by T. R. Harris
“You’d also have the memories of love and joy.”
Lila reached out and took Adam by the hands. He felt an unnatural warmth, knowing that microscopic layers of skin were melding together, making the contact more intimate than would be possible between two mortals. “I left once before yet came back when I was needed. I am still young and not as firm in my resolve as Panur, so who knows? I may come back at some point. After all, nothing lasts forever.”
“Except me, Lila and a few Aris,” Panur added in a lame attempt at levity.
“What about me? Surely you have some grand plan for me.”
“You will continue being Adam Cain, the reckless and noble scoundrel with more luck than any one man can expect or deserve. If anyone, the galaxy needs you. You will go find your friends and save the day. It’s what you were born to do.”
Adam was weak with grief and sorrow. He had rescued Lila just to lose her again. And now the weight of responsibility for the galaxy pressed down upon his shoulders. Sure, he shouldn’t feel as though resolving the Nuorean crisis was his task alone. But someone had to take responsibility, and Adam always seemed to be the one in the front row with his hand held high saying, ‘Me, me!’
“Any hint as to what I should do next?”
Panur had maneuvered the Najmah Fayd next to the Aris ship and mated with the transfer hatch. He stood from the pilot seat and stepped up to Adam and Lila. “It’s time to go. As for you, Adam, find Riyad and Sherri. Once you do, your path will become clear. Come, Lila.”
Lila fell into Adam arms and hugged him tightly. Then abruptly she broke away and rushed from the room without looking back. Panur and Adam looked at each other before Panur spoke.
“Like she said, nothing lasts forever. Situations change and priorities get rearranged. Until then…later, dude.”
And then it was Panur’s turn to leave.
A minute later the glowing Aris starship streaked off into the vacuum of space, leaving a trail of light that quickly faded. Adam turned back to the silent control room and sighed.
“Now what?”
80
Adam was pretty adept at the controls of the Najmah Fayd—the famous TD-starship capable of transferring between universes with the press of a button. It also meant he could travel vast distances by first jumping to another dimension then re-entering the Milky Way at another point. The whole thing took a couple of minutes, and he could find himself thousands of light-years away in another part of the galaxy.
His first priority was to get as far away from the Aris—and the memories—as he could. He plotted a jump, and a few minutes later he was at the entrance to the Kidis Frontier near the planet Woken.
He’d been out of touch for a while, so the first thing he did was tap into galactic news broadcasts to the get the latest on the war with the Nuor. A lot had happened over the past two weeks, most of it good. The allies had recently defeated a Nuorean fleet using a suppressor beam platform and now the aliens were running scared, avoiding every engagement they could. Maybe the crisis wasn’t as serious as he thought. But then he heard how the invaders were consolidating their forces as they reworked their strategy. And they were all headed for the Fringe.
Adam knew a lot of people in the Fringe, including his two best alien friends Kaylor and Jym. He scanned the CW links for their location, and after several tries, found an old acquaintance who knew of the relationship and wasn’t afraid to give him their contact information.
Soon, Kaylor’s pale face, with the faint tracks of purple veins just below the skin, was on the screen. He didn’t seem excited to see the Human, but it wasn’t because of anything Adam had done.
“We are being inundated with Nuorean warships,” the Belsonian reported. “At first, there was talk of resisting, but then the numbers became so great.”
“How many do you think?”
“I have heard as many ten thousand warships, maybe more.”
Adam whistled, which made his alien friend frown. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever whistled before in Kaylor’s presence. “Where are you now?” he asked.
“Castor. The underground cities here seem safer than those on the surface of other worlds.”
“You’re not in the FS-475?”
“No, there is very little space travel now, not with the Nuorean’s practice of stopping ships and commandeering their crews for their games. Even Angar and his Fringe Pirates are grounded to a certain degree, even though they have sided with the locals and are helping to provide guidance and warnings concerning fleet movements.”
“The Nuor are doing their games again?”
“Yes, in fact on a much larger scale. Do you remember the planet Qidos?” Kaylor asked.
“Yeah, one of the minor worlds in the Fringe, towards the edge, if I recall. Not much there. Why?”
“The Nuoreans have taken it over and built hundreds of their combat arenas. They have the fights going day and night. That is where the main concentration of their forces lay.” Kaylor’s expression turned even more serious. “And Adam, they appear to be particularly interested in Humans, searching local worlds for all they can find.”
“What are they doing with them?”
“Castorian labor crews—and others—are rotated to Qidos for the construction on a daily basis. They come back to report that the Humans are simply being warehoused. Very few are scheduled for the arena, although special facilities appear to be under construction near where others of your race are being quartered.”
“Have you heard anything about Sherri, Riyad or Copernicus?”
“Copernicus? Why would I hear of him?”
Adam smiled, remembering how Kaylor and Jym had been caught up in the spy’s nefarious activities a couple of years ago. He went on to explain how Coop was really a deep-cover operative working for the Union and was tasked with locating the elusive Klin when all the shit came down. Now he was working with Riyad and Sherri to locate a new Nuorean entry point into the galaxy.
“I find that hard to believe,” said Kaylor after Adam was through. “He sold us to the Klin. It was not until ten days later we were rescued, making it quite possible we would have died within that time. Even if he was looking for the Klin for noble purposes, it seems we were expendable in his efforts.”
“So true, my friend,” said Adam, “but right now he’s on our side and with Sherri and Riyad.”
“A fleet just arrived from the Kidis, which you say is where the entry point was rumored? A battle was lost there a short time ago, before the one employing the Sol-Kor suppressor beam. This fleet may be the victors, now joining the others.”
“They could be with them and being moved to where the other Humans are being held.”
“It would make sense.”
“I’m coming to Castor. Don’t leave.”
“We have no intention of leaving; it would be too dangerous. Yet you are weeks away. By the time you arrive, the situation may have changed.”
“I’ll be there in two days.”
“How?”
“I have the Najmah Fayd, the trans-dimensional starship.”
“The one which allows travel to the Sol-Kor universe?”
“One and the same.”
“Are Jym and I to join in your latest adventure?”
“That’s up to you. But I could always use the help, especially from people I trust.”
“I appreciate your confidence, Adam. Please include us. We do not want to sit idle as others fight our battles. I will contact Angar, if you wish.”
“Having a force of notorious space pirates on our side couldn’t hurt, either. Thanks. See you in two days.”
81
“It’s a massive force, Admiral, which seems concentrated around one planet in the Fringe. With the three completed beam platforms, plus a hundred beamships, we should be able to cover enough space to make a pretty big dent in their operational strength.”
Admiral Nathan Smith looked at the Lt. Commander with skepticism. “What kind of stre
ngth of our own could we muster if we attacked at the soonest?”
“Six thousand ships…possibly.”
“That’s it?”
“Fighting units are at the lowest they’ve been in years, sir. After Cain’s crusade, the Juireans were just about depleted, and we weren’t that much better. Then for the year afterwards, there wasn’t any great urgency to replace them, not with Lila Bol preventing all major conflicts in the galaxy. When the Nuoreans showed up, we weren’t prepared. And they’ve also taken a toll on what reserves we did have.”
Smith looked at his datapad. “Six thousand would be about seventy-five percent of our existing units—and that’s across the entire galaxy. That’s a lot to risk in one engagement.”
“But with the beams we wouldn’t need even that many. Look at the last engagement, sir. We could have done the same with only a hundred ships—after the beamships got through with them. It was just a matter of moving throughout the battlefield and destroying enemy ships. I wish I could have been there.”
“That was the first engagement, Commander, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned about the Nuor, they don’t make the same mistake twice.”
“How can they stop us? It’s only been a couple of weeks. There’s no way they could have figured out what happened and then done anything about it. I say we strike now before they do.”
His young adjutant was right. But so was the admiral. There was a narrow window of opportunity to act. The Nuoreans were master game players, strategists of extraordinary ability. So it wasn’t a matter of if they would find a counter to the suppressor beams, but when.
And yet with all his respect for the Nuoreans superior tactics, they did appear to have made a mistake. The strategy of avoiding allied contact had been working. And by dividing their forces, they took advantage of the small number of beam platforms available for deployment. Now they’d consolidated all their forces in one location, allowing the relatively few platforms available to be brought to bear against their entire Milky Way contingent.
That didn’t make sense.
But the enemy did have over ten thousand ships. That would instill any area commander with a sense of strength and security.
Smith looked at the beam-spread analysis readout again. The platforms had been originally designed to subdue planets from orbit. Because of the nature of such large, round objects, it usually took three platforms to cover the surface area adequately. But the range of an individual platform in clear space was impressive, extending out a quarter a light-year before losing strength. Three of them, positioned properly, could dominate a considerable area. And then as one section was cleared, the beam could be shifted.
Yes, it was possible that their existing three platforms—and accompanying support units—could eliminate the bulk of the Nuorean concentration, if the Nuoreans cooperated. And so far they had.
“Very well, Commander,” Smith said. “Contact Juirean Command and the Formilians. Tell them to get the platforms to us ASAP. I’ll begin assembling the attack fleet. We go in ten days.”
82
Theoretically, it was possible for Adam to jump the Najmah Fayd five thousand light-years or more at a time. The problem came with the landing. The longer the jump, the more likely he could materialize in the middle of a star, a gas cloud or an asteroid belt. So shorter jumps—those with more reliable data—were the general rule. Still, going from the edge of the Kidis to the Fringe in only two days was remarkable.
Once in the region, Adam contacted Kaylor again and got his exact location. Adam smiled when he heard the name of the city Krune. When he was active as an alien assassin, the city had been his home base. His primary source of business—the gangster Seton Amick—lived there, up until the time he didn’t live anymore. His unfortunate demise was precipitated by another freelance alien assassin—one Sherri Valentine, Human.
The homecoming should have been more nostalgic, but with the Fringe flooded with dangerous alien warcraft, Adam had to be careful he didn’t attract too much attention. He made shorter and shorter jumps as he approached the planet, and once on the outskirts of the Castorian system, he engaged the conventional gravity-drive and made a beeline for Krune. There were Nuorean ships lingering within the system, and it wouldn’t pay for him to be challenged and for the aliens to attempt a boarding. He’d have to split before they could, and that would set off the alarms.
Castor is a mining world, which hundreds of years before the natives had stripped nearly all vegetation from the surface in their quest for their precious raw materials. This had the effect of dropping the oxygen in the atmosphere to unhealthy levels. Although the natives adapted, they still utilized the vast network of abandoned underground excavations to move the population underground, where they could better regulate the oxygen content. Adam would still have to wear a nose mask when not within an enclosed structure such as a house or a hotel room where the O2 content could be adjusted.
He didn’t like leaving the Najmah Fayd outside in the commercial spaceport, but he had no choice. On the way to Castor, Adam had developed a thread of a plan, based on something Kaylor had told him. He initiated the first phase while still hopping through time and space on his way to the Fringe.
He took a plastic locking wedge from the hangar bay and drilled a half-inch in diameter by two-inch-deep hole into it. Next, he filled the hole with silicone sealant and once it set, he repeated the procedure. He found a marking pen with light blue ink and traced fine lines on his face, after which he glued his silicone creations to his earlobes. After shaving all but a trace of hair from his head, he surveyed image in a mirror. Not perfect, but passable.
Upon landing, Adam contacted Kaylor and Jym and had them meet him at the Najmah Fayd. As the hatch slid open and Kaylor entered, the alien’s shocked reaction wasn’t what Adam was hoping for.
“No! It will not pass,” said the Belsonian.
“Why not?”
“The under-veins are much too prominent, and the capens are—well, they are just not right.”
Adam assumed his ear dangles were called capens. He never knew they actually had a name, even though it made sense that they would. “Sure, I may not fool a Belsonian, but the Nuor don’t have that much experience with all the species in the galaxy. All I want to do is not look like a Human.”
“It is risky, my friend.”
“It’s the best I could come up with.”
What followed was a quick welcoming, both for the Belsonian and for Jym, his four-foot-tall Fulqin companion. After the rescue from the Klin colony ship, the pair had been nursed back to health aboard a Human medical ship before being released. They recovered their precious Muleship—the FS-475—and returned to the Fringe. Adam hadn’t spoken with them for over two years.
This homecoming was bittersweet, coming at such a time and under dire circumstances.
“I am to suspect the disguise is part of your plan?” asked Jym.
“It is.” Adam turned to Kaylor. “Tell me more about the work crews and how all that works.”
“The Nuor learned early on that the Castorians were master with ground work and other such construction. About four months ago they enlisted a force of forty thousand to help build their combat arenas on Qidos.”
“But you said they rotate this work force between planets. Why would they do that?”
“Rather than build facilities to house such a large force—plus feed and care for them—the Nuor simply transport half the force between the planets twice a day. They have a large compound not far from Krune where they first dropped the crews, without food or shelter. The natives arrived with tents and supplies, all at their own expense. The Nuor allow this since it provides them with a massive work force without any of the expense of caring for them. All they do is load twenty thousand at a time into huge troop transports and shuttle them back and forth. They have figured it is cheaper to do it this way.”
“But the natives are allowed into the compound to deliver the supplies?”
“You mentioned others are taken to Qidos as well.”
“Yes, specialists.”
“Like engineers?”
“Correct.”
Adam smiled. “I’d like you to meet the newest construction engineer assigned to the Human facility.”
“Who is that?” Jym asked, confused.
“Me, Jym, it’s me. I’m the new engineer, recently recruited from the local Belsonian population.”
“I was not aware Belsonians were known for their engineering expertise.”
“Well they are now, and that’s all the Nuoreans need to know. Now listen up; here’s my plan.”
Adam spent the next two days training Kaylor and Jym on the operation of the Najmah Fayd. Both were excellent pilots and had flown just about every type of starship in the galaxy, so the job was relatively easy. Next, he used his ATD to create a ghost image of the device in the ship’s computer. This would allow for much longer communication between the ship and himself. He added a homing feature into the computer as well.
“Once I’ve found Sherri and the others, I’ll contact the ship and have it home in on my position. I can jump it remotely, but not all the way to the surface. That would be too dangerous. I can get it about ten miles above the surface, and from there you’ll have to manually pilot it the rest of the way. Once we’re all onboard, we can jump from there out a few hundred light-years to make our escape.”
Kaylor frowned. “You mentioned when we are aboard. Does that mean you, Sherri, Riyad and Copernicus?”