“Do you have any opinions, Dharma?” she asked. The small, dark woman turned to her and sighed.
“Not really. I just want to survive. Not like Lashmi.”
The rest of the warbrides cast their eyes down. How many more of their co-wives would they lose before they returned home?
“We’ll send Chimata out in one of the shuttles,” Shakti decided, “since it was her idea. She’ll have the chance to transmit to us what she finds. The shuttle has just enough fuel to make it to the outer planet. Let’s get some sleep, because I want everyone ready in the morning.” They went into the showers attached to the sauna and retired to the crew quarters.
Chimata took the shuttle out slowly while the rest of her co-wives watched from the safety of the command center on the Widowmaker. As there was no gravity in the center of the hub, they were free to float around and observe from whatever screen was handy. With no men on the ship, they were casually attired, but Shakti insisted they wear briefs and some kind of breast restraint.
“If you want to learn how to use a bow,” Dharma said to Bravi as they watched the feed from the shuttle, “let me know. I can show you in the training hall.”
“Thank you,” Bravi said to her as she floated by and touched Dharma on the back. “I appreciate it. I would like to pick up another weapon form. It’s best if we all learn more than one weapon.”
“Do you think the wasps will know we’re here?” Shakti asked Durga. “I’m concerned they’ll notice our transmissions to the shuttle.”
“I doubt it,” she replied. “Space is vast. Hard for them to scan every sector around this system in hopes they might pick up a transmission. I think we’re safe.”
The knowledge that they were expendable to the empire began to pick away at Shakit’s soul. She knew it was all for show, but Shakti felt she owed it to every woman who ever lay earned money on her back. She was determined to show the empire the lowest women from the most despised profession could fight better than any well-fed recruit from a wholesome farm world.
The war college had a tradition of Gods, Empire and Hearth she wanted to bust open. How would the empire deny their importance in the realm of humanity after they’d prevented its destruction by alien invaders? She looked back and admired her co-wives. At the same time, she mourned for the ones who had given their lives for the rest of them. Lashmi’s loss had been painful to her. Every death was a pain in her heart she could not deny.
Perhaps she could have found a way to keep Seth in the ship as mascot for the rest of them. She had no need for a man to keep her warm at night. He seemed important to her co-wives, but it was right to send Seth away to the medical ships. Eventually he would be home. She did miss Seth and wondered if she’d made the right decision.
Chimata flew the first of the two shuttles the corvette kept on board. Whenever possible, it was much easier to mate individual ships to each other in deep space. But sometimes it was better to fly a shuttlecraft of some type between two. There were also times when an entire crew needed to leave the ship to investigate something or do repairs that could not be reached by walking on the hull. And there were times a better look was needed than what could be done with a sensor or telescope.
It took Chimata two standard days to reach the periphery of the shuttle’s range. It used chemical engines for docking and maneuvering, but had electrostatic propulsion for long-range travel. When she was as close as she could get to the nearest wasp colony world, Chimata killed the engines and drifted in free fall. She took a big risk as the shuttle had no defensive capability. Her only recourse, if spotted by the wasps, was to detonate a large bomb she carried on board the ship. The shuttle was beyond effective laser cannon range from the Widowmaker.
The first pictures she sent back to the corvette confirmed what everyone had feared: the wasps were building a whole new wave of battleships in the Kephra system. They were not building them so much as growing the ships. They were able to watch the surface of them rearrange into whatever shape the wasps needed. It accounted for the organic look to the wasp ships.
Durga spent her time trying to analyze the way the wasps communicated. She was certain it had to do with pheromone traces, but it was not possible to follow the wasps’ conversation. It was her hope she could understand it and find a way to use it against them. Privately, she wondered if their might be some way to open up a line of communication with the wasps. There had to be a way to reason with them. However, no one had communicated with the wasps on anything more than a rudimentary level.
The images of the new wasp ships grown in orbit outside the third planet of the Kephra system were sent to the corvette. Shakti decided to send them through folded space to the war college. They needed to see what was out there in the wasp-controlled regions of space. The wasps were totally mobilized for war and had the resources to bring it about.
“It doesn’t look good,” Kamala commented while she viewed the pictures sent to them from the shuttle. “If they are doing this in other places, can you imagine the size of the invasion?”
“I’ve just told Chimata to take a staggered pattern back to the Widowmaker,” Shakti informed her. “If the wasps have some means of observing the perimeter of this system, I don’t want them to spot the shuttle on the way back. Best to wait till we’re ready to strike.”
In the training hall, Bravi busied herself learning the sublime art of archery from Dharma. Today was bow training. She stood wearing a light shirt and briefs while Dharma, dressed the same way, showed her the proper stance for firing at a moving target. She stood next to her co-wife and held Bravi’s arms in position while Dharma talked her through the exercise.
“You won’t have to use one of these very often,” she told her. “A crossbow is preset and is the better weapon for close combat. However, the crossbow has to be reloaded each time, as does the regular bow. The difference is in the speed of reload. A crossbow takes much more time to put a bolt in place than a bow. A bow can have arrows close where you can reach out and grab them quickly. But a crossbow is much more accurate and can have its bow locked into place prior to firing.”
On Dharma’s command, Bravi unleashed the arrow and watched it miss the target by a good six inches. She placed it down and grumbled.
“Don’t worry,” Dharma, said as she rubbed her shoulders, “you would have killed the wasp soldier who stood next to it. They fight in close quarters, which make them easy to pick-off.”
Bravi picked up another arrow and nocked it. She drew back the chord and brought the bow up to a firing position. “You know a lot about this weapon,” she commented to Dharma. “Did you use one before you were a warbride?”
“One of my clients taught me how,” she told her as Bravi let the latest arrow fly. “He liked to watch me shoot targets naked and paid the house owner a premium fee. That’s all he ever did, watch me practice archery. He would even bring the bow and arrows with him. No one else was allowed to watch. Then one day he quit and never returned. Someone told me he was arrested for embezzlement.”
The arrow had reached the target this time. However, it was stuck far from the center of it. Not a good score if she ever planned to use the bow to take down a phalanx of wasps on the attack.
“Let me show you how I used to do it,” Dharma told her. She slipped out of her brief and shirt, placed them on the stand, and took the bow from Bravi.
Bravi admired her slight build and muscular arms. Dharma showed her years as a dancer as she glided across the practice floor and nocked an arrow. She flicked her fine hair back and eyed the target. Her breasts were small, but still large enough to get in the way of the chord. Bravi wondered how she was going to deal with the snap from the bow when she released. With no shirt to protect her breasts or gauntlet to cover her arm, the chord would cut her flesh. Dharma inhaled and released the arrow.
She moved out of the way of the chord with a grace Bravi had not witnessed. The second she released the arrow, Dharma brought the bow over her head. She held her
pose just long enough to make sure the arrow had struck the center of the target. She performed the same feat over and over again just to show Bravi it was possible. Not once did the chord strike her. Every time the arrow hit the center of the target.
“This is easy because the target does not move,” she told her co-wife. “It is much harder to do when you are wearing suit armor and the target wants to kill you. For such times a crossbow is the better tool to use.” She placed the bow on its mount and stood naked with her arms crossed across her perky breasts.
“Are you ready to try again?” she asked Bravi.
Bravi stripped off her shirt and briefs. She felt something familiar and looked down at her breast to see the nipple rings reflect in the light. “I may have some problems with these,” she said and fingered one of the rings.
Dharma walked over and tugged on one of them. “They look pretty, but you’ll have suit armor on when you use a bow in combat. Nice; the client might have paid more if I’d had mine done.”
“I think we should take both shuttles out again,” Kamala told Shakti as she floated around the control room. “We still have no idea of the extent of the wasp’s armaments. Two shuttles deployed would bring back better pictures.”
“Two shuttles would attract attention,” Shakti countered. “We’ve been lucky so far and they don’t know we’re here. If either of the shuttles is detected, we’d never get out in time.”
Kamala and Durga were busy with the data from the wasp communications. Somehow, the wasps found a way to convert it to electromagnetic signals. One thing puzzled them was the regularity. There was little in the way of communications from the probe ships the wasps used to track the movements in and out of the Kephra system. They eventually decided it was series of commands. The remotes sent back data and adjusted their plans based on what the wasps told them to do.
“Not much room in their plans for initiative,” Kamala observed. “They are told the plan to execute and they carry it out.”
“Just what you might expect from a life form based on insects,” Durga pointed out. “They can’t make swift decisions because their armies don’t have the ability. But they can field huge fleets, which is what the wasps will do once they get the latest one grown.
Shakti planned a meeting later in the day to decide what kind of attack they should carry out. She wasn’t even sure they should attack the wasps in full force. They had one corvette against the entire invasion force the wasps were growing in orbit around the one satellite of the Kephra sun. If they were to do anything, it would be quick and bold. The second the wasps knew they’d arrived, the warbrides would be in a defensive battle. So long as they had the Schrodinger generator, they could fold space and get out. Should the Widowmaker be damaged in any form, they would be trapped. Immediate destruction would be a mercy the wasps would not grant.
“I still think we need to use both shuttles in conjunction with our corvette,” Chimata argued. She floated around the command center, but managed to hold onto one handrail provided for the crew. “We can send them out as scouts and find the best place to strike. They can come back to the mothership; we can hit them with the nuclear torpedoes and leave. If we do it right, they’ll be set-back and we’ll be gone.”
“Not a good idea to have two shuttles out there,” Shakti overruled. “I’m not so much concerned about them as losing two more of you.”
“We need to hit them quick,” Kamala argued. “Find out where there is a weakness. Move in before they know we are there, launch torpedoes and get out. If we do that, they’ll never know what happened and we’ll be gone.”
“The communication systems they use,” Durga brought up.
Shakti was glad to see she’d put a shirt over her breasts. Watching them float independently was amusing.
“They are very primitive as compared to what we have,” Durga continued. “You move fast enough and they don’t have a way to send out a counterattack. The individual units lack the ability to respond. If we can figure out where the sentient castes are housed, we hit them first. The rest won’t know what to do.”
Shakti turned toward Dharma. She seemed to be lost in thought or somewhere else. Best not to bother her. She turned to Bravi instead.
“You have any ideas?” she asked her.
“I like using the shuttles,” she responded. “It allows us to move into range and they won’t know we’re there.” She had her top off for some reason and Shakti heard her nipple rings clink on a panel.
“Could you please cover those up?” she asked her. Bravi snorted and pulled a shirt over her top.
Chapter 14
Dharma was in the bad place again. She tried her best to hide it, but the bad place always came back to her. She might be sleeping and then the dream would end, but she would be in the place she wanted to escape. She’d been left with a man no one should have trusted with a young girl. He’d taken advantage of her and she was too young to understand. She fought it inside her mind just as she couldn’t fight him off at such a young age. It was somewhere she never wanted to go again, but it pulled her back.
Bravi had watched her become still a few times. She spent the night cradling her, trying to bring Dharma back from where ever she was. Even Shakti knew something very bad was inside Dharma, but she couldn’t heal her. She didn’t know if anyone could.
A few minutes later, Dharma blinked and was back again. They knew better than to ask her. They knew it would happen again.
“Have you noticed Dharma’s episodes?” Durga later asked Shakti when they were alone. “I think it might be worse than when she first joined up.”
“I worry about them too,” Bravi told her. “I don’t know what to do and none of us are trained to help her. The best we can do is leave her alone. She always comes out of those episodes. I’ve never seen her bad during combat.”
“But it could happen,” Durga pointed out. “I saw her become unresponsive for a few minutes in the command center when we were under attack. We need to decide what happens if she becomes completely cationic if we’re in combat. I wouldn’t want her covering for me if the wasps strike. What do we do if she fades out when we really need her? We don’t have too many of our original team left. She could get us all killed.”
“We’ll have to watch her carefully. Make sure she doesn’t take point if we’re in a tight battle. I don’t know what else to do. Out here, there isn’t much we can do.”
The Widowmaker stayed on its course for another two weeks, matching orbital velocity around the Kephra sun while they observed the wasps create another fleet. It was strange seeing the ships grown out of some mass they brought up from the surface of the planet. Stranger yet as this was not the home world of the wasps and they’d found a way to be resourceful on a world which was not theirs.
Dharma continued to show Bravi the finer points of archery. Durga spent hours in her attempt to understand the wasps command and control. Shakti had the entire corvette to monitor. The repair bots climbed over it, replacing parts, creating new ones where needed. It was amazing such a large and sophisticated ship could be operated with a small crew, but the ship was built so that the human pilots could do their jobs and not have to worry about the upkeep. The little bots could be seen daily crawling around the corridors and passages of the corvette on their way to fix something.
Two days later, they had an unexpected guest.
It was early in the first watch of the standard day when Durga picked up something on the scanners. They searched the area around the Widowmaker for anything unusual. Space was full of junk and debris. They were close to the wasp operations on the third satellite planet of the Kephra system. Periodically, they would receive a warning of some object in close proximity to the corvette and the lasers would power into operation. It usually turned out to be a chunk of debris of some kind and the cannons would vaporize it to atoms. If nothing else, the warnings served as a reminder of how deep they were in enemy territory.
This particular morning, the
scanners let Durga know the object it tracked moved with purpose. This was no idle piece of junk or even a stray comet. Something was moving around the vicinity of the Widowmaker. They observed its momentum. It tried to avoid detection, but the movement gave it away. Durga summoned Shakti to the command center and showed her the object, represented by a blip of a holographic image projected into the center of the deck.
“Right here,” Durga said as she pointed to the small pink sphere as it moved around the corvette, represented as a blue rectangle in the projection. “It’s not moving in any particular pattern. Look at where it’s been. This thing is under some kind of guidance.”
“You think it’s the wasps?” Shakti asked her. She held onto a handrail while looking at the image.
“Could be,” Durga responded. She had a blue robe wrapped around her top and briefs covering her lower part. “Let’s have a look on magnification.” Her hands tapped a sequence across a panel.
The sphere grew in size until it had a definite shape. This, from the image projected in front of them, was a wasp scout vessel. The organic construction could not be mistaken. The basic shape was consistent with the identification manuals the war college sent with them. It took her five seconds to identify it as an advance scout vehicle with few weapons.
“The only question now is what it’s told the wasps,” Shakti said. This narrowed their options.
“If it’s sent anything at all,” Durga pointed out. “Crude communications, remember. It might not be in active contact with the base.”
“I want everyone on the command center,” Shakti broadcast to the rest of the ship. “We have a potential threat. Five minutes.”
It took less than five minutes for the remainder of her co-wives to travel to the command center. Kamala was the first to drift down from the nearest corridor. She was followed by Chimata. Two minutes later Bravi, her nipple rings showing through the shift she wore, made her entrance with Dharma pulling her clothes on as she came up behind her.
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