by C. Gockel
Russo barked, “Your God has not delivered you from lust, hunger, greed…those are all…human…” His lip turned up in a snarl. “Your captain keeps you from us. He is demented, deviant, aggressive because he believes in your God…”
Blinking, Volka drew back. Though she’d never say it aloud among Luddecceans, she knew Alaric didn’t believe in God. Russo’s behavior was scary, but he didn’t know everything.
Smacking the window with both hands, Russo declared, “God…That’s why he fights us. If he saw what the researchers of Time Gate 33 did, he’d understand the error of his ways. We don’t want to fight you.” Leaning against the glass, he said, “It’s so much easier when you don’t fight.”
Volka pulled herself upright, about to say that they’d all fight to the death, but behind her, Ben said, “Don’t say anything, Volka. Don’t give it any weapon against us.”
The man in the cell began to giggle. “This body has told us all we need to know about Luddeccea. The researchers have told us all we need to know about the Republic. You don’t know anything about our weapons, and we know all about yours.”
The ship jerked, and Volka tumbled to the floor. Pain shot from her injured leg and she almost cried out, but then all the lights in the cell block went completely black.
“Sir, phasers are at 10 percent!”
“Divert whatever power we can to our phasers,” Alaric commanded the priests.
The ship shook, and the lights went out. Alaric focused on the holo, its light now the primary illumination on the bridge. The pod was nearly in range.
“They are hailing the pod,” someone said.
“We’re losing connection to the payload detonators,” said Sinclair. “Some sort of interference.”
“I lost connection with the suit,” Young said. “I can’t respond to the hail.”
The ship was trembling and losing velocity. Alaric’s hands tightened on the armrest. The second buoy had joined the first, all but three of their torpedoes, and 90 percent of their phaser power in the shuttle’s gravity weapon.
“We’re back at 20 percent phaser power,” one of his crew declared.
“Fire,” said Alaric.
The ship jerked forward, cut loose from the shuttle’s beam. “Helm, take us closer to the gate,” Alaric commanded, eyes glued to the holo, and the phasers disappearing into the vortexes on the shuttle’s wings.
Seconds later, one of his torpedo controllers whispered, “What is that?”
Alaric glanced at the window. Time Gate 33 was in view. Strangely, it was completely dark. Along the outer edge of the inner ring, there were flat panels protecting the time band’s vulnerable periphery.
“Magnify,” Alaric ordered.
There was a beep, and in the window, he saw what the panels were.
“Those are the grav plating panels,” said Dr. Bower. “But what have they done with them?”
The grav panels were set at angles, and they appeared to be stitched to the time gate’s ring with coppery colored bands…time bands. At their apexes and bases were darker plasti-couplings.
“They’ve turned the gate into a singularity weapon,” Alaric murmured.
Dr. Bower started to speak. “The power in those couplings—”
“We’re in range of the drones, sir.”
“I’m in contact with the shuttle, giving my prepared speech,” said Young.
“Deploy the drones now!” Alaric said.
Young protested. “But our ruse—”
The ruse wasn’t going to work, nor would the combined thirty kilotons of TNT. Alaric knew it in his bones, but he would never give up. “Deploy the drones and prepare to detonate,” Alaric ordered.
“Done,” said Sinclair. “Captain, if I may suggest—”
“Helm, bring us about,” Alaric commanded. “Open outrigger hatches,” he ordered. “And prepare the net—”
The stars spun, the ship jerked toward the gate, the deck trembled, and the hull groaned. In the window, Alaric saw the blue bauble that was S33O4, and in the holo, he saw the pod crumple in the center of the gate, and the Merkabah being towed toward the gate’s central ring. The shuttle had retreated.
“Detonate!” Alaric ordered.
“Done,” said Young.
“Done,” said Sinclair. “They were within meters of their target. It should be enough to at least temporarily disable the gate.”
Unlike a fission bomb that didn’t generate heat in vacuum, the fusion grenades generated infrared that would melt the time bands and a good chunk of the time gate’s superstructure and substructure as well. Alaric held his breath, but then Ran said, “I’m not detecting any infrared wavelengths.”
“Are the sensors down?” the archbishop asked.
Checking, one of the weere priests replied, “Negative.”
Alaric swallowed. No infrared. No heat.
“How is this possible?” Ran asked.
Alaric’s jaw got tight. “The heat is going where we’re going.” To destruction. The hull’s groan turned into a rumble. An alarm wailed. “Captain, we have a hull breach on Deck 3. Two men are gone.”
“Two men are gone...dead?” Trina cried.
The orb of the planet below retreated. They were running out of time. Alaric’s nostrils flared. The outriggers were delicate and would be ripped off by the gravitational force if he extended them, but to escape the gravitational pull he needed time…He sat up straight. “Extend the outriggers by .5 percent and deploy the nets.”
A human priest protested, “But without the outriggers fully extended—”
“Point five percent extended,” said Sato.
“Nets deployed,” said Ujk.
Alaric silently thanked the archbishop and the weere priest. The net on the only partially extended outriggers wouldn’t wrap around the whole ship. Also, the nets were more delicate, and each strand individually less powerful than time bands. There was a chance this wouldn’t work, but it was the only chance they had to steal time. “Power up the net,” said Alaric.
Shipboard gravity vanished. The Merkabah shook, her hull screamed, sirens wailed, and anyone not belted in was knocked out of their seats and shooting to the back of the bridge. But the Merkabah shot forward, wrapped in a fragile time bubble, and the orb of S33O4 grew larger in the view screen. In the holo, Alaric watched the tips of the Merkabah’s wings shoot into the maw of Time Gate 33’s “singularity beam” and crumple like bits of paper.
The alarms went silent so abruptly it was as if a hush had fallen over the bridge, though the deck still trembled, and instruments still beeped. They were out of the gate’s pull. “Get us out of visual range,” Alaric said.
They weren’t alone. The shuttle was still out there. “Damage report,” Alaric said.
“The beam took the outriggers out of alignment,” said Sato. “But it is repairable.”
Alaric rubbed his jaw. They would not be able to jump home soon, but they could go home to deliver this devastating report. Forewarned was forearmed, and Alaric told himself the mission hadn’t been a complete failure no matter what it felt like.
“Captain, the shuttle is on our scopes,” Ran said, and Alaric saw it rising from the planet’s atmosphere off their stern. They wouldn’t even make it home to deliver their report if the thing destroyed them. The Republic would have this whole adventure retold to them via Q-comm, but he doubted that they’d share it promptly with Luddeccea—Sinclair and Young had only become cooperative with Volka’s prompting.
“Helm, take us into the atmosphere,” Alaric said. He glanced at the phaser readouts. They were at 7 percent, and he had one torpedo left. “Do not bring gravity back online. Divert all power to phasers. Keep them busy,” he commanded. He stared hard at the blue orb below them. The enemy was closing in, and even with the diverted power, they only had minutes left.
“Sir,” Ran said, “We’ve had a breach of one of the quarantine cells in the brig, Russo’s. His behavior in the past few minutes has been…erratic and violent.”
<
br /> “Make sure that the brig is sealed. Do not let anyone out,” Alaric said.
“The weere woman and Davies are in there,” Ran added, and Alaric wondered if the commander was testing him by conveying that last bit of information.
In the window, the clouds of S33O4 were slipping by. Alaric’s hands clenched his armrests so tightly his fingers ached. “See that the door remains sealed, Commander.”
Not for the first time, he wished he believed in God.
Volka was trapped in the dark, on the ceiling, barely holding her stomach. Davies’s body was between her and the floor. The ship had shaken, the gravity had vanished with the lights, and she and Davies had careened head first against the far wall. Or rather, Davies had careened head first into the wall. When the ship had first begun to shake, he’d turned, wrapped his arms around her, and tucked her head beneath his own just before gravity had disappeared and the ship had accelerated. He’d protected her even though she was a weere, and he’d hit the wall, and Volka had hit him. Now, she could hear him breathing, smell fear in his sweat and the horrible S-rations humans ate aboard ships in his breath, but he wasn’t moving. Did he have a concussion? From her paperback education, she’d learned that typically concussions only lasted a few minutes, and it was “God’s way of keeping the injured person flat, to allow their brain to recover after a blow.” She wasn’t sure what “flat” was in zero gravity. Also, what if it wasn’t just a concussion? What if his neck had broken in the impact? Then it was imperative, the same source informed her, for him not to be moved. If so, she shouldn’t move, but what if gravity came back on again? She didn’t want her protector slamming against the deck.
“Volka?” Sixty’s voice clicked through an intercom in the absolute dark. She blinked. Actually, beyond Davies’s shoulder there was some light. She reached out with a hand, looking for any leverage, and found one of those peculiar “rungs” she’d noticed on the ceiling and walls of the ship when she first arrived. She now knew they were for leverage in zero G. Pulling herself forward, she peered over Davies’s shoulder and saw glowing spots in the floor. Their faint luminosity and hue reminded her of the glowing hands of her former employer’s pocket watch.
“Davies,” said the man who wasn’t Russo. “Davies, man, answer!”
“Volka?” said Ben. “I can’t see her, Sixty. Davies? Davies?”
“Volka, are you all right?” Sixty asked again, his tone worried.
She opened her mouth, prepared to answer, but then she heard a rattle, a hiss of air, and smelled a new person, and worse, fetid water. Her stomach heaved again, but she managed to keep its contents in…barely.
Below Davies and her, Russo giggled. This time, his voice wasn’t coming through an intercom. For the first time, she realized that sometime during the shaking she’d lost her crutch. It floated just above the “floor,” between her and Russo.
Russo peered up at her. Squinting for a moment, he stared up at her and Davies, and Volka’s heartbeat was as loud as a drum in her ears. She swore he looked right at her, but then he grabbed a handle on the wall and pulled himself toward the entrance. He hadn’t seen them...thank God for human night blindness!
Sixty and Ben began to shout and bang their bodies against their doors. The fourth man was quiet, strangely so, but his door did not open. Volka used the sound as cover to shift, seeking Davies’s stunner.
Russo laughed as he climbed along the wall. “We’ll infect them all, infect them all. They will be a lovely part of the holy waters.”
The blasphemy made Volka’s eyes snap to the abomination that had been a man, and she saw the stunner in the center of the hallway, just above his head. Volka held her breath, and Russo continued his rant. “And we’ll have their ship. And the priests. And we’ll know how it all works. We won’t need a gate.”
Laughing to himself, he climbed the side of the walls right beneath the stunner. Volka’s eyes went wide—he hadn’t seen it! Sixty and Ben continued to slam themselves against their prison doors, but it wasn’t loud enough to cover what she was about to do. Silently, Volka prayed, “Let them be louder, God.”
There was an answer to her prayer, but it had Carl’s voice. “You got it, Hatchling.”
Sixty started shouting, “You prude! Get back to your cell,” and Ben hollered, “You are betraying your world and your people, Russo! Don’t do it!” and Volka couldn’t bring herself to correct Carl’s blasphemy. Taking advantage of the noise, she tried wrestling around Davies, biting her lip to contain a cry when her injured leg collided with his unconscious form just so. Sucking in a breath, holding back blinding agony, she managed to push him to the floor and then turn about so her feet were against the far wall and her body was angled toward a rung on the wall near the stunner.
Russo was fighting with the door, but thankfully, it didn’t budge. She nearly sighed with relief, but then, in an amazing imitation of Davies, he said, “Joe, it’s me, Davies. I can’t get this door open. What’s going on?”
There was the static of an intercom, and then the voice of the second guard who’d been in the hall. “Davies, there is a breach in Russo’s cell. Is he out?”
“No, no, he’s still in. Door’s not open all the way.”
“What’s all the shouting?” the man outside asked.
Kicking off the wall with one foot, Volka caught the rung in the wall by the stunner. Holding the rung with her left hand, she reached toward the stunner—just in time for the ship to drop. Volka kept her hand on the rung, but her body swung upward. The stunner hit the ceiling and bounced out of reach. Seconds later, she hit the floor, and the stunner did, too. She heard Davies and the crutch hitting the floor behind her, squeaks from Carl or Isssh, an exclamation of “blighted processors” from Sixty, and a groan from Ben. Worse was the rattle and hiss of air from the front of the brig. A tiny sliver of light spilled into the brig. After the only faintly luminous spots on the floor, it was nearly blinding.
“Just the robot and the Galactican cyborg making trouble,” Russo said in Davies’s voice, recovering his feet in the returned gravity. Volka could see him wedging his hands in the door, trying to pull it open. “Help me with this, would you?”
“Don’t do it, Joe!” the real Davies shouted from behind her.
Russo spun and growled at Davies. “Surrender is the only option. You only have one useless torpedo left; your phasers have gone dark. You have no weapons that will work against us. It’s over. This ship is ours. You are ours.”
Taking advantage of the distraction, Volka dived for the stunner. She heard Russo swear and footsteps on the deck as her fingers closed on its trigger. She rolled and fired. The sound of the stunner was covered by Sixty’s and Ben’s shouts, and the next thing she saw was Russo’s form above her.
24
The Most Dangerous Weapon
Alaric’s seat restraints dug into his shoulders and hips.
“They’ve got us in their beam—” said Alaric’s helmsman.
Alaric’s body slammed to the right.
“What was that?” Trina asked.
“Gust of wind,” said Young. “We’re heading into a storm.”
“Should we be doing that?” Trina asked.
“We’re free of the beam,” said the helmsman, and Alaric’s body was slammed into his seat as the Merkabah leaped forward. He frowned; the reprieve would be brief. The shuttle was being hit by the same gust of wind. As soon as it recovered, they’d be captured again. On the holo, he saw their destination. A rugged, mountainous desert along the coast of the saltwater ocean they were now above, 130 kilometers away. They weren’t going to make it.
His body was thrown against his restraints again.
“We’re in the beam again,” said Ran, and Alaric swore he could hear his man at Torpedo Control itching to launch the last torpedo.
“Decrease hover power to 10 percent,” Alaric ordered.
He was distantly aware of Trina saying, “But without the wings for lift, that could blow out th
e hover engines.”
Thankfully, his crew didn’t question the order. Alaric’s straps dug into his shoulders as the ship plunged toward the sea.
“We’re out of the beam,” Ran declared. Alaric exhaled. A sign of hope. The planet’s gravity was a force more powerful than the enemy's weapon, but this trick would only last for a few seconds more.
“I want the ocean on view screen,” Alaric said. The windows, filled with clouds, switched to a camera eye view of the roiling waters below instead. His father’s words filled his mind. “A saltwater ocean is just another kind of desert.”
Alaric smiled grimly.
In the holo, the shuttle dropped to follow them.
“Bring hovers back on. I want a hovering altitude of seven meters.”
Dr. Bower said, “Some of the wave swells are over fifteen meters high—”
“Altitude of seven meters,” Alaric reiterated, too busy to order the scientist and Trina dragged off his bridge. “And switch off camera view.”
The window briefly was clouds, and then it was filled with a dark blue wave that completely obscured the sky. Alaric almost laughed at how perfect it was.
“The wave is exactly 18.28 meters,” Sinclair said.
“And approximately 2,460 tons of water,” said Young. “It will crush a ship of this size.”
“Excellent,” said Alaric, a new theory alive in his mind. It wasn’t the destruction of his ship the enemy wanted. “Helm, take us into that swell.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“Their beam is on us,” said Ran. “They’ve increased the power.”
The ship started to lift, and Alaric smiled grimly. His theory was proving correct.
“Turn off hover power and transfer to thrusters. Resist that thing’s pull!” Alaric commanded. The Merkabah dropped, jerked forward, and skimmed the water like a stone, the wave approaching like a ravenous mountain. The singularity device on the shuttle fighting gravity and their thrusters, keeping them just barely above the waves, shaking and fishtailing, hull groaning.