“The counsel hasn’t told me what I’m to think yet,” Sir James said, “but if they asked, I agree with you. It’s worrisome to believe the Diak may have multiple ways out of our territory, but bone chilling to realize that they might also have multiple ways in. Admiral Sullivan, are you carrying the appropriate probe bundle?”
“No. But, as we speak, an ESF squadron is docking to reinforce our combined defenses. They’re carrying one.”
“We’ll send another your way regardless. Hold launch until I get consent of the full Counsel.”
“Yes, sir,” Sullivan said.
“Then that’s all for—”
“Excuse me,” Liu held her hand up. “We still need to discuss a rescue mission for the Marigold.”
“There won’t be a rescue mission for the Marigold,” Sir James said. “Even if they weren’t obliterated the minute they entered Diak space, they’re defenseless, with little or no supplies, and no range.”
“But . . . ” Liu looked determined.
Sir James shook his head. “I’m sorry. End transmission.”
~ ~ ∞ ~ ~
After the meeting, Anne Rostenkowski stopped by Security HQ’s front office. In the last few weeks they’d lost four out five command staff and been hijacked by Earth military. Kyle Drubber and Mitchell Jones were still acting shift commanders, but Cutter’s and Walker’s positions had been combined and filled by an ESF officer. Capt. Murray seemed competent and fair, but he was insensitive to the emotional condition of security’s rank and file. Anne felt they deserved a little more empathy. On the other hand, the entire K.U. was suffering right now.
Kyle sat at the shift commander’s desk with as blank an expression as anyone still breathing could have until he noticed her approach. “Good morning, Secretary Rostenkowski.”
“Hello, Kyle. I just stopped by to see how things were going. Any new crises?”
“No, but then it’s early yet, sir.”
She laughed. “If you and Jones have questions or need an advocate, you’re free to come to me. I’m not sure I can always help, but I might be able to put in a good word.”
“I appreciate it, sir. Can you tell me how your meeting went? Are we mounting a rescue mission?”
“No. And I agree with the decision. There’s no telling what’s on the other side of that wormhole. It’s sure to be guarded and maybe mined as well. Any chance of finding a way back is miniscule. We can’t risk more lives on a mission without even a remote chance of success. But we’re sending a probe package through.”
“Yeah, we guessed as much. There is one other thing. Chief Cutter didn’t want us talking to Mattie, and Capt. Murray is enforcing that. But she’s overheard bits of conversation and knows something’s up. I . . . all the staff . . . at least want to let her in on what’s happened. Maybe she doesn’t deserve it, but she was one of us once.”
“I don’t see a reason to keep her in the dark. But I don’t want to countermand Murray’s orders either. I have a few minutes now. I’ll go back and speak with her myself.”
“Thanks, sir.”
~ ~ ∞ ~ ~
Mattie lay on her cot, eyes closed, arms crossed over her chest, one leg propped up with the other resting on its knee. Her foot made little circles in the air. Anne knew she’d heard her approaching the cell and guessed Mattie was trying to appear disinterested.
“Miss Freelander? It’s Anne Rostenkowski of the ETOC.”
“So?” Mattie said, without opening her eyes.
“You were scheduled for transfer to Earth on the Reagan, which was to leave this morning. But an unfortunate event yesterday evening has delayed the Reagan’s departure several days.”
Mattie sat up, no longer feigning disinterest. “Is this about Chief Cutter? I know something happened.”
“Yes. In a skirmish with the Diak, his shuttle inadvertently crossed into their space through a wormhole no one knew was there. Chief Cutter and several others were lost.”
“So . . . Cutter’s dead,” Mattie said.
Anne thought she looked genuinely saddened by the news. “We assume—”
Mattie exploded like a detonated pumpkin before Rostenkowski could finish her sentence.
Anne stood perfectly still. She remained rational, noticing small details of the carnage around and all over her, but as if doing so out-of-body. As she watched, a tooth attached to a bit of skin slid slowly down one cell bar. She wondered at the almost total lack of red blood. The bit of tooth merged with a chunk of skull, its patch of hair still intact. Under their combined weight, both dropped to the deck with a soft splat.
The hatch opened and Kyle burst in. “Secretary Rostenkowski, something’s happened!”
Chapter 37: Man Down
Travis Barnes approached the infuser. He easily made out the magnetically contained input and output conduits, which snaked between the infuser and the wormhole. One conduit captured exotic matter produced by the quantum vacuum fluctuations of the wormhole and the other infused it into the ring. The conduit lines were the circumference of a piece of straw.
The K.U. version had a much larger magnetic tube encasing the conduits themselves to provide further shielding. And K.U. units emitted proximity alerts to approaching ships, as well as safeguards to stop the exotic matter flow if the ship strayed too close. When the flow ceased from one infuser, a second—positioned on the opposite side of the ring—would reestablish the stream needed to maintain the wormhole. Barnes saw no second infuser. He doubted the Diak shared the safety concerns of the K.U. races, but it was odd they wouldn’t want to protect the bridge if the single unit failed.
He hoped there was time to disable the infuser and take it permanently out of service. But the only way to ensure the ring collapsed before the Diak could re-stabilize it was to physically penetrate the ring. When his matter collided with the ring’s exotic matter, the hole would close in a flash of brilliant light, taking him with it. He wouldn’t feel a thing, but his natural instincts for self-preservation and pain avoidance kicked in. His heart pumped dangerously fast and he sucked oxygen in large gulps. As he examined the infuser casing, he practiced breathing exercises he’d learned in training.
~ ~ ∞ ~ ~
The command console indicated the shuttle’s hatch had opened, then closed and resealed. Travis was gone. Letty had no time to dwell on his passing. They were entering the wormhole, so large now that she’d lost sight of the edge distortion. For some reason the proximity indicator wasn’t working. With sudden comprehension, she released the mag-locks.
Travis had predicted only a five-second window to avoid dropping too soon or too late. She wasn’t superstitious, but she hoped, willed, prayed, and cajoled whatever forces might be listening that she’d released the mag-locks at the right time.
Though wanting to go back and comfort Toby, she remained at command. The viewport reflected the scene behind her: three adult heads floating above a row of seatbacks. Curtis stared through the shuttle window, his auburn hair pronounced atop a ghost-white face. Nikko sat ramrod straight in his seat, eyes closed. Across the aisle, Drew rocked slowly back and forth, his head tipped at an odd angle.
Letty returned her attention to the console just as the Marigold emerged from the wormhole.
~ ~ ∞ ~ ~
Travis looked for a latch or some other means to open the cube and access its interior drives. The sides were smooth, with no obvious panels or buttons. He ran a gloved hand across the top edge and down one side. The bottom corner protruded slightly. He moved down the box to inspect the bump at eyelevel and observed a raised lip about four centimeters wide. With all his force, he pulled outward. Not only did the side not open, but the box didn’t budge. Somehow—impossibly—it was anchored in place. Frustrated, he hit the side of the infuser with his fist. It popped open and slapped the front of his helmet.
He moved around the open panel to look into the interior. Inside lay a series of smaller black cubes, three to a row across and three down, each one a perfect min
iature of the larger casing. The smaller cubes were set about five centimeters apart, with no apparent connections. He ran his glove around the perimeter of one, finding no bumps or indentations of any kind. He repeated the action on two others. Nothing. He grabbed hold of a cube and pulled on it.
With little resistance, it came away from the casing. He turned it over and over in his hands. It was smooth, six-sided, without seams or protrusions. He pressed on each side, duplicating the action that had opened the larger box. When nothing worked, he pushed it out into space, then did the same with the remaining boxes until he’d emptied the infuser case. Searching for the exotic matter conduits he’d spotted earlier, he realized there were none. Simply removing the interior cubes had successfully stopped the flow.
The wormhole yawned in front of him. He turned full-face toward a section of the Blanchett ring and activated his propulsion jets. Shit!
~ ~ ∞ ~ ~
They were through. The Diak ships that’d crossed ahead of them receded in the distance. They’d failed to detect the Marigold. Letty activated the shuttle’s thrusters and moved it away from the wormhole and in the opposite direction from the retreating ships.
Drew slid into the chair next to her. The other three crowded behind them. She turned to Drew, her breathing labored from a combination of fear and relief. He reached out, cupping the side of her face in his hand, his thumb gently stroking her cheek, brushing the tears away.
“You did it, sweetheart.”
Toby ducked under Drew’s arm to hug Letty, pushing him away.
With a shaky breath, Letty said, “Now let’s see if we’re in friendly space.”
All eyes looked to the map display on the control panel. In Diak space the caption for each object on the map within sensor range had read “Unknown.” The captions now read “Devil’s Gate,” “Prosse,” “Bin,” “New Pryor,” and a dozen other familiar appellations.
“Locate Dark Landing,” Drew commanded.
The display morphed to show the station’s position one hop and three days out—well beyond the shuttle’s range and ability.
Letty, not wanting to risk a live feed, dispatched a message with their coordinates to Dark Landing security, Secretary Rostenkowski, Rear Admiral Jensen Sullivan, and as many other names as she was able to spit out in her excited state: Four Diak gunships headed your way; Diak armada amassing; results of attempt to close their bridge into Alliance space unknown. The Marigold could use a tow.
Minutes passed before they received the terse reply: On our way, Marigold.
They each ate a package of nuts and divided the water pouch between the five of them, holding back some for Toby to drink later. They then settled in to wait the three days for help to arrive.
~ ~ ∞ ~ ~
His forward motion stopped by a gentle backward tug, Barnes opened his eyes and inspected his gloved hand floating weightless in front of him. Every nook and cranny, crease and seam was illuminated in sharp detail by a light beam originating from above and behind him. He pressed his propulsion controls without result. Something pulled him backward, away from the wormhole. And then he was consumed in a blazing white void.
~ ~ ∞ ~ ~
Sar Mode watched her display. The alien was snared in the repair craft’s grip-net. As it backed from the wormhole to return to the command station, the ship was engulfed by a blinding flash of light. When her screen cleared, the bridge to far-off space had disappeared.
The appointed principal ordered new calculations. The secondary bridge would take time to create, and the chosen location lay many rotations from their current position. The cost to the Mass would be considerable. How many Diak would turn before acquiring new hosts? And, of those, how many would lose faith in their purpose and cease to be? On the five new worlds, they’d not only lost the advantage, but now the thousands of receptacles infused with Diak devices, set to detonate upon loss of transmission, were gone as well.
She was not programmed to handle regret or despair—it was a flaw in the system she’d often wondered about but could never explain. While a new assault plan was being generated, Sar Mode recalled a stored memory to dispel her melancholy. She’d grown curious about the small, six-legged creature with the cold nose and wet tongues to which the Paresee Captain had been so devoted. Of particular interest was how they reproduced.
~ ~ ∞ ~ ~
Kyle stopped short in front of Anne Rostenkowski, but slipped and almost went down. He grabbed a bar of Mattie’s cell for support, then hastily pulled his hand back and wiped it on his pant leg. He clapped the still sticky hand over his mouth in horror as he surveyed the macabre scene before him. Clearly Mattie had exploded. Parts of her covered the cell walls, the deck, the corridor, and Secretary Rostenkowski.
She turned to him. “Yes?”
His words came fast and clipped. “The Fitz statue disintegrated and Capt. Murray ejected the screamer cell. Doc tapped and—”
Rostenkowski cut him off. “Please ask my aide to bring me a change of clothes. I understand there’s a shower in the chief’s office?”
“Yes, sir.”
~ ~ ∞ ~ ~
Rostenkowski came out of Cutter’s, now Murray’s, office in a fresh outfit, her hair hanging strait instead of its usual French twist. Every processor station in the outer office had two or three staff members in front of it. The air was filled with indistinguishable chatter. She caught Kyle’s eye and he came over.
“The Marigold is back, and there’s a lot more,” he said, then his initial smile turned into an expression of concern. “The others are waiting for you in the conference room.”
“Fill me in,” Anne demanded, joining Rear Admiral Sullivan, TSF Capt. Makayla Liu, and ESF Capt. Murray at the conference room table.
“We got the following message from the Marigold twenty minutes ago,” Sullivan said. He continued as Anne read the screen set in the table in front of her. “All ten ships of the ESF squadron that arrived last night are hunting the four Diak ships Miss Taleen warned us about, as well as watching for the armada. Pray the Marigold team’s attempt to close the bridge from Diak to Alliance space was successful. My two battleships along with Muck and the TSF ships are patrolling the station and guarding the wormhole into Diak space. We’re prepared to close it if our scouts spot the gunships or the armada.”
Captain Liu relayed updated intel from her com as she received it, “TSF dispatch reports there’s a freighter, the Essovius, within hours of the Marigold. They’ve alerted her to the situation, and the ship will detour to get them.” She glanced around the room. “That’s good news. But, Miss Taleen hasn’t mentioned Commander Barnes. It’s odd her original message didn’t come from him.”
“There’s a lot to wonder about right now,” Capt. Murray said. “Excuse me.” He tapped his com to advise his EFS squadron they’d now be escorting both the Essovius and the Marigold. Then he addressed Rostenkowski. “Kyle told you they ejected the screamer cell, and we heard about the Freelander woman. Dr. Jameson reported four people waiting in quarantine for transport—the three women posing as monks and an infected evacuee–met the same end. She should be here any minute, and Sir James will be joining us as well.”
Chapter 38: Leavings
At Letty’s request, the Essovius sent its pilot over to dock the Marigold. He squeezed it into the tight space next to the Essovius’s own shuttle with ease. When the doors closed and the bay pressurized, Drew relaxed. But he was exhausted; a sledge hammer pounded in his head, and every muscle in his body ached. As soon as the hatch opened, the five of them stumbled out. A nurse assistant escorted the group directly to the ship’s small medical station where the doctor determined they were all somewhat dehydrated, but otherwise fine. The doctor wanted to keep Toby under observation, but the boy threw such a fit at being separated from the others, the only option was to sedate him. Letty wouldn’t allow it. They were given water pouches with mineral supplements and told to contact medical if they felt nauseated or dizzy.
They sprawled on loungers in the ship’s public area, eating hot soup and waiting for the live feed with Dark Landing. Toby had managed only a few spoonsful before falling asleep with his head in Letty’s lap. Drew envied him. Letty looked calm, but periodically a tear would slip down one cheek. He knew she was thinking of Barnes; they all were. He’d never met anyone who cried as much as she did, but then he’d never met anyone who had as much reason to. Curtis and Nikko finished their soup in silence and sat unmoving except to take occasional sips from their water pouches.
Anne Rostenkowski’s image materialized on the large monitor. She was in the Security HQ conference room with Rear Admiral Sullivan and a man and woman Drew didn’t recognize. The man wore an Earth Space Force captain’s uniform, and the woman sported the equivalent Taleen Security Force uniform.
The head of another man floated in the upper right corner of the screen and he spoke first. “Miss Taleen, Chief Cutter—everyone—welcome home. My name is James Hawking-Barstow; please call me Sir James. I know it sounds a bit presumptuous, but I’ve rather gotten used to it. I am the head of the Earth Defense Council. What a delightful surprise to meet you. I am sure you’ll understand if I cut directly to the subject at hand. Would you please tell us what you know about the Diak armada?”
The female TSF captain sitting next to Secretary Rostenkowski broke in before Drew could speak. “Where’s Commander Barnes?”
“H-he didn’t make it,” Letty said. Her voice rose as she struggled to maintain control. “Travis saved us all and probably the entire K.U. He stayed behind when we went through, sacrificing himself to close the Diak wormhole into our space. Are you sending someone to see if he succeeded?” The captain accepted Letty’s news stoically, but her eyes glistened from the screen.
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