Pitting oneself against a computer, whether it be in a simulator or in the simulator mode aboard a ship, was only a starting point for tactical training. One of Greg’s first projects after assuming the position of Chairman was to link ground simulators together in order to pit man against man in realistic battles instead of man against a computer. Advanced training took place in these simulators.
Grayson graduated from primary training and moved onto the next phase, combat training. Greg joined him, first as Grayson’s captain, then as Grayson’s crew member. It did not take long for these ancient warriors to surpass Greg’s skills and shoulder him aside, a move he welcomed as representing progress in the right direction.
The An’Atee had staffed their ships with families for centuries. Because of the long-term nature of many space missions, missions that could last years rather than months, Angie pushed hard to try something similar with Alliance crews. She wanted to pair spouses on combat crews, but only families without children. Grayson agreed to try it. The program worked well in the training and operational environments, but no one knew how pairings would work during combat. In terms of morale, the effect was instantaneous and good, and after seeing it in action, more spouses signed up for shipboard duties.
* * * * *
Admiral Geoffrey Douglas and his wife Gertrude had met during his Navy days. Both of them had been assigned to submarine design, Douglas doing a stint as an engineer at the same facility where Gertie was a civilian project scientist with a PhD in physics. Both had come through their rehabilitation on Ariall in excellent form. Though still looking like senior citizens, years had dropped from their bodies, and their minds were as sharp as ever. They both partook heavily of the teaching machines, coming up to speed on many of the latest scientific discoveries of the An’Atee. The knowledge the An’Atee shared with them enriched their lives more than either of them could ever have imagined.
Greg had chosen Douglas for a special mission—to spearhead Alliance efforts to find the home world of the Oort. Despite many defeats at the hands of the Harbok, there seemed to be no end to Oort replacements. To defeat them, the Oort had to be stopped at their source. There was no issue of greater importance to his long-range plans than this project.
He had no idea how Douglas would accomplish his task, but he did know where Douglas could begin. He invited Douglas and Gertie, along with Professors Yarbo and Nessaka, to a private meeting at his home.
“I assigned office space at Alliance headquarters to you and to whatever staff you develop,” he said, looking at Douglas. “Professor Nessaka led the project to find Haldor, the Harbok home world. I’m thinking that the same process might be used to track the Oort back to their nest.”
Nessaka groaned. “Ordinarily, I relish challenge, but the years of work on that project became tedious and monotonous. It was a terrible time for me. I do not look forward to repeating it.”
“Will it work?”
“I don’t know. You’re proposing something vastly more complicated. That said, the concept sounds intriguing. Let me give it some thought.”
“Don’t take too long,” Greg cautioned. “I want you to head the project, and there’s something else: I want to base this project out in space—far out in space. I don’t want the Oort discovering Ariall through your project.”
Nessaka’s eyes widened and he looked away, then he turned to Yarbo for help. Yarbo’s expression did not change, but Greg knew what was coming and beat him to it. “Neither of you has ever been in space, I know.” He shifted his gaze to Yarbo and said, “This won’t just be an exercise in physics. I want to find the Oort, and I want to study them. I want both of you to go.”
Nessaka and Yarbo looked at each other in dismay. “Go into space?” Yarbo asked in disbelief.
“If you’re unwilling or unable, you can name your replacements, but I’d rather it was you two. This mission will be pure science,” Greg said. “What more can a scientist ask for?”
“Suppose we succeed. What happens then?” Yarbo asked, his eyes searching Greg’s with a penetrating stare.
“I will take the war to them.”
“Will you annihilate them?”
“Not if I can help it. I give you my word on that. The Alliance will do its best to represent all intelligent life, not just the ones we like. If the Oort give us half a chance, we’ll let them present their case, but I will not allow them to continue savaging other civilizations.”
Yarbo nodded. “I can live with that. I could not participate on any other grounds.”
“Just to clarify, I do not envision genocide, but I can’t rule it out completely,” Greg said.
Yarbo looked at Nessaka, and volumes of unspoken thoughts passed between these two old friends. “I suppose we could try, Merril,” he finally said. “There are others, but no one is better qualified than you.”
“I’m not so sure,” Nessaka said, shaking his head. “We failed with our analysis of the Harbok.”
Greg shook his head. “I’m sorry you feel that way. You didn’t fail, either of you,” he reminded them. “When presented with a different interpretation of your discoveries, you both identified the key on your own, and it’s because of the work you did that we learned of this Fourth Race. Stopping them is the new key to our survival. To do that, we have to find them. The futures of civilizations might once again rest on your shoulders.”
Greg turned to Douglas. “You’re in command of the project. Your career as a stealth submarine captain makes you our expert on not getting caught. I don’t know how much of the science you need to understand—you’ll have to work that out on your own—but you have to know ships, and you have to know how to fight with them in case the Oort discover you. While we don’t want to rush the project too much, our clock is ticking. The sooner we see results, the better chance we’ll have of defending the Harbok. I’d like to see you on your way within the year if at all possible.”
“Then it will be so,” Douglas said.
“Resources are your call, but I’m thinking you’ll need a baseship.”
“Are you sure? Do you want to risk 75,000 people?”
Greg bit his lip while he contemplated. He had given this subject a lot of thought. In response to Douglas’ question, he said, “You and I both have a lot of experience with clandestine operations. Smaller is usually better, but this is a mission of exploration and discovery, not an attack, and you could easily be gone for four or five years. Project scientists will need a lot of support, and the support people will need support. You’ll be light-years from help, and we have no idea what you’re going to run into. It’s your call, but bigger might be better this time. I’m thinking you’ll need a baseship, some prime ships, and a bunch of fighters, all of them fighting ships.”
Douglas nodded thoughtfully before saying, “I’ll get with Grayson for my training before I decide. I can learn ship-handling and tactics, and as much of the science as I can cram in, but some of the science will have to wait until we’re underway or we’ll never get going.”
Nessaka looked to Greg and said, “Depending on what we discover, you might be opening up your own job to a lot of new distractions.”
“I hope so. It’s what the Alliance is all about. The Harbok are our primary focus now, but in the long term I’m guessing we’ll encounter more new civilizations. Our present difficulties might pale in comparison.”
“Do I get to go?” Gertie asked.
“That’s up to Douglas. We wouldn’t want to put him on the spot, would we?” Greg asked with a gleam in his eye.
She smiled. “I’m in then. We already discussed it.”
“You’ll be in more than you think,” Nessaka added. “It took an Earthman’s interpretation of our data to discover the truth about the Harbok. The same might apply to these Oort. You’re a scientist, and you’re from Earth. You will have a place in all of this, and I will be your teacher.”
Chapter Fourteen
Captain Brice burst onto the bridge abo
ard the Alliance’s prime ship Obsidian still rubbing sleep from his eyes. The summons had been urgent. His gaze immediately focused on the forward screen. Haldor, the home system of the Harbok, lay off to the side. Above and to the left of Haldor, far out in the system, ships streamed out of hyperspace, one after another. Several hundred had already formed up and headed toward Haldor, only these ships were not colored yellow or green on the display. They were white, meaning Obsidian’s computers did not know their origin.
Brice’s eyes queried the watch officer, Lieutenant Orson. “Report,” he demanded crisply.
Orson’s eyes betrayed his alarm as he stated, “Many ships of unknown origin entered the system, sir, some 300 in the past ten minutes. They’re headed for Haldor. As you can see, their numbers are increasing as we speak.” He looked hard into Brice’s eyes before adding, “I believe it’s the Fourth Race.”
Brice’s eyes immediately went to the cloaking panel. Yes, they were cloaked, hopefully from the newcomers as well as from the Harbok.
He had a difficult decision to make: should he secure the sensors poking imperceptibly through the cloaking field and run for home, or should he stay to learn more? He continued watching for the next hour as more and more ships dropped from hyperspace. These ships were so far out in the system that they were still weeks away, so he had time to decide.
The approaching ships appeared to have reached full strength at the end of an hour. He counted almost 1,000 ships in 30 groups of 33 ships each. Smaller ships had formed up on one large ship at the center of each group.
The Harbok did not remain idle. Radio traffic, scrambled as always, filled the spectrum. Remote sentry ships headed back toward Haldor to reinforce an already impressive armada circling the planet. By the next day, fighters began streaking up from the surface and going aboard baseships. A number of ships at repair facilities powered up, presumably getting ready for departure as well. The vast array of laser platforms encircling the planet began rotating and test firing.
At the end of the second day, eight baseships carrying some 1,500 fighters set forth from Haldor to intercept the advancing ships of the Fourth Race. The Harbok force consisted of only two types of ships: baseships and fighters. All of them resembled the UFO that Greg Hamilton had encountered on Earth three years earlier, varying only in size. As near as Brice’s men could ascertain, each baseship stored somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 fighters.
Brice called his staff to a meeting. Rumors had been running rampant throughout the ship for the past two days, most indicating they would soon return home. Nothing could be further from the truth. After departmental reports and recommendations, he laid it on the line.
“We volunteered for a dangerous assignment. We came here for one purpose—to gather intelligence. We’re not leaving, at least not yet. We’ve been handed an incredible opportunity to do exactly what we set out to do. We don’t know if this Fourth Race can find us while we’re cloaked or not, so there is some risk, but I will not stand before Chairman Hamilton and tell him that we passed up this opportunity.”
He paused, then added crisply. “Here’s the plan: Starbright leaves for Ariall immediately with a report of everything we know. She will remain cloaked until her first jump. Because it takes hours for information to reach us, Aldebaran, remaining cloaked, will detach from the group and head out-system toward the area these new ships exited hyperspace. She will remain there to observe developments in real time rather than hours later, but she will be prepared to jump away at a moment’s notice. Obsidian and our three remaining scouts will remain cloaked in our present locations and maintain a watch with all available sensors until further notice. Any of us leaving this system will execute at least two jumps away from Ariall before proceeding home at highest speed—I do not want anyone out here knowing where we came from. Do I hear any discussion?”
* * * * *
A thousand ships burst out of hyperspace, screaming inward toward a point in space soon to be occupied by Haldor, the home world of the Harbok. On Haldor, order prevailed. Eight baseships orbiting outside a complex array of battle stations around the planet spent two days gathering their flocks, then they began their journey out-system to meet the invaders.
They had three weeks before engaging the Oort, then another three weeks before any surviving Oort reached Haldor. During that time, Haldor would set an infallible defense in place. Not one invader could be allowed through, not a single one, or they would take the planet. If the Harbok defense failed, the Harbok realm would continue, but its latest home world and its head, the Lor, would be lost.
Fifteen hundred ships set forth to counter the invasion. Days later and in accordance with a master plan, more ships reached orbit to provide an inner defense. Inside their orbit lay the minefield of battle stations that nothing could get through. Haldor was impregnable to the advancing horde.
The invaders had tried before, many times, and failed, but Lor Tas’val had a bad feeling this time that something had changed, a feeling he could not put his finger on. Many years had gone by since the Oort had challenged Haldor. They had changed tactics, attacking other worlds of the Harbok domain instead. Why here and why now, when they had allowed Haldor so many years to regroup, he wondered? It didn’t make sense. Had they grown impatient? Could they have a new weapon, or a new strategy, or were they just bent on throwing themselves on the swords of the Harbok as they had so many times in the past? Because that is what battles for Haldor were like.
Not so for his other worlds. There, he would have classified most battles as draws—many of his ships destroyed but all the Oort destroyed—except for one thing: there was no such thing as a draw with the Oort. You either destroyed every single Oort, or you lost that world.
Lor Tas’val, dressed as usual in a worn but comfortable beige uniform without emblems of rank or awards, pulled the cape he had thrown over his shoulders tighter. It wasn’t particularly cold in the operations center, but still, he felt cold and even a little numb, though he never let his men know that. Intelligent, shining black eyes stared out of his heavily creased, leathery face into the holographic display, reading the display with the same emotions he always felt in regard to the Oort: disgust, dismay, and hate. Disgust of the creatures hurtling toward Haldor. Dismay for the survivors on worlds that had failed to check the advance of the Oort. Hate for the cost of this war—the cost in lives, the cost in resources, and the cost to the Harbok culture, a cost that would never be recouped, at least not in any future he could foresee.
Always the hate. It pervaded his being. Hate sustained. Hate paved the way for resolve. Hate gave credence to the harsh commands he had already issued and for the commands that would follow. Hate prepared one for loss. Hate sealed away the memories of friends and compatriots certain to die in the weeks ahead. Hate sanctioned disregard for the cost to families, the cost of dead loved ones.
The display clearly depicted the drama that would unfold. The Oort, tightly grouped since emerging from hyperspace, began to spread, to fan out on slightly diverging vectors. Harbok fighters would eventually spew from baseships, regroup and cloak, and speed off on individual assignments. Because of the cloaking device, the Harbok should hold the advantage, but it was not always enough. The Oort enhanced the physical abilities of their hosts, making the Oort/host combination more productive and lethal than the host alone might have been. In addition, they fought to the last creature with apparent disregard for their own lives, like fanatics. They never gave up, never retreated.
Tas’val’s lips pursed in his hard, wrinkled face, and he unconsciously pulled his cape tighter about his shoulders again. Sometimes he hated being Lor. Like right now. His soldiers, his people, were going to die. Wives and children would wail before this battle ended.
Weeks passed. The battle joined, not as fleet against fleet but as ship against ship. The Oort always fought singly, with no apparent strategy. Harbok strategy had no alternative but to do the same, though in two-ship elements whenever possible. An
d the Harbok fought effectively.
When the battle ended, 538 of the original 1,500 ships began the long journey back to Haldor. There was no hurry. Celebrations would be held onboard, then once again after the fleet reached home to celebrate the lives of those not so fortunate. Lor Tas’val held his head in dismay rather than in triumph over the victory. In a dejected voice, he ordered his shipyards to increase production of new ships. Again.
Despite his dismay, deep down he felt relieved that the premonition he had been harboring for weeks, the feeling that something had changed, never materialized. It was back to business as usual for Haldor.
* * * * *
Captain Brice was in the middle of a staff meeting when his personal communicator chirped. He lifted the unit to his ear and answered, “Go ahead.”
The voice of the duty communications officer responded, “Tightbeam message from Aldebaran, sir. You’ll want to see it immediately.”
“Display it on the conference room screen, Lieutenant.”
“Uh, sir, the message is not coded for your eyes only, but I think you might want to see it privately first.”
That got his attention. “I’ll be right there,” he said tersely.
Aldebaran’s message sent chills through his body. “After the battle ended, one ship of unknown origin, probably Fourth Race, appeared briefly on our screens where the attacking fleet initially formed up. Moments later, it jumped. Suspect the ship was cloaked and dropped its cloak only long enough to jump. No information available on how long it was here, but believe it was here long before our arrival. Suspect its purpose was to study the battle. End.”
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