by T. R. Harris
“Coming to one-eight-zero, up forty.”
“There is something out there,” Jym said from the nav screen. Everyone froze.
“What is it?” Adam finally asked when the little bear didn’t volunteer further details.
“I…I do not know.”
Reluctantly, Adam asked the computer for an analysis.
“Unknown gravity signature. I am displaying it on the main screen.”
It was two dots of light against the black background of space. The contacts were representations of the energy readout and not actual lights in space. Still, they were strange. The dots appeared to be circling each other, but not in a spiral. As they spun in closer, they would speed up and then fly away, only to slow and return again. The dance formed an infinity shape of light.
Everyone on the bridge was mesmerized by the almost hypnotic pattern. And then the stars disappeared.
“What the hell?” Adam said in a whisper.
“It’s a ship, Adam,” Jym reported.
He had to take the alien’s word for it, because it was like no ship he’d ever seen. It was made of a black matte material that refused to reflect the starlight around it. It was also incredibly huge.
“Computer, reduce magnification.”
“There is no magnification. This is a live view.”
“Kaylor, watch out!”
The Belsonian pulled back on the stick, racing up along the long fuselage.
“Distant to target, twenty miles,” Jym reported. “The ship is over six miles long.”
“Something new from the Nuoreans?” Lt. Drake asked.
“They do like to make their ships big,” Adam responded.
Lights began to flicker, along with controls and monitor screens.
“What’s happening,” Adam asked the bridge.
“We’ve contacted…a diffusion shield,” Jym replied, astonishment in his voice.
“This far out? It can’t be.”
“Yet it is. The shield is drawing away our power. We—”
Jym didn’t have to say anything else. The ship went dark and dead in the water.
Diffusion shields absorb energy from flash bolts and then bleed the electricity back into space. Having come in contact with such a screen, all active energy aboard the Tobias was drained from the ship.
“We’re twenty miles from the surface of the black ship. DS’s can’t be created that far out,” Adam protested.
“Unless they can,” said Jym, ending the debate.
With a dead ship, they lost internal gravity, compensating fields and life support. The tiny luxury yacht began to bounce along the invisible energy field, with every jolt felt aboard the ship. The monstrous ship was moving through space, and eventually the Tobias came to the end. It drifted off in space behind the dark vessel, as the crew stared out the viewport at the largest set of gravity generators they’d ever seen. They towered five hundred feet high, and there were six of them. They would have to be big to move something this large—and they were.
A few seconds later all they could see of the black ship was the cloaking of stars as it made its passage through space.
Systems began to come back on as battery backups kicked on. It would still take several seconds for full power to be restored.
Sherri and Riyad had made it to the bridge, beginning their journey in the dark before the lights came back on.
“What the hell is that?” Sherri could see the black object transiting the starfield.
“Some new super weapon from the Nuoreans,” Adam answered.
“Then why didn’t they fire on us?”
“Too small of a target possibly.”
Adam used his ATD to try to contact Nolan’s ship. The CW comm was still down. If the Rutledge had contacted the diffusion screen as well, they would need time for their systems to recover. He couldn’t detect a signal of any kind. If the computers were down, his ghost program would also be out of order.
“I have intermittent nav scans available,” Jym reported. “The Nuorean fleet is turning toward the black ship. Adam…they appear to be in attack mode.”
“Against their own ship?”
“Obviously, it’s not one of theirs,” Riyad pointed out. “And if not, then who the hell are they?”
The ship’s computer felt Adam and the rest of the crew would like to watch the battle taking place outside the ship, so she placed a magnified view on the main screen for all to see.
The Nuoreans were engaging, sending dozens and then hundreds of powerful cannon bolts at the black ship. The unknown craft didn’t deviate from its course. Instead, something very strange was taking place.
As the roiling balls of plasma contacted the impossibly distant diffusion shield, they were absorbed by the screen. This was expected. What happened next wasn’t.
23
The huge, black starship appeared on the Nuorean threat screens from inside a strange, double event horizon.
The techs had never seen such a gravity signature before. It was like two deep voids in space, close to one another, and causing a confined rippling effect on the surrounding space that effectively cancelled out ninety percent of the gravity wave. Something this large and powerful should have had a more widespread influence, but this one didn’t. And what made this particular gravity well even more unique was the fact that it was created by a spaceship over six miles long.
The generators required to create singularities deep enough to transport such a large vessel would have to be enormous, and from the look of the ship, they were. But the reduced signature meant the mighty warship could slip into an area with very little warning and be upon its prey before anyone knew it was coming.
Such as it had just done to the Nuoreans.
First-Lead Axn Kallen-Noc (1203) was called to the combat center aboard the battle-carrier 9 to watch the transit of the dark spaceship through the system. He immediately attempted contact with Master-Lead Qintis on the surface of the Third Cadre refuge planet. He knew a battle was taking place there and wasn’t sure if contact was possible at this time. That’s what his ship was there to guarantee—that the contest would result in a Nuorean victory.
The introduction of this behemoth into the battle changed all his assumptions.
His curiosity concerning the huge starship grew more pronounced when scouts reported that there were no trailing support vessels, just the massive ship, alone and on a direct course for the 9. As a master player, Axn understood game strategy. He knew an enemy wouldn’t intentionally breach an adversary’s stronghold unless they had a reasonable expectation of victory. Besides, a vessel of this size—the largest Axn had ever seen—constituted a major investment of workforce, technology and material. The forces of the Kac would not risk such an investment on an unsure gambit.
Therefore, Axn recalled two-thirds of his attack force, leaving only a third to engage the huge ship. He had another two hundred ships in reserve, but he wasn’t willing to commit them until he knew what he was up against. At the same time, he informed his other three support ships that they would be leaving the area. Once the strike force reported back, he could always amend those orders.
In the command center, Axn took control of the attack. “Probing at first,” he said. “Feel them out.”
A series of confirmations came to the bridge of the battlecruiser.
A moment later, Axn leaned over in his chair. He didn’t do it to see better, but rather from the unexpected nature of what he saw on the viewscreen.
The first of his ships opened fire on the black ship, the balls of hot plasma racing toward the impossible-to-miss spacecraft. Diffusion screens flared an iridescent blue—as was expected. What wasn’t expected was the distance at which the bolts contacted the screen. It was almost ten times farther out than normal screens would be placed. Not only that, but Axn noticed a faint double glow closer in as residual energy bled to other screens.
The alien ship had three distinct diffusion shields, one stacked upon the other.
Axn had never seen this before; in fact, he had no idea how this could be done. Yet it was possible, as his eyes testified.
His concern grew deeper. The diffusion shield—which was designed to absorb the energy from plasma bolts and bleed it back into space—was still glowing, up to the point that the blue light moved laterally away from the center of the ship before arcing back like a miniature stellar flare to connect with the forward and aft sections of the black ship. As this was happening, the second diffusion screen began to glow strong and bright. Axn knew instantly that the energy from the plasma bolts was being rechanneled to the secondary screen, and as his ships fed more bolts into the outer screen, the inner screens would only grow stronger.
“Stop firing,” he ordered through the comm. All they were doing was making the defenses of the black starship more formidable.
He also noticed something else. Whereas most diffusion screens were essentially flat panels of energy, positioned to protect the most-vulnerable sections of the ship, the glow from the alien screens extended in a contiguous fashion around the entire vessel. There were no breaks, no openings where precise bolts could possibly slip through. In its current configuration, the alien ship was impervious to attack.
“Advanced force, break off attack. Return to fleet. Third Squad, proceed to surface of planet to evacuate Master-Lead Qintis.”
On the screen, Axn watched as six ships broke away from the main force and took a different vector. The remaining twenty-seven ships in his attack force began evasive maneuvers, changing course and taking four distinct paths out of the system to meet up with the 9 in the space between systems.
So far, the black ship hadn’t made any offensive moves; they didn’t need to.
Just then ten thin energy signatures appeared from the ship. They were extremely powerful and continuous. Axn turned to his tac officer.
“Analysis?”
“Forthcoming,” said the First-Level Lead-Tech. “Laser beams, my lord,” he reported a moment later.
Axn looked back at the screen. Several more lines of light were flashing out in a myriad of directions, tracking his departing attack squadron. Nineteen of his ships went offline.
“Execute emergency evasion,” he ordered, but he already knew it was too late.
Axn shook his head, confused by this new wrinkle in the game he and his people were playing with the inhabitants of the Kac Galaxy. Lasers were seldom used in space combat, for the simple fact that to create beams of the proper intensity required more energy than could be produced within a starship. Even battlecruisers like the 9 lacked the capacity. The preferred weapon of space combat was the ubiquitous flash cannon, which fired concentrated balls of plasma shot out using railgun technology. They could travel at three-quarters light and were ballistic in nature. This may sound impressive, but for starships in maneuvering gravity-wells, even this was considered slow. So barrages of leading bolts were sent out, predicting the course of the enemy vessel and flooding space with their deadly presence, hoping to catch the influence of an enemy gravity-well.
Lasers were a different matter. The star-hot beams could travel at near the speed of light and be adjusted to track the movement of a starship. And that’s just what the black ship was doing. Within a minute, his attack force was gone.
Axn leaned back in his chair and summarized the brief encounter. Besides the impenetrable screen around the ship, the aliens also had a weapon system with incredible range and power. He sighed. The enemy could have destroyed his ships long before they got within firing range. Instead, they were allowed to approach, either to demonstrate the black ship’s invincibility, or to test their systems. Either way, it confirmed his earlier belief: The aliens knew they would win even before the first bolt was launched. He had been wise to order the retreat.
An hour later, the 9 was in open space between systems. Axn ordered the three major ships in his fleet to enter deep gravity-wells and bolt toward the six worlds that constituted Nuorean space. He was confident the black ship wouldn’t follow; they didn’t need to. The Nuorean systems within the Kac were well-known, even sanctioned.
This had been a test—a very successful test—of the enemy’s new super-weapon.
At that moment, Axn (1203) was glad he wasn’t the leader of the Nuorean forces in the Kac—that honor fell to Master Lead-Player Qintis Bondo (454), who by then had been rescued from the Third Cadre planet. That rescue still made Axn third-lead, instead of second. Even then, he would eventually be called upon to help devise a response to the black ship, and at the moment he was at a loss as to even speculate a solution. And if one couldn’t be found, then the Nuorean’s time in the Kac—what the evil Humans called the Milky Way—was quickly coming to an end.
24
Eventually communications were reestablished between all three ships in Adam’s fleet. Neither the Tobias nor the Rutledge was in any condition to come to the aid of the Biddle, which was still hiding in the asteroid field near the edge of the system. Even if they were, there was still the matter of the huge black starship prowling the system.
When the Nuoreans bolted for their sanctuary worlds, the alien spacecraft made a long, looping turn and headed back toward the Tobias and the Rutledge. Gravity drive focusing rings were still charging aboard the ships, so all the crews could do was watch and wait with nervous anticipation for what was going to happen next. They’d seen the powerful laser beams take out a third of the Nuorean attack force, as well as the glowing triple set of diffusion screens. The Nuoreans broke off their attack almost as soon as it began, realizing the futility of their actions. And they had a hundred fighters plus a battle-carrier.
What could Adam’s two barely-serviceable starships do against that?
The fact that both Human ships were still in one piece gave some aboard a smidgeon of hope. After all, didn’t the saying go: ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend?’ Adam was hoping they’d just found a new and extremely powerful friend.
There was another fact that gave him hope. As the black ship changed course and approached Adam’s two ships, he detected countless systems aboard the ship of Formilian—or at least Milky Way—design. Since so much of Formilian technology had been pirated by now, nearly everything built in the galaxy was compatible to his ATD. This meant the huge ship was of local design, and not from some distant galaxy or another dimension. Adam had already been there and done that; he wasn’t looking forward to a replay.
Fortunately—possibly—his questions would be answered soon. The Tobias was being pulled into an incredibly huge landing bay by magnetic grapples. So far the Rutledge wasn’t being towed in. Nolan kept his ship in near-dark status, hoping the mysterious behemoth would ignore him. As the Tobias disappeared into the belly of the beast, he got his wish—sort of.
The black ship created a deep gravity-well, with the same narrow configuration as when they first detected the vessel. Then it popped out of normal space and entered the fringe of an event horizon, leaving conventional physics behind.
What it didn’t leave behind was the Rutledge. The tiny ship came under the influence of the deep gravity-well and was taken along for the ride…wherever that may lead.
To Adam’s surprise, the landing bay of the huge ship was empty of any other starships or shuttles. It was large enough to carry hundreds, and as they witnessed from outside, this was only one of six such bays. Now the Tobias sat small and insignificant in the center of the cavernous chamber.
Once the room was sealed and atmosphere returned, Adam had to wait another fifteen minutes for the temperature to climb to a comfortable level; it took a lot to heat such a large room, especially one that had recently been open to the chill of space. He went to the main exit hatch and looked back at the anxious faces of his team and crew.
“No use putting it off. These guys are our new allies. And seeing what they did to the Nuoreans, I think we need to be gracious guests.”
The concerned looks on the faces indicated his little pep talk didn’
t have the desired effect. So he turned and undogged the hatch, before stepping out into the warm and slightly humid chamber.
Although there was only one starship in the landing bay, it wasn’t truly empty. Along three walls were stacked hundreds—if not thousands—of metal boxes, each about four feet square. Their surfaces were uniform and carried no labels or markings of any kind. They were stacked to the ceiling, and from an angle, Adam could see there were twenty rows extending out from the walls.
Without closer examination he was at a loss as to what the boxes contained. If they were food stocks, then there was enough to support the population of a small city for ten years or more. Weapons, possibly, but what kind? The black ship used lasers against the Nuoreans. Besides, there could be a couple hundred thousand of the crates aboard holding over a million weapons. Where were the soldiers who would use them? Even a ship this big couldn’t carry that many troops.
The rest of the Tobias contingent joined him on the latticed deck, silently gawking at the sheer size of the room and the vast number of stacked crates. Adam could see through the glass panel into the control room for the landing bay. There was no one up there looking down at his motley crew. In fact, the whole place was as quiet as a tomb, without even the ubiquitous hum of the gravity generators. Was this a fully-robotic ship, with no living crew aboard? If so, then why build it so big?
“Please proceed to the second airlock door on your right,” a voice directed them from hidden speakers. It could have been a computer speaking; one couldn’t tell these days.
“Are you automated?” Adam asked as the entourage approached the door.
The panel slid aside.
“I assure you, Adam Cain, I am quite real.”
He was also a Klin.
25
In another time, Adam would have shot first and asked questions later. But with his new mutant powers, he didn’t feel compelled to act so impulsively. Sherri, however, wasn’t so conflicted. It took a sudden surge of his lightning-quick reactions to grab her hand before she could level the MK-47 at the alien. Adam would have liked nothing more than to see another dead Klin at the moment, but now he needed answers.