Neem’s usual cheer returned. He smiled “Now let’s see what happens if we try to open a wormhole through a rift!”
Just then, a call came in on both their phones, from Haral Karden.
“Eh?” was Jat’s friendly reply.
“Oh, Jat, you’re awake. Good to speak with you.”
“Karden, got anything interesting?” said Neem.
“In fact I do. I’m going to arrange some facts for you, and a goal. Then, let’s discuss ideas…”
“And me?” interrupted Jat.
“It involves rifts, so I thought you’d find it fun.”
///
Karden had little time to spare, but of all people, he wanted to meet this man. Varen, who’d had the same thoughts, was with him.
Shirazi was kept strictly isolated from other Protectorate prisoners. He was in a comfortable, but spare holding cell in the International Zone itself. There were no electric or electronic devices in the room, or anything that could be remotely used as a weapon. His elaborate Admiral’s uniform gone, he was standing there in gray prison clothes, facing them impassively with his hands folded behind his back. Karden took a long look at him, and decided formality would work best.
“Fleet Admiral Shirazi,” Karden said in his now-eloquent Elder, “I am Strategic Director Karden, of Global Defense Command for the planet Ground.”
Shirazi watched him, but betrayed no reaction.
“Admiral, though due to necessity of war, you are now are our prisoner, I would like to complement you on the brilliance with which you waged your campaign against us.”
“It was genius!” said Varen, who then realized he hadn’t introduced himself. His Elder was not as good as Karden’s, but it would do, “I’m Star Marshal Varen, also of Global Defense Command.”
Even after years of interacting with Elders, their facial expressions were inherently less intuitive to the Grounders than their own, and on top of that was the carefully cultivated Elder calm reserve. Still, something seemed to be passing through Shirazi’s mind.
“Brilliance and Genius? Strategic Director and Star Marshal, I did only what had to be done. However, why are you here?”
Karden replied, “Admiral, we are at war with the Galactic Protectorate, but not its people, not even, strictly speaking, its military personnel as individuals. Someday, this war will be over. When it is, I would like to talk to you under better circumstances. Whether or not you see it, I do think you are a leader of brilliance, and I hope to see that brilliance applied for the benefit of the galaxy.”
“Strategic Director Karden, are you asking me to betray my duty? I have sworn an oath as a military officer of the Galactic Protectorate, and so long as it stands, I will serve according to that oath.”
And with that, he would say no more.
///
The next couple of days were frantic busy ones for Karden. He worked on Viris and McCoy’s new propaganda video, very disturbed at news of Level Three Retrogression, but at this point, somewhat numb to such shocks. Then he discussed the military buildup with leaders from what were now the twenty-nine worlds of the League.
“Admiral Shirazi’s raids and economic disruptions have set us back, but thanks to our new friends,” and here Karden named leaders from the six most recently joined worlds, “not by as much as we feared.”
“In fact,” he said, “We will have nearly four thousand Liberty class warships ready by the anticipated attack date, and should have new weapons augmentations ready for all of them. In addition, we’ve begun construction on the first of the new Independence class star cruisers. They are five times the size and ten times the firepower of the Liberty class, and should give us the staying power we’ve lacked in situations where we can’t quickly rift away.”
“How will you know where to find the Grand Fleet?” asked the leader of the newest world, Service 146. He was Drakas, a tough looking orange-skinned Shulgar who wore ballistic armor as his normal clothes.
“I’m afraid I can’t share that. But we will, in eleven standard days.”
“I hope you’re right,” said Drakas, “Otherwise, we’re going to end up fighting on their terms.”
///
Karden, getting weary, sat at a control station with Neem and Jat, watching an image of a railgun floating in orbit. It was attached to a power supply and stabilizers to prevent it from moving in unintended directions, and it had a very small rift ring mounted at the aperture of its barrel.
“Here it is,” said Neem.
“The prototype?” asked Karden.
“Only a prototype of the ground controls we’re using, and even they are inspired by the work we did with that railgun battery back at Bacchara. The rift ring is an off the shelf model we’re already manufacturing in large numbers,” said Neem.
“Licensed courtesy of NeemJat Designs,” said Jat with an odd chuckling inflection to his voice.
“Harker’s moneymaking abilities seem to have rubbed off on you two,” said Karden.
“Should we work for free?” remarked Jat.
“Ready to shoot?” asked Neem.
“Yes. I think it might actually be… fun,” replied Karden.
He took the control stick, a bit like those he’d seen used by younger people on computer games, activated the rift, and looked at the screen in front of him. There, via a camera near the muzzle of the railgun, framed by the ring, was another patch of space entirely. Floating in a heads-up display was a viewfinder with target crosshairs, ammunition count, and a few other points of data.
The whole scene was relayed to him via a tiny rift communicator inside the camera. On either side were panels giving wider views of the target area, as seen by spy satellites. In front of him was a keyboard where he could manually set a precise coordinates if he wanted to do so. Neem had insisted he wear the headset that went with it, for voice communication.
“Ah, is that the target there, that tiny canister floating in space?” he asked.
“Yep! Fire away!” said Neem.
He zoomed in using the viewfinder, moving not just the view, but the actual rift point. It took him a while to manage it, but he locked on, squeezed the trigger, and the canister flew apart.
“Nice shot!” said Neem.
“That was entirely your work” said Karden, “This gun makes it easy even for a slow study like me, and it gives me an idea. Jat, what would you say the range is for the rift ring on this gun, if one wanted to go through the entire ammunition supply?”
“Well with current levels of power, not much, about a thousand light years” replied Jat.
“A thousand light years? That covers almost the entire distance from one end to the other of our little League of Worlds! I assume if we, say, doubled the power, we could get it far enough to have full coverage?”
“Yep. Why?” said Jat.
“Because if we can sit here safely in a lab, and shoot at something a thousand light years away, with a floating gun that costs a fraction of the price of a starship, we’ve just changed the rules of the game, and immensely in our favor.”
Neem started his now-familiar bouncing, “We could build them by the thousands! And it wouldn’t have to be just railguns… lasers and particle guns would need even smaller apertures – meaning longer range for less power – and with this set up, we could open the rifts almost right next to our targets… we could cut them to pieces!”
“All from the comfort of home,” said Jat.
“Now, while you and the manufacturing capacity of twenty-nine planets get started on that little job, I still need my eight thousand rift rings for the fleet. Off the shelf you said?”
“Well maybe not eight thousand, but close,” said Neem, “We’ve got them licensed to companies on twelve planets. I bet you can round up enough in time.”
Karden boggled, once more, at the new world in which he lived. It was amazing what was unleashed when you freed, rather than shackled, people’s minds and productivity.
53
; Across more than half the galaxy, a network of small spy and communications satellites was slowly expanding in the face of increasing efforts to locate and destroy it. Across that network, a transmission was spreading. It contained viral coding designed to rapidly spread through a planetary network. It didn’t enforce viewing, just made itself available to the curious.
There was a coded kill switch, but those who knew it were all high-ranking leaders of the League of Free Worlds.
On thousands of Production worlds, the curious began to watch a short video. It featured an introduction by a high Elder official in full white and gold robes of office, introducing himself with the unusual title of Philosopher Administrator McCoy, and instructing viewers to watch an important message. Next came a speech in eloquent, yet simple Elder, by an alien leader named Haral Karden who talked of the struggles of his world, far at the edge of the galaxy.
His people wanted to live in peace, but now they were threatened with war, and not just war, but complete annihilation. An excerpt of a message transcript appeared on the screen giving orders for something called Level Three Retrogression. Few outside of the military or diplomatic services knew what that meant. Therefore, the video showed them.
An old-looking, computer enhanced video displayed a planetary surface being bombarded, cities dying, and the corpses of millions on the ground. Finally, a few prisoners were taken away, and the planet’s surface was incinerated.
Then the leader spoke of his resolve to fight not only for the survival of his people, but for the freedom of all in the galaxy, so that none would ever again have to meet such a fate. He called to his fellow citizens of the galaxy to rise up and claim that freedom, to put an end to an age of duty, guilt, stasis and fear, even if his people, his world, might not survive to see it.
Reactions were complex. Many were indifferent. A few saw him as an enemy, of the Galactic Protectorate or of the cause of enlightenment, and thought his people would deserve their fate. There were others, a substantial minority, who felt sympathy. All lived under the cloud of fear and duty, and here was someone in a seemingly hopeless situation, speaking of a life free of them.
On Production and advanced Type 3 and 4 Supply worlds, here and there, things began to stir.
///
At all times, Karden carried a very special rift transmission receiver. It was one of a dozen that had been made. The eleven people who had the others were a group of his closest friends and allies. It was designed for the simple task of requesting and then receiving a set of coordinates.
On the thirtieth day, it was time. He pulled it out of a pocket from his clothes, unlocked it, and pressed a button. There were two pings back. Two of the transmitters planted by Skrai’kiik had survived to send signals a third of the way across the galaxy!
He had the coordinates, within a few kilometers of each other, in a wide stretch of interstellar space! Calls started coming in. The first one was from Skrai’kiik.
“Karden it worked! My transmitters worked!”
“Skrai’kiik, thank you… I don’t know I can ever adequately thank you enough for what you did.”
“That speech you made about liberating the galaxy, it better not have been just a speech.”
“It may have been propaganda, but I meant it, every word.”
On the other end of the line, she was making sounds that he knew to be the Ara’kaa form of crying.
Minutes later, Karden was making a mass call of his own, to the two hundred people, senior commanders, who had preplanned instructions waiting on this very news. He transmitted the coordinates along with a short message.
“The time is here. Be at the rendezvous point in three standard hours.”
///
Thousands of light years away, the Grand Fleet of the Galactic Protectorate had grown to thirty-eight hundred Warden Ships and nine thousand transports. Transports were still arriving, dozens a day, with fuel and supplies.
Supreme Fleet Admiral Katiyar was on his bridge with Flag Captain Sikrai, surveying the work.
“Admiral Sir,” said Sikrai, “We’re getting very close.”
“I estimate ten days, Flag Captain. Thanks to the vagaries of the Logistical Support Subdirectorate, there are eight hundred sixty four transports due to arrive in that time. However, then we’ll be ready.
A Communications Officer spoke up.
“Admiral Sir, I’m getting report of rifts and enemy fire along the outer globe at coordinates eight three nine four seven four.”
Katiyar opened a fleet-wide channel.
“All ships, all crews, prepare for action.”
///
Light years away, four thousand Liberty warships under Star Marshal Varen moved along a path of deep space operating bases. They arrive at an immense one, well prepared and supplied with reserves of antimatter. The entire trip thus far, a third of the way across the galaxy, including fuel stops, had taken a bit under three hours.
“All units,” said Varen in Elder, “We’re getting close to the end of the blazed trail. Now you’ll see why we have extra fuel pods and ammunition magazines in place of our missiles. The jump after this one is going to be a little longer.”
He sent a second message to his officers; Star Generals Edad and Driyatan of Ground, Fleet Commanders Avtil and Atsra’aak of Solidarity 17, and leaders from twenty other worlds, each with either their own recently-devised rank systems, or something borrowed from the Elders. He had a surplus of Fleet Admirals.
“All flag officers, review the attached fire coordination plan.”
He made a mental note that, if the war went on my longer, he’d push for some kind of standardization on ranks and command structure.
Varen sent a third transmission “Captains and navigation officers. Stand by while crews fuel up, I have your orders.”
Some minutes later, the fleet appeared at a point in deep interstellar space. There was nothing around for millions of kilometers. In fact, the nearest thing of any consequence was the Grand Fleet of the Galactic Protectorate, about a light year away.
They took their positions far enough apart to avoid interfering with each other’s rifts.
“All gunners and navigation officers, because we have no spy satellites at the location of the Grand Fleet, you will be using visual sighting with your rifts. As we will not have nuclear weapons available for this attack, we will be concentrating all fire on two Warden Ships at a time. When you lock on the assigned ship, immediately close rift and reopen at minimum stable range twenty meters outside their shields, then open fire.”
Everyone readied.
“Open rifts.”
Before them appeared the most astonishing sight any of them had ever seen. More than twelve thousand starships floated in space, organized in vast concentric globes. Around them flitted hundreds of thousands of fighters, shuttles, and tiny missiles.
“Select target.”
Two groups of two thousand Liberty class ships each aimed four thousand railguns at a Warden Ship - and not the entirety of each ship. A thousand ships targeted the stardrive, and another thousand the bridge.
As they opened their first rifts, tiny Caltrop Missiles, modified to track the slight energy flash of a rift, screamed toward their targets, but then found no targets. No ships came through.
“Zoom in.”
They selected new coordinates twenty to thirty meters from their targets, closed their original rifts and opened the new ones.
The Elder fleet scrambled, looking for targets of their own, but there was nothing to hit.
“Fire.”
The shields of each Warden Ship shimmered as they were hit with concentrated fire, tens of thousands of hypersonic rounds by four thousand railguns. Their shields were powerful, and recently reinforced, but the fire continued to pour in. The ships under fire attempted to maneuver, to shift and take the fire elsewhere. As they did so, the rifts closed and new ones opened closer to the new positions of their bridges and stardrives.
No matter
what they attempted, there was nowhere to escape, and no way to counter what was happening.
Within moments, sections of the shields started to ripple, flicker, and go out. Moments after that, two Warden Ships were reduced to leaderless, immobile hulks in space. Their compartmentalized hulls, sectional shielding, and independent life support held. Each had thousands of crew members and troops still alive, but with bridge and drives gone, they were out of any potential fight for a long time.
“Next targets.”
Varen’s fleet repeated the process, and two more Warden ships were out of action. In space behind him, the first of a long supply train of Freedom class cargo ships appeared, loaded with more ammunition and antimatter.
“Next targets.”
They began wearing away at the shields of the next two Warden Ships.
///
On board the bridge of the Reeducator, Katiyar observed the disastrous situation unfolding at the outer globe of his fleet.
“Reconnaissance Officer, any readings of ships, anything else, hidden with stealth casing?”
“No Admiral Sir.”
He turned to Flag Captain Sikrai.
“I think we are seeing a new application of the enemy rift technology. With no way to return fire, this will not be a battle, but target practice, and we are the targets. It means we must finish things sooner than we were prepared for.”
Katiyar opened a channel to the entire fleet.
“All ships, all crews prepare for prearranged FTL jump in ten standard minutes. All shuttles and fighters, return to your ships immediately.”
In those ten minutes, they lost more Warden Ships, but the Elder crews and pilots calmly did their duty. Shuttles and fighters loaded, crews locked down, and except for those ships damaged or under retrofit, the entire vast fleet was ready in the ten minutes Katiyar had given it.
“All ships, all crews. Jump.”
And nearly twelve thousand starships opened wormholes to another point in deep space, one much closer to the system containing the planet Ground. Behind them, they left the temporary starbase, thirty-two disabled Warden Ships, another fifty in the middle of retrofit, unable to jump away, and two hundred transports in the same position. Within moments of the fleet’s departure, five more transports arrived by wormhole. With Elder calm decisiveness, they moved to assist the stranded ships.
Alien Empire Page 36
