by Andrew Beery
AG waved the door open.
“You’ve been monitoring Captain?” AG asked.
“I have, Commander. I think we should evacuate that crew to the Glory. She-Who-Would-Sing says they should just have enough time to pull it off. I need you to call your man back and turn this over to the Prime Captain.”
“Sounds like a plan, Sir. I certainly didn’t have any better options for young Mister Robison.”
***
Admiral Cat Kimbridge inched forward on her hands and knees. The water where she crawled, was only a few inches deep. She imagined it would be quite a bit deeper once high-tide hit. She had argued, yet again, for the rebels to wait for the Yorktown to arrive in system but the rebels would have none of it. She was crawling through an aqueduct into the palace of the Nester’s highest caste to keep people on both sides from being killed.
The rebels wanted to execute all members of the Prime Caste. Unfortunately for the rebels, the Prime Caste had quite a bit of experience dealing with subjugated races hell-bent on doing just that. As a result, they were quite adept at thwarting such efforts.
What neither the rebels nor the Prime Caste knew was that they were facing an unstoppable force in the form of one Admiral Catherine Kimbridge.
Her nanite-covered body armor was set to absorb sound and refract light around her body. She was both invisible and silent as she moved through the tunnels. Behind her, a good thirty meters, were the rest of the rebel strike force.
In point of fact, they had no idea she was in front of them. When she had left them, they thought she had marched off in frustration at being unable to deter them from action. In reality, she had realized that nothing she said or did would change their minds.
Faced with the certainty that they would be captured or killed… she decided that she would help them in as much as she would try and remove any deadly obstacles before they had a chance to kill or maim the handful of humans and Hedgemites.
So far, she had removed two pulse cannons and a sonic disrupter. This last was somewhat of a surprise. She had missed it on her initial inspection as she entered the aqueduct. Had her form-fitting body armor not been set to absorb sound, the entire palace, if not city, would have known that someone was attempting to breach the palace’s defenses.
It was a reminder to her that she was not infallible. Had the disrupter caught one of the others, there was a good chance they would not have survived the experience. She redoubled her efforts to find and disable all threats.
Sadly, her work meant the rebels, advancing from the rear, remained unaware of the risks they were facing. This was evident by their increasingly cocky behavior. Even without her enhanced hearing, the sound of their voices was beginning to carry forward.
Finally, Cat reached the access port that had been their destination. There was of course a problem. There was always a problem. The port was closed and the mechanism to open it was on the other side.
Cat knew from the diagrams they had obtained from the ancient Hedgemite that the master bypass controls were in this section of the palace. If they could gain access to them they could change the temperature regulation to the palace hatchery. Nesters were especially sensitive to water temperature while in their larval state. It was a major factor in how intelligent they became. Control of access to hot springs was how the Nester Caste system had developed.
As Cat examined the hinged portal and the surrounding sensor array she began to develop a plan. Unfortunately, the plan required a certain degree of stealth which her witless companions seemed unable to master.
She slowly moved backwards until she was only a few feet from the whispering men.
“Nay see nuthin,” a man she knew to be Roy Havastraw mumbled.
“Aye’s tell’n ya der spose ta be traps in ear,” another man said. His accent was so thick Cat had trouble understanding him.
“As I said, nay see nuthin. Maybe dims nuthin but stories,” Roy argued a little louder this time.
Several of the others following behind began to echo these thoughts and what had begun as a whisper quickly turned into something more than that.
“Unless you all want to be killed, you might consider lowering your voices,” Cat said from the darkness.
“Good God! Woman. Ya scared the piss out a me!” Roy muttered loudly. “Where be ya? I canna see a thing ahead.”
Cat reached out and touched his arm. Startled, he jumped back and hit his head on the top of the aqueduct. At the same time, she instructed her internal AI assistant to drop her cloaking field and uncover her face. She was still wrapped in a skin-tight metallic body armor that rippled as she moved.
“Are ya trying ta kill me!” Roy grumbled loudly.
“Be quiet you fool,” Cat hushed at him.
“Good Lord, why woman. D’aint been a damn thing to worry about so far.”
“That’s because I’ve been disabling their defenses before you get to them. I found three which would have likely killed the lot of you,” She hissed. “Now do you want to stand here bragging about how easy this has been… or do you want to get down to business?”
“Three a dim traps ya say?”
“Two twenty megawatt pulse cannons and a sonic disrupter that damn near shook my teeth out even wearing my armor. Oh, and by the way… where is your armor?”
“We nay be hav’n any,” the big man acknowledged.
“Exactly right. Which is why I wanted to wait for the Yorktown and a chance to outfit this operation properly.”
“Well den,” Roy said, “It’s a good thing we got ya. We poor lads be up da it in shite weren’t it not fer ya.”
“Yeah, a good thing,” Cat muttered. “There’s an access port up ahead. It’s sealed but I think I can trigger a maintenance alarm that would cause the staff to open the portal to investigate.”
“Aye, and we’ll be ready fer’em when they do,” Roy said with a bit of lust in his voice.
“If I help you do this… there will be no killing if it can be avoided. I’ve spent too much of my life trying to save lives. Anybody we meet down here is likely to be indentured staff. If you kill an ambuled servant you’d be no better than a member of the Prime Caste.”
“Alright… point taken. No kill’n less’n it be necessary”
***
Ken Kirkland walked onto the bridge of the Yorktown rubbing his wet hair with a towel. He had taken a quick shower and was going to grab a bite to eat when his First Officer called him back to the bridge.
“Ready to transition, Captain,” Commander Martinescu reported from his First Officer’s station. All scorpions are in their bays and locked down including our late arrival, Lieutenant Robison.”
“Very good Number One. Did the Glory signal she was ready yet?”
“Yes, Sir. She did.” Martinescu paused to look directly at his captain. “Her ‘guests’ were all given the opportunity to capitulate and for the most part they did.”
“For the most part?” Ken asked. He was still wondering why his First Officer had called him back to the bridge when he was scheduled to return in no more than another fifteen minutes anyway.
Andrew Martinescu stood and walked over to his Captain. His face was drawn. He had discovered something about Nester society that he found both distasteful and worrisome.
“Sir, there are nuances to Nester sociological hierarchy that we may never understand. The best I can figure out, those that refused to capitulate accepted demotion to the lowest caste… this would include the captain of the pursuit vessel. As the lowest class is typically populated with Nesters of very limited… mental agility… the demoted Nesters were lobotomized.”
Ken sat down hard in his seat. “They what!”
“She-Who-Would-Sing lobotomized the Captain and three of his officers. When I tried to get clarification, I was told it was a kindness. To subject a higher caste to the rigors of a lower caste would be cruel if they were allowed to retain their faculties.”
“You are right Number One… there
are nuances to Nester sociological hierarchy that we may never understand,” Ken gasped.
***
The transition through the ring-gate was uneventful. Ken halted just outside the gate’s event horizon. He ordered probes launched and a deep probe of the system. This system too had minefields but the Glory’s data core had provided both the safe route through them as well as the disable codes.
His caution proved to be warranted. No less than six defender-class warships, the same general configuration as the NE Glory, were parked in orbit around Nebi Prime. In addition, there was a massive defense platform in geosynchronous orbit. All this had been known before they entered the system due to She-Who-Would-Sing’s knowledge of the system. What she could not know was that three more defender-class ships were in bound from another gate. The Yorktown needed to decide if she wanted to take on the three ships first before heading to the planet… or if she wanted to risk taking on the planetary forces while she was still in top operational form. Facing either force would likely reduce her operational efficiency against the remaining force.
“Ziggy, open a channel to the Glory.”
“Aye Captain. Channel open.”
Ken had no doubt the Yorktown was more than a match of any of the other ships… but nine? That was another matter entirely.
Chapter 17: High Ground…
Cat and two of the rebels, a teenage girl named Nera McConnell and a much older engineer from the ill-fated FSS Longhorn named Bud Feldergaus worked their way forward. A Hedgemite squirrel lay on the floor. Cat’s armor had administered a non-lethal shock the moment he had poked his head through the access portal of the aqueduct to check out the moisture sensor.
The sensor had been reporting the aqueduct was bone-dry. At this time of the year, this should never happen and so the maintenance engineer had correctly assumed a sensor was misbehaving. What he couldn’t know was that it was misbehaving because Cat had disabled it with a Heshe-enhanced blow from her armored fist.
As the Hedgemite had entered the aqueduct, Cat reached out a cloaked hand and administered the shock… catching the creature in her strong arms before it could fall into the aqueduct and potentially hurt itself.
She and the others quickly scrambled up and out of the access portal into a room that looked like a small engineering substation. Fortunately, there were no other occupants. With the Hedgemite bound and gagged in a corner of the small room, the intruders were free to enter the palace proper through the maintenance corridors.
Cat had Roy and the remaining rebels head towards the electrical room. She argued, successfully, that cutting power to the palace was in all their best interests and that she was better able to carry out their primary objective. What she didn’t share with the rebel leader was that she didn’t trust him to limit the carnage.
After several minutes and two trips up small ramps they entered a section of the palace that clearly was no longer for the lower-caste staff.
“It should be just ahead and off to the right,” Cat whispered to the others.
She checked her internal chronometer. Roy’s team should have made it to the electrical room several minutes ago. If all went as planned, they would wait another three minutes and then kill the power. She hadn’t heard any gunfire so she remained hopeful that the rebel leader had managed to take his objective without casualties on either side.
The door they reached was elaborate and gilded in what looked to be rose-colored mother of pearl. The entire level they were on had been richly appointed… completely dissimilar to the stark and bare hallways of the maintenance corridors.
Cat scanned the doorframe looking for possible defensive measures. This room should have been one of the most highly guarded in the palace. That is wasn’t… had her somewhat concerned. She felt like they were walking into a trap.
Nera got impatient and attempted to get past Cat to push the release plate what would open the door. Cat grabbed her hand before she could touch the panel. She shook her head.
“Something is wrong,” Cat whispered.
Nera raised an eyebrow. She mouthed the word “Why?”
Rather than answer Cat ran her armor-clad hand over the entire exterior of the doorframe… always keeping her hand just off the actual surface. Tiny sensors built into the armor told her what her eyes had not. There was indeed a trap.
She stepped back and looked over the wall on both sides of the doorframe. She adjusted nanite filters in her cornea to favor infrared light. A glowing rectangle appeared just off to the left. Cat stepped over to the area in question and tapped the wall. Immediately a door-sized portal contracted and then recessed into wall. The gilded door was a fake meant to incapacitate anyone attempting to enter this special room. Touching the door would have triggered any number of countermeasures… some of which would undoubtedly be unpleasant.
Presumably, anyone with authorization to enter the palace’s hatchery would also know about the hidden entrance.
Cat peeked into darkened room. Her Heshe enhancements amplified the merger light. There were dozens of recessed pools. Their surfaces undulated and rippled with the swirls of circulating water. She knew that each pool would contain hundreds of Nester egg pods. The water temperature was regulated to within one quarter of a degree. This would insure the larvae-like Nester zoea, once hatched, would mature into powerful and intelligent adults.
Cat hated the thought of holding infants hostage for political gain… even given the fact that she would die before she let anything happen to them. That said, the rebels had given her little choice. Their first plan had been to kill all the Prime caste they could find. This would have precipitated a bloodbath on both sides. Cat’s hope was to force a negotiation between the two groups.
The suggestion to take control of the nursery, in lieu of the planned massacre, had actually come from a Nester starship captain named She-Who-Would Sing. Cat had interviewed the Prime Captain via her quantum communications link several times over the course of the last several days. In many ways, the two were becoming friends even though they had never physically met.
What Cat didn’t know was that her interactions with the Nester Officer had cemented, in the Nester’s mind, a new way of thinking for her people… the wisdom of working with the Yorktown crew rather than subjugating them. Cat’s insistence that a means be found to address the forced participation in the caste system that did not involve the loss of life… impressed She-Who-Would-Sing more than mere words could. It was, in fact, a confirmation of what She-Who-Would-Sing saw when the members of the Yorktown crew attempted to render medical assistance to Left Captain Hero and others of her crew. Here was a people, composed of multiple races, who were not afraid to fight for their beliefs but at the same time valued all life… even that of an adversary.
Cat stepped into the vast chamber. There was an almost Holy feeling about the room. It seemed, in Cat’s mind at least, that a place associated with new life was always a sacred space… blessed by the Creator. Cautiously, almost reverently, the GCP Admiral motioned the others to enter the room.
“Be careful not to disturb the incubation pools. Even the temperature of your hand in the water for a minute could seriously injure these little ones.”
“How many…” Nera started to ask.
Before she could finish the question the floor trembled and a loud BOOM echoed through the corridor. At the same time, the dim illumination in the room flickered and went out. It was eerily quiet.
A second or two later some type of backup system kicked in and the dim illumination, as well as the pool circulators, resumed. It had been the circulators shutting down that had made the chamber seem so quiet. A panel on a side wall, a good thirty feet from the entrance, slid open. A red light was flashing on a newly exposed panel.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Cat said as she made her way to the panel. The plan had been for Roy and his team to plant a computer virus that would allow the rebels to take remote control of the electrical facility. This would al
low them to selectively cut power to various locations in the palace. Cat had intended to plant a similar virus in the nursery. The idea had been to use one as a demonstration of the potential of the other.
It seemed Roy had decided to modify the plan. He must have planted an explosive in the electrical room thereby cutting the power to everything… permanently. Unless Cat could find an alternative power source, the infants in the hatchery would not mature correctly and would quite likely die.
“If I’m reading this panel right, this system has two redundant power supplies.”
“That’s good news, right?” Nera asked hopefully. She didn’t want to be responsible for killing Nester infants any more than Cat did.
“Sadly, no,’ Cat answered. “The primary backup is a bank of fuel cells that runs through the main electrical junction. It should have been able to keep essential systems up for days. Unfortunately, our idiot friends have disrupted that power junction. The secondary reserve is only rated at about ten minutes.”
“What’s that bugger Roy gone and done now?” Bud grumbled testily as he turned a table-like piece of furniture over and placed it so he could cover the door with his weapon. “Here I thought we might get out of this with our skin intact.”
“You still might,” Cat said. “Drop your weapons and head back to the aqueduct. Run as fast as you can.”
“Now see here Missy. I’m not sure where ya was raised but in my home the men didna abandon the women. Tain’t gonna start now!”
“This isn’t a debate,” Cat said firmly. “I have body armor and can take care of myself. If I’m forced to protect you two as well, these little ones will die. The best chance for all of us, including these fry, is for you get out of here while you still can. Most of the response force is going to be heading towards the source of the explosion… this gives you a short window of opportunity to escape. In short, I need you to move and move now!”
“What are you going to do?” Nera asked.
Cat looked at the dwindling power supply and shook her head... “What I have to,” she answered cryptically.