“Won’t our pursuer find it suspicious?” someone asked.
Mark shrugged. “Who cares? It presents him with a tragedy that has a mundane explanation rather than a mystery to be investigated further.
“Besides, the destruction of the stargate will trap the Avenger here in the Etnarii System for God knows how long. Its captain won’t be able to report anything until someone notices that the Etnarii gate is down.”
“They’ll have their sensors focused on us,” the Exec said. “Once they analyze the recordings, they will see that we disappeared an instant before the explosion.”
“Then we obscure their view. Just as we enter the gate, we power up our jump generators. Their instruments will register that fact. Just as we reach critical power, we vent atmosphere and anything else we can think of to produce an opaque cloud. We momentarily cut off his view, then transition to superlight.”
“Can we go superlight this close to the star?”
“This close? No,” Mark responded. “But out where the gate is, we’re beyond the local critical limit.”
The captain thought about it for a moment, then nodded, “I like it. If we take out the gate, news of our presence doesn’t get out for weeks or even months.”
It took another two hours to flesh out Mark’s idea. When they were through, they had a plan.
#
“The freighter is decelerating, Master.”
“How long until they reach the gate?”
“One rotation.”
“We will begin our own deceleration on schedule, Sailing Master.”
“We could catch them if we continue accelerating,” Saton reminded him.
“And fly past so fast that we would have a single opportunity for a shot? No, our mission is to capture these thieves and deliver them to the Council.”
“We might disable them before they reach the gate.”
“And we could as easily vaporize them with a misplaced bolt. No, we will capture them as intact as we can manage. If they beat us to Gasak, it will save us the trouble of transporting them there. We will hold to our flight plan.”
“Command acknowledged, Master.”
Pas-Tek watched passively as the weight on his chest continued at five-twelfths above what he was used to. The acceleration made it difficult to breathe, but was not yet debilitating.
The range fell more quickly now that their quarry was slowing its headlong flight for the gate. However, the gods of speed and distance were against them. The freighter would reach the gate before they closed to weapons range.
Let them think they have escaped, Pas-Tek thought with grim humor. They would soon discover their respite a brief one. Blood Oath would materialize in the Gasak gate before the Trojan ship could flee.
“Engineer!”
“Yes, Master.”
“How are my jump engines?”
“The engines are calibrated and ready for use, Master.”
“Very good. My compliments to your crew.”
“I will tell them, Master.”
#
“How are we doing, Astrogator?” Captain Harris asked 26 hours after turnover.
“Fifteen minutes, Captain,” Mark replied, watching his displays carefully.
“And the Avenger?”
“Closing fast, sir. Even so, he’s going to be late to the party.”
“Thank God! Propulsion!”
“Yes, sir,” the Chief Engineer responded from deep in the bowels of the ship.
“Everything ready on your end?”
“Ready, sir. I’m afraid there is going to be a jolt. Luckily, it will come and go so quickly that we probably won’t be affected much. Still, I would have everyone strap down, just in case.”
“Communicator, make the announcement.”
“ALL HANDS. SECURE YOURSELVES FOR TRANSITION TO SUPERLIGHT! WARNING, IT MAY BE ROUGH. FOURTEEN MINUTES, AND COUNTING!”
Mark tightened his acceleration harness and keyed his communicator for the Alien Technology Section. Within seconds, Lisa’s worried features were on one of his auxiliary screens.
“All secure there?”
“Secure.”
“How are you holding up?”
“I’m okay.”
“It won’t be long now.”
“I hope not,” she said with a wan smile.
“I love you.”
An indefinable emotion flashed across her features. Then she replied, “I love you, too.”
“See you after we jump.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
With that, he cut the connection and concentrated on his screens.
Ten minutes later, as the wedding-band shape of the stargate filled the main viewscreen, and continued to get larger by the second, Captain Harris ordered, “Astrogator. Activate the stargate jump generators. Bring them up slowly. Give him a good chance to see our field building.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Engineering. Prepare to vent plasma!”
Mark switched on the generators that, when in the embrace of a stargate’s matching field, would send them to a distant system. He watched as the generator power bars grew apace, flashing from red to yellow to green.
“Generators online, Captain.”
The next step involved considerable cross-talk between the ship’s ersatz Broan computer and that of the stargate. The synchronization process took several seconds, and would end with a green READY TO JUMP message on Mark’s screen.
Instead of the expected message, however, he found himself looking at a red, flashing HOLD warning.
“Captain, we aren’t synchronizing. The gate just rejected our request to jump.”
“What’s the matter?” Harris demanded. “Something wrong with the gate?”
“Doesn’t appear to be,” Mark said, scanning his instruments.
“We need to look like we are about to jump, Astrogator,” Harris said quietly. “And we need to look like it now!”
“Working on it, Captain,” Mark replied as he resent the jump commands to the gate. Once again, he received a HOLD warning in response.
“Combat Systems! Where is that Avenger?”
“Coming on fast, Captain,” Spacer Rodriguez, the offensive weapons systems tech, reported. “Two minutes to weapons range.”
“Stand by to fire superlight missile on my command.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Damn!”
“Was that an official report, Astrogator?”
“Sorry, sir. I just figured out the problem.”
“Don’t keep us in suspense.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the gate, Captain. It is working perfectly.”
“Then why can’t we synchronize?”
“Because there is another ship coming through from the other side. What we are seeing is an anti-collision lockout!”
#
“Master. The gate has been activated from Gasak!”
“Say again, Sailing Master.”
“There is a ship in the gate in the Gasak System, readying to jump. The freighter cannot get a lock.”
“Then we have them!”
#
“Combat, where is that Avenger?”
“Just coming into weapons range now, Captain,” Rodriguez reported. “He hasn’t powered weapons yet.”
“Then hold your fire until he does. At the first indication, take him out.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Astrogator, report!”
“The gate is powering up, sir. The jump field is almost at critical! I think…”
Before Mark could tell Harris what he thought, a shudder went through the ship, rattling every storage compartment door on the bridge.
“That was a big one!” someone exclaimed as the clatter caused by the gravity wave died away.
“And so is that!” Vivian Domedan responded, pointing to the viewscreen. Where before there had only been blackness at the center of the stargate, now there lay a massive spherical ship.
; “Bulk hauler,” Rodriguez reported. “Must be here for the annual harvest. She’s starting to move out of the gate.”
“Take us in!” Harris ordered.
New Hope was jolted again, this time by her own normal space engines. When he had been unable to gain a synchronization lock, Mark halted the ship a few kilometers short of their goal. Now that they were once again under power, New Hope responded like a race horse, sliding forward with ever increasing speed. Both the stargate and the newly arrived bulk hauler expanded alarmingly.
The bulk hauler dodged sideways to get out of the way of the suicidal fools rushing straight for them. New Hope slid past within naked-eye range. Entering the circle of the stargate, Mark brought the ship to a halt. They hovered for a dozen seconds while he checked his alignment.
He punched for synchronization. Power bars grew on his screen and flashing Broan script followed the lightning-like conversation between ship and gate. This time, almost to his surprise, the screen flashed READY TO JUMP.
Only when he exhaled loudly did Mark realize that he had been holding his breath. “Ready for jump, Captain,” he reported.
“Engineering! Begin your toxic dump.”
The starfield on the main viewscreen dimmed as glowing incandescent fog enshrouded the ship. Harris let the dump continue for five seconds until they could no longer see the glowing spark that was Etnarii. Hopefully, they were also obscured to the Avenger’s sensors. As soon as the star disappeared, he gave the command.
“Superlight drive generators to power…NOW!”
#
Chapter Thirty Eight
“What’s happening?” Pas-Tek demanded as his ship continued to slow in its headlong rush for the gate. A gravity wave strong enough to be felt without instruments had just passed through his ship, causing the usual clatter.
“A cargo carrier has appeared in the gate, Commander,” his sailing master reported. “It is powering up to vacate the ring. The freighter is starting to move toward it… those fools are likely to collide with the larger ship if they aren’t careful!”
As Pas-Tek watched, the freighter barely missed the big cargo ship and took its place within the stargate while the other craft moved visibly on the screen.
“They are powering generators, Commander,” his sensor operator reported before issuing forth with an oath in his native tongue.
Such a breach of protocol would normally have brought punishment down on the head of the hapless crewman. As it was, Pas-Tek barely noticed. For the scene on the screen held his full attention.
Their hull camera was at full magnification. The small Type Seven freighter could be seen surrounded by the silvery ring of the gate. Suddenly, the outline of the toy ship softened as several plumes of vapor began issuing from vents all over its surface.
The vapor quickly built in thickness until they lost sight of the craft.
Then the universe exploded!
#
At Captain Harris’s command, Mark Rykand tapped the ‘execute’ key. From that moment on, the ship’s computer took over as it stepped through a preprogrammed series of maneuvers.
The first was a crash engagement of the stardrive generators. The jump engines were at full power when several high power switches shunted the coils that would have sent the ship to the Gasak System directly across the coils of the stardrive generator. The result was a short circuit that generated an overload in the stardrive, throwing New Hope out of normal space. To an outside observer, the ship simply disappeared, without producing a gravity wave.
Their superlight voyage was a short one. A mere 2.7 nanoseconds after breaking free of Einstein’s barrier, they dropped back into normal space at the limit of missile range. The computer launched a superlight missile at the stargate and again crashed power to the stardrive. The next leg of the voyage was longer than the first, but still too quick for human senses to perceive.
All the human beings onboard detected was an indefinable sensation, as though someone had taken hold of their insides and twisted. The ship seemed to shudder for an instant. The shaking was accompanied by a sudden drop in illumination that lasted for about as long as it takes to blink. The overhead lights brightened momentarily, then failed completely.
The computer displays were the next to go as their protective circuits took them offline rather than subject them to the power spike. The bridge was plunged into murk. The only source of illumination was the multicolored glow emanating from various emergency status lights.
“Someone get power back!” the captain’s voice ordered from out of the gloom.
Seconds later, the overhead lights illuminated. It took thirty seconds for the displays to return to life.
“Where are we, Astrogator?”
Mark commanded a hull camera to search for Etnarii. When it ceased slewing, a bright star sat at the center of the main viewscreen. At the stargate, Etnarii was shrunken, but still displayed a disk. No longer. The sun was now merely to the brightest of several stars in the field of view.
The computer immediately began searching for Pastol and the other planets. Within a few seconds, it had found three of them, enough to do a reverse parallax calculation.
“We seem to be one light-hour due galactic north of Etnarii, Captain. Right where we want to be.”
“Thank God for that! Weapons, status!”
“I didn’t see it go, sir,” Rodriguez replied, “but we seem to be short one SM from our magazine.”
“Congratulations, Mr. Rykand. Your plan seems to have worked, at least up to the point where we fired a missile at the stargate. Any indication that we hit it?”
“No, sir. Not at this distance.”
“How long before the light from the flash reaches us here?”
“I make if fifty four minutes, Captain.”
“All right. All sensors focus on the gate. In fifty-four minutes, we see if we hit what we were aiming for.”
#
“What was that?” Pas-Tek demanded as every sensor on the side of the ship closest to the gate ceased transmitting.
“The freighter, Master. It exploded!”
“Suicide?” Pas-Tek demanded. Suddenly, all of his visions of future advancement faded, to be replaced by the thought that he would be carrying messages to the hinterlands for the rest of his life. He would forever be known as the ship commander who let his quarry take the easy way out.
“Malfunction, I would think. They were leaking something just before they blew.”
“Sensors!”
“Yes, Master.”
“Get me a view of the gate.”
“I cannot, Master. All of the aft cameras are burned out and we can’t rotate the ship while we are decelerating.”
“Stand by,” Saton answered. “We will be through with engines in a few heartbeats.”
Almost before the sailing master’s sentence was complete, the weight lifted from Pas-Tek’s chest and he rebounded into the restraining straps. He wasted no time feeling relieved.
“Sensors. Rotate the ship. Get me a working camera!”
“Acknowledged, Master.”
There followed several disquieting sensations as the ship spun about its axis until the bow once again faced forward. The main viewscreen lit. Of the freighter and the stargate, there was no sign.
An expanding fireball occupied space where the gate had been. The incandescent cloud was already large enough to overflow the edges of the viewscreen. At Pas-Tek’s command, the sensor operator reduced the magnification until they could see the whole cloud. It roiled with turbulence, a beautiful white, translucent flower against the blackness of space. The size of the flower could be judged by the size of the small, off-center black dot
“Focus on the cargo vessel!” Pas-Tek ordered.
The view expanded once more until the large sphere was centered in the viewscreen. Even from this distance, the cargo vessel appeared misshapen, almost molten.
As he gazed at the horrific sight on screen, the implications slowly seepe
d into his consciousness. Not only was the Type Seven freighter destroyed, but so was the gate. At the edge of the cloud, one small sector of the ring could be seen spinning lazily away from the origin of the explosion. The rest of the ring seemed to be missing altogether.
With the stargate destroyed, he and his ship were stranded. There was no way for him to send a message to Those Who Rule to tell them what had happened. Nor were there any other gates in the Etnarii System. Stargate technology was the sole province of the Race. No other species could be trusted with the knowledge.
That meant that the replacement gate would have to be procured from one of his species’ home worlds. It would be delivered to Etnarii via single-ended star jump. After that would come the careful maneuvering into position, followed by a delicate calibration process that could take a demi-cycle or more to complete. Only when the new gate was linked to the one in the Gasak System would his ship be free of this backwater system.
None of these time consuming positioning and calibration steps could take place until someone in Gasak noticed that the link between that system and Etnarii was down. Considering the amount of ship traffic that normally plied the route, he had no idea how long it would be before Those Who Rule realized his dilemma.
Until they did, he was trapped.
#
“You may begin your countdown, Mr. Rykand.”
“One minute to go, sir.… Fifty seconds.…”
The bridge crew of New Hope had just spent the longest hour of their lives hovering at the edge of the system, waiting to see whether or not they had fooled their enemy.
The Avenger had nearly caught them. At the time of their departure, the Broan ship had been close enough to record the whole event in excruciating detail. Broan scientists would study that recording in future months and how they viewed it was important.
The impression that everyone hoped the recording would leave was that New Hope had exploded while attempting to jump. That perception would present the Broa with a minor mystery, but one that was reassuringly mundane.
However, that whole scenario depended on them hitting the gate with a superlight missile. They had just taken the fastest snap shot in history, in the midst of wild transients in New Hope’s entire electrical system. If the missile malfunctioned, or just plain missed, the Avenger would have full recordings of a ship that disappeared through a stargate without producing a gravity wave.
Gibraltar Sun Page 29