Exploration

by Beery, Andrew

  "The WhimPy just took out a Dreadnaught class Syndicate vessel that fired on it. It would seem our location is no longer a secret."

  "This is definitely not good. The Bluefin is in no condition to mount a defense, much less even flee. Can we escape on the WhimPy?" Running Stream asked.

  "We could..." Cat said, "but there might be a better option."

  "And that would be?"

  "Let me ask you a question. What would you do if you knew where the Suhtii that built this facility went?"

  "That's simple. I'd go to them for help."

  "Help with what?"

  Running Stream's trunk reached up and caressed the Modos symbiote that rode on the Bearephant's shoulder. It seemed the physical response was from the Suhtii, He-Who-Speaks.

  "First I would see if they could provide a genetic blueprint for repairing the retrograde evolution in our Suhtii friends, then I'd ask if they were willing to help us fight to end this shameful institution."

  "Basically the same things you have asked us to do."

  "Essentially yes, but with a second set of allies, each with a vested interest in the outcome of this conflict, I'm more hopeful than ever that this is a battle we can win."

  Cat turned back to Ken. "Grab Sassi and check out the last ship in the launch bay. Specifically, access and review the ship's computer log. If I'm right that ship should be in near perfect operating condition."

  "Why would you say that?" Ben asked. The D'lralu engineer had been atypically quiet while he inspected some subtle charring evident on the power feeds to the cloaking control panel.

  "This system seems to be damaged, but there is no reason to assume the ship is also defective," he added.

  "Exactly my point," Cat said. "If the cloaking system burned out then that last ship would have been seen if it launched."

  Ben turned to look at her. "Are you saying the last ship stayed behind so that the mass exodus by the Suhtii could remain a secret?"

  "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends..." Ken mumbled.

  "Exactly," Cat agreed.

  Chapter Seventeen: Invasion...

  Ricky Valen smiled at the beautiful blue-skinned woman sitting next to him. They had both just shared a pleasant surprise. Their FTL quantum entangled communication links to other members of the GCP in the beta-verse had been destroyed when their ship was damaged, but a separate link used by the Heshe defense platforms known as WhimPys was intact. Initially this was a moot point and had little relevance as there were no WhimPys in the beta-verse. However a 'battle alert' message had just been received by Honey.

  "I've uploaded our contact information," Honey purred. "We have to use the WhimPy as a relay point but that shouldn't be much of a problem so long as 101 stays in the Beta-verse."

  "Can we open a channel to the Admiral?"

  Honey smiled again. "I already have!" She couldn't help but notice that Ricky was quite happy to use Cat's rank when she wasn't able to hear. It was an interesting relationship those two had.

  ***

  "Madam Admiral?"

  Cat, who had just ordered Sassi and Ken to inspect the remaining ancient Suhtii starship, stopped in her tracks.

  "Ricky?"

  "Madam Admiral, it is good to hear your voice. I didn't think we would ever talk again...what with my ship blow'n up and all."

  The grin spreading across Cat's face threatened to break said face. It did not go unnoticed by the others in the room. Cat held out her hand and a small omnidirectional audio speaker self-assembled in her palm.

  "Show off," Ben said with a wolfish grin. His grin widened more when he heard the voice coming from the speaker.

  "Ricky and Honey, I have you on speaker. Ken and Ben are here as well as Captain Running Stream."

  "What, ya all had a party and I wasn't invited?"

  "To be honest Ricky, we thought you were dead."

  "Yeah, I get that a lot," the small speaker said.

  Ben stepped closer to the speaker in Cat's hand. "Here I thought we had finally gotten rid of you," Ben said with a wink for the others.

  "Ah, you love me...you know you do," Ricky said.

  "Probably not a safe bet after you dusted his quarters with flea power..." Honey added.

  "Yeah, what she said," Ben agreed. "I wouldn't have cared except you got it into my chocolate stash!"

  "Gentlemen!" Cat interrupted. "There are more important things going on." Ben started to open his mouth but a stern look from Cat caused him to rethink what he was going to say.

  "Yes, Ma'am," Ricky said meekly over the commlink. Obviously Honey had given him a similar look.

  "What's your status?" Cat asked her friend.

  "Well, funny you should ask. We lost our ship...sort of...and kind'a took over a fleet, but they don't know it yet."

  ***

  The next several hours were intense as Cat digested the activity logs she’d had Honey upload through her link with the WhimPy.

  It seemed Ricky was part of a group assembling for action. What Cat didn't know was whether the action was going to be directed at her or the alpha-verse. Based on the message that Honey had intercepted earlier, she was inclined to believe they would be part of the alpha-verse invasion force. Because of this, she spent a few minutes working with Honey. Their actions to date had been laudable, but Cat needed them to lay low.

  If too many anomalous events continued to occur the Modos Syndicate might proceed without the ships in question. Cat needed Honey to continue her efforts to infiltrate the other ships of the task force with her command and control nanites.

  Meanwhile Ken and Sassi were making good progress on the ship in the launch bay. The computers came back online the moment Ken hooked a compatible power supply into the system. The language used by the ancient Suhtii was initially difficult to work around but the WhimPy platform with its superlative AI was able to make short work of it and fabricate a translation matrix. Ken was able to retrofit the matrix into the ship's systems. Suddenly, every console was reporting its information in GCP Standard English.

  When Cat finally entered the ship herself, she saw hundreds of yellow sticky notes on all the control surfaces. These served as a hasty relabeling of the fixed Suhtii text that adorned most of their equipment.

  "How goes it Ken?" Cat asked, as she stepped over some hastily laid power cables on the floor of what Cat was assuming was the bridge.

  Ken looked up from an open panel he was inspecting with an electronic probe of some sort. "Ah Admiral..." Ken said straightening up. "I think we are close to bringing the ship's fusion core back on line. Everything was shut down in a very orderly fashion and from what I can tell of the systems I've seen already these guys built to last. I think this ship could have remained in stasis for another ten thousand years and it would have made no difference."

  "Impressive. We could learn from these people."

  "Admiral, we could learn A LOT from these people. What I don't understand is, if they were so advanced why did the Modos beat them? And why aren't the Modos more advanced?"

  "All good questions, Commander. I hope we find out."

  ***

  The Chairman grabbed a small sweet clam and shucked it. He deftly used his trunk to pop the morsel into his mouth part. The Bearephant host was hungry too, but the Chairman was planning on replacing it with a younger specimen in a few hours. He saw no reason to feed a creature that would soon be dead.

  He had spent the last several days working with his generals. They were busy on two separate fronts. The SSF would be engaging a small rebel outcropping as well as helping to secure new territories in the recently opened up universe. The second was called Operation Tsunami. He had come up with the name. He intended to wash over the GCP forces with an overwhelming armada. He had given the operation his go ahead a few minutes ago.

  In the middle of their planning for Operation Tsunami a report had come in from one of their rebel suppression units, a ship called the Deepdive. Appar
ently a nest of anti-slavery sympathizers had been discovered. Regrettably, the required follow-up reports had not been filed. There was a possibility, however remote, that the Deepdive had been incapacitated in some fashion by the rebel forces. As a result the Chairman had authorized a second task force of twenty ships to sterilize the rebel stronghold. Such rebel activities were bad for business and simply would not be tolerated.

  ***

  Jason leaned forward in his command chair and stared at the holographic view screen. The Modos slaver had been taken with no loss of life. The cargo turned out to be members of a race unfamiliar to the GCP. The Yorktown's AI recognized the race in question to be members of the Agur. They were bipedal humanoids from a heavy world that orbited a star system some sixty-eight light years from Earth. They communicated by vibrating membranes located on their throats...kind of an external larynx. The sounds, while beautiful, were beyond the ability of a human to reproduce. Fortunately the Heshe technology available to the GCP made bi-directional translation a simple matter.

  Jason had tasked the newest Yorktown class ship in the fleet, the GCP Mador to repatriate the Agur. The name Mador had a long and distinguished heritage in the Space Corps. Captain Roberts was a good friend and a top notch naval officer. He would get the job done and hopefully secure a new ally for the GCP.

  The air in front of Jason shimmered at the same time his communication officer announced an incoming transmission from Admiral Kimbridge. Cat's face and upper torso appeared in the air in front of him.

  "Good afternoon, Admiral," Jason said with a warm smile.

  "Actually, it's evening here," Cat said "But it’s always good to see friends. I trust you are taking good care of my ship?"

  "Hardly a scratch that can't be buffed out, Admiral!"

  "That may cost you another bottle of wine at that dinner you owe me, and you can 'can' that 'Admiral' malarkey," she said while shaking a finger at the holo-projector pickup.

  "What can I do for you, Cat?" Jason answered with a grin.

  Cat proceeded to explain the discovery of Honey and Ricky Valen as well as their efforts to infiltrate the command and control systems of an entire task force bound for GCP space.

  Jason whistled softly. "That man has almost as many lives as you."

  "If I understand what Honey is sharing with me; her repairs to his body required almost as tight an integration with Heshe tech as Yarin used on me. He has as many nanites floating around as I do, just not a Heshe encounter unit to control them."

  "On the other hand he has Honey's AI so I'm not sure there is a lot of difference between you two from a practical point of view."

  "Fair enough," Cat Agreed. "Ricky's group is moving towards the transition point between universes. Based on what he and Honey have been able to glean from fleet communications, it seems unlikely that they will be the first making the jump. The idea seems to be to use overwhelming numbers to force the GCP to back off."

  "I'll contact Admiral Faragon. I'm sure he'll want to arrange a few surprises of his own. Anything else you need us to do on this end?"

  "Negative. We are looking to contact a race that may have a vested interest in helping us stage a rebellion within the Modos Syndicate. If we are successful they may find themselves unwilling to battle on two fronts. I'll keep you apprised of our efforts."

  "Good luck, Cat. I'll keep you in my prayers."

  "Same here Jason. Admiral Kimbridge, out."

  ***

  Twenty-six hours later, the first of twelve waves of attackers began to emerge from the trans-universal hyperfield corridor. As per Captain Ruck's prediction, Admiral Faragon did indeed have a few surprises laid in place for the visitors to the alpha-verse.

  "Here they come!" Ensign Mayweather yelled as alarms started flashing on her sensor board.

  The First Officer on the GCP Mador slammed his palm into the call button on the command chair he was sitting in on the bridge of the new star ship. "Captain to the Bridge!" he yelled. The ship had just returned from a first contact mission with a raced called the Agur that they’d had to call short.

  Not twenty seconds later the doors to the aft turbolift swished open and Captain Roberts entered the bridge.

  "Report Mr. James!"

  The First Officer rose to surrender his seat to the Captain. "We have multiple objects transiting from hyperspace. Current count is sixteen, but more are coming."

  "Status of weapons and shields?"

  "Weapons are hot and shields are fully deployed. Backup fusion generator number three is still giving us problems. Engineering has it offline until they can figure out why it's so flakey."

  "Is that an engineering term number one?"

  "No sir it’s not...but the actual term used by the Chief Engineer was less appropriate and far more colorful."

  Captain Roberts grinned and sat in the command chair. "Nothing to be done for it now, I suppose. Still the damn ship is brand new...you'd think things like this would be covered by the warranty."

  Roberts toggled his comm. "Engineering, tell me that reactor is not going to be a problem."

  "Chief Montgomery here, Captain. I've got the containment field down. We fixed the intermittent flux issue but then we started getting some type of feedback harmonic that I was afraid might destabilize one or more of the other reactors."

  "How is that possible? Aren't they isolated?"

  "That's the thing sir...they are. But we are still seeing a limited amount of unexplained coupling. It shouldn't happen, but it is. I have the ship's AI doing a deep diagnostic but it will take several more hours."

  "What's our status without that reactor?"

  "Well, it’s a backup. If we lose one of the primaries we'll be down to 50 percent plus batteries. Of course, that's assuming the problem is with the reactor itself and not one of the interlinked support systems."

  "Do what you can Chief. It looks like we may be entering a slug fest at any moment. I'd hate to have to pull out early if I can avoid it."

  "I'm on it, Sir. Engineering out."

  "Ensign Mayweather, give me an update. How many Modos ships have emerged?"

  "Twenty-four, sir. The transit conduit has closed so this may be it."

  The First Officer stepped over to the Captain and handed him a tablet. "Our orders from the Yorktown are to hold position. The particle wash from the Modos emergence is traveling at about .6 c. It should impact our shields in another two minutes."

  "Signal the Yorktown. Report our status as fully operational and ready to engage on their 'go.'"

  The next several minutes crawled by. The GCP task force consisted of sixteen Yorktown class ships, as well as twenty-eight enhanced heavy Bowman class frigates. On top of these ships, there were over a hundred fast attack pinnaces that were heavily shielded and mounted a single TeraJoule laser cannon each as well as several dozen tactical "Sandy" mines. These devices could generate a cloud of specially crafted deconstruction nanites that were programmed to disassemble any material they encountered that could not provide an approved response to a friend/foe challenge.

  Commander James checked his status board and turned towards the Captain. "Our shields should start encountering the exit wash any moment."

  On cue the ship shuttered slightly as the first of the highly energetic particles began to wash over her shields. The forward view screen started to dim automatically in response to the influx of energy.

  "Our shields are at 86 percent and holding. We should be able to weather this just fine sir," Mayweather reported.

  Commander James would remember those fateful words later. He was one of the few on the bridge that would.

  Chapter Eighteen: A Secret No Longer...

  Captain Jason Ruck raced to the bridge. He had been playing a pickup game of racquetball with a group of over-ambitious gluttons-for-punishment from engineering. Jason was a master racquetball player who rarely lost, unless he was playing Cat Kimbridge. The game was cut short by the blaring of a battle klaxon. While he ran he queri
ed Cal, the ship's AI, for a status. Thus he was fully aware of the Modos incursion as he settled in the command chair recently vacated by his weapons officer, Commander Martinescu.

  Anticipating his first request, his communications officer spoke up. "All ships of the line including the Mador are reporting ready, Sir. The GCP Broadchurch has two fully cloaked pinnaces in close proximity to the emergence point. Neither was in the direct path of the exit wash."

  "Very good, Lieutenant. How long before our ships are free of the particle wash?"