She followed Brian and Lieutenant Kennison out into the night air of a Chicago late summer night. The air was thick and heavy and the smell of freshly mowed grass surprised him.
The light nightshirt Brian wore to bed was almost too much for the warm night. He used to love being out in nights like this when he was younger and married. Now it made it hard for him to breathe, but he wouldn’t be out in the humid, thick air long enough for it to matter.
Overhead, he could see the full moon, bright in the night sky. He and Dot were both far too old to ever walk under that moon, even on a warm night. But at some point in the near future, he hoped they would be together, staring up at some moon, somewhere in this sector of space.
No one talked.
He could hardly speak anymore, but none of the other three bothered either. It was all business for all of them.
They were on a mission.
Around the country right now his crew, and Dot’s crew, were going through the same routine.
Damn he was excited.
He always felt this way going on a mission.
The four of them neared the center of the courtyard of the nursing home. He could feel the humidity forming slight sweat on his face and neck, but there was nothing he could do to wipe it away.
The full moon was so beautiful on a clear summer night. He hoped he would see it again later.
Then a yellow beam struck them from above and lifted all four of them up easily into the big intergalactic transport ship.
The cooler, thinner air of the ship covered him and behind him he heard Dot say softly, “See you on the other side.”
He would have answered her, but he couldn’t talk louder than a whisper at a good moment. He couldn’t walk or even lift his arms at all either. A stroke a little over a year ago had taken most of those skills.
She knew that and didn’t expect an answer from him.
They were both very much in love.
At some point soon he hoped to ask her to marry him and live out on the frontier, not ever having to return to earth and their old bodies. He hadn’t gotten around to it yet, but hoped to very soon.
She hadn’t brought it up either, but he knew she was just old-fashioned enough to not do that. And since they hadn’t talked about it, he wasn’t sure if she understood the rules of living out at the edge of the EPL space. They really needed to talk about it.
And he needed to flat ask her to marry him.
But right now they were still frontline fighters. And clearly they were needed.
Lieutenant Kennison put Brian down in his sleep coffin in a private cabin off to one side of the big hallway and stepped back and snapped off a salute. “Good luck, sir,” he said.
Then he lowered the lid until it latched over Brian and the light went out.
Brian would have loved to salute the young man back, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t even wipe off the drip of sweat threatening to run into his right eye.
Instead, he just lay there thinking of seeing Dot again in her young and youthful body.
And he thought of them dancing as they always did after a mission.
But first they had to survive whatever faced them in deep space this time.
A faint orange and rose smell seeped into the coffin and Captain Brian Saber dozed off.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
September 3rd, 1961
Equivalent Earth Time
Location: Deep Space
BRIAN AWOKE WHAT seemed like just an instant later.
He reached up and easily pushed the coffin lid open. Then he levered his young body out of the sleep chamber.
He never got tired of that feeling after being trapped in that wheelchair and bed what seemed like just moments before. The magic of the Trans-Galactic speed had done it to him again, given him his young body back.
He had sure taken this body for granted when he had been young. He didn’t now. Not for a moment.
The memory of his stroke-beaten body was always just too fresh in his mind when he was in this younger body.
He quickly slipped off the old nightshirt and tossed it back in the coffin. He would need that for the return trip back.
If he survived.
He pushed that thought away.
If he didn’t, his son would be called in the middle of the night and there would be a funeral for a body that looked like his old body that was a fake. And no one but those in the Earth Protection League would know Brian Saber of Chicago died in space, fighting for the safety of all humanity.
And Brian didn’t honestly care if anyone knew. He just loved doing this, getting a chance to be young again.
This trip they must have gone a little farther out in distance from Earth. He looked to be about twenty-five. Often he ended up closer to thirty on missions.
So that meant they were very, very close to the EPL border, more than likely the border with the Dogs.
He quickly dressed, then with one last look in the mirror as he always did, he left his room, turning right and heading for the command center.
He was on his own warship, The Bad Business.
Dot would have been transferred to her ship as well, The Blooming Rose. He wished he could see her now, kiss her, hold her with his young strong arms. But there would be time for that later.
Right now he had to focus on the mission they faced, whatever it was.
He got to the Command Center just a few seconds before his other two command crew arrived.
Marian Knudson, took her second chair to his left and started working on the boards in front of her, bringing up the screens in the command center to show the area of space they were in. The two of them had been a team for years now.
She was tough, all business, and smart as they came.
This time she had her red hair long and down over her shoulders. Usually she kept it up tight against her head.
Behind them Carl dropped into his chair with a “Damn this feels good. Home again.”
Brian felt the same way.
The small command center with its four chairs and many screens and control boards was his home.
“I like my home on Earth,” Marian said.
Back in Wisconsin, Marian lived alone, even at the age of ninety, in her own home. As Carl had said once, she was too damn mean to die or live anywhere else.
Marian had not argued with that, only smiled that smile that let Brian know that at some point Carl would pay for the remark.
“So any news as to the mission, Captain?” Marian asked, her fingers running over the board in front of her. “We are within striking distance of the Dog border. Much closer than normal, actually, which is why Carl here has pimples. No sign at all of Dog warships.”
“There are six other EPL ships with us,” Carl said. “One is The Blooming Rose.”
Everyone knew about his and Dot’s relationship. They had made no attempt at all to keep it a secret. There had been no point and no one had seemed to care.
“No word yet,” Brian said. “But I suspect we don’t have long to wait.”
He pointed to the board in front of him, and as he did, a red light started blinking, meaning an emergency message was coming in.
“You creep me out every time you do that,” Carl said, shaking his head and turning back to his board.
Brian just smiled at Marian. The brass had a certain timetable that they allowed the crews to get into positions on their ships, and that timetable never varied, so Brian always knew when the message was coming in.
“Message on screen,” Carl said a moment later.
General Holmes’s face appeared, his frown causing his middle-aged face to wrinkle even more than it already was. His hair was balding and he looked like he had recently seen too much sun on that exposed skin.
They had worked a few times with General Holmes. He was in charge of the defense forces in the ground bases scattered along the EPL borders.
“Captains,” he said, nodding. “I’m afraid this is as bad as it gets.”<
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Brian said nothing, as did the other captains of the other six warships, so the general went on.
“The Dogs have launched a moon at Earth.”
Brian sat there hoping that General Holmes would take back that statement.
He didn’t.
The general just kept frowning.
“The moon is accelerating from deep in Dog space and will be at the border at your position in about six hours.”
“Fleet of ships with it I assume?” Saber asked.
The general shook his head. “They don’t think they need ships on this one. The moon they have launched is as big as our moon around Earth. It’s not carrying a weapon like they tried last time. The moon is the weapon.”
Brian sat back and tried to imagine what it would take to get a moon like that actually moving, what kind of power and how the moon would even hold together. And how they would even aim it from such a long distance through space.
And how many thousands of years at real-space travel it would take to get to Earth.
“I’m sending all the data we have on it through to all of you,” the general said. “We want you to investigate the moon the moment it crosses into our space, pass on the data to our scientists on bases closer to Earth.”
With that he clicked off, leaving the screen blank.
“Why do I think there’s something he flat omitted from that briefing,” Carl said.
Marian’s fingers flew over her board as Brian sat there, waiting. He knew Carl was right. The General wasn’t telling them everything. There was something more.
“Oh, shit,” Marian said.
Brian looked over at her. She never swore.
She put up the report that made her swear on the main screen in front of Brian so that they could all see it.
“One hour after the moon crosses into our space,” Marian said, “it reaches Trans-Galactic speed and will be protected by the Trans-Galactic shields. Nothing will be able to change its course until it plows into Earth.”
“They built a T-G drive big enough to power a moon at full speed,” Carl said, shaking his head. “Wow! That’s impressive. So how about we just stop it like we did the last time they tried to launch a moon?”
Brian had to admit, it was impressive. But there was only one problem. Once something was in Trans-Galactic drive, it couldn’t be stopped. It wasn’t in real time and the shields that formed with the drive could plow through anything.
So they had to figure out a way to stop a speeding moon before it got up to speed completely.
Or Earth would be destroyed very, very shortly.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
September 3rd, 1961
Equivalent Earth Time
Location: Deep Space
BRIAN LOOKED AROUND at his command crew, then shook his head. “Looks like we got seven hours to figure this out. Marian, make sure to get that report to everyone on board who understand Trans-Galactic drive physics.”
Marian nodded, her fingers moving quickly over the controls as Brian swiveled his big chair completely around so he could see Carl on his right and Marian on his left in the small command center.
Actually he was facing the door, but since his chair was slightly ahead of theirs at point in the room, they could all talk this way. His back was to his screens, but they could still access their screens while they talked.
“Done,” she said.
Brian knew that meant the other thirty-some members of his crew all knew the score and were working on solutions as well. When you had that many experienced people working hard on something, results tended to happen.
And Brian knew that everyone on the other ships were doing the same. That was a lot of years experience focused on the same problem. One of the advantages of having a lot of really old minds in young bodies.
“Let me kind of think out loud here,” Brian said.
Both Marian and Carl nodded.
“I assume T-G space will power the thing once the moon reaches hyperspace speed. But what’s powering it now?”
Both Carl and Marian had the report at their fingertips and it was Marian who spoke first. “The moon has a hot core, so the engines spaced around the moon are feeding off the internal core of the moon itself.”
“All T-G engines,” Carl said. “Are shielded from EMP blasts as would be expected since we toasted their last moon. Nothing we have will knock them out.”
Brian knew that and he nodded. He’d been in a lot of fights with Dog warships and knocking their engines out was never an option, just as Dogs knocking out a T-G EPL engine wasn’t possible either. It was the nature of Trans-Galactic engines and the force fields that built up around them.
“Can we dig the engines out of the moon’s surface outside the shields?” Brian asked.
Again both his command crew worked on the report, then both shook their heads at the exact same time. “Engines are buried thirty miles deep inside the moon. No dislodging them.”
Brian looked at the big screen near Carl with the report and wondered how the EPL got all the information. More than likely a number of good people had died for it.
“And I assume no blowing the moon apart before it enters Trans-Galactic speed?” Brian asked.
“They found the most stable hunk of rock I’ve ever seen,” Carl said and Marian nodded.
“It would take an entire fleet of ships,” Carl said, sounding disgusted, “pounding it with all weapons, and I doubt that even that much would make more than a dent.”
They all three sat there in silence. Brian just kept looking around, looking at his young body, at his command crew’s young bodies. Somehow they had made it out here, to this exact location in space.
And suddenly he knew that was the key to this.
He looked at Carl. “Who is driving the moon?”
“No one will be on the moon,” Carl said, looking at the report.
“So who drives us when we come out here,” Brian asked. “Who gets us to exact coordinates, with Trans-Galactic drives, in those transport ships.”
Marian frowned and turned back to her board.
Carl did the same thing.
Brian knew he was on to something and something important. You don’t just send a ship hurtling through more miles of space than Brian wanted to think about without something or someone driving. Even with top shields, you didn’t want to plow holes through things along the way that didn’t need holes in them.
So those transport ships from Earth had someone driving it, controlling it, from somewhere.
And that moon would have someone driving all the way to Earth. One planet that far away was far, far too small a target to hit from over sixty light years of distance without a number of course corrections along the way.
“Computers,” Marian finally said. “Each transport we take out here is run by a computer to do course corrections.”
“Through sensors, the computer is able to see the route ahead,” Carl said, “and make corrections to avoid the transport putting a hole in something else along the way.”
“So there is a computer on that moon somewhere?” Brian asked. “We know where?”
“Buried with the Trans-Galactic drive engines,” Marian said quickly.
“Damn,” Carl said, clearly getting angry. “They thought of everything.”
“Not everything,” Brian said, smiling. “Is the moon rotating in any fashion?”
Carl and Marian both looked puzzled at him, then quickly checked.
“No,” Marian said. “It couldn’t rotate and maintain its T-G drive thrust.”
“So we blind it,” Brian said. “Tough to hit anything without being able to see.”
“The computer sensors,” Carl said, laughing. “Of course, they would have to be hidden on the front side of the moon to feed the computer.”
“And I’ll wager those sensors are not hardwired into that computer,” Brian said. “Not through that much rock.”
Marian laughed, the first time Brian had heard
that for some time. “What are you thinking, Captain?”
“We going to just blow those sensors off the face of the moon?” Carl asked.
Brian sat back, his hands behind his head, smiling. “I have a better idea.”
“Oh, I love it when he smiles like that,” Carl said, laughing.
“How about,” Brian said, “we feed those computers in that moon some bad targeting information, something simple such as the location of a big Dog military base.”
“Oh, that will annoy them something awful,” Carl said, laughing so hard tears were coming to his eyes.
Marian informed all the other ships of the idea and then all three of them set to work on exactly where on that moon those sensors would be planted and how to intercept the signal from the surface sensors to the moon targeting computer.
The fallback plan was to wipe all the sensors from the face of the moon and hope it missed Earth. But Brian liked his plan a lot better, and didn’t let that moon even get into EPL space.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
September 3rd, 1961
Equivalent Earth Time
Location: Deep Space
THE MOON WAS fast approaching the EPL border when Earth Protection League Command gave the clearance to try their plan. It had been a scientist on Dot’s ship who had finally cracked the Dog computer code between the moon targeting computer and the sensors.
And it had been a scientist on yet another warship who had figured out how to intercept the signals from the sensors.
They needed to have a ship in tight over each of the six sensors on the moon and the intercept would have to be sent at exactly the same moment to all sensors.
In essence, the control of the moon was going to be transferred to Brian. He and Carl and Marian were going to turn the moon just before it started into Trans-Galactic drive and fire it at a Dog military base.
And then destroy the targeting computer with a very nasty virus.
That moon would wipe out that Dog base and then head out into deep space at full T-G drive. The engines would have to fail before that moon dropped back into normal space a very, very long ways away from this entire galaxy.
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