“Yes, sir. It might be worthwhile to hold a press conference and let the people of the G.A. know about Husteus before the Grand Princess has an opportunity to release her version of the information.”
“I thought you wanted to keep the Denubbewa situation quiet because you feared a panic.”
“The press has already learned so the word will soon be out. The citizens of the G.A. might as well know the whole truth rather than getting a slanted view from a press that might not be supportive of our endeavors. Perhaps the real news will provide an incentive to non-aligned worlds to join the G.A. as full voting members and pay assessments that will enable us to increase our forces and provide improved protective services to a larger part of the G.A.”
“And yet knowing what you do about the inability of Space Command to protect all of our current territory, you want to add the Ruwalchu territory to the G.A.!” Senator Urhelect shouted.
“If the Senate confirms the annexation, the Ruwalchu will pay all expenses for the construction of a fleet of ships needed to patrol the new region in addition to the normal annual assessment required of all aligned planets in the G.A. I doubt we could find a more generous offer.”
“But they’ve insisted that any ships they pay for never leave Region Four.”
“I’ve made it abundantly clear that the ships built there will call Region Four their home port. But if a need arose elsewhere, they would be sent to where they were needed, just as we sent a taskforce from Region Three to the Ruwalchu territory when it was needed. The Ruwalchu are being very accommodating. They know how much more powerful our ships are than the ships of their Space Fleet were. They have a choice between joining us and allowing Space Command to protect them or rebuilding their own Space Fleet, a fleet that was totally destroyed by the Denubbewa without claiming more than a few kills of their own. They know they stand a far better chance by uniting with us and that we’ll be far stronger with them fighting by our side. I heartily support the annexation, but the decision is for the Senate to make.”
“Then you expect the Denubbewa to hit us again even though we’ve shown we can defeat them both in space and on the ground?” President Fluessa asked.
“Just as with Maxxiloth, I don’t expect the Denubbewa to ever give up unless we can hit them so hard that we either render them unable to wage war or manage to annihilate the leaders behind the effort to control the galaxy, and possibly the universe. Now they might have another thirteen million, five hundred thousand cyborg soldiers to fill in the holes left from the ones we’ve destroyed in the past. They don’t have to grow their replacement military people as we do, they simply have to take biological brains and stick them in a can. As long as they can keep rebuilding their forces like that, they’ll never stop. I’m convinced more than ever that we must find their main base and destroy the leaders if we’re ever going to win this war. We just haven’t managed to locate their main base— yet.”
~ ~ ~
“Hey, Jordie,” the Marine PFC said to his companion as they stood in the shade provided by a shuttle and watched the Space Command engineers work on a Personnel CJ Gate booth about ten meters away, “how many of these things have we done now?”
“I think this is about number eleven, and we’re just one of a dozen teams doing this. It seems like there’s no end to these things. Based on the amount of territory we’ve covered so far, we may be doing this for a year.”
“A year? I’ll go crazy if I have watch those guys do this for a year. Do you believe what they say about those booths, that you can step inside and travel anywhere in the universe?”
“I believe that they believe it. That’s kinda the same thing.”
“Yeah, but how do they control it?”
“By those codes on the control panel. I think it’s some kinda system like the coordinates on a map. You key in where you want to go, and it takes you to that place.”
“Yeah, but how do you know what place you’ll wind up in?”
“Damned if I know. Those engineers probably know.”
“They’re officers. They won’t talk to us. I tried. The one I spoke to just ignored me like I didn’t exist.”
“Maybe he didn’t hear you. They are so focused on what they’re doing, it’s like they’re in their own world.”
“Do you think there’s a danger, like maybe the booth could explode?”
“If there was no danger, do you think we’d be standing here in our armor with our laser rifles? But the danger isn’t from an explosion. These things are gateways or something that the cyborgs use all the time. Any minute, cyborgs could come pouring out of that Gate like fire ants from a disturbed anthill. That’s why we’re here with our weapons. Were you sleeping when the Staff Sergeant briefed us on what we had to do?”
“No. But I thought he was just pulling our leg when he said to watch out for cyborgs. I thought we killed ‘em all.”
“From what I hear, we haven’t scratched the surface. There are supposed to be millions and millions and millions of ’em.”
“Yeah, sure. Hey, it looks like they’re done with the control panel, so now they’ll just disconnect those wires in the back and we can head out.”
“Yeah, I guess. Hey, did you see that?”
“What?”
“The outside control panel just— like— flashed. Shit. It’s three cyborgs. Open fire. Don’t hit the engineers or the booth.”
As soon as the two Marines opened fire, the engineers dove to the ground. They had no weapons so they couldn’t help. Two other Marines who’d been sitting in the shuttle jumped out and opened fire as well. The three cyborgs opened fire with their own laser weapons, but the Dakinium armor of the Marines absorbed the energy. To Dakinium, the laser bolts were no more dangerous than the beam from a flashlight.
The firefight lasted less than fifteen seconds and no one was injured except the three cyborgs. They were all down for the count. The two Space Command engineering officers had been behind the Gate booth when the shooting started. As soon as the firefight ended, they ran for the shuttle and called the Marine Command center for the sector, informing them of what had just happened. Within seconds, every Marine Command Center on the planet knew of the incident and was informing the other teams. The squad of Marines with each team told the engineering officers that there was a danger and that all of them were ordered to get back into the shuttles.
With the shuttles’ ramps closed, the teams were as safe as if they were a thousand kilometers away. The shuttle pilots watched the booths and no more cyborgs emerged.
After fifteen minutes had passed, the two engineers at the site where the cyborgs had emerged asked the pilots to open the ramps. They called for permission, but it was denied.
“Sorry, sir,” the pilot said. “Command says to stay in the ship.”
“Lieutenant, we have to get back out there and find out where those cyborgs just came from. We only need a couple of minutes to get the data and disconnect the power so no more can come through.”
“Sir, it’s my ass if anything happens to any of you.”
“And it’s all of our asses if we never learn where these tin cans are coming from. We need to see the transport codes for this latest batch before anything happens to that booth or it loses power. It’s already shot up quite a bit. We need to go now. This is more important than your bars, Lieutenant, but I’ll make it an order to keep you in the clear.”
“I’m not sure that would save my ass, sir, but go do what you have to do. Just make it quick.”
The two engineers and the squad of Marines were out of the shuttle so fast one would think there was a fire in the rear cabin. One of the engineers plugged a data storage device especially constructed for this operation into a data jack below the booth’s exterior control panel and then touched a few touch-sensitive points on the panel itself. Within seconds, the process was complete. As he removed the data device, he shouted to the other engineer who was presently standing behind the booth. Almost immediately,
the control panel dimmed completely and the booth’s interior light winked out. As the second engineer walked out from behind the booth, he gave the thumbs-up sign.
* * *
Chapter Twenty-Four
~ November 28th, 2292 ~
“Commander,” Captain Critarian said, “your report is slightly ambiguous. You state that your teams of engineers have completed the process of collecting data from all of the CJ Gate booths located in the internment centers on the planet, plus several dozen you’ve been able to find in outlying areas.”
“Yes, ma’am, we have,” Christa replied, “and we’ve assembled a wealth of information.”
“But the ambiguity is that there may be booths on the planet that we’re unaware of.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“That’s unacceptable.”
“I agree, but most of the original population of the planet is gone. Less than four percent remains. At the food stations we’ve established, we’ve asked for assistance from that four percent to help us locate any unknown booths, telling people that if we don’t find and remove all of the booths, the cyborgs could return at any time they choose. While we have received some useful information from people grateful for our having saved their lives, enormous areas of the planet are now totally unpopulated. Where there are no people, there’s no one to report the presence of a Gate.
“We know that every active Gate reports its location twice each day, Captain, but the transmission is only active for the tiniest fraction of a second, and that’s not enough time to pinpoint their locations. Since we know the precise timing for booth reporting, we’re trying to identify the approximate locations of every signal and then slowly move in to watch a much smaller geographical area every time the booth is about to make a report in the hope that we can better pinpoint the brief signal. However, the engineers tell me that it could take months to track down all the active booths, so we’ve also begun working it from another angle.
“Centuries ago on Earth, they had wired communications devices called telephones. You entered a numeric code to have a telephone at another location ring, alerting someone at the destination that you were trying to contact them. The first few digits of the code told the system where the destination phone was located in a geographic area, and the latter digits identified the phone ID. The first part was actually called an area code. That made it easier for those primitive systems to forward the call to the right location. We’ve gotten away from that now, and every transceiver simply has a unique address with a master computer system tracking where the device being called is located at any instant. That’s the situation we face here. The address of the booth seems to have no relation to its actual location. Two booths, placed side by side, could have radically different addresses, so right now it’s impossible to determine where all of the Denubbewa Gates are in the universe. Only the Denubbewa central database knows for sure.”
“So how are you combating that system in order to locate the booths on the planet?”
“We’ve acquired a great many addresses from the downloads my engineers have completed. We’re now trying to establish patterns from that information. Based on the structure of the address system, it appears that while a small number of the send-to and receive-from addresses are unique, many are identical, and in some cases, transmission to an identical address was performed at the same instant. Technically that’s impossible if there was only a single booth at the destination because access to a destination booth must be allocated to just one sending booth at a time. However, if the address selected connects to a large center with multiplexed booths, the identification of the sending booth can be added to make the transmission ID unique and the signal can simply be routed to any available booth. Say, for example, that a booth with an address of 011 wanted to send something to a booth with an address of CCC, but CCC could be at a location with a thousand booths. So what the system would do is send it to the next available booth and append a unique booth number. The actual receiving address could become something like CCC05302. Another transmission might be coming from a Personnel CJ Gate with an address of 999 and that might be sent to the next available booth in line. So the receiving address might be something like CCC05308. Our difficulty is determining if CCC05302 should simply be referenced as CCC because the appended address data shouldn’t be present in the send-address. It’s a very complex situation that requires much more information to understand fully.”
“How does that help you identify the location of the extra booths on the planet?”
“It doesn’t.”
“Then what good is it?”
“Collecting the data is helpful in two ways. One, it helps us identify travel between local booths on the planet and travel from booths on the planet to either booths in ships or from booths on the planet to the massive indoctrination centers for new cyborgs they must have somewhere in the universe. Two, identifying the addresses of the massive centers identifies a prime target.”
“A prime target?”
“Imagine you’re standing near a booth in one of the massive orientation centers for new cyborgs when that booth suddenly activates. As you watch, one of the most powerful WOLaR bombs Space Command has in its inventory appears inside the booth and the detonation time is set to just twenty seconds.”
Captain Critarian grinned. “I like it.”
“So do I. It’s a shame we can’t do it.”
“Why not do it?”
“Because it would probably anger the Denubbewa leaders enough to retaliate in a similar fashion. Can you imagine hundreds of powerful bombs exploding in the trash piles at Lorense-Four or in booths we don’t know about elsewhere? No, that’s a card we’ll just have to keep up our sleeve and use at a later time.”
“Then you’re saying we’ve reached a brick wall in our effort to locate all the booths on this planet.”
“No, ma’am, not at all. I’m sorry if I’ve created that impression by giving voice to a fantasy of mine. When we feel confident we’ve identified most, if not all, of the booths on the planet with the data we’ve collected, we’ll begin sending locator beacons to each of the unidentified locations. If we try to send to booths that have been deactivated or destroyed, nothing will happen. But if the locator beacon disappears from the booth, we’ll know we have a live one. If we then receive a locator signal from somewhere on the planet, someone will travel there, download the transmission information to increase our collection of booth data, and then deactivate the booth. In that way we should eventually be able to locate all active booths on the planet.”
“And if the locator disappears but you receive no signal?”
“Then we’ll know the Personnel CJ Gate is a valid destination but is off-planet. Since the locator signal only uses S-Band, it’s possible it may not be received in our lifetime. But if it’s received fairly soon, we’ll investigate and try to determine where the booth is— or was.”
“Was?”
“It might be aboard a Denubbewa ship somewhere in our space, and I have no doubt that the Denubbewa will deactivate the locator immediately. Of course, we’ll never receive a signal if the ship is sheathed in Dakinium. That’s another issue. A great many of the ships we destroyed in the first Denubbewa armada were sheathed, but we haven’t seen any lately. We think that’s because the sheathing was being fabricated here. It’s possible the sheathing operation has now been moved to outside our border or even to the home base of the Denubbewa. If they manage to get one of those armada-sized CJ Gates into our space, we could suddenly find ourselves awash in Dakinium-sheathed warships and motherships.”
“As long as we have our double envelope capability, the sheathing won’t protect them from us.”
“No, but it does hide them. We have great difficulty spotting them since our DeTect equipment can’t see the ships.”
“Okay, Commander, thanks for the update. Carry on.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Christa stood, braced to attention, then turned and left the captai
n’s office. Her shuttle was waiting at an airlock and she’d be back aboard the Koshi within twenty minutes.
~ ~ ~
“Christa and her teams of engineers have provided us with significant amounts of data from the CJ Gate booths on Husteus,” Admiral Plimley said in the closed session of the A.B. being held in Jenetta’s office. “Unfortunately, we still don’t have enough to draw any conclusions regarding where the missing thirteen point five million inhabitants of that planet might have been sent— and it probably doesn’t matter. I feel confident they’re no longer in G.A. space, and they’ve probably been processed already. If we see any of them again, it will be as cyborgs.”
“I fear you’re correct, Loretta,” Jenetta said. “Where do we stand with the new com system?”
“From all reports, it’s been working wonderfully. Being able to communicate with our ships and bases at the extremes of G.A. space in seconds has made an incredible difference. Our capability of responding to problems before they get completely out of control is something we’ve needed for a long time.”
“Yes, but I was referring to the G.A. system you’re manufacturing.”
“Oh, well, we’re making good progress. We’ve already begun shipping satellites to be sprinkled throughout G.A. space. As you know, we’ve used the same basic design of the satellites we created for SCI to keep an eye on rogue planets and monitor traffic in the main shipping lanes that might be used for smuggling operations. The only modifications are the instructional chipsets and the specialized components that create the tiny wormholes in subspace. As with the SCI satellites, the shell is sheathed with Dakinium, which makes them almost indestructible while being able to recharge themselves from solar energy or cosmic energy. They should never run out of power, and if they’re involved in a collision with a ship or asteroid, they’ll simply reposition themselves afterward.”
“How many have you shipped?”
The Invasion Begins Page 29