” Adam replied. “And what happened to
your belief in my super-human abilities?”
“Reality happened, sir.”
Adam shrugged. “Give me a readout on the torpedo blasts. We have a moment to get our bearings.”
“A hole’s definitely opened up in the swarm of Juirean ships, but that’s because of the two small stars we created. The hull’s measuring max contamination. If we try to run it again, the radiation will kill us before the Juireans do.”
The bridge fell quiet after the sergeant’s sober assessment, all witty repartee and ribbing drowned out by the reality of their situation.
“I suppose surrender is out of the question?” Paulson said, breaking the silence.
He knew the answer. The Mark VII was a unique ship, if only powered by Pogo’s magic. She was still too valuable to let fall into enemy hands. Even if there was chance the Juireans wouldn’t kill them immediately, they couldn’t leave the Vengeance, at least not in one piece.
“The sphere of ships around us is deforming, thinning out, Captain,” said Travis. Looks like they’re giving us a chance to surrender.”
“Pogo, can you set the laser weapons to overload, like I do when I make a bomb out of an MK flash weapon?”
“Yes I can. But if I did, you’d not have the pleasure of seeing the Juireans destroyed by the new fleet of warships that just arrived behind us.”
Riyad copied the nav screen to all the others so the crew could see what Pogo was talking about. It was a massive gravity signature, creeping into range at the bottom of their screens.
“Are we sure they’re friends and just not another mass of foes?” Adam asked.
“Checking sigs now,” Travis said. “They’re…a mixture. Not all Human, but I don’t see any with specific Juirean markings.”
“Regardless of their loyalties, the Juireans sure are reacting to them. I hate to say it, but the mane-heads still have them outnumbered,” Paulson said.