Searcher a-5

by Saxon Andrew

  Matt shrugged and said, “Get it approved with the ship’s Captain and let them know that my crew and I will be joining them on their arrival.”

  After a few minutes Al announced, “It is approved; they’ll be teleporting in about one hour. They’re currently loading the live penetrator rounds.”

  Everyone looked at each other and could see each other’s excitement. Matt could feel the need to kill the coming ship.

  Chapter 17

  Captain Leonovitch Alexander Kosiev looked over his command board and watched as his crew reported their readiness for battle. He thought about what his ship was about to undertake and his mind was full of concerns about the success of the mission. He was also concerned about the observers that were going to be present. “I hope I don’t mess up anything.” He put that out of his mind and focused on the task at hand. “Weapons, I want the first penetrator fired at optimum range. Set your range correctly.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “Ensign Mendel.”

  “Yes Sir?”

  “Have your team ready to place the portable star drive as soon as the all clear is given. We need to move it quickly if the attack is successful.”

  “We’re standing by and ready, Captain.”

  Leo looked over at his sensor officer and said, “Lt. Sen-Gen, make sure the red screen stays active during this exercise and make sure it’s extended to maximum distance during the firing of our weapons. I want them to have as little warning as possible before impact of our penetrator.”

  “I’ve set the screen to expand automatically upon firing, sir. The penetrator should be at two thirds speed when it leaves the coverage of the screen.”

  Leo looked at his board and said, “We will be teleporting to the Hugon system in five minutes. We will now go to full alert.” He pressed the red button on his console and the ships intercom began announcing, “Battle stations. All hands to battle stations.” Most of the crew was already at their posts but the alarm let them know that the Rossville was going back to war after twelve hundred years of lying dormant. The crew felt the tension and was impatient to go into action. Leo looked at his display and then said to Sen-Gen, “Count it down, Lieutenant.”

  The huge Glod pressed her com and said, “Teleport in 5.4.3.2.1, port.”

  The Rossville appeared in the Hugon system and took its position halfway between the jump limit and the planet.

  “Permission to come aboard, Captain.”

  Leo looked at his display and saw Prince Gardner, “Permission granted, Your Grace. The landing bay is clear for your ships; the coordinates have been sent.”

  Aladdin and Wings appeared in the landing bay and Matt, Melanie, and Stem stepped out and was greeted by three Red Warriors in full battle armor. “Welcome aboard, Prince Gardner, Admiral Grace, and Seed of Sprig. The Captains apologizes for not welcoming you personally with the full crew but we are currently at battle stations and he requests that we take you to the bridge.”

  Melanie returned the salute of the warriors and said, “We understand, Team Leader, carry on and we will follow you.”

  Al sent a thought to Fly Girl, “This is a big ship.”

  “Not as big as the defender class but I can tell that this one is built for speed. They built them strong in the past.”

  “You’re right. Notice that this crew is focused on their jobs. The Captain runs a tight ship.”

  “He should, Al. He is a direct descendant of Admiral Kosiev. He doesn’t have the psychic skills to be a searcher but he sure has what it takes to command one of these ships.”

  “Let’s be nosey and see what’s happening on the bridge.”

  “I’m already listening.”

  “You over achiever.”

  Fly Girl laughed and sent a feed to Al to listen in.

  Leo saw Matt enter the bridge and said, “Crew, Atten-shun.”

  “As you were,” Matt said. “Please carry on your duties Captain.”

  “At ease, return to your duties,” Leo ordered. He then bowed to Matt and saluted Melanie.

  Melanie returned his salute and said, “Carry on, Captain. Tell us what you’re planning.”

  Leo returned to his command chair and pressed a switch which illuminated the central screen on the bridge. He turned a toggle and a strange looking device appeared on the screen. “This is the penetrator that the Algeans have developed for the transports.”

  Matt looked at it and said, “I don’t see the cross in the center that was on the first model.”

  “That is only for the penetrator that will be used to hit the invader’s small ships. This one is quite similar to the one that we are developing to use on the mother ship.”

  The three visitors walked forward and looked closely at the screen. Leo used his board to highlight different areas. “This penetrator was originally powered by Coronado Power cells and was the fastest weapon ever used during its time.

  Stem thought, “It was very effective against the ships my race used during our war with the Realm.”

  Leo nodded, “It reached half the speed of light in its flight. This new penetrator is externally similar but it is powered by a red generator. It will reach three quarter light speed in its brief flight.”

  Matt whistled, “That is fast, Captain. What is the range of this weapon?”

  “There really isn’t a range except that it will have to be fired by visually aiming it. We still don’t have a sensor that can electronically track them. We do have optical sensors that will home in on the color of their ships which means the sensor will be most effective if they are coming toward the star in this system and we are between them and the star. If they are between the star and our ships then they will be dark on the side away from the star and the optical tracking won’t work.”

  Stem thought while looking at the device, “How much distance does it take for it to reach full speed?”

  Leo looked at the Algean and said, “That’s the other limitation; in order for the penetrator to make it through the hull of a transport it must reach full speed. It will take fifty miles for that to happen. It probably won’t work inside that distance. It will work best at seventy miles.”

  Matt looked at Leo and said, “That’s going to be a tough shot if you have ships flying erratic paths during battle.”

  Leo shrugged, “That’s why we will want to plan to have them coming in toward the star; our optical sensors will see them that way.”

  “Just how big is this penetrator,” Stem asked.

  “It’s seven hundred feet long with the stone tree shard making up five hundred feet of its total length.”

  Matt was stunned, “How many of those can this ship carry?”

  “More than ten thousand, Your Grace.”

  Melanie said, “How can you carry that many? This ship is big but it could never hold that many.”

  “This ship has the black hole skin of the Alexander Kosiev. We could theoretically put millions inside that skin if we wanted.”

  “I thought the Kosiev was the only ship with that type of skin,” Melanie said.

  “No, the Realm converted most of the Megaships during the war with the Captors.” Leo looked at Stem, “Your parents developed the process that made that conversion possible.”

  “With the help of Cassandra and Tommy Gardner,” Stem added.

  “How fast can you fire these?”

  “We haven’t field tested it but we think we can fire more than forty a second if we needed a spread of them. We also think that if we had to fire them at darkened targets they would turn and come back once they passed the target and saw the green color.”

  Matt looked closely at the screen and then looked at Leo, “So this attack we’re planning will answer a number of questions about this new weapon?”

  “That is what we are hoping. We are going to launch from behind our red screen so the transport should only have two seconds to see the incoming penetrator and react. I do not believe that a ship that big can react fast enough to a
void it.”

  “Does this penetrator carry the Captor energy ball?”

  “Yes it does and it is set to go off two seconds after impact. The case holding the iron tree marbles will open and blast the marbles out when the outside temperature drops two hundred degrees below their melting point. We estimate that should happen two minutes after the energy ball ignites.”

  “We are assuming that the shard will penetrate the hull of that transport,” Stem thought.

  Leo looked at Stem and said, “That green substance is a dichotomy of hardness. Nothing can penetrate it except items made from organic substances but it is very fragile when hit by an organic substance. I understand that the engineers actually fired a simple arrow made of wood through a ten foot section of it from the captured ship. The shard will be traveling at 140,000 miles per second at impact and it should penetrate the hull. Some of the engineers fear that it might go all the way through the ship but the bomb and marble package will automatically eject from the shard if a second impact is detected and remain inside the hull.”

  “Matt, are you going to hide the planet like you planned,” Al inquired?

  Melanie looked at Matt, “I believe the ship is actually going to the planet.”

  “Why do you think that, Admiral,” Leo asked?

  “You have to ask why a ship was sent here. I believe that they want a better reading of the planet to compare with their data. I noticed that the planet we substituted does not match the continents on the old planet at all. With the planet missing from the system they’re in now they might be starting to wonder if planets can be moved. That would lead to a second trip to take a much closer look.”

  Matt stared at her and decided, “We will not hide the planet. If the ship stops at the jump limit and does not move toward it we will activate the screen to hide it. That will probably cause it to return to the fleet to report the disappearance which will bring the mother ship back. We’ll turn off the screen when the ship leaves so they will find the planet just as they left it when they return. At that point I believe their frustration will be quite high and they will go to another system to investigate and send a ship in for better scans. Either way, we should be able to get a ship here for our little soiree. Captain Kosiev, notify your crew of our plans and maybe we’ll get lucky and the ship will go straight to the planet. We need to hit them pretty quickly once they are inside the jump limit to give us enough time to pull off the attack, clean up the attack site, and move the transport before the ship is missed.”

  “It’s an eight hour trip from the jump limit, Your Grace. I plan to hit it two hours inside the limit which will give us eighteen hours minimum to complete our plan. We are going to jump them out using the null space frequency so no star drive residue will remain. If you want, we have a room set up for you to relax and have something to eat until the action starts.”

  “That would be fine, Captain.” Matt thought to Melanie, “We’ll only make them nervous if we stay on the bridge. Let’s move so they can work without the added pressure of us looking over their shoulders.”

  Melanie noticed the Glod sensor officer relax when Matt agreed to leave, “That’s a great idea; besides, I’m hungry.”

  Matt paused then thought, “Stem, you should go with us.”

  “Why?”

  “This crew is already nervous about the attack; we need to give them some room to do their jobs. It’s a human thing, Stem.”

  Stem raised his branches and thought, “I understand; I’ve been through it myself.”

  The three turned and followed a yeoman off the bridge.

  Leo watched them go and took a deep breath. “Alright, crew, let’s get this set up and I’ll throw anyone that messes up their assignment out the airlock.” He noticed every one turn back to their boards and focus on the upcoming action. “This is a good crew,” he thought. “I can’t tell them now because it would go to their heads; perhaps afterward; if we’re successful.”

  Stem watched Matt and Melanie eat like they were starved. He looked out of the view port and said, “We know what the Eight Legs are.”

  Matt and Melanie stopped and looked at him, “What?”

  “My father has looked through all the data he has stored and found a creature that matches up almost identically with the Eight Legs we killed in the last attack. The information actually came from your home planets history.”

  Matt flinched, “What did he find?”

  “Before your planet’s last major war there were eight leg creatures called spiders. They were not insects but were called arachnids. One of them had the same hour glass shape on its abdomen as the Eight Legs and they also had the bristles on their legs. That particular spider was called a black widow. It was classified as a latrodectus. The reason humans no longer recognize them is due to the long nuclear winter that followed that war and the release of a toxin by one of the nations that was supposed to kill humans but ended up being toxic to quite a few of your insect population. Spiders were particularly susceptible to the toxin and none survived. However, your old encyclopedias suggest that spiders predate the dinosaurs.”

  Melanie looked at Stem, “Are you suggesting that these creatures came from Earth?”

  “There are just too many similarities between the two. We know there was intelligent space faring civilizations that long ago. One needs to look no further than the Captors or the race you met called the Reg. If one of their ships visited your planet and a spider was taken away by their ships, then it would explain some common ancestry. The spider from your planet was very small and Eight Legs are huge by comparison but environment could account for the difference.”

  “Do you know anything else about these spiders?”

  “They were killers extraordinaire. They also possessed some of the strongest venom of all animals. The black widow used a neurotoxin just like the Eight Legs and the venoms are identical to each other. If an Eight Leg bites; someone will die. There is not an antidote strong enough to overcome the massive amount of poison injected. Its main property is to paralyze its victim for later consumption. Another interesting tidbit is that the female spiders actually ate their mates thus the name black widow.”

  Matt sat back in his chair and thought for a moment, “Why do they go after intelligent life?”

  “I’m going to take a wild guess here, Matt. Perhaps one of those ancient spiders bit an alien and absorbed the alien’s intelligence. It would take a peculiar type of being for that to happen but it would give the spider immediate mental capacity to begin directing its development. If this trait was then passed on to the spider’s offspring then they would actually start hunting beings with intelligence.”

  “Which ultimately led them to where they are now; they are ultimate evil.”

  “I hate to disagree with you on that point particularly in light of your loss; however, they do not kill everything in their attacks. They are actually acting like farmers by harvesting their crops and leaving life behind to develop for the next harvest. My race was much worse than they are because we killed everything on a planet and consumed it. In their own way they are probably offended by the planet we moved for them to find. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t try to eliminate them; they are responsible for more death than any species ever created. I believe that the only way to stop them is to kill them down to the last one.”

  “Do you think they have more than just one invasion fleet?”

  Stem did not respond for a few moments and then thought to them, “I have discussed this in detail with my parents. They suggest that there are possibly as many universes as there are stars in a galaxy. If there was only one fleet, how long would it take them to harvest that many universes and return?” Matt and Melanie looked shocked. “I suspect they have hundreds or even thousands of those fleets. That’s the bad news.”

  Melanie looked at Stem and said, “Is there any good news?”

  Stem leaned back showing his smile and thought, “They all have to come through the same doo
r.”

  Matt said, “There is that. We’re just going to have to learn how to make them avoid opening it.”

  Matt thought a moment and then asked, “Stem, do we have the toxin that killed all the spiders on Earth.”

  “That’s the other good news; we found the formula in an ancient text that came from some nation that was once called Switzerland. It was a small nation but according to what we’ve uncovered it was bent on world domination. It must have been very warlike in its day.”

  “They all were during that time of human history, Stem.”

  “Your home planet must have been a tough place to stay alive, Matt.”

  “That’s why we’re so consumed with peace today, Stem.”

  “Matt, the transport has arrived at the jump limit.”

  “Thanks, Fly Girl.”

  “I was going to tell him.”

  “Oh shut up, Al. It doesn’t matter who tells him as long as he gets the information.”

  There was silence and then Fly Girl said, “Oh so now you’re pouting.”

  “No I’m not.”

  Yes you are.”

  The three stood and walked out of the room toward the bridge smiling and shaking their heads.

  The Transport Commander came out of null space and started moving toward the planet eight hours away. He looked at his Sensor Male and said, “Do you detect anything out of the ordinary?”

  “After all that has happened, First Fang, I no longer know how ordinary would look.”

  The Commander raised two legs and said, “Let’s get this over with; go to full speed.” The hundred miles long transport accelerated toward the distant planet.

  Matt, Melanie, and Stem entered the bridge just as the combat lights illuminated and the klaxon started blaring, “Battle stations, this is not a drill, battle stations.”

  They heard Captain Kosiev order, “Lt. Sen-Gen, determine where we need to be to arrive in firing position two hours inside the jump limit from that ship.”

  “Already plotted and coordinates entered, Sir.”