“If it’s all right with you, I’ll send two of my repair robots over there for it.”
“But…”
“Zed, the fissionable material in this bomb will save me months of tedious fabrication.”
“I suppose.” The thought of the bomb aboard the Rose of the Dawn made his stomach clench. “Just be careful.”
For some reason he was sure that THAT message had gone only to him and likewise, he was sure which ‘her’ Lola was talking about.
Zed was drying his hair with a thick towel as he walked into the crowded conference room. He grinned at the intent faces. “I knew that you would all appreciate me taking a shower before our little meeting. Those new EVA suits may be a world of difference better than the old EVA suits, but I still felt grimy and sweaty.” He sat and stretched his legs. “So, Lola. Please tell us what this startling news you’ve heard is all about.”
“Any one thing would have been a disaster.” Lola began slowly. “But happening all at the same time elevated the crisis to the level of a natural catastrophe. First of all, the Chamdar attacked Dramul with a fleet that they had been secretly constructing for years. That fleet would have crushed the Dramul completely, if it hadn’t been for the fact that the Dramul Imperium had also been secretly constructing the greatest battleship ever made, and it almost bankrupted the entire empire. The ship was named Sword of Blandar. You might recognize the vessel’s more modern name: 7651 Rose of the Dawn.” There was a buzz of excited voices at the table. “The Blade proved her name well, cutting through the massive enemy fleet. If it hadn’t been for her, all would have been lost. With two thirds of both fleets destroyed, the Chamdar threw everything they had into one final suicidal attack on the Sword. Sword lashed out, obliterating most of the remaining Chamdar vessels, but the trap had already been sprung. Every Chamdar ship had fired every missile they had at the Sword. The Sword engaged supra-light engines just as a single volley penetrated her tattered shields. With twenty percent of the crew dead from massive radiation exposure, Sword was flung off course and out of control, no one on the bridge left alive to stop her mad plunge across the galaxy. Finally I managed to cut the supra-light engines, and as I did we struck the asteroid. The terrible bombardment had crushed our shields, and the craters from the Chamdar high yield weapons still glowed in the dark of space when we hit. Another third of the crew died of decompression or blunt force trauma, and the survivors fled in small lifeboats to the habitable planets of your isolated system.”
Silence settled over the room as they all sat entranced by the terrible story.
“The Dramul had won the war, but the loss of the Sword and most of her fleet had bankrupted the Imperium. The Chamdar Republic was left no better. Ten thousand years went by and the two thriving civilizations crumbled. It was about that time that returning scouts reported seeing Creednax ships in the farthest reaches of our explored space. Dramul and Chamdar fleets had returned to their respective homeworlds, pale ghosts of their former glory, to prepare for the onslaught that has yet to come. That is why Thal’ark Station was set with scuttling charges.”
“What about this QX’an tril Station we’re supposed to go to next? Was that a Chamdar or Dramul Station?” Alina DeThomaso asked quietly, leaning forward on the table.
“Neither. QX’an tril Station was built by the Creednax, or possibly some older alien race. Our job was to go there, enter the impregnable station and find a weapon to win the war. Now we go there to find a weapon to save both Chamdar and Dramul from the Creednax.”
They sat there for a long time, just looking at each other. “I say that we wait until we have more ships, pack up our bags and head back to Earth. With hearty Russian pioneers, we could settle some uncharted and unpopulated section of the galaxy, and with this firepower, who will argue with us?”
Zed gave Dimitri a flat look. “Two things. First, we HAVE to go to QX’an tril Station. It says so right on our orders. Lola is driving this bus. She can call me an Admiral, or she can call me a Cook, for all it matters. We go where she tells us to go. Next, could you really live with yourself if you abandoned people that needed your help, without even trying?? I’ve done a lot of dumb and stupid things in my life, but I don’t plan on adding THAT to the list.”
“He must be talking about the Russian satellite fiasco.” Lola chuckled. “I read on your Internet that there’s still a bounty on his head in Moscow.” Dimitri’s eyes lit.
Alina’s face was impassive. “I suppose that means we’ll be going to this QX’an tril Station next?”
“Yes, Tactical Officer DeThomoso. Unless, of course, you would like to remain here, at Thal’ark Station?” Lola had beat them all to the punch. Alina seemed to collapse in on herself, a bit. “No, I don’t think so.”
“A wise move, Alina DeThomoso.” Zed frowned. Lola, he knew, was up to something tricky. “I have noted in your memory that you like Chinese food. Tonight I am serving Four Delight Sizzling Rice Soup, followed by Lobster Cantonese and Marinated Lotus Root.”
Alina looked stunned, and then a slow smile crept across her angular face. “I may just marry you, Lola, if you keep cooking like this.”
“Thank you Alina, but I might have difficulty fulfilling the physical end of the bargain.” Alina just laughed at this remark, but Zed noticed that Lola had specifically mentioned that fulfilling the physical end of the bargain would be difficult — not impossible.
“I think that we should adjourn for the day.” Zed mumbled, stretching. “I’m looking forward to a good meal and soft bed.” It was as good an excuse as any. He really needed to speak with Kat, who pointedly hadn’t attended the meeting.
She was, as he knew she would be, sitting alone on the bridge, staring into the depths of space. “Hi Kat.” He said quietly. “Miss me?”
His attempt at humor fell flat, and she turned her red eyes on him. “Stupid question.” Her tone was empty. “I’ve always been smart. Everyone said it: my teachers, my shrinks, and even my parents. She thinks like an adult they all said.” She paused to wipe her nose on her sleeve. “They were right. I do think like a very smart adult. What nobody realized was that I also feel like an adult, care like an adult and love like an adult. An adult stuck in the body of a thirteen year old girl. I…”
“It’s OK Kat.” Zed interrupted in a soft voice. “I’ll wait. Three years, four years, five years. Whatever it takes.”
“But, you’ll get older and I’ll…”
Katherine stopped in mid-sentence, and her eyes took on a far-away look as she spoke with Lola. She blinked and focused on Zed. “You’d do that for me? You’d wait?”
“Yup.”
“But…” Her eyes grew wider. “You are a normal man. You have needs and desires too.”
“That’s what cold showers are for.”
Her laughter had a bitter edge. “Then you’ll be clean and horny. It will be a long time for both of us.”
“It could be.”
“So, what do we do now?” Dimitri Galygin was leaning back in his chair, sipping the very last of his breakfast coffee, his dark curly hair still slightly damp from his morning shower. His dark Slavic eyes were intent, despite his relaxed appearance.
Zed had long since finished his own coffee, and looked at his security officer’s cup with something approaching envy. “Begin fueling, starting with the cargo on the tanker Lola mentioned. If we need more we’ll tap into the reserves on the station.”
Kat was frowning. “Why do we need fuel at all? Can’t Lola just ‘make’ some?”
“You are correct in assuming that I can create fuel, Kat. But I can only make a relatively small quantity, and operating defensive
shields and heavy weapons expends it at a terrific rate. The reactor itself is powered by a harnessed singularity, and needs no refueling. It operates the supra-light drives only. Sub-light drives use fuel.”
“So.” Li Tong, the Science Officer, looked thoughtful. “Without fuel we could go very fast from one general area to another, without the ability to stop or land.”
“That’s approximately correct, Li.”
The Asian man gave the ceiling his best inscrutable look. “Then, by all means refuel. I have no wish to sail aboard a modern day Flying Dutchman.”
“I’m so glad that you see things my way.” To her electronic credit, the flavor of Lola’s comment held not a trace of sarcasm.
“I wish we had one of those tugs you mentioned available to us.” Zed leaned back, imitating Dimitri.
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, if we had a tug we could pick up one or two of those wrecks you sighted on the way in, and strip it down for parts. The rest we could leave for the station. I’m sure they will need the raw material.” Silence echoed around the conference room — and in their minds.
“The bloody thing’s just a big gas station.” Mike chortled. “I’ll be damned.”
“Essentially correct, Michael. It does, however, have the ability to defend itself, if needed.”
“Just like home.” Zed murmured dryly, thinking of the robberies he’d heard about in Dade County Florida, within a handful of miles from his apartment. “My cousin worked at a gas station. He kept a shotgun under the counter, just in case. If we begin refueling and rearming now, and at the same time break down a couple of ships for parts, how long until we can finally leave for QX’an tril Station?”
“Four weeks, Zed.”
“And once we leave here, how long until we reach the other station?”
“Twelve weeks, Zed.”
“Twelve weeks?” Yate’s voice went up in volume. “I thought you said this place was extremely distant, Lola.”
“It is, Captain.” After several heated discussions Lola had finally agreed to address Zed as Captain rather than Admiral. “If you remember, when we came here I mentioned that we had to maintain a low relative speed because of our fuel situation. That will no longer be the case. We can go as fast as we like because we will have plenty of fuel to decelerate and cruise sub-light.”
Zed took a deep breath. The other faces of the crew were watching him intently. “Begin refueling, rearming and salvage operations immediately, Lola.” A sly look crossed his face. “This station is in orbit about a small, blue and white planet. Is there any life there, Lola, and is the atmosphere breathable?”
“There were several research stations on the planet, Zed, and I still show a number of powers sources active, but no human lifeforms. The air is breathable, gravity slightly less than Earth normal, and initial surveys indicated no hostile organisms. There are many non-human lifeforms on the planet, some quite large. The name of the planet, by the way, is Cybele. The temperature there is a bit chilly, though, at minus fifteen to plus ten Celsius in the temperate zone. Snow is common year-round.”
Zed grinned. “I think that I may just grant us shore leave, for those who don’t mind chilly weather. We do, after all, have a ship full of research scientists, and a new planet to explore.”
CHAPTER 5
Cybele:
Lola set the saucer shaped tender down a few hundred meters from a small compound composed of interlocked dirty white domes, some half buried with leaves and the detritus of time. Snow was drifting around equipment that had been abandoned for centuries, while straggling thorny bushes struggled to pierce the icy surface and reach the thin and watery sunlight. The air had that peculiar scent of dusty dry snow and puffed out in great heavy white clouds when he breathed. Zed pulled the hood of his parka further over his face and pointed a glove covered hand at the largest dome, fully thirty meters across by ten high. “Let’s try over there. The largest building should be the Dining Hall, with labs and dorms radiating out from it.” He, Li Tong and Dimitri stamped their feet free of snow in a small airlock designed, Zed surmised, to keep in warmth rather than atmosphere, and then the big Russian pushed open the inner door.
“It looks as though you were wrong, Zed. It’s not the Dining Hall. It looks more like a morgue. He stepped into the room, pistol magically in hand. Shadows sketched strange shapes on the curved walls, while Zed fumbled for the light switch. Yellow light blazed, and he stood blinking.
“All right, Lola. What are we looking at?” The coffins were all identical, dull silver metallic, and all had a small bank of lights on flat tops. Of the twenty five coffins, eighteen showed a red glowing light on the top, six showed green and one a blinking amber. Zed knew that Lola was seeing the same thing as he, because the ground party all wore small button cameras on their collars, transmitting the picture back to the ship.
“Those are cold sleep chambers Zed; hibernation units. Get the green lights and especially the amber light back to the ship immediately.”
“And what about the others, Lola?”
Her voice was hard. “The others are dead. Look around. There should be a sled for moving those hibernation units.” Zed turned. “There! To your left. Hurry! The amber unit has only hours left until failure.”
The three crewmembers struggled the seven hibernation caskets out of the building and across the frozen ground to the tender. Lola had them in the air before the loading door was fully closed. A small fleet of robots were waiting their arrival and promptly slid the caskets out of the tender, onto floating sleds and whisked them off to Medical.
“I thought that you said there were no human life signs on the planet.” Zed was following the sleds at a slightly more leisurely pace, his parka unzipped and flapping.
“Their vital signs were all below my sensor threshold, Zed. I didn’t know that they were there.”
“This could cause a problem, you know.”
“How so??”
“If they wake up, recognize this as a former Imperial warship and start issuing orders, things could get — complicated.”
Lola’s voice in his mind was steady and unwavering.
Zed stopped, shocked and more than a little humbled. He thought for a moment.
There was a chuckle in his mind. Lola mused.
Embarrassed even more, Zed changed the subject. “How are our new patients?” He
spoke aloud as he finally turned into the door for sick bay.
“The patients in the hibernation caskets with green lights are all doing well, and should be fully revived by tomorrow. The casket with the amber light is still in in serious condition. Her casket systems were failing, but we reached her in time. She will live — however, there is something you should know. I recognize the woman in the failing casket. She is the Imperial Princess Nerina Foy, daughter of the man who used to run the entire Imperium. Her casket and the caskets of the other survivors were of much better quality than the ones that failed, so they were probably her servants and bodyguards.”
“Oh damn!”
“Exactly.”
Zed looked down on the sleeping forms stretched on the white sick bay beds. All had tubes and wires running from their bodies so that Lola could monitor them. “Can you keep them asleep for a day of two?” Lola actually laughed.
“Zed, they’ve been asleep for thousands of years. A few days more won’t matter.”
“What!!” Zed took a deep, calming breath. “I swear if I have one more shocking discovery like this I’ll jump in the tender and head for home.” He glared down at the forms. “These ‘children’ have been asleep for twenty five thousand years?”
“Approximately eighteen thousand years Zed, but they aren’t as young as they look. Most are in their mid-twenties. The Princess, however is a little older. She is thirty. If it hadn’t been for us they wouldn’t have seen another year.”
“I suppose we should get the rest of the crew together and let them know what to expect.”
“That’s a very good idea. I have a few suggestions I’d like to make to the crew also.” There was a pause. “They will be waiting for us in the bridge conference room.”
Zed looked around the room, at the concerned faces of his fellow humans. “Dimitri and Li probably told the rest of you that we picked up a few extra passengers on Cybele. Out of the total of twenty five hibernation units, seven were still operational. Those seven, Lola has informed me, belong to the Imperial Princess Nerina Foy and her retinue.” He let out a dry chuckle.
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