by T. R. Harris
“That is not the concern of the Klin any longer, Nomar. Events have progressed too far for us to influence them at this point. I would suggest you surrender to the inevitability of your situation and begin to make the appropriate arrangements.”
Nomar was incensed. The Klin leader was simply dismissing the Kracori’s fate as if they were a piece on a gaming board.
The Klin continued: “This will be our last communication. I will be dissolving this link once we are done and scrambling the source. I would express my confidence in a positive resolution to your current dilemma, if I truly had such confidence. But alas, I do not. Farewell, Nomar Polimic. That is all.”
True to his word, the comm screen suddenly displayed only static. The abrupt and disrespectful end to the Kracori’s eight-hundred-year relationship with the Klin left Nomar stunned and gasping for breath. He began to sweat, and the pounding of his heart became so pronounced that he feared it could not sustain this pace much longer. Heart failure was a leading cause of death among Kracori.
Nomar closed his eyes and tried to calm his breathing. He would give it a moment more before calling his physicians.
In the blackness of his vision, he heard the words of the Klin echo in his mind: Surrender to the inevitability of the situation. The very thought was anathema to the Kracori—surrender was not a concept his race understood well. It was so....
His eyes suddenly shot open and he rose up straighter in the chair. Even though his heart still continued to beat at a far greater rate than was healthy, now it beat from excitement.
And idea—no an entire strategy—had just burst forth in his mind. Even though gaps still existed in its understanding, he sought to pull the concept—the vision—more into focus.
Yes, it was radical, yet what other choice did he have?
Nomar reached for the comm pad again, but this time he summoned Daninf and Command-Tactician Galix to his quarters. He would need their input and feedback to further define the strategy, even though he was already committed.
The next link he made was to arrange a starship to be at his disposal; the fastest ship the Kracori had in their arsenal. After all, the Juireans would be arriving at the Kracori star system within twenty hours. He had no time to waste.
110
The tiny probe reached the source of the disturbance in the Shield and instantly recorded the lack of density in the structure. There was a wide gap, nearly devoid of all the stellar ejecta that made up the Dysion Shield. The craft began to move slowly into the opening....
Seven minutes later the craft shot back out into the Void, and immediately sent a burst message toward the Colony. Seconds later, the probe exploded. With no oxygen present in either the probe or that of the ballistic missile that struck it, the parts of both simply flew apart with no accompanying flash.
“Goddammit! Goddammit all to Hell!” Admiral Nash shoved the small stack of papers off his desk in an angry display and glared at Christian Bergmann. “No doubt about the signal?”
“No sir,” Bergmann answered, just as angry as Nash. “The burst was recorded heading straight for the anomalies.”
“They’re no longer anomalies, Chris. They’re bogies and they carry the mass of our entire fleet in only twenty vessels.”
“I don’t mean any disrespect, sir, but we need a decision. Go or no go?” Bergmann said, impatiently. He was visibly impatient.
“If it weren’t for the Cain Drive, I’d say we break off and return to Earth. But that’s not what we came here for. I’m sure we can run circles around anything the Kracori have ... but now this. We don’t know what those things are.”
“Go or no go, sir? The fleet’s got its ass hanging out.”
Nash slammed his fist down on the desk. “Go, dammit! We’ve come too far to turn back. Get the fleet through as fast as you can.”
Bergmann had already turned from the desk and was sprinting for the doorway leading directly into the CIC from the Fleet Admiral’s quarters. He was barking orders even before Nash finished his last word.
There was a small dining room and lounge area in the Pegasus, which now served as a bunk bay for all the excess passengers aboard. Once he had showered and changed into a dark blue tunic, Adam took his bruised, cut and aching body to get some real food in his stomach.
Rutledge and Riyad were in the room, as was a frankly hideous-looking Sherri Valentine, just now coming out of her much-needed slumber. She passed to a sink and splashed water on her face. Even then, her long, blonde hair—matted into a spider’s nest of greasy confusion—only served to accentuate the still caked-on streaks of dirt and grim on her face. The brief rinsing at the wash basin, without the benefit of a mirror, did little to improve her look.
Still, Adam’s heart warmed at the sight of her. He truly believed she had died as the result of McCarthy’s betrayal.
She scooted into a booth at one of the two dining tables in the room next to Riyad Tarazi. She ran a hand over his chest and along his side. “Are you sure nothing is broken?” she asked. “It’s amazing that you had the will to survive. I would have given up after the first few hours knowing there was no chance of rescue or escape.”
“No you wouldn’t have, Sherri,” Riyad said warmly. “We Humans have a very strong will to live.”
“But what could you have possibly been living for?”
Riyad looked over as Adam took a seat next to Chief Rutledge and opposite the pair. “I don’t know; maybe just more minutes, more seeing, more breathing, more experiencing life ... no matter how tragic it may all be.”
“That’s deep, Riyad,” Adam said with a smile.
“We have all been in difficult situations, yet we will ourselves to go on. I can’t say why, except that the need to last a little while longer on this plane of existence is a powerful force.” He smiled broadly and then turned to Sherri with large, dark eyes. “Besides, I knew you would come to save me.”
“Bullshit!” Chief Rutledge said from next to Adam. “You had no idea we’d even try.”
“It’s called faith, Mr. Rutledge.”
“Then I can’t argue with that. If there’s anything to be based on an absolute lack of empirical evidence, then it has to be fact that we’re all sitting around here together—”
Geoffrey Rutledge’s face suddenly went dark.
“I am sorry that you had to trade John Tindal’s life for mine, Master Chief. I truly am. I know you were friends.”
“He wouldn’t see it that way, Mr. Tarazi. We don’t go around comparing the value of one life with another, at least not as SEALs. It’s the mission that is most important, and as a mission, we succeeded. John would have been happy just to know that.”
“I’m sure he knows, Chief,” Riyad said. “And I am beyond the power of words to express my gratitude to all of you for what you have done for me.”
“Yeah, well you owe me a beer—a real beer—when we get back to Earth,” Adam said trying to lighten the mood.
“So where are we?’ Sherri asked in a dusty voice. The relief of being away from Elision and on the downhill slide towards safety was having the effect of sapping all her energy. Others may feel ecstatic after such an ordeal; Sherri was having an opposite reaction.
“We’re headed for a spot in the Shield where Ruszel first brought Riyad into the Void. It’s a thinner part, he says, and he’ll get us through—”
“You mean where we found the Klin?” Riyad interrupted, tensing as he spoke.
“What are you talking about?”
“The Klin; when we came through the first time we landed right in the middle of a whole mess of huge Klin spaceships, bigger than anything I’ve ever seen.”
“Where?”
“Here ... in the Void. Like I said, right where we came through.”
Adam slipped out of the booth; they all did. He shook his head. “You’re saying the Klin are here, in the Void?”
“They were. The Klin who made contact with us did say they would be moving soon. But that was
only three-four months ago, and with all that’s happened here, who knows?”
Adam ran from the room, and in the process, slammed his head against the top of the doorway as he bounded higher in the light gravity of the Pegasus, set low to accommodate all the aliens they had onboard. He stumbled backwards and was caught by the other Humans directly behind him. It was like a scene out of a Keystone Cops movie.
“Fuck!” he yelled. He recovered, and the four of them rushed down the corridor to the bridge.
“Why didn’t you mention the Klin?” Adam yelled at Ruszel as they entered. The alien was seated at the nav console next to Jym.
“Klin? Oh ... the white creature?” Ruszel blinked his eyes several times, overwhelmed by the intense presence of the Humans all staring at him. “I forgot. He did seem very intimidating yet did say they would be leaving soon. Is there a problem?”
“You don’t think it’s an incredible coincidence that the Klin and Kracori would be so close to each other, and with the Juireans and Humans on the way?”
Ruszel shook his head. “At the time, I knew nothing of this, and the Kracori were only a rumor within the Nebula.”
“I mean now!”
“Like I said, I forgot.” Ruszel was angry. “Then we can change course and attempt passage at another location.”
“No shit!” Adam didn’t wait for the customary confusion to register on the alien’s face. “Find us another place, and quickly. Kaylor! Turn us to port.”
“Port?”
“Left; turn us left.”
“I’m picking up some huge gravity sources, Adam,” Jym said from his station. “Just coming in range.”
“Don’t tell me ... dead ahead?”
“Ahead certainly,” the small alien said. “Not sure about dead and how it relates.”
Adam stepped to Jym’s station. “Are those readings normal?” he asked, seeing that the brightness of the contacts was particularly strong, especially for semi-stationary objects.
“No,” Jym answered. “That is because they are very large, generating a minor gravity field of their own. And the metallic content of the objects is very high. This is all having an effect—” And then he leaned in closer to his screen. “And they have just activated gravity drives.”
“Course?”
“Calculating,” Jym said, the tension evident in his voice . “Away! Away from us now that Kaylor has made his course correction.”
“So they’re not pursuing?”
“That is correct. They are moving away!”
Adam fell back into the observation chair and breathed a sigh of relief. “Give us maximum speed, Kaylor,” he said softly. “Let’s get as much distance between those contacts and us as possible.”
“We have a little more speed available, Adam. Applying now.”
“New contacts!” Jym screamed a minute later, his voice now as high-pitched as Adam had ever heard it.
Adam didn’t even lift his head out of his cradling hand. “Where, Jym, where?”
“Ahead! Dead … ahead.”
“I could have guessed.”
“Multiple contacts, closing at incredible speed.”
This did get Adam’s attention. He looked over at the screen and saw a whole cloud of contacts coming their way. “Can you measure the gravity signatures?” he asked.
“They are strange, like nothing I have measured before ... except. They match those of the Pegasus, Adam!”
“It’s our fleet!” Sherri cried out from behind Adam.
He slipped out of the chair and leaned in towards Jym’s screen. “Is that true?” he asked the alien.
“I cannot confirm. No transponders are recording. I only have the signatures, and the speed as evidence.”
“Let’s hope they’re ours,” Admiral Tobias said soberly as he entered the pilothouse. “If any of the alien fleets have ships that can go that fast, then we’re all screwed.”
“The last one just came through, Admiral.”
Nash was buckled into his command chair on the bridge of The Trident, watching the data stream across the various monitors on the wall before him.
“Good,” he said to Christian Bergmann. “I don’t see the bogies anymore.”
“They’ve moved off, away from our position.”
“No shit? They’re running?”
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Admiral,” Bergmann said with a smile. “From the last reading we got, each of those things was over twenty miles in diameter. And sir, they’re disk-shaped.”
Nash immediately recognized the significance of Bergmann’s statement. All disk-shaped spacecraft originated with the Klin. Other races now had similarly-shaped vessels—the Humans included—but that was because they all followed the basic Kiln design.
“What have we stumbled upon, Chris?”
“Probably just what you’re thinking, sir. We’ve often wondered how the Klin could stay hidden from the Juireans for four thousand years. Maybe it’s because they travel in huge mobile fleets, or colonies.”
“And here they are, in the same area as the Kracori.”
“The two of them did just plan and execute the latest attack on the Earth. It makes sense that they would be this tight.”
A monitor on the forward wall of the bridge suddenly flashed to life. On it were several bright dots with tracking lines.
“Looks like our forward units have them back on their screens,” Bergmann said. “They’re huge, but not terribly fast.”
“You know, Chris, if they’re so tight, then it’s a pretty good bet the Klin have let the Kracori know we’re here. That could screw up our plans. Any intel on the Juireans yet?”
“Nothing Admiral. We don’t have assets in that theater.”
“Using our speed advantage, we better get some out there. It’s not a good idea to be the fastest runner on the track, if you’re also blind.”
“I’ll get right on it.”
“And Admiral,” Nash said. “Leave a few units behind to keep this tunnel open. We may need a quick way out if things go to shit.”
“I’m ahead of you on that one, sir. Already in place.”
“We cannot outrun them, Pleabaen.” Moisee Linuss reported.
Wesselian Velsum had been afraid of this. The generators on the largest spacecraft ever built were beyond massive, yet they also had that much more bulk to attract. And the gravity-wells required were so much deeper than conventional wells that the Colony had to separate at extreme degrees just to keep from having them overlap.
Velsum eyed his executive assistant. “Do you have a track established yet?”
“Yes, they are pursuing, yet presently it is just to match our speed, not to overtake.”
At first Velsum had not believed the data that had come to him not more than two hours before. It was sketchy as to exactly how this information came to light, yet as the burst of information was deciphered it became clear that a fleet of alien vessels was gaining entry to the Void through a hole cut in the Dysion Shield. The only fleet expected in the region that wasn’t already accounted for was that of the Humans, and yet the distance to be traveled over the time allotted made that impossible. And yet the data did not lie, and as the first units of the mystery fleet were analyzed, there was no doubt that it was indeed the Humans.
Velsum’s first responsibility was to the Colony, so he ordered an immediate evacuation of the region. They would move off, away from the breach in the Shield, yet still far enough away from the conflict being waged at the far side of the Void.
Once his ships were on the move, Velsum had a little more time to try and piece together the puzzle and formulate the proper questions.
It was an incontrovertible fact that the Human fleet had been in the vicinity of Earth only a month before. And it was also undeniable that it was now here, in the Silvean Nebula. Considering the distance traveled within that short time, the Humans must be in possession of some radically new propulsion technique.
Once he accepted
this as fact, then other scenarios could be postulated.
With vastly superior speed now added to the Human tactical skills and overall talent for war, the fleet now occupying the Void should be able to defeat any force brought against it. And when coupled with the present situation involving the near stalemate battle between the Juireans and the Kracori, this Human fleet may find very little to occupy its time. The clean-up of any surviving units, be they Juirean, Kracori or even the Nebula allies, will not pose much of a challenge to the Humans.
That would leave the bulk of the Human fleet to concentrate on the Klin Colony.
The thought made Velsum cringe. Where only hours before he had been contemplating the realization of the Klin’s ultimate resolution, he now found that his Colony may have only hours left in its lifetime. The Humans hated the Kracori, but they also hated the Klin just as much—if not more.
Yet this new information he had just received through his assistant made little sense. The Klin ships were essentially unarmed; they would make soft targets for the Humans. The Humans were not grouping for an attack. Why were they not?
“Moisee, what is the latest status on the Kracori-Juirean confrontation. Have they engaged?”
Linuss checked his datapad. “Not yet, Pleabaen. It appears they are within twenty hours or so of meeting.”
The Klin Colony would not last twenty hours, Velsum thought, not unless he could keep the Humans from attacking. He had an idea. He pressed a button on his arm comm bracelet.
“Pilot-Guide, I would like a course correction.”
“Of course, Pleabaen,” said the voice through the tiny speaker.
“Have pods Six through Twenty move to sector three. The remaining units will steer for sector eleven.”
“Is not sector eleven Kracori territory?”
“That is correct. Have those pods accelerate at maximum well-depth.”
“I will obey. Is there more?”
“Not at this time.”
Velsum saw Linuss’ look of confusion. “I wish to lead the Humans closer to the current conflict raging,” the Pleabaen explained.