When the two groups finally merged without so much as a shot being fired, Frank finally realized what had happened. "Whoever came up with with that crazy stunt gets me for a whole month," Frank said.
"Let’s hope it was a woman," Gronk replied.
Frank chuckled at that, got up and fell forward, drunk.
"Geez, you people don’t hold your alcohol very well, do you," Gronk said, getting up.
"I didn’t think I had that much to drink, Frank said, pulling himself off the floor of the cave, "How the hell do we get outta here, now?"
"We have to go through the maze, this way," Gronk said as he opened a panel and crawled through.
Gronk moved quickly through the tunnels on hands and knees, and Frank had some difficulty keeping up. Twice Gronk stopped to wait for Frank, to insure that Frank did not get lost in the maze of tunnels.
After a half an hour of crawling, Gronk said, "We’re almost there."
Frank was growing weary of crawling, this not being a natural means of locomotion for him.
"Okay, I’m ou…" was all Frank heard before the explosion that shook the mountain. In the next moment, he heard the cave collapse ahead of him.
Thirty-Three
"Shore up that breach!" Suni yelled into her com set at her battle cruisers, "They’re trying to flank us!"
The Butterworth had been riddled with holes from attacks by the Black Hole ships. In the meantime, conventional enemy forces were still attempting to converge on the weakened Butterworth position. Suni had some difficulty keeping near Site 11 while trying to perform evasive manuevers to avoid attack from the Black Hole ships.
"Suni! I’ve redesigned some of the K-C Specials. They should be ready to fire now," Nikki said.
"Thank god you’re back. Fire them whenever you have a target." Suni replied.
"They’re all automatic," Nikki said, seating herself at her weapons station. How many of them did you get?"
"Only the two we got before. They’re still evading us."
At once, two K-C Specials came into view and then dropped out of view, transitioning into transpace. In moments, both of them began bleeping into and out of normal space, as they made their way to their targets. In another moment, one bright flare came into view, then a very bright flare in the same place, then another flare in another place, also followed by a very bright flare.
"Does that mean what I think it means?" Suni asked.
"I think so. Scanning for x-ray emissions… I’m not getting anything. I think we got both of them," Nikki replied.
"Damn, what did you do?"
"I modified them to track x-ray emissions, but I also had them drop in and out of transpace to get new bearings. Sorry it took so long."
"Good work, Nikki."
"Thanks. Now what do we have?"
"Don’t waste ‘em, but see how many of those warstations we can take out with those K-C Specials. Keep some in reserve in case more of those Black Hole ships turn up."
"Aye, Suni."
At once, Nikki began tracking and firing at the largest of the enemy warstations, picking them off one-by-one. Below, strange things were happening. Somehow, Tia, Michelle and Sandy had managed to entirely destroy all of the enemy ground forces that had previously outnumbered them a hundred to one. She had watched as the enemy forces began fighting each other, then watched all of those forces continue to dwindle in size until only a small group of enemy forces remained.
They calmly advanced to Michelle’s position, whereupon the two small armies appeared to merge and battle one-another with much weapons fire and many explosions. Within several minutes, there appeared only one army remaining, but it was not a warbot army. It was an army of Mechanicals. Meanwhile, Tia, Sandy and Michelle assured her that the valley was secure and that they were all unharmed, except for a few scrapes and minor wounds.
They would not explain what they had done or where they were, and Suni was unable to locate any of them or their warbots anywhere. To make matters worse, she had sent down landing craft to pick up parts and bodies, but obviously into a zone controlled by the enemy. Yet Tia had assured her that it was safe to do so. Their transponders had all been turned off, so she could not locate them that way.
~
Tia, Sandy and Michelle all turned in unison as the nearby explosion blew out the side of the southern mountain. Shortly after a mock battle, simulated in order to have the appearance that the Mechs had battled with Michelle’s warbots and had defeated them, when in reality they had merely reshaped themselves on-by-one into Mechs. They hoped that whomever might be watching from above might not notice that they ended with more Mechs than they had started out with.
At any rate, the ruse was complete, and though it might not fool other enemy forces for long, it would fool them for long enough. But the explosion in the side of the mountain boded ill for Frank. They knew he was still inside the mountain somewhere, since their search had revealed a cave in which they were certain he had been. Off of the cave was a small tunnel, now collapsed, apparently from an explosion from within. They had surmised that Frank had set off that explosion himself.
"I’m detecting a neutronium deposit over there, right where the explosion was," Michelle said. It was about a kilometer from where they were, and they were quick to arrive at the scene of the blast.
"I thought Frank lost his skinsuit," Sandy said, "How could there be any neutronium there?"
"This isn’t a skinsuit. There’s a lot more than that. It might be a warsuit, but where would he get one of those? Maybe we have a stray warbot."
"That’s possible. We need one of the big armored repairbots to start digging right here where the blast was."
The field of battle, now littered with corpses and machines of war, was getting cleaned up. Warbots, disguised as Mechs, had spread out across the valley, collecting other damaged warbots and warbot parts, which they set up as the second priority, the first being to maintain military control over the valley.
Some warbots had begun collecting the bodies of the enemy, placing them in large piles and burning them, after collecting documents and personal items from each of them. These items were also collected and placed neatly in rows away from the bonfires to be collected later by survivors from enemy armies. Images were made of each body before it was burned.
Suni had sent down craft for collecting damaged warbots and warbot parts. The valley was searched thoroughly for these, using neutronium detectors to locate anything made of this. Within a few minutes, one of the repairbots had been modified as a digging machine and was burrowing its way into the mountainside where the blast had occurred.
After an hour of digging, the modified repairbot backed out, pulling a body with it. It was gory with blood and wearing what appeared to be a warsuit, but not like the ones they wore.
"My god, no!" Michelle said.
"Wait, it’s not Frank," Sandy told her.
"What?"
"She’s right," Tia said. "I’m not sure if this is even alien. It looks sort of… human, but it’s not Frank. But it’s wearing a warsuit. A neutronium warsuit."
"Maybe it’s Relmish," Sandy ventured.
"No. This looks… prehuman, like a caveman."
"Yeah, caveman," the body said, and the three of them jumped.
"Oh my god, it’s alive!" Michelle said.
"Barely," Sandy replied, "We’ve got to get a medbot over here."
"No," the body said, struggling to speak, "It’s too late."
"You speak English."
"Yeah, learned it a long time ago."
"Who are you?" Tia asked.
"I’m Gronk."
"The Relmish Shaman…"
"Yes."
"Where’s Frank?"
"He was… behind me."
"But we’ve got to get you some help."
"No… No… It’s done for me. Tell Frank… tell Frank, everything is his now." Gronk said, his head fell to the side, and he let loose his final breath.
"He’
s dead," Tia said.
"Send the repairbot back in. Frank is still in there."
"Frank might have been killed too."
"Doesn’t matter, we’ve got to find him. If we have to bring his body back, then that’s what we’ll bring back," Sandy replied.
"So sad," Michelle said.
"What?" Tia asked.
"To draw your last breath in the presence of strangers."
"He was human… I think." Tia replied, "At least he was among his own kind."
"He spoke English," Sandy said, "Doesn’t that seem a bit odd?"
"Yes it is," Michelle replied, "very odd."
The modified repairbot was back in the tunnel, digging its way through a maze of tunnels, after removing the debris from the explosion. Where there had once been only a small tunnel, there was now a cave large enough for several warbots to stand shoulder to shoulder and walk through. Debris from the digging was converted to neutronium and stored.
After an hour of digging, they found Frank. Michelle was the first to greet him, running up to him and jumping onto him, holding and hugging him, though there was not much to feel through the warsuits each of them wore. Sandy and Tia also ran up to him, right behind Michelle, also making vain attempts at affection. The four walked out of the newly formed cave together. On making it to open air, Tia contacted Suni and reported that Frank had been found and was alive and well.
"You’re drunk!" Tia accused.
"Uh, yeah," Frank said, stumbling a bit.
"Ach! I thought you were injured," Tia said, then let loose of carrying him. "I can’t believe we were out here getting our asses shot off and you were getting drunk."
"Well… we were bored. We waited a long time, but we didn’t think you would be here so soon."
"Where did you get that suit?" Michelle asked him.
"Oh, this? Just something I threw on," Frank replied.
"Now stop it," Michelle said, "Where did you get it really?"
"Oh… where’s Gronk?"
The four of them stopped. Sandy looked at Michelle, who looked at Tia. Frank looked at them.
"I’m sorry, Frank," Tia finally said.
"No," Frank said, letting loose a sigh. "I guess you found him." He lowered his head. He had not known Gronk that long, but had taken a liking to him.
"Yes," Michelle said. "He had a message for you."
Frank looked at her.
"He said everything is yours now," Michelle said.
"What did he mean by that, Frank," Sandy asked.
"Oh," was all that Frank had to say.
"Who was he," came from Tia.
"Well… he was a great man, and a great human being."
"He was human?"
"Yeah. One of the first."
"One of the first what?"
"One of the first humans."
Thirty-Four
Suni and the rest of the crew of the Butterworth had been ecstatic about the news of finding Frank alive. Then again, the reality of their situation was that they would not be able to get away from the enemy fleets surrounding them above the planet. The hull was damaged so badly from the attacks from the Black Hole ships that it would take several days to do repairs—repairs that would have to be done under battle conditions.
Worse yet, enemy battleships were taking advantage of the weakened condition of the Butterworth, firing missiles right into the ruptures in the ship’s hull. Missile after missile made its way into the Butterworth’s belly, causing endless damage within. Of the three new superdrives, only one remained operational, and that barely, though two of the old drives were still working.
It took another three hours, through the sporadic attacks and launching vehicles to collect the remainder of the warbots and to get Frank, Tia, Michelle and Sandy aboard. They went straight to the bridge when they arrived. Suni was busy commanding and moving all of her war pieces around. The remainder of the command crew was busy at various weapons consoles, launching missiles or directing lase weapon fire.
"Whoa," Frank said, as he entered the bridge, "this is really different."
"This is the battle configuration bridge," Sandy remarked.
"Wow. It’s really 3-D," Frank said, awed by the shape and configuration of the new battle bridge.
"All ground personnel and machinery are back aboard, Suni," came from Dyna.
"Good, let’s get the hell out of here."
At once, Suni directed a new tactical battle configuration. Her remaining battle cruisers formed into a cone, blasting their way through the weakest region in the enemy attack formation. From there, the cone shifted and peeled outward, the wounded Butterworth following close behind. At once, the enemy fleets realized what they were doing and pulled forward to block their escape.
Suni opened up the remaining superdrive and the Butterworth accelerated, leaving the enemy fleets struggling to keep up. Even so, they still sent high speed sorties and fired their lase cannons at the Butterworth. The two remaining original engines struggled to maintain hull structure.
"We can’t breaklight yet, Frank," Suni explained, "The hull has sustained too much damage and it will take too long to repair it. We’ll have to dilate time to get away from them."
"That’s fine, Suni. Take us to these coordinates," Frank replied, punching in coordinates and transmitting them to Suni’s console.
"What’s there? They’ll find us in no time if we go there."
"Trust me."
"You’re the captain."
"No, Suni. You’re the captain. I’m just an explorer."
"Is that my promotion, Frank?"
"I’d be a fool not to keep you there, Suni. You’ve earned it."
The Butterworth slowed long enough to collect the remaining battle cruisers covering their escape. After this, Suni poured power into the superdrive and headed the Butterworth towards the coordinates Frank had given her.
"At this accelleration, Frank, when we get there, we’ll only have an hour and thirty-eight minutes before they catch up to us," Suni announced.
"Plenty of time for what we need to do," Frank replied.
The coordinates Frank had given her were twenty lightyears away. The time dilation they had now would put the fastest of the enemy ships on their heels for most of the trip, which would take them about three months, but the Butterworth only a matter of hours.
Three hours later, they arrived at a star system consisting of of eight gas giants, and no other habitable planets.
"What are we looking for here, Frank?" Suni asked.
"His ship."
"Whose ship?"
"Gronk’s."
"What does it look like?"
"Dunno. But it’s here somewhere. Don’t we have neutronium detectors?"
"They’re on, but I’m not getting anything," Nikki said, "Just a lot of big planets here."
"He said it was here."
"Check for wobbles in the planets, Nikki," Suni said.
"That’ll take at least half an hour, Suni," Nikki replied.
"Deploy the battle cruisers to scout out the system. We only have another hour and eighteen minutes before the enemy fleet arrives."
"Aye, Suni," came from Paddy.
Within minutes, the battle cruisers had launched and were spreading throughout the star system, looking for Gronk’s old ship. After a half an hour, Nikki had the preliminary results of the gravity scans of the local system.
"There are no orbital anomalies in this system, Suni," she said.
"Can’t be," Frank said, "It’s got to be here somewhere."
"We’ve got forty eight minutes to find it. Keep looking," Suni replied.
"We may need a contingency plan, Suni," Michelle said.
"You have a suggestion?"
"Hide."
"Where?"
"Inside one of those gas giants. Somewhere they can’t follow us."
"We have hull breaches. How can we tolerate those pressures?"
"For us, we have our warsuits, which will protect us.
For pressure-sensitive systems and biologics, we can reinforce walls next to undamaged areas of the hull and put them in there temporarily. I think we could do this in a short period, say fifteen minutes."
"Dyna, do we have sufficient botpower for this operation?" Suni ventured.
"The suggested operation can be completed in twenty-three minutes, Suni," Dyan replied.
"Do that, Dyna,"
"Compliance."
"Which one would you suggest, Michelle?" Suni asked.
Michelle looked over at Suni, realizing that she had surmised she had one of the planets in mind already.
"The sixth planet."
"Why that one?"
"Dunno… something about it…"
Suni turned the Butterworth to head for the sixth planet of the system. In another eighteen minutes, they were in orbit above the planet. Huge storms thousands of kilometers across brewed in the atmosphere of this planet. But it was large enough to hide the Butterworth, even as large as it was.
"Any better ideas?" Suni asked.
No one said anything.
"I’m taking her down, then," Suni said.
Suni slowed the Butterworth first, allowing the planet’s gravity to bring it into its atmosphere. In moments, plasma enveloped the hull, heated by the friction of the descent at large velocity. As the Butterworth slowed, its descent rate sharpened. Within minutes, the pressure began to build. At first, around fifteen psi, but within another minute, it was up to five thousand psi.
"How far down, Michelle?" Suni asked.
"Another hundred kilometers should put us well out of their reach, Suni," she said.
"What is the pressure is at that depth?"
"It should be around one point two million psi."
Gasps.
"If our warsuits don’t protect us…"
"We will die. The warsuits are rated for twice that. But it will give us time to do some of the repairs we need to do."
Timestar Page 29