by Saxon Andrew
“The ship has been destroyed, sir,” Mikado said. Then he looked at his board and said, “We also have a message coming in from spaceport authority.”
“Put it on speaker, Lieutenant.”
The speaker came on and a voice asked, “Commodore Kosiev, did anyone survive the destruction of that ship?” Kosiev looked at Lieutenant Mikado, who nodded and held up one finger.
“Yes, we recorded one person ejecting.”
Then he heard a new voice from the speaker. “Commodore Kosiev, I am Inspector Esa Connor and I am the head of the Americas Security Enforcement Committee. I have reason to believe that the person who stole that ship is someone we’ve been trying to apprehend for more than three years. It is important that he not escape. We are sending you seventeen additional warships to assist you in locating the whereabouts of this person. I have just learned from your military attache that you were firing eight lasers at his ship and he managed to avoid every one of them.”
Kosiev stood up from his command chair and looked out the view screen at the surface of the moon below him. “Yes, sir, that’s correct. We don’t understand how that could happen and we were forced to use missiles to stop the ship from escaping.”
“It has to do with the talents of the person you were chasing,” Esa said. “He knew before you did when and where you were going to fire. I’ll explain it in more detail later; right now I want you to take command of the ships we’re sending and find Thomas Gardner.”
“We weren’t able to track exactly where he landed because our sensors overloaded briefly due to the explosion of his ship. We have it narrowed down to a four-hundred-square-mile quadrant.” Kosiev glanced at Mikado, who was shaking his head and said, “Sir, it might be easier to bombard the surface and kill him than to actually find him.”
“Commodore, you will do absolutely everything in your power to find him and not, I repeat not, harm him in any way. I will be sending someone to your ship he might listen to. They will arrive within five hours.”
“Yes sir. We will begin search operations immediately.”
“Commodore, that young man on the moon possesses a gift that may ultimately save all of mankind some day. It’s critically important that we find him alive.”
“I’ll do my best, sir.”
“Do better than your best, Commodore; find him alive.” Kosiev’s com went dark.
Everyone on the bridge stared at each other silently, and then Lieutenant. Mikado said, “I’ve never heard of more than three ships being used in any kind of search operation and especially not warships, and even if we have a hundred ships, we still may not find him.”
Kosiev replied, “Warships have the best sensors and the most highly trained people using them. We’ll have to do our best. This person we’re looking for must be very important for some reason. It appears that we will look however long it takes until we find him. Lieutenant, set up a search pattern that covers the area we think he landed in. We’ll start on one boundary, Red Sea will start on the second, and Yellowstone will start on the third. The next ship to show up will start on the last boundary, and then we’ll work our way inward. As other ships arrive assign them an area to scan. If we don’t find him we’ll start the search all over again. They may force us to go to the surface and find him if all else fails.”
“What about the craters, sir? Their walls are so irregular that someone could hide under them and not be seen by any of our sensors, especially if they turn down the power of their spacesuit.” Lt Alverez, Kosievs’ weapons officer said.
“Then scan an area far enough away from the crater wall and fire a low power laser into it. It might make him leave his hiding place where we can see him. But I want it perfectly clear, you will only fire into an area far enough away from the crater walls so that he will not be harmed, and only if we’re certain he’s not close to our target. Does anyone know who the person is that is supposed to communicate with him?”
Lieutenant Mikado looked at his board, “We’ve just received a message concerning that. It’s a senior inspector from the security enforcement committee named Danielle Ash.”
Annihilation
H e sat on the surface of the moon among the rocks, pebbles, and dust with his back against a crater wall. He had watched as the dust he kicked up running into the crater’s shadow finally settled back to the surface. It had settled slowly in the moon’s gravity like rain falling in slow motion. He was sitting in a shadow cast by the overhang of a crater, staring up at the Earth overhead, which looked huge, with white clouds covering the southern hemisphere and oceans shining deep blue. It was breathtaking and was made all the more beautiful by the stars that surrounded it like a halo. He could see the North American continent clearly with Central City covering most of it, and it reminded him of his home there as a little boy. He decided that if it had to end here, at least he had a spectacular view. The moon’s surface was so bright that he had to put his helmet visor on its highest setting to keep from being blinded. It was pitch-black in the crater’s shadow, but the moon’s surface was brilliant as it sloped away to the far wall of the crater more than four miles away. In its own way, the moon had a beauty in the starkness of its ragged, scarred surface, with every inch screaming its billion-year-old bout with meteor impacts. The one good thing about the titanic struggle was it offered many hiding places.
He would look up and occasionally see the thrusters from one of the naval warships as it maneuvered overhead looking for him. The warships had their own kind of beauty too, and their sleek lines glowing brightly with the power of their screens belied the danger they represented. He wasn’t too worried about being seen because he was in the crater’s shadow and they had no chance of seeing him with the visual sensors. Blazes, he couldn’t even see himself. Since the moon had no atmosphere light was not scattered, so the shadows were pitch-black. The only real risk he faced of being discovered was that one of the warships would get close enough and its sensors would pick up the small electronic emissions of his suit, but even that was a remote possibility. He had turned off most of the suit’s accessories, leaving only his environmental and visual circuits active, so they would have to come very close to detect him.
The warships overhead had been firing energy beams from high-altitude randomly into the surface, hoping to get him to move. Each beam would vaporize rocks for a hundred yards, and one had hit two miles across the crater from where he was hiding. Even at that range his suit had to turn up its cooling just to dissipate the heat. Weapons designed to destroy starships at forty miles just weren’t effective at such short range. They did, however, make a very impressive hole in the moon’s surface. He watched the dust from the beam strike slowly settle back to the surface as the warship moved further along the crater and fired again.
He had counted twenty ships crisscrossing overhead. “Twenty ships! Can you believe it? They didn’t use twenty ships to wipe out the belt pirate fleet of the last dictator five hundred years ago,” he thought. He was genuinely surprised that the fleet would go to this much effort to capture or kill him. Well, maybe not too surprised. After all, they had been chasing him for three years, and now they had the chance to eliminate a prime target. The skills he had used to avoid their capture over the years, coupled with the fact that he had managed to steal a ship that had interstellar capability, only added to their resolve to end this particular problem now. “Some poor flight officer is going to disappear shortly,” he thought, and he felt a twinge of sympathy for the poor fellow, but only for a moment. “Part of the dues for having a high-paying position,” he said to himself. “I wonder where all those people who disappear go? I guess I’ll find out if they capture me.”
He turned on his small suit light, looked at his air indicator, and saw that he only had six hours remaining. He gazed out at the moon’s surface, which was ragged where it had been pulverized over the eons by all sizes of meteorites. The crater he was currently hiding in had been made by a huge impact. The ships had been searching ove
rhead for over two hours since two of their missiles had killed his ship, forcing him to jump to the surface. He saw no evidence of them leaving anytime soon. “I guess they don’t have a sense of humor about ship theft,” he chuckled to himself. He had always been able to cheat death or capture, capture being the same thing as death, by being resourceful and always attentive of his surroundings, using the psychic field, and just being plain lucky. “Looks like lady luck has deserted me,” he thought. He toyed with the idea of stepping out of the shadow and using his suit radio to contact one of the ships overhead; there was a chance they would come down and take him aboard, which would only extend the time until they put him to death. What would probably happen is that they would not waste their time picking him up but just shoot him with one of the ship’s main beams. If he could be certain that they would use the beam, it might be a good idea to step out. At least that would be a quick death instead of suffocating. But there was also the chance that they would want to interrogate him, particularly about how he managed to steal the ship that got him as far as the moon. How could he have known they placed remote-controlled transponders on civilian ships? Once their signal turned it on, their sensors could see him no matter how he tried to avoid them. Even with his special talents, there was no hiding from the ships tracking that transponder. He just couldn’t run the risk of being captured and interrogated. Then they would find out about Leila, and that was one risk he was unwilling to take. He had ejected from the ship just before two missiles exploded it. Fortunately, he was close enough to the moon to reach the surface before his chair ran out of fuel. He could always slowly turn down the heat of his suit and wait until he fell asleep and froze to death. “Ah, Leila, except for you and your test I would still be on Earth playing hide and seek.”
So he sat on the moon, looking out at its ragged surface with the Earth glowing overhead, and thought about his history classes where he learned all that his planet had endured. He could see Mexico and the depressions where six fusion bombs exploded in the last global war. Mankind had come a long way after that last war, from living in caves to interstellar space travel. He reminisced about life and how he had spent most of it being a pain in the grump to the Directorate. He decided that they weren’t such bad people; it’s just that their fear for Earth’s safety led them to control every aspect of existence. Where you work, what job you do, how much you make in credits, where you live, who you marry, how many children you’re allowed, what color clothing you wear, what things are acceptable recreation, and a thousand other details in living one’s life. And anyone questioning these decisions somehow disappeared. It was easy to understand after the final world war when over twelve billion people lost their lives in the nuclear holocaust; those fusion bombs in Mexico put the whole planet into nuclear winter. In the eight hundred years since then, the planet had been rebuilt, wildlife had come back, the population had grown to over nine billion, space travel was developed, and the Douglas Star Drive took mankind out to explore the galaxy. It was one of mankind’s most peaceful periods. All weapons of destruction were eradicated after the last dictator and his fleet of pirates had been overthrown. This led to three hundred years of peace and prosperity for the planet. But that ended abruptly two hundred years ago when one of those interstellar trips out toward the Andromeda Galaxy brought Earth head to head with the Cainth Empire.
Oh, what a wonderful race the Cainth were! They looked like a cross between a four-armed kangaroo and a gorilla. They stood about five feet tall and their legs were short and highly muscled, which made them walk stiffly. They had a very light covering of light tan hair and narrow, totally black eyes above a protruding snout. Their ears were small on each side of their head instead of the long ears of Earth’s kangaroos. They were equally adept with both pairs of arms and could perform four tasks simultaneously. They also had the temperament of a tiger and were just as territorial. As soon as the unarmed Earth exploration ship entered their system, they determined its home planet’s location and then destroyed the defenseless ship. A war fleet was then readied and dispatched to destroy Earth.
Earth had learned its lesson about the consequences of aggression and hostility during six world wars, so the planet was basically unarmed and defenseless, having done away with all weapons of war. Fortunately for Earth, the Cainth were a member of the Alliance of Worlds, which discovered their intentions to destroy a peaceful civilization just in time. There were a number of races in the Alliance that actively disliked the Cainth because of past wrongs, and several of the ambassadors on Cainth notified their home worlds about what was happening. Earth was barely saved by three fleets from other members of the Alliance, but not before settlements on Mars and the moons of Jupiter had been totally obliterated. The Alliance then told Earth that they could have twenty light-years around Earth’s solar system to settle, but that if humans stepped out of line then Earth would see the business end of those fleets again. Since the Cainth Empire was the closest member of the Alliance, they were given the job of watching over Earth
The Alliance ruled its members with a heavy fist, and major violations usually led to the offender facing orbital bombardment. It was at that point that the Directorate was formed by all nations as Earth’s central government to make sure that no one would violate the many rules imposed by the Alliance, which included the twenty-light-year limit, or do anything to antagonize any member of the Alliance when they were on Earth. Weapon development immediately took a high priority, and the government vowed that Earth would not be caught defenseless again. The three hundred years of peace ended abruptly.
One would think that it would be easy to avoid stepping out of line as long as Earth stayed inside the twenty-light-year limit. The problem was that members of the Alliance would come to visit Earth to see its young civilization. Earth’s very existence depended upon no one doing anything that would cause an incident with these visitors. There also had to be central control of all Earth’s space ships to make sure no one violated the twenty-light-year limit. That’s why such tight controls were placed on people’s behavior. A hundred years ago a Cainth noble had the misfortune to die while visiting Earth. Within one week a Cainth war fleet arrived to investigate and take action. Thank the creator that he had died from natural causes and there was a Spejk doctor from the Alliance visiting Earth to confirm it prior to the war fleet’s arrival. The Cainth admiral actually slammed his four arm pads on his ship’s control board because he wasn’t going to be able to eradicate the planet.
On their way out of the Earth’s system, the Cainth encountered one of Earth’s new battle cruisers returning from the Virgo cluster and proceeded to attack it. Unlike the first encounter, this Earth ship had new weapons and was able to hold off its attackers for an hour. It had more than two hundred ships chasing and firing at it, but it still managed to destroy two Cainth destroyers and disable a cruiser and battleship before it perished. The Cainth suddenly realized that in the future it might not be so easy to destroy this young civilization. The final message from the admiral was, “Next time we’ll bring four fleets.”
Even bad things sometimes yield good results. The weapon designers learned a great deal from that battle about the Cainth offensive and defensive capabilities, which would lead to great improvements in Earth’s ships’ armaments. The Directorate felt all along that Cainth visitors showed up looking for an excuse to eliminate a possible rival from the universe. Again, we have to thank the creator that not all races in the Alliance were as bloodthirsty as the Cainth. Another good thing that happened as a result of the Earth’ ship’s destruction was that the Cainth were reluctant to attack with only their fleets. The effectiveness of the Earth ship in battle concerned them, especially since they had no idea how many ships Earth had built. So from that point on, even if they had a reason to try and justify an attack, they had to persuade other members of the Alliance to join them. After a hundred years of hearing numerous petty reasons from the Cainth, most members of the Alliance just ignored them
.
So he sat on the moon and thought about why twenty ships were looking for him. He guessed that stealing that ship frightened the Directorate enough to make sure it wouldn’t happen again. “They’re overreacting,” he thought. “Even I wouldn’t dare go outside the twenty-light-year limit. That would put Leila and Danielle in danger and I just wouldn’t do that. I was hoping to make it to a new colony located near Ross 248. Of course, since they didn’t know about Leila or Danielle, they couldn’t trust what I would do. Well, it shouldn’t last too much longer either way. A closer shot from a laser or suffocation would end it.” He wondered how much longer they would continue to look if they didn’t find his body.
He stood up and stretched his legs, moved a little deeper in the shadow, leaned back against the wall to relax, and fell back flat on his back. There was a hole in the wall leading into some kind of a cave. It was in the pitch-black of the crater’s shadow and he had sat down right next to the opening and hadn’t seen it. He stretched his arms out trying to touch the walls but could feel nothing within his reach. He took a few steps further in and turned on his small suit light and immediately saw a body lying at his feet. It had on a strange-looking blue spacesuit that appeared to not have any seams, and it looked to be about seven feet tall. He reached down to turn the body over and as soon as he touched the suit several things happened at once. The opening to the cave instantly disappeared and was replaced by solid rock, lights came on, and he felt and heard a roaring vibration that ran through his entire body. As he fell to his knees in fear he saw a small ship in the back of the cave and knew that because of his stupidity he had just placed Leila, Danielle, and all of mankind on the path to total and complete annihilation.