by Meridian
“Za,” Redfire told him.
“How many such ships do you possess?”
“A lot.”
Shouts clapped his hands together. “Prophecy is fulfilled.”
Basil settled down gently at the edge of their perimeter, Desmond about twenty meters behind. The hatches slid open and the Warfighters came charging out in gray and black battle armor, heavy pulse weapons on every arm.
“There is nothing more beautiful in the afterdawn than a company of Warfighters coming in to save your ass!” Roebuck enthused. Then, Flight Captain Jordan exited her ship, walking on her long, thin legs, her uniform tight around her hips and small waist, showing off her bosom in a way the standard flight suit was clearly not intended to do.
“I take that back,” Roebuck said.
Redfire approached her first, Driver flanking him, three steps behind, and Roebuck bringing up the rear
“Status report, Tyro Commander Redfire?”
“Captain Jordan, we have been on the surface of the planet for fifty-one standard hours. Since the time we have left Prudence, Technician Halliburton was killed, tortured by the Merids. The others were taken to the leaders of this planet, alien entities called the Regulators. The Regulators want to acquire our technology in order to spread themselves throughout the galaxy. There is a resistance movement on the planet called the Witnesses of the Conspiracy. They infiltrated the ranks of those who serve the Regulators and managed to free Taurus and Partridge.”
“And Tyro Commander Lear?” Jordan asked, her ice-blue eyes locked on a point a meter past Redfire’s skull.
“Tyro Commander Lear is helping the Merids build a techyon pulse transmitter to carry the Regulators back to Republic, where it will doubtlessly infect Republic’s artificial intelligence network and take over the planet.” Redfire turned away from her and shouted at the Warfighters. “Is our perimeter secured?”
“Perimeter secured, Tyro Commander!”
Redfire turned back to her. “How much longer before Pegasus makes orbit?” Jordan seemed to be looking past him as she reported, avoiding eye contact. “Pegasus is not making orbit. The central BrainCore malfunctioned and took Pegasus out of the system. Commander Keeler shut down the drive engines. We have had no further reports, however, two hours after we launched, two Nemesis class missiles were launched from Pegasus. These missiles are currently 3.6 hours behind us.
Ostensibly, they are to remain in orbit as a threat to secure your release.” Redfire nodded, also looking past Jordan. “Well, this mission is a one-hundred percent Panrovian Cluster Phuck all the way around.”
Jordan touched the back of her jaw lightly. “Jordan to Eureka. Please send a message to the incoming missiles indicating that all personnel have been secured and are preparing for evacuation. If the missiles do not alter course, prepare to engage them.”
She looked past Redfire again. “What is the Mission Plan from here, Tyro Commander?”
“As I see it, we have to get our people out of here, and I don’t think one Aves is enough to take out both missiles.”
“Hopefully, that won’t be necessary, but if it comes to that, an Aves against a Nemesis missile is a fair fight.”
Redfire called out. “Driver, get over here. This is Flight Lt. Driver. He’s good with time-tables.
Lieutenant?”
Even someone as socially obtuse as Driver could read that there was something between the Tyro Commander and the Flight Captain. It was in the past, maybe, but not very well buried. “Sir?”
“Can you calculate how much time we have to Evac the planet before the Big Dam Missiles hit?”
“She said 3.6 hours.”
“Can you keep track of that time while you chase down those missiles.”
“I can do that.”
“I want you to take Flight Captain Jordan’s ship and intercept the Big Dam missiles before they reach the planet. She will stay here with the Warfighters and me while I work out a plan to get Ex-Commander Lear out of the tower.
“With all due respect, I would rather take Prudence. ” Driver touched the comlink on the inside of his jaw. “Driver to Prudence, initiate recall sequence. Enable code: Alpha-zero-zero-two-three.” Meridian — Prudence
At the bottom of the tower, Prudence rose and began retracing its way out of the cavern, much to the shock and panic of the shock-troopers who had been guarding her. She reached the end of the tunnel and found the entranceway had been closed off. Prudence scanned the doors. Blast-shielded. Her braincore analyzed the situation. The blast-shielded bay doors would be resistant to her weapons, but the walls around them would not be.
Prudence aimed her ventral pulse cannons underneath the doors and blew away the foundations. A few blasts from the dorsal pulse cannons destroyed the rest of the structure. Prudence raised her energy shields to full and blew through the rubble, bursting out of the base of the tower.
Meridian — Outside the Arco-Tower
Driver closed the projector mode on his Spex. “ETA, forty seconds,” he told Redfire.
“All right.” Redfire nodded and pointed to the Aves. “Flt. Lt. Driver will take Prudence out to intercept the missiles before they make orbit. Flt. Lt. Eureka will hold in high orbit with Desmond to provide point defense in the event Flt. Lt. Driver is unable to destroy or disable the Big Dam Missiles.”
“And I will be on Prudence, ” Roebuck announced, “in the event that Flt. Lt. Driver can’t destroy or disable the Big Dam Missiles.”
Driver scowled. Redfire frowned, but having no use for Roebuck, decided not to argue.
“And Basil? ” Jordan asked.
“Basil will stay here to Evac us if the Big Dam Missiles get through. We’re going to bust into the tower and get Lear.”
“How?” Jordan asked.
“I am exactly two minutes to the left of figuring that out.” He looked toward the Witnesses. “Shouts.
How do you insert your people into the arco-tower?”
Shouts looked at him quizzically. “We enter through the lowest levels. They are poorly guarded and there are many sewers, and garbage chutes, and ventilation shafts. The enforcers do not even care to guard them, but they end well before the uppermost levels.”
“How long would it take to get to the top?”
“We proceed slowly, through hidden passages.”
“Can we enter the tower at an upper level?”
“The uppermost levels are well-shielded both by structure and guards.”
“I haven’t been impressed by the guards we’ve fought with so far. I think a direct assault might be worth considering. I can put Warfighters in on the same level as Ex-Commander Lear.” Redfire’s brow furrowed. He thought about blowing another hole in the side using Basil’s guns, but he feared the resulting attention would make further infiltration impossible. He wished he could force a flash of inspiration upon himself.
One hundred meters above them, there was a sharp snap, crackle, and pop. A stray lick of the artificial lightning generated by the electrostatic dischargers spilled over the roof and poured down the side of the arco-tower like liquid electricity. Halfway down the side, it burst into fluorescent spiders that skittered down the sides and off into the air.
“Whooo-ee,” said Redfire, with a certain understatement. “Hey, Shouts, do you know what those electrostatic dischargers are for?”
“Electrostatic discharge-ers?” Shouts repeated slowly.
“The sparky things,” Redfire repeated.
“Öh, the sparky things,” Shouts chittered. “We have no knowledge of their functionality. The Regulators built them… six hundred years ago… for highly uncertain purposes.”
“They’re ionizing the atmosphere,” Partridge put in. He was analyzing them with his Spex.
“Changing it chemically… within a few thousand years, the atmosphere is going to be toxic to humans.”
“It’s also altering the planet’s electromagnetic field,” Jordan reported. “Our instruments detected…”
“The planetary magnetic field being altered into a series of coherent pulses, I know.” Redfire looked around the company. “Excuse me,” he said, and started walking toward Basil. “Captain Jordan, you might want to come with me. Taurus, you, too.”
Shouts also followed, making a reverent gesture as he entered the Aves. Inside the ship, Redfire sat down a science station and brought up a three-dimensional display of the arco-tower, with energy-flow patterns highlighted. He then instructed the computer to animate the arco-tower in real-time through data-link to the external sensors.
He brought up a second hologram. Isometric atmospheric analysis. When he saw the readings, he gave out a low whistle. He pulled in a satellite analysis from one of the orbiting probes.
“What is it?”
“First, Partridge is right. The electrostatic dischargers are apparently part of some kind of atmospheric processors. The composition of atmosphere around the cities has been altered, slightly, but over time, it will be completely different.
Flight Captain Jordan raised a single perfect eyebrow. “Perhaps, an atmosphere to support an alien species.”
“Fair bet. The dischargers draw energy from the planet’s magnetosphere. When they spark, there is a planet-wide power surge. Every discharger on the planet imparts a specific signature. Cumulatively, it creates a unique energy pattern in the planet’s magnetic field, which is in turn projected into space.”
“Like a beacon,” said Jordan.
“Right,” said Redfire. “Let me show you what I want to do.”
Redfire showed her what he was going to do.
Jordan’s eyes widened. “Are you serious?”
“Absolutely, it will be a masterpiece, if I can pull it off.”
“I’ve heard that before,” Jordan muttered, but no one but Redfire heard her.
Redfire turned away from his station. “Shouts, you’ll want to pull all of your people off the arco-tower. Get as far away as you can.”
Meridian — Inside the Arco-Tower
Lear brushed her thin bangs off her forehead and leaned back. She had spent nearly seventeen straight hours taking the interfaces through a series of experiments to prove the validity of her approach.
The first test was simply to demonstrate the existence and the properties of the tachyon field she had detected underneath the arco-tower. She had directed specifically phased temporal harmonic energy into the field, so that it swelled outward, affecting the function of an atomic clock placed in the lower levels of the tower. Comparison with atomic clocks in other cities showed the tachyon field had caused the clock to lose time.
The second test was to demonstrate how tachyon pulses could be encoded to convey data. This time, she programmed the harmonic energy pulses to affect the function of the atomic clock in a specific pattern that could be decoded using another atomic clock. It was fundamentally the same method used to encode and decode TPT signals in the receiver orbiting Republic. An ever-more-complex series of algorithms was encoded into the signal, and it was decoded with 100% accuracy, to the satisfaction of the Regulators.
“All that remains is to encode the actual data for transmission, and then transmit.” She pointed to a monitor displaying the same piece of Meridian architecture that had captured Lt. Cmdr. Redfire’s attention. “This structure at the apex of your arco-tower will function adequately as a transmission tower.”
“The Regulators will require assurance that the transmission has been received.” Lear pinched the bridge between her eyes. “As soon as the signal is sent … is set to send repeatedly …
we can begin construction of a receiver.”
“The Regulators demand to know how long it will take to construct the receiver.”
“It will have to be at least a thousand kilometers in diameter. Depending on the availability of materials and technical assistance…”
“Two-hundred and four days,” The Interface interrupted.
Lear wearily nodded her assent.
“The Regulators have detected the approach of a large space vessel, with sufficient capacity to disrupt the transmission of the data and construction of the receiver antenna.”
“I can handle Pegasus. The important thing is that the signal be sent before Pegasus makes orbit. How long will it take you to encode the Regulator program into a form that I can transmit.”
“It has been done.”
Lear looked at the data on her monitor. “I would have expected the dataset to be me much larger.”
“The dataset is a self-extracting program detailing how to construct the Regulators in a receptive host. It is more efficient than sending the actual Regulator protocols.”
“Good,” said Lear. “Let’s prepare to encode. We will still require a substantial amount of energy.”
“The Regulators demand to know, how long before the dataset can be transmitted.”
“Can you confirm that a large electrostatic discharge will take place in fifty-eight minutes time?”
“Confirmed.”
“Then that is when we will transmit.” She smiled. “Within an hour, the Regulators will have a whole new world to conquer.”
chapter nineteen
Pegasus — Primary Command
Pegasus looped around a large, icy moon in the middle of the Meridian system, close enough to pull a few tendrils of atmosphere along behind it. With this last swing, the great ship was once and finally on course to Meridian, and making almost decent speed.
Eliza Jane Change had consented, after persistent and annoying persuasion from Specialist Alkema that eliminating the risk of any error was only too critical, to the assistance of an and/oroid. The androgynous figure with the smooth, dove-gray face sat at the station across from Change, double-checking her calculations and finding, to her smug satisfaction, no errors. Change turned to Keeler.
“It’s working, Commander. Our speed is .275c, and we should be at planet Meridian in another three hours, nine minutes of ship time.”
“Are the Aves transmitting intercept orders to the landing teams?” Keeler asked Kayliegh Driver, who was still at Communications.
“Affirmative.”
“Any response?”
“At light speed, the transmissions won’t reach the landing parties for another nineteen minutes.” Keeler turned and crossed the bridge, tapping his walking stick as he went. “Must go faster,” he muttered. “Must go faster. Is there any way we can get any more speed?” Change answered. “Commander, we had to program the engines in advance to make it this far. We could rig to go faster, but programming time would cancel out the increased speed.” Keeler sighed. “I figured as much.”
“I think our time would be better spent calculating contingency use of the maneuvering thrusters, in case we find ourselves on a collision course.”
“Why, are we moving into an asteroid field?” Keeler asked.
Change answered. “Negative, Commander. There are probably some stray bodies in the system, but it’s very unlikely we would hit any of them. I’m more concerned we don’t collide with Meridian.”
“I thought you calculated our trajectory for a high orbit. Maximum safety margin.”
“I did.”
“And your calculations are accurate, right?”
“As accurate as can be, but Meridian is in motion and my calculations are based on its estimated position. That introduces some uncertainty. There is a small chance that we may need to take corrective measures in order for us to …”
“… to not plow head-on into the planet,” Keeler finished.
“The angle of impact would most likely be oblique.”
“Oh, that’s not so bad then. It just means we’d be a big stain instead of a deep crater. Lt. Alkema!” Alkema appeared from behind the Tactical Station. “Thanks for the promotion, sir, but I thought I was just a Spec.”
Keeler sighed loudly. “No wonder you get so much done. I may never promote you. Give me the status on Defensive Systems.”
“Caliph
wrecked the arrays pretty thoroughly, but I think we should have a few on-line by the time we reach the planet.”
“No telling how soon, though.”
Alkema looked over his readings again. “I’m afraid not.”
“Do you ever sleep, Specialist Alkema?” Keeler asked.
Alkema blinked at him. “Four hours a night. Same as everybody.” Was I ever like that? Keeler wondered to himself. It suddenly struck him that he had never even ventured into space until the first time he had gone to Republic as a command nominee for the Odyssey Project. He had not even ventured much out of New Cleveland except for Vernal Recesses spent on the beaches in Kandor. Otherwise, there had never really been anything he wanted to see.
So, what in perdition am I doing here?” he wondered again.
Doing your dambed job, the voice of an Old Man answered in his head.
Meridian — Basil
Basil’s engines held the briefest of arguments with Meridian’s gravity and prevailed. It shot into the air and began a looping course to the top of the arco-tower. Far below, the Witnesses fled the tower under the cover of a dozen Warfighters. Another dozen were sitting in the back of Basil, ready to man weapons stations should the Sinister Buckyballs of Doom reappear.
“Course laid in,” Jordan announced.
“Adjusting shield polarity.” Redfire reported.
“This is insane,” Jordan muttered.
Redfire could not keep a tiny smile from turning up the corners of his mouth. “You said the exact same thing in New Sapporo, eight years ago.”
“It was sixteen years ago, and I was right in New Sapporo.”
“Right about what?” Taurus asked.
Jordan tightened her grip on the thrust levers. “Never mind.”
“She was right about about ‘Ice Rage,’” Redfire explained. “One of my earlier pieces; a flirtation with concrete expressionism. Another time, I’ll tell you about it. Right now, take us in, Captain Jordan.” Jordan nodded and pushed the stick forward. Basil surged ahead, angling down to a point directly over the arco-tower.
“Flight Captain Jordan!” Molto barked.