by Saxon Andrew
“Why?”
“I was hoping I could convince you to allow me to take you out to dinner to pick your brain.”
Gibbs smiled, “I didn’t answer all your questions?”
She smiled, “The professor did cut us off. I determined rather quickly during your presentation that the current tactics being used by Fleet does not match up well with what we’re being taught. I’m going to be flying a Rover and I really want to know all that’s going on out there. By the way, my name is Lydia Daniels.” Gibbs slowly shook his head. “What’s wrong, Sir. Is it inappropriate for me to ask you out?”
Gibbs blew out a breath and said, “I’ll certainly allow you to take me out. However, let me suggest something else.” Lydia’s eyebrows went up. “I’ll come in and pick you up here and you can go with me to a get together some of my pilots are having at the space port. You can ask them any questions you have and afterwards we’ll go get a bite to eat and I’ll clarify anything you don’t understand.”
Lydia’s smile was just gorgeous. She said, “I would so appreciate it. You don’t know how much this would mean to me.”
“I like your desire to learn. I’ll pick you up in front of the Academy Book Store at six.”
“How should I dress, Sir?”
“My pilots will be in their civilian clothes. They don’t get to wear them very often so I think you should also be out of uniform. You should also drop the Sir while we’re there. This is an informal get together to celebrate the lives of the pilots we lost in our last battle.”
Lydia’s face turned serious. “I don’t want to intrude on them.”
“This is a celebration. They would like to share their memories with someone that doesn’t already know them.”
“Would it be possible to bring someone else?”
Gibbs knew it had to be a boyfriend, “Who would you bring?”
“My roommate and her twin sister; they would love to attend.”
Gibbs smiled, “What, isn’t your roommate living with her sister?”
“She’s hung up on some boy. Carrie needed a new one and I volunteered.”
“I’ll see the three of you at six.”
Lydia smiled and said, “We’ll be there.”
• • •
When Gibbs brought them back later that night, Lydia stayed after her friends had thanked Gibbs and walked away. Lydia said, “The Rovers in your unit are amazing. They really are what I envisioned a Rover would be.”
“They really liked the three of you as well. You really added a lot to their get together.”
Gibbs turned to go and Lydia said, “Sir.”
Gibbs stopped and turned around, “Yes.”
“I still owe you a dinner. Will you please allow me to pay off?”
Gibbs smiled and said, “I’m shipping out in three days.”
“Then how about tomorrow night?”
Gibbs smiled and said, “What time should I be here?”
“Seven.”
Gibbs chuckled and said, “What should I wear?”
“Oh I think you look great in your civilian clothes.”
“I’ll see you at seven.”
Gibbs walked away and Lydia watched him go. She had learned from one of his pilots that he had just ended a relationship with a woman. She also learned that his pilots would follow him into hell itself. She had decided long before they left the meal he took her and her friends to that he was going to be in her life. Now she just had to persuade him to agree. Tomorrow she would really dress up and give it her best shot.
The next night after Gibbs arrived and saw the angel approaching his shuttle, Lydia’s best shot was a direct hit to his heart. He contacted Kune a week later and thanked him for his advice. It was then that Kune fessed up that he found his wife at the Academy after being a guest lecturer. Gibbs learned later that the two twins married two of his pilots. It seemed the boy that one of them was smitten by didn’t measure up to the pilots they met that night. When Anna called him four weeks later to see about getting back together, he told her that she had made a good decision and he wished her well. Even Roy and Link liked Lydia. That only proved his decision to see her was a good one.
• • •
Brandon saw the enemy squadron holding station above a planet that manufactured their shuttles. His hunter-killer pack locked in ten of the hundred grey ships holding station and after a moment, skipped in and fired on the selected ships. All ten blew up in massive explosions as Brandon’s pack skipped away to hit another target across the galaxy. The ninety survivors began changing positions. Remaining in one place too long was proving to be suicide.
• • •
The Fifty were screaming at each other over their displays. They had left their normal sanctuary and bordered ships to avoid having the planet they were occupying blown up under them. The two hundred million ships that remained after the others were sent out to scout had been whittled down to eighty million. The argument was starting to get out of hand. “We must recall our ships. We’re going to lose control of this galaxy if we don’t get them back.”
“Those ships are attacking us because we’re getting close to their home. We can’t stop now.”
“It won’t do us any good to find them if we don’t have the forces needed to attack them. Our ship construction sites have been destroyed and it will take at least a year to get new ones built. We’ve got to get the forces here needed to defend us.”
Bedlam ruled the moment until a scientist said, “I think I know a way for our ships to survive their attacks.”
He said it quietly but several of the attendees heard him and grew instantly silent. The silence rippled out into the group on the display as others saw many had stopped arguing. The Master next to the scientist on the display said, “What did you just say?”
“My staff has been working on a way to prevent our ships from being hit by those beams. I think we have devised a way to make that happen.”
“Tell us.”
“The reason they’re able to kill our ships is they jump in on the thruster lines on our ships.”
“Go on.”
“We can program our ships to rotate at random speeds. Jumping into an area above the thruster lines would be extremely difficult. We can also program the scanner directed beams to factor in the rotation in their targeting.”
The Fifty remained silent as they thought about the concept. “We’ve also found a way to see their approach.”
“WHAT?”
“We’ve discovered that those ships are not actually in subspace when they jump. It appears they are in a small boundary area between normal space and subspace. We can set our scanners to detect movement in that area.”
“That also means we can follow them.”
“It does but not for long distances. We won’t be able to follow them into intergalactic distances.”
“Why not?”
“We have to follow an electronic trail and that will make us slower than the ship we’re pursuing. Over a long distance, we’ll lose the trail.”
“But it will tell us what direction to search.”
“Just one thousandth of a degree at intergalactic distances will put you off the line more than two million light years. We’ve looked at this and it won’t work.”
“Are you sure?”
“Consider this, if you look out at the universe in any direction from our galaxy at any place in the void, you’ll see billions of galaxies in whatever direction you look.”
“Are you saying the warships we sent out to find them are a waste of time?”
“If they’re located more than a billion light years away, your chances of finding them are basically zero.”
Silence slammed down on the meeting.
The First Speaker said, “We should recall them. Does anyone disagree?” The silence continued. The First Speaker said, “What will need to be done to modify our ships to do what you suggest?”
“There aren’t any physical modifications that
need to be done. All that’s required is a download of new software. We can send that out to all of our ships within a few days.”
“Get it done.”
• • •
Dat looked at Admiral Hull on his display, “There have been some developments.”
“I never like to hear you say that, Dat.”
“You won’t like it this time as well. We’ve lost eight thousand Rovers in our most recent attacks. The enemy has started their ships rotating at different speeds. That speed changes every two seconds and getting into the area where we can hit them is not going to be easily done.”
“There’s something else, isn’t there?”
“They can see us coming and are now able to pursue us.”
“That is not good.”
“Fortunately, none of our ships have left for the Milky Way since this development and we’re going to be extremely careful before we send any home. However, the advantage is now with them.”
“Why?”
“They’ve recalled all the warships that were sent out to scout and they arrived on the scene spinning.”
“What happens when a Rover confronts one of their ships?”
Dat slowly shook his head, “It’s a tossup as to who will emerge victorious. We can’t win in this current situation; they still outnumber us seven to one.”
“Will we have to call it off until we can develop new technology?”
“We have what we need technologically.”
“We do?”
“The Juke Box class battleships can take out large numbers of them before their force fields fail.”
“But we don’t have very many of them.”
“We have millions of them that have been mothballed. The Hive and Horde also have millions in their inventory. They just have to be modified to the three force fields and stocked with enough medium penetrators to make them effective. We also need to computerize their systems so two people can operate them. We will also have to automate the loading of the penetrators.”
“How long will it take to make those modifications?”
Dat leaned back in his command chair, “Belwen tells me that if we bring them to his two hundred thousand planets, he can modify two a month.”
“So in three months we can have more than a million to use.”
“Yes and it doesn’t matter how fast a ship spins, a medium penetrator will stop it along with blowing the hell out of it.” Dat paused, “We just never knew that dark matter technology had the holes in it. If we had simply taken the time to fire one of those penetrators at a Rover, we would have seen that they couldn’t stand up to them. Until we can power a small ship with multiple force fields, they won’t be effective against beams as powerful as the Monsters use.”
“What does Belwen say about closing the holes?”
“He is of the opinion that you could use twice as many particles in the fields and they would still have holes. It’s a byproduct of dark energy that can’t be completely eliminated. All of the beams we’ve encountered over the last thousand years have not been strong enough to penetrate the holes. The Monster’s beams are powerful enough to get through. It’s the width of a Rover and will hit a hole if the Rover takes a direct hit.”
“So the ancient technology is the best.”
“No it’s not; our recent developments makes them effective. It’s by adding the three force fields and our modern computers that will make the Juke Box ships deadly. The Juke Boxes are a great platform to build on. They are a completely new class of ships. The old ships wouldn’t last a second against the Monster’s beams or a Juke Box that has been modernized.”
Kat shook her head, “I don’t like that they don’t have beams to defend them and are totally dependent on penetrators for defense.”
“Belwen is working on that issue. He says not to give up hope on developing one.”
“We don’t have a beam strong enough to penetrate their force fields from a distance, Dat.”
“I told him the same thing but he smiled and said three words.”
“And they are?”
“Dark Matter Needle.”
Kat smiled. Now that would prove to be interesting.
Chapter Twenty
Gresha sat in her command chair and looked around the bridge of her new ship. It was huge and her panel was an exact duplicate of the one next to her. Either of the two pilots could command the ship and all of its functions from their panels. The section of the panel in front of her at the moment was weapons and scanner controls but the panel could move the flight controls to the center with the push of a button. Learning how to operate the new controls had taken a month. Dat had picked up how to operate the ship within a week but he had an affinity for technology that few possessed. The Weapons panel had red and green controls where the pilot’s board was blue and white. She leaned back in the wide chair and wondered why the ship needed pilots at all. It was computerized to a level that was unheard of before. She looked up and saw Dat walk in, “Hello, Love. Where have you been?”
“I’ve been meeting with Belwen and he still hasn’t ironed out the beam he’s hoping to install on our ship.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Yes it is. How are you doing getting up to speed on the panel?”
“I’m making progress.”
“Belwen sent you this.” Dat handed her a helmet with a long chord coming out of it.
“What is that?”
“It’s the link to the computers. They’ll feed everything to you directly and you can issue commands without having to manipulate the controls on your panel.”
“Then why have the flippin’ panel!?”
“If a computer is hit or damaged, the panel will operate the systems manually. It’s a safety protocol.” Dat looked up and said, “Stein, have you and the others ironed out your areas of responsibility?”
“We have.”
“Tell me what you’ve decided.”
“I have the flight controls, Loree has the scanners, Cyanna has weapons, and Newton has power manipulation for the force fields.”
“Is there a reason you and Loree kept your former responsibilities?”
Cyanna said, “They have seniority but I also enjoy firing weapons. Newton is the best at manipulation of force fields. This just seemed the best use of our talents.”
Gresha smiled. “Thanks, Cyanna. And she is incredible at targeting the penetrators, Dat.”
“Stein, how about the links to you; is there a delay?”
“None that we can see, Gresha; having our two Rovers kept in the landing bay in the event we need to escape, is a good arrangement. The links to us are quite remarkable. All of us actually feel like we’re part of the Juke Box Battleship even though we’re still in the Rovers.”
Dat shook his head, “We are trialing the use of four computers on this ship; all the others have the normal two. If this works out, we can assign two Rovers to each Juke Box.”
“Have you named the ship, Dat?”
“Yes, fleet has commissioned her the Havana.”
Gresha smiled, “Now that’s a big name for us to live up to.”
Dat smiled, “I know but it just seemed right. This particular ship carried that name before it was decommissioned. This was Arvolo’s Flagship in the First Galactic War. It holds a special place in my heart.” There was a moment of silence and Dat placed his hand on his panel and gently ran his fingers along it, “This ship is the one Admiral Arvolo and Cyanna fought in the final battle against the Red Sector. Fleet felt that I should be the one to fly it.”
Gresha stood and went and hugged Dat, “I know you’re proud. I can tell you I am.” Dat nodded. “Well, how are we going to break her in?”
“We’re going to see if we can slow down the Monster’s pursuit of our ships.”
“Do tell.”
“We need to find a way to escape, Stein.”
“And just how are we going to escape?”
“We are going to attempt to ma
ke it too costly to chase us.” Dat paused and said, “We are going to jump out to a coordinate and wait for six of our Rovers to skip to us after they fire on a Master’s Wing. They will run to our location, enter normal space, and escape at light speed for ten minutes before they skip away. We have to slow the pursuers so that the six can’t be followed. Once they escape, we’ll skip away.”
“You still haven’t told me how we’re going to escape.”
“Stein, you’ve noticed all the penetrators in the back bays, haven’t you?”
“I have.”
“Well, we’re going to skip away and as we enter normal space we’re going to drop an appropriate number of penetrators just before we skip again. They’ll immediately go active and target anything that enters normal space.”
“What’s to prevent them from just staying out of normal space?”
“We won’t skip away until they emerge.”
“Dat, have you really thought this through?”
“Why do you ask, Loree?”
“What’s to prevent them from calling reinforcements to where we are before they emerge?”
“Nothing; but we can detect the incoming waves and skip away before they arrive and tie up huge numbers of their ships playing tag. If things get too dicey, we’ll make a huge skip out into the void between galaxies and then skip back to a new location.” Dat paused, “Hey, we have to find out if we can be effective against them.”
“When are we going to do this?”
Dat looked at Gresha and tilted his head, “We’re skipping in twenty minutes.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“We have to take the initiative; all we’re doing now is running. We’ve been chosen to try these new tactics.”
“Isn’t this a huge risk?”
“Yes, Newton, but I need to know what these ships can do in order to make decisions on how to use them. We need to be the ones that do it first.”
Gresha smiled, “I need a few moments to use this helmet. I’ll be ready.”
Dat smiled and plugged his helmet into his panel, “Loree you have the coordinates; pick a spot where we can hit whatever emerges after the Rovers appear.”
“Stein has it. I’ll also select a route out of there.”