"You mean an attack on the Iskolians?" said Tia. "But they have trade agreements—and a war pact. Why would they do that?"
"I've analyzed their attack," Anna interrupted, "We weren't their only target. But they did use quite a bit of force against us. They knew we were there."
"But the Iskolians knew they were coming also," Sandy replied. "Someone high-up sent for them."
"Yes," Suni agreed, "But who?"
"The Emperor must've known about it," Tia insisted.
"Then why did they hit Iskolian military targets?" Anna asked.
"A coup?" Tia asked, unbelievingly.
"Perhaps," Suni replied, "but whoever it was, they wanted us out of the way."
"And what about the 'black hole' people? If they gave chase, they could be near us right now." Anna said.
"Good lord, you're right," Sandy agreed. "Two hours is too much time to waste. We've got to get out of here as soon as we can. We can't even tell if they're around."
"Anna, modify your scanners for the x-ray spectrum where we first saw them," Suni said. "And don't forget a doppler shift in case they're behind us."
"I'm doing it now, Suni," Anna replied.
"Let me know if you get anything. Dyna, what's our minimum time to breaklight capability?"
"Fifty-eight minutes, Suni."
"Any way to shorten that?"
"Negative."
"So we get breaklight back. Where to, then?" Anna asked.
"We need to get away and regroup," Suni replied. "We know we can't go back for Frank right now. If we do, they'll blow us out of the sky. We’ll head back to the black hole we found. When we get there we can work out whatever needs to be done."
Forty minutes later Anna found something on the scanners.
"It's definitely moving with us, Suni," she said. "And it looks just like the thing that hit us back at Iskol."
"How long has it been there?" Suni asked.
"I don't know. I just found it a minute ago."
"Why doesn't it finish us off?" Sandy wondered aloud, as they watched the main imager.
"Maybe they want to watch us when we breaklight out of here," Nikki suggested.
"Damn," Sandy exclaimed. "They could cream us right now."
"How much longer, Dyna?" Suni asked.
"Fourteen minutes."
"Can you do repairs while we accelerate?"
"Affirmative. But antimass fields must remain shut down."
"No sense in that," Suni remarked. "They'd just get suspicious and realize that we know they're there."
"They're not moving any closer. We can wait a few more minutes," Anna suggested.
"That's true. But bring us back up to Alert Condition Red just in case. We may not have much of a chance if they attack, but I'm not going down without a fight."
They watched the ghostly craft as the minutes slowly ticked away. Foremost in their minds was the fear as yet unspoken; What if the "black hole" people could keep up, even in transpace? They did not want to think about that. Breaklight was their last trump. If it did not play, they might not live to know about it.
"Temporary repairs are complete," Dyna interrupted the tension.
"Destination; Black hole, Dyna. Let's do a gamma factor of ten billion before we breaklight, and get us off course to a vector lightyear at least fifty degrees. I don't want them to know which way we're going," Suni instructed.
"Compliance."
"Engage."
The five women on the bridge watched the main imager as the universe slipped away in front of them and transpace imposed its whiteness.
"Maximum acceleration unavailable," said Dyna.
"I should've known that," Suni said. "There's probably too much structural damage."
"Affirmative."
"Okay. How long's this going to take?" Suni asked.
Sandy looked over her imager and replied, "Three days, fifteen hours."
"That's not too bad," Tia said.
"Don't forget about the dust ghosts," Suni remarked.
"Dyna?" Anna queried.
"No effect," Dyna replied. "ETA confirmed."
"Anna, are you getting anything?" Suni asked.
"Scanners don't work in transpace, Suni."
"How about a visual? Black holes should be easy to spot in transpace."
"Nothing. There's nothing out there," Anna replied.
"I don't know if that's good or bad. But if they were here, they would've done something by now. I'm going to back to bed. I've missed too much sleep already," said Suni.
"Take a couple extra hours, Suni. We can do a little overtime."
"Thank you, Anna."
Suni started to leave the bridge to head back for some sleep, but stopped before reaching the door and turned around. "Anna, send a drone back to Iskol. Tell Frank that we’re alright and that we’ll return. And have it find out about him."
"Aye, Suni. Get some rest."
Suni turned again and left the bridge.
Three days and fifteen hours later the Butterworth made orbit around the black hole it had first encountered many days earlier. Michelle and Nikki were at the com. Sandy and Anna were preparing for the graveyard shift and had decided to arrive early for debreak. Everyone else had come up to watch also, except Maria, who was still in sick bay.
Maria was awake and taking food now, but still unable to leave her bed. Everyone visited her often, so she had plenty of company. Dyna said, in three more days Maria would be able to get up and move around, although her left arm was still paralyzed. More operations would be needed to bring it back to usefulness.
After debreak and orbit around the black hole, everyone else cleared the bridge and Sandy and Anna took over the midnight to morning shift. The night was uneventful, so Sandy and Anna discussed what sort of changes they would like to see to make the Butterworth a little more battle-worthy than it had been.
First thing the next morning there was a meeting on the bridge. All crewmembers were there except Maria, who watched and listened over the ship’s comlink. Suni opened the proceedings.
"Good morning, everyone. You too, Sahn," Suni greeted, and then took a little sip of coffee.
"Good morning," they said back.
"We have with us some of the brightest people from our homeworld. We have, probably, the fastest and most powerful starship in the galaxy. We have the most sophisticated computer that anyone knows of. Several days ago they beat the hell out of us. Why?"
At first no one spoke. The pause went on for almost a minute before Dyna finally broke in.
"I have an analysis," she said.
"Go on, Dyna."
"This is an exploratory and pleasure craft, not designed for battle." Dyna had summed it up in a sentence and the fact stared at them.
"She's right," Heidi said. "We thought we had what we needed to take care of ourselves, and we didn't."
"Frank warned me about this long ago," said Nikki. "In fact, he warned all of us. I remember he said to make sure everyone got his message. He said it long before we made landfall on Iskol."
"That's true, Nikki," Michelle said, "but we got his message and did what we knew best to do. If we hadn't, we would not have escaped. We can thank him for that."
"Something on scan," Paddy interrupted.
"What?" Suni said, confused.
"Dronebot! It's back!"
"Bring it in! Bring it in!" Michelle said, excitedly.
"Hurry, hurry." said Tia.
They waited tensely as the lone machine returned from its two hundred lightyear trip. Dyna made the drone's announcement.
"Frank sends his regards."
"Oh thank God he's alive," Nikki said, as tears welled up in her eyes.
"Thank you," Paddy said, also with a dab of wetness in her eyes.
"It's incredible," Sandy muttered to herself, looking away, "He got my message."
Sahn, a little confused, finally asked, "What is it?"
"Oh hoho," Anna said, happily, "Frank is alive."
Sahn grasped the meaning to be that the Chosen One was still alive. She had never actually realized that he had been in danger. "Oh," she said.
"What's the rest of the message," Suni asked.
"He says he's in hiding from the Iskolian government. The slaves are taking care of him along with Trong, Crush and Mangle, who saved his life and helped him escape during the takeover. The Emperor has been overthrown and Lord Wellum is the new head of state."
"I knew it. It was a coup," Anna said.
"He instructs us to stay away from Iskol until we have a viable plan for getting him off the planet," Dyna went on, "He also advises that we need to work on the hull and the weapons systems."
"How thick is the hull now?" Tia asked.
"Less than two millimeters," Paddy replied. "But when you consider that it's neutronium, it's equivalent to twenty-three meters of solid iron. Nothing can punch through it."
"Something did," Suni reminded her.
"I don't know how," she argued. "A thousand megaton nuclear bomb couldn't even scratch the surface. Whatever hit us was superheavy."
"We've already determined that it was," Suni reminded her. "But don't forget that neutronium structure is maintained by nuclear force wavefields. If those wavefields are disrupted, the neutronium breaks down and decays into ordinary matter."
"Then what can we do?" Tia asked.
"We can thicken the hull," Michelle answered, "We can reinforce the structural components, and improve the nuclear wavefield matrix."
"But the ship isn't big enough for all that," Paddy argued, "If we add even a millimeter to the outer hull, we'd have to build much larger drive units to push us along. We're using forty million g-force of drives to push us along already. And those four drives occupy most of the back end of the ship."
"I've considered that," Michelle responded. "Anna and I have been working on a new drive unit. It's a one hundred million g-force drive, and we'd planned on building eight of them to mount externally at the aft end of the ship. If you like, you can triple the hull thickness. These eight new drives won't be phased in the least."
"Then we should do that," Paddy agreed, "Triple the hull thickness and add the eight new drives. We can use the four old drives to increase the power to the nuclear wavefield generators. The new bigger ones we'll have to make to support the increased mass of the ship."
"I like all of those ideas," Suni interrupted, "Unless there are any objections, we must start right away."
"One problem," Paddy said, "Where are you going to get the matter we need?"
"From there," Michelle answered, pointing at the main imager, where the black hole was displayed.
"If we remove it or change its mass, they'll know we did it. And they'1l know what we can do."
"We can do it," Maria said weakly over the comlink, "without being detected. We can use gravity field generators to simulate its presence. Build a shell around it and keep the shell hidden below the gravity field."
"Yes. That can be done," Sandy said slowly, "I think. It would take time."
"It would make an excellent hideout," Nikki suggested.
"True," Suni said, thoughfully.
"I think we should do it," Paddy agreed.
"I agree," Suni confined.
"I think we need to talk about the weapons systems," Tia said.
"She's right," Nikki agreed, "The only weapons we had that did any good were the neutron torpedoes. Problem is, for every fifteen we fired, only one made a mark."
"And the tachyon cannons barely worked against their missiles. I had to beat their ships to death with tachyons before they were even disabled," Tia confined.
"We need to boost the power to those systems," Sandy remarked. Up to now all of those systems have been feeding off the main drives. If we build eight new drives, we can use one of the old ones and dedicate it to the weapons systems. We'll have to build bigger cannons to handle the extra power, but if we're going to build the bigger engines, we'll have plenty of time to do that."
"That sounds feasable," Suni concurred. "What about the neutron torpedoes?"
"They need bigger drives also," Anna said, "The enemy ships were evading our torpedoes, and the torpedoes couldn't generate enough power to change course fast enough."
"Then we need to modify the assembly line on the neutron torpedoes. Analyze the last battle and see how much more power they need," Suni suggested.
"Will do, Suni," Anna said.
"Now, what about the black hole people?" Suni asked. "How do we defend against them?"
"Won't neutron torpedoes work against them?" Heidi asked.
"No," Sandy answered, "They would stall in the event horizon. The people inside would have them disarmed before the torpedoes went two meters."
"Then what?"
"A KC engine," Michelle said.
"Kiruna-Corbyn."
"Yes," Heidi agreed, thoughtfully, "Attack a black hole with a black hole. Will it work?"
"I don' see why not," Michelle replied.
"Well, ladies," Suni interrupted, "Let's get busy. We have a lot of work to do, and no time to do it. Frank's waiting for us. Dyna, do you have a time estimate for completion of all the modifications?"
"I have an initial estimate of sixteen weeks, Suni," Dyna replied.
"Eh?"
Sixteen
Eight weeks had passed since the overthrow of the Iskolian government, and a week since Frank had heard from his ship. He had been happy to hear that his crew was alive and safely away from Iskol. Unfortunately, still in hiding, he was a prisoner of Iskol. He stayed underground most of the time, and on rare occassions, ventured out at night, peering up at the stars wistfully. It reminded him of earlier days when he was still a prisoner of Earth's gravity. The slaves and the bots made such a noise about his wandering outside at night that he did not do it very often, for the trouble of having to listen to their complaints.
Three times now, he had been forced to seek new shelter, as the Iskolian searchers closed in, and even once, almost caught him. He had only escaped with minutes to spare. Several slaves had died protecting the knowledge of his whereabouts. Frank was not told this because they knew that if he were, he would give himself up. Even Trong and the other bots allowed this information to go untold, for they knew the consequences as well.
Frank spent most of his time watching the holo-set. It turned out to be about as entertaining as Earth TV, but a little more developed. He needed only to imagine that the characters were human before he really began to enjoy it. Escaping Earth TV, however, did not allow him escape from the scourge of Earth TV, which must be, he guessed, the scourge of television everywhere in the universe—TV commercials.
Net continued to grow and expand, sending its children out into the galaxy with the single-minded intent of governing it in Frank's name. This bothered Frank since he really did not want anything to do with governing the galaxy, but more importantly, he wondered whether he had unleashed something dangerous. And even though his machines said differently, he knew that machines were basically unfeeling and unemotional—unable to comprehend the human, or life condition, how would they deal with kindness or despair, happiness or want?
Frank was not certain that he could stop it. One 'bot had already overridden his direct order so that it could 'preserve the body'. He might expect more of this logic if he ordered Net to shut down.
At any rate, Net was the only reason he was still alive, so he allowed it to continue. His main concern now was getting back to his starship or getting his starship back to him.
"See those two bluish stars right there," Frank said, pointing into the brilliant night sky, "My homeworld lies somewhere between them. Actually a lot further away, but in that direction."
"You miss your homeworld, don't you," Shuma replied.
"Not as much as I should. Perhaps I miss my people. I need the company of the ones I love."
"I too, miss ones that I love."
"But your people are all around. How can you
miss them?"
"I was taken from my homeworld when I was young, but still old enough to know and remember those I left behind. My brother and I were captured together. I was brought here to serve our Iskolian masters. My brother was sold and taken to another world far away."
"How do you know this?"
"Friends… friends told me."
"That is unfortunate."
Shuma did not reply immediately, but seemed thoughtful for a moment. "You must be getting back to safety soon. We’ve been out here too long already."
"I suppose you won’t leave me alone until I go back into that hole again."
"As always, if I must."
"Don’t bother. I give up."
"That is wise."
The two arose from the small clearing and returned to the tunnel entrance, climbed down and returned to Frank’s room. Trong had posted himself at the tunnel entrance and followed as they walked through the small corridor.
Frank prepared himself for sleep, still armored in his skinsuit, which he longed to remove. The slaves and the warbots would not hear of it, no matter how much he complained.
"Sir," Trong interrupted his nightly ritual, "there is word from the Butterworth. A plan has been formulated for your escape. Net is making the arrangements. You are to be smuggled aboard a freighter which will rendezvous with the Butterworth at a designated point away from this system."
Frank said nothing, but looked over at Shuma, who appeared as though her whole family had died.
"I won’t forget your cause," Frank said to her.
"I know," Shuma replied, and then she left.
"So when do I leave?"
"In three days time," Trong answered.
"I'll sleep very well tonight."
"That is good to know."
Frank did not sleep well that night. In fact, he hardly slept at all. In his tossing and turning, he was unable to detach himelf from the plight of the Relmish people. He had sworn not to become involved in local politics, but this thing would not go away.
Frank awoke early the next morning, groggy, but excited. Apparently, the conflict he bore had settled itself during the early hours of the morning.
Breakfast was more of the slave food cubes with water. Frank longed for a nice "bacon'n'eggs" breakfast and was almost able to taste it as he consummed the cubes and considered his impending freedom.
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