Exploration

by Beery, Andrew

  ***

  Jason Ruck ran through the smoke-filled corridor of the GCP Mador. It didn't seem fair. Every time they got this ship fixed somebody would go and try to blow it up again. The Mador had been caught, along with most of the GCP fleet, in a massive trans-dimensional backwash. Her shields had held...barely; but there were plenty of overloaded power conduit and relays. The Modos who had jumped into local SgA space through those conduits had taken advantage of the confusion by unleashing a powerful barrage of weapons fire.

  The Mador had been holed more than a dozen times. Only the superlative nature of her Heshe inspired automated repair systems kept her going. Over two dozen of the crew had been placed in a state of medical morbidity. Their medical nanites kept their bodies on the very edge of death until their damaged tissues could be repaired. Rescue crews had pulled many of them from areas of the ship that had been exposed to vacuum. Unfortunately for several of them, the damage, especially to the cranium, had been too severe. They, like his predecessor Captain Roberts, were well and truly gone.

  Both the Mador and the Yorktown had been forced to withdraw from the active battle to lick their respective wounds. The GCP Intrepid had not been so lucky. Her hyperdrive had failed and she was stuck in the battle zone. The Modos swarmed the ship and her captain, Hikaru Takei, was forced to surrender or watch his crew be killed. Fortunately the Modos rarely killed when they didn't have to. They were, after all, a slaver society.

  As Jason made his way back to the bridge from Engineering where he had been helping Chief Montgomery get things back in order, his commlink signaled for his attention.

  "Ruck here," he said as he activated it.

  "Jason! Good to hear your voice son. This is Admiral Faragon. What's your ship's status?"

  "We got hit pretty hard, Sir. We have one reactor left and partial batteries. Shielding is gone. The nanites are rebuilding the nodes from the ground up but it will be at least another twenty minutes before we can even think about raising minimal shields. Weapons are in better shape. The railguns are gone but my beam weapons are all online. We can still pack a powerful punch."

  "How long before minimal repairs are done?"

  "Realistically sir...we are looking at a minimum of at least half an hour. I'd take a full day if I could."

  "I'm afraid I'm going to be hard pressed to give you the thirty minutes. Our fleet was pretty much decimated. I'm trying to get as many of our ships back into formation as possible, but the Modos are continuing to push through the SgA corridor and there is not much we can do to stop them. I have WhimPy's deployed and guarding each GCP member world, as well as several near emergent worlds like the Agur, but that leaves dozens of pre-space-flight civilizations in our controlled space that are going to fall prey to the Modos if we don't get a handle on this."

  "Understood, Sir. I'll do what I can. What are your orders?"

  "As soon as you are able, I need you to jump to sector 43. I'll already be there by the time you jump. I have the Bowman, the Avenger and the Hawking already in place. We are going to try and place a defensive ring of orbiting SJ's around SgA. The Modos are knocking them down as fast as we can put them up but at least we are keeping them occupied while we try to get more ships in theater."

  ***

  Thirty-eight minutes later the still cripple but marginally functional Mador jumped into the space near SgA.

  "Give me shield status as well as a tactical display on the forward view screen," Jason barked.

  "Shields are holding Captain," Commander James reported. "Tactical on the forward screen. There are 142 Modos heavies in theater, along with the Yorktown, Hawking, and Bowman. The Avenger is down. Most of her hull is open to space and there are minimal life signs."

  Lieutenant Zimmerman spoke up. "Sir, I have ship to ship traffic coming in. The Yorktown is running on batteries only and cannot jump. The Bowman and Hawking are attempting to shield her."

  "Helm! Make course for the Yorktown. Best possible speed."

  "Aye, Sir!"

  "Weapons. Commander I want you to target the next ship that fires on the Yorktown with a full spread of lasers and partial beams. Load the two working missile tubes with cloaking Sandies. I want you to drop them between those ships and us...far enough out that they will have to travel through them to get to us."

  "Roger that, Sir" Commander Andrew Martinescu responded from his weapons console. "SJ's away. Firing on primary target."

  "That got their attention, Sir. Twelve Dreadnaughts are breaking off to engage us," Commander James reported.

  "It's not enough," Jason mused.

  "They are hitting the Sandy field. The forward two ships are breaking apart. The remaining ten are sweeping the space in front of them with widely dispersed energy beams."

  "Got to give them credit. They learn fast," the First Officer muttered under his breath.

  WHOOMP! The bridge lighting flickered briefly.

  "They're in weapons range and engaging with beam weapons. Forty-eight PetaJoules. Our shields will hold so long as they don't gang up on us," Lieutenant Zimmerman reported.

  "Ten to one...I suspect that is wishful thinking. Helm, evasive maneuvers. There is a lot of junk around here, but see if you can't micro-jump us out of the immediate action and closer to the Yorktown."

  "Aye sir. Jumping now."

  WHOOMP! WHOOMP! WHOOMP! WHOOMP!

  "Roll the ship! Keep those shields balanced. Emergency jump! Get us out of here!"

  "Captain! This is engineering. We took a direct hit. Chief Montgomery is down. We lost the reactors. Batteries will hold the shields for a few minutes but we cannot jump."

  "Launch fighters! I need time!"

  Jason watched the tactical display. Thankfully the Modos had switched from high-powered beams to lower yield weapons. They were almost surgical in their efforts to disable rather than destroy their prey.

  The Mador, like the Yorktown and Hawking, was being subjected to a low-level beam of anti-protons; just enough to drain their shields without doing extreme damage to the ships underneath them.

  "The shields on the Yorktown have just gone down. The Modos are launching boarding parties."

  Jason toggled his ship-wide comm. "This is the Captain. I expect hostile forces to attempt to board us in a few minutes. All stations prepare to repel boarders. We are trying to buy time for help to arrive. I know you will continue to do your best. Ruck out."

  "Sir!" Lieutenant Zimmerman shouted. "I have multiple inbound hyperjump corridors forming."

  "Ours or theirs?"

  "Sir, I'm not sure. I don't recognize their configuration."

  "Did someone call for help?" the familiar voice of Catherine Kimbridge filled the bridge.

  Chapter Twenty Five: New Hope Springs Forth...

  Cat sat on the bridge on the Suhtian flagship Divine Purpose. Her friends Ken Kirkland, the D'lralu cyborg Ben, and Sassi were with her. They were advisors only on this ship, but Cat none-the-less considered it a great privilege to be there.

  The Suhtian people were in many ways as advanced as the GCP. However, whereas the GCP had benefited from the gift of advanced technology from their Heshe benefactors, the Suhtian had developed their technology on their own. Their advances were not limited to technology or the arts...although both were impressive.

  As the name of their flagship implied, they too had a sense of the divine. Ken, who was a Chaplain within the GCP in addition to his other duties, had spent time discussing the Suhtian's sense of the divine. Their greatest law was to honor the creator of all by loving one's neighbor. Ken shared with them that the very same "Golden Rule" restated in various forms was a predominate theme among those races within the GCP that had a sense of the divine. It seemed, in fact, to be a common factor amongst the more advanced races that at a certain point doubt was replaced with a firm belief in the divine. It was almost as if the more a race learned about the universe the more they realized a greater unifying force was at play.

  It was this sense of the Suhti
an Golden Rule that ultimately led them to join the effort in defending the GCP against the Modos Syndicate. That and the simple fact that Running Stream was a Modos and wanted the slavery to end. He was proof-positive that the Modos people were not beyond redemption.

  Admiral Tuti stood at the command console of the SDL Divine Purpose. From here he could direct the activities of all six hundred Suhtian starships that had been deployed by order of the ruling elders to deal with the Modos threat to this universe.

  Cat imagined the sight was an impressive one. The SDL capital ships dwarfed all but the biggest of the GCP ships. As far as she could tell about their weapons she suspected only a WhimPy could truly challenge them.

  Admiral Tuti cleared his voice. "Open a channel to all ships. Tie communications into the translator routines provided by Admiral Kimbridge"

  "Channels open, Sir," was the immediate response.

  "Attention Modos Syndicate warships. This is Admiral Tuti of the Suhtian Defense League. We have entered into a mutual defense pact with the Galactic Coalition of Planets. You will cease and desist all hostile activities immediately, or we will fire on your ships."

  A young Bearephant at a station whose purpose Cat was having trouble discerning, turned to face the Admiral. He used his trunk to touch his own head. Cat had learned that this was a gesture seeking permission to speak. Admiral Tuti noticed and nodded for him to speak.

  "Go ahead...and while we are in battle mode conversation curtsies are suspended. I may not see you raise you trunk at a time when I need to hear your voice."

  "Sir, yes, Sir. The Modos seem to be accelerating their boarding actions on the three disabled GCP vessels."

  "Weapons...target ten of their nearest capital ships. Fire the CABs at 10 percent."

  The columnated antimatter beams, or CABs, were anti-proton beams that employed helical hyperfield technology that effectively allowed the beams to selectively phase through an adversary's active and passive shielding.

  "Firing now! Three seconds to impact. Impact!" The Weapon's officer paused briefly.

  "Report!"

  "Sir, their shields were completely ineffective. The ships we targeted are breaking up. I'm sorry, sir."

  Cat stepped forward. The Admiral looked at her and raised an eyebrow in a completely human gesture.

  "If the goal is to disable without destroying these ships may I suggest using a varying harmonic on your helical hyperfield without the associated particle beam. If you overload their shield emitters they will have to back down."

  "Make it so, Lieutenant."

  "Yes, Sir, and sorry I didn't think of that, Sir."

  "Not your fault, Lieutenant. We had no way of knowing their shields would be so weak. What are their ships doing now?"

  "They appear to be latching onto large asteroids and heading towards the singularity the GCP calls Sagittarius A. I think they are trying to jump back home. Should I attempt to stop them?"

  "Negative. There are several thousand of their ships here. We need to join our new friends in the GCP in encouraging them to all make the journey home. This universe is not big enough for them and us."

  ***

  The former Chairman was in fact delicious, the new Chairman thought, as he sat in his plush chair and surveyed the office that was now his. The Syndicate Security Forces had arrested the previous owner of this chair when the Board of Directors voted him out due to incompetence.

  The old Chairman had allowed a prime slaving territory to become contested. The SSF had been repelled and a new alliance had been formed to resist the Syndicate. Even worse, news of the defeat had been allowed to propagate into the general population. Already uprisings were beginning on worlds that had been properly subjugated for hundreds of years.

  There was much work to be done to clean up this mess, but he was just the Modos to do it. He picked up a napkin and wiped a bit of sauce from his mouth part. He had had the chef prepare the old Chairman in a herb marinate that did wonders for tenderizing the deposed Chairman's tough and stringy flesh. It had been years since the old traditions had been honored, but sometimes it was the old traditions that were the best.

  ***

  Ricky Valen wondered what they had gotten themselves into now. In an effort to remain hidden and continue to misguide members of the Vengeance's battle group; they had latched onto a large asteroid and cloaked themselves.

  They had been hit glancing blows a few times by random shots that missed their intended targets but nothing serious. Now, however, they had a more serious problem. A large Modos ship had grabbed their asteroid as a shield and before they could disengage jumped into a trans-dimensional conduit. One thing was sure...Ricky and Honey were going to find themselves back in the beta-verse.

  "Any thoughts about what we should do now?" Ricky asked his friend, co-pilot, and the Creator-only-knew-what-else companion Honey.

  She smiled and looked at the lovely couch. "We have eleven hours...I'm sure we can think of something."

  ***

  Hikaru Takei leaned against the wall of his cell. Anyone monitoring him would have seen him smile. He had just had a nice conversation with a friend named WhimPy-101. Per the new protocols Admiral Kimbridge had put in place, he had instructed his internal nanites to disassemble his commlink and to secure his entangled quantum qubit. Once the Modos doctors were finished removing or disabling what they thought was all of his GCP technology in preparation for selling him in the slave markets, he had his nanites reassemble the link. By then he was in the beta-verse.

  He immediately reached out and discovered not one, but two GCP vessels in Modos controlled space. The WhimPy platform and a young lady named Honey who strangely enough seemed too busy to talk with him.

  The WhimPy platform had been in communication with the alpha-verse via a temporal hyperfield conduit. He may be in enemy controlled space but he was certainly not alone.

  THIS ENDS BOOK THREE OF THE CATHERINE KIMBRIDGE CHRONICLES

  Join Admiral Kimbridge in book four of the series, "Retribution" as she faces an adversary that respects no boundaries in the pursuit of absolute victory. CKC#4: Retribution will be available Dec 2013/Jan 2014.

  The Catherine Kimbridge Chronicles, #4 - Retribution

  Copyright 2013 by Andrew Beery

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  Chapter One - Friends Not Forgotten...

  Personal Log

  2124 was the year I learned the meaning of fear. The GCP and her allies fought to free entire peoples from the horrors of slavery. The fight would span two universes and multiple galaxies within each. Friends were lost and friends were made... but in the end, I learned the true meaning of pain... and love as well.

  "Run!"

  The young soldier next her was frozen in place. His armor showed signs of heavy abuse. Admiral Cat Kimbridge kicked his shin. The metallic exoskeleton of his battle armor shuddered with the force of the blow. It was enough to get his attention.

  "Run?... Yes Ma'am... Good idea Ma'am"

  The sound of gun fire was deafening. Smoke and fire made visibility difficult. In the background Cat could hear the sound of Syndicate heavy armor moving in their general direction.

  "If we can make it to that ridge I can call in an air strike. How much juice do you have left?" She yelled over the deafening noise of the battle.

  The soldier paused as he checked the combat computer built into his Mark Six battle suit.

  "I'm down to about twenty percent on my power reserves but my computer is showing only thirty-eight percent combat effectiveness due to damage. If I let the repair systems have the power to fix things up I'll drain my reserves and be dead in the water."

  Cat nodded her silver-clad head. Unlike the marines in the squad she had run into, Cat was not dressed in a battle suit. Instead her ultra-advanced Heshe construction nanites had fabricated a second metallic skin. She looked like she was wearing metallic spandex that covered every inch of her body.

  Micro-Emitters dotted the surface of her silver skin so that c
lose-up her metallic skin resembled a golf ball’s dimpled jacket. The hyperfield emitters in her 'skin' were able to reflect radiant energy as well as reverse kinetic momentum. The result was armor many times more effective than the Mark Six battle suit but at a cost. The energy for her enhancements came directly from her organics. This meant she burned through inhuman amounts of calories when she operated in a combat environment. Her last meal had been over a day ago. In short, her own reserves were critically low.

  She looked around. The buildings in this part of the Modos city of Harromog were thoroughly trashed. Days of mortar fire had pretty much destroyed everything in sight. Each side had taken and lost the city several times in the last weeks. The spaceport where her shuttle had crashed three days ago was now just so much rubble. She could see dust clouds nearing her position as the Syndicate armored lines advanced. Most of the GCP forces had been neutralized. They were quickly running out of options.