"Don't forget our CTs," Fareman said. "They're built into our bodies. And SCI has a plethora of electronic gadgets they put into the bodies of their undercover agents."
"But the insertion is voluntary and can be removed."
"I'd be completely lost without my CT," Kalborne said. "I use it constantly throughout the day."
"There's one thing the Denubbewa get that I certainly don't want," Christa said.
"What's that?" Lori asked.
"A new set of phony memories after the old ones are involuntarily stripped away."
"I agree," Commander Fareman said. "So are we going to put a few thousand of them out of their misery today?"
"Let's do it," Christa said.
~
Six hours later, after traveling at Marc-One, the four squadrons halted their travel less than ten minutes away from their destination. They had divided into two attack groups, each group proceeding to one of the two locations where the Denubbewa had been seen. A single CPS-16 from each attack group was sent to overfly the area and record images that could be used for planning the attack.
Christa was on the bridge of the Koshi when the scout from her group reported in.
"Uh, you're not going to believe this, Commander. They're gone. All of them."
"You're sure you're at the right location?"
"Yes, ma'am. The stars say this is the place. I see nothing and the DeTect sensors confirm there's nothing here. I flew through it six times from different directions with the Neutrino Measurement Sensor running. It didn't pick up a thing."
"Return to the squadron."
A minute later the other scout reported that there were no ships at the second location. Christa turned the bridge over to her XO and walked to her office where she set up a conference call with the three other captains.
"It's déjà vu. The Denubbewa are gone— lock, stock, and motherships."
"This can't be happening again," Commander Ashraf said.
"But it is," Commander Fareman said. "The question is why."
"It has to be in response to the attack at the other location," Commander Kalborne said. "The other Denubbewa must have sent out an alert when the first attack began and the two battle groups moved farther away in case we knew their location."
"We have ninety-six CPS-16s and four SDs, less the four CPS-16s I left to protect the Dakinium scrap from scavengers at the last battle location," Christa said. "We know the motherships are sheathed in Dakinium and that the unsheathed warships are most likely inside the motherships while they're traveling so it's not going to be easy to spot them while they're on the move. But we do have the neutrino measurement devices and we might get lucky. We know we have a significant speed advantage over the Denubbewa so they can't have gotten too far away in the two weeks since they were spotted. Anybody want to start scanning space here rather than heading back to your assigned territory?"
"I'm game," Commander Ashraf said. "I think the chances of finding some Denubbewa are a hell of a lot better here than at the territory I was assigned."
"I agree," Commander Fareman said. "I'd prefer to spend my time here, searching for an enemy we know for a fact is not far away."
"I'm in," Commander Kalborne said. "We know the Denubbewa are around here— somewhere. And there's a good chance there may not be any near the territory we were originally assigned if they've really assembled here to have all their ships sheathed with Dakinium. Let's split up and start searching this sector. And when we find them, let's not hesitate. Better that just fifty or so warships escape than we allow the entire battle group to get away."
"Okay," Christa said, "let's assume the Denubbewa wouldn't move closer to the last battle site if they were notified of the attack, and the probability that one or more of the warships that escaped has briefed them is high. Let's divide the remaining part of the sector into four sections and begin a search to find where the Denubbewa that were here— went."
~ ~ ~
"I've just received a vidMail from Christa," Admiral Holt said to Jenetta when the secure call from his office on the base went through to her office in the A.B. building.
"How is she?" Jenetta asked.
"She seemed in good spirits when she sent this message. After learning that the Denubbewa are limited to Light-480, she took her squadron back to the sector where they'd seen them. When they searched previously, they'd assumed the Denubbewa had traveled much farther than they could have if they'd been limited to Light-480. The squadrons actually bypassed the area where we now believe the Denubbewa could be. So when the squadron returned, they calculated the maximum distance the Denubbewa could have traveled since they were last seen and worked back towards the original site."
"And?"
"And they found a battle group consisting of two motherships and three hundred three warships. Rather than summoning the other squadrons and waiting weeks for them to arrive, the Koshi squadron moved in alone. The final kill count is two motherships and three hundred one warships."
"Wonderful, Jenetta said. "That should put a bit of a crimp in the Denubbewa plans for the conquest of Region Three."
"Christa says she's summoned the other three squadrons to return and help mount a thorough search of the sector."
"They should already be there, given the distance the communication had to travel."
"Yes, they should be there already and searching for Denubbewa. Perhaps they've already engaged another battle group. I really wish we could get more timely information. These delays are maddening."
"The original sighting was twelve motherships and an estimated four thousand warships. That means ten motherships and thirty-seven hundred warships remain. That's an enormous battle fleet."
"Then we'll just have to keep whittling it down."
Jenetta chuckled before saying, "That works for me."
~ ~ ~
"Fluessa, did you hear?" Senator Witherea asked. "The G.A. Justice Court has ordered that an arrest warrant be issued for Sloasku. They're searching for him."
"An arrest warrant? On what charge?"
"A hundred sixty counts of slavery."
"Slavery? Who did he enslave?"
"A hundred sixty Jumakas."
"But Jumakas can't be enslaved. They're non-sentient animals."
"Not on Taurentlus-Thur. They've been declared sentient there."
"But if he has the Jumakas, they're on Kethewit."
"But the hundred sixty Jumakas were captured and illegally removed from Taurentlus-Thur against their will after the export ban went into effect, so he never had a right to remove them. That means they are legally and technically still inhabitants of Taurentlus-Thur, and the government there says those Jumakas are now legal, sentient citizens of their planet. The Justice Court has agreed to hear the case."
"That'll never stand up in court since the Jumakas were removed before the species was declared sentient there. The export ban is immaterial."
"That's up to the courts to decide, but in matters of slavery they almost always go against the slavers. He should have freed his Jumakas as soon as Taurentlus-Thur declared them sentient. I doubt we'll be seeing Sloasku in Council meetings for quite a while."
"Perhaps not ever. Even if he's not found guilty of slavery, no one will want to associate with him and he'll lose the supporters that got him a Council seat."
"No big loss. Who do you think will get his seat?
"Carver!"
"What?"
"Carver. Admiral Carver."
"Nooo. She can't be elected to the Council unless she first gets a seat in the Senate."
"No, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about Sloasku getting arrested."
"You've lost me."
"This is her work. She's behind this."
"Behind Sloasku's arrest? Do you really think so?"
"Without a doubt. She indicated that she knew who was responsible for blocking the resolution from going to the full Senate for a vote, didn't she?"
"Uh, yeah. I gu
ess so."
"She couldn't force a vote, so she's removed the impediment. And I'd be willing to bet my seat that she's planned things to go this way all along. She purposely presented the Jumakas at her first A.B. session so the entire G.A. audience would have a chance to assess their sentience long before she filed that request for an official determination and pronouncement. She knew that once citizens of the G.A. saw that little demonstration she put on, they'd be clamoring for us to declare the Jumakas sentient. Oh, I underestimated her. I knew she was a brilliant military tactician, but I didn't realize she was this skilled in political matters. We're going to have to watch her much more closely."
"She's an Azula on Obotymot and a Lady of the Royal House of Nordakia. She's reportedly handled a number of very important and delicate political issues for the Royal Family. She understand politics."
"Yes, I'd forgotten that. I was viewing her as just another pompous military drone. I won't make that mistake again."
~ ~ ~
"We've completed a basic analysis of every square centimeter of the Denubbewa ship," Admiral Plimley said. "The good news is that their technology is generally inferior to ours. The bad news is that their technology is generally inferior to ours."
"Wait a minute," Admiral Woo said. "The same news is both the good news and the bad news?"
"Exactly. Being inferior to ours means that we have nothing to be overly worried about, but— we were hoping to find a number of technological advances in the Denubbewa ship that we could incorporate into our own ships."
"You said generally inferior, Loretta," Jen said. "Does that mean you found something we can use to improve our own capabilities?"
"We found one thing we believe is far superior to our technology. We've suspected for a very long time that the original Denubbewa empire is a very great distance from G.A. space. We have no idea where they first came to power, who it was that decided cyborgs would be a good idea, or even why they felt that way. The cyborg prisoners we're holding either don't know or are withholding that information. However, we found an electronic device aboard the recovered Denubbewa ship that we couldn't identify so we decided to remove it with the intention of examining it closely in a lab. But while trying to remove it from the console on their bridge, we learned that it was connected to a vast assortment of equipment in an engineering space below decks. Nothing else was connected to that equipment so we've assumed that the device on the bridge is a controlling interface."
"What's the function of the equipment down in the engineering area?" Admiral Bradlee asked.
"We don't know— yet. The cyborg prisoners claim total ignorance. We don't believe them, but we haven't been able to ascertain with any certainty what the device actually does or is supposed to do."
"Do you have any speculations about the device's purpose?" Jenetta asked.
"We— think— the device might be a long-range telecommunications device. The equipment below decks contains a huge power generator, and based on our study of the interface we're pretty sure it's not a weapon. If the Denubbewa take orders from a controlling government tens of thousands of light-years away or even in another galaxy, they'd have to have a way to communicate that information in a timely fashion."
"Now I'm excited," Jenetta said. "Not too long ago I was talking with Brian about developing a faster method of communication. It can presently take two months for a message to travel from our farthermost border to the opposite side of our territory. With our travel time catching up with our telecommunications time, we'll soon be able to deliver important messages faster than sending them."
"Don't get too excited, Jen," Admiral Plimley said. "First, we're only speculating that it's a communication device. Second, we don't yet understand the technology being employed or the science involved. So third, we haven't been able to make it work. And fourth, we don't even know if the Denubbewa had gotten it to work. They might have installed it, discovered it didn't work as intended or wasn't reliable, and simply left it in a bridge console without ever using it."
"You seem to have settled on the idea that it's a telecommunication device so you must have some clue about its operation."
"A famous writer named Arthur Conan Doyle once had a story character say, 'When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.' We have eliminated most of the impossible, and what remains is that it appears to be a telecommunications device."
"What else haven't you eliminated?" Admiral Woo asked.
"Uh, well, we haven't eliminated the idea that they might have been trying to make a teleportation device."
"The principal cyborg prisoner did admit that the Denubbewa believed we were able to teleport bombs to places inside their ships and detonate them," Jenetta said. "It's possible they were trying to accomplish the same."
"Foolishness," Admiral Burke said. "Sending electronic signals, or even solid matter through space, might someday be possible, but sending a complex piece of electronic equipment like a bomb and rematerializing it is the stuff of sci-fi books and movies."
"A lot of things have been labeled foolishness," Admiral Woo said, "until someone comes along and does it. Look at powered flight attempts on Earth in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. People laughed at the people who tried it. Of course, some of the contraptions were pretty ridiculous, but every leap forward seems to start with ridiculous ideas. Look at the attempts to break the sound barrier, then a flight to Earth's moon, and then interplanetary travel to Mars. And let's not forget the naysayers, even eminent scientists, who said faster-than-light travel was completely impossible because one man, Albert Einstein, theorized that was the case. And then someone pointed to the fact that he didn't really exclude FTL as a possibility in his theories."
"I meant that teleportation without both a transmitter and a receiver to focus the signal is impossible," Admiral Burke said.
"Oh. I admit that makes it much less likely to be possible," Admiral Woo said.
"What other possibilities do we have?" Jenetta asked.
"Well, uh— someone suggested they might have been trying to open an entrance to an Einstein-Rosen bridge."
"A wormhole?" Admiral Yuthkotl asked.
"Yes."
"More sci-fi nonsense," Yuthkotl said.
"As Lon said, all scientific investigation seems like sci-fi until someone proves it beyond a shadow of doubt," Jenetta said. "I prefer to keep an open mind about such endeavors because in my lifetime I've seen scientific investigation that was branded sci-fi nonsense at one time become scientific fact. Teleportation and wormholes would be wonderful, but I'll be delighted beyond belief if we can simply send messages across our space in one day."
"All three of the technologies we're working to prove or disprove," Admiral Plimley said, "involve transmission of a signal and thus require great amounts of power, plus some sort of external antenna so the transmission won't be affected by the Dakinium. Part of the device equipment on the Denubbewa ship included connection to a sort of antenna network that could be either raised or pulled back into the ship as needed. That's why we've focused on these technologies as our possibilities."
"Thank you, Loretta," Jenetta said. "We look forward to your next progress report."
~ ~ ~
"Admiral," the chief secretary to the Senate Council said as the com call began, "I've been told to call and report that the Jumaka Sentiency resolution has been placed on the docket for presentation to the full Senate for a vote."
"Wonderful. Thank you. When do you believe that will happen?"
"Well, there's a great number of discussion topics ahead of it, so it'll depend on how quickly the Senate concludes all previously scheduled business. I'm unable to predict when it'll come up."
"Okay, I understand. Thank you for calling."
Jenetta leaned back in her chair after concluding the call. If the resolution wasn't brought up for discussion during the present session, it would die and have to be reintroduced when the
senators returned from their winter break. The recesses always lasted six months because of the distances to their home planets. Space Command vessels would take them to their homes and then pick them up for the return to Quesann because the trips could otherwise take several years if the senators had to rely on regular passenger ship travel. It wasn't lost on her that bills were sometimes intentionally sent to the full Senate for a vote too late to be acted upon in that session and the process would have to start over again in the Council with the next session. In this way, the Council made it appear that they weren't delaying a vote when in fact they were trying to kill a bill surreptitiously.
Jenetta fantasized about how great it would be if there really were a teleportation device like the ones in books and movies where one stepped onto a small raised platform at one place and was instantly able to step down from a platform at the destination. The Senators would then have no excuse for not taking care of business more expeditiously. But then she realized that if the Denubbewa had access to such a transporter device, they could send an entire invading army through it overnight. And it wouldn't be possible to watch every single teleportation connection. Space Command would have to take responsibility for security at every location, with the ability to shut down the platform in an instant if there was a problem. "Perhaps it wouldn't be such a good thing after all," she said.
* * *
Chapter Twenty
~ September 18th, 2291 ~
"Captain," Christa heard Mollago's voice state via her CT as she worked in her office, "we just intercepted an encrypted message sent to the Seeker from one of his CPS-16s. They've located a battle group and performed a flyover to capture images. Before transmitting the message, they moved a light-year away. We have the coordinates where they're waiting. Do we join them?"
"We most certainly do," Christa said after touching her Space Command ring to establish an outgoing carrier signal. "Send a confirmation to Commander Ashraf that we're on our way to join the attack group, XO."
"Aye, Captain. Navigation has already entered the course into the system and Helm is ready to push the throttle to the stops if you approved. Estimated time of arrival at the assembly area is three hours, eighteen minutes. Now engaging drive."
Changing of the Guard (A Galaxy Unknown - Book 11) Page 23