by Randal Sloan
But he knew they all could only move forward, so finally he stood. It was time. “Go your way, my friends, and may the Creator bless you in your endeavor.”
Chapter 8
Plans and Preparation
Now that they more fully understood what they had to do, Jarra and her team got to work. There was a lot to do before they could leave on their mission, which despite the need was not time constrained. The Master provided all the information he had promised. He had the language modules sent to Amy and she immediately disappeared to assimilate herself in them, especially taking to heart the need to learn the Aerstone language. Of course, it was all at least a thousand years out of date, but she suspected it hadn’t changed very much at all in that time. After all, the Aerstone had no imagination.
Sasha had her data dump and even though she knew it was hopelessly out of date, still she had to try. She quickly hit a bottleneck, so she had to loop Amy in; her data was two languages off in translation. She was dealing with a Borjon translation to Galactic Standard which came from their translation of the original Aerstone. It took Amy several hours but when she was finished and sent Sasha back her translation, suddenly the data made a lot more sense.
For a moment, she just stared at it. When Jarra had told them all that somehow she knew the next mission would fail without Amy, Sasha had believed her, because she trusted her friend and leader. But now, it made much more sense. The difference in the datasets after Amy finished was astounding and it was something she could understand and see for herself.
When Jarra left her in charge of the ship on the last mission, one of the things Sasha struggled with was to see beyond the black and white and interpret the grey areas. She had gradually learned to accept her feelings and intuition. That had led to her pushing the rest of her small crew to complete their work above and beyond what logic had dictated was necessary. That was one of the reasons Katarina had survived all that she had faced.
Even though for Sasha that had been a giant leap, it was nothing compared to what the princess had. Time after time, Jarra had seen hints of what was to come — hints that logic said were crazy. Yet time after time she’d been right. Without her, they wouldn’t be here at all. But still, this thing with Amy amazed her. That went way beyond intuition — it had to be what Jarra called the second sight!
Somehow, Jarra had foreseen that Amy and her ability to translate languages was critical to their new mission. Sasha had thought that had meant something to do with the Borjon meetings, that Amy would be needed to translate for them, and she had done that amazingly well. But now she realized it meant much more.
Finally, she shrugged. She’d best be about it. There was a lot of data to go through, but that was her own strength that she brought to the team. Jarra had been one of the first to see that — well, except for John, who had been the first. She owed everything to John, who she was already missing greatly. She wondered how he was doing; they’d exchanged messages a couple of times before she left for this mission, but the Relentless had not made it to the Capital system in time for them to meet in person, so no opportunity to continue to develop their relationship.
Despite all that was on her mind, she quickly got down to business. Something told her that she would find something significant, even across those hundreds of years. It was way beyond logic, but she knew she was right. After only a few minutes, when she found something that she knew was going to affect the entire mission, she really wasn’t surprised. But the patterns didn’t lie.
Nevertheless, it shocked her to the core!
Galen and Gabo had undertaken the challenge to come up with a way to escape from Aerstone space in the very likely event of detection. They couldn’t just waltz back into “fast” hyperspace, or they’d be giving the enemy information that had to be kept hidden. The Aerstone were very good at copying, so that would probably be all they needed to build their own fast ships. There was no way they could let that happen, so they would be effectively trapped if detected unless they could come up with a way to fool them.
“So I’m thinking some kind of fake explosion,” Galen told his friend by implant link. “Do you think you could rig up something to look like we did a self-destruct?”
“Maybe,” Gabo told him. “But it will have to include lower level hyperspace radiation or it won’t be enough to cover our hyperspace insertion. Plus, our EW signature will have to make it look like we’ve disappeared instantly or any detailed scan would still see it.”
He linked Sara in, replaying their last conversation. “What do you think? Can you do it?” he asked her.
“Yes,” She told him. “But it can’t be an instantaneous disappearance. Just close to it. Actually, it’s much more complicated than that. Any explosion has to have both a starting point and a progression to it, and it will have to look like our EW failed completely in the middle of all that. I’ll need the help of the ship’s AI to do it, and it’ll take me some time to get it right.”
Jarra had been listening to their conversation with half an ear. “Get it right,” she told them. “You’ve got until tomorrow to get it done. We’re scheduled to do a test run with our friends out there—” she pointed to their companion ship, the Borjon Amfiltrite, “—and I expect you to fool them the first time we attempt it. After all, we do have a reputation to uphold.”
With that, the challenge was on. Jarra knew her team would come through. In fact— “Kaeden,” she said quietly, so as not to disturb her working team, “How much do you know about the human concept of betting?”
“I read it disease of your race,” he told her. “Is correct?”
Jarra shook her head. “Sadly, yes, some humans become so addicted to the thrill of the bet that it can destroy their lives, but no, betting in and of itself is a relatively benign thing. I propose a small bet between you and me. The way betting works, you wager something that is of value for an expected outcome. Someone else wagers something against that where they expect a different outcome. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I think so. So what you bet?”
“I bet you that my team will be able to fool your friends aboard the Amfiltrite, so that they think something has happened to us, rather than that we jumped into fast hyperspace and that we’ll do it on the first attempt. If I lose, I will cook and serve you a meal of your choosing. If you lose, you must cook a meal for me.”
Kaeden just stared at her for a moment. There had to be some trick to it, some human thing, but he couldn’t see it. “I think understand why bet. I sure you lose, but you must think win. Only one will be right. I think I win.”
“Yes,” Jarra told him with a smile. “I think win. So do you take bet?” She held her hand out. “Human handshake?”
Kaeden smiled at her. He took her hand, lifting it up and down more or less in a shake. “I take bet.”
Jarra beamed back at him. Somehow, he suspected he was going to lose. But how? How could they possibly do it? Amfiltrite’s crew was made up of some of the best warrior monks, the very best of the Borjon race. Surely, they couldn’t fool them all.
He looked up to see the entire team watching him. “Oh, we’re all in on the bet,” Amy told him, speaking in his native tongue. “You have a lot to learn about this team.”
He just shook his head, the motion very close to a human one. “I don’t see it,” he replied to her in Borjon. He switched to Galactic Standard. “Perhaps I no understand my human friends? I sure I learn.”
Amy smiled, also switching to Galactic Standard, sorta. “Learn you will do.”
Amfiltrite was in the lead as the two ships entered the system they were using for the planned test. With the input of their Borjon friends, they had chosen an unpopulated system a few light years from Borjon. A couple of gas giants were the only planets in the system and the Amfiltrite dropped into orbit around the largest.
Katarina continued further into the system, finally coming to a stop at her assigned coordinates. There she waited as Borjon observer ships too
k their position throughout the system. It had been decided that to be absolutely certain of their success or failure, since they dared not risk any chance of discovery, observations from several viewpoints would be necessary.
As they waited, Jarra thought about their discussions from the night before. It had once more driven home some of the sheer importance and risk of the mission. It had all begun when Sasha explained to the team what she had learned in her data dive. They’d all gathered in the ship’s galley to hear.
“Most of what I’ve found is information we already had known or at least suspected. The Aerstone are arrogant because they have the ability to download themselves and reload if their ‘bodies’ die. They also have been around for at least a couple of millennia, with no new children being born. In fact, I suspect they no longer have the ability to have children.”
She stopped a minute to allow the significance of that to sink in, not that it was relevant to the current situation. If the Empire could figure out a way to win this thing, it could be quite important. Finally, she continued.
“They have a huge repository of data, but it’s not as effective as it should be because it is so overloaded with information, not even I would be able to read the patterns. Plus, all the older information gets ‘forgotten’ as new information gradually overwrites it. For example, they probably knew what happened to produce the Badlands, possibly some version of what we did to trigger that storm. But if they did know, it’s been pushed out and so forgotten. I suspect all they know now is that they could do things there that the Empire wouldn’t know until it was too late. So they assumed.”
She smiled. “That didn’t work out for them, thanks to Katarina. They didn’t count on this team showing up.” She pointedly looked at Kaeden, who had been growing more and more worried about his bet.
“However, deeper in the patterns, I discovered something quite significant.” She pulled up a galactic map on the 3D VR display in front of them, concentrating it on Aerstone space. “This shows the area where we’ll be searching, the same area where the Borjon attacks occurred. The shaded colors represent the amount of data that was recovered from the ships that managed to return. The lighter the color, the more data returned.”
She looked at Jarra. “Do you see it, Your Highness?”
For once Jarra ignored the royal address. She was much too distracted to call her on it. “What is the meaning of that black spherical area, sitting almost in the middle of the map?” She was afraid she knew the answer. Very much afraid.
“It is the one area where we have absolutely no data. Something or someone destroyed every single ship that entered that space. There can be no other explanation!”
Everyone stared in shock. Sasha could still barely believe it herself.
Kaeden looked at his new friends. Even with him being Borjon, totally alien to them, they couldn’t help but see the fear in his eyes. “I know what is. It is Sentinel.”
He went on to explain about the Sentinels and how they had learned about them near the end of the last war. What he told them was bad; so bad he could hardly bring himself to speak of it.
Jarra’s thoughts were interrupted as a message came in, “Begin exercise.”
“Galen, get us moving,” she said, speaking out loud for the benefit of the entire crew. She looked around at the team. “Get it right, guys. After what Kaeden told us about the Sentinels, this test is even more important. Assuming somehow we find a way to survive contact with the Sentinel, we absolutely have to have a way to escape.”
“Keep the drive booster system on ready,” she told Gabo. “We’ll have to be ready to kick it in at the proper time.” She knew Gabo was already doing that, the instruction was more to remind them all of their plan. That, and the fact that the drive booster was essential to their plan.
All human ships used the same basic drive designs for navigation in the normal universe, and with the sharing of data with the Borjon, they’d learned that their ships were quite similar in that aspect. Katarina had one of the more high-end systems, as did the Amfiltrite, both partially depending on additional speed due to the small size of the ship. Everything they’d seen on the Aerstone indicated the same basic designs. It was all down to the physics of the normal universe. No cheating allowed.
But after discussion, the team had decided that to pull off their plan, they needed an extra burst of speed at the end of their run to pull away from the Amfiltrite for a short time to get a little more distance between them. Using the booster system wouldn’t come totally free to the ship; for those few seconds, they would trade the ship’s drives normal damping of inertia for a little extra speed. After all, the immutable laws of physics wouldn’t let it be any other way as long as they remained a part of the physical universe.
Running at full stealth but knowing Amfiltrite had their position locked in just like a potential enemy might, Katarina raced across the system headed for the edge of hyperspace with Amfiltrite in hot pursuit. For all intents and purposes, they were headed for the edge of hyperspace in an attempt to escape.
How were they going to pull it off? Everyone was wondering what Katarina’s plan would be. So far they hadn’t tipped their hand, not even to the ones on board the Amfiltrite who were the closest ship to them.
Master Hadassah had not been able to resist slipping onto the Amfiltrite to observe the test for himself. He thought he knew what to expect. He knew it was critical that the humans figure out a way to escape, but he really didn’t believe it was possible. In fact, he had a bad feeling about this test, but he couldn’t pin it down. It had to be something blocked from him, something important to the future, but he couldn’t see it. Perhaps it was just nerves; he still wished he had a way to keep them from having to carry out this very dangerous mission.
The first several minutes of the chase was actually quite boring. Both ships were so closely matched in speed, Katarina was unable to gain anything over her pursuer, but neither could the Amfiltrite gain on them. Master Hadassah smiled to himself. If this had been one of those “Vids” that the humans kept going on about, all the watchers would have tuned them out.
The Master was very much worried about this mission. His visions had put him in quite a quandary. He had seen that the Katarina was the only ship that could complete this mission and he knew the Prophecies were quite clear, that it had to be the One and her team that attempted it. They were also crystal clear that it was essential that they do the mission. Without it, there was no hope.
But the Master had also seen something else. If the Emperor’s niece did not survive this mission, he would be greatly affected by it. He wouldn’t end their alliance, but their relations would become more strained. Also, his will to fight wouldn’t be as strong. That was the other reason he feared sending them. If they failed to return, he knew they would lose this war. He hoped that somehow — somehow they would find a way to safely complete the mission and return. The test today would be a big part of it. Still, he didn’t have a good feeling about it all. All he knew was he felt pain every time he thought about it.
Gradually they drew nearer to the hyperspace boundary. They were still several minutes away, but whatever they were going to do had to happen soon. Suddenly, Katarina started pulling away from her pursuer. What were they doing? Ahh… A bit of an expert on modern spacecraft, Master Hadassah knew what it had to be. They were trading the normal level of inertial compensation for a little extra speed. It would let them get further off from the Amfiltrite, but what good would that do? Although they were now probably only a couple of minutes away from the edge of hyperspace by this time, it wouldn’t be enough for them to put it to any real use.
Suddenly, the Katarina exploded!
Master Hadassah cried out in anguish. The future suddenly looked very dark…
During that meeting the night before, after Kaeden explained what he knew of the Aerstone Sentinels, they’d talked about its significance to their mission. Not a single one even thought about using that as an
excuse for them to back out. Yet they also knew before they could complete their mission, they would have to enter that “black hole” on Sasha’s map, and somehow find a way to return.
Finally, they had moved on to the other major topic for the evening. Kaeden had listened as Gabo explained their plan for their escape. He had to admit it was quite ingenious. He began to think that he might lose his “bet” and he actually hoped he did. After all, if they had to use this plan for real, it would be his life and that of the others on the line.
The plan had several key features. They had to have a “fake” explosion that looked real enough to fool the pursuers. It had to be close enough to hyperspace that they could pull just a little of that hyperspace energy in to hide their transition. But they had to be far enough away from that hyperspace to ensure the enemy didn’t suspect that they had made it in. Even the EW signature had to be perfectly disguised.
The key had been something Galen reminded them all about. The boundary to normal hyperspace wasn’t the same as that of fast hyperspace. Because the energies of those higher levels were stronger than the more normal level, the boundary to the fast level extended further out than the standard defined edge. Although they couldn’t enter at full fast speed, they could make that transition earlier than expected.
Yes, Kaeden actually believed he would lose his bet. He couldn’t help but smile.
Katarina sat just within the edge of hyperspace, her stealth systems on full. Even though Jarra knew it was a cruel thing to do to the Borjon, she had to wait while they did their full analysis of the incident. She knew their enemy would certainly do so if it happened for real. They had to be sure the analysis wouldn’t give them away.
The plan had been executed to perfection. It had taken her amazing team and the ship’s high-end AI to pull it off, but they’d done it! As they had begun the transition to fast hyperspace at a distance that was still a full minute’s travel away from the normal transition point, Gabo’s special missile had launched and exploded outwardly away from their ship.