After Burton was gone, Christa said, "I'm going to relate everything the cyborg said to me, and my impressions. I recorded it, but I want you to know now in case something was to happen to me. But you're not to repeat it to anyone unless something happens to me."
"Of course, Captain."
~
"That's quite a story," Mollago said when Christa had finished.
"Yes."
"Do you believe him?"
"I'd like to. And he was pretty convincing, but I just don't know. He went from not knowing a word of Amer when he came aboard to speaking like a professional on a lecture circuit in just two days. So, did he learn everything from the vid instruction courses with the combined information from all of the messages he intercepted, or has he been stringing us along? And he originally said that the safety of the G.A. depended on my releasing him and the others. But when I questioned him about that, he said he was just trying to get my attention. There's more there than he's admitting."
Mollago just shook his head slowly to show he had nothing to offer on the topic.
"And it adds another dimension to where we go from here. If we'd had to leave the area without being able to take the Denubbewa ship, I would have ordered it destroyed, along with all of the Denubbewa aboard it. But now, knowing that most of the Denubbewa might actually be captured aliens who are aware of their previous lives and only want to be free makes such a decision much harder."
"I'm glad I don't have to make that decision."
"Your time will come. You're an excellent second officer and will move into the top spot one day."
"Thank you, Captain."
"Of course, it may not happen if you keep coming to your captain's office dripping sweat all over her carpet." She punctuated the humorous remark with a smile.
Mollago smiled and said, "Sorry, Captain. And next time I'll bring my own towel."
~ ~ ~
"Captain," the Com chief said, "a Priority-One message for you has just come in."
"Send it to my queue, Chief."
"Yes, ma'am."
Commander Lori Ashraf was working in her office aboard the Scout-Destroyer Seeker. She leaned in so the computer could perform the retinal scan before she was allowed access to the message. When the computer was satisfied, the message began to play. She was surprised when she saw that it was from the Koshi.
"Hello, Lori," the image of Christa Carver said. "I have some distressing news. I've already forwarded this information to Admiral Holt, and I'll be sending it to Commander Fareman as well.
"In a nutshell, we've found what appears to be a derelict Denubbewa warship. More importantly, it appears to be sheathed with Dakinium. If that's accurate, it might explain why we haven't spotted a single Denubbewa ship before now. And we only discovered this one because we stopped to investigate a derelict freighter that did appear on our sensors. While my people were investigating the freighter, someone noticed that the light from a group of distant stars wasn't visible.
"That's all for now. I'll message you again when we know more. We're going to attempt to board the Denubbewa ship. I'm appending our coordinates so you'll know where we are if we fail to report in again.
"Wish us luck.
"Christa Marie Carver, Commander, Captain of the GSC Koshi. End of message."
Commander Ashraf immediately notified the watch commander to have the entire squadron proceed to the new coordinates she was sending to the navigation station.
~ ~ ~
"Working with the engineers from the Karl Linne," Lt. Burton said to Christa and Lt. Mollago during a meeting in Christa's office, "we were successful in removing a piece of sheathing material that covered a vent on that Denubbewa ship."
"Excellent," Christa said. "And the acid issue?"
"A single drop of the acid went inactive after several seconds on the Dakinium. It only scored a deep slice about a centimeter in length. We had to use quite a bit to cut the sample off."
"That's good news. Have you begun the analysis of the material?"
"We began that work this morning."
"Is the Denubbewa ship still invisible to all sensors?"
"Yes, ma'am. Captain, this ship gives us an incredible opportunity to learn about the Denubbewa. Have you decided when we can begin examining their systems?"
"We cannot begin examining their systems until we first ascertain that nothing our people do can result in any sort of an automated signal being sent to the Denubbewa fleet— at least not until we're ready for a signal to be sent to them."
"I don't understand," Burton said. "Why would we want to have an automated signal sent to them?"
"Why does a hunter bait a trap?"
"Oh."
"Exactly."
"But we can never be sure that we won't accidentally cause an emergency signal to be sent to the Denubbewa when we begin examining electronic systems. If that happened, they'd know their secret was out."
"There is one way."
"Not examine the systems?" Mollago said.
"Okay," Christa said with a smile, "there are two ways."
"Then what's the other, Captain?" Burton asked.
"As I've mentioned before in our meetings, I've been sending a stream of updates regarding our find to Admiral Holt and the other two squadron commanders searching for Denubbewa to keep them fully apprised of developments. In one of my first updates to Admiral Holt, I suggested that he send one of the newer ship transports the Second Fleet now has operating in Regions Two and Three. That would enable us to send the Denubbewa ship back to Quesann for study. Unfortunately, the distance to Quesann means that they haven't yet received even the first message I sent.
"Yes," Lt. Burton said. "If a DS Ship Transport were to arrive, we could put the Denubbewa ship inside and be confident that no emergency beacon or automated message could ever reach the Denubbewa because the transport ship's Dakinium outer hull would prevent it."
"Until we have some safeguard such as that in place, or we actually want to summon the Denubbewa fleet, we can't start messing around with alien technology that we don't yet understand."
"Of course, Captain. And that's fine. I don't really expect that ship to be going anywhere. I'm just kind of anxious to play with the new toy."
"While we wait, what's the situation with our prisoners?"
"We continue to rotate the guards every watch," Mollago said. "There's been no activity among the Denubbewa on the tables, and there's nothing going on where the inactive Denubbewa are in shipping containers."
"Very good. Well, there's just one more thing to discuss before we adjourn. Lt. Burton, have we made any progress with the attempt to block all communications within that storage area we want to use as a holding cell?"
"We're still working on it. The power envelope we've created around the storage locker so far is blocking all communications in most of the interior. We continue to work to achieve one hundred percent in the entire room. Perhaps it will be ready by tomorrow."
"I hope so. It's darn inconvenient not having the CT system working."
"I know, Captain. And I agree. I keep finding myself trying to use mine throughout the day until I remember it's been deactivated."
"Okay. If that's all, we're done. Carry on."
~ ~ ~
By the next afternoon, work on the temporary holding cell was finished. Lt. Burton guaranteed that no electronic signal could possibly be received or sent from inside the storage locker. The prisoner was moved immediately. Following completion of the move, Christa ordered the com chief to restore the CT system. Every officer aboard ship was delighted to once again have their CT fully operational. It was commonly said that a person never appreciated something they used frequently until they were suddenly without it.
~ ~ ~
Several days later, the Seeker and twenty-four CPS-16s arrived in the sector. They had used the coordinates sent by Christa, but in the vastness of space, with everything constantly spinning and shifting, coordinates were not as accurate a
s they would have been on a fixed plane. And with the Koshi and all of the CPS-16s being sheathed with Dakinium, the small task force was not visible on sensors. The Seeker was able to locate the Koshi by first locating the derelict ship the Koshi squadron had stopped to investigate. The Koshi squadron ships had all turned on their exterior lights at minimum intensity once each hour so the other ships could verify everyone's position, and the same policy was employed when shuttles needed to navigate among the twenty-five unseen vessels. When a message arrived from the Seeker in which Captain Ashraf announced that her squadron was nearby, Christa ordered all ships to illuminate their exterior lights at half brightness until the arriving ships could establish their exact positions. Communications among the ships, naturally encrypted, was accomplished via narrow band laser signals rather than open S-band in order to assist their concealment.
~ ~
"Commander Ashraf's shuttle has arrived at the shuttle bay, Captain," Christa heard through her CT.
"Thank you. I'll go down to greet her personally."
Ten minutes later the shuttle had entered the bay and settled onto the deck while the outer hatch sealed and the temporary airlock was pressurized. When the airlock's transparent walls rose up out of the way, the shuttle moved to the only available parking location in the small bay and settled to the deck. Christa entered the bay as the shuttle's ramp was extending to the deck and watched as the passenger hatch was opened.
"Lori, it's wonderful to see you again, especially under such difficult circumstances," Christa said with a smile when Commander Ashraf emerged from the shuttle and walked down to the deck.
"And you, Christa. Are the circumstances difficult here? I got the impression you had everything under control."
"Let's go to my office and I'll fill you in."
* * *
Chapter Eleven
~ December 13th, 2290 ~
"Congratulations," Ashraf said as soon as the doors to Christa's office closed and before they had even taken their seats.
"For?" Christa said as she sat down.
"For securing an undamaged Denubbewa ship and dozens of Denubbewa prisoners. SCI must be beside themselves with joy and anticipation."
"I doubt they even know yet. We're a very long way from Quesann."
"Even if they don't know now, they'll know soon enough. And when they do, they'll be toasting your name."
"I'm glad you've come, Lori. We may have to defend that ship and the prisoners with everything we've got."
"Have you confirmed that the hull of the Denubbewa ship is sheathed in Dakinium?"
"Not completely. We've determined through analysis that the material shares many of the same properties as Dakinium. But the final verdict will rest with the Space Command scientists who've been studying it for years."
"It's black, it's virtually indestructible except for that acid the Denubbewa have, and it absorbs all energy beams and electronic signals?"
"Yes."
"Sounds like Dakinium to me. I guess the real question is: Where did they get the formula so they could manufacture it?"
"I'm hoping they acquired a piece of Dakinium when they destroyed either the Salado or the Yenisei and reverse engineered it."
"Why hoping? Because the alternative means someone sold us out?"
"Exactly. And it wouldn't be just Space Command or even Terrans being sold out. The one cyborg that is talking to us says the Denubbewa aren't here to conquer and control G.A. space. He says they're here to conquer and destroy all sentient life so they can replace it with their own cyborgs. He claims the cyborgs are just mindless slaves to the real Denubbewa."
"Are the real Denubbewa cyborgs, or do they have a biological body?"
"During one of our conversations he said he doesn't know. He claims never to have met one. Apparently the cyborgs work in designated clusters, and each cluster receives their directions from a single supervising cyborg who gets his marching orders from a higher supervisor, and so on."
"Sounds like a standard military hierarchy."
"Yes, except only one cyborg in each cluster ever gets to communicate with a higher up, and he only sees one level up. We, on the other hand, always know who's in the chain of command above and below us."
"So you're just going to sit here and wait to see what happens?"
"What else can we do? I can't destroy that Denubbewa ship with all the cyborgs inside and simply continue on with our mission. The intelligence loss, were I to do that, would be immeasurable. Besides, the mission is a bust if we can no longer detect Denubbewa ships with our sensors."
"I was thinking we should take the ship back to Quesann in order to save time, or at least as far as we can get it before we meet a Transport."
"I requested a Transport be sent, but that message hasn't even reached Quesann yet. And we don't know their systems well enough to pilot it. We might accidentally engage some sort of a self-destruct mechanism or send out a signal that attracts every Denubbewa in Region Three directly to us, and we wouldn't even know they're coming."
"True, but we don't have to fly it. We have forty-eight tugs available. That was the designed purpose of CPS-14s after all before they became a reconfigurable ship that could be customized for any mission. The CPS-16s have been modified quite a bit, but they can still be used for that purpose."
Christa grinned. "That's true. I've been so focused on the other issues that I never even thought of that."
"You're a Carver, not a god, although some folks think of you three ladies that way. I managed to almost keep up with the admiral while I was her aide, and I was ahead of her only a very few times during our many years together. And when I was actually ahead, it was only because the issue was extremely complex and I considered an option she missed because she was focused on issues I didn't even know about yet. Are there any issues here that I'm not aware of?"
"Uh, maybe one."
"I bet it's a big one."
"Uh, yeah."
"Can you talk about it?"
"Yes, but you can't repeat it."
"Your sister always trusted me to hold confidences sacred."
"I know. Okay, hang onto your seat."
Christa then related everything she had heard about the Elobian race in multiple conversations with the cyborg down in the special holding cell.
When she was done, Commander Ashraf said, "Wow!"
"Yeah."
"Who else knows about this?"
"My XO knows everything I've told you. And the guards have overhead parts of it, but I've sworn them to silence under threat of court-martial for anyone who speaks of it."
"Not Admiral Holt?"
"I've told him a little, but only the highlights. I didn't want to put too much in a communication— even a Priority-One communication."
"I don't blame you. This is Corplastizine on steroids."
"I like your suggestion about using the CPS-16s as tugs. Let's do it."
"Okay. As soon as we're done with our conversation, I'll inform my senior engineering officer and he can work with your senior person to figure out what we'll need to do it. Have your people produced images of the ship that we can use to determine attachment points?"
"No. I hadn't considered towing it to Quesann as an option. Until we learned of the sheathing, I had intended to destroy the ship because we're so far from Quesann that bringing a Denubbewa ship to the base seemed like a waste of time. Although we've never captured an intact Denubbewa ship, SCI has had enough pieces of destroyed ships that I believed there were no surprises in this one."
"Then we should have them begin work on that right away so our engineers can develop the plan for towing it."
"I hope they'll be able get it working with a double envelope," Christa said. "Do you have any idea how long it would take us to get back to Quesann at Light-480?"
"I suppose it would take about— eighty-four years. Half a lifetime. I'd say— that would definitely make it worth waiting for a Ship Transporter."
Christa s
tarted laughing, and that started Lori laughing.
~ ~ ~
The best engineers among the fifty ships present devoted themselves to preparing the Denubbewa ship for being towed in a double envelope. At first, they attacked the problem as if they might have to actually tow the Denubbewa ship with multiple tugs and account for control and inertia, but then they decided to forget all that and simply concentrate on building an envelope large enough to encompass one CPS-16 and the Denubbewa ship. The envelope generator of the CPS-16s had been designed to handle massive loads, but nothing so large as a Denubbewa warship that dwarfed Space Command's largest battleships. Working around the clock, the engineers came up with a plan to dramatically increase the power output from a CPS-16 envelope generator. They hoped their modifications wouldn't burn out the generator, or even worse, short out the electrical system in the entire ship.
Rather than ropes or cables, each CPS-16 carried a dozen sections of two-inch-thick rods, each rod being just over three meters long and made of Dakinium. Once fastened together, two rods, each 18 meters in length, would extend from the CPS-16 to the Denubbewa ship. The rods were probably strong enough to tow a planet, but strength wasn't the primary requirement. Once the rods were connected to both ships, the CPS-16 would activate its envelope generator and the two ships should then be able to move as one. Should any gap suddenly open in the connection, the envelope would dissipate and the Denubbewa ship would suddenly be at a dead stop in space while the towing ship continued on until it learned it had lost its load. The honor of towing the Denubbewa ship to Quesann was given to the Karl Linne because it was the bridge officers from that ship who had noticed the light from distant stars being blocked out by an anomaly, which led to discovering the black ship in the blackness of space.
Once everything was ready, it made no sense to hang around where they'd been for the past twenty-four days so the convoy of fifty-one ships prepared to head for Quesann.
~ ~ ~
"Admiral, Admiral Holt is calling," Jenetta heard from the viewpad sitting on her desk. She tapped a couple of contact points and the large monitor facing her desk illuminated with the image of Brian Holt.
Changing of the Guard (A Galaxy Unknown - Book 11) Page 13