The Curanian Dominance: The Linda Eccles Series - Volume Three

by Robert Woodard

  Swinging her eyes over to Loge, who had hung around the control deck after Denc relieved him because he said he wasn’t tired or hungry yet, she said, “There is no way their fleet came from here to spring the trap on Nage. The time travel is way too long for them to have performed it in time to intervene like they did.”

  “Maybe they know we are following them, and they are leading us nowhere,” Loge said.

  “I seriously doubt it. They gave no indication of detecting us when they first entered the system, and after they departed, they would have been so far ahead of us, there is no way they could have detected us when we reached their initial jump point.”

  Loge turned his head to look at her, and asked, “Then how could their fleet have traveled this far and reached Nage in time to prevent his pacification plan?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it? I can’t come up with any logical reason for it other than their fleet had to have already been in the area for some other purpose. If that’s true, then Nage just suffered the misfortune of bad timing. The ship we are following was already at the planet when Nage arrived, so they must have been there for another purpose. I suspect it had something to do with that ship they pulled up from the surface.”

  “Maybe our answers are waiting for us at the other end,” Loge said.

  “Perhaps, if we ever arrive,” Denc responded. Her negative tone rang in her own ears at hearing the words.

  “At least whatever technology they use to get into stage-two leaves a nice trail for us to follow,” Loge said.

  They both leaned forward slightly as the ship dropped out of light speed, once again. Denc waited patiently, even though she was anything but patient at the moment, for a report to be made. Scanning the area in front of the portals, they had landed in the middle of nothing but empty space and distant stars.

  “Stage-two trail loss, Denc,” Wofe, who crewed the directional control station, reported.

  “We overshot them,” Denc said, “Finally.”

  “Now we just have to backtrack,” Loge said with a satisfactory nod.

  “Turn us around Wofe,” Denc ordered. “You know the drill. Short hops until we reacquire again.”

  While Wofe went about the tasks of making short jumps back along their trail to pick up the path again, Denc recalled the many discussions, or perhaps arguments, she had participated in with other ship commanders. Many commanders like herself believed that they always ran the risk of flying right into the back of another ship if it dropped out of stage two and didn’t veer in any way. Others believed that the sheer force of being in stage two would cause them to deflect slightly from a stagnate object and thereby avoid hitting it. Denc would like to believe that second theory was correct, because she had risked her own ship and crew by following directly behind the fleeing ship. It had dropped out of stage two, and she hadn’t run into it. However, it still left unanswered whether that ship deviated from its course before her ship passed it, or if her ship had flown directly passed it with a slight deflection. Either way, she had safely gotten passed it.

  Releasing the thought, she glanced at the tactical map as Wofe made each quick jump back along their original course. This would continue until they picked up the trail again. Once they did, Wofe would reverse course to make even shortly jumps until they finally triangulated the exit point of their target, or they picked it up on their rebounder. They would find them, Denc knew, as it was only a matter of time. She again showed patients as her crew did their job. Eventually, they found the trail, reversed direction, and then lost it.

  “They have to be right here, Denc,” Loge said while putting his finger on the tactical map and leaving a fingerprint on the screen.

  The logic seemed right to Denc. After narrowing their location between each jump, they had performed the latest quarter-tick jump and lost the trail again. Now the exciting part would commence, and the most dangerous risk of detection. They would jump back one-eight-tick to drop somewhere into the system where their target had to be. She hoped it would be on the outskirts of wherever the other ships resided, but it could just as easily be right smack into the middle of everything.

  “Set shields to maximum. Charge up the laser cannons. Calculate a stage-two emergency exit, in case we need to jump out again. Set the emergency beacon to automatically eject in case we are attacked.” Denc ran things through her mind to make sure she wasn’t missing anything. She then ordered, ““Alright, Wofe, let’s do it.”

  The ship and crew were now into the hands of fate. Her orders were to find the ship, so the risk was theirs to take. She had already sent a message to Control letting him know she was closing in on their location, along with her coordinates in case anything happened to them. The emergency beacon, if it ejected, would transmit its location so that others would know exactly where she was last positioned should her ship be destroyed. Nage had lost two fast attacks to these creatures, and with that in mind, she planned on being more than prepared for whatever awaited them.

  The ship shimmied and settled again. For a few ticks all Denc could do was wait for the strategic view to come alive as the rebounders fed data into the sweep for mapping onto the screen. The tactical map view also awaited that data to recalibrate. It was like standing in the dark waiting for someone to turn on the light.

  The strategic view came to life that caused warning bells to begin to ring in Denc’s brain. They were only 160,000 klicks out from what appeared to be a huge docking station. The station was well within the range of her rebounders, so she had to believe she was also within their range of detecting her.

  “We are being heavily scanned, Denc. They know we are here,” Yols reported from her communication station.

  “Sweep is picking up a lot of shipping here, Denc,” Adoc said from his tracking station.

  “Should we jump back out?” Loge asked. He seemed to be prompting her into action.

  “No, it’s too late for that. They know we’re here, so leaving will not change that fact,” Denc answered. She then turned to Adoc, and ordered, “Make as many sweeps of this area as you can before we are forced to leave. I want to paint a perfect picture for Plon, so he can feed it into his battle plan. Loge, get a plot going on jumping out of here on a stage two trajectory back to where Control has his fleet waiting.”

  “Sweep is not detecting either of the two ships we were tracking,” Adoc reported.

  Denc only nodded her reply while continuing to watch the docking station that sat before her ship. She figured that the two ships had plenty of time to enter and dock within that huge station somewhere while her ship was making short hops to find them again. She stared at the station outside the forward ports. While appearing as a miniature toy due to the distant, it had to be quite large to even be seen with the naked eye. Adjusting her focus to the tactical map, the simulated image of the station slowly appeared as more and more of the rebounder data fed into the sweep to provide details.

  The top-down view of the station gave her pause. The design seemed quite chaotic to her. The center of the station was round like a flat disc, but then three spears pointed in her direction. The spears contained tiny branches like a tree about to sprout leaves. Within many of those branches, the rebounder was slowly painting oblong objects that she knew were ships. And there were a lot of them.

  “I think we hit our mark, Loge,” Denc said while smiling. “This appears to be where they are housing their ships. It’s a good bet that planet is their home. Plon is going to drool all over this data when we get it back to him.”

  Her excitement at having successful fulfilled her duties ran high within her. Well not completely, Denc reminder herself. She still had to get out of here in once piece. So far, though, her adversaries seemed slow to respond. If they seemed content in letting her sit here and make nice maps, she would oblige them.

  ◆◆◆

  “Damn it, I knew this was going to happen!” Admiral Philip Litton said between clenched teeth as he stared at the screen on his ca
bin wall. He recognized the design of the little scout ship the moment he was notified of a foreign ship sitting at the edge of the shipping lanes.

  “It sure validates your redirect of the Auspicious, Admiral,” Roger replied.

  The feed from the Traffic Control Center routed into the Convictions recognition computer to spit out tactical details on the screen. The recognition computer had already classified the ship as a fast attack, even though Philip had recognized the ship by sight. It was a mirror image of the same ships he had captured in his first battle with the Curanians.

  “What do you recommend we do about it, Admiral,” Roger asked.

  Philip noticed that Paula now stood in the doorway. He figured she was listening in on something that affected her well-being, too. Ignoring her presence, he answered, “I want you to send out two destroyers to drive that ship off. They make me nervous sitting there spying on us. Once you take care of that, get this fleet of mine ready to move.”

  Roger left the cabin to see to his orders. Philip glanced out the door to see Paula giving Roger a concerned look. Philip decided to put her to work to keep her mind on other things. “Paula!”

  “Yes, Admiral?” Paula responded as she came through the open cabin door.

  “Here is what I need you to do.” Philip hesitated while Paula retrieved her electronic notepad and activated the screen. She had become a wiz at using it. “Get a message out to all commercial ships to return to Rapatine without delay. This is a priority one military order. Any Captain who refuses the order will be subject to immediate arrest, wherever they are, under emergency Governments’ directive. Include the actual directive wording too.

  “Secondly, I need you to set up an emergency meeting with the Rapatine Board of Supervisors within the hour. Send out the Conviction’s marines if you have to. I also want you to send a shuttle from the Conviction down to Rapatine’s surface with orders to load every ounce of demolition charges the village engineers can muster. Send a detachment of marines to enforce the order in case the villagers prove unwilling to hand it over.”

  “I’m on it, Admiral,” Paula said as she furiously scribbled on the pads surface with her finger. Done, she quickly turned and headed into the outer office.

  Phillip moved away from the tactical screen he had been standing in front of and plopped into his desk chair. Activating the communication icon, he quickly selected the preset emergency warning channel which he knew would go directly to the top-level officials within the Governments and all Admirals and Generals within the ESD. When the camera came to life over his monitor, he said, “This is Admiral Philip Litton, Chief of Staff—Rapatine. I am issuing an emergency notification of an imminent attack on Rapatine. I repeat that an attack on Rapatine is imminent. A Curanian fast attack vessel is currently holding position just outside the Rapatine shipping lanes. The ability to hold this station is questionable, and I will be making every effort to remove all nonmilitary personnel from both the station and the planet. I will also be taking steps to destroy all possible links between Rapatine and Earth. Immediate response with authorization to proceed and additional orders from Earth Space Defense is requested without delay.”

  Philip didn’t even bother to review the message before sending it. Time was critical now. He was banking on the fact that the Curanian scout ship was only a lead ship sent to follow the Auspicious, and that the actual attack fleet would be either sitting around Kracks waiting word, or with any luck, still back at the home planet of the Curanians. Either scenario gave him at least twenty days or more based on standard warp travel between Kracks and Rapatine. That didn’t even account for the time needed for a Curanian fleet commander to plan out his attack and pull together his fleet to communicate the plan to all ship commanders.

  “Admiral, the meeting with the Supervisors has been set up. I am using the main conference room on the Auspicious. They will be here at 11AM,” Paula said. Her voice came to him from the outer office.

  Looking at the time display on his monitor, Philip only had twenty minutes to prepare. Glancing up at the tactical display, he could see that two ships had already been dispatched into the shipping lanes. The Curanian Fast Attack had turned in what he took as preparation for departure. Apparently, they took the hint that it was time for them to leave.

  Ignoring the scene, Philip brought up the meeting sharing software on his monitor and began typing in talking points he needed to relay to the Supervisors. There would be a lot to do and very little time to get it all done. It would be the rise of the minutemen all over again. Only this time it was Philip’s turn to delay or turn back an attacking force bent on destroying the freedom of the people of Earth. He would be ready regardless the cost, and he suspected the cost was going to be very high in human lives—and most likely his own as well. He found that a very sobering thought.

  ◆◆◆

  Philip walked into the conference room after receiving word that the five supervisors were now present. Chatter filled the room as the Supervisors talked among each other. Not used to being kept waiting, they filled the void with conversation.

  “I thank you all for coming on such short notice,” Philip said loudly to reign in their attention. He didn’t have time to babysit political divas.

  As he slipped into a chair, his eyes swept the table. Supervisor Joan sat on his left and closest to him. A red-headed fireplug barely topping five feet, she carried an Irish temper she used often to get her way. Overseeing the commercial district, the business owners loved her drive for their causes.

  Next to her sat Supervisor Aleesha representing the professional district. She typically aligned with Joan since their constituents’ needs were often the same. Seeing her reminded him of how Paula commonly referenced her appearance as the girl next door. She dressed simply and sported a modest shoulder-length cut to her brown hair. Her looks were modest, too, with a nose slightly larger than her face allowed, puffy lips and a long neck. Despite her common appearance, she was professional through and through. She used diplomacy where Joan preferred arm twisting.

  Next to Aleesha sat Supervisor Dranko. If ever there was a stereotype of the old Russian mob, Dranko was it. His short black hair, pitted face, dark staring eyes, in combination with his extremely large nose, all seemed to be leading to his chin and neck that always seemed to sport a day’s stubble. It was rumored he drank a lot, mostly vodka, but Philip had never seen any sign of it. Since Dranko oversaw the shipping district, Philip interacted with him quite often. Dranko had always been professional, courteous and cooperative.

  Across the table sat the blond-headed Supervisor Sven. His normally light complexion appeared sunburnt with the coming of the summer season on Rapatine. His red face gave him a mad appearance, which was opposite his typically quiet demeanor. He seldom spent time on the station since he represented the Rapatine Colony. Philip figured he preferred being on the planet’s surface much more than the stuffy station.

  Supervisor Tasha sat next to Sven and could have been the dark-haired sister of Paula. Tall at six feet and sporting a sexy body, she could turn any male eye in the room. Her hair was so dark brown that it looked black under the lighting in the room. Her pugged nose and thin lips drew you right into her beauty. Philip never knew what her true eye color was because she always wore contacts in wild shading. Today, her eyes were emerald green, as was her pants suit. She oversaw the residential district

  Roger and Paula sat on Philip’s right. Feeling everyone was ready, Philip hit the sensor to activate the control screen mounted to his left. Switching the input to tactical, he brought up the recorded sensor readings of the Curanian ship.

  “This is a Curanian Fast Attack ship that appeared within the shipping lanes of this very station less than an hour ago. This represents a clear indication that the Curanians were monitoring the Kracks system, and that they followed the Auspicious to our front door. Supervisors, we can expect a Curanian attack, and I suspect it could be as early as twenty days from now. Having witnessed the d
estructive capability of this species firsthand, we face the elimination of this entire space station and everyone on Rapatine. In my limited communication with the two commanders of the captured Curanian crews, they have multiple fleets they can draw on to overwhelm my forces. It would be unwise for anyone in this room to believe I can put up a defensive stand to avoid their reaching this station.” Philip paused to let each of them absorb the information.

  “How do you know they will actually send a fleet here?” Tasha asked.

  “Yes. They could only be curious as to who we are and where we came from,” Joan added.

  “When they first appeared over Kracks, they did not show any curiosity at all. They blasted right through the minefield and begin attacking the launch platforms. There wasn’t any diplomacy opportunity then, and we shouldn’t expect any different treatment when they show up here. The last thing we want to do is expect the best and not prepare for the worst.”

  “I have to agree with Admiral Litton on this one. To sit here and do nothing when we know a potential problem exists would be shameful. What are you recommending, Philip?” Aleesha asked.

  “A complete evacuation of Rapatine is warranted. To do this, I am putting into place an immediate three-prong plan to address this threat. First, I have recalled all freighter traffic to merge onto Rapatine. We need to begin the immediate evacuation of this station and the colony on Rapatine. Secondly, I will be positioning my fleet into a defensive position to protect the station and colony location until everyone is evacuated.”

  “Can we expect help from the fleet back at Earth?” Tasha interrupted.

  Philip shook his head no, and answered, “I wouldn’t count on it, and I’m not asking for it. That fleet is our last line of defense should the Curanians find their way to Earth. My intention is to prevent that from happening at all cost. That brings me to the third part of my plan. It is imperative that nothing is left here to give away Earth’s location. All records, archives and computer data will be destroyed the very moment the Curanian fleet arrives. That includes the archives carried by the colony, too. We will be setting charges at strategic locations within the station to be blown should it prove unfeasible to stop a Curanian attack. I plan to deny them any viable usage of the station.”