From deep within the ship came a massive explosion. Marjorie tumbled around and fell to the ground. Plooma managed to hold onto a rail to prevent himself from falling. The hum of the engine stopped. Plooma looked over at his bridge crew who were running frantically. They shouted out information and, even if Marjorie didn’t understand the words, she knew they were in trouble.
“Captain, I am sorry you had to be here for my defeat,” Rulla Plooma said. “We have lost our engines and shields. I don’t know if they will board or if they’ll destroy us from space. If they board I will need you to take arms and fight with me.”
“I can’t do that,” Marjorie replied. “I will not do that until I know what is happening.”
Plooma walked from his chair and stood in front of her. She wanted to look into his eyes so she jumped onto the platform. The two looked at each other as equals. “Captain, the Regals, Ecollites, and Hellamites have built a massive fleet which, even as we speak, is in wormhole space heading toward Earth. They have the firepower to destroy your planet several times over. I did not want to be a part of this plan and that is why I and my crew need your help. If you help us I swear on my honor you will have my help in defending your planet from the attack.”
“And those that are chasing us, they’re part of this plan?”
“I have gathered everyone in the Regal military who did not want this war and placed them on my ship. Everyone else is my enemy.”
“And you swear on your honor?”
He lowered his head once again showing a sign of submission. “I swear on my honor.”
She looked at the Rulla. His pride ran deeper than his loyalty to Regal.
Her communicator beeped. “Captain, we’re still getting interference but we think we can work through it. Can you hear me?”
Captain Cook, not taking her eyes off the Rulla, replied. “Commander, I can hear you. Change of plans. Destroy those bastards who are attacking us.”
Rulla Plooma looked at her and smiled. The violent and swift destruction of the pursuing ships played on the screen behind him.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Professor Ricter hated the fact the Gyssyc scientist working with him had chosen the name Albert Einstein. Gyssyc names were impossible for humans to pronounce. It had nothing to do with phonetic spelling and everything to do with human vocal cords not being able to produce the sounds needed to pronounce the names.
Marjorie had set a bad example by naming the first Gyssyc Abraham Lincoln. Ever since then, any Gyssyc who had contact with a human wanted to be named after someone famous from Earth. This Gyssyc scientist decided to call himself Albert Einstein. He explained he had done his research and discovered this was the most famous scientist Earth ever known so it only made sense that he, the most famous Gyssyc scientist, should be named after him. Ricter protested but found it a losing battle. He also had to admit if the roles were reversed, he’d probably have done the same thing.
Lysis walked into the hologram room with a beaming smile on his flat face. “Hello, Professor Ricter, Einstein. It is good to work with both of you on this matter. I feel honored.”
Einstein and Ricter shared a glance at each other. They had discussed many times how cheerful the Ulliam were. Einstein told him the need to please was inbred into the race. They were a tribal race, a race that would fight each other till the last Ulliam, but, in the presence of non-Ulliam it was only natural for them to be pleasant.
“Are we ready?” Einstein asked. His long skinny fingers played on the controls and the lights dimmed. The now familiar simulation of the Ulliam system appeared. “Professor Ricter, have you found a planet yet?”
“No,” he replied.
“We better find one soon.”
“I’m looking through the charts as fast as I can,” Ricter snapped. “How long did it take you to find the moon?”
Einstein shot a look at Ricter. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not a fool,” Ricter replied. “You must have discovered the same thing I did when you studied Ulliam’s orbit. I’m guessing you noticed the winters growing colder and the summers hotter. You probably discovered some fossils which showed the climatic change of the planet over millions of years. It wasn’t unreasonable to decide the best way to stabilize it would be to place a moon there as a counterbalance.”
Einstein answered, amused. “You are clever. It took us several decades. In fact, finding the moon is one of the reasons we made such large advancements in wormhole technology.”
“I don’t understand,” Lysis said. “Are you telling me the moon wasn’t our natural satellite?”
“Yes,” Ricter said. “The Gyssyc placed it there probably hundreds of years before your war.”
“Amazing,” Lysis replied. “I am in awe at this.”
“Don’t be,” Ricter said bitterly. “They’re no smarter than you or me.”
“You really don’t believe that,” Einstein replied.
“Please,” Lysis said, “we do not need this bickering. We are here to save Ulliam, not to determine who is smarter.”
Einstein chuckled. “You can’t ignore my findings, Professor.”
“No, I can’t,” Professor Ricter replied.
Lysis once again looked between the two of them confused. “What findings? What are you two keeping from me?” His agitation was evident.
“Nothing,” Ricter said, shutting the system off.
“Come on, Professor Ricter, don’t keep him the dark. Let him know. He might be able to help.”
Ricter sighed and then turned to face Lysis. “The planet we need needs to be about the size of your third planet. We’ve never built a wormhole that big and we’re not sure we can.”
“We know we can’t,” Einstein replied. “It’s one of the reasons we went with a large moon close to the planet and not a large planet.”
“Of course there’s a way,” in an almost whisper he continued, “there is always a way.”
“Professor, we can’t generate enough material to keep a wormhole the size we need open for as long as we need it. Then, we need to move a planet through wormhole space and place it exactly where it’s needed. It took our engineers several generations to figure out how to place a simple moon in a steady orbit around a planet. You want to place a large planet in a very precise orbit around a sun. Not even the best Gyssyc scientist could figure how to do that.”
“I’m not Gyssyc,” Ricter said. “I’ll figure this out.”
“Professor,” Lysis said shyly, “I believe I have an idea.”
Ricter and Einstein looked at the Ulliam who continued. “From what I’ve read, if we place a wormhole near a planet or sun, the gravity from that planet or sun will travel through wormhole space, correct?”
“Yes,” Einstein said. “Gravity does travel through wormhole space and effect objects on the opposite side.”
“What if we place a wormhole near the sun of the planet we want to take and then we place another opening near the planet. Then, we place a third wormhole near the planet itself with the other end in the location we want to place it here in Ulliam.”
Professor Ricter closed his eyes and tried to picture what Lysis was telling him. A small smile formed on his lips. “The gravity of the planet will pull material from the sun through the wormhole, feeding the second wormhole.”
Einstein said, “We could build a magnetic device which could accelerate the material through the wormhole and control it. I would hate to have a stray strangelet destroy a sun.”
“Lysis,” Ricter said, “the three of us will work on the numbers and build a simulation to see if it could work.”
A communicator on Einstein’s belt beeped. He picked it up and looked at the screen. As he read, Ricter saw his shoulders slump. His mouth opened and he let out a small gasp. He looked at Ricter and Lysis. Professor Ricter wasn’t great at reading aliens, but he knew surprise well enough. “I—I must go,” Einstein said. “I’m sorry. I must return to my ship.”
“Wh
at is it?” Professor Ricter asked, holding Einstein in place by grabbing his thin arm.
“Please, let me go. I must return to my ship. It will be explained later.” He pulled away from the professor and quickly marched out of the room.
Ricter’s eyes narrowed; something was very wrong.
~*~
Payton walked into the holographic chamber, his mood somber and dark. He carried with him Marjorie’s report. Three races banning together to destroy the Earth. Three small races with small fleets allying themselves to create one large armada. These three worlds were so different from each other and each had a different history with Earth. It was something no one suspected.
The Ecollites were one of the first races they encountered. They had xenophobia unlike anything seen before or since. When the Ecollites’ home planet was found, they destroyed the probe that found it. It took Earth a year before they could send a manned expedition to the planet and when the unarmed ship arrived, it was destroyed before it could even send a greeting. That caused the first Earth/Ecollites war which devastated their home planet. Then, they somehow got wormhole technology and a second war broke out. The Earth president at the time ordered a preemptive strike that destroyed all their docks and most of their starships. Ever since then, the Ecollites were a minor threat, attacking Earth ships in hit and run raids but rarely venturing outside their own system’s borders.
They never found the Hellamite home planet. They were a race that seemed scattered, disjointed. Many speculate that the Hellamites might not have a home world and were a race of nomads. They considered themselves at war with the Earth even though they never posed any real threat. They would attack larger ships then scatter. The damage they caused was either a minor inconvenience or a major problem. Payton recalled the Arwen being one of the ships they attacked, killing a few hundred of Marjorie’s men.
The Regals were the easiest to understand. They would always gravitate toward the stronger force. They valued dominant/submissive relationships with other planets. They saw themselves as submissive and would do what it took to become dominant. Again, it seemed odd they would join the armada. Even odder they would want to wage war with Earth unless they thought they could come out on top. Of all the races, they had the most powerful fleet and would provide the most ships.
He needed to defend the Earth against this impressive show of force. What did he have to work with? The Ulliam war was short but it cost the lives of tens of thousands of people and destroyed almost half the fleet. It was going to take decades to recover. He didn’t have the ships or the manpower to defend the Earth if the fleet was as big as Marjorie reported it to be.
However, he was given an order and he was going to follow that order. He walked over to a control panel and dimmed the lights. With a practiced hand, he activated the real time wormhole monitor.
Above him, all of wormhole space appeared. At any moment there were at a least a dozen ships traversing the little understood parallel dimension located next to their own. Each ship produced a white contrail that stretch far behind it. The contrail was invisible to the naked eye; the monitoring system enhanced it to make it easier for anyone observing to see what was traveling through space.
He made a request for the computer to mark the ships that were known and those unknown. Within moments all the Earth and Ulliam ships appeared green, all other ships red. He spotted the Arwen. He wished he could reach out and pluck it out of wormhole space so he could see Marjorie one last time.
“Sentimental fool,” he said to himself. Then he saw them. The computer marked the armada as a large swarm of red dots. This was an advantage he had. No one outside a small group of people knew the Corps had the ability to monitor wormhole space as precisely as they could. No one knew the Gyssyc had helped them establish a system which would allow communication in near real time. Before the Gyssyc, it would take weeks for a message to travel from one system to another, now it took a few hours. If the system was close enough, a few minutes.
He zoomed in and looked closely at the fleet. They had organized themselves in a very tight formation. Battle cruisers and their support ships in the front with the carriers in the back. He had the computer do a count. The number was staggering. Over ten thousand ships with enough firepower to leave the Earth baron. He asked the computer to look for troop ships and it found none. This was a mission of total destruction, not occupation. Earth’s sins have finally caught up with them and this was the harbinger of its destruction.
Payton closed his eyes and visualized how the attack might go. The fleet would come out of wormhole space and move quickly toward Earth. They could easily start the attack as soon as they appeared. A volley of missiles could reach Earth within a few minutes. Of course, the fleet was expecting the attack to be a complete surprise. Perhaps he could use that to his advantage.
What else do we have they don’t know about? he thought. We can come out of wormhole space almost fully charged, unlike them, who were probably using older technology; it would take them a few minutes to have their shields and energy weapons powered up.
A plan formed in his mind. He played a few simulations on the computer and then when he was satisfied with one he would play it above his head to see it on a grand scale.
He did this several dozen times, each time noticing something that would not work. He corrected any mistakes then reran the simulation. He hardly noticed the time go by. He barely paid attention to the rumbling in his stomach as hunger tried to gain his attention.
After twelve hours, he felt he had a good plan. He saved the program, rubbed his eyes, looked at his watch, and decided it was time to get out of here and attend to some other work. This could wait till the morning.
His mind felt numb but he knew there were things he needed to do before sleep. He walked into his room then sat on his bed. Rubbing his eyes, he looked over at his desk. It was decorated with the spoils of dozens of battles. Trinkets from thankful world leaders, awards from several presidents and a few personal treasures he managed to get his hands on after battles. The most important item on his desk was a picture of him and Marjorie standing on a shore, the sun setting behind them, the Arwen clearly visible as a small dot in the slowly darkening sky. He remembered Marjorie insisting they take the picture while the Arwen was visible and he did. Even when he had her alone he was still competing with the damn ship. Still, he loved her smile in the picture, loved the fact she had shed her normal military clothes for just one day, loved that she really wanted to share that moment with him.
He leaned back in his chair and stared at the picture a bit longer. Things always seemed to work against them. Even when he married her he knew it wouldn’t last. They were in love but they lived in two different worlds. She wanted the adventure of traveling between the stars while he wanted to move up in rank as quickly as possible.
He could never understand her love of that ship. It was just a ship. It had no personality, it had no feelings, and it was a hunk of high-tech metal. He would argue that point with her many times. She would tell him she could feel the Arwen’s heart. It talked to her with every creak and bump. She told him the Arwen wasn’t just a ship, it was her daughter, it was her mother, and it was her best friend.
He rubbed his eyes trying to will the sleep out of them, he still had so much work to do, he couldn’t afford rest. He called the galley and asked for a pot of the strongest coffee they had; he was going to need it.
Over the next few hours, Payton managed to finish off the pot of coffee. Marjorie was always on his mind as he sent the orders out for all ships to return to Earth as fast as possible. He outlined, in a coded message, what was at stake. Had he ever been in a battle where he was outnumbered this badly? He could recall no such battle. He worried about the battle plan. So much of it depended on factors he was guessing at. Would the fleet arrive where he predicted? Would they take the bait he was going to lay? Was their wormhole technology as far behind as was last reported?
He finished his last cu
p of coffee and stood. He felt his knees crack and his back ache from sitting for such a long time. In a few hours he was going to have a meeting with President Nollan and maybe President Packard. Packard seemed to be spending more time on Earth than he did on Ulliam. He had also changed a great deal since he killed Merriam. Killing him had made Packard a stronger leader, someone whose reelection was uncontested. He recalled President Packard’s inaugural speech very clearly. He spoke of how Merriam looked at him, smiled, and shrugged. “It was the only time that tyrant showed me or any other Ulliam any respect. It taught me that I will no longer beg for respect but I will earn it. It showed me the only way to earn respect is to go out and get it.”
Ever since then, he and President Nollan had been constant partners, rarely leaving each other’s company. This crisis will only strengthen their partnership. A part of that bothered Payton but he couldn’t put a finger as to why.
Payton lay on the couch in his office and closed his eyes. Before drifting off to sleep, he had a quick image flash in front of his eyes. He saw Marjorie, standing on the bridge of the Arwen, flame all around her, shouting orders to some unseen person. He saw a fireball rip through the bridge. He heard her scream in horror. He snapped his eyes open and stared into the quiet, darkened room.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Leaving wormhole space in two minutes,” Commander Pippleton said. “Strangelet count at ninety percent.”
Thanks to Gyssyc technology, the time it took to create a strangelet was cut in half and they could create twice as many. The Arwen, along with every other wormhole traveling ship, had been upgraded to take advantage of this new technology. The Gyssyc still held a few secrets to themselves; they never did share how they could create a wormhole at a distance. There were still things the Gyssyc didn’t know about, like force field technology, so Marjorie was sure there would be a fair swap of data between the two.
The Arwen Book one: Defender Page 26