by Terry Mixon
The limos settled onto a landing pad beside the castle. The marines and Royal Guards came out and made sure the pad was secure before Talbot gave her the high sign. The Admiral exited first and held the door for the ladies. The Chancellor followed them out.
Elise gestured to the wide entrance. “My father is waiting inside. This is a casual visit, so we’re not standing on ceremony. He wants some quiet time to get to know you and to assure you that we’re decent people.”
“I already knew that,” Kelsey said. “I’ve been watching the news vids. It didn’t take long to figure out that what we were seeing wasn’t propaganda. The people here seem genuinely happy for the most part. Even those who criticize the Royal House don’t seem to feel afraid to do so. That told us a lot.”
The Crown Princess laughed. “I can only imagine what you heard. Some people seem to go out of their way to find something to be unhappy about. Or look for some conspiracy. If so, they’re free to do so. Open speech is a cherished right here.”
She gestured for Kelsey to precede her. “Come on. Let’s have lunch and get to know one another.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jared brought Athena to a halt outside the sphere of orbital fortresses surrounding the hostile flip point. He didn’t need to be inside it to send the probe and being under all those missile tubes would make him itchy. Their Royal Fleet escort stopped with him.
The damage to the fortresses was…extensive. Many were little more than floating clouds of debris. The Pale Ones had severely damaged most of the rest. Smaller ships were flitting around grabbing large chunks of wreckage and moving them toward a collection point. They also towed the remains of the enemy ships. Some of which looked surprisingly intact.
He looked down at his console, focusing on the image of Commodore Sanders. The other man sat on Mace’s bridge watching the same scene on his main monitor, Jared presumed. “Commodore, some of those attackers look better than I’d have expected after a missile duel at knife range.”
The older man shrugged. “Sometime they appear too close to one another and their grav drives mesh as they attempt to accelerate. That fries them right quick. Their actual momentum after transition is too small to get the derelicts far..”
“Have you pulled any usable intelligence from them?”
“Not in years. We’ll casually examine them, but they’re not our priority. The space-time drives burn out with the grav units. For whatever reason, they make their drives as a single unit. On rare occasions, they manage to repair a ship and continue on, but no space-time drive has survived one of these burnouts. Or the battle damage required to stop the ship.”
Jared frowned as he considered the man’s words. “Exactly how does a savage repair a damaged drive unit?”
“Most likely in the same way they can pilot a spaceship. We hypothesize their implants have some automatic way to do some of that work without intelligence. We’ve seen the manner they fight hand to hand in the ones we’ve captured. Rote execution of advanced martial arts moves based on the situation. They are quite deadly in a fight.”
“Might we have a relatively intact ship to study? Sometimes an outside eye can see something new.”
Sanders nodded. “I’ll have them shift one of these to your care. What will you do with it?”
“See if I can strap it to a cutter dock and flip it over to the other system. The scientists can disassemble it to their heart’s content. If there’s anything to be learned, they’ll find it.”
Zia turned in her seat to face Jared. “We’re ready to launch the probes, Captain.”
The plan was to launch two probes through the flip point. One would stay just long enough to get a scan of the immediate area and return. The other would remain for fifteen minutes. If it survived that long, they would have an idea of the star system on the other end. They’d also launch a widespread volley of probes set to scan the Pentagar system for any anomalous flip points.
Jared raised an eyebrow at Sanders. “And we’re good with launching these? They look like missiles and we’ll be launching a lot of them. I do not want my command fired upon.”
The Commodore shook his head. “Everyone has been told multiple times. No one will fire on your ship, even if you inadvertently launched a salvo at one of the fortresses.”
“I think we can avoid that particular blunder. Zia, launch the probes, starting with the ones going elsewhere in this system. Flip the two going over to the next system as soon as you’re ready.”
“Aye, sir.”
The probes appeared on the plot of local space. A dozen moved quickly out of the general area and began probing. The final two quickly traversed into the flip point and disappeared before they reached the center. Perhaps by going over at the edge of the flip point, one would survive long enough to get back home with a snapshot of the tactical situation in the enemy system.
The probes had been gone less than ten seconds when the first one popped back into existence. An overview of the far side of the flip point began taking shape as Zia added details from the data feed.
“It looks like the immediate area around the flip point is empty,” she said. “No defensive installations and no ships detected. There might be some close by, but with only a glimpse we won’t see them.”
“Can you give me any details on the system itself?”
“The star is a medium sized yellow capable of supporting life. We have some images of the stellar background that the computers are crunching to see if they can narrow the location down using the computer records the Kingdom recovered after the Fall.”
It took a few minutes before Zia confirmed the stellar location of the target system was the Erorsi system. Old records indicated it was at one time a populous world with several billion citizens.
“The second probe just reappeared,” Zia said a few minutes later. “I’m pulling the data feed now.”
The diagram on the screen updated. No transmissions showed on any of the scans. No ships or structures detected. That didn’t mean there weren’t any. No ship or artificial structure was visible at the kinds of ranges a flip point normally sat from the habitable zone of a planet. All they could possibly see were radio transmissions or the gravitic signature of a ship moving at high speed.
Sanders shifted his attention from the display Athena was forwarding to Mace. “Does that say what I think?”
“If you think it says the flip point is completely unguarded, sir, you’d be right. That’s insane.”
Graves looked up from the console he’d appropriated at the rear of the bridge. “Perhaps not. Those things seem to operate on some preprogramed berserker imperative. Perhaps they aren’t designed for defense. From what I’ve surmised, they overwhelmed the old Empire with sheer numbers.”
“It seems to have worked well enough for them.” Jared considered the readouts. “We’ll send the probe back over with instructions to return if it detects any enemy activity.”
“Well, then,” Sanders said. “I suppose I can shift my people into helping with the search and rescue operations. I’ll want to know at once if you detect anything unusual at all.”
Jared gave Graves a lopsided grin. “Just how much trouble would I be in with the Princess if I popped over for a detailed scan, Charlie?”
“She will eat you alive,” the XO assured him. “Is that what you want to do? They might note the incursion and respond.”
“It doesn’t look as though they keep a close watch.”
“Our scanners are far more sensitive than the ones on these probes. If we can get a detailed scan of the system it could prove decisive when the Pentagarans make their own incursion.”
He shifted his attention to Sanders. “Can you avoid shooting us when we come back?”
“If we arrange for you to be transmitting something known as you come in, I think that would work.” They quickly worked out a signal that Zia could begin transmitting before they came back. That would keep the Royal forces from firing on Athena.
“I might need a place to hide when the Princess finds out I didn’t bring her along.”
The older man laughed. “She won’t be pleased, I imagine.”
“We’ll either be back very quickly or we’ll be there a while. It depends on what we find. Don’t be alarmed if we’re gone for a few hours. We’ll send a probe back with our estimated time of return.”
“Good luck and god speed, Lord Captain.”
Once the transmission ended, Jared brought Athena to combat readiness. They’d go over with their fingers on the triggers. This time he brought the ship to the center of the flip point and gave the order.
The momentary disorientation faded. Zia scanned her console closely. “No ships in the general vicinity, Captain.”
“Stand down from combat stations. Hold station and passively scan the system. Prepare a dozen probes. I want to send them deep into the system to map it for flip points and Pale Ones. Program them to transmit the results to our location via tight beam.”
“Aye, sir.”
Graves moved over to Jared’s console. “You don’t think they’ll spot them? The scans might be passive, but the probes are moving. And even if they don’t, it will take days to cover the entire system.”
“We’ll leave a probe here to record data until they stop transmitting or ships approach. The reaction will be almost as useful as the data they get.”
It took Zia an hour to locate the formerly inhabited main world of the system. Another two passed before the probe was close enough to detect artificial structures orbiting the planet. She detected no transmissions from either the orbitals or the planet’s surface. While Zia couldn’t be sure, she thought there were three clusters of artificial structures around the planet.
“Zia, how long to get the probe into range for a close look?”
She checked her console. “Another hour. Less if you want to let it shoot past the planet.”
“If we can keep it there without it being seen, I’d rather have the extra intelligence a stationary probe could get.”
He let the crew cycle off for meals and downtime. He’d know if they needed to come back long before trouble could come to them. He took the first break with half the bridge crew and relieved Graves an hour later.
By the time everyone was back, the probe was slowing into position. He waited the final minutes with some impatience. He really wanted to know what they were going to find.
“I’m getting good data from the probe,” Zia said. “I’m also detecting three clumps of fusion plants in orbit. They are each roughly a third of the way wound the planet from the others. At the orbital distance above the surface they occupy, they don’t have line of sight with one another. Our probe is in a position to the see the first two now. The third will take a few minutes to come into sight.”
The system diagram they had been reviewing vanished, replaced by the breathtaking view of a planet. The greens and blues looked very much like Avalon. A small speck crossed in front of the ocean and the image swelled as the vid zoomed in.
The orbital it revealed looked deceptively small, but the scale on the bottom of the scan made it apparent it was bigger than all the orbitals around Avalon put together. True, it was mostly an open framework, but that didn’t change the scope of it.
“What is that thing?” Graves asked.
“It’s a shipyard,” Jared said. “I visited a freighter construction dock a few years ago. This is a lot bigger.”
“How much bigger?”
“Big enough to construct an invasion fleet,” Jared said grimly. “Thankfully it looks empty now. What else do we have?”
The view shifted. The second orbital structure was almost as big as the shipyard, only it was a solid sphere. Jared pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. That crude looking facility could’ve housed tens of thousands of people.
The wait for the third set of power sources seemed an eternity, but was less than half an hour. To his horror, it was another shipyard.
This one still looked to be under construction. That didn’t seem to have slowed down its use, though. It had hundreds of ships in various stages of construction. It looked like they’d been working on this one for a while and now it was almost ready to launch a new invasion. Not in years like the Pentagarans expected, but in days or weeks. An invasion they had no way of stopping.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Meeting the King of Pentagar was a bit anticlimactic. The short, rotund gentleman would’ve made a great tavern keeper. He welcomed Kelsey warmly and made her feel like a member of his family before a simple and delicious lunch was over. He insisted she use his given name any time she tried to be formal. She now knew what a favorite uncle must be like.
He seemed to have an endless supply of amusing stories, many from segments of society that she wouldn’t have guessed he had knowledge. After a particularly funny story about the construction crew of a building in the capitol, she asked him about it. “Raymond, how could you possibly know what a brick layer does on a construction site?”
His eyes twinkled. “I learned at a young age how to slip out of the castle and get to know the people I was to rule. Just like in an old story. They never suspected I was the Crown Prince. It drove my father simply mad. He would post guards, but I always managed to slip past them. You see, I’d found the secret passages.”
Kelsey’s eyes widened. “Secret passages? Seriously?”
“Absolutely,” he assured her. “They were built into the castle when it was constructed. They had lain disused until I stumbled upon a secret room. Once I knew something like that existed I made it my mission to find them all, though I doubt I succeeded. I think I may have, but even now, I’m not completely sure. They are hidden devilishly well.”
Kelsey glanced at Elise. “Is he being serious?”
She nodded. “I’ve seen them. He insisted on showing them to me when I was old enough to appreciate them. You can get from almost any part of the castle to another. A few lead out into the woods. The exits are works of art.”
“In any case,” the King continued, “I still have my brick layer’s certification framed in my office. I think such knowledge and insight are crucial to being a good monarch. All too many noblemen live in little bubbles where they have no idea who their people truly are.”
Elise leaned over toward Kelsey. “I apprenticed under a wood carver for several years. If you haven’t considered doing something like that, you really should. We live such isolated lives. We need to be more like the people we lead if we’re to be the best rulers we can be.”
“I wish I’d had an opportunity like that. It sounds wonderful.”
Raymond Orison laughed jovially. “But you see, Kelsey, you have exactly such an opportunity! Here on this mission, you’re one of them. You strive side by side with your fellows. You don’t have to live inside a bubble. Socialize. Do what they do. Be one of them. The only thing stopping you is yourself.”
“Well, I have been spending quite a bit of time with the marines. They were standoffish at first, but now we drink beer and gamble. I almost feel like one of them.”
“Splendid! You’ve seen how easy it is. You can overcome the boundaries set by protocol. Meet your Fleet comrades in the same way. Dine with them. Find out what they do for recreation and join them. By the time you get back home, you will be one of them. And don’t forget the scientists. The quiet ones can be the most fun! Such a golden opportunity shouldn’t be squandered.”
Elise put her napkin on her plate. “Speaking of opportunities, how would you like to go into the city and meet the man who taught me woodcarving?”
Kelsey smiled. “I’d love that.”
“You girls go have fun. Kelsey, we’ll have dinner tonight and we can talk about diplomatic things after you’ve had a good night’s sleep.”
“I don’t imagine these negotiation
s will be very difficult.” She rose to her feet. “Thank you again for your kind welcome.”
“It’s my pleasure.”
The flight into the city proved to be a long one because Elise kept telling the driver to show Kelsey various parts of the city. Not that Kelsey minded. She even made some side trips of her own to look at some interesting piece of architecture in the distance.
It was close to three hours later when they arrived at the square. The limos settled into a parking area long enough for the occupants to disembark and then took to the air again. Elise led them to a small shop on the corner of a busy street.
A plaque of dark wood hung over the door. Someone had cut an eerily lifelike image of a man walking a dog on it. A second smaller plaque hung beside the door. Alec Vestor, Master Woodcarver.
They went inside once their escort had checked it and Kelsey gasped. Incredible woodcarvings filled the shop. Stunningly beautiful plaques and intricately detailed statuettes of people and creatures decorated the room. Some were familiar to her, others were not, and still others appeared to be fantastical. “This is amazing!”
She walked over to a shelf holding a collection of tiny figurines. None of the carvings stood more than a few inches tall, but all were so elaborate and lifelike that she half-expected them to be moving. At Elise’s nod, she picked up one of a small boy holding a bow. Looking closely, she could see the serene expression on his face and his meticulously detailed clothes.
“I cannot tell you how overwhelmed I was the first time I walked in here,” Elise confided. “While I’m not nearly so talented, I find myself blessed to study with people like Master Vestor.”
“Did I hear my name used in vain?”
They turned to find a tall, thin man in a tunic of turquoise blue standing behind them. Elise squeaked and hugged him. “You scared me!”