by Wilson Harp
“Yes, I would,” Kyle said as he removed his ceremonial robe. “Please lead on.”
Bill brought Kyle a black garment bag from under the table and helped Earth’s Galactic Ambassador store his robe. The two men then traversed the crowded hallways of the United Nations to the underground parking garage and climbed in Bill’s sedan.
“Where is the general eating tonight,” Kyle asked as they headed uptown in Manhattan.
“A little Thai place,” Bill said. “Nice, but not enough to have eyes.”
“Loud?”
“Loud enough. You should be able to talk pleasantly.”
Kyle hated he couldn’t speak to Kitch without being heard by those who wanted to cause damage to both of their careers. It was ironic he could speak freely with an alien who he didn’t completely trust and a Russian he knew better than to believe. True, both had supported what he believed was the best interest of Earth. He just wished he could talk to Kitch. He really wished the old man was still alive. He wondered what Admiral Rider would have counseled him to do and who to trust.
Kitch was sitting near the back wall in a t-shirt and jeans. Her short hair was covered by a baseball cap and she was wearing reading glasses as she flipped through a magazine. At the table next to her was her head of security and her aide-de-camp.
“Russell. John,” Kyle greeted each man as he took the seat across from Kitch. Bill joined the other two men, leaving Kyle and Kitch alone.
“That went about as good as we could hope,” Kitch said. She never looked at Kyle. She just kept looking through the magazine.
“Valaskov seemed certain of the outcome.”
“He should have. The Russians were pulling the strings for Botswana. You should see a few stories in the next few weeks about Russian aid helping Botswana, and Botswana considering letting Russia establish a military presence.”
Kyle shook his head. “I could never keep my fingers on the pulse of politics like you could.”
Kitch looked up from her magazine and smiled at Kyle.
“No, you never could. I’m just glad it was me in the hot seat and not you. India would never have allowed you to remain. They were the one I was most worried about.”
“What do you do now?”
“We wait to see what Wu’s next move is. He won’t dare break the treaties when he can’t even get rid of me. That will have to be good enough for now.”
“Sounds good. Listen, there is something that’s come up with A’nacal. There is a plan he has, and I don’t like it.”
“You don’t like it, but you agree with him anyway,” Kitch said.
Kyle nodded. “Yes, and it’s very frustrating.”
“The mission isn’t going to succeed, is it?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“And that’s what this plan is. A fail-safe in case mosar can’t be removed from us. Right?”
“Yes.”
Kitch nodded and put away her glasses. She placed the magazine to the side and picked up a menu.
“Let’s get the waitress and order. You can tell me about this plan over dinner.”
Kyle shook his head. “No, I can’t Kitch. Not yet. Not until I’m sure this is what we have to do.”
“Okay. That’s your call and I trust you. What should we talk about?”
“Anything that doesn’t involve the fate of our friends or the world.”
Kitch smiled and motioned for the waitress.
Chapter 8
Alex was reading at his station. He read a lot on his tablet in the security room. There was only so many weapon checks to be done on a ten hour shift after weeks in hyper-space. He had a strange desire to read some Burroughs. Tarzan, not the John Carter stories.
“Alex?” Williams asked as he slipped through the door. “You busy?”
“Of course. Can’t you see all of the chaos and insanity?” Alex asked back as he waved his hands at the static screens.
“Two more weeks until we get to Oracos. I have never been this excited and yet bored at the same time.”
Alex looked up from his reading.
“You’re bored, Williams? I’ve never known you to be bored in your life.”
Williams shrugged and sat at one of the vacant stations.
“I don’t know. I brought a dozen novels, I have plenty of engineering books to read, and there are quite a few friends on board. But the only time I feel really engaged, really in the moment, is when I am talking with Jii. I understand why I feel that way when he is describing technologies or we’re discussing theories, but as soon as he steps out of the room I feel…”
Williams shrugged his shoulders as he struggled for the words. Alex had never seen Williams this way. Williams was the smartest man Alex had ever met, and Alex had been in the presence of plenty of smart men.
“You feel restless,” Alex said.
“Yeah,” Williams said. “Restless. Which makes no sense whatsoever. I’ve always been traveling, I’ve always been active. Both physically and mentally. And I’ve been ship-bound more times than I would care to count, including a two year run in a Virginia class. So I don’t know what’s different.”
Alex hesitated. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to reveal what Jii had told him. He had conflicting thoughts at that moment. Was mosar wanting him to not tell Williams? Or was Alex’s resistance his natural inclination to not obey mosar? He decided it was the latter. What Alex hadn’t told Jii was his instincts were first and foremost to disobey a command. Being raised by a Marine officer, Alex knew from his earliest years what an order was and how to obey it. But he also knew the internal feeling he got when he wanted to disobey the command. It was a part of him. Natural.
“What are you thinking, Alex?” Williams asked.
“Nothing. Just thinking why things are different on this trip. It could be Jii.”
Williams shook his head. “No, Jii has been the only thing that’s felt normal.”
Alex put the tablet down and walked over to Williams.
“Say that again, Carl.”
Williams looked at his old friend and started to speak. But the words froze in his mouth.
“Why would Jii feel normal?” Williams asked. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“What does Greenaway think?” Alex asked.
The ship lurched and Alex was thrown to the deck. The sound of an alarm reverberated through the vessel. Men started running to their duty stations as soon as the first few seconds of shock wore off.
“Alex, weapon systems are coming online,” Williams said as he looked at the screen in front of him.
“Security to stations. Engineering, we need shields up. Now!” Daack barked over the ships comm.
Alex scrambled to his feet and strapped himself in as Williams rushed from the room toward Engineering.
“Ramirez, are weapons hot?” Daack asked just as Alex pulled on his helmet.
“We’re hot, Cap,” Alex said as his vision was filled with asteroids all along the port side of the ship.
“We have maybe a dozen coming in hot. They’re hidden among the asteroids.”
“Why did we drop out of warp, Gunny?” Hendricks asked as he rushed into the Security station.
Alex signaled he was in communications with the cockpit.
“Weapons are tracking four, they seem to be using the asteroids as cover,” Alex said over the command channel.
“Affirmative. Moving point three away from the field, keep those weapons trained on them.”
“Cap, I see a disturbance at point four,” said Greenaway from his sensor station.
“Negative, Greenaway. Nothing is showing on scanner.”
“Visual disturbance,” Greenaway said. “Camera two.”
“I see it,” Williams said.
“Why don’t sensors show anything?” Daack asked.
“I don’t know, but whatever it is, it’s large,” Greenaway said.
“More than one,” Williams said.
“Cruisers,” Daack said. “Sensors have locked
onto them. Otina design. They have some sort of electronic interference masking them.”
“They were expecting us?” Williams asked.
“Move into the asteroids, Commander Daack,” said Jii.
“Towards the asteroids?”
“We were expected. They’re chasing us into the open,” the alien said. Alex could hear the frustration in his voice.
Alex saw the vector of the ship change and the weapon system picked up a dozen more ships moving towards them.
“We’ve stirred up the nest,” Alex said. “Hendricks, start picking marks.”
Alex chose the four closest targets and energized his weapons.
“Hold fire until we close to 26 point 8,” Daack said. “We need shields over-charged, Williams.”
“Diverting power to shields, weapon capacitors at full.”
“All hands, this is Jackson,” Cowboy said over the ship’s comm. “We are heading into battle, report to secondary stations and prepare for emergency action.”
“We have incoming missiles,” Greenaway said. “Enacting counter measures.”
Alex gritted his teeth. The counter-measures would blind the weapon targeting systems for a few seconds. They were getting close to range of the enemy ships, but not close enough to fire yet.
“Resetting weapons,” Hendricks said.
“No,” Alex said. “Don’t reset. Keep them hot, we’re almost in range.”
“I have no lock.”
“Use your instincts.”
“Weapons in range, fire when ready,” Daack said.
Alex concentrated on one of the small vessels as it come into range. A single man fighter by the shape and size. Definitely Otina in design. Alex anticipated the small vessel would roll to the left and increase distance, but Alex trusted his instincts and fired as if the Otina would cut across the ships trajectory and try to create panic with a flyby.
The small vessel melted as the blast from Alex’s gun caught it square on the nose. Alex wanted to smile, but as the weapon scanner cleared up, he saw there were several large cruisers coming up behind the Earth ship and dozens of assault craft were closing in. Alex turned his gun toward a small knot of enemy fighters and filled the sky with the bright pulsing lights of his weapon.
Hendricks had followed Alex’s lead, and was blasting into space without a solid lock on targets.
“Do you have target lock?” Daack asked.
“No sir, just gunning,” Alex answered.
“Those cruisers are powering up their weapons,” Greenaway said.
“Full thrust on engines, we need shields at max, Williams,” Daack said. “Ramirez, we need the path clear to the asteroids.”
“Station two, are you set?” Alex asked.
“We’re down here, Gunny. Systems engaged,” Peterson answered from the secondary Security station.
“We’re splitting off our guns, everyone sequence targets.”
The ship accelerated toward the nearest asteroid and the four gunners blazed a path of destruction through the Otina fighters.
“The lead cruiser has their guns hot,” Greenaway said. “They’re ready to fire.”
Alex saw they had closed the distance to the large asteroid Daack had chosen, but he didn’t know if the ship would make it before the cruiser fired.
They didn’t make it in time. Alex saw the cruiser flash and it looked like the shot was on target.
“Damage report,” Daack said.
“No damage,” Williams reported. “Shields didn’t stop it. Just didn’t do anything to us.”
Jii said something that sounded like a curse into the comm.
“We have another two cruisers coming in from point eighteen,” Greenaway said. “And more fighters.”
“The cruisers have slowed and they have powered down their weapons,” Daack said.
“They have the information they need, I fear,” Jii said.
“We have more missiles inbound,” Greenaway said. “Deploying counter-measures.”
The weapon targeting system was blinded again, but this time Alex and his team were already engaged with several enemy fighters. The shields of the ship held strong against their weapons, but Alex was sure the energy signatures made it clear to the cruisers exactly where their prey was.
“We need to get deeper into the asteroids,” Alex said.
“Won’t they just be able to wait us out in there, Gunny?” Fuller asked.
“Probably. What about that Jii? Will they just wait? Set up a perimeter then wait for us to pop our heads out?” Alex asked.
“If we are near the edge, yes,” Jii said.
“How deep do we need to go?” Daack asked.
“Fly into the asteroids, Commander. We need to convince them not to follow us,” Jii said.
Alex and his fire team cleared the skies of any stray Otina fighters as Daack maneuvered the ship past the first series of asteroids. The ships computers helped pick the most likely avenues of flight, but the thruster controls still needed the sure hands of a master pilot. Daack was first officer on the Hemingway under Jackson. He was more than a competent pilot, though, and had flown most of Earth’s new ships. Jackson was a great pilot, but Alex was glad it was Daack at the controls now.
The giant hunks of metal and ice, of frozen gases and misshapen forms seemed almost comfortable to Alex. He had spent some time in the asteroid belt in the Earth system, and this asteroid field didn’t seem all that different. It even had the danger of Otina fighters, the same as back home.
“Williams, we need shields and engines killed in one minute. Ramirez, take the weapons system offline. We need to drift and not let their sensors pick us up,” Jii said.
Alex switched off the weapons console and his helmet stopped projecting the image of the space around the ship. He set the helmet on its stand and leaned back in his chair.
“At least the ship looks like a giant piece of rock,” Hendricks said. “That’s fortunate.”
“I think more than fortunate,” Alex said. “I think Jii thought this might happen. So he designed the ship to blend into an asteroid field.”
“What do we do now?”
“We wait, I suppose. We wait and hope they don’t have any surprises Jii hasn’t thought of,” Alex said.
Hendricks shook his head. “I just want this trip to be over.”
Alex stood and walked to the door. He tapped his fingers on Hendricks’ console as he walked by. “Me too,” he said as he left the station.
He should have headed back to the common room or to his bunk. Fuller would take a dog watch before Alex relieved him. That was protocol for a situation like this. But Alex wanted some answers, and he didn’t want to wait before he came back on duty.
He turned toward the cockpit and saw Cowboy standing in front of the command room.
The captain of the ship nodded a greeting as Alex approached.
“Thought you’d be here soon,” Cowboy said.
Alex slid past the large Texan and into the room. Daack stared at his hands in silence as Alex took a seat. Jii paced on the far side of the table.
“Williams is on his way,” Cowboy said. “You were right, Jii.”
“Thank you, Jackson. When he gets here, we’ll begin.”
Cowboy entered the room and took a seat across from Alex. A few seconds later Williams entered. His jaw was clenched and his eyes darted around, as if he expected to see more people.
“Have a seat, Williams,” Jii said. The alien paced on.
Williams sat and leaned forward on the table. Alex had seen him like this before. Usually when a mission had gone poorly due to incompetence from the commanding officer.
“Today we had a couple of unfortunate incidents,” Jii began. “First, we were anticipated and we were pulled out of warp. The second, and far more serious, incident was the Otina cruisers fired on us with their heavy weapons. And our shields did not block the blast. That was very unfortunate.”
“We suffered no damage, though,” Cowboy said
.
“But we should have,” Alex whispered.
“What?”
“Remember the Hedali when I was shot with the tilsoc? They were upset, not because I was alright, but because I wasn’t harmed.”
“So if the weapons didn’t damage us, they will figure out we are from Earth,” Williams said. “That’s why we needed the shields in the first place. To act as cover for us in case we ran into problems.”
“You understand the situation we are in, Doctor. We have been betrayed and mosar has now confirmed we seek to destroy it.”
“Betrayed?” Daack asked. “What makes you think that?”
“We were pulled out of warp. This was a trap to engage us. If it were a simple act of piracy, they wouldn’t have stealthed their cruisers. It’s more effective to have the capital ships visible when you want to board and rob a random merchant. No, this was an ambush.”
“How could they have discovered our flight path, Jii? You were the only one who knew the coordinates and you didn’t know the exact time we were departing.”
Jii faced the wall and bowed his head.
“I don’t know,” he said. “If someone had an understanding of where we were going and when we left, then mosar, at its most advanced stage, could have put together the needed ambush. But humanity hasn’t encountered mosar at that level.”
“What about A’nacal?” Williams asked.
Jii looked at the engineer and smiled.
“If A’nacal has lost control, then our mission is in vain. If mosar takes A’nacal, then mosar has our galaxy.”
Alex shuddered. The cold statement filled him with dread, and he thought he could feel something in him rejoice at the thought of A’nacal giving in to the will of mosar.
Chapter 9
The e-mail had an encrypted link embedded. Kyle shook his head as he thought about the sheer amount of nonsense he had to put up with. Even when he was Commander of Special Operations in the Indian War, he didn’t have to deal with as much cloak-and-dagger stupidity. And yet, Chancellor Wu with his incessant paranoia and spying were causing him to run this cheap encryption absurdity.
The embedded link had a ‘W’ in the fourth position, and a ‘23’ in the twelfth and thirteenth positions. That meant the Washington Post, second page, third word. Kyle pulled up the paper on his tablet and looked for the word. It was ‘overnight’. A word which was more than six letters long meant he had to log into Thomas’s account and check the drafts folder.