The silent tragic form of Grand Admiral Guenuel Koor had nothing to say.
CHAPTER 21
“Shitty frigging around, we’ve been doing nothing but shadowing for four days now, when will we get some orders?” Captain Konstantinov fumed, and needlessly so. His crew largely ignored his outbursts, though they steered clear of him when they occurred. Four days? That was nothing to a submariner with Konstantinov’s years of experience. Perhaps it was the opportunity for finally putting those long years of waiting aside and getting into some real action. Whatever the reason Konstantinov prowled his space borne submarine with the impatience of a hungry tiger. The crew was used to their Captain’s quirks. They’d served with him aboard this very ship during the “Cold War” with the U.S. Navy. Yet now real war had come, and, they had three dozen Alliance “kills” to their credit. The Gagarin claimed thirty-four warships destroyed on her now infamous single ship attack on the Golkos-Seer’koh fleet, with Alliance help, and two stragglers from the massacre on the Golkos-Terran frontier. The crew took pride in the accomplishment, but there was an almost feverish certainty that Captain Konstantinov was eager for more.
Konstantinov puffed like a laboring train, pacing down the narrow aisles of his bridge trailing the cigarette smoke of his second pack of the day. He stopped at the central Conn where a cramped hologram dominated the bridges tactical displays. He checked the hologram each and every time he paced the bridge, but no matter the scowls and growls the Golkos-Seer’koh formations did not change. “Bloody hell,” he muttered again and again. The Alliance warships just sat there in space, three parsecs from the frontier, taking no notice of the Gagarin. No vessels emerged from the cocoon of overlapping firepower to attempt to chase him off, they simply ignored him. This as much as anything else infuriated the Siberian, and more than once he hailed the Alliance fleet with insults, trying in vain to gain any type of response. The Captain angrily slapped the rail of the hologram base. “Maybe a full spread into their belly will wake them, what do you say First Officer?”
Commander Vladimir Chernenko grimaced at the third suggestion of attack this day. Shaking his head he advised his Captain, “Our orders forbid any such provocation, Captain. Our mission, signed by Alexander himself, is at this point reconnaissance and nothing more.”
“Damn this wallowing in space!” Konstantinov cursed. The Captain prepared to vent his rage and frustration upon his First Officer, who prepared for it, again, without any outward sign of concern. In mid curse, however, the Communications Officer interrupted him.
“Broadband encrypted communications being received by the Alliance fleet, Captain,” she informed him.
“Well, can you decode it?” Konstantinov asked impatiently.
“It will take a few moments, Captain,” the officer responded.
“Well damn it comrade lieutenant don’t waste time talking to me then, get to it!” The Captain ordered.
“No need, Captain,” the First Officer informed him, “The Alliance fleet is coming up to power. They are on the move.”
“Excellent!” Konstantinov exclaimed, staring at the now moving formations of almost thirteen hundred Alliance warships. “Set up a secure real time link to Headquarters, and track those ships! I want a projected course as soon as possible!”
“They are about to make the jump into superluminal!” Chernenko informed the Captain.
“Stay with them, First Officer,” Konstantinov ordered.
Chernenko went to the helm where the ships pilots operated the modified control board. The board was actually quite similar to the original, though the functions of the familiar controls had changed. The submarine still flew as she once did, though in space now, not water. The First Officer watched the scans carefully, gauging his orders for course and speed according to the movements of the Golkos and the Seer’koh. Shadowing during the jump was extraordinarily difficult as even the minutest of errors could put them instantly millions of miles from their targets. True, there were other submarines lurking about the perimeters of the Alliance fleet, but Captain Konstantinov was not about to let someone else gain the upper hand in this game. Chernenko calculated his orders with the heat of his Captain’s eyes burning into his back. The scanners showed the power curves of the Alliance vessels, and Chernenko calmly matched them. Then just at the superluminal threshold he gave the order.
“Engage superluminal engines, maintain heading and elevation!” The superluminal shift occurred, bluing the star field into a momentary web of glowing strands and bright cores; a glimpse into the foundations of the structure of the universe. Then the star field reappeared. A central core of blue stars stood on their bow. Each and every moment a dozen stars would break out of the core turning white and then red as they rushed by. The central core of the Milky Way was still there, comfortably nestled in the lower right corner of the field. To the left the vast bulk of the Alliance fleet slowly fell back. Chernenko made a small adjustment to their speed, and the fleet stabilized in their viewers.
“Well done, First Officer, station keeping!” Konstantinov ordered.
“Station keeping!” The First Officer echoed.
“Navigator, plot their course and speed; where are they headed,” the Captain asked.
The Navigator barely glanced up from her table, her charts replaced with several laptop computers and a small version of the bridge’s hologram. The calculation was easy, but she checked it three times. The answer did not surprise her, but her voice still quivered perceptibly as she told her Captain, “Earth, they are headed for Earth. Estimated arrival thirty-one days.”
Konstantinov nodded, and his voice and expression grew in gravity. “A full month,” he mused. “They’re not in any hurry are they? At flank speed it should take them only three weeks. Undoubtedly they’re keeping good formation. You never know when those crazy Terrans will attack. Isn’t that so Overlord?” Konstantinov grinned and looked directly into the bridge camera, which was sending the live signal to Alexander’s headquarters. With a nod and a wink the Captain addressed Alexander directly.
“Captain Konstantinov and the Gagarin awaiting orders, Overlord; we are ready and waiting, and-how do you Americans say it-we are loaded for bear!”
CHAPTER 22
“I don’t like this, I don’t like this at all,” Mr. Edgar breathed, his face flushed with emotion. His brow twitched, and he could not steady the cigar in his fingers. “Damn it! We should never have let you push us into this Crandal! Things were dead and buried. Now all of our past dealings are there to be dredged up against us. What was necessary in the past can be seen in a vastly different light now, and it is your greed and incompetence which has put us in the spotlight. Face it Crandal, you lost the edge. You don’t have it anymore, and we were fools to believe you did.”
“Whine all you want, it doesn’t change anything,” Crandal replied evenly, puffing at his pipe. “The fact remains that we’re not fingered yet. Alexander may still be alive, but he doesn’t see or suspect who is behind these attempts.”
“He saw enough to fire you,” was the retort. “A fine job of that, I might add, especially after convincing the Hrang that you would take care of the third attempt on Golkos if the second attempt failed. That won’t be so easily done now that you are no longer working on the inside. How are you going to explain that away?”
“Calm yourself, my friend, all of that is worked out,” Crandal assured him. The heavy man was unsatisfied and unperturbed. At that moment the door opened and another man entered. He was a stranger to them all. Crandal jerked up in his chair, a gun in his hand, but the stranger smiled holding up his hands and changed into a Hrang. Crandal breathed a sigh of relief, but said, “That’s a new look for you isn’t it?”
“I thought it wise to periodically change my appearance,” the Hrang said, changing back into his disguise. “Alexander’s security forces are proceeding quietly in their investigations but with a fair amount of energy. Having the same man appear here so many times without reason
might seem suspicious to the outside world. If I am suspicious of it other, more important beings, may also be.”
Crandal smiled thinly and stabbed at the remote sitting next to his drink. The television in the dark room bloomed to life playing a grainy black and white tape. “Have a seat. You are just in time for a brief review. Do you remember this event gentlemen?” Crandal asked, puffing at his pipe. The camera’s view moved inexpertly through the interior of a spare office building. There was nothing extraordinary about the locale, but wherever the camera looked there were the huddled bodies of white coated staff and soldiers. They were slumped on the floors in hallways, rooms, everywhere; lit up by naked electric bulbs.
Edgar stared dumbly at the screen before finally saying, “The “accident,”area fifty-one in seventy-three. The day the “Grey’s” killed fifty-nine people in the compound and then disappeared.”
“Yes, my friends, the “accident,” Crandal echoed. “The day when fifty-nine people were killed by our new friends the Scythians without bullets, blasters, knives or gas. It was that catastrophe of stupidity which cost us global power. The Scythians left immediately after the murders, but they left their victims behind. Autopsies revealed they were all killed by some form of telepathy, a psionic weapon. It didn’t take long to figure that out. Autopsies showed that the chemicals in each victim’s brain responsible for transmitting information through the neurons were all ionized by an influx of energy. The brains, unable to transmit data then simply shut down. It was efficient, and indefensible. What took a bit longer was to figure out how they did it. That little piece of work took almost twenty years, gentlemen, and was one of the few programs to survive through this very day. Fortunately, the Scythians not only left us the evidence of this new form of killing, but all of the technology that we had thus far captured or traded from them. We had all we needed to painstakingly piece the puzzle back together. We knew the Scythians were telepaths, but we also knew they were limited telepaths. There was another piece of luck on our side. We had, unbeknownst to the Scythians, a living Scythian prisoner. Now Scythians, as we learned, were connected with each other on a sort of species wide psionic net. We learned, however, that the net could be interrupted, isolating an individual from the rest of the species, by mildly short circuiting the brain. This left the individual in a coma-like state until we had need of them. We did this with a survivor of one of our shoot downs. When the Scythians left we set up an electric interference field in a special room and interrogated the prisoner. The Scythians, especially when isolated from the comfort of their psionic net, are highly susceptible to physical methods of information extraction. It didn’t take long to learn a great deal. We learned, for instance, that the psionic weapon is largely mechanical in nature. Although the initial pulse of energy is actually psionic it is amplified and channeled artificially. This is done through a complex body of circuitry impregnated into the Scythian’s clothing. Of course the Scythian’s wear this specialized clothing when they deal with alien races, as a precaution, so we have examples of it. The weapon has a limited range, about ten meters, and is omni-directional so it has its limitations. It is, however, quite lethal in this range.”
“How is it possible to employ this weapon against Alexander?”
“The weapon actually works quite simply,” Crandal explained. “The Scythian’s have an enlarged pons, and this is the area responsible for their telepathic capabilities. When a Scythian activates the psionic weapon a simple neurochemical trigger sends a pulse of energy out of the region. Normally this pulse would not be strong enough for you or I to notice, and it would do no damage. However, when amplified it becomes quite deadly to life forms without psionic disciplines, as we have seen. The question as to how to employ it is somewhat more complicated since we do not have a Scythian to trigger it. What we do have is the circuitry, and a passable mechanical method of artificially recreating the initial Scythian psionic pulse. The pulse, after all, is simply energy which travels by pathways dictated by physics. That does not mean it was simple to recreate, or that we can accurately do so, but we have a signature which is good enough to serve the purpose. When fired the pulse triggers the psionic amplifier and produces the desired results.”
“You have tested it, I assume?” It was the obvious question.
“Several times,” he answered, wreathed in a blue haze of smoke. “We didn’t want to burn out the circuit. It is unique, and beyond our ability to reproduce, as it is actually a bio-electrical circuit. Understand me, as are other Scythian products, this circuit is manipulated on the quantum level by a process still alien to us. But yes, we’ve tested it on several subjects with excellent results.”
“How are we then to employ it?”
“While engaged in my temporary but useful duties as Alexander’s Chief of Security I had access to Alexander’s private quarters. During one opportunity I secreted the circuit into Alexander’s ceremonial cuirass. He is very rarely without it, not only for its obvious protective purposes but due to its galaxy wide recognition. It is the same cuirass he wore on Pantrixnia, and Alexander knows the value of this recognition. He will wear it when he is on Golkos, and Admiral Augesburcke will be there as well. In one pulse we will take down the entire government of the Empire, leaving a void which we will fill.”
The room became deadly silent as the men digested the news. Crandal could see the slight nods and the hardening of their resolve. That’s exactly what he needed. Now more comfortable, he continued, “You see, alongside the circuit I also implanted a tiny ethernet receiver provided to me by the Alliance. We shall send our artificial pulse through an ethernet transmitter on the day Alexander is on Golkos accepting the Alliance surrender. The pulse will activate the psionic amplifier in Alexander’s armor killing Alexander and Augesburcke. To improve matters there will be nothing at all to trace the assassination to ourselves. The psionic amplifier, when found, is obviously Scythian; and though it is not common knowledge that the Scythian’s have this form of weapon our Alliance friends will assuredly aide us in holding the Scythians responsible for the act.”
“Ingenious,” admitted Edgar, “but why wait? Why not activate the amplifier now?”
Crandal shook his craggy head, “And change history before it is ready? No, my friends let us allow Alexander to play his part. He can gain the glory so long as we reap the benefits. After all, that is what galactic legends foretell as his destiny, and we wouldn’t want to alter destiny would we?”
CHAPTER 23
Alexander and Nazar were at dinner in Alexander’s stateroom, a chess board between them. Nazar had taken to the game quite readily, and as Alexander was no expert, he soon proved to be a potent opponent to the Overlord. Nazar was so adept, in fact, that Alexander was completely absorbed in an attempt to draw the present match out to a respectable length before his inevitable defeat. Therefore, when an urgent communiqué from the Gagarin interrupted the evening meal Alexander gladly accepted the rescue.
After taking the report he sighed, cradling his wine. “You know we’re not up against a beginner over there. There is someone in the Alliance hierarchy with a backbone. I see no other way they could move so quickly to the offensive after the thrashing we gave them on the frontier. Imagine the effort just to get the Syraptose and the Quotterim back in the fold. Incredible! I am impressed.”
“I imagine this is the work of their new Grand Admiral. They are definitely Golkos. We’ll know who they are in a decurn or so, and then I can procure the dossier for you.”
“That will be fine,” Alexander replied, his voice far away. “It has begun in earnest. I can scarcely believe it. We’ve spent so much time talking about its eventuality, even to the point of our raid on the Golkos-Seer’koh, but it scarcely seems real to me.”
“Alexander, that is a strange statement seeing as you dispatched your strike forces to Syraptose and Quotterim an eternity ago,” Nazar observed. “I remember you sketching out your invasion plans during the Chem civil war. This is hardly u
nexpected, especially as you planned for this eventuality decants ago. I know you too well to think you are having second thoughts.”
“No. I’m not having second thoughts, but it’s the first serious move in this galactic game. You’ve practiced and prepared for it, but until the game is underway and you take that first hit there is a surrealism about it. It is unreal. But there it is; it has begun. The Alliance has found their stomach. The three strike forces have already entered Terran space, and our forces will shortly begin engaging them.”
“Seven hundred ships spread out on three invasion routes to delay what amounts to three Galactic armadas,” Nazar smiled. “I’d not miss this for anything Chem could offer, unless it were a war against the Golkos. It’s just wonderful! Such brash gall! I’d not have believed any defense possible unless I’d heard your plans myself. I’d wondered how you were going to tackle the problem of fighting at superluminal velocities. Superluminal battle has been considered impossible for the entirety of our space faring history, and for good reason. A superluminal field is very susceptible to fluctuation, thereby negating the field. Firing from within the field is as disruptive as absorbing fire. The field can be protected by the ship’s shields, but only at the expense of power to the superluminal field. When one considers the additional impossibility of targeting a specific ship at superluminal velocities the reasons for abandoning any form of superluminal combat is obvious. The very impossibility of the dilemma must be what intrigued you. I must say your strategy is again elegantly brilliant.”
Alexander Galaxus: The Complete Alexander Galaxus Trilogy Page 73
