by Dean Sault
The weapons officer in the Tanarac War Room offered his thoughts.
“Sir, I don’t think the Heps can target that ship. It looks like they are firing manually, hoping to get lucky. Those are old-fashioned spread patterns.”
A second volley fired as the human ship got close to the giant Codae vessel’s midsection. One of the heavy energy beams hit its target. To the naked eye, the human ship expanded abruptly as it simply absorbed the energy.
Simon slowed to match the course and velocity of the fleeing command ship. A strange swelling rose at the base of the human sphere. At first, it was just an odd bump in the swirling energy mass, but the bulge grew quickly until it formed a small, secondary ball of pure energy attached to the larger vessel.
Without warning, the ball of pure plasma broke free from the human ship and raced across the short distance between the two vessels. It made contact toward the tail of the royal ship and began rolling forward, bouncing along the contour of the command ship’s hull.
A gaping slice opened in the enemy vessel every place the plasma touched. Loose items, unlucky Heptari crewmembers, severed superstructure—anything that was not soundly attached to the ship, spun off into space.
The energy sphere shrank as it traveled forward along the royal starship’s surface until it vanished. Another sphere formed at the base of the human ship and followed a trajectory similar to the first, leaving a second deep gash the full length of the Heptari hull.
All the while, the human ship absorbed numerous direct hits from both the command ship cannons and supporting heavies, all without effect.
Raucous cheers broke out in the War Room, as they watched the damage to the Codae ship.
The enemy command vessel turned out to space under maximum power as two Rahls tried to fill the gap between the command ship and human vessel. A third Rahl attempted to ram the humans.
Heptari warships continued firing heavy cannons into the slow moving silver globe with no apparent effect. The entire enemy fleet followed their sole remaining royal command center as it attempted to escape the rogue sphere.
The fleet passed Kob’s disabled Kyome as they ran toward perceived safety of the first asteroid belt.
Chapter 72
The War Room speakers crackled with static.
“General Tragge, you there?” The general recognized Simon’s voice.
“Yes, I’m here. I thought you didn’t have any weapons.”
“We don’t. We’re directing surplus energy through an overload vent. It’s kinda like throwing their own energy back at them. Pretty smart boy, that Dr. Farnthal.”
“Who is Dr. Farnthal? Never mind. What can we do to help?”
“I don’t know. We’re just taking whatever opportunities they give us right now. If they stop firing at us, we can’t even fire back. We need their energy for the overload dump. I sure hope they don’t figure that out. Dr. Farnthal told me to draw them as far away from Tanarac as possible. I think I’ve got their attention.”
“Sir,” Ludic said, “Heps are setting a trap for the humans.”
Ludic was first to notice the classic box-within-a-box Heptari formation.
“Simon, you’re flying into a trap,” the general warned. “They’re setting up a three dimensional box with one open end. That open end is the trap.”
“Yeah, I see it. Farnthal predicted this, too. You better shut down your entire planetary power grid. I don’t know what Farnthal’s got in mind, but he asked me to warn you.”
“Shut down our power grid? Why?”
“Don’t ask me. I don’t know what he has planned. Just do it. He hasn’t been wrong yet.”
General Tragge considered for a moment before giving the order. All over Tanarac, lights blinked out.
“What about my space fleet?”
“Doc says send them to the far side of the planet and have them power down.”
Again, the general hesitated, but gave the order. On all of Tanarac, only his War Room retained backup battery power to run his monitors and computers.
“Sir, they’re closing the box on the humans.”
“Simon, are you sure you know what you’re doing? They’re closing the trap.”
“Me? Heck no, General. I don’t have a clue what I’m doing. I just fly this thing where they tell me to!”
The Royal Heptari Codae vessel slowed to a dead stop near the asteroid belt. The human ship mirrored the position. Surrounding the human sphere, Heptari ships fired particle beams into the stationary globe. Simon became nervous about the danger in this trap.
“Doc, are you sure Farnthal knows what he’s doing?”
“No, young man. You know I don’t agree. I told you from the beginning, I was against taking this risk,” Dr. Boroski said with a noticeable edge in his voice.
If it were not for the fact that the scientist was just a photonic image, Simon would have sworn he was truly angry.
Smaller ships that had been shielding the Heptari command ship moved out of the way. All the big ship’s cannons glowed blue and fired simultaneously. Several nearby Rahls fired at the same time in a coordinated effort to destroy the humans.
With all combatants sitting dead in space, the enemy’s accuracy was excellent.
Inside the human ship, sparks flew, conduits burst, panels overloaded, lights flickered, and Dr. Boroski vanished. Simon was rapidly losing confidence when a voice formed inside his head.
“Stay calm. This is Dr. Farnthal. The ship can handle this power surge. I am sending you piloting instructions as we speak. You must follow them exactly.”
“I can’t do this. I’ve never engaged the time displacement engines.”
“Follow my instructions. You’ll do fine.”
“But, I thought you could only use those engines in deep space.”
“True, under normal conditions, but these are not normal circumstances. Now, you must follow my direction exactly, because you will lose my assistance shortly. The external plasma surge is disrupting our memory banks. I’ve given you all you need. It’s up to you now. I know you can do it.”
Several more power surges blew out monitors on the main command panel and the ship began to shake violently.
“What are you doing?” Benjamin shouted his question over the chaos.
“Following directions,” Simon shouted back. “I gotta engage our time displacement engines above maximum design load, whatever that is.”
“What will happen then?”
“I don’t know. Farnthal said something about an unstable time rift. Here goes.”
Almost two dozen attacking Heptari capital ships and the big command ship fired a steady barrage from their main cannons. The human ship grew more than twice in size as its external energy layers swelled.
Simon carefully followed directions. The human ship began to rotate on its axis, slowly at first, but soon it spun at a dizzying rate.
Heptaris ceased firing as they watched the odd spectacle.
Two thin shafts of energy stretched out from the top and bottom axis of the spinning sphere. The human ship appeared to elongate along those spikes. Initially, small slivers of plasma spun off the rotating energy field into space, but before long, massive bolts of angry energy flew out in every direction.
The Heptari fleet, led by the big command ship, began backing away from the sight.
General Tragge accepted the human’s warning and powered down the entire planet, but he could not resist the temptation to use his War Room batteries to keep watching.
The human ship was now so bright, he and his staff had to shield their eyes. A nearby window to the outside world revealed the Tanarac night had somehow transformed into brilliant daylight by the false sun that was the human ship.
Without warning, the expanding spaceship exploded in a massive flash of light and radiant heat, extending in all directions. The entire Heptari fleet disappeared inside the ball of energy. Just as abruptly, the brilliant field of the explosion collapsed back into itself like wate
r of a wave receding back into the ocean. The vast energy field disappeared into the exact point where the human vessel existed only moments before.
The Heptari fleet appeared none the worse from immersion in the energy bath, and the human ship was gone. Nothing remained in its place.
Heptari vessels sat stationary, momentarily stunned by the event. A few ships began moving away from the place where the human ship was last seen. Their engines glowed as they applied power, yet their positions in space barely changed. Even the big royal ship was not making progress, as it attempted to move away.
One by one, Heptari ships began sliding backwards toward the spot in space where the human ship once existed. Two enemy ships collided as they frantically maneuvered under full power, trying to escape the area. Pieces of their wrecked ships accelerated rapidly toward the singularity. The closer the debris got, the faster it moved until it reached some invisible barrier point, where it became a blur and vanished instantly into some un-viewable void.
It wasn’t long before the entire Heptari fleet was caught in a growing spiral of asteroids, starships and space debris. They circled involuntarily in the inescapable vortex of a black hole left when the human ship imploded. The big command ship broke slowly into pieces before its residue vanished into the center of the growing hole.
“Sir, is that a black hole?”
“I believe so, Ludic.”
The general and his staff members understood the danger of a black hole in any star system.
“Sir, look!”
One of the general’s staff members pointed at the monitor showing Tanarac’s binary suns. The energy flume that had always flowed between the two suns, now stretched far out into space. It looked like a giant, glowing ribbon caught in a strong wind. As they watched, the flume broke at its farthest point and two long threads of super hot hydrogen nuclei extended from both suns into the black hole.
Gravitational pull from the growing space anomaly began to affect the planet. Loose items slid across War Room desks, ending up pinned against the wall closest to the black hole. The general and his staff held on to fixed desks to avoid joining loose debris.
Chapter 73
“Simon, wake up. Simon!”
He lay unconscious in his command chair. Blood pooled in the corners of his eyes and dripping from his ears and nose. Dr. Boroski called out again to no avail. When the pilot failed to respond, the hologram placed his photonic hands on Simon’s temples and deliberately thrust them deep inside the young man’s head. When he felt they were properly located, he de-materialized and reformed in a fraction of a second.
Simon screamed in pain.
“I’m sorry,” the doctor said. “I had to wake you. You have to finish the job. Can you hear me?”
“Where are we, Doc?” Simon asked as he rubbed his aching head with both hands. “What happened? Where are the Heptaris?”
“You created an unstable black hole. It destroyed the Heptari fleet, but now it’s drawing energy from Tanarac’s suns. If we don’t stop that source quickly, it will become a permanent black hole and engulf everything within two light years.”
“How am I gonna stop a black hole? I thought that was impossible.”
“We don’t have time to discuss theory. Go to these coordinates. Quickly!”
The command deck was dark, except for a small, lighted area around Simon’s chair and the hologram. When he attempted to follow instructions, the ship did not respond. Another source of energy was needed.
Simon searched the ship’s computer and found a pool of plasma storage that was segregated from the external grids. It was for maintaining stasis tubes. It would have to do.
The ship began moving slowly when he tapped those critical reserves. Lights in the control room came on at the same time, and Simon saw Shilgar, Benjamin and Kelly slumped to one side in their chairs. Blood trickled from their noses and ears, but there was nothing he could do for them at that moment.
He followed instructions, skirting around the small energy ribbon extending from the lesser sun to the black hole. When the ship approached the thicker line of plasma emanating from the primary sun, he inserted the human ship directly into the energy stream, vanishing inside plasma.
Lights in the control room increased to normal intensity, and the ship regained the hum of normal operation. The giant plasma stream cut off from the black hole as the hungry vessel absorbed all the energy available.
“Good. Now, proceed slowly to the lesser plasma thread.” Dr. Boroski carefully monitored progress as the ship flew back toward the energy string from the smaller sun.
“Slower. If we lose connection with the first sun, its plasma stream will return to the singularity.”
The human starship eased into the second plasma ribbon, cutting off the final source of pure energy for the black hole. Simon’s ship now acted as an energy node linking the binary suns and restoring the normal exchange.
“What now, doc?”
“Now, we wait. Unstable anomalies will collapse once the Hawkins Radiation exceeds the energy inflow.” Dr. Boroski’s program flickered. “Dr. Farnthal would like to speak to you. He will speak through me.”
The Dr. Boroski hologram blinked again.
“Good job! You only had a few microseconds to enter the space-time rift before the singularity formed. Outstanding job of piloting. I was worried that you’d return us to standard space-time too close to the event horizon.”
“You told me to set the course toward the sun and hold the time distortion for three nanoseconds. That’s what I did.”
“Well, you did it very well. Black holes need energy to sustain space-time displacement. It should implode any second as the time phase overlap realigns. I’m not sure you understand the full implications of your actions. Do you realize you saved two races today?”
The stripper-plow boom operator blushed at the praise.
“I just followed directions. You and Dr. Boroski are the geniuses.”
“Simon, when we were leaving this system, I monitored your conversations with my colleague and your friends. You were the only one who refused to give up on Tanarac. Your stubborn insistence created the opportunity to use my knowledge. You made it happen, and I thank you.”
In that instant, a bright flash spread throughout local Tanarac space.
“That was the anomaly collapsing. Everything inside it was converted to pure energy and released. It’s safe to exit the plasma stream now.”
“How do I do that?”
“Power down the ship and release stored energy through the surplus vent. Everything else will take care of itself. It has been a pleasure to know you, Simon. Good luck and goodbye.”
Simon sensed a disturbing nuance at the end of the conversation.
“Doctor Farnthal, maybe someday you can explain to me what we did.”
“You’ll understand soon enough, but I won’t be here to explain it. We have made a decision—”
The hologram fell out of focus.
“Simon, it’s me again, Dr. Boroski. I cut off Dr. Farnthal. I wanted to tell you myself.”
“Tell me what?” He had a sense of foreboding.
“Our job is done. We endured this electronic existence for a very long time. Our personality programs will terminate before you reach Tanarac. We gift you the entire Earth library and our collective technical knowledge, but it’s time for us to rest. Before you reach Tanarac, we will be gone. You are the only person with psychic ability to access this ship. That makes you keeper of the knowledge. Use it wisely. Goodbye, my young friend.”
Without waiting for further discussion, Dr. Boroski vanished.
“Benjamin is hurt,” Kelly called out as she wiped blood off the old scout’s cheek. Shilgar rose on unstable legs and approached his old friend.
“Okay, I’m heading back to the hospital.” Simon took charge, “I’ll let Dr. Hadje know we’re coming.”
The human space ship settled onto the same hospital landing pad as it did when they
brought Kerl-Ga and Shilgar in for treatment. Benjamin was alert now, but complaining of a severe headache. Shilgar and Kelly accompanied medics as they rushed him into the emergency room.
Simon remained on the ship, checking his passengers in suspended animation. When he was done, the young boom operator left the bridge. He took a deep breath of fresh air and walked on weak legs to the base of the loading ramp. He leaned against a concrete crowd barrier, utterly exhausted. A hand came to rest on his shoulder, startling him.
“Hello, Simon. I wanted to meet the human who saved my people.”
General Tragge stepped around the barrier and joined the young human. Both leaned against the concrete. He placed his arm around Simon’s shoulders in a familiar way as he spoke.
“Son, I hope you will consider Tanarac to be your permanent home. I would be honored to count you as my friend.”
Overwhelmed by exhaustion, Simon leaned his head against the old general’s shoulder and closed his eyes. In an instant, he fell fast asleep, drifting into his childhood.
Before him, a row of ore plows waited in darkness next to the Tasker family compound for the next day’s duties. He and his teenage friends, Adam and Kelly, held close to moon shadows. They helped Kelly to slip quietly up the ladder onto the top of the ore bin to steal a look into the private Tasker compound. They were breaking all the rules. Simon felt alive—he felt free!
Chapter 74
“Prime Skah, Rotaga, I beg your forgiveness. You asked not to be disturbed until we arrive at Heptari Prime, but something of great importance has happened. Will you grant me speech, Great One?”
“I am in no position to take your head. Rise. Speak as you will.”
“Prime Skah, we intercepted reports from Tanarac. Our entire fleet was destroyed. The Codae are dead.”
Rotaga leaped to his feet and withdrew a ceremonial knife from his belt. He held it to the throat of his adjunct.