And they were both very much in love. At some point soon they would get married and live out on the frontier, not ever having to return to earth and their old bodies.
But right now they were still frontline fighters. And clearly they were needed.
Big Ed laid Brian down in what looked like a coffin in a private cabin off to one side of the big hallway.
That coffin was a sleep chamber that knocked Brian out during the trip at Trans-Galactic speeds toward the frontier of the Earth Protection League. And during that sleep, because of the nature of space and time and matter, his body would regress to being young and healthy again.
He had no idea how or why it worked that way. A couple of people had tried to explain it to him once. Something about matter being at a fixed point in time and space, so if a person flew faster than light, everyone on board regressed in age in relationship to the distance traveled.
They had figured out a way to help the brain hold the memories of being old, and the experiences during the trip.
Brian was just glad it worked the way it did, because otherwise he would be stuck in that nursing home and in the stroke-damaged body just waiting to die. Now he could actually do something constructive, help defend Earth and its allies.
Big Ed stepped back and snapped off a salute. “Good luck, sir,” he said.
Then he lowered the lid until it latched over Brian and the light went out.
Brian would have loved to salute the young man back, but he couldn’t.
Instead he just lay there thinking of seeing Dot again in her young and youthful body.
And he thought of them dancing as they always did after a mission.
But first they had to survive whatever faced them in deep space this time.
A faint orange smell seeped into the coffin and Captain Brian Saber dozed off.
TWO
CAPTAIN SABER AWOKE what seemed like just an instant later.
He reached up and easily pushed the coffin lid open. Then he levered his young body out of the sleep chamber.
He never got tired of that feeling after being trapped in that wheelchair and bed what seemed like just moments before. The magic of the Trans-Galactic speed had done it to him again; given him his young body back.
He had sure taken this body for granted when he had been young.
He quickly slipped off the old nightshirt and tossed it back in the coffin. He would need that for the return trip back.
If he survived.
If he didn’t, his son would be called in the middle of the night and there would be a funeral for a body that was a fake of his. And no one but those in the Earth Protection League would know Brian Saber of Chicago died in space, fighting for all humanity.
And he didn’t honestly care if anyone knew. He just loved doing this, getting a chance to be young again.
He quickly dressed in his tight brown pants and tall black leather boots over the pants. He put on a loose white-silk blouse and a brown vest over that with a logo on it that read EPL. He strapped his two photon blasters on his hips with a wide black-leather belt and then looked at himself in the mirror.
This trip they had gone a little farther out. He looked to be about twenty-five. Often he ended up closer to thirty on missions.
So that meant they were very, very close to the EPL border, more than likely the border with the Dogs, one of the nastiest alien races to ever exist.
And a race set on the destruction at any cost of the EPL and Earth.
He turned and left his room, turning right and heading for the command center. He was on his own warship, the Bad Business.
Dot would have been transferred to her ship as well, the Blooming Rose. He wished he could see her now, kiss her, hold her with his young strong arms. But there would be time for that later.
Right now he had to focus on the mission they faced.
He got to the control room just a few seconds before his other two command crew arrived. Marion Knudson, a striking redhead from Wisconsin took her second chair. The two of them had been a team for a dozen missions now.
She was tough, all business, and smart as they came.
This time she had her red hair long and down over her shoulders. Usually she kept it up tight against her head.
Behind them Kip Butcher dropped into his chair with a “Damn this feels good.”
Kip was from Southern California and lived in a nursing home there. When he was young he had been a surfer and now, even in his uniform, he still looked the part with his tan skin and blonde hair.
Back in Wisconsin, Marion lived alone, even at the age of ninety. As Kip had said once, she was too damn mean to die.
Marion had not argued with that, only smiled that smile that let Brian know that at some point Kip would pay for the remark.
“So any news as to the mission, Captain?” Marion asked, her fingers running over the board in front of her. “We are within striking distance of the Dog border. Much closer than normal, actually. No sign at all of Dog warships.”
“And there are six other EPL warships with us,” Kip said. “One is the Blooming Rose.”
Everyone knew about his and Dot’s relationship.
“No word yet,” Brian said. “But I suspect we don’t have long to wait.”
He pointed to the board and as he did, a red light started blinking, meaning an emergency message was coming in.
“You creep me out every time you do that,” Kip said, shaking his head and turning back to his board.
Brian just smiled at Marion. The brass had a certain timetable that they allowed the crews to get into positions on their ships, and that never varied.
“Message on screen,” Kip said a moment later.
General Dan Holmes’s face appeared, his frown causing his middle-aged face to wrinkle even more than it already was.
“Captains,” he said, nodding. “I’m afraid this is as bad as it gets.”
Brian said nothing, as did the other captains of the other six warships, so the general went on.
“The Dogs have launched a moon at Earth.”
Brian sat there hoping that General Holmes would take back that statement.
He didn’t.
The General just kept frowning.
“The moon is accelerating from deep in Dog space and will be at the border at your position in about six hours.”
“Fleet of ships with it, I assume?” Saber asked.
The General shook his head. “They don’t think they need ships on this one. The moon they have launched is as big as our moon around Earth.”
Brian sat back and tried to imagine what it would take to get a moon like that actually moving, what kind of power and how the moon would even hold together. And how they would even aim it from such a long distance through space.
And how many thousands of years at real-space travel it would take to get to Earth.
“I’m sending all the data we have on it through to you,” the general said. “We want you to investigate the moon the moment it crosses into our space, pass on the data to our scientists.”
With that he clicked off, leaving the screen blank.
“Why do I think there’s something he flat omitted from that briefing,” Kip said.
Marion’s fingers flew over the keys as Brian sat there, waiting. He knew Kip was right. The General wasn’t telling them everything. There was something more.
“Oh, shit,” Marion said.
Brian looked over at her. She never swore.
She put up the report that made her swear on the main screen in front of Brian so that they could all see it.
“One hour after the moon crosses into our space,” Marion said, “it reaches Trans-Galactic speed and will be protected by the Trans-Galactic shields. Nothing will be able to change its course until it plows into Earth.”
“They built a TG drive big enough to power a moon,” Kip said, shaking his head. “Wow! That’s impressive.”
Brian had to admit, it was impressive. But
there was only one problem. Once something was in Trans-Galactic drive, it couldn’t be stopped. It wasn’t in real time and the shields that formed with the drive could plow through anything.
So they had to figure out a way to stop a speeding moon.
Or Earth would be destroyed very, very shortly.
THREE
CAPTAIN SABER LOOKED around at his command crew, then shook his head. “Looks like we got seven hours to figure this out. Marion, make sure to get that report to the people on board who understand Trans-Galactic drive physics.”
Marion nodded, her fingers moving quickly over the controls as Brian turned his big chair around so he could face Kip on his right and Marion on his left.
“Done,” she said.
Brian knew that meant the other 40-some members of his crew all knew the score and were working on solutions as well. When you got that many experienced people working hard on something, results tended to happen.
And Brian knew that everyone on the other ships was doing the same. That was a lot of years experience focused on the same problem.
“Let me kind of think out loud here,” he said.
Both Marion and Kip nodded.
“I assume TG space will power the thing once the moon reaches Trans-Galactic speed. But what’s powering it now?”
Both Kip and Marion had the report at their fingertips and it was Marion that spoke first. “The moon has a hot core, so the engines spaced around the moon are feeding off the internal core of the moon itself.”
“All TG engines,” Kip said. “All shielded as would be expected. Nothing we have will knock them out.”
Brian knew that and he nodded. He’d been in a lot of fights with Dog warships and knocking their engines out was never an option, just as Dogs knocking out a TG EPL engine wasn’t possible either. It was the nature of Trans-Galactic engines and the shields that built up around them.
“Can we dig the engines out of the moon’s surface outside the shields?” Brian asked.
Again both his command crew worked on the report, then both shook their heads at the exact same time. “Engines are buried thirty miles deep inside the moon. No dislodging them.”
Brian looked at the big screen near Kip with the report and wondered how the EPL got all the information. More than likely a number of people had died for it.
“And I assume no blowing the thing apart before it enters Trans-Galactic speed?” Brian asked.
“They found the most stable hunk of rock I’ve ever seen,” Kip said, and Marion nodded.
“It would take an entire fleet of ships,” Kip said, sounding disgusted, “pounding it with all weapons, and I doubt that even that much would make more than a dent.”
They all three sat there in silence.
Brian just kept looking around, looking at his young body, at his command crew’s young bodies. Somehow they had made it out here, to this exact location in space.
He looked at Kip. “Who is driving the moon?”
“No one will be on the moon,” Kip said.
“So who drives us when we come out here,” Brian asked. “to exact coordinates, with our Trans-Galactic drives?”
Marion frowned and turned back to her board.
Kip did the same thing.
You don’t just send a ship hurtling through more miles of space than Brian wanted to think about without something or someone driving. Even with top shields, you didn’t want to plow holes through things along the way that didn’t need holes in them.
So that transport ship from Earth had someone driving it, controlling it, from somewhere.
And that moon would have someone driving all the way to Earth. One planet that far away was far, far too small a target to hit from this distance without a number of course corrections along the way.
“Computers,” Marion finally said. “Each transport we take out here is run by a computer to do course corrections.”
“Through sensors, the computer is able to see the route ahead,” Kip said, “and make corrections to avoid the transport putting a hole in a planet or moon or anything else along the way.”
“So there is a computer on that moon somewhere?” Brian asked. “We know where?”
“Buried with the Trans-Galactic drive engines,” Marion said.
“Damn,” Kip said, clearly getting angry. “They thought of everything.”
“Not everything,” Brian said, smiling. “Is the moon rotating in any fashion?”
Kip and Marion both looked puzzled at him, then quickly checked.
“No,” Marion said. “It couldn’t rotate and maintain its TG drive thrust.”
“So we blind it,” Brian said. “Tough to hit anything without being able to see.”
“The computer sensors,” Kip said, laughing. “Of course, they would have to be hidden on the front side of the moon to feed the computer.”
“And I’ll wager those sensors are not hardwired into that computer,” Brian said. “Not through that much rock.”
Marion laughed, the first time Brian had heard that for some time. “What are you thinking, Captain?”
Brian sat back, his hands behind his head.
“How about we feed those computers in that moon some bad targeting information, something simple such as the location of a Dog military base.”
“Oh, that will annoy them something awful,” Kip said, laughing so hard tears were coming to his eyes.
Marion informed all the other ships of the idea and then all three of them set to work on exactly where on that moon those sensors would be planted and how to intercept the signal from the surface sensors to the moon’s targeting computer.
FOUR
THE MOON WAS fast approaching the EPL border when Command gave the clearance to try their plan. It had been a scientist on Dot’s ship who had finally cracked the Dog computer code between the moon targeting computer and the sensors.
And it had been a scientist on yet another warship who had figured out how to intercept the signals from the sensors.
They would need to have a ship in tight over each of the six sensors on the moon and the intercept signal would have to be sent at exactly the same moment to all sensors.
In essence, the control of the moon was going to be transferred to Brian. He and Kip and Marion were going to turn the moon just before it started into Trans-Galactic drive and fire it at a Dog military base.
And then destroy the targeting computer by feeding it a very nasty virus.
That moon would wipe out that Dog base and then head out into deep space at full TG drive. The engines would have to fail before that moon dropped back into normal space a very, very long ways away from this entire galaxy.
At least that was the plan.
But there was one major problem with the plan that Brian didn’t much like. Six EPL ships would have to basically hover in close over the moon to intercept the signal from each sensor and relay the signal to his ship and then, in turn, take the new instructions and feed them back into the sensors.
Dot and her ship would be one of those in close.
And they would have to stay in close during the moon’s turn and then somehow get a safe distance away when the moon jumped to Trans-Galactic drive.
It was going to take exact timing. Just a second or two of delay and a warship would be lost.
And if one warship didn’t stay in close enough, all six sensors wouldn’t feed the computer the right data and there was no telling what might happen.
Brian sat back in his chair, trying to keep his nerves under control as they waited the last ten minutes. He knew everyone was busy checking and double-checking the plan. He had talked with Dot privately thirty minutes before, telling her to be careful and that he loved her.
She just laughed that wonderful, young laugh of hers, and said, “Trust me, I’m not missing the dancing tonight for anything.”
Dot loved to dance, more than anything in life it seemed at times.
And he loved to dance with her.
“Moon crossing the border now, Captain,” Marion said.
Brian nodded to Kip who opened a fleet-wide communications link.
“Move into positions now.”
On the screen in front of him, Brian could see the six other EPL warships with their sleek noses and wing-like appearance move as one, turning toward the large moon and matching speed with it. EPL warships had been designed to look like birds not only to allow them atmospheric flight if needed, but because in so many of the cultures the EPL fought against, birds were feared.
Including with the Dogs.
Brian kept the Bad Business outside and above the group, moving with them to match the speed of the moon.
Then, almost as a practiced dance in space, the six ships broke away from each other and moved in over an area of the large moon.
The closer the moon got, Brian could see that it did look a great deal like their moon at home. It had no atmosphere and was covered with impact craters. And it was just about the same size.
Brian took the Bad Business in right over the center of the moon and matched its speed and acceleration to stay in position.
“Thirty seconds,” Marion said.
“Signal when in position,” Brian ordered the other ships.
Each ship had to hover no more than a football field length above the surface where the sensor was, and match the increasing speed of the moon at the same time.
Very, very tricky flying and a slight miss and the EPL warship would crash into the moon’s surface, or be too far away to intercept the signal.
Brian could see the Blooming Rose turn and settle into its assigned position above the moon surface. Dot would be flying it. She had one of the steadiest hands at the helm of a ship that he had ever seen.
Three other warships signaled ready.
Then Dot signaled The Blooming Rose was in position and steady.
“Ready here,” Brian said, checking to make sure his people were ready with the computer download and new signal into the moon’s computer.
Smith's Monthly #9 Page 6