by GARY DARBY
He had sent his Faction fleet in for the attack on the Imperium rebels over an hour ago, and now he was just waiting for word that not only were the rebel ships destroyed, but there might be news on the Marrels’ fate.
If the Marrels were in the Faction’s hands, then his next order of business was to withdraw his ships to a safe distance and activate the nova machine.
He whirled around to his captain and demanded, “Well, have they reported anything yet?”
“No, sir,” the captain replied nervously, knowing that each time he gave a negative report, Peller’s anger intensified.
“What about your sensors?” Peller commanded.
“The asteroid field is interfering with our long-range instruments,” the man huffed. “I’m not getting any clear readings. Perhaps one of the escorts is able to—”
“And why do you think those ships would be better equipped than my craft?” Peller retorted. “Did you not tell me that this vessel has the most updated, the most sophisticated instruments available?”
“Yes, sir,” the captain stammered. “I was just suggesting that their position might enable them to see better than us, that’s all.”
Peller glowered at the man as he considered his suggestion before he stabbed a finger toward the console. “Contact them, see if they have any information.”
The captain sat at his command center and began to communicate with the ring of ships that encircled Peller’s personal craft.
A few minutes later, he rose from his chair to face Peller. He averted his eyes from Peller’s steel-hard glare, his trepidation evident to see.
In a quavering voice he announced, “Sir, the Star Thunder’s captain is reporting that it appears that our ships are falling back and being pursued by the rebels.”
“What?!” Peller shouted in disbelief. “That’s impossible!”
He spun, his robes whirling about his body and slammed a hand down on the nearest console. With shaking fingers, he entered the orders that would put him in contact with his Faction leader onboard the lead fleet ship.
In seconds, Peller stared at the man’s wavering image. A stream of blood ran down his nose and dark soot smeared both cheeks.
In the background, there was a loud hissing as if from a burst hydraulic pipe. Flames licked against a far bulkhead and smoke wafted across the image, obscuring the dazed man.
The screen cleared and the man swayed to one side before he caught himself and leaned forward. “Report!” Peller demanded.
“They ambushed us,” the Faction leader coughed out, before he wiped his mouth with his forearm. Rent and torn in several places, the Faction’s uniform exposed soot-covered skin.
The blood from his mouth smeared itself in one long streak, mixing in with the sweat that glistened on wrist and arm.
“I had to pull us back, or we would have lost every ship,” he emphasized.
“Were you outnumbered?” Peller questioned harshly.
The man hesitated, and his eyes seemed unable to focus on the image in front of him. He shook his head and whispered, “No,” before he sucked in a deep breath.
“They hid most of their ships on the planet’s backside. We didn’t see them until they attacked our flank and concentrated their fire on my ship.”
He shook his head and rasped, “We lost all command and control, had no way to coordinate our—”
Peller cut him off harshly. “Were there any transports on the ground, were they able to get any of their people off the planet?”
The man brought a hand to his bloodied and torn forehead as if trying to collect his thoughts. “They had transports on the ground, but none of them got off the planet.”
“So,” Peller sneered, his mouth hard and taut. “They managed to bring in troop transports right under your nose and you didn’t destroy or damage a single one. You incompetent idiot!”
Peller stared at the man, his eyes unblinking, hard and merciless. Thanks to this fool, he had no choice now; he would have to activate the nova device before those transports had a chance to take even one scout off the planet.
He took several breaths to calm himself before he ordered, “Pull your ships completely out of the system. I’m going to activate the nova weapon. You have ten minutes to get your people out.”
The man looked startled and held up a hand as if to stop Peller. “Sir,” he stammered, “the damage to some of our ships is quite severe, they might not be able to go to hyperlight and get away in time.”
“You have ten minutes; the clock is ticking,” Peller answered coldly. “After that . . .”
He gave the man an indifferent shrug to let him know that Peller didn’t care if any of his ships remained behind.
All he cared about was delivering the weapon into Sarpen Two’s sun and with it the massive explosion that not only would destroy the star, but also everything within Sarpens’ planetary system.
Including every Star Scout on the planet, and with them, the hated Marrels.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Star date: 2443.115
Inside the Nova Weapon
Running his hand over the dark console’s smooth surface that sat against the nova machine’s forward wall, Dason concentrated on every touch of his fingers to the cold metal.
Every few centimeters, he could feel a slight raising in the metal that outlined each of the strange symbols. By his count there were at least a dozen, each, no doubt, having something to do with the doomsday device’s operation.
The question, though, was what and how to operate the machine’s inner workings.
He leaned over to study the Mongan markings one by one to see if any correlated with the markings he had come to know on the captured Mongan cruiser.
However, after studying them for several minutes, he concluded that none of them matched what he recalled.
After several minutes, Dason leaned back to glance around at the dim interior and mused aloud, “She must have had atmosphere in here. I doubt if she stayed buttoned up in her suit the whole time.”
“Maybe,” TJ answered. “But I don’t see anything on that console resembling a pressure reading, do you?”
“No.”
“So what does it matter?” TJ returned.
“Because,” Dason replied as he turned and pointed down at the unconscious woman, “I’m wondering if she has anything on her person that might help us with our dilemma.”
“You want to get her out of her suit,” TJ returned. “But you’re afraid that we’d expose her to vacuum, and she might asphyxiate before we could get her helmet back on.”
“You got it,” Dason replied.
“Easy enough to find out,” TJ returned. With a swift motion, she turned off her oxy-generator and reached up to unseal her helmet.
“TJ!” Dason yelled when he realized what she was doing, “Stop!”
It was too late. TJ pushed back her helmet and let her breath out. She breathed in and out several times before she joined thumb and finger together to sign, “Okay.”
Dason and Sami unsealed their helmets and took several breaths. Sami sniffed several times loudly. “A bit stale and musty. Kinda reminds me of the ready room back at school. You know, all the dirty socks and sweaty bodies, plus the—”
“Enough, Sami,” Dason ordered. “Let’s get her out of her suit. TJ, you go through her clothes, see what you can find.”
Minutes later, TJ was riffling through the unconscious woman’s clothing, emptying out what few pockets she had in her dark uniform. Finishing, she sat back on her heels. “Not much here, LT, this girl travels light.”
She held up a planetary identification card. “If we can believe this, her name is Vola Marme, her homeworld is Canista Three, her birthday is 2412.222, she’s a member in good standing of the Interplanetary and Intergalactic Pilots Guild, and has both planetary and interstellar piloting certification.”
She looked up to ask, “You want to know her blood type or allergies?”
Dason waved no and
reached out for the card. “Anything else?” he asked.
“As I said, she travels light,” TJ answered and held up a few creased silver-colored bills. “Other than about fifty Imperium credits in her waistband wallet, that’s it.”
Dason and Sami examined the identification card. Some planetary governments issued memory shards with the necessary data to their citizens, though the more Outland and remote planets used the cheaper plas-cards, similar to the one Dason carried from his home planet of Randor.
Sami pulled back from his inspection to shake his head at Dason. “Pretty standard issue, boss, I don’t see anything there that’s gonna help.”
Dason turned the card over in his hand, hoping that there might be something, anything, that would give them a clue as to how to open the box or at least unlock the communication console.
Seeing nothing on the card that spoke to his dilemma, in frustration Dason flipped the card against his thigh several times, making a loud smacking sound in the room’s small confines.
He stalked down one side of the chamber and then the other; the rustling of his P-suit sounding as if someone rubbed two pieces of rubber together.
Squeezing the back of his neck with one hand, he pressed on tight, cramped muscles, feeling the pressure mounting with each second.
He knew he had to take some action, but what? He also knew that if he didn’t do something very soon, that whoever controlled the nova machine could activate the device and then it would be too late.
Not just for him, but for his team, and for any other unfortunate soul caught in the resulting titanic explosion. And, for all he knew, that still included the thousands of Star Scouts on Sarpen Two.
He glanced up at the forward wall. There wasn’t a chronometer sitting in the rough stone, of course; nevertheless Dason felt as though he faced a doomsday clock.
The inexorable seconds were ticking away, and he had no way to stop it from reaching the final tick that would lead to the deaths of thousands.
Dason reached up to rub at his mouth, bringing up the identification card so that it was only centimeters away from his face.
His eyes caught the woman’s birthdate, 2412.222. Interesting, he thought, five two’s, makes it easy to remember your birthday.
Makes it easy to . . .
He stopped and stood dead still. “Wait,” he mumbled to himself, “it couldn’t be . . . she wouldn’t, would she?”
“Wouldn’t what?” TJ asked.
“Use her birthday as the code sequence,” Dason answered. “It couldn’t be that simple.”
“Uh, boss,” Sami stammered, “you’d better hope it’s that simple. Look.”
Dason’s head snapped up and he stared in disbelief. Flickers of light sputtered across the Mongan control consoles. That could mean only one thing. Someone had started the nova device’s activation sequence!
And if they couldn’t stop it, in a few seconds it would be speeding through space on its journey of total annihilation of the Sarpens system, including anyone left on the planet of Sarpens Two.
Dason dashed over to the keypad next to the box and with rapid strokes entered the seven numbers in a sequential pattern. He waited for several anxious seconds, but nothing happened. There was no change whatsoever.
“Maybe entering them backward?” TJ offered hopefully.
With flashing fingers, Dason reentered the numbers starting with the last number first. All three stared at the box but again there was no response.
In the meantime, they could hear a definite humming that was becoming louder with each passing second. There was no doubt that the machine was revving up power to begin its fatal journey sunward.
“Try the skip number method,” TJ offered.
Dason did as she suggested but with the same result.
TJ then instructed, “Add all the numbers together, maybe it’s a two number program.”
Another failure.
She offered several other ideas, all of which produced the same result. The box stayed locked, and the nova machine’s power-up machinations grew even louder.
“We’re running out of time,” Dason ground out in desperation, his breathing coming fast and hard. “If this thing gets started, even if we find the right sequence, it might have a blocking program that prevents any master command override.”
Her brow contorted in frustration, TJ snapped, “I’m out of ideas, what we need is a porta-code breaker which we obviously don’t have.”
“Have you tried multiplying all the numbers?” Sami asked.
“Of course!” TJ snapped. “128, but we got the same result, frontwards and backward.”
Sami glanced at the identification card, reached out to the keypad, and entered one-two-eight. He then murmured, “She’s thirty-one years old, so . . .” He reached out and tapped the three and the one.
The box snapped open, revealing a small console board with three colored inset buttons.
“Sami, you’re a genius!” TJ gushed and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.
“Aw,” Sami returned, “anyone could have—”
“Great job, Sami,” Dason commended and leaned forward to study the small console board that had lain under its protective shield.
“Now what?” With a light touch, he ran his fingers over the three little buttons that lay embedded in the console’s surface, one white, one green and one red.
“No problem,” Sami pronounced before reaching out with one finger, “red is for stop, right?”
Dason’s hand flashed out, and his fingers gripped Sami’s wrist in a firm hold. “No!” Dason snapped.
“We got lucky on the keypad, it didn’t have a lock-out program if we entered the wrong numbers. But this just might, and if we hit the wrong buttons in the wrong sequence, we’re done and we won’t be able to stop the power-up process.”
Dason eased his grip on Sami’s wrist and Sami stepped back. “Okay, okay,” he muttered, rubbing his wrist from Dason’s powerful hold. “You could have just said, don’t touch.”
“Sorry, Sami,” Dason replied apologetically and turned to stare at the three colored knobs. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just didn’t want you to start something we couldn’t stop.”
“What do you want to do, Dason?” TJ asked in a soft voice. “We can’t just stand here staring at that thing.”
Just then, a soft moan caused the three to turn. The woman was rousing, raising herself to her knees. Dason jutted his chin toward the Faction woman. “Help her up.”
Sami and TJ hurried over and put hands under the woman’s arms to lift her to her feet. She swayed before she caught herself and peered at her captors.
Then, her head jerked up as she caught sight of the activity on the Mongan consoles.
Shaking off TJ’s and Sami’s hands, she staggered over to the boards and let her eyes rove over the various lighted symbols that were flashing faster and faster.
“That’s right,” Dason told her dryly, “someone activated it, and it wasn’t us.”
He gestured toward the three recessed buttons and asked, “Can you stop it?”
She glanced at where he pointed, and her eyebrows lifted as her eyes caught sight of the open box. “How did you—” she muttered, before she waved a hand at him. “Never mind, we’ve got to get out of here, now.”
“No,” Dason replied in a hard voice. “We’re not going anywhere. We’re going to prevent this device from moving even one meter, and you’re going to help us.”
She shook her head and gave a little laugh, “You don’t understand—”
“I understand all too well. I know that this device can blow a star apart,” Dason replied over the ever increasing noise. “And that you got it from the Mongans and you intend for Sarpens to be the target.”
He took a step so that he stood scant centimeters from her. “So your choice is simple. Stop this device, or die in it.”
The woman’s blue eyes narrowed and hardened as she stared at Dason. For a second, her eyes flick
ed toward TJ and Sami. Dason could see from her expression that she was gauging her chances if she tried to take on the three of them.
Sami and TJ drew their weapons and cradled them against their chests, an unmistakable message that if she tried anything, she wouldn’t get far.
The woman snorted and licked her lips as her eyes flicked one way and then the other before she stared straight into Dason’s eyes.
“You’re serious?” she muttered. “You’d stay here, knowing what’s going to happen?”
“That’s right,” Dason replied and pulled his weapon to point it toward the consoles.
He dialed it up to full disruptor and leveled it at the contoured board. “If you don’t stop the power-up sequence, I’m going to start blasting away.
“And something tells me that might not be such a good idea, but I’m not going to sit idly by doing nothing.”
He paused and turned hard eyes on her. “So what’s it to be, you do your thing, or I do mine?”
The two stared at each other, and Dason could see that her chest rose and fell with rapid intakes of breath. Dason turned as if to aim his weapon but just before he pressed the fire button she yelled, “Stop!”
She shook her head vehemently at him. “You don’t want to be doing that.”
Pushing past Dason, she reached for the three knobs. “Guess it doesn’t matter. We’re all dead anyway.”
She jabbed at the console and within a few seconds, the humming, which had grown to a loud vibration that shook the room, now wound down to a mere whisper and then stopped altogether. The lights on the Mongan console flickered for an instant and then went out.
The three scouts stood still, waiting and watching, not daring to breathe for fear that any movement could restart the device.
“Did it stop?” Sami asked. “Are we still alive?”
Dason turned with a weak smile. “Yeah, Sami, it stopped, and we’re still alive.”
The Faction female grunted and with a cruel upturn to her lips declared, “For a few more minutes, but don’t count on much more than that.”