Move fast when you hear the beeps, and those ‘egg shaped’ droids will be yours.”
“Great. Some action already!”
“You’d better believe it Thomas, and if you can get one of those droids intact, all to the good. But remember, your safety and the safety of all of us is paramount.
The droids all go down without hesitation if there’s any doubt.”
“I have a question, for Ned or Mark,” Susanna said as she looked at them. “These mini droids don’t seem to have a force-field like the droid we saw in the corridor on Pavonis. Why?”
“Probably because they’re too close to the computer. What do you think Ned?”
“I agree with Mark,” Ned said. “They wouldn’t want to ruin the very thing they’ve come for.”
“OK. Does anyone else have a question, No?
Alright. Return to your ships as if your regular routine hasn’t changed. In thirty minutes, precisely, Susanna and I will be on board the Argonaut.”
She gave him a sideways look as he continued. “At that instant, I want us to be able to shoot a Nuke into their wormhole.”
No one spoke.
“All right… We have no real idea of what might happen, so all ships continue monitoring visually and play it by ear.
Ned and Mark, you’d better do likewise, and keep in contact with Andromeda.”
“Will do Frank,” both said together.
“What about me?” Jenny asked.
“Your Marines are Andromeda’s security. We don’t know if the Solveron’s mother ship has marine types or not.”
“OK, Frank. We won’t let you down.”
“Right, we’re done. Susanna, stay, please. Oh, and everyone sync your time units with Andromeda. Execute time, 11.30 exactly. Be ready,” he finished as they all left to take up their assigned tasks.
“Andromeda.”
“Yes. I’m ready Frank.” Andromeda replied, then said. “Susanna, did you realize that you could still hear Frank even though the links were off?”
She thought a moment. “No, I hadn’t taken that in, but yes, I can. So?”
“Well, I picked up Frank’s conversations when your shuttle was leaving Mars, so your link must have been strong.
Why, I’m not sure, but it means that both of you can get close to the Solveron’s sphere without your transceivers being monitored like they were on Pavonis.”
“And?”
“Well, Frank will be able to keep in touch with me, and you with him, without having to worry.”
“I get it, so ‘Orangey’ won’t know that we’re coming.”
“That’s what we hope.”
“OK, I’m in. What next?”
“Both of you make your way over to the Argonaut. Then Frank will have his target, and you’ll be there to protect him. Don’t forget, you’re the female demon.”
“You mean you want me to protect my old man?”
“Yes, but make sure your pistols are out of sight. The Marines will be at least 30 seconds behind, so it’s up to you to fill the gap.”
“Just up my street,” Susanna replied with a grin.
Then thought for a moment. “But if the Solverons are continuously monitoring Argonaut’s computer, surely they’ll wonder why another force-craft is coming in?”
“No, Orangey’s mates will assume it’s the Commander’s pre-warp inspection. Hector’s registering the visit on the computer, and it’s not uncommon.”
“Fine, I’ll get my handguns from my cabin.”
“No need Susanna, I’ve arranged for a droid to bring them to our force-craft, together with some extras.”
It would be no use telling Andromeda off for sending a droid to her cabin, she thought.
But, even so, it would have been nice to have been asked, Susanna decided.
Then tucked the weapons under her belt. Loosened her top and let it drape down over her weapon butts before they boarded the force-craft.
Then Frank tapped his own blaster, and she smiled at him in acknowledgement, then nodded her head.
It was now eleven fifteen as the force-craft, controlled by Andromeda, emerged from the holding bay and headed out towards Argonaut. At the halfway stage, Argonaut would take control and bring the force-craft into her docking bay.
The Argonaut’s holding bay was like Andromeda’s, except that it included individual docking-tubes for up to eight force-craft to divert into on entering the holding bay. With the tubes, then sealing and repressurizing immediately.
Frank and Susanna both looked at their timepieces as they made their way along the corridor towards the computer area.
11:28
‘No change,’ came Andromeda’s voice in Frank’s mind.
The entrance to the computer area was just ahead around the corner. They turned the corner and were relieved to see that Thomas had done his job. The hand-held nuclear launcher was already there.
11:29
The launcher was smaller and lighter than Frank expected. He lifted it up, pushing the butt into his armpit, took a deep breath, then turned and kissed Susanna as she withdrew the pistols from her belt. “I love you,” she said.
“Ditto,” he replied.
11:30
Then two beeps sounded over the comms. Frank and Susanna took a quick look at the computer area and saw that the one-metre diameter wormhole was still sitting above the orange sphere.
With one of the two droids still connected between it, and the computer.
They glanced at each other, nodded and stepped into the computer area, straight into chaos.
One of the two almost transparent droids moved straight towards them while the other rapidly uncoupled itself from the computer.
Both were met with the sound of thunder as Susanna’s twin weapons opened fire. Each shot ripping away chunks of stealth material.
Frank aimed his nuclear launcher, pulled the trigger and, with an instant flash and blast of thunderous noise, the Nuke headed straight into the wormhole. He dropped the launcher, drawing his blaster even before the launcher had clattered to the floor and managed to shoot once before the egg-shaped droids fired back.
Both Susanna and Frank cursed as they dived for cover round the other side of the computer. Horrified to see the droids following and firing particle beams. With all the beams coming their way.
The droids suddenly rocked, as they were hit by a hail of fire from the marines who had followed Frank and Susanna into the area. The hail of fire sent a spray of material into the air, leaving the droids bodies peeled open and showing pure white metal beneath.
Then Argonaut also shook violently, as the wormhole disappeared, and the two droids collapsed inertly on the floor.
“Geeze, Frank. What was that?”
“The mother ship, with any luck.”
“Are you two okay?” Thomas asked, as he hurriedly approached them.
“Fine thanks,” Frank confirmed. “Keep an eye on the orange sphere, there’s another droid inside.”
He was cut off as the orange sphere began to shrink back to its original diameter. The top of the remaining droid inside it showed briefly, then the orange skin gradually shrank around it. Once it had stopped shrinking, its skin turned black.
“No power to keep it active,” Thomas remarked.
“No,” Frank agreed. Then thought ‘Andromeda, order re-activate links now.’
Everyone seemed to jump as the usual comms noise flooded into their transceiver implants once again.
Hector came through on his link. ‘Frank, come up to the bridge, there’s something you’ll want to see. Thomas will show you both the way.’
“Come with me,” Thomas said having heard the request. “There’s a quick way.”
They followed the marine at the trot. Up the corridor, through an empty cabin, along another short hallway and straight onto the bridge.
Frank was surprised at its size. The bridge was, at least, three times bigger than his and had six ‘Atom glass’ windows to boot.
<
br /> Hector shook their hands. The beaming smile on his face said it all. “Saved by the Bell,” he said.
“And by good co-operation,” Susanna added.
“True.”
They saw two other people sitting at their desks in front of a huge screen, each person operating their systems using proximity control.
The image on the screen in front of them was the biggest thrill for all of them. It was of a large ‘black’ sphere some three thousand metres away from the ship.
“Wow!” Frank said as he turned back from the view on Hector’s main screen. “Can you playback, the event?”
“We certainly can. Trent, playback, please,” he ordered.
“Yes sir,” Trent replied as his fingers appeared to ‘dance’ across his screen, and the recorded scene started to play.
They could see spurts of flame that seemed to come out of nowhere, as the blue sphere suddenly appeared before them, some 3000 metres away in space.
The globe’s outer hull seeming to move and swirl like molten lava. Then began cooling, slowly turning black as it became cooled, then died.
Hector broke into Frank’s thoughts. “The other end of the wormhole must have been inside the blue globe ship.”
“Yea, and for them to be able to control their wormhole like that, amazing. But even so, they never knew what hit them.”
“Our droids are already going into the sphere. But it’s too hot, and the radiation’s too high for us to go in.”
“Agreed. Hector,” Frank said, cautiously. “You’ve got some weapons that we haven’t got on our ships, I think we need to update our ships before we head out.”
That’s not a problem for me,” Hector said with a smile. “We’ve already updated Andromeda with some of them.”
Frank laughed. “Of course, you are a science vessel, after all.”
Chapter 6
The Crillon Navy.
Commander Tripicac waited patiently for their meeting with the Senate to start.
It was their first meeting since the day they had forced Bronico, the former Senate Leader out of office.
He thought about the changes that were being put into place.
Kasosko, the new Senate Chairman, had been true to his word. The weapon's research and Starship manufacturing plants had been re-activated.
Tripicac was pleased to see that their Senate was more active now than before and active in the right way. But it would take a long time to build up their stocks of new weapons and ships. Time, which he knew in his bones they didn’t have.
He knew there were about 276 Starships left in the Crillon Navy. But only 75 were in the Kepler system. He didn’t know the locations of the rest, or even if they were still in existence.
Still, he had convinced the Senate to manufacture a human language translator box, and now these boxes had been distributed to all the Senators and to their ships crews.
They had also been added to the communications systems on their moon Tapin.
Crilla had two moons, both of which had been settled and mined for more than a hundred years. Tapin was the largest and had a Starship production facility with a massive communication’s array that hyperlinked Crillon ships with Crilla when the ships were in deep-space.
Tripicac also thought that the natural wormhole had been advantageous for the Crillons in many ways, and it had, in the end, provided a conduit to the Sector where the human’s system was located.
Apart from the fact that his race had tried to wipe out any help, it might have received from them. He was still sure that they would assist them if his race proved to be worth the effort.
The downside of the natural wormhole was the unexplained fork close to the Kepler end.
The fork was a theoretical impossibility. What was also strange to the Crillon scientists, was that although the fork went somewhere, they hadn’t been able to enter it as their warp drive just wouldn’t operate in that part of the fork.
They were sure however that the Solverons home world was at the other end. So, in the hope that the natural wormhole would re-establish itself, the Crillon Navy had left a small unmanned picket ship near the defunct wormholes position, some 21 million kilometres from their home planet Crilla.
The picket ship was sophisticated and capable of traversing a wormhole from one end to the other, mapping the wormhole’s characteristics and providing a star map for each of its exit points.
The Crillon year was divided into ten segments or months, with the planet taking the equivalent of 1.2 Earth years to complete an orbit. Already two of their home world months had passed, and still the wormhole was not co-operating. A few tremors were reported now and then, but nothing else.
However, if the wormhole did re-establish, that would present another danger, it would allow the Solverons to come flooding through into Kepler space.
Tripicac checked his chronometer, 10:50. Only ten minutes left before the meeting.
‘No rush,’ he thought. He knew it would only take 5 minutes to reach the Senate building where the meeting was to be held.
However, when he arrived, he found that everyone, including the six local group Commanders and seven Senators, were already there and seemed to be busy muttering or whispering to each other.
“Good morning,” Kasosko said.
Tripicac, on hearing his shaky sounding voice, looked at Kasosko and was shocked to see that he appeared to be very badly shaken.
“I’m afraid we’ve just received some terrible news from Sector three. Commander Kribourg’s squadron was attacked by the Solverons three days ago, and eight ships, including the battleship Vern, have all been disintegrated.
The rest of his ships managed to get away, but although there was a crystal growing support ship with them, we don’t know which three ships escaped.”
A murmur went around the Navy personnel. Kasosko put his hand up, and the murmur ceased.
“Where are the three surviving ships?” Tripicac asked.
“There’s been no communication with them so far,” Kasosko replied, then paused and looked around.
“However, the good news is that six new ships are nearing completion in the automated factory on Tapin. You probably know this already,” he added.
“I can assure you that we’ll keep on producing new ships for as long as they’re needed,” he said then paused.
“The warp crystals…” Kasosko started to say.
Then stopped speaking, as he was interrupted by shouts and screams that could be heard coming from outside the Senate building.
Then he, and everyone else could hear panicky voices flooding the comms.
Everyone's gaze shifted to the senator’s primary screen. Everybody stood up, gripping their seat armrests, with fear showing in their eyes.
They were watching something hurtling down, and towards them. While high above them continuous flashes of light riddled the edge of space.
Running to the window, they saw a copper-coloured section of a Crillon Battlecruiser plunge into the city’s outskirts, two kilometres away. The resultant flash nearly blinding them.
“Down!” Arans yelled as a clap of thunder sounded, followed by the glass window shattering, and filling the room with glass like bullets. With the bullets, embedding themselves into the back wall.
Tripicac shouted into his communicator. “Trenma, what’s happening?”
“We’re in bad shape sir,” Tripicac's second in command instantly replied. Then Trenma’s trembling voice rattled through the comms again.
“Solverons are trying to take us out. We’re down to 23 ships. Antimatter weapons have no effect… Oh no, one’s coming our way…. Can’t move fast enough…”
The comms went dead for a moment and Tripicac felt sick.
“I don’t believe it sir,” Trenma’s voice returned. “They’ve gone… They had us all… I don’t understand.”
“Just be thankful. I’m coming up with the rest of the Commanders.”
“Very well, sir.”
“Keep going Tripicac,” Senator Kasosko urged, seeing him running for his shuttle.
Chapter 7
Extreme measures.
The now dead and black looking Solveron sphere rolled gently. With its broken edges exposing the immense damage within that had been caused by the human drone’s nuclear detonation.
Drones, from Andromeda and Argonaut, were moving slowly around the outside of the sphere, mapping and recording the damage to it. Most of the damaged areas, they could see, had been molten but had now re-solidified.
The diameter of the sphere was equal to the length of the Andromeda7 and showed no sign of its propulsion and weapon’s systems. But the blue globe apparently relied on the use of its own molecular cohesion-disruption weapon to protect itself and to destroy anything it wished.
It was now twenty hours since the attack, and all personnel were back on their own ships. Two of the drones remained on guard outside the Solveron sphere, relaying data and images back. While Andromeda’s drone was inside the sphere, and the Argonaut’s drone was removing some emitters that appeared to be undamaged.
“Andromeda link me to Hector on the Argonaut.”
“Yes Frank,” Hector wearily replied.
Seconds later, Hector’s image appeared on Frank’s screen. “I know. You’re going to ask me what my scientists think.”
“Of course, Hector. You have most of the scientists.”
“True. I’ll keep sending our updates as they come in. Oh, and make sure Andromeda has finished ‘nicking’ our weapon’s upgrades.”
Frank chuckled. “That obvious, is it?”
“To myself, yes. But to scientists, no.”
“Hector, I noticed something on the pictures sent back by our drone that looked like a being’s shadow burnt onto a bulkhead. Did you get that?”
The Definitive SpaceFed Trilogy (SpaceFed StarShips Trilogy).: A thrilling, action-packed Sci-fi space adventure. (SpaceFed StarShips Series Book 8) Page 47