by Ryk Brown
“Sebaron is an arrogant bastard,” Nathan stated, breaking the silence as he took the pilot’s seat in the shuttle’s cockpit and activated the door close mechanism.
“His arrogance is irrelevant,” General Telles insisted, taking the copilot’s seat. “Only his motivations matter.”
“His motivations are to impede the formation of this alliance,” Nathan insisted.
“You state the obvious. The question is, why? You and I both know that Rakuen and Neramese will be safer as members of our alliance.”
Nathan looked thoughtfully at General Telles for a moment, his brain analyzing all possible motivations and outcomes. As he continued powering up the shuttle’s systems in preparation for takeoff, a realization hit him. “He doesn’t want Neramese on equal footing,” he declared, looking at the general again.
“Neramese has been restricted from possessing its own defenses since Rakuen defeated them in the Water Wars. This alliance would put defenses on the surface of Neramese.”
“Which they could turn against Rakuen,” Nathan surmised.
“As could Rakuen, against Neramese,” the general added.
“Which explains why Cornell was siding with Sebaron.”
“The problem could easily be solved,” General Telles suggested. “Simply have a two-man, fail-safe system on each world.”
“One from Rakuen and one from Neramese?”
“Precisely.”
“What a great job that would be,” Nathan commented as he activated the auto-launch sequence, and the shuttle began to lift off the ground. “Living among your enemy, checking to make sure they don’t attack your world.”
“Perhaps a central command could be created,” General Telles suggested as the shuttle climbed skyward. “On a space station, perhaps? One manned by equal numbers from either world.”
Nathan grinned. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
The slightest smile came across the general’s face. “The leaders of Rakuen will not like it.”
“No, they won’t,” Nathan laughed as he activated the auto-jump sequencer. “But the Nerameseans will love it, and that might be all we need.”
* * *
Tensen Dalott guided his crawler along the interior of the Teyentah’s starboard flight deck, headed toward his next work assignment. After nearly two weeks of working paint crew, his good fortune and his skills with a crawler had landed him a spot on the team installing the emergency doors on the battleship’s flight decks.
The Teyentah’s flight decks were large, square tunnels located on either side of her forward section. The tunnels allowed ships to fly in from either end, landing and rolling through one of the massive doors which led to the inner airlocks or taking an elevator down to the hangar deck below. Every such door had an emergency door that would close within seconds of a sudden depressurization of the space on the other side. It was the responsibility of his team to install those large doors. Installation required the plasma welding of door fittings, a task that was far too dangerous for someone in a pressure suit. Luckily, the plasma welding systems on the crawlers were fully automated and required no real ability from the operator, other than to enter a pattern and push a button.
While it was a step closer to working inside the Teyentah, it was still outside. Details of the battleship’s interior layout and specifications were still classified. Even the teams who worked inside only knew the areas in which they were assigned. Few knew the entire layout of the ship, other than the master designers. Tensen’s only hope was to eventually get inside and try to learn his way around the massive warship. In time, he might learn enough to come up with some sort of plan.
Unfortunately, at this point, it seemed that nothing short of a full-on assault would be required, and even then, the odds were not in his favor. Although shipyard security seemed to focus on those going to and from the shipyard, Dusahn warships were always nearby. While they were not necessarily guarding the shipyard, and were sometimes there for maintenance of their own, they were there and could repel any attack within moments.
To make matters worse, time was running out. It had been three weeks since his arrival on Takara, and crawling around the outside of the Teyentah in a pressurized, yellow, metal coffin, with spidery arms and legs, was as close as he had gotten. In a few more months, the ship would be completed. In a few weeks, her primary officers and department heads were due to arrive and begin their inspections. Soon after, her crew would arrive to prepare for space trials. Once the Teyentah was fully crewed, getting inside, let alone stealing her, would be impossible.
It was at that moment Tensen admitted he may indeed be forced to change his plans from theft to sabotage.
* * *
It had been nearly three weeks since Terig Espan had sent the covert message to the Karuzari, using the order placed from the company on Haven. In fact, the molo twine he ordered had already arrived from more than seven light years away, yet he had still not received any reply. For all he knew, his message had never reached the Karuzari. For all he knew, the message had been intercepted by the Dusahn, and his arrest was imminent.
Every waking moment was a nightmare for Terig. He could not sleep, he could not eat, even his work suffered. Luckily, he had been able to convince his coworkers that he was suffering from the psychological aftereffects from his ordeal on the Mystic Empress. But his wife had also noticed the change in his behavior and had expressed her concerns more than once. He had convinced her that he had a lot of stress at work, and he just needed to get more sleep. To that end, she had secured medications for Terig, which had helped.
But what Terig really needed was an answer from the intended recipient. At least then, he would know his message had gotten through and that the Dusahn were not aware of his treachery.
Or would he? If Suvan Navarro was a Dusahn spy, meant to expose Lord Mahtize’s disloyalty, or worse yet, to lure the Karuzari into a trap, surely he would be exposed, as well.
One thing was certain. Terig was not cut out for this line of work. He had even considered confessing his crimes to the Dusahn and offering to help them by sending false messages to the Karuzari. Surely, a few hundred Ghatazhak and a handful of ships could not stand against the entire Dusahn fleet. He needed to be on the winning side to be safe, or at least as safe as he could hope to be. Not just for himself, but for his wife, as well.
But which side would be triumphant? The Dusahn had might on their side, while the Karuzari had right. From an ethical standpoint, the choice was easy. The Dusahn were unwelcome invaders. They had killed hundreds of thousands in mere hours. They had glassed two worlds, simply to ensure that no one dared stand against them. By those measures, the choice was simple indeed.
Yet, the Dusahn had brought order. Even more important, they had somewhat leveled the playing field on Takara. Although the noble houses still retained their power and wealth, their dealings were now monitored and controlled by one central leadership. And that leadership had a single goal: to build a massive empire…and not just by conquest alone. The Dusahn had already reached out to worlds outside of the Pentaurus cluster, inviting open trade, with offers far more lucrative than ones the nobles of Takara had provided those same worlds. In just under two weeks, the Dusahn had changed the economies of nearly a dozen worlds, most of them for the better. Even Terig had seen the effects of Dusahn occupation. In the markets, where he and his wife shopped, the prices had already dropped, and the availability and assortment of products had increased. Interstellar transport of goods had been taken over and regulated by the Dusahn, reducing the cost of shipping across the board.
Yet, no sane person could deny that the Dusahn were ruthless conquerors who held little regard for human life. But, much like Caius Ta’Akar, such ruthlessness seemed necessary in the realm of interstellar empires. Casimir Ta’Akar had tried to bring freedom a
nd fairness back to Takaran society, and had been assassinated for his efforts. The Dusahn’s assertions that such empires required ruthless and determined leadership made sense, as long as one could ignore the atrocities required to accomplish those goals. That, too, had been something Caius had preached…that great leaders bore the burden of knowing great evils were necessary on the stage of interstellar empires.
The more Terig thought about it, the more confused he became. Instead, he tried to focus on the one thing that preoccupied his every thought: the safety of his wife and himself. He had not the luxury of thinking on an interstellar scale, as much as he might wish to do so. He was just a man…one man, in the midst of a rapidly changing empire.
* * *
“I still don’t know how you got Yokimah to fund all this,” Minora said as she led Deliza on her tour through the Ranni shuttle plant on Rakuen.
“Captain Scott can be quite convincing,” Deliza replied with a wry smile. “How soon can we start production of the Gunyoki jump drives?”
“Our engineers are still working out the bugs in the design. The Gunyoki’s irregular body requires a bubble field, rather than a contoured one. That, combined with the stealth requirement, forced some redesign of the emitters.”
“Is Doctor Sorenson aware of this?” Deliza wondered.
“She has been consulting with our engineers on a daily basis,” Minora assured Deliza. “She’s a remarkable woman.”
“Yes, she is,” Deliza agreed as she followed the plant manager through the main assembly floor. “Will we still be able to produce shuttles?”
“We already have enough parts in inventory to build at least one hundred shuttles. Since the Gunyokis can’t fly in the atmosphere, and will be retrofitted at the race platform, all we will be doing is producing the components. Our plan is to continue using the assembly area to build shuttles using the inventory on hand, until that inventory runs out. But, at some point, we’re going to have to stop making Gunyoki jump drives and start making shuttle parts again, or we’ll fall behind in order fulfillment. And if this plant stops making money, your rebellion will run out of operational funds.”
“The Glendanon is using the Ghatazhak’s fabricators to produce more fabricators. Hopefully, they’ll be in service before we run out of shuttle components.”
“Where are you planning on putting them?” Minora wondered.
“We haven’t figured that out yet,” Deliza admitted. She stopped, looking out across the plant floor as her employees worked on the line of shuttles under construction. “How long until we start producing Gunyoki jump drives?”
“A week,” Minora replied. “Sooner, if they solve the emitter problem ahead of schedule.”
“There’s a schedule?” Deliza replied, surprised.
“Yes. The schedule is ‘get it done now’,” Minora replied with a smile.
* * *
Miri entered her father’s office, her finger to her lips so the president would not speak. Without a word, she placed a small sound-suppression field generator on his desk and activated it, waiting for the green light atop the device to illuminate.
“I take it you have word from Captain Hunt,” the president surmised.
“He has made contact with several people who once served under Nathan. Those people are contacting others. He expects to have replacements for the members of his crew he cannot trust by the end of the week. That means his first shipment could be ready for hand off within ten days.”
“How will he coordinate with Nathan’s people?” the president wondered.
“We have received word through back channels that Nathan is in the process of creating a new alliance, with two industrialized worlds in the Rogen system.”
“The Rogen system?” The president wondered.
“A few hundred light years from the Pentaurus cluster,” Miri explained. “In the middle of the Rogen sector, as I understand it.”
“That’s a long way from the Dusahn.”
“Not far enough, apparently. They already had to defend the system against a Dusahn attack…during a race, no less. Long story,” she added, noticing her father’s puzzled look. “The good news is, he at least has a safe point through which to channel communications.”
“Does Captain Hunt know about this?”
“He does. He is establishing a comm-relay point, using one of the jump shuttle services out of Mu Herculis. Their messages get routed through their ops center in the Alpha Centauri system and, in turn, get forwarded to the one here.”
“Is it secure?”
“The messages are encrypted using standard public algorithms, just like anyone else would use, so they don’t look suspicious. They wouldn’t be difficult to crack, if intercepted, but considering the thousands of similar messages coming through our communications systems each day, the odds of that happening are pretty slim. I think it’s safe enough. Besides, even when decrypted, it’s still not in plain text. You really have to read between the lines and understand the key words for it to make sense.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” the president agreed.
“Captain Hunt believes he can get in five, maybe six runs before being discovered.”
“Maybe he shouldn’t push his luck,” the president suggested. “Maybe keep it to three or four.”
“That may be possible now, depending on this new alliance that’s in the works. We’ll have to wait and see, I suppose.”
* * *
Commander Macklay entered Admiral Galiardi’s office unannounced. “Give us the room,” he instructed the members of the admiral’s staff present. When they all cast a puzzled look at him, he followed with a stern, “Now.”
The admiral leaned back in his chair as his staff rose from their seats to depart in a hurry. It was not like the commander to behave in such a way, and despite the fact that he had overstepped his authority in clearing the room without the admiral’s consent; he knew the commander was likely to have a very good reason for doing so.
Once the door was closed, the commander spoke. “My apologies, Admiral, but I am quite sure you need to see this,” he added, placing the data chip in his hand into the reader of the viewing console on the wall of the admiral’s office. He touched a button, and the windows of the office turned opaque as a sound-suppression field activated, as well, making the room completely secure. “Tech managed to retrieve data from one of the marine’s damaged tactical helmet cameras,” the commander explained as he queued up the battle footage. “You’re not going to believe this.”
Admiral Galiardi watched the familiar images of Ghatazhak soldiers moving expertly from point to point, bolts from marine energy weapons slamming into the ground around them, as they returned fire with uncanny precision. “You’re right, this is unbelievable,” the admiral agreed, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “The way those Ghatazhak shoot, it’s hard to believe we didn’t lose more men.” The admiral’s voice changed from sarcasm to annoyance. “I’ve seen enough footage of Ghatazhak holding off our marines, Commander.”
“Look…in the background. The two men running from right to left, in front of the line of gunships.” The commander backed the footage up a bit and then ran it again.
The admiral squinted, studying the footage as the two shadowy figures ran from right to left, ducking under the nose of the Cobra gunships just before disappearing off the other side of the frame. “Who are they?” the admiral wondered, leaning forward with curiosity. “They’re not Ghatazhak, that’s for sure.”
“No, they’re not,” the commander agreed. “You can tell by the way they’re running. The Ghatazhak always use uneven strides and cut from side to side in random patterns to make it more difficult to target them.”
“That, and they’re not wearing Ghatazhak armor,” the admiral added, still sounding annoyed.
&
nbsp; “The fact that they are not Ghatazhak is what got our intel people curious, since every combatant they’ve seen thus far, in what little footage they’ve recovered, has been Ghatazhak.”
“You broke up my meeting because you found two combatants who were not Ghatazhak?”
“They started combing through bits and pieces of data from other battle cameras, just little flashes of data here and there, concentrating on the cameras from the two soldiers who were standing to the left of the one that the first footage was from,” Commander Macklay continued, undaunted. “They found another shot of the two men just before they climbed into a gunship.” The commander paused the footage at the moment he had just described, pressed several buttons to zoom in and then to clean up the image. The image processors made several rendering passes in only a few seconds, each pass bringing their faces more into focus. “Facial recognition algorithms identified the larger guy on the right as one of ours, Commander Vladimir Kamenetskiy, the Aurora’s chief engineer.”
Admiral Galiardi squinted more, trying to see the man’s face more clearly. He was now becoming more interested. “And the other guy? Is he also from the Aurora’s crew?”
Commander Macklay smiled. “He was.”
“What do you mean?”
“We couldn’t I.D. him at first, since the image just wasn’t good enough. Then they tied in the data stream from the marine’s tactical helmet’s sensor system. It was able to create a three-dimensional map of the subject’s face and head, which the computer was able to paint using details from the video images,” the commander explained further, “and…violà!”
Admiral Galiardi’s mouth dropped open, and his eyes widened in disbelief. “That’s impossible.”