"This is Marybel. With whom am I speaking?"
"Uh, this is Harris Gruberg. I'm looking for anyone who's an authority there."
"Well, Mr. Gruberg, I'm the specialist for this shift. Is there anything I can help you with?"
"Could you tell me if you've had any visitors come down to the planet today, and if you don't know, could you connect me with the port?"
"Let me check the logs... no. No visitors since last Friday. That was just before we lost contact with Domicile. And I can see the port from my office. No one has been over there since that time."
"Thank you, Marybel. You've been extremely helpful."
"Well, thank you, Mr. Gruberg."
The comm closed.
"No answer at the Retreat and no drop at Farmingdale. Can't say I like that."
Tawn replied, "Maybe Bax just doesn't want to talk to you. She might still be loading them up for transport."
"Maybe, but I want to know."
"We going to the Retreat?"
"We are. Trish, we're making a run out to check on the colonel and the others. You're in charge of these three. Check with Alex if you need anything. We'll be back as soon as we know what's going on."
The Bangor slid through a wormhole, coming to a stop in free space near the Retreat.
Tawn said, "Nothing on the nav. And no sign of a void with a point-source of random noise. Move us in."
Minutes later, the results of a bioscan were returned.
Harris sighed. "Nothing. Nobody there. Let's check Farmingdale. Maybe they were in transit."
A return to free space was followed by a jump to the agri-colony Farmingdale. Checks for Bax's hidden fleet were followed by a run in for another bioscan. Again, the results told of no sign of the Biomarines.
"Where could she have taken them?" Tawn asked.
"Last we knew she had been at Viochan. We check there, and then possibly New Earth."
"She wouldn't take them there. That's a death sentence."
"Maybe that's what she intended all along."
Checks at both worlds showed no evidence of Baxter Rumford or the Biomarines. The Bangor was soon landing in the grass beside the bunker.
Harris walked into the supply hut, Tawn just behind him. "They're gone. Bax took them, but we don't know where. Whatever deal they had with her, she either broke or changed."
Tawn opened a comm. "Idiot, we need you to do a search for Bax. Start checking systems for that point-source noise. If you find it, let us know immediately."
"Searches commencing now."
Tawn looked at Harris. "So what do we do now? Trish? How are the bots coming?"
"We have an abundance of processor cores now. Just need bodies to put them in."
Harris said, "The colonel gave us the coordinates of the Hailstorm. We could go get her. I hate to put more of those cores in her to fly her, but right now I don't think we have a choice."
"Let's bring her home."
A short time later, the larger two of the three ships in the small fleet were landing beside the bunker. Two cores had been selected for the Hailstorm and given orders. Commands would only be accepted from Tawn, Alex, or Harris.
Trish said, "You don't trust us?"
"Not that. I just want to keep their security as tight as possible. If we're away and Bax makes it back here, are you gonna give control over to her if she threatens to kill your brother?"
"Well, that's not a fair scenario. What if the roles were reversed?"
"Tawn would be a dead woman."
Tawn nodded. "What he said. We don't make deals like that for each other. Has to be an extreme reason for that to happen. It's what we were trained for."
"Fine. Guess I don't need control anyway."
A comm came in from Idiot. "Sir, I have located the stolen fleet. I've detected the point-source noise broadcast in orbit around Helm."
"Helm? You sure?"
"Why would I not be?"
Tawn chuckled. "Stupid question gets a smartass answer."
"This isn't funny. That place isn't friendly to Humans. If she took the colonel and the others there, it was not for a good reason. We need to go find out if this is true."
Tawn checked the time on her arm pad. "Less than a day and the Burrell are gonna be landing at Gondol."
"Then we need to get this resolved. If we have to, we bring them all back here."
Tawn and Harris hopped aboard the Bangor and were soon slowing in Helm space. A deep scan showed nothing but random noise.
Tawn shook her head. "We're blind."
"Then we launch a few probes through there and wait for visual confirmation. You want to send those along or do I need to do it?"
"I got it."
A hail came over the comm. "So you found me. Wouldn't have thought you had the brains. Looks like I have some work to do to figure out how."
Harris asked, "What are you doing here, and where are the Biomarines?"
"Your friends are down on the surface for safe keeping. I'm having the bots build a nice structure to house them. I'll provide food and water."
"For what purpose are you holding them captive?"
"Is your short-term memory that bad? The Frizoid are still out there. If they pop in here with a fat fleet, I want options. Once I have Domicile and the other colonies fully under my control, I'll use the bots to build a larger and more powerful fleet. Maybe even one big enough to go take a few of their worlds. But don't worry, that's a much longer term plan."
"Why Helm? Why this planet?"
"I'd like your friends to stay in the facility I'm putting together. Helm has sufficient oxygen, but no water. If they decide to break out, they'll be dead in less than a week."
"You made a deal for Farmingdale."
"Yeah. After thinking about it, I decided this was a better option. I was planning to leave a few bots here to do maintenance while your people stayed alive and out of sight. Now you've kind of ruined that plan. So here's an adaptation: I'm placing one of those gamma warheads in there with them. Any attempt at a rescue, and my bots will set it off."
"As I said before, you harm them in any way and you'll answer to me personally."
"Yeah, I'm shaking," Bax replied. "Look, I'd love to stay and chat, but I have other business to tend to. Ta ta."
— Chapter 9 —
* * *
Tawn said, "The point source has split in two. One is down on the surface. The other appears to be moving away from us."
Several minutes passed. A wormhole opened just as the second interference signal shut off.
Harris asked, "You get the destination?"
"Back to the Retreat. Guess she's gonna make that her home."
"At least we'll know where she is."
"What do we do about this?"
"What can we do about it?"
"Don't answer my question with a question."
"Don't ask a question you know I don't have an answer for. I don't know. Maybe we just go back and wait for the Burrell to show."
Tawn looked over the nav display. "Too bad we can't work up that same sensor disruptor for us to use."
"Maybe we push Idiot to make that happen."
"Take us home."
Several hours later, Harris was sitting in the crew quarters on the Grindle with Milos. "So tell me about your people? What drives them? Sports? Entertainment? Conquest?"
"We are similar to you Humans in those regards. Some of us spend our lives in competition with others, be those competitions physical or mental. Some like to sit and watch, allowing others to entertain them. And there are those who are militaristic in their every endeavor, always looking to advance themselves at the cost of others. My studies of Humans showed we share many similar traits."
"Tell me about your sport competitions."
The Burrell leaned back on his bed. "Games centered about a ball are popular, although somewhat different than yours."
"How so?"
"Our society places less value on life. Many of the Ro
lton games often end after the death of a player."
"Doesn't sound like much fun."
"If you wish to play the game, you assume the risk. Altercations can turn violent, and are often encouraged by both fans and leagues. The more violent the game, the higher the potential pay. Some of the mental competitions are just as bad. In the Race to Partiki, individuals are pitted against one another in a series of trivia questions. Each round brings an increasingly deadly shock to the losers. Most drop out before risking it all. Some will push until the end."
"What of your military? What are the attitudes of your leaders?"
"The spots can be both cunning and ruthless. Not to say there aren't an equal number of caring and considerate officers, just that you have to watch who you come in conflict with. As to conquest, the Burrell have always been explorers, and more often than not, conquerors. We do have more than a dozen sister species working within the empire. The Frizoid will claim this, but we only see those species fighting on the battlefield."
Harris asked, "When was it decided the Burrell were going to help Humans? You said you studied us for several years."
"The gamma ray experiment took place almost fifteen hundred years before your arrival here. Nothing was done until the time drew close for the arrival of the deadly onslaught of waves."
"So nothing was done until it was almost too late?"
"I cannot speak for the decisions made by my superiors or by generations past. All I know is that we made an effort to save you after our mistake became irreversible."
Tawn walked in the door. "Alex has something he'd like to tell you."
Harris stood and nodded. "Be right there. Milos, we'll talk more when I have a chance."
Tawn walked hurriedly as Harris followed. "Something important?"
"Alex seems to think so."
Alex turned as they walked into the lab. "I've isolated the phenomena that overwhelms our sensors. Our sensors rely heavily on the three outer-shell electrons of the thallium atom. I believe we can overcome that interference with a doping of astatine and barium. In simulations the interference was rejected by 90 percent or more. The sensors lose 3 percent of their range, but that can be overcome by having a combination of the two types."
"So we can defeat Bax's masking of her fleet?"
"We can. And as a benefit of my studies, we can now generate the signal as well. As an added bonus, if we broadcast from at least a dozen points at once, we would remain undetected with our current sensor technology."
"So we can hide from ourselves?"
"And everyone else as far as we know. Our sensor technology is based on Burrell tech. The Hoya sensors, as were those of the Denzee, were nearly identical."
"So what's the bad news here?"
"Bad news?"
"Each of our advances usually comes with one or more drawbacks."
Alex smiled. "Then I must apologize, as I have none at this time."
"When can we have them for the Bangor?"
I've tasked one of the bots with constructing the manufacturing bench that will be required to produce them. I expect that bench to be complete in six hours, with the first of the dozen broadcast transducers ready five hours after."
"And the sensors?"
"Those will require an additional day."
"So not tomorrow, but the day after, the Bangor will be able to fly to Bax's location? Stopping just short of visual detection of course."
"The answer to that question would be no. The sensors and transducers will have to be installed and integrated. That effort may take two hours or two weeks. We won't know if this fully works until it can be tested."
Harris nodded. "I do love tech upgrades. Anything that gives us an edge when we're so outnumbered. Now we just need a way to make ourselves visibly stealth."
"You may already have it," Alex said. "You had the Bangor equipped with an active skin that can be changed to offer different reflective colors. I believe the pure blackness of space to be one of those. You've had external repairs that will require looking into, but I believe the system when fully functional will make you extremely difficult to detect visually."
"What kind of distances are we talking about? How close could we get?"
"I would have to believe fifty kilometers to be manageable."
"What? That's insanely close. We could fire off a couple tungsten rounds before they could react. Doesn't do us much good against forty thousand ships, but it would work wonders one-on-one."
Tawn asked, "If we put more bots on this, can it be done faster?"
"I suppose."
Harris opened a comm. "Idiot, the doc here has a solution for the sensor interruption problem we're facing. I'll have him pass you his simulations and analysis. I need you to make this a priority effort, utilizing all the bots if necessary, to implement this as soon as possible on the Bangor."
The data was passed and a schedule put forth. An estimate of seventeen hours would see the sensors and transducers produced and bench tested. Four hours more would see installation and readiness for real world evaluation.
Tawn sat in the supply hut as she ripped open a meal. "This timing puts us right along with the arrival of the Burrell."
"If initial testing proves out, do we take her in close to the Burrell?" Trish asked.
Harris nodded. "I think we have to. We'll be cautious of course, but we have to know if this will work for us. If it works like the doc thinks it will, we can fly right up to Bax and annihilate her for good."
Tawn grimaced. "Not sure that's a good idea with her holding the colonel and the others. Knowing her, she has a standing order to those bots that if she's killed they take out everybody else."
The remainder of the day came and went. The device benches were constructed and put to use. After failures with the first two sensors, the third passed all tests and was soon being integrated into the Bangor's systems.
Harris opened a comm. "Alex, we're ready to give this a shot. Broadcast that signal from your lab. I'll be using the standard sensor first so we know your broadcast is actually working."
"Here it comes."
"Perfect. I can't see a thing except for visual. Other parameters are all showing a zero. Now we open our newly installed eyeball. And... I have all detectors showing at one hundred. Excellent job on this, Alex. Bax is once again trackable."
"I'll be adding one of these here for Idiot to make use of with his scans. No more hiding."
"No more hiding. We're two hours from the first transducer tests. That will coincide with the arrival of the Burrell."
Tawn said, "We have the time to kill. Why not pay a visit to Helm and then to the Retreat? If we come in at a respectable distance, they won't even detect the wormhole."
"Close that hatch and we'll be off."
"You close the hatch. The button is right there in front of you."
"You're seriously gonna make me lean forward when you're already there?"
Tawn shook her head. "We need to get you back in a fight. You're getting lazy. When's the last time you ran?"
"It's been a couple days, but we have a lot going on. You?"
"Fourteen forty-five this morning while you were playing footsie with your furry friend Milos."
"I was quizzing him on the Burrell. Trying to get a psychological profile going on them."
"What'd you find out?"
"They're a lot like us, only they don't value life quite as much. Lots of sports or matches where a competitor can get themselves killed. And I'm not talking about accidents. They have some violent tendencies, and apparently an appetite for watching it."
"He gave up all that info?"
"I don't think he views us as the opposition. Not sure what his real mission was, but it doesn't seem to have been to our detriment."
The Bangor came in short of what would have been a standard jump. Helm floated before them as a point of light in the distance as Tawn flipped on the active skin and set the exterior to pitch-black.
Harris chuc
kled. "Now what good does that do us? We don't have the transducers yet."
"No. But we do have the bots down there supposedly broadcasting the interference signal for us. Remember, they can't see us either. This will make us that much harder to see visually, so you can take us in closer."
"OK. Guess I missed on that, but we aren't going in any closer than we have to. I don't want to give those bots an excuse to snuff out all our brothers and sisters."
A short run had the ship in range of the new sensor. A large structure sat on the surface of Helm with four Banshees parked around it.
Harris groaned.
"What's the problem?"
"She put that building right in the valley we fought over. Could have picked anywhere on that planet and she picked there."
"You recognize that spot from here?"
"I stared at it for several hours from the transport we were taken up to when it was over. The bed in the med bay they stuck me in had a perfect view out a viewport. One of the few times I couldn't control being anxious as we were waiting to head home. That hillside to the left is where we spent our final days. The tale might be great for the history books, but the reality is we lost a lot of good people down there."
"I don't see how the colonel has any option but to sit and wait. Can we get a bioscan from here?"
"Too far, and not with that interference signal running."
"We have the new sensor."
"And we're still too far."
"Let's head over to the Retreat. See if Bax is parked there."
A run out to where a wormhole was opened was followed with a run in toward the Retreat.
Tawn said, "The jamming signal is there, but I'm only counting maybe a hundred ships. They're the bigger Hoya ships that would be carrying the bots. Should we move in to check for bios?"
Harris turned the Bangor back toward where they had come in from. "She's not there. The Fargo is gone."
"Where we going?"
"Back to Midelon. We came out for a look. Now we go back and finish up our updates."
A jump and a short run had the small cargo-shuttle landing in its usual spot. Tawn made her way over to Trish's lab as Harris opened a comm to his AI assistant.
"Idiot, Bax has taken the bulk of the fleet somewhere other than the Retreat. See if you can find out where."
ARMS Helm's End: (Book 7) Page 8
