“Maybe, but I doubt it. Besides, I’ll have the entire moon-ship, and I should be able to teleport out of danger if I need to.”
“What about a good offense being the best defense?” Diana asked.
“That’s a saying, Prime Minister. It doesn’t make it holy writ.”
Her eyelids finally grew heavy. “I’m going to sleep, Creed. We can talk later.”
“No,” I said. “We’re leaving. It’s good-bye, Diana.”
“I hate good-byes.”
“Yeah.”
“Kiss me, Creed,” she said, sleepily. “Kiss me on the lips.”
I bent down, doing just that. The Amazon Queen grabbed the back of my head, kissing me longer than I’d intended, using her tongue.
Finally, I pulled away. She was already asleep.
I smiled before heading for the door.
-13-
Since we’d captured the moon-ship and made it ours, we decided to christen it. To my mind, the best name was Santa Maria, Christopher Columbus’ flagship. We were about to explore places no human had been before. Sure, the Indians had beaten Columbus to the New World, but Chris had made the world a little smaller with his feat, knitting it together. Wasn’t I about to do the same with our galaxy?
Before the Earth died the first time, some people had gotten huffy about Columbus. I remember an intense argument in my high school history class. I’d sided with Columbus, saying the man had been a stud, risking everything on a courageous voyage of discovery. I’d had a few fellow students who’d gotten angry with me. It turned out according to the teacher that I made some politically incorrect comments toward them. That had landed me in the office later getting a good talking to by the principal.
Big deal. Who doesn’t get sent to the office now and again? The bigger deal had been a few gangbangers waiting for me on my walk home. The hombres hadn’t liked my comments in class. They proceeded to call me a few names, among them pendejo and gringo.
I’d seen the way the wind was blowing, five of them against one of me. My palms had turned sweaty and my balls had begun shriveling, looking for a place to hide until this was over. Sometimes, a big mouth could land a kid in trouble, especially if he lacked the muscle to back it up.
I turned around and ran, which had been a mistake. They ran after me, shouting more insults. Soon enough, my side began to ache. A few of them had scooped up stones, one of them hitting me in the back of the head. It had been just hard enough so I lost my balance and skidded chest-first across pavement. That had torn the front of my shirt and bloodied my chin.
I imagine that would have been enough of a chastisement for most of them. One guy, though, the smallest, had strutted around me, giving me several kicks in the side, telling me that’s what he would have done to old Columbus.
The last time he walked toward me to give me another boot, I reacted, rolling onto my side, catching his foot and yanking as hard as I could. He slammed back hard and fast, his head hitting the ground with an audible crack.
I’d already scrambled to my feet while the others stared at their friend. I was a mess, with a torn shirt, blood on my chest and craziness in my eyes. Mr. Tough Hombre had begun puking and then choking on his vomit. I’d rolled him over face first. He gagged, spewed again and began to cough hoarsely.
“Better take him to emergency,” I said. “He might have a concussion.”
“Maybe we give you a concussion,” the biggest one told me.
I finally remembered the knife in my backpack. I’d been wearing it the entire time. So, I shrugged off the pack, ripped it open, rummaged around and pulled out my switchblade. Admittedly, I was a bit of a troublemaker in my youth, with plenty of poor decisions to show for it.
I clicked open the blade, telling them in so many words to let it go.
“We’re finished here,” a different gangbanger said. “You go home, Gringo. We’ll take Jose to emergency. But watch your mouth next time in class or it won’t go so good for you.”
“You watch your mouth,” I said, getting madder the longer I clutched the knife.
“Maybe we get knives, too,” the biggest said.
“You do what you have to,” I told him.
Jose started retching again, which was probably good for me. Two of them helped Jose to his feet, taking him away.
Some things you don’t forget. They get branded in your memory. I was going to call the moon-ship the Santa Maria in honor of Christopher Columbus, because one day as a kid I’d been forced to run away. This was my belated finger against our former politically correct system and against Abaddon who thought he could wipe humanity off the galactic map.
***
The Santa Maria was huge inside with hangar bays, endless corridors, chambers, engine rooms, fuel pits, storage facilities, elevators, garden rooms—you get the idea.
The repair teams had fixed some of the T-missile damage, maybe a bare hundredth, the most critical hundredth, though. We took along thousands of technicians and engineers, and they worked in shifts around the clock. Other teams with hordes of shipped tractors, cranes and other equipment, built laser batteries and plasma cannons, along with missile launch sites on the moon surface.
I didn’t want to worry about the personnel, so I had Dmitri Rostov take care of that. He was another of the original assault troopers. Once he learned about our mission, he’d demanded to come along. That was fine with me.
For those who don’t know, Dmitri was a Zaporizhian Cossack by nationality. He’d been from the Ukraine. The Cossacks used to be a hard-riding, freedom-loving people from the steppes or plains of Russia and the Ukraine. They were good fighters, but most people recognized them as those acrobatic dancers who squatted low, folded their arms on their chests and vigorously kicked out their legs.
Dmitri was a solid, muscular man, shorter than my six-three. He had taken to wearing his hair in a straight-up brush-cut like Rollo.
It felt good to have my old teammates back: N7, Rollo, Ella and Dmitri. Rollo and I had been together since Antarctica, since The Day. Then, I’d found Dmitri and Ella in glass tubes, ready for transshipment up to Claath’s battlejumper on The Day +1.
I called a meeting with the four of them, wondering how soon we should start the great journey.
Rollo would run the moon-ship as its captain. Ella was the chief science officer while Dmitri took care of personnel, as I’ve said, and would run security. That would leave me more time to simply think, with N7 as my personal advisor.
We sat around a conference table fashioned out of moon-stone instead of wood. Ella had a steaming cup of tea, Dmitri a shot of vodka with a bottle beside the glass. Rollo had a beer. N7 kept his hands free and I kept moving my .44 lying on the stone top.
Many of the moon chambers, incidentally, had been hewn out of rock. It gave the ship a cavernous feel, like flying around space in an ancient cave. I kept wondering how the builders had drilled the holes for the electrical equipment behind the scenes.
“I am struck by the incongruence of our vessel,” N7 said. “It can transfer, which is stunning. Otherwise, it strikes me as a primitive machine of ancient design.”
“It’s a freak of a ship,” I agreed. “It has a few built-in advantages, though. The biggest is its massive rock armor, an entire moon of it surrounding the deepest structures like the bridge and living quarters.”
“I’m still troubled concerning our motive force,” Ella said. “I have been studying the transfer mechanism—”
The doors swished open and Key floated into the chamber, disrupting the meeting.
Key wasn’t actually shaped like a key or hotel card plastic. It wasn’t like a giant ball-bearing, either. Key was square like a metallic cube the size of a desk, with colored lights swirling on all its sides. I couldn’t see a way to put anything into Key or open it up to fix the thing. When Key spoke—causing the air to vibrate with sound—the swirling lights pulsed a deeper color and moved in faster rhythms on its sides.
“You began your
meeting without me,” Key said. It had an alien feminine voice like a cat-person. There was nothing visibly feline about the cube, but that’s what I thought if I listened to Key with my eyes closed.
“This is an exploratory meeting,” I said. “Here, we don’t hold anything back. If you’re going to stay, you’ll have to follow the rules of the meeting.”
The lights flashed darker on Key’s sides. “You are suggesting I am not welcome here.”
“Of course, you’re welcome,” I said. “You’re going to help us into the Fortress of Light, aren’t you?”
Key didn’t respond to that.
“You will help us in, won’t you?” Ella asked.
“If the basic conditions are met, certainly,” Key said.
“What are those conditions?” Ella asked.
“I would rather not say,” Key said.
“Why are you withholding the information?” Ella asked.
“I would rather not say,” Key replied.
“Fine, fine,” I said. “We don’t want to put you on the spot.” I also wasn’t sure how to make Key tell us if the thing didn’t want to. We’d have to ease into this, it seemed. “I’m curious, Key. What were the conditions of your imprisonment aboard Holgotha?”
“I would rather not say,” Key said. “And before you ask me why I’d rather not say, I should tell you that I won’t explain it.
Deciding on yet another approach, I spread my hands. “Are you seeing why you’re not very helpful to have at the meeting?”
“No,” Key said.
“Now, you’re just being stubborn,” I said. “That will put a dampener on our talk, which we can’t afford. I’m afraid you’re going to have leave.”
“I do not want to leave,” Key said. “And I do not believe you can make me.”
“We can make you anytime we want to,” I said, starting to get angry.
“I’m curious how you would achieve this feat.”
I almost retorted hotly. Instead, a thought struck. I sat back with a half-smile, saying, “I would rather not say.”
Dmitri chuckled appreciatively, sipping his vodka.
The big metallic cube bobbed up and down in the air as if thinking. “I have noted your reactions and can now tell you this was a test. From this point forward, I will react according to what I’ve learned. Please, continue your meeting while I double-check your main transfer unit.”
We watched Key depart, the doors closing behind it.
“I don’t trust it,” Ella said promptly.
“Me neither,” Rollo said, with his thick features set.
I touched my revolver. “Trust is an issue, isn’t it? Can we trust Holgotha? Can we trust Key?”
“You don’t trust Holgotha?” Dmitri asked.
“Not altogether,” I said. “There’s too much the artifact doesn’t tell us. What is the Fortress of Light, for instance? What exactly is Key? Why would Holgotha keep such critical information from us?”
“We should transfer and discover these things for ourselves,” Ella said.
I picked up the .44 and shoved it into my holster. “Ella, N7, maybe one of you can explain to me how the transfer unit works?”
“I am ashamed to admit this,” Ella said, “but I have no idea. I would dearly like to know, however.”
“I believe it works on similar principles as the Lokhar dreadnaught’s ability to move into hyperspace,” N7 said.
That didn’t make any sense. The two operations were quite different. A transfer ship remained in the same universe. A dreadnaught moved into hyperspace, something next to normal space but also outside of it.
“Oh, wait,” I said. “The dreadnaught had a sealed-off area. The Lokhars told us it contained a simulated black hole, but we had no way of confirming that.”
“Precisely,” N7 said. “Our captive Saurians showed us the procedures, but we still don’t understand the transfer engine or its fuel. It is all a mystery, just as the dreadnaught’s hyperspace mechanism was a mystery. I have been pondering our situation, and I have a concern.”
“Speak up,” I said. “That’s why we’re having this meeting.”
“How many times can our present moon-ship transfer before it needs refueling or an overhaul?” N7 asked.
I looked around the table, finally settling onto Ella. “Do you have an idea?” I asked her.
“We understand the regular engines well enough,” she said, sounding defensive. “They’re big antimatter drives. As to the transfer mechanism…” She shrugged, frowned and focused on N7. “I’m surprised you don’t even have a theory.”
“Who said I did not?” N7 asked.
“What is it?” I asked.
“This may sound surprising,” N7 said. “But I believe the transfer mechanism is partly supernatural in origin and operation.”
“That’s preposterous!” Ella said. “We’ve transferred before with Holgotha. They were natural occurrences. I do not recall anything supernatural about the process.”
“That is interesting,” N7 said. “How did these ‘natural’ occurrences take place?”
“I don’t know,” Ella said. “But I mean to find out.”
“That still does not eliminate the possibility that it is through a supernatural act,” N7 said.
“No,” Ella said. “I don’t accept that.”
“Isn’t that simply a matter of your preconditions regarding reality?” the android asked.
“This is absurd,” Ella said. “An android, a mechanical man, is suggesting supernatural processes to move a spaceship. Does anyone else find that strange?”
“You have stated my condition and belief correctly,” N7 said. “I find nothing incongruous about the two.”
“Just a minute,” I said. Ella was getting angry, and I had no idea what N7 was really driving at. It was time to switch topics. “Let’s not get bogged down. How the ship moves from one location to another isn’t critical.”
“I must decline such a view,” N7 said.
“Good enough,” I said. “For now, though, let’s leave it at we don’t know how the transfer mechanism works or what fuels it. We do know that we can set the coordinates and transfer to said location. That’s all we need at the moment to get from A to B. We’re like cave men with a jet, able to fly it from France to California. We don’t need to know how much jet fuel the thing has. We just have to be able to turn it on and fly.”
“Is there a point to this?” Ella asked dryly.
“You bet,” I said. “I don’t fully trust Holgotha or Key. Something is going on with them and it smells. Some of you appear to agree with me.”
I got nods around the table.
“Why won’t Holgotha take us himself to the Fortress of Light?” I asked. “Why wasn’t he sure it was still there? Can’t he see that far?”
“What is your point?” Ella asked. I could see that N7’s words still had her riled.
I tapped a finger on the table, studying them. “This transfer power is strange. Popping from one locale to another…I don’t know. It seems custom-made to land someone in terrible trouble each jump. To forestall any more delays and any possible trouble, I think we should make a single direct transfer to Sagittarius A*.”
“Is that your only reason?” Ella asked.
“No. The other is that we don’t know how many transfers the moon-ship can make. Why waste them with mini-transfers? Get everything done as quickly as possible is my thinking.”
Ella thought about that. “That is true after a fashion. We don’t know our transfer limit. There is another possibility, however. Maybe a transfer twenty-seven thousand light years is too much for our ship.”
Dmitri drained his shot glass, clicking it onto the table. “Isn’t it dangerous going against Holgotha’s advice?”
“That’s the question, all right,” I said. “I’m saying ‘No, it isn’t.’ If there’s one thing I’ve learned these past years, it’s to go with my gut. My instincts tell me to switch it up a bit as to how Holgotha sai
d we should do it.”
“Why would Holgotha try to trick us?” Ella asked.
I grinned. “I can think up as many reasons as there are hours in the day. The artifacts are screwy. Add to that Abaddon’s strangeness and unpredictability and the more troubling fact that ordinary weapons can’t destroy him.”
“You don’t believe that’s true?” Ella asked.
“I do, as a matter of fact. Abaddon has talked to me across a thousand light years in my dreams. He’s survived who knows how many thousands of years in a different space-time continuum. If anyone would be hard to kill, it would have to be Abaddon. I mean, we don’t even know how to kill Jelk. Last time we tried to butcher Claath, he just floated away.”
“At least we were able to drive him away,” Rollo said.
“That’s a point,” I said. “But if you want to know the truth, I lie awake at nights sometimes trying to think up ways to kill Claath. I want the little bastard dead.”
Ella began to nod. “We do not have enough facts to make a reasoned decision. Therefore, it is logical to trust some other mechanism to make the decision. Your ‘gut,’ Commander, is as good a mechanism as others.”
“It’s better,” I said.
“Please, let me finish.”
I inclined my head to her.
“Your instincts have proven right more often than not. If they were merely random choices, I would expect you to be right only fifty percent of the time. Therefore, it is logical to depend on your gut feelings, given that we have nothing else concrete to go on.”
“That seems like round about reasoning,” I said.
“It is scientific,” Ella said, glancing sharply at N7.
“Right,” I said. “My gut instincts are scientific. I like that.”
“No,” Ella said. “Your instincts aren’t scientific. That they’ve been correct more than fifty percent of the time shows they are not completely random. Therefore, a scientific test proves they are worthwhile in lieu of anything else.”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Let us proceed. Are we agreed that we transfer directly to Sagittarius A*?”
“When do you envision the jump to take place?” N7 asked.
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