“Agreed,” Opash said.
“And we can’t just hang out in space for months and months until we find the right opportunity. This is a small ship, so the supplies of food, water and air are probably limited.”
“Right again.”
“Which means we need to head back to Earth as quickly as possible. Assuming we can’t figure out how to defuse the bomb, we’re going to have to land the shuttle and let it explode. After that, we need to locate one of the other space faring species and ask them for help, but we have to do it from the surface of the Earth.”
“That could be difficult,” Hiranaka said.
“We still have that communications device they left us. Maybe we can adjust it, so we can talk to other species.”
“Problematic,” Ramirez said, “since we don’t know what technologies they use, and what channels they speak on.”
She sighed. “But there’s another species that’s already made open contact with us.”
“The Dakh Hhargash?” Opash said.
“And they’ve made an offer,” Mehta added, “or they’ve said they would.”
“You’re not thinking—” Davis said.
“She is,” Trel said.
“It’s better than letting the Russians get the technology.”
The silence that followed hung over them like a cloud of poison gas.
“Who do you plan to offer for the harvest?” Davis said.
“You can offer them my mother,” Ramirez muttered.
“I don’t,” Mehta said. “When it comes harvest time, we stiff them.”
Ramirez let out a long, descending whistle. “That’ll make them angry.”
“We’ll have to finesse the whole thing,” she said. “We tell them we don’t trust them, so we need time to make sure the technology works. We keep stalling until we have the wherewithal to defend ourselves.”
“Dangerous,” Trel said. “The Protectorate won’t be there for your planet if you make a deal like that.”
“They’re not going to be around, anyway,” Mehta said.
“Do you think the president would agree?” Ramirez asked.
“I don’t know.”
“And what if we get to the point where we have to give them a harvest?” Hiranaka asked. “Who would we pick?”
“That’s right,” Ramirez said. “How could you choose?”
“I couldn’t,” Mehta said. “Any choice would be like saying those people aren’t worth defending.”
“You’d just let them abduct people, and not try to stop them?” Ramirez said. “I cannot imagine any way this idea could work without bad results.”
“I know,” Mehta said. “Why do you think I’ve been asking for other suggestions?”
Another moment of somber silence passed. Then Hiranaka said, “There were two hundred thousand people killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but some historians insist millions more Japanese would have died without it.”
“Do you believe that?” Davis said.
“I don’t know. I’m just saying, you could go down in history as a mini-Truman.”
“Mega-Truman,” Ramirez said. “The Dakh Hhargash want ten or twenty million a year. That’s a difference of two orders of magnitude.”
“You got any better ideas?” Davis said.
“No, just the location of the Species X planet,” Ramirez said.
“What?” Mehta said. “How did you get that?”
“I was tooling around in the files, and I came up with the study I had one of the analysts working on.” He smiled. “We don’t have it narrowed down to the exact planet, but we’ve got the general area.”
“Maybe we can use this to bargain with the Mralans,” Davis said.
“How did you come up with that?” Trel said.
Ramirez pointed to the screen in front of him. Mehta walked up to the back of the cockpit and looked over his shoulder. Opash and Trel stood beside her, crowding the spot behind the pilot seats.
“Here, you can see all the attacks, marked with X’s. From each of those is an indicator showing from which direction the Species X ship first approached our ship. Some of them are random, as though the ship had been wandering around in the sector before it came across its target. But most of them point in a general direction, toward this area of space that’s marked with a cube. I think Species X originates somewhere in here.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Opash said. “That area is all inside what used to be protected space. We would know if one of them had space technology.”
“None of them do?” Mehta asked.
“Ninety-eight percent of the planets we protect don’t even have agriculture,” Opash said.
“Show me a list,” Mehta said.
Ramirez smiled. “I have it right here.” He changed the image with a tap on the screen. “These,” he highlighted the top of the list, “are the planets known to have intelligent life.”
Mehta scanned the remainder of the list, then her eyes stopped at one planet. “A-seven-fifty-three.”
“No,” Opash said, “that one doesn’t—”
“Isn’t that the planet where your people sent the failed mining expedition?”
“It is,” Trel said.
“That’s Species X.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Opash said.
Mehta ignored her and turned back to Ramirez. “What do we know about that planet and its inhabitants?”
Ramirez made several taps on the controls. “The planet’s mass is less than two thirds Earth’s mass, but the atmosphere is thick and well oxygenated. It has lush plant growth, and a large number of primitive species.”
“Mostly arthropods?” Mehta asked.
“Um, yes.”
Ramirez clicked his screen controller. “Here’s one of the photos of the miners being attacked.”
Mehta looked at the screen and saw an image of a Mralan man trying to slap away his attackers. But he was surrounded, and they were climbing up his body, one creature on top another. And they were, just as Trel had said, the shape of ants.
Trel shuddered.
Mehta ran her hand through her hair. There was something about the fact that the enemy were ants that she knew was important. Something about the biology of ants, or maybe just arthropods in general, that could make all the difference. But it had been 25 years since she’d been in college studying biology, and entomology had not been her favorite among all the other interesting things there was to learn.
So, what was it? It tickled her right at the edge of her awareness, teasing her. If she could just figure it out, put it all together…
“Colonel Mehta,” Hiranaka said, her voice wavering, “all this discussion may be academic.”
“What?” Mehta said.
“It’s another ship,” Hiranaka said. “They’re on an approach course.”
Trel tapped Ramirez on the shoulder. They traded places and Trel went to work on his console.
“Who is it?” Mehta said.
“It looks like a Mralan ship,” Hiranaka said.
“But a Mralan ship would have an identity beacon,” Trel said. “This one doesn’t. That can only mean one thing.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“Let’s evade,” Mehta said, gripping the back of Trel’s chair. She could see the indicator of the approaching ship on the small screen in the dashboard, and her heart pounded. “Are there any systems nearby we can use to blend in?”
“We’re in kind of a void right now,” Trel said. “Closest system is fifteen minutes away.”
“They’re coming up fast,” Hiranaka said. “I give them five minutes.”
“Change course. See if they compensate.”
Hiranaka made the move. A moment later, they had their answer. “They’re definitely pursuing us.”
“Diós,” Ramirez said. “This shuttle doesn’t have weapons, does it?”
“No,” Trel answered. “A weak shield, but that won’t last long. And shields don’t work in Nethers
pace, anyway.”
“How about reducing the gravity?” Davis said. “Like we did on Fmedg’s ship. We could go faster that way, right?”
Trel made a sad sounding laugh. “Maybe.” He flicked his hands over the controls, and Mehta’s feet lifted off the floor. “Okay, that was all the gravity we have, but the difference in speed is… not much at all.”
“Not going to be enough,” Hiranaka said.
“Ideas,” Mehta said, but no one answered.
“We’re going to die,” Ramirez mumbled.
Her entire body felt jittery, like she was shivering, and every layer of her body vibrated at a slightly different frequency. “Are you sure it’s not a Mralan ship,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” Trel answered.
Damn, what was she going to do? She ran her mind through all the things she’d learned in all her years in the military. Tactics, techniques, procedures… how could she fight when she was this outgunned?
“I can fly evasive maneuvers,” Hiranaka said. “It’s what I was trained to do.”
“Evasive won’t be enough,” she said as an old tactic came back to her. She tapped Hiranaka. “Give me the helm.”
Hiranaka jumped up, and Mehta slid into the warm seat.
Trel stared at Hiranaka. “I don’t understand,” he said. “You’re a trained pilot. You know how to do this. She’s not.” He pointed to Mehta. “Why did you give her your seat?”
“It was an order.”
Trel looked at Mehta. “What are you doing?”
“This isn’t a dog-fight,” Mehta said. “Techniques used by pilots don’t apply.”
“What is it, then?” Ramirez asked.
“An ambush.”
“Mierda.”
“Buckle up,” Mehta said, even though she knew the actual protocol was to activate movement-dampening force fields. She heard the crew scrambling to get into position while she turned the shuttle around to face the oncoming enemy, then dropped out of Netherspace. The streak of the galaxy spread across her view, slashing the darkness.
“Where are they coming through?” she asked Trel.
“I’ll send you the spot,” Trel said, then a dot appeared on Mehta’s screen, with a range indicator beside it. She turned the nose of the craft to face it. “Maximum power to the front shields,” she said.
“I don’t get it,” Hiranaka said. “What are you doing?”
The enemy ship burst into view, as though it had popped through a hole in space. A red glow in the weapons pockets told her they were ready to fire. But she also knew they rarely fired immediately. That would give her the time she needed.
She pressed the controls and the shuttle leapt forward.
“We’re going toward them?” Trel shouted. “Won’t that make it easier for them to hit us?”
As if to answer his question, a bolt of energy struck the craft on the left front. Sparks flew from the shields, enveloping them in a sphere of bright tendrils.
Someone in the back screamed, a high-pitched cry of terror.
But she realized her own paralyzing fear was gone, replaced by a robotic calm, almost an out-of-body experience. She had heard about this state, but it was the first time it had ever happened to her.
A second weapons pod glowed on the enemy ship, now the size of a watermelon in the front window. It spat a focused beam at them. Mehta dodged the bolt and continued forward in a random zig-zag path.
“This is suicide!” Opash shouted. “We need to get away from them!”
Another weapon leapt from their ship, this time a wide beam. No way she could dodge it. But it didn’t seem to do much damage.
“Shield status?”
“Ten percent.”
The fear in the back of her mind poked itself forward. She put a pillow on it to smother it.
Again, the weapons pocket of the enemy ship glowed.
“Looks like this’ll be a focused beam,” Trel said.
“Yeah,” Mehta answered. “Let’s see if I can evade.”
The weapon fired.
It slammed the shuttle, jerking everyone back and forth against their restraining fields. She felt like a shaken baby, like she had whiplash.
“Shields are gone,” Trel said.
But now, they were less than ten feet from the enemy, slipping past the weapons pods, so close to the ship that the shuttle was out of the fields of fire of the weapons. The enemy couldn’t crank the aiming points around enough to target them. Mehta slowed the craft, making a quick circle to bring the shuttle into synchrony with the Species X ship, and lowered the craft until its skids touched the skin of the enemy vessel.
“Spirits,” Trel whispered.
“I call that ‘the Han Solo maneuver’,” Mehta said. She looked around. “The landing, that is. The rest of it was basic tactics for responding to an ambush.”
Trel let out a loud breath. “I can’t believe we’re still alive.”
“Yeah,” Mehta said. “But we can’t stay here forever. And I doubt Species X is going to oblige us with the second half of Mr. Solo’s trick. So, we’ve got to come up with something else.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Trel said.
“I’ll show you the movie someday.” She leaned back in her chair. It almost didn’t seem real that they were still alive. But how were they going to get away?
“You don’t suppose they’ll forget about us, do you?” Davis said.
She shook her head.
“I didn’t think so.”
“And anyway, as soon as we disengage, they’ll remember.”
“We can’t just stay here forever,” Trel said. “Our fuel will run out.”
“Okay,” Mehta said. “I’ll turn everything off until we can figure something out.” She reached up to the console and hit the off button.
Oh, hell.
“I feel gravity,” Mehta said.
“It has to be coming from the Species X ship,” Opash said.
“Enough to trigger the bomb?”
“Shit,” Davis said. “We got less than fifteen minutes.”
“Can we take off again?” Hiranaka said. “Will that turn the bomb off?”
“I doubt it,” Ramirez said. “I don’t think this was a possibility they considered.”
“I agree,” Mehta said. “But if we leave the shuttle, where the hell do we go? Inside the ship?”
Trel jumped to his feet. “Something moved out there.”
“There’s no one out there,” Ramirez said. “Calm down.”
“No, something…” He pointed to the right. “There it is again. I think it’s an airlock handle.”
Mehta looked in the direction of his gesture, and saw the handle turn again. “They’ll be coming any minute. Opash, get out those handguns they gave us.”
Opash opened a compartment in the wall, and pulled out the weapons, handing them to each crew member.
“So, we’re just going to shoot at them from here?” Hiranaka said.
“The shuttle’s going to blow up. We have to move out. Suit up.” Mehta grabbed the space suit ball that hung from her belt and slapped it against her hip. “Trel, I don’t know the outsides of these ships very well. Which way do we go to get to engineering?”
“Get to what?”
“Engineering. I’m assuming their ships are the same as yours on the inside, too.”
Trel sat with his space suit ball in his hand, staring at her, the color gone from his face. “Inside?”
“Yes, the…” She took a deep breath. Insects, he was afraid of insects, and these were big enough to immobilize almost anyone. She grabbed his shoulder and shook it. “Snap out of it. Trel! We’ve got to get out of here, and inside’s our only option. Help me get to engineering!”
“I can’t do this.”
She pointed to the spot where they’d seen movement. “You’re sure that’s an airlock?”
“Yes.”
“Then they’re coming for us. You can’t just sit here.”
/> He took a deep breath in several halting gasps, then slammed the space suit ball against his side. He looked at her through the visor, and his face distorted. She thought she could see tears in his eyes. Then he jerked his hand up, as though to protect his face.
The alien airlock popped open, and several creatures scrambled out of the hole. They were suited up for space, just as Mehta’s team was.
“Spirits!” Opash exclaimed. “They have six legs!”
“And exoskeletons,” Mehta said. “My theory about Species X has just been confirmed. And now we know why they’re more powerful.”
“Six legs?” Opash said.
“They don’t use as much gravity. They have all that extra power to routinely put into their other systems.”
“Then they don’t have better technology,” Trel said.
“Nope. Now, where’s engineering?”
Trel looked around. His chest rose and fell like he had just run two miles, and he kept blinking. “I think through that airlock,” he said, pointing to another spot several hundred feet away.
“They’re getting closer,” Hiranaka said.
“Davis, take Ramirez, Hiranaka and Opash, and draw their attention away from Trel and me,” Mehta said. “Last one out, turn on the shuttle and set it on a course away from the ship.” She pointed to the door. “Let’s go.”
She could see Trel’s face distort in terror. But he opened the door and jumped out. His magnetic boots clicked as he hit the deck, then he plunged forward.
Mehta followed him, then gasped as the immensity of the blackness surrounded her. Trel was almost ten feet ahead, dodging equipment on the hull and ducking whenever a blaster flash reflected silently in front of him. She hurried to catch up.
“Shuttle away,” Hiranaka said through the radio.
“Ow, damn!” someone else said. It sounded like Davis.
No time to wonder what was going on. She clamored over the uneven surface of the outer hull, trying to keep up with Trel. White light illuminated the space beside her. She ducked.
A moment later, she was at the airlock with Trel, where he worked to open it.
“They’re coming toward you,” Ramirez said through the radio. “Prepare yourselves.”
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