Chapter 10
McShane was enjoying the hospitality of Implacable’s bridge. He’d polished off a plateful of a pasty that tasted like a raspberry tart but wasn’t when Lawrona called, “We’ll be within range in four hours, Captain.” The first officer sat at the Tactics station vacated by Kiroda. “No change in enemy status.”
“Engagement point?” Detrelna eyed the three Scotar ships’ position, shown relative to Implacable’s on the big board.
“Midpoint between the asteroid belt and the fourth planet.” Lawrona turned to McShane. “Did you know that asteroid belt was once a planet, intentionally destroyed?”
Bob started. “How can you tell?”
“Radiation traces common to the whole belt. Someone dropped a planetbuster on it a few million years ago. Planetbusters leave a distinct signature.”
“Stand by for hyperspace,” the captain ordered. Turning away from the screen, he met his men’s startled looks.
“I thought we were going to fight,” said Lawrona after an instant’s hesitation.
“We are. But not stupidly. We’re no match for three heavy cruisers.” He smiled at their confusion. “But our drive’s Imperial and allows for short, very precise jumps—pity it doesn’t allow for the long ones as it’s supposed to. So, we’re going to drop right into that task force.”
“Sir, the drive has never been tested to those tolerances,” protested Natrol. He took a step away from his station. “Anything could go wrong.”
“Archives assures us that the Imperials ran their drives to such close tolerances.”
“Five thousand years ago.”
“Bah! You just overhauled that equipment yourself, Commander. You’re the best engineer in the Confederation, Natrol. That drive will perform as specified, I have no doubt.” Detrelna waved down any further protests. “I’m touched by your respect for my command ability,” he said gravely. “Now shall we stand by for hyperspace?”
They’d jumped to it, Lawrona running figures and laying in coordinates, the rest busying themselves at their stations. An alert klaxon hooted.
“Cycling to jump, Captain” The first officer’s tone was one of quiet efficiency.
“Quite a little democracy you have here, Captain,” Bob observed amid the bustle.
“We’ve been an independent rabble for a long time, Professor.” Detrelna smiled crookedly, half-turning toward the Terran. “A trait happily not undone by the present emergency. There are some”—his face clouded—“who’d like to see a return to the grand ways of the Imperium. The glory of battle, the joy of obedience, the stifling of initiative—and perhaps if this war continues much longer, they’ll have their way. But not on my ship.”
“The captain’s not in favor of restoring the Emperor.” Natrol grinned.
“So I gathered,” said Bob. “Is there a candidate?”
“There’s an Heir Apparent—a kindly old man who potters about in his gardens,” said Lawrona. “Jaquel’s generally tolerant of the old aristocracy, despite a family history of blowing us up now and then.”
“We Shatarians are republicans, but accepting ones, My Lord Margrave,” said Detrelna, checking the tacscan.
“How long is the jump?” asked McShane, vowing to later raise the fascinating subject of Kronarin history and politics. He thanked whatever gods had blessed him with a galactic empire to study.
“Ten nanoseconds,” said Lawrona.
“Please tell our guest what an error of a picosecond would do,” Detrelna said. “I want him to appreciate my daring.”
Lawrona looked up from his station, swiveling to meet McShane’s gaze. “One picosecond short will cause us to blow up, far from our target. One picosecond over and we land inside the sixth planet.”
“An event that wouldn’t do us or the planet much good,” Detrelna noted.
Lawrona glanced back at his console. “One minute to jump.”
“Set all weapons systems to automatic, Mr. Nidreyna,” the captain ordered the Weapons Officer, “and tie them into Tactics.”
“All systems tied in, sir,” the young ensign reported.
“Should I strap in, or what?” Bob asked, hands searching his chair for belt or harness. There wasn’t any.
“Don’t worry.” The first officer leaned back in his chair, eyes on the screen. “It will be over before our minds can comprehend—one way or the other.”
“Thirty seconds.”
“If we’re very lucky,” the captain said to no one in particular, “their shields will be down, so far from Terra. We’ll emerge from nowhere and blow them away.”
“Fifteen seconds.”
“Of course,” he mused, “if not . . .”
“Ten seconds.”
“Their shields will be up . . .”
“Five seconds.”
“And we die.”
“Jump!”
McShane thought his stomach flopped, but later wrote it off to imagination. There seemed to be no transition. One instant they were alone in space, the next the screen blazed with light as alarms sounded.
“All targets destroyed!” The usually reserved Lawrona leaped up, pounding his smirking captain on the back. Implacable reverberated to jubilant whoops and the screech of alarms touched off in celebration.
Good-naturedly enduring the tumult for a moment, Detrelna finally held up his hands. “All right, everyone! Stations, please. We were lucky,” he said as the din subsided. “But our mission’s far from accomplished. We have to return to Terra and our people.”
Bob looked out the main view screen. Where light had flared an instant before, there was a thin, colored vapor, dissipating as he watched. “There’s no wreckage,” he said to no one in particular.
“Shipbusters leave only a brief cloud of evanescent gas,” said Detrelna. “Sorry we couldn’t put on more of a show for you, but fighting it out ship to ship and beam to beam would fatal. We had to surprise them and kill them in an instant.”
“I see,” said Bob, looking at the space where three ships had been a moment before. “So, do you have planetbusters, too?”
Captain and first officer exchange glances. “We do,” said Detrelna. “Though we’ve only used one in the long history of this Confederation.”
“And your Empire?”
“Used them whenever it was having a bad day,” said Lawrona “The Empire essentially slaughtered itself out of existence.”
“And yet you keep a kindly old gentleman who’s its Heir Apparent,” noted McShane.
“We’re a complex people,” sighed Detrelna.
“How long to return to Earth?” asked McShane as the bridge sank back into routine.
“A few hours,” said Detrelna. “I’m not about to risk a jump again, assurances to Commander Natrol notwithstanding.”
Innocent of danger, the tow-headed boy bounded up the path into Zahava’s blaster sights. Communicator shrilling in her ear, she swallowed hard and pressed the trigger.
Dying, the boy-form shimmered into a Scotar warrior. “Incoming bugs!” she called over the tactical circuit.
Helmetless, the pilot she’d been guarding raced out of the shuttle, rifle in hand—and died, head exploding from a blaster bolt fired from the rocks below.
Zahava threw herself behind one of the shuttle’s thick landing struts, her helmet’s infrared scanners picking out the ochre blotches of Scotar massing along the hill’s lee. Throwing the rifle to her shoulder, she poured a series of quick bursts into the Scotar. A fusillade of blue bolts flashed back at her, lighting the night.
“Zahava! Hold on! We’re coming!” John’s voice called from her commlink.
He was there in less than a minute, Greg and one of Kiroda’s men zigzagging up behind him, through the Scotar fire bracketing Zahava.
“Can these suits take simultaneous hits?” John asked the Kronarin, ducking as a bolt exploded into the strut, showering them with sparks. He glanced uneasily at the tons of spacecraft perched above their heads as the crewman repl
ied, “Not for long—depends on how heavy the fire is.” The man, a middle-aged commtech, sighted carefully and fired. A distant boulder flared cherry-red as a form scuttled from behind it. The Kronarin killed it with a shot from his hand blaster. A fusillade of blaster fire replied, riddling the shuttle.
“The ammunition crèches will blow!” cried the Kronarin, leading the others in a hasty low-crawl to the cover of the rocks behind them.
The shuttle went up with a ground-shaking roar, sending a pillar of blue flame shooting skyward. Molten debris rained down, sparking scores of small brush fires through which the Scotar advanced undeterred.
“Kiroda, we can’t hold here,” John called over the tactical band. “They’ve blown the shuttle and are advancing in strength. What’s your status?”
“They’re coming up our side of the hill, hundreds of them! I’ve lost two men.” The young officer’s voice mingled with the crackle and whine of blaster fire. “We’re falling back to the tunnel. Join us there.”
John laid down covering fire as the others withdrew. No matter how many insectoids he mowed down, more swarmed up from the beach, firing as they came. Soon his warsuit started taking multiple hits, forcing him to withdraw. He followed the others at a run, stopping only twice to snap off a few shots.
So intense was the return fire that for the last few yards John’s warsuit was encased in a rippling aura of raw energy. He dived behind the temporary shelter of a boulder, joining the surviving humans now huddled among the rocks ringing the site’s entrance. A stunning barrage of light and sound swept over their shelter, shattering rock and shaking the earth.
“Let’s go!” Kiroda ordered.
They charged into the tunnel, securing the door a second before another, stronger barrage rocked their previous position.
“Photon mortars!” exclaimed Kiroda. Leaning against the wall, he checked his blaster charge. “Either they’ve landed a task force or there’s a Nest on this planet.”
Zahava was about to ask what a Nest was when Greg asked, “Can they get through this door?”
“With some work,” said Implacable’s Tactics Officer. “It only looks like rock—it’s a derivative of Imperial battlesteel.” He tapped the door with his gun butt. “Nothing tougher.”
“So I discovered,” said the geologist.
“Why don’t they just teleport in here, Mr. Kiroda?” asked John.
“My friends call me Tolei. Either they don’t have the coordinates or are afraid we’ve laid some nasty surprises for them.”
“My God! Where’d they all come from?” The Israeli slumped wearily against the wall. “We littered the ground with them, but still they kept coming.”
“From what you told us,” said Kiroda, “the nearby oceanographic institute must be their Nest. They probably quietly killed off the staff and were using it to search for this site.”
“Cindy!” Greg’s eyes widened in alarm. “She’s at the Institute.”
“Who’s ‘Cindy’?” Kiroda demanded sharply.
John explained.
The Kronarin officer grasped Greg by the shoulders. “Answer carefully,” he said intently. “How long did you know her?”
Blinking, the Terran met his gaze. “Three months.”
“Lived with her?”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“About a month.”
Kiroda nodded, then pressed on. “Did you ever notice anything unusual about Cindy? Inappropriate mannerisms, dress, speech?”
Greg shook his head, mute.
“I only saw her once,” John said. “She was dressed very lightly for a raw, rainy day. She looked comfortable.”
“Just as Langston bounded up Goose Hill with no sign of exertion!” exclaimed Zahava.
The Kronarin turned back to Greg. “Do you have any vivid memories of sex with her,” he asked bluntly, “or just an indistinct recollection of a wonderful, glowing experience?”
“Why do you think we had sex?”
“Oh, please.”
Greg sighed. “I . . . I can’t recall anything.” He shook his head, bemused. “I remember clearly every other woman I’ve ever been with, but not her.”
Kiroda released the geologist. “There was no ‘her.’ ‘Cindy’ was a Scotar. The real Cindy’s long dead.”
“That would explain how Langston—how the Scotar—knew we were on the hill,” said Zahava. “And that nice, freckle-faced girl I slept under the same roof with—”
“Was a transmute that could have ripped your throat out,” said Kiroda.
“But why?” Greg’s voice was anguished. “Why lure me back to Massachusetts? Why ask to marry me?”
“You were the last human who knew where this site was,” John guessed. “To kill you outright would have drawn even more unwelcome attention to the Institute. Better a wedding in Louisiana followed by a tragic accident.”
Greg looked sick. “Now what?”
“We hold until relieved, or until I can awaken this installation’s slumbering guardian,” said Kiroda. He turned to Zahava. “Show me the control room you were taken from. I’ll try to activate the defenses. Unless Implacable returns soon, it’s our only chance. We’ll make our stand at the control room, then destroy it.”
“Hold here as long as you can,” he called over his shoulder, following Zahava down the stairs. “Then fall back to the control room.”
“We’ll redo the floors in vulture-vomit green,” John promised, turning to face the door. It’d begun to glow just a bit under the hellish energies clawing at it out of the night.