The Slones stood on the veranda of their house, looking over the lake with its serene beauty. Christopher did not know how or why he knew it, but he could feel there was a war coming. Something told him to enjoy what he had while he still could. Alaya stood next to him and rested her head on his shoulder. He wanted to do all he could to protect his family, if only that were possible. The Saltic were a very powerful and dangerous enemy. They looked on humans as a resource and not a being. They had to be stopped if they planned to attack human space. The question was could they be stopped since no one knew how many of them there were. For the first time in his life, he despaired about the future.
“Hon, lets head to bed,” Alaya suddenly said and startled him.
“I’ll be right behind you,” Christopher said as his wife walked into the house. His heart was filled with love and a determination to live life now and let the future take care of itself. Slone left the veranda and followed his wife into the house.
Epilogue
A convoy of five freighters was moving through the Knowles system at the slow rate that freighters do. They were here to deliver vital mining tools as well as food, clothing and other sundries. It was a routine delivery, to a mining base on an airless planet, in Coreward Industry space on the border with unexplored coreward space. The system was as far coreward of old Earth as man had explored. It was also the farthest mining base from the Coreward Industries home world.
“How long remains on the transit to Knowles base?” Captain Macgruder of the freighter CI Tradewind asked.
“Just over five hours remain, captain,” the navigator reported.
“Very well, call me when we are a half hour out. I need some rest.”
With that, the captain left the bridge and his crew gave each other knowing looks. They all knew the captain was retiring to his cabin for a date with his latest favorite brand of whiskey. The crew didn’t blame him. Running a freighter was one of the most boring jobs around. The bigger corporations and the wealthier smaller ones all used automated freighters to avoid the use of human crews, but Coreward Industries was too poor. They were making money, it’s just that the CEO and her family kept it all and spent nothing on upgrades. They did not have enough money to buy automated freighters. As the hours ticked by, the crews of all five freighters, kept themselves busy either gambling or playing video games. They had seen all of the latest movies already for the umpteenth time. As they approached the mining base, they were told to pull into synchronous orbits. The captains of the freighters coordinated their orbital locations to make sure there were no accidents. Off loading of the cargo started immediately. Captain Macgruder and his counter parts from the other freighters went down to see to the off loading and then the loading of ore into the empty freighters.
“Macgruder, about time you arrived. We were running very low on materials. Why does the corporation always have to wait until the last minute to do things?”
“Joe, you will have to take that up with the big bosses. All I do is drive the delivery vehicle. Your people ready to do the cargo swap, I’d like my crew to have some shore leave. We’ve been travelling for two months. These beasts aren’t exactly fast.”
“Sure, bring them down and enjoy what little we have.”
The freighter crews all left their ships and came down to the planet for some R&R. There was a small tavern on the base and a back room gambling hall to make sure the miners don’t take home too much of their money. Macgruder decided to get a drink and try his hand at the dice table. He had some credits to burn and no one on whom to spend them. He was just starting on his second drink and he was actually up a few credits when alarms started going off all over the place. The tavern was next to the operations room and the ships’ captains all went there to see what was happening.
“What’s going on,” Captain Macgruder asked the nearest tech.
“There is some kind of disturbance half way across the system,” The tech responded and pointed to a tactical screen against the far wall.
Macgruder looked at the screen and could see something registering as an unknown energy burst. The information was just under five hours old so the disturbance was quite a ways off. Just as Macgruder decided whatever it was, was not a threat to the base, ships began to appear coming out of the disturbance.
“We have ships incoming from the disturbance,” One of the sensor techs reported.
The base commander asked communications if there was any telemetry. The communications tech reported that they were not transmitting an identifiable transponder code. The commander ordered a Red Alert and the klaxon went off throughout the base. There were several thousand souls on the base and a few hundred more in the attached mine. The base was protected by cannons on swivels and missiles. The problem, as with all corporations, lay in the fact that they had only enough ammunition and missiles to fend off some pirates. Here they were dealing with five ships, four small and one larger than an automated freighter, and they were hostile. Macgruder knew this because his cover was just a freighter captain; his job was to covertly report on any mines that were slacking in production. It allowed him to be on the correct side of the corporation and gave him some of the money the corporation was not willing to spend on upgrades. He had no idea who these ships belonged to but he had a feeling they were up to no good and someone had to warn the corporation. His crew was also in on his assignment and he had the equipment needed to discover what was going on.
“This is Macgruder, everyone back to the ship, now,” Macgruder sent his message over a secure, direct line to his crew. They all met in the hangar where their shuttle was and flew up to their ship. The stevedores were still in the process of off loading the cargo. Apparently, no one notified them of the red alert. The freighter crew docked their shuttle on the top of the freighter, over the docking collar. The crew went into the ship, but instead of going to the bridge, they climbed down a ladder in a cylindrical passageway to the lower portion of the vessel. There they entered an airlock that took them to the small bridge of a very fast scout vessel that was made to look like part of the freighter. Everyone took his or her assigned place and Macgruder sat in the captain’s chair.
“Detach us and take us to the outgoing slipstream as far from those ships as possible.”
The engineer stated, “Captain, when we detach, the Tradewind will suffer an explosive decompression. That will kill any of the stevedores aboard, even if they are wearing space suits. They will be propelled at a speed that will take them away before they can be rescued.”
“They are supposed to be tethered. Not my problem if they aren’t. Our job is to warn the corporation of what is going on and that means we have to observe and escape. Now detach us.”
“Yes, sir.”
The engineer pressed two buttons and put in a code. They could hear the explosive bolts freeing the ship from the docking collar and the helmsman immediately propelled the scout away from the freighter. As they did this, the freighter suffered an explosive decompression and they could see the bodies of the stevedores flying out of gaping holes in the ship. The scout moved rapidly away. The electronics aboard the scout were top of the line military hardware, bought from the Highline Corporation, who was the protector of Coreward Industries.
“I want everything recorded.”
“Yes, captain.”
As the ship pulled away, it started scanning and visualizing the incoming ships. They were all rectangular cuboid shaped. None of them looked like ships Macgruder had ever seen. As they approached the base, Macgruder watched and the ships never made any aggressive moves until they were quite close to the base. Suddenly they started firing what looked like bursts of light at the ships in orbit and the base. The orbiting ships exploded from the light burst barrages coming from the smaller ships. The main ship fired a steady stream of light pulses at the base and, under magnification, Macgruder could see the base was decompressing. Whoever this enemy was, they were intent on destruction only.
“I’ve seen
enough. Take us out of here at flank speed.”
“Yes, captain.”
The enemy ships did not attempt to follow the scout vessel. Either they didn’t see it or they didn’t care. The scout had an 11-hour transit to the slipstream away from the energy mass the ships came from. There was nothing to alert the crew as to the nature of this energy mass. Before the scout ship reached the slipstream, the enemy had returned to the energy mass and entered it. After they did, it vanished and all was quiet. Telemetry from the base had stopped and that meant the power was down. Anyone still alive would be long dead before the scout could return, but return he must to discover the nature of the attack. The base computers would have visuals and information about the attack. He had no idea what he just witnessed, but he knew those ships did not come from any of the corporations. They also did not seem to travel the slipstreams, but rather some kind of energy wave. Rumors reached Coreward Industries about an unknown human civilization on the other side of human space in the Matsua Rim. However, this was all chalked up to rumor and fantasy, since there was no way a powerful human civilization could have developed without the corporations knowing about it. Where would they have come from originally other than corporate space?
The scout ship returned to find a great deal of debris in orbit above the mining base were the ships were destroyed. That much he had seen from a distance. “Are there any remaining life signs on the base?” Macgruder asked.
“None, captain.”
“Land us next to the base and let’s get our vacuum suits on.”
“What if the attackers return?”
“Keep the engine running. Only four of us will go.”
The captain and three of his crew went into the base, which was no longer pressurized. What they found were bodies everywhere. On the upper levels, they were dead because of the explosive decompression as the base depressurized. As they went into the deeper levels, they began to see damage from direct combat. Apparently, the scout was too far away to see the enemy land shuttles on the planet. He had no idea why this attack took place, since nothing seemed to be missing. Macgruder and his crew retrieved all of the logs and videos of the events surrounding the attack and the attack itself. He would let the higher ups worry about it. He was concerned about what it meant for the future of his corporation.
The scouts returned to their ship and took off. They plotted a course for their assigned sector command post and that was where they would give up the information and put the event out of their minds. The captain was glad he and his crew had left when they did. He had no way of knowing that he was wrong about the attack. Something was missing but it would only be discovered when the cleanup crew arrived and identified the bodies. There were over a hundred people missing and these were the real target of the marauders. The balance of power was shifting in corporate space and a new player was about to enter the picture and bring an evil not even the CEOs could have envisioned. Humanity was about to face a terror beyond what they could imagine and no one was ready for it, other than the Romani, and they were not inclined to help the corporations as time was running out...
The Sakkara Page 24
