by T. R. Harris
“I think just the leg.”
Copernicus studied the fallen beam and how it was braced between the ceiling and the deck. Securing himself, he pushed against the ten-foot-long bulkhead brace. The zero gravity allowed it to move, and with a free arm, he pulled Sherri into the air.
Her leg was bleeding and the pant leg torn, but he didn’t see any odd angles or penetrating bone. Those were good signs. He took off his shirt and wrapped it around her leg. She cried out in pain.
After taking several deep breaths, Sherri relaxed. “What happened?”
“Hell if I know. It felt like something hit us, an explosion or another ship.”
They were in the pilothouse of the small supply ship, and when they turned their attention to the exterior viewport, they were shocked to find the space outside filled with tiny flashes for as far as they could see. The frequency of the explosions was tapering off, but it was obvious something big had just happened.
“Are we back?”
“I think so,” Copernicus replied.
He floated to the pressure door of the pilothouse and looked through the tiny viewport. The entire back end of the ship was open to space. Safnos and the rest of the Juireans had been back there. Next, he looked over the flight control panels. They were in ruin.
“I saw the fleet in front of us stretch out and disappear…and then the flash. I’m pretty sure we’re back in the Milky Way.” he said.
“If we’re back, then that means—Adam!”
“Yeah, looks like something he would do, with the help of his mutant sidekick.”
“They couldn’t have known we were with them. We have to let them know. How can we send a signal?”
“I don’t know. We’re pretty broken up.”
“You’re the mechanic—fix it.”
“Spoken like most of the women I’ve known.”
“Well….”
“I’ll call Triple-A for a tow.”
Sherri grimaced when she tried to smile, discovering a deep cut on her lips. “Well…if we have to die, at least we’ll do it in our galaxy.”
“That damn mutant!” Adam yelled once the ship stabilized.
“The comm’s still open,” came Panur’s voice within his helmet.
“Then I repeat: That damn mutant!”
“I take it you had a little trouble?”
“Who activated the damn drive?”
“That was me,” said J’nae. “I’m not as proficient as Panur and realized too late your command code had been triggered. It was only for a second or two.”
“When it comes to gravity drives, that was long enough.”
“What’s your status?” Panur asked.
“Unknown at this point. We just came out of a spin and the systems are erratic. We still have gravity and some of the screens are active. Give us a minute to do an assessment.”
Riyad and Adam unfastened their safety harnesses, discovering that even through their spacesuits, they had suffered bruises and burns from the severe buffeting they’d taken. Helmets had protected their heads when they slammed into the portside bulkhead, and other than a few other cuts and strains, they appeared to be okay.
The ship turned out to be halfway functional. Only one generator was working, and at sixty-percent capacity. They’d lost atmosphere to most of the ship, but wearing their suits allowed them to do an adequate survey of the damage. Tapping into one of the rear internal gravity generators would help get the ship up to traveling mode, using only maneuvering wells instead of the deeper light-speed variety.
Adam contacted Panur again.
“Good,” said the mutant when learning the ship could steer its way out of the mess they’d made. “The effect was better than expected.”
“How so?”
“We launched three hundred eighteen ships and two hundred four made it to the fleet. By our estimates, over seventeen hundred Nuorean ships were destroyed out of two thousand ten. The ones that survived are the smaller ones toward the rear of the column.”
“That should get their attention. Can you help us out? Navigation is down and our proximity sensors are offline. We’d be eyeballing if we head out of the debris field on our own.”
“Let me do a scan and find the easiest route. It should be toward the rear of the column, where there’s less debris.”
A moment later he came back on the line. “Okay, steer one-one-five, up six from your location. Go slow. I’ll be feeding you constant updates to avoid debris.”
The battered Nuorean spaceship began to move. As Panur fed Adam directions, Riyad stood at the viewport with a viewing magnifier he’d found on the bridge, and able to survey the path ahead at a thousand times magnification. His mouth hung slack as he took in the incredible damage the telescope brought into focus.
They slipped past five huge warships, busted and sporting gaping holes filled with jagged metal, wires and beams, along with a few frozen bodies orbiting nearby. The operation had been a success, if only for this one time. When the debris field showed up back in the Andromeda galaxy, the Nuoreans would surely suspend future transits, at least until they figured out what happened. Then they would probably shift entry points. But that would take time, hopefully time enough for the allies to build Panur’s suppressor beam platforms.
There were still a few explosions still taking place, but mainly on the periphery of their route. The space ahead had a few derelicts, as all the space-worthy vessels had scattered to places unknown. That was why the flashes Riyad noticed along their path seemed so…odd. They weren’t sporadic but pulsed with a pattern that repeated. He tried to think what would cause such a system of timed pulses on a damaged or destroyed warship but was at a loss.
Unless they were artificial….
“Do you know Morse Code?” he asked Adam.
“Back in my SEAL days, which was like a couple of centuries ago it seems.”
“Well I think someone is trying to send us a signal.”
Adam was at the window a second later, taking the magnifier from Riyad and following his directions to the source of the flashing lights. A moment later he pulled the telescope away from his eyes and smiled.
“I have no idea what the signal means in Nuorean, but on Earth it means S.O.S.”
Epilogue
Hell, they’d only been gone for three days, but the greeting Sherri and Copernicus received from Adam and Riyad was epic. There was far too much crying taking place for a room filled with three manly men and one irascible woman. But no one seemed to care. Adam truly believed he’d never see Sherri again, and although he knew the odds of what just happened were far beyond that of the largest Powerball drawing of all time, even with that, someone usually won. This time it was the four people on the bridge of Adam’s barely running Nuorean spaceship.
They made it back to the D-4, where J’nae and Panur proved their credentials with Human medical procedures. Sherri’s leg was cast posthaste, and all their other injuries scrubbed and bandaged as if by professionals.
Then with the new jump drive operational, the D-4 headed off for the galaxy end of the Radis Spur. The trip would take six days, even with the modified star drive, but Panur didn’t wait until they reached friendly territory before working on the plans for his suppressor beam platforms. Using all the computing power aboard the Belsonian starship, he completed the plans in two days, and then sent all thirty-seven hundred pages of drawings, specifications and instructions to Admiral Olsen.
Two days later, Olsen was back on the line with a half a dozen engineers in a conference link, firing a million questions at the mutant. Panur grew impatient, saying it was all right there if they would just follow the directions. What followed were five more conference calls before the engineers began to grasp the concept. It was still going to be a long and difficult road before the platforms were up and running.
The allied lines were no longer at the beginning of the Radis Spur. They had been moved back until they were forty light-years from Formil. This was where th
e Expansion—along with the first Union reinforcements—would make a stand. Formil was the premier manufacturing center for the Expansion—the planet and the nine others the Formilians controlled nearby. If these fell into Nuoreans hands, it would be a major blow to the war effort.
As the days passed, and the D-4 neared Formil, Admiral Olsen finally reported some good news.
“After each new alien fleet entered the galaxy, we noticed a huge uptick in their activities. Since your party at the entry point, new activity has dropped to zero. They’re maintaining what they have, but not pushing for more. You seemed to have made an impression.”
“That is good news, Admiral,” Adam said. “But what we have to lookout for now is them showing up in different sectors, and in large numbers.”
“A realignment?”
“Yessir. If I were them I wouldn’t risk sending another fleet through to the same spot. They’ll probably shift focus and then send in units to scout around. A few of the survivors from the last attack probably got pulled back to Andromeda along with the debris field, so they might have some idea what happened, but not the whole picture. They’ll want more information before committing full fleets again.”
“Giving us time to complete the platforms.”
“How’s that coming? We’ll be at Formil in six days; I guess we’ll see firsthand when we get there.”
“To be honest, it’s going slow. Panur may consider his plans child’s play, but our scientists and engineers are having a hell of a time with them. We could sure use his help.”
Adam had already told Olsen about the mutant’s plan to leave and go find Lila, rather than stay and help with the platforms.
“Panur’s still set on leaving. We’ll get there just in time for him to recover the Mark IV and head out.”
“We can keep the ship from him,” Olsen threatened.
“You really think you can? Besides, that would be shitty. He’s done yeoman’s work to this point.”
“It would be for the common good, Captain.”
“You’ll just have to do the best you can, sir,” Adam said. “You can stay in touch with us through CW links.”
“Us?”
“Yessir. I’m going with him.”
“Captain—”
“She’s my daughter, Admiral. I’ve already lost one. I don’t want to lose another.”
“Understood.” The sour look on the Admiral’s face spoke volumes. “I suppose the whole gang is going?”
“Yessir.”
“And Smith?”
“He wants to tag along as well.”
“You okay with that?”
Adam snickered. “It’s really not up to me anymore. He and Sherri are an item now.”
“Heaven help us, Captain.” Alan Olsen leaned back in his chair, resigned to the fact that his best spy and greatest warrior were teaming up and heading out on their own galaxy-quest. “I wish you luck in finding your daughter, Adam. From what I’ve heard through classified channels, that’s not going to be an easy task. Did I hear them right: three-billion-year-old super-beings?”
“It’s just another mystery in this great big universe of ours, Admiral. And I have to tell you, this place is getting weirder by the day.”
The End of Alien Games
The Cain Legacy
And now…
Book #18 in
The Human Chronicles Saga
Copyright 2017 by T.R. Harris
All rights reserved, without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanically, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. ***
62
“Of course it’s a wave; an oscillating wave with splintered modulation. That’s how the beam can affect a variety of species.”
“But why would you not—”
“Let me stop you there,” Panur interrupted. “You are attempting to modify my design based on your primitive understanding of physics and engineering. Even the mindless Sol-Kor could build suppressor platforms…because they didn’t question my plans. They simply followed directions.”
“Yet the power source delivery can cause splintering—”
“That’s covered on page nine-eighty-four, halfway down. All you need to do is read it.”
Adam raised his eyebrows. The mutant Panur was speaking to the engineers on Formil over a CW comm link while staring at the bulkhead in the Najmah Fayd’s pilothouse, yet still he could recall the exact location in his three-thousand-plus page set of plans where the splintering effect was addressed.
“The frequency modulation is a question—”
“Refer to addendum fourteen. It details how to build the modulation unit. It’s all there…as it has been from the beginning.”
“We understand that,” said the engineer. “However, the requirements—”
A loud squeal erupted from the speakers, followed by silence. Panur turned to Adam, his face displaying the frustration that had been building over the past twenty minutes of the link. His emotional state was exacerbated by the almost continuous series of communications the mutant had endured over the past two weeks with the scientists back on Formil.
“These are rumored to the brightest beings in your galaxy,” Panur barked at Adam. “I welcome this second disruption of the CW link.”
“The second?” Adam asked.
“Yes, there was a similar interruption three days ago—” Panur’s eyes grew large.
Adam was in the pilot seat, waiting patiently for the mutant to continue. Riyad was on the bridge as well. The two Humans shared a knowing glance, enjoying the frustration the often-pompous immortal mutant alien genius was experiencing.
“The last event was three days, nine minutes ago, to be precise,” Panur announced. “The prior interference was only a scrambling of the wormhole. This latest disruption caused a complete break.”
The tone of Panur’s statement made Adam take notice. He knew continuous-wormhole communication linked together two points in space by way of a microscopic wormhole. Such links were capable of sustaining integrity for just over an hour before the natural gravitational influences in the galaxy caused the points to fall out of alignment. Other than that, there was very little that could break an established link.
“What do you think caused it?” Adam asked.
“A gravitational wave of incredible strength, and this latest event was stronger than it was three days ago.”
Adam sat up straighter. “The Nuoreans?”
“The mid-point generators take three days to charge.”
“Why haven’t we seen this effect before?”
“Two reasons,” Panur began. “The original entry point was located far from the main part of the galaxy. And two, we were not within a CW link at the time we were close enough to notice the phenomenon.”
“That means—”
“We are close to their new entry point into the Milky Way.”
Riyad sent a star map to the forward viewscreen. They were just entering the Kidis Frontier after two weeks of travel from Formil—which was another point of contention for Panur. The journey to the planet Incus was taking twice as long as necessary, especially in his trans-dimensional starship. But CW links couldn’t be established between dimensions, so the ship had to stay in the Milky Way and under normal drive for the duration of the trip, just so the workers on Formil could subject the mutant to their constant barrage of inane questions. Incus was still two weeks out, if they maintained this schedule.
“The new entry point would be along the outskirts of the galaxy,” Riyad pointed out. “And if you follow how they did it in the Radis Spur it’ll be close to a projecti
on from one of the major arms.”
Panur studied the map. “The gravity wave is created by the surge of incoming space as the continuum returns to normal. To work properly, the entry point needs to be away from any major gravity source at this end. I’ll analyze the strength of the wave and determine the direction, but from my initial estimates I would place the entry point at the edge of the Anxel Prominence.”
“Where’s that?” Adam asked. Although he’d spent a lot of time in space over the past twenty years, it was impossible for him to know every part of the galaxy. Who did—besides Panur?
The mutant tapped a keyboard at his station. A circle appeared at the outer edge of the Orion Arm, near the border of the Kidis spur.
“That’s pretty close to Earth,” Adam said.
“Yes, relatively; however it’s closer to Incus.”
“A coincidence?”
“Unknown.”
“We need to investigate,” Riyad declared. “The Formilians will need a definite location once the platforms are operational.”
“I will relay the information and let others investigate. I’m already far behind schedule in my quest to find Lila.”
Riyad shook his head. “The platforms are nearly complete, and if you’re right about this gravity wave thing, then the Nuoreans are already bringing in new units from Andromeda. We can’t waste time.”
“They may be testing the link,” Panur countered. “There is no evidence of warships coming through.”
“That’s why we need to investigate.” There was a moment of quiet on the bridge before Riyad finished his statement. “It’s on our way to Incus.”
Panur scrunched up his face. “At this rate we will never begin our search for Lila!” he growled. The CW link chirped; the mutant glared at the screen with fire in his eyes. The wave had passed the Najmah Fayd and now the engineers on Formil were calling back.