by M. R. Forbes
"That's better. At ease, Major. The rest of the required participants will be along in a moment."
Gabriel took a seat next to Colonel Choi.
"Did you give Lieutenant Bale the news?"
"Yes, sir. She said she promises she won't let you down."
"I'm not completely sure about that, but I guess we'll see how the stump shakes."
"Sir?"
"She's impulsive, and her moral character is weak. She's either going to clean up her act, or she's going to get herself killed, maybe along with us."
"Isn't that a bit of a risk?" Choi asked.
"Yup. Sometimes it's necessary. She has potential if she can grow up a little. Anyway, that's small potatoes compared to what all else is going on around this neck of the bayou. Vivian here's been filling me in on everything. I'm about as angry as a rattlesnake in an alligator's gullet."
"You look great, though," Gabriel said.
Theodore smiled. "I've been out of action too long. Way too long. Casting off that demon was something else. I spent three days in bed, barely able to move, it all hurt so much. Then I woke up on the fourth day and knew I had to make a decision to live or die. I promised your mother I would live a long time ago, so it wasn't really much of a decision."
"Yes, sir."
Sergeant Diallo entered the room, with Guy Larone behind him.
"Guy. Thanks for coming," Theodore said.
"I don't recall having a choice, General," Guy replied.
"But you didn't bitch too much. I'll take whatever victory I can get."
Guy surprised Gabriel, sitting down next to him. Diallo left the room, and Hafizi entered a moment later with Sarah Larone.
"General," she said, sitting opposite her husband.
"Where's Reza?" Gabriel asked.
"He'll be along shortly," Theodore replied. "I wanted to talk to Guy and Sarah without him first. Sergeant Hafizi, can you wait outside with Diallo, and keep anyone from getting too close."
"Yes, sir," Hafizi said, leaving the room.
Gabriel looked at his father. He knew what his request meant.
Theodore cleared his throat, rolled his chair back, and leaned up on his arms. He looked at Guy, and then at Sarah.
"I already chewed out Mr. Mokri," he said. "Be glad you didn't decide to sit in that chair. He had to go back to his quarters to get a new pair of pants. Thing is, Reza's just a kid. Responsible for his own actions, yes, which is why he got chewed, but still a kid. Mrs. Larone, you should have known better."
Sarah looked down at the table. "Yes, sir. I'm sorry-"
"Sorry?" Theodore said.
Gabriel cringed, knowing it was the wrong thing to say.
"You're sorry?"
"It was a mistake," she said.
"Are you taking powerful narcotics that affect your judgment, Mrs. Larone?" Theodore said.
"What? No, sir."
"Then how the hell do you get away with categorizing putting the integrity of this team and the overall chance of the mission's success as a damned mistake?" Theodore roared, so loudly even Colonel Choi flinched. "That weapon is the key to this war. This entire damned war, Mrs. Larone, but for some reason, you decided that playing house with a man half your age was more important. Somehow, you thought that was some kind of acceptable. Do you even have the smallest understanding of the effects your shortsighted, ill-advised actions have already had on our chances?"
"General, I-"
"It is well within my rights as the commander of this starship to have you tried and convicted of treason, Mrs. Larone. You and Mr. Mokri both. I don't want your damned reasons, and I don't want your damned excuses. It wasn't a mistake. It was stupid. Pure, unfiltered, unadulterated stupid."
Sarah kept her head down, staying silent.
"General," Guy said.
"Hold on a second, Mr. Larone. I'm not quite done."
"General, wait," Guy said again.
Theodore looked at him without speaking.
"I don't want you to yell at her," Guy said. "What's done is done. It won't change her decision, or put things back together."
"Entirely my point," Theodore said.
"It won't help, either. It isn't her fault, General. It's mine."
"Oh? How so?"
"I've spent the last few weeks acting like a child. Pouting at the situation we're in, instead of doing my part. I closed myself off, made myself unavailable." He looked at Sarah. "What else were you going to do?"
"Not be unfaithful," Theodore said. "That's the coward's way out."
"I don't want us to fight, General," Guy said. "What you said is right. The enemy is behind us, and we don't have a way to defend ourselves. That first attack, that was nothing. It was a test."
"My thoughts, exactly. Do you have a theory as to why?"
"Slipspace sickness," Guy said. "Their human clones would have the same response to long slipstream travel as we do if we aren't careful."
"I like the way you're thinking right now, Mr. Larone. If your hypothesis is right, we probably have two, maybe three days to figure out how to either stop their next attack or escape before they can hit us."
"We can't fix the nacelle in three days," Colonel Choi said. "There is no escape."
"Then we need to figure out how to repel them," Theodore said. "I need your heads in the game. All three of you. Together."
Guy's jaw tensed. Gabriel waited for him to rebuff the request. He nodded instead. "This isn't about me, or Reza, or Sarah. I understand that now. I'm sorry, General. I'm sorry, Sarah. I won't cause any more grief. What I want won't matter if we're dead. What any of us want won't matter if we're dead."
"I'm glad you see it my way, Mr. Larone. To be frank, I don't care about your individual personal lives. I do care about this mission and the integrity of it. We need to put our heads down and worry about surviving the Dread, not acting like a bunch of children. Do you think you can do that? Mr. Larone? Mrs. Larone?"
"Yes, sir," Guy said.
"Yes, sir," Sarah said. Her cheeks were wet with her tears.
"Good. Gabriel, go tell Diallo to fetch Mr. Mokri for me."
"Yes, sir."
"Mr. Larone, I want you to show us everything you've got. Let's put our heads together and solve this thing."
THIRTY-EIGHT
Reza entered the meeting room with Sergeant Diallo. Diallo was holding the Dread rifle, while Reza was carrying his tablet, the same one that Gabriel had often seen him absorbed by back on Alpha Settlement. He was staring at it even now, a look of interested curiosity drawn across his face.
"Mr. Mokri," Theodore said loudly.
The scientist shuddered slightly at the sound of the General's voice, looking up from the screen while his face turned red.
"Uh. Yes. Yes, sir," he said. He surveyed the room, his eyes purposely passing over Sarah Larone faster than the others.
Gabriel watched Guy's face. The older man held it tight and expressionless. There was no doubt he was angry at Reza, but he was doing a good job sticking to his promise and keeping his emotions to himself.
"Do you have everything I requested, son?"
"Yes, sir," Reza said, a little more comfortably the second time.
He approached the table, sitting at the end of it away from everyone else. He placed his tablet on the counter, tapping it a few times to switch the display. A three-dimensional image of the Dread plasma rifle appeared suspended in the center of them.
"I think Guy should be the first one to go over this," Reza said. "He's done the most work on the weapon."
"Agreed," Theodore said. "Mr. Larone? You're up."
"Yes, General," Guy said, getting to his feet. "You didn't want to risk damaging the rifle, so we did the highest resolution three-dimensional scan and composition analysis possible with the equipment we have on board. It isn't quite to the level of what we can achieve back home, but as you can see we were able to get a decent visual composite breakdown of the weapon into the system. From this, I was able to lear
n to take the real weapon apart and put it back together in working order."
"Have you?" Colonel Choi asked.
"No, ma'am," Guy replied. "I didn't want to be solely responsible for it, and Reza has better eyes than I do. In any case, I have been working with the model since we began heading for this system." He leaned forward, expertly manipulating the image, breaking it apart into its component parts. "I've identified one hundred percent of the parts used in the manufacture of the weapon, and matched them up with equivalent human technology. While some of the Dread's manufacturing processes and production compounds are more advanced than our own, the basic function of the rifle is in line with our science."
"What does that mean in English, Mr. Larone?" Theodore asked.
"It means that I believe I understand exactly how the weapon works, based on what we've derived from the imaging. Except, clearly I don't understand how it works, because I have no idea how it can penetrate their armor, while our own weapons can't. There's nothing in the composition of the weapon that suggests it has any special properties that we can't replicate."
"So you don't know how it works?" Gabriel asked.
"I know exactly how it works, up to that point. But I have identified all of the components. There is nothing out of the ordinary that I can see."
"There has to be something, Mr. Larone," Theodore said.
"Yes, General. And it is that truth that has me frustrated. I know there must be something different about it, and yet I can't discern that difference."
"It might help to take the weapon apart, sir," Reza said.
"Is that right, Mr. Larone?"
"Yes, General. As I said, I did the best I could with the equipment we have. Seeing the real thing may reveal something I missed."
"Mr. Mokri, do you understand how to deconstruct the weapon?"
"I've been reviewing Guy's scans," Reza said. "I believe so."
"You ought to be certain, son. We only get one shot at this."
Reza bit his lower lip and then nodded. "I can do it, General."
"Good man," Theodore said. "What do you need?"
"My tools from the lab. I can go and get them."
"No. Stay put. Sergeant Diallo, would you mind?"
"Yes, sir," Diallo replied.
"They're on the bench," Reza said. "Just grab all of them."
"Of course, Mr. Mokri," Diallo said. He handed Reza the rifle and headed from the room.
Reza placed the weapon on the table, looking uncomfortable to touch it. "I don't like guns," he said.
"The reason I wanted you to stay was so that we could talk things through a little bit. The fact is, we got a big fat clue as to what all we should be looking for from our encounter with that Dread fortress that's hugging our ass back there."
"Their armor was vulnerable to our weapons," Gabriel said.
"Yes," Guy said. "I have been giving it some thought, as you requested General."
"And?" Theodore asked.
"There is one thing that is different from this encounter with the Dread, and all of our prior encounters with the Dread." He pointed at the schematic of the rifle. "Do you mind if I replace this for a moment?"
"Go on, Mr. Larone."
Guy put his tablet on the table, replacing the image of the gun with one of his own.
"This is a star map of the system we are currently skirting the edge of," he said. "It happens to be right on the corner of a slipspace dead zone, which is where we've been trapped for the last three weeks."
He tapped his pad, and a field of red mist appeared throughout the system beyond the Magellan.
"These are the slipstreams we've detected within the system. There are two dozen of them crisscrossing one another, but as you can see they all reach their terminus at an eerily similar location."
"Any idea why?" Gabriel asked.
"No. We don't understand what causes slipstreams to end, or slipspace to have what seem to be holes throughout. It could be caused by dimensional tears, but to be honest, we don't have the technology to make more than a random guess. What we do know is that slipspace is a dimension that runs parallel to our own, and it is filled with ripples in spacetime. Streams. Riding these streams allow us to travel faster than light by using quantum phasing to cross the boundary between dimensions and take advantage of these distortions."
"Astrophysics one-oh-three," Reza said. Guy almost glared at him but stopped himself short. Reza's face reddened again as he prepared for Theodore to bawl him out again.
"Go on," Theodore said, glaring at Reza.
"Those are the slipstreams," Guy said, pointing at the mist. Then he pointed at the green dot some distance away from it. "That's us."
"We're still in the dead zone," Choi said. "You're suggesting that the Dread armor uses slipspace?"
"I believe it is so, yes."
"You mean it's phased?" Gabriel asked, not quite believing it. "How can something static like metal rest permanently in another dimension?"
"I didn't say it was," Guy replied.
"The Dread armor is coated in phase paint," Reza said. "Yes. It could be. It doesn't have to be phased all the time, only when it detects something is about to strike it. It enters phase, and the threat is avoided."
"No," Theodore said. "Missiles would go right through if that were the case. They don't. They hit the armor, explode, and don't leave a scratch."
"And shooting it still exerts a force on the armor," Gabriel said. "That wouldn't happen if the ions were being phased into slipspace."
"True," Reza said, pausing to think.
"What if the phase were partial?" Sarah said, speaking for the first time.
"What do you mean?" Guy asked.
"Well, instead of trying to stop the entire attack, only part of it is deflected. For instance, a missile strikes the armor and detonates. The force still exists, but enough of it is absorbed into phase that it doesn't cause any damage. It just kind of pushes against the armor."
"An interesting thought," Guy said. "To take it one step further, what if there is another type of phase, or use for the properties of quantum phasing that humans have yet to discover? What if slipspace can be manipulated into realspace, similarly to how we manipulate this dimension into that one."
"You mean pull slipspace in?" Reza said. "Impossible."
"Is it?" Guy asked.
"There's no viable theory to suggest it. No math that can prove it, or an experiment that has shown it."
"They used to say the same damn thing about slipspace," Theodore said. "They said it didn't exist, and even if it did, we could never use it to go faster than light. They said it was all just made up sci-fi bullshit. Until it wasn't."
"The Dread are an advanced race," Gabriel said. "I don't think it's safe to dismiss the potential for them to do anything just because we haven't done it yet."
"Especially because we haven't done it yet," Choi agreed. "I'm sure many geneticists would have thought the cloning and gene manipulation the Dread use was also impossible. When we limit the capabilities of the universe to what we currently understand, we undermine the potential of it."
Diallo re-appeared in the room, holding a bag full of small tools. He dropped it on the table in front of Reza.
"Thank you, Sergeant," Theodore said.
"Yes, sir."
"As I was saying, General," Guy said. "What if slipspace could be pulled into this dimension? How would it work? What effects would it have? I don't know the answer, but what we do know is that the Dread armor absorbs damage without the kinetic force of the blow being deleted. Reduced perhaps, but not removed. We also know that it is dependent on slipspace to operate. Without it, the armor is still solid, but it is not even as solid as the metal plating on the Magellan's hull. Finally, we know that whatever allows the weapon to bypass the defenses operates at a scale we weren't able to pick up with our scanning equipment."
"It may be nano-scale," Sarah said.
"Well, then, what are you waiting for, Mr. Mokri?" T
heodore asked. "Open her up and let's see what we can see."
THIRTY-NINE
"What's the word from the science team?" Miranda asked.
Gabriel stood just inside the doorway to her quarters, stroking Wallace's head. His father had ordered him to take a break from the research that was ongoing in the meeting room since he would need to relieve Lieutenant Bale from her shift on the hot seat within the next few hours. He was supposed to hit the sack, but the whole thing had left his mind whirling and unable to calm enough to fall asleep.
He had decided to find Wallace instead, heading first to Daphne's quarters, and then to Miranda's, which was where he had found the dog.
"They're picking the Dread weapon apart a piece at a time, and then running everything through a microscope. It's slow going."
"What about your father?"
Gabriel smiled. "You saw him on the bridge. When I went to see him, and he popped up and told me he wanted to steal the Magellan, I thought I was seeing the old Old Gator. Now I know I wasn't. The real General St. Martin is the one we saw a few hours ago."
"He's changed the entire complexion of the ship. The crew is working with purpose and energy again. Of course, surviving a skirmish with the Dread didn't hurt."
"No. It felt pretty good."
"I'm glad you're not still beating yourself up about the nacelle."
Gabriel grimaced. "Oh. Thanks for reminding me."
"Come on, Captain, you know I'm always on your side."
She was. She always had been. "Don't you mean Major?"
She laughed. "I'm teasing you again. Seriously, Gabriel, I'm glad you made it back in one piece. I was worried about you."
"I don't know what would have happened if the Dread hadn't been vulnerable. Bale was real close to getting cut down, and if one of us had gone down, I think the others would have followed pretty soon after."
"But they were vulnerable, she didn't get shot down, and you're all still here. That's the important thing."
"I know. It's hard not to worry sometimes. It's hard to stop thinking in general. The Dread fortress is still behind us, and we can't get away. It's not a question of if they'll try again, it's when. My father looks great, and he sounds great, but I'm still worried about him. When I saw that clone of my mother on Earth, I could barely breathe. I could barely think. It hit me like a meteor. How is he going to react if he ever comes face to face with one?"