by David Smith
Dave left the suite without another word, chastened, and very, very worried.
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Dave hated to do it, but he spoke to Tiger’s other officer’s to try and gauge how seriously he needed to take Long’s vision.
Most were horrified by her prediction and seemed to immediately assume that she was right. Even the ultra-pragmatic Commander Romanov didn’t question the vision, only how Dave intended to react to it.
It was her explanation that convinced Dave to consider Long’s prediction as a matter of fact.
‘I’ve had experience of Long’s predictions before. She came to me one day and said that Cassini’s speed run would be a disaster and Tiger would be crippled. At the time I was personally in charge of the engines and power systems and ignored her as I couldn’t see how things could possibly go wrong. I didn’t realise that Cassini was shaving the hull down and screwing around with the structural integrity systems, and I was caught cold when the idiot buggered up every power relay on the ship as a result.’
She winced at the memory. ‘I didn’t learn my lesson though. When Long came to me again a few days later, she told me Andy Carstairs was about to do something stupid which would result in us having to eat haggis and that I should arrest him immediately. I mean, how ridiculous does that sound? I ignored her as Carstairs is always dicking around, but two days later the moron stuffed up the replicator system and inflicted a years worth of haggis on us.’
Romanov scratched her head. ‘There are some things you have to believe. I believe in good engineering, I believe toast always lands butter side down, and I believe I’m still sober if I can lie on the floor without having to hold on. But if Cassie Long says that a huge Imperial fleet is going to be destroyed here by some mysterious explosion, I believe I’m going to need a very, very large vodka.’
Once he’d come to terms with Long’s revelation, Dave girded his loins to deal with what he could.
The first order of business was to evacuate the Sha T’Al, and with Cassie Long’s warning resonating in the back of his mind, he couldn’t get this done soon enough.
Elders Jalai and Cannassi had made good progress in provisioning the Imperial transport vessels in the essentials they’d need to found a colony. Dalan and Paurin were visiting friends and colleagues and trying to persuade them to leave too, even though the Councillors were set on staying themselves.
Dave requested a meeting with the Council to discuss the evacuation, but was told to speak directly to Jalai, who seemed to have been nominated as their spokes-person in that respect.
He found him in one of the small regional council offices, checking numbers and trying to agree what allowance could be made for personal effects for each evacuee.
‘I’m sorry to have to disturb you Elder Jalai, but I have some worrying news.’
‘Welcome Commander Hollins. I am at your disposal’ replied the Sha T’Al graciously.
Dave paused, unsure how the Sha T’Al would react to suggestions arrived at via extraordinary mental abilities. ‘I won’t bore you with details, but we have reason to believe that the Terran Empire is dispatching a large fleet to attack us.’
Jalai took a deep breath, but looked unworried. ‘We have always assumed that would be the case. Are you suggesting that their arrival is imminent?’
Dave decided that trust was precious. ‘I won’t lie to you. I don’t have any hard intelligence, but several circumstantial events lead us to believe that the Terran Third Fleet has been reinforced and will be heading for Todot Hahn. I don’t know distances or dates, but I’d like to speed up the evacuation as much as possible.’
Elder Jalai remained calm as always. ‘We have around seventy-thousand citizens to evacuate. Whilst I appreciate your candour, please remember that we are not a people prone to hasty reactions. Once we have settled who is staying we will allocate berths aboard the vessels with the utmost diligence, but it will take as long as it takes.’
The Elder paused as if slightly uncomfortable. ‘I would also remind you that we have not as yet agreed a destination.’
‘My team will provide you with details of suitable destinations, but we hope you will be patient as none of the systems is familiar to us. We are dispatching probes to survey a variety of star-systems as we speak.’ Dave hesitated ‘I am sure you’re doing everything you can, but I can’t stress how important it is to get away from here. If we need to make a decision on where to go after we leave, so be it. But we must go as soon as possible.’
Elder Jalai regarded him carefully. Even through different physiology, culture and language he could judge Dave’s sense of urgency. ‘Very well. You have my word that I will do what I can to accelerate the evacuation.’
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Returning to Tiger, Dave headed back to the Bridge to find Yeoman Turner waiting by the Captain’s chair. Dave had something of a soft spot for Tiffany Turner. She was a slim attractive women, with a warm smile, neat black hair and stunning blue eyes. As a person, she was sweet, unassuming, patient and incredibly loyal.
Perhaps that was why, at forty-seven years of age, she was the oldest Yeoman in fleet history. She’d been a Yeoman for twenty-six tears and had never even tried to rise above the rank of Petty Officer. Of those years, eleven had been spent under Captain LaCroix, Turner being the only member of LaCroix’ previous crew to transfer with him to USS Tiger.
Her nickname ‘Ten-gallon Turner’ was a cheeky reference to a calculation someone had once made concerning the amount of the Captains body fluids she’d have swallowed in his service, and even though she knew this, she took no offence to the epithet.
‘Hello Turner, been waiting long?’ asked Dave nonchalantly.
‘Only a day or so, sir’ she replied cheerfully as she handed Dave a pad.
Dave knew better than to ask if she was joking and thumb-printed the screen to open the Captain’s orders.
‘Where’s Viera?’
‘Ps. Stop launching torpedoes. It’s putting me off my stroke.’
‘Pps. You have the Bridge.’
Sighing, Dave attached a weeks’ worth of status reports, an assessment that A&A Dept had made of the Terran Empire, the transfer note the Captain had authorised to place Viera in the Supply Department and a transcript of his discussions with the Sha T’al. Just for the hell of it he added a couple of hard-core porn movies and said to Turner ‘Tell the skipper Viera went mad so we shot her and Crash and I have using her body as a surf-board.’
‘Of course, First Officer’ replied Turner with a smile, and headed to the turbolift. Her skirt was tucked in the back of her knickers, which seemed to be made of bright red latex, but Dave couldn’t work up the will-power to tell her.
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Dave kept a weather eye on the progress of the evacuation, but wasn’t happy until the first of the Sha T’Al boarded a transport vessel. He watched nervously as the numbers slowly increased, and at the same time nervously asked for reports of any activity from Tiger’s long range scanners.
The wait was agonizing and as his nervousness increased, he even took the precaution of sending Falcon out along the likely path of any incoming Imperial Fleet.
However, when the bad news finally arrived, it wasn’t what Dave had been expecting.
Dave was down in the Chart Room when Janus called him from the Bridge. Dave answered, expecting the worst. ‘Hollins here. Do we have sight of the Third Fleet?’
‘No sir. ISS Tiger has come back.’
Chapter 16
Dave was on the Bridge seconds later and threw himself into the Captain’s Chair. ‘Any comms?’
‘Nuthin yet, sir’ said Shearer.
ASBeau popped up a tactical display on the main view-screen, which showed two red dots on a heading to intercept the gaggle of green dots that represented the Imperial Assault Transports that the Sha T’Al were busily loading up. To the rear of the green dots, Rhino was shown as a large unattended grey dot amongst the smaller gr
ey dots of the abandoned Sha T’Al vessels.
‘Two in-bound Terran Empire vessels, sir. ISS Tiger and ISS Goldberg, the scout we lost track of a while back’ advised ASBeau.
Crap thought Dave. The unarmed transport vessels were sitting ducks. If the two ships attacked there would be hundreds . . . maybe thousands of casualties. They needed to act fast, and act decisively.
‘Dolplop plot a course for a defensive orbit, get us between the Imperial ships and the transports. Crash, make it happen. ASBeau, get a tactical team over to Rhino, you don’t need to move her, just get her shields, lasers and torpedoes on-line ready to make life interesting for them if they get too close to the transports.’
ASBeau was out of the chair before Dave had finished speaking, understanding the urgency of his task. As he left the Bridge, Chief Aline DuBois arrived to take his station and reported ‘Shields on line, phasers and torpedoes ready sir.’
Dave watched nervously as Tiger dropped from high orbit down into the same orbit as the transports to place herself between them and the incoming Imperial vessels.
As she did so, it became apparent that she’d be in position before the Imperial vessels got within weapons range of the transports, and they adjusted their strategy, splitting up. The bigger red dot, ISS Tiger, began accelerating while ISS Goldberg decelerated hard, dropping her into low orbit, but on the opposite side of Todot Hahn and out of reach of Rhino, but also preventing her from attacking the transports.
Dave saw that the Transporter beam had been activated. Knowing that this would be ASBeau taking a team over to Rhino, he was confident enough that he could chase after the other Tiger and possibly disable her and remove that threat to the Sha T’Al completely.
‘Crash, change course, get after ISS Tiger, maximum delta.’
Dave felt the slight surge as the ship altered course sharply and accelerated hard. Under reaction drive, they were probably a little slower than the Imperial version of Tiger as she had an eighteen-thousand tonne mass advantage. However, that advantage was bought at the cost of a dangerously weak hull structure; if they could get close enough, any phaser or torpedo hit would almost certainly disable her.
On the tactical display there was a pregnant pause before the other Tiger saw the danger and reacted, accelerating herself, but oddly not as quickly as Dave had thought she might. The gap closed slowly and Dave watched anxiously as they got ever closer to weapons range.
He barely registered a shout from Chief Benoit, who was manning one of the science consoles, reporting that ISS Goldberg had transported a party down to the surface.
The resolution of the screen reduced as the two versions of Tiger built up velocity, carrying them further and further away from the planet, where the gaggle of green, grey and purple dots sat on the opposite side of the planet to the red dot of ISS Goldberg.
‘In range, Commander’ announced Chief Dubois.
‘Fire when ready, Chief’ Dave replied. They were at extreme range, but there was no reason not to try their luck.
There was a faint shuddering as the forward and starboard phaser banks opened fire. DuBois split the screen and a forward camera view showed orange bolts of energy lancing away from the ship. The camera zoomed in on the target vessel, but the phasers bolts all missed by significant distances. Chief DuBois, corrected some settings and tried again, without much more success.
Something was nagging at the back of Dave’s mind.
If he was in command of the other Tiger, he’d never have risked letting them get this close. They could surely escape if they needed to, but instead they lingered, a tempting target for Tiger’s gunners.
A lure.
A distraction.
A diversion.
Cursing himself, Dave shouted ‘Crash, all stop!! Hard about!’
Every eye on the Bridge swivelled towards him in astonishment: they were so close to catching the other ship!
Dave was in command and didn’t need to explain his orders, but he wanted them focused on the change of plan.
‘We’ve been had! Tiger is a diversion. She’s deliberately staying in range to keep us from tackling the Goldberg. We have to get back and find out what she’s up to!’
Crash swung Tiger onto a new heading calculated by Dolplop and accelerated hard.
Dave was frantically trying to figure out what the Goldberg was up to. He contacted the Rhino, hoping they might be able to see what was going on. ‘ASBeau, the transports they made: are they trying to free the marines on the surface?’
There was a pause as ASBeau checked his tactical data before replying ‘No sir, they’re on the wrong side of the planet.’
‘What about some kind of bio-weapon? Did they drop something in the atmosphere?’
ASBeau cross-referenced his data with data from the Science Station. ‘No sir, it looks like they beamed six people down, then some cargo of some sort then more people. They’re still beaming people down now.’
What were they up to? ‘Crash, time to intercept?’
‘Eight minutes fifty at maximum delta, sir’
They’d barely made any headway when Lieutenant Shearer spoke.
‘Incumen cawl from tha surface, sir!’
Dave instantly knew that he’d failed. He’d reacted too slowly and played into their hands. ‘On screen, please.’
‘Well, fancy seeing you here!’ smirked Magistrate Isobelle Grosvenor. She was dressed in a very, very tight black leather catsuit, that covered every part of her body apart from her face, but it hid very little. She posed for the camera, simpering as she expansively waved behind herself to a peculiar column-like device, around which a small group of technicians we fussing.
‘This,’ she smiled ‘is a very new and interesting device that Lieutenant-Commander O’Mara has invented.’
The camera panned in on the device which was a complex looking array of coils and tubes with a computer interface installed on one side. It glowed and audibly hummed, throbbing before their eyes. Mist-like gases rolled down its sides, covering the ground ankle deep and a disconcerting countdown clock on the side showed thirty-two minutes.
The Magistrate continued with her communication. ‘O’Mara describes this as a sub-elementary particle fission device.’
Dave’s mouth went dry. Such weapons had long been theorized, but all research into such matters was banned, as their potential was terrifying.
The camera panned back to the very serene looking Magistrate. ‘I won’t pretend to understand the science of it all. I don’t need to. All I need to know is that when the countdown gets to zero, the device will actually split the quarks and leptons of a small mass of hydrogen gas, resulting in a phenomenal release of energy.’
She giggled. ‘Even O’Mara isn’t sure how much energy will be released, but she assures me this will produce the biggest bang since the start of the universe, certainly enough to completely destroy this entire planet and devastate everything within this solar system. Exciting isn’t it!! Unfortunately the explosion will kill all the Sha T’Al on the planet and those in orbit too, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make’ she said with a very (well faked) solemn face.
Dave knew he’d been out-thought. ‘What do you want?’
The Magistrate’s face suddenly lost its smile, and her icy-cold stare was focused sharply on Dave. ‘Power down your weapons and shields. Bring your ship into orbit ten clicks astern of Goldberg. You, both Mengeles, your Tactical Officer, Science Officer and the Captain are to transport over to ISS Tiger which will take station ten klicks behind you. ISS Tiger will transport a small team over to guard the ship, and also check that we can account for all three-hundred and eighty-nine of your crew. I wouldn’t want to leave five of them hanging around at a loose end like we did last time we met. Any change to this plan and I detonate the device and we’ll find out just how big a bang this thing can make.’
She killed the comm-link and Dave slumped back in his seat. They were screwed. All he could do was try to limit the d
amage. He pressed a button on the arm of the chair. ‘Lieutenant-Commander O’Mara, Commander Romanov, meet me on the Main Engineering Deck immediately.’
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Dave stormed into Engineering and headed immediately to the PILOCC, collecting O’Mara and Romanov as he went. ‘We don’t have much time. We have to disable the drive system or the consequences could be devastating for this entire galaxy.’
O’Mara and Romanov nodded as they tried to keep up. PO Park and Lieutenant Sato were already at the PILOCC’s console loading up programmes.
Without preamble Dave got to the point. ‘Park I need to lock all engine functionality within Susan’s fake interface protocol. I don’t care what we have to do to achieve it, but we cannot let the Magistrate find out about the warped-drive.’
PO Park nodded and began frantically altering the command sequences for the ships drive system.
Dave addressed the Computer directly. ‘Susan, do you understand my instruction?’
‘Yes, Commander. You are concerned that use of the hybrid drive system will give an insurmountable tactical advantage to the Terran Empire and enable them to conquer the entire galaxy.’
‘I’m going to give you a command sequence that will unlock your fake interface, you are only to accept this command from myself, Commander Romanov or Lieutenant-Commander O’Mara. I am locking this in with my Command code, Commander David Hollins, First Officer, USS Tiger, authorization code, Tiger Ops Two Delta.’ Dave physically typed in a command phrase and asked Romanov and O’Mara to read it before clearing the screen.
‘Your order is understood. Please note that Captain LaCroix has authority to over-ride this command.’
‘Yes, Susan, I understand. Fortunately, the Captain has no understanding of your fake interface, has almost certainly forgotten his command code, and probably couldn’t find the Engine Room even with a trail of naked Yeomen to mark the way.’