The Plasma Master
Page 20
Chapter 12
“Treason! It had to be! There is absolutely no way they could have known how to beat us unless someone from StarBlazer told them!” Marvis Harvey was pacing back and forth in front of Marnax’s desk, screaming in rage. “When I find out who did this I’m going to …” He couldn’t think of anything severe enough fast enough, so Marnax took the opportunity to cut in.
“Marvis! I believe you if you say there’s no way the Empire could have done it on its own, but you’ve got to explain this all to me, from the beginning. And calm down! We won’t be able to rendezvous with the others in the Council for another couple of days, so we’ve got plenty of time to think and plan things out before then. Now tell me; exactly what went wrong?”
The battle at Ergana Prime had ended just over an hour ago. Harvey had rushed about, studying reports and going over sensor logs until he was sure he knew as much as he could, and then he had stormed into General Marnax’s office, barely containing his wrath. Now he took a slow breath to steady himself and began to relate to Marnax the events surrounding StarBlazer’s secret weapon and how it should have destroyed the Imperial starship Devastator. Marnax already knew most of it, but it wouldn’t hurt to go over it again, just for clarification.
“When Devastator was built and started eating away at our army, we immediately started analyzing it – its tactics, its energy outputs – but mostly its weapons. We knew that a couple of its most deadly weapons used substances with which we weren’t familiar, and we wanted to know how to defend against them, and if possible to use them ourselves. A month after we started looking we found something.
“One of Devastator’s weapons used a substance we call ‘anathelium hexaderitia.’ It allows a great deal of energy to be stored in a very small space, and in conjunction with several other compounds it provides Devastator with an extremely powerful weapon. Devastator only had two guns that used this weapon, though, probably because anathelium hexaderitia is extremely difficult to produce.
“What we discovered, though, was that it is extremely unpredictable when in its natural state. Without the additional compounds present in the weapon, the substance would undergo a chain reaction and explode violently. Eventually we developed a way to disrupt the balance in the weapon’s particle beam and destabilize it. Our lab experiments showed that this should have caused a reaction strong enough to destroy Devastator and any nearby ships as well. We built a weapon that would deliver our destabilizing agent, and just before the battle at Ergana Prime we completed it. When Devastator charged the appropriate weapons, we fired. But, instead of exploding, Devastator absorbed the power from our beam. It then redirected that power and destroyed several of our warships.
“That seems strange, but I talked to Dr. Wernalk and he explained to me that what really happened was very simple. The beam emitter on Devastator that our weapon hit contained no anathelium hexaderitia. In fact it was not a weapon at all. Devastator emitted a replexing bendatulary uridic field just before our weapon hit it. The uridic field allowed Devastator to absorb the matter from our beam, which it then combined with other compounds and fired it at our own ships.
“But, there is absolutely no way that could have happened by coincidence. First of all, we had already observed Devastator’s guns firing the appropriate weapon during that battle. There is no doubt that we targeted the right guns. That means that Devastator switched weapons on us at exactly the right moment. And that means they knew what we were doing. Not only that, but the substances they used to create the uridic field require seven weeks to prepare, and they are absolutely useless without the substance we used in our weapon, and there is no way Devastator could have carried enough of it to make it into an effective weapon. The only way they could have obtained enough of it was to absorb it from a massive particle beam, which we provided them with. In other words, the Empire knew what we were doing, exactly the substance we used, and exactly how we planned to deliver it. It knew this all far in advance of our use of the weapon – far enough in advance to not only avoid our weapon, but to manufacture the one thing in the universe that could possibly be used to turn our own weapon against us. They knew, Gerran! They had to! Someone told them!”
Marnax’s brow was furrowed. “But how can that possibly be? We manufactured the weapon in five different components, and no one who worked on any of them knew anything about the other four! No one could have known what we were doing.”
Harvey nodded. “Besides you and me there are exactly seven people who had all of the knowledge necessary to betray us.”
“So we confine our search to those seven people. Easy. But what if it wasn’t one of them? What if the Empire has some sort of spy, or some way to tap into our databases?”
“I don’t know! That’s why I’m here! We have to find out, now, before we go into battle again and risk another betrayal!”
“We’ll meet with the others soon. We can work out something then. In the meantime, I’ll help you go over everything in relation to the weapon and see if there’s anything we missed.
Harvey nodded solemnly and turned to leave.
“Marvis!” Harvey turned. He looked miserable. “We’ll find out what happened.” Harvey nodded again and left the room.
The one watching them almost laughed. In all likelihood neither of them would ever find out. There was no way they could. StarBlazer would fail, and then the Empire would rule the galaxy. And then what? The answer was obvious. Then my work will be finished and I will leave Dark Viper to his little game. Then it thought of something. The Shield Master. Nedward Simmons. What of him? Perhaps there was hope for StarBlazer after all. It shook its head in disgust. No. Whatever Simmons did, it would be too little, too late. The Alliance was doomed. But then, isn’t everything? Hatefully it continued about its work.