“Are you telling me that in order to get the jump data . . .” Catala asked in shock.
“If we do that they won’t notice us jump to Reloas?” Alden asked quickly.
“Not exactly,” Brent said with a weak smile.
“There’s more?” Shen asked incredulously.
“The Shard will realize almost instantly that by attacking so many worlds with such a small fleet we are trying to draw their attention away from something. After all, we don’t have the forces to really do much damage to their footholds.”
“And this is a good plan . . . how?” the kneeling captain asked.
“Because once the Shard take the bait, we launch the planet killers. We have them head straight for the Shard hub world. We’ll be giving them the answer they are looking for, and they’ll completely ignore our jump to Reloas.”
“They’ll think the jump to Reloas and all the other worlds was to divert attention from the planet killers,” Shen said, trying to wrap his mind around it. “While, in reality, the planet killers are really diverting attention from Reloas?”
“It’s so confusing I barely understand it,” Alden said with a grin.
“If that’s the case, the Shard will fall for it completely,” Shen said with a smile. “I doubt they’d ever expect us to do something so devious it would confuse you.”
“Do we have enough ships for this plan to work?” Catala asked.
“I’ve gone through the numbers and I believe so,” Brent said confidently. “I’ve got a rough outline all ready, and with a little assistance from all of you, we should be ready before the day is up.”
“This could really work, couldn’t it?” the kneeling captain asked hopefully.
“It will work,” Alden said as if it was fact.
“Explain it to me one more time,” Doug pleaded.
“Give it a rest, Dougie,” Marie said with a sigh. “Ronald has already explained it to you seventeen times! If you haven’t gotten it by now, you’ll never get it.”
“I just want to know why we are waiting one jump away from Reloas. Shouldn’t we just get this over with?”
“We are waiting because the other ships aren’t in position yet,” Brent said with a smile as he entered the crew quarters.
“Brent!” Liz shouted as she ran over and hugged him.
“It’s good to see you, too.” He smiled and wrapped his one arm around her.
“I thought you were going to go with Catala, sir,” Dante said.
“That’s the only redeeming value of being the mastermind behind this plot. I get to say who goes where.”
“Do you think they’ll fall for the same trick twice?” Tyra asked.
“If the ITU couldn’t spot Alden’s fleet waiting here the last time, there is no reason for the Shards to spot us now.
“So when do we jump in?” Doug asked.
“Thanks to Catala, we have the access codes to the ITU refueling depots, so the fleet is moving faster than I expected. Everyone should be in place not too long from now.
“Is that why you finally decided to join us?” Cain asked with a grin. “Don’t tell me you’ve been hiding from us since we launched.”
“Not exactly,” Angela said, matching Cain’s grin as she casually strolled in.
“I’ve wondered where you ran off to.”
“Did you miss me?” Angela asked with a wink.
“What have you two been up to?” Dante asked Angela.
“As odd as it might sound, Weaver lessons,” she said with a shrug. “Brent’s finally getting a handle on his abilities and asked me to give him a hand working out the details.”
“So?” Mahoney asked expectantly.
“So what?” Angela asked, not understanding.
“How did it go?” Marie nudged Brent. “What amazing feats can he do?”
“I’m not really that good of a teacher,” she said, clearly embarrassed.
“Nonsense, I appreciate your hard work,” Brent said. “I’m not sure amazing feats is the right word for it, but I don’t tire myself out so quickly anymore. Plus, I’ve gotten pretty good at sensing the subtle nuances of emotions. Don’t worry, Ronald. We’ll make it in time.”
“Ten days of solid travel by the fleet to get to this point. Another fifteen to get to the Shard staging ground and who knows how long to reach their main world. The Commonwealth only has another fifty days at best . . .” Ronald paused a moment. “How did you know I was worried about time?”
The other troopers chuckled at Brent’s display.
“That is impressive,” Tyra said. “But Ronald has a point. Isn’t this cutting things close?”
Brent held his response until after the Wall cleared the room.
“Too late for second guessing now; we’re underway,” he said, shrugging.
Cain pulled out his pad and sighed.
“I hate Navy ships; they are so tight lipped with information. Now, if this were a CI ship I’d know exactly how long until we had the data we’re after.”
“You can’t always know everything Cain,” Rhea said with a smirk. “Even Alden gets surprised from time to time.”
“Speaking of surprises,” Doug said with a mischievous laugh. “I wish I could be there to see the looks on their faces when they realize they’ve been tricked.”
“Do Shards even have faces?” Humphrey mumbled his question.
The troopers all looked at Brent for the answer.
“Not really,” he said thinking it through, “but then again, I didn’t know they had Shards that could pass as a human either.”
“Sounds like the Shards might have picked up a new trick or two over the last thousand years,” Penny said thoughtfully. “I wonder what it was like to live during the Great War.”
“I, for one, don’t want to know,” Tyra said with a shiver. “Fighting for your life everyday. Never knowing which day would be your last. Living in fear. I’ll pass.”
“And that’s different from our current situation . . . how?” Kindra asked with a grin.
As the squad chuckled, Brent pulled out his pad.
“What is it sir?” Dante asked.
“Just checking . . . they’ve taken the bait!”
“Seriously?” Doug asked.
“The Shard defense fleets have broken up into small groups and are headed to aid their footholds.”
“How long until the planet killers launch?” Sanderson asked.
“As soon as the defense ships exhaust their reserve energy, the planet killers will head out. Without those reserves, the Citadels will have to rely on their internal generators for each jump. In other words, the progress they are going to make over the next thirty minutes will take them six or so hours to undo.”
“I bet they are going to soil themselves when they spot the planet killers . . . if they can, that is,” Doug corrected himself before Humphrey could.
“There’s one thing I don’t get,” Erin said.
“Only one?” Angela asked with a smile.
“Okay, there are a lot of things, but one big one. If the planet killers are heading to the Shard hub world, how exactly do we plan to take down the main Shard world when we find it?”
The troopers looked at one another. Apparently, not one of them had thought of that before. As one, they all locked their gazes on Brent.
“I never planned on using the planet killers against the command world of the Shard,” he said nonchalantly.
“Why not?” Cain asked in surprise.
“I don’t think you understand exactly how much the Shard fear the planet killers,” he said, trying to keep his own fear in check. “When the planet killers launch for the hub world, everything else will become background noise to the Shard. We could tap dance on their most sensitive scanning array and they wouldn’t notice.”
“With all that attention, it would be a mistake to use them to attack the Shard homeworld,” Dante said, nodding in agreement. “They’d realize in an instant our true intention and try to stop us.”
/> “So, as long as the planet killers stay far away from our true objective, we can move freely,” Ronald said with an approving nod. “We have complete freedom of movement and action while they move closer to the hub world.”
“Exactly,” Brent said.
Reassured in the plan, the troopers relaxed a bit. Checking over his pad, he watched as the Citadels moved farther and farther from the hub world. The recovery teams had the jump data long before the Citadels exhausted their reserve energy stores.
“Well, if anyone had any doubts, we’ve just confirmed the Shards were calling for another ship,” he said, waving his pad.
“We’ve got the jump data?” Mr. Springate asked.
“Yep. As we figured, the jump path originated deep behind the Great Divide.”
“The Great Divide?” Doug asked.
“Did you sleep through every single lecture back at the academy?” Marie asked, clearly frustrated.
“During the Great War, the Commonwealth and the Shard reached a kind of equilibrium point,” Dante quickly explained to Doug before Marie could hit him. “It would shift back and forth somewhat but remained in the same relative space for most of the war. We call that massive expanse of space the Great Divide.”
Doug blinked at him not understanding.
“Think of it as an imaginary line that divided the galaxy between the Commonwealth and the Shard forces,” Humphrey mumbled with a grin.
“Why didn’t you just say that in the first place?” Doug asked Dante.
Dante groaned as Cain chuckled.
“How much longer until we can head out?” Ronald asked. “Now that we know where to go.”
“Another fifteen, twenty minutes,” Brent said, checking his pad.
“This waiting around is killing me!” Doug said.
“Could be worse,” Kindra grumbled. “The Citadels have had time to make a couple of jumps by now. They’ve probably run into a few of our friends by now.”
“Really?” Penny asked, horrified. “Will they be okay?”
“Don’t worry,” Brent said reassuringly. “They have standing orders to keep their distance from the Citadels. They are doing little more than playing a game of tag right now.”
“They are going to know something is up,” Doug said as he shook his head. “Why stick around and play tag when they should be running away?
“That’s the whole point,” Tyra said with a sigh. “We want them looking for something. When the planet killers launch, they will think that is what we were hiding.”
“Oh! I get it,” Doug said with a content smirk.
“Only took eighteen times to get it through that thick skull of yours,” Marie said with a chuckle.
Brent watched the information readouts intently as the minutes passed. Finally, the deadline passed, and the swift progress of the Citadels ground to a halt.
“Showtime,” Mahoney said with a wide grin as he watched over Brent’s shoulder.
The other troopers gathered around him and his pad. Brent handed the pad to Cain, who quickly rigged it up to a large monitor.
“I didn’t know you knew how to do that,” Marie said, slapping him on the back.
“You’re not the only one who’s taken some support training,” Cain said, rubbing his back.
The monitor showed the information from the pad large enough for the entire squad to make out what was happening. Six new icons flashed on the screen as the planet killers launched. After a single jump of the planet killers, their effect was obvious. Every Citadel stopped dead in its tracks and reversed course. Energy readings from the Citadels spiked as they put everything they had into fueling the jump drives. Each and every Citadel not entrenched on a planet headed directly to the Shard hub world. Even a few of the nearby entrenched powered up to pursue. As the Wall passed through the section of the ship, the other human ships moved around randomly on the monitor.
“Why aren’t they all heading back to Eos?” Penny asked.
“So they won’t notice the fact that we aren’t headed to Eos,” Brent said watching intently. “The Shard are distracted, but I don’t want to tempt fate. The other ships are vectoring away from the Commonwealth planets along random jump paths. The fact we are headed to the Great Divide should get lost in the noise.”
After a few more jumps, Brent let out a sigh of relief. Not one of the Citadels changed course. They hadn’t noticed his group of ships. The planet killers were the first, last, and only concern of the entire metallic race. Taking his sigh as a good sign, Cain broke the silence.
“Fifteen days from now we’ll be the first people to enter Shard space in centuries.”
“Really?” Tyra asked, taking a relaxed position. “I’d think there would be a lot of interest in the remains of their empire.”
“At first there was, but it waned pretty quickly. When the Shard homeworld was vaporized, it took almost everything of value with it,” Cain said with a shrug. “Combat units self-destructed, information terminals overloaded, resource gathering facilities malfunctioned. It was assumed from the pattern of destruction that their homeworld housed some kind of central control unit that commanded and maintained the rest. Without it, they all were lost.”
“Wait, what about that moon over Eos?” Dante asked. “It didn’t look in all that bad a shape.”
“Don’t bother asking me,” Cain said. “I found out about it at the same time you did. Everything I know about it, you know.”
“Did Alden tell you much about it, sir?” Dante asked.
“He did say the moon was heavily damaged when they found it,” Brent said, watching the monitor. “They had to do some extensive repair work to gain access to the database. The first few generations spent their lives just trying to get it to work again.”
“That would explain the nebula,” Ronald said. “If it was damaged, it might have been attempting to comply with its original orders.”
“But with its damaged systems,” Sanderson added, “instead of a nebula that spanned an Commonwealth, it got a cloud large enough to cover a single system.”
“I wonder . . .” Doug’s voice trailed off as he thought to himself.
“This should be good,” Marie said with a chuckle. “Tell us, oh wise one, what do you wonder?”
“Do Shards have sexes?”
“That’s actually a good question,” Sanderson said, pondering. “Rita turned out to be a Shard and she was female, but was the Shard itself female or not.”
“It’s a moot point,” Brent said. “They build replacements at factories; they have no need for reproduction as we know it. Gender would be pointless. What I wonder about is if that Shard was organic.”
“Sir?” Dante asked.
“Everything I know about the Shards is based on the fact they are machines ruled by a central mind. If they have learned somehow to create organic Shards, they might have also developed a new way to rule themselves.”
“Wait, are you telling me there may not be a central control world for us to blow up?” Tyra asked.
“It’s a possibility,” he admitted, “but not a strong one.”
“How can you be sure?” Cain asked, concerned.
“The way the Citadels move is too perfect. They move as one, like the extension of a centralized will. If each piece thought for itself, there would be lag times, irregularities. Imagine if every cell in your arm had to consciously decide for itself to obey every order your brain set to it. Some muscles would fire quickly, others slowly. Fluid motion would be impossible on the level those Citadels operate at.”
“Alden was right to put this responsibly in your hands,” Ronald said.
“Hand,” Brent said with a grin as he wiggled the fingers on his left hand.
“Let’s just hope you don’t have butterfingers,” Cain said, bursting into laughter.
He smiled at the joke to the relief of the others. He continued to watch over the Citadel fleet like a hawk. As time passed, the others grew tired of the monitor and found other s
ources of entertainment. While the others trained and watched 3Ps, he studied the Galaxy like a gigantic chessboard. The Shard had fallen for the trick completely. In their mad dash, several Citadels had been destroyed in the attempt. The residual energy reading hinted they had pushed their reactors too far. However, the Citadels had reached the hub world barely before the planet killers. Brent found that was a relief to him. The idea of using that terrible weapon, even on a Shard world, sickened him. He knew the Shard were slowly annihilating his species, but the terrible nightmare of the massive maws shook him to his core.
As ordered, the planet killers had turned tail and retreated to Eos along with the rest of the fleet. Brent’s task force of ships had penetrated the Great Divide and was safe from detection, for now. The navigation array of the Commonwealth didn’t extend over the Great Divide because there was no need for it. The real threat was whatever sensor array the Shards used in their own territory. For all Brent knew, they could have already spotted his small fleet.
Day in and day out, he went over the reports Alden sent him while double-checking the long-range scans of the ship. The Shards returned to their business of eradicating the human race, while Brent’s ship moved, apparently unnoticed. The diversion had given humanity an unexpected bonus. The Shards intensified their patrols near their hub world, diverting forces away from the human worlds. The Commonwealth was still hanging by a thread, but the Shards were holding back now. They knew the planet killers were out there, lurking.
After every jump, Brent anxiously reviewed the long range scans, expecting to find an enemy fleet waiting for him, but every time he was greeted by nothing. Finally setting down for the final night, he tried to sleep despite the anticipation. He was rudely awakened in the morning by the blaring klaxon alarms of the ship. Leaping out of bed, he and the rest of the squad quickly prepared for battle. Thankfully, the ship wasn’t as massive as the Harbinger had been, so reaching the bridge hadn’t taken too long.
“What’s going on?” Brent asked the bridge crew.
“Could we please turn off that racket?” Cain complained. “Something is wrong; we got it. Can we save our eardrums?”
“We are jumping to the indicated jump coordinates now,” the captain said anxiously. “All crewmembers are assembling in battle stations. Glad you are here to see for yourself – whatever is out there.”
The Ninth: Invasion Page 40