Book of the Guardian 3: The Last Mission

by Ben Winston

  The task of mapping the whole base had not occupied the scouts very long, so they moved on to the transit station the Guardians had found. Despite the centuries since the transit system had been sealed off and abandoned, it was remarkably still intact. Major seismic activity had been recorded over the years, yet not only were the tunnels still intact for the most part, but also the system itself was still able to function in most areas. This meant that the Tammerain had a method of building that was very resistant or very adaptable to seismic activity.

  The tunnel leading from the old base had been an end stop. The scouts followed it and found that it led to another station that was under the city of Threshold. When Threshold was being built, no one had found the old station because of the amount of damage that had been done during the fighting to take the planet.

  The initial survey before the last battle had listed a city in that location, but there had been only the remnants of the spaceport, and one other building remaining. The rest had been unrecognizable, slightly radioactive rubble; not even foundations had remained to mark where buildings had stood.

  The scouts did discover that the lizards tended to build underground as much, if not more, than they did above ground. Once the Scouts found the Threshold station, a major hub from the looks of it, they also discovered the remains of an abandoned underground city. The floor closest to the surface had collapsed and been destroyed in the battles, but the deeper structures had remained surprisingly intact. As the scouts uncovered more of the hidden city and discovered more hidden ruins all along the underground tram network, Bethel's Anvil would eventually boast a thriving archaeological business.

  The tram system itself was an engineering marvel. It used a form of anti-gravity to move trains from one place to another. Trains could even pass each other in tunnels simply by the precision manipulations of the gravity fields. Admiral Surry finally had to make the tram system off-limits from her engineers who clamored to learn its secrets. Others could learn those secrets; the Admiral and her fleet had a mission, and that had to take priority.

  Many light years away, in the area of the realm furthest from Tammerain space, in an isolated, and very well protected system, several hundred new warships had moved to the system boundary and were ready to jump out. These ships represented the latest advances in kingdom defense technology.

  Included in their number were fighter carriers, battleships, dreadnoughts, and a few ships never seen before in modern warfare; a smallish frigate sized craft whose prow was marked by an unusual amount of missile tube openings. This ship had one mission, to seek out and destroy capitol class ships. The missile boat was armed almost exclusively with the new hyperspace missiles. All of her brethren in the fleet had improved computer systems capable of receiving targeting hand-off from the small ship.

  The missile boats had larger companions that were little more than heavily armored, medium freighters. These were ammo litters, and carried a missile supply twice that of the launching vessels. Each launcher had two of these ships that stayed with them until their missile supply was emptied, at which time they would return to a supply base to reload.

  Another new class of ship was for the support of the fleet, lacked every type of weapons save for point defenses; a flying engineering vessel that could surround a damaged ship and begin repairs. The damaged ship could either remain in the fight, or the gantry itself could jump them both back to a dry-dock facility capable of repairing it.

  Loaded on the carriers and larger ships were new fighter craft, these new ships had improved power units, computer systems, and more powerful weapons including small mass drivers that fired tritainium coated antimatter rounds. The tritainuim had a property that allowed it to maintain the antimatter in a magnetic containment for a set amount of time without a power unit. If a round missed its target, the antimatter would destroy the round when the magnetic field degraded.

  A newly discovered technology that was just finishing development would give the small fighters, as well as the hyper-missiles, a major advantage. It had not been included simply because time had not permitted it. The scientists that developed it, called the new drive system a spatial/temporal fold drive. The techs called it a 'jump' drive. The military called it instantaneous interstellar travel.

  Depending on the mass of an object, this drive could move it to almost any point in space-time with little to no transit time. For vast distances, there was a resultant transit time measured in femto-seconds, or trillionths of a second. The drawback of the drive? Mass and density. Although not yet clearly understood, this type of travel dealt with an entirely different set of physics.

  The scientists that developed this new type of science had built a set of 'jump gates'. They placed one gate in polar orbit of the second planet in the system, and moved the other gate a hundred light years away, in uncharted space. It took the cruisers towing the gate almost two years to get it in position and activated. It took them less than a second to return to the gate at Xanadu. No other drive technology had needed to be installed on the ships.

  Plans were under consideration for placing the new transit gates all over the Kingdom, and several new gates had been built, but they remained in a storage orbit, except for the one that had been sent to Centauri Prime, and 'hidden' in the system. Currently the gate could only link with the other active gate in Xanadu, (the distant test unit had been remotely deactivated shortly after the test jump) and was to be used as a bolt-hole for the king and as many of the congress as could get to it in an emergency. As a safety precaution, a ship could only use a gate if had a recognized IFF signature. One drawback to the system was that a gate could only 'link' to one other gate, and then only if that gate was not already 'linked' to another gate. The gates themselves did not like to be close to one another when they were active, so multiple active gates could not be set up within a light-hour of each other.

  In the Xanadu system, two hundred of the new ships were standing by near the resident gate waiting for the transit order. The gate had already been linked to Centauri Prime, and all that remained was for each of the ships, one at a time to fly into the gate's event horizon. The gate did not look like a big ring, nor did it look like a huge pulse rifle, it was simply a smallish, (compared to a capitol ship, or a station) device that seemed to sit placidly in whatever gravity well it had been placed in. However, if you were in a ship, within about fifty miles of the unit when it was activated, you would be sent to the receiving unit instantly. You would appear in the same place relative to the gate unit in the distant system.

  Multiple vessels could be sent at once, but that could get problematic very quickly from a navigation stand-point, so a safety protocol had been included. Only one ship at a time, and the transit would not occur if there was a ship within the receiver's event horizon. In the event of an emergency, that could be over-ridden.

  Once linked, transit was one way. If Xanadu linked to Centauri Prime, then transit could only be from Xanadu to Centauri Prime. To travel back to Xanadu, the Gates would need to disconnect and reconnect with the Centauri gate initiating.

  The Centauri gate had been added to the existing System SATC(Space/Air Traffic Controller) facility so the gate could be controlled from that facility. When it was first brought online and tested the link formed, but transit refused because there was more than one ship in the event horizon. It took the bright boys days to figure out the gate was detecting the station itself, as well as the small shuttles that were either docked with it or stored in the station's internal landing bay. The multiple ship protocol was rewritten in order to allow the controller to select the transiting ship, and to allow for 'never transit' tags to be added to IFF signals.

  The order to begin transit was given, and while the ships at the outer edge of the system began making their normal hyperspace jumps that would eventually get them to their assigned duty stations, the ships of the new Centauri Fleet began the four-hour long operation of transiting the fleet to the Capitol World that normally
would have taken them much longer.

  Chapter 24 Stven Day (Seventh day)

  "Major," Lieutenant Carmichael called over the comm. She was the nominal 'pilot' of the TG Flyer, but the Guardians and one other 'pilot' took turns with her during long flights.

  Jon opened his comm. "What's up Carmichael?"

  "Astrometrics is predicting the formation of a transit point that will drop out very close to Centauri Prime. It'll take a few hours to get there, but we can make it before it closes. Are you interested?" The pilot replied.

  "Sure, go ahead and change course, are you comfortable with it, or would you like Chloe to come up there?" John asked. Using a transit point was very different than flying in normal hyperspace. Transit points were the natural formation of what 'The Gates' were created to mimic. However, in the naturally occurring ones, there was a potentially hellish navigational computation that most computers simply couldn't deal with. Luckily, the Flyer wasn't equipped with one of them.

  "I think I got a handle on this, but if you would like her to take a look at my plot before we transit, I'd be a little surer of it," Carmichael replied.

  "Okay, I'll let Chloe know. Good work by the way; you just cut three days off the trip!" John replied. Hearing the comm close, he got back to the 'paperwork' involved in becoming the leader of the new knights.

  Four hours later, John and Chloe were in the cockpit with Lieutenant Carmichael as they approached the outer marker for the Capitol system.

  "Centauri Control, this is the TG Flyer requesting permission to enter the system," Chloe called.

  "You're very early, My Lady," the controller replied. "With respect, can you explain this?"

  "Sure can, I'm sending you our logs for verification, but the short version is we jumped a transit point," Chloe replied, typing for a second on her keyboard.

  "Receiving." The man said. A few moments later, he came back on. "Verified. Sorry for the delay Flyer, can't be too careful. Permission for entry is granted. What is your destination?"

  Chloe chuckled, "He must be new." The she rekeyed her mic. "Royal Palace, Control. We should have a Royal Summons in the system."

  "Oh! Uh, Stand-by, My Lady. I'll arrange an escort for you," the controller replied.

  Chloe smiled sweetly. "Control, please tell your trainer to quit messing with you! We don't need an escort. We have a standing invitation and clearance for the Royal Palace!"

  "My apologies, My Lady. He's been doing very well for the last two days, when you arrived I saw the opportunity to trip him up. It almost didn't because this trainee is pretty good," a new voice replied.

  "Understood, Control, I'd say you owe your charge a beer for that!" Chloe replied.

  The original trainee controller came back on then. "Proceed on vector one-nine-two by three-four, speed point four. We are really busy today, so I may need to alter your approach. Thanks for the beer, My Lady, we'll toast you while we drink it."

  "Understood and not a problem, Control. Just holler if you need to," Chloe replied. "Good luck, and good work. TG Flyer out."

  Chloe chuckled. "Everyone has to start somewhere!"

  "At least he didn't lose his cool and get frustrated, he'll make a good traffic controller," Lieutenant Carmichael added.

  "Wow, I'm surprised they're training today! Take a look at the scanners!" Chloe replied. "There's got to be a thousand ships out there!"

  "Yeah, there's a hell of a lot more ships out there than there should be," John replied and keyed up his own communit. "ATC this is T-Gaurd One, over."

  "Main Control on-line. What can we do for you Lord Aster?" a no-nonsense sounding female asked.

  "A couple of things actually; First off, what's with all the ships? This isn't normal." John replied.

  "Secure comm activated," the woman said. "The Sentinel fleet is being replaced. The new ships have been arriving for almost three hours. When they all arrive, the old fleet will withdraw to be upgraded."

  "Okay, I can understand that, but why is everyone still crowded around the planet? It almost looks like the planet is under siege," John replied.

  "In all actuality My Lord, Admiral Thomes has refused to move any of his ships out until the replacement fleet is in position," she said flatly, telling John that she was not very happy with the intransigent Officer.

  "Can you add him to this call, and maybe I can help sort this out for you," John replied.

  "I would appreciate it, My Lord. I'm about ready to pull my hair out over this. Please give me a moment to add him in," the ATC officer said.

  "Good afternoon, My Lord Aster! Welcome to Centauri Prime! What can we do for you today?" Admiral Thomes said as he joined the channel.

  "You can clear something up for me, Admiral. Since entering the system a few minutes ago, I've noticed an unusually high number of ships in orbit of the planet. In fact, I've personally witnessed several near collisions. The ATC is telling me you are refusing to move until the new fleet is in position, is that correct?" John asked reasonably.

  "Yes it is, My Lord," the Admiral replied. "We are in a state of military emergency, and I will not leave my post until the incoming fleet can properly protect the planet."

  "I see. Tell me Admiral, did you have basic physics in primary school?" John asked.

  There was a short pause before the Admiral answered. "Of course I did, what does that have to do with the ATC not being able to do their jobs?"

  "It is a simple and widely known aspect of physics that two separate objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time unless one of them is out of phase. So tell me, if you will, how can the incoming fleet take position if you are still in it?" John asked reasonably.

  "Now see here, Major! I will not..."

  "Admiral Thomes, you will move your fleet in accordance with instructions from the ATC as that is her job. If you continue to refuse the instructions of the ATC, I will hold you personally responsible for every single loss of life and materiel incurred in the accidents that will happen. I will also make it my personal mission to ensure you are imprisoned for those deaths. Currently, I will be filing a formal suggestion with High Command recommending you be removed from fleet command and reassigned to a desk someplace since you obviously no longer have a clue as to how to command a fleet!" John said, no longer sounding reasonable, but rather firm and resolute. "Why am I not seeing any ships moving Commodore Thomes?"

  "You have no RIGHT!" the Admiral began only to be interrupted by John.

  "You better check your laws again, Thomes. Military emergency gives me all the authority I need. I'll be in orbit in forty-five minutes. If you haven't moved your fleet to where the ATC tells you, I will board your ship and shoot you in the fucking head. Do you understand me now?"

  The former Admiral disconnected from the comm channel. John saw the ATC was still on though. "ATC, has any of the old fleet begun moving yet?"

  "Not yet, Sir," the woman replied, sounding much less formal.

  "Chloe, could you see if His Majesty has a moment for me?" John asked, glancing over at her.

  "Sure!" Chloe said, and got busy on her comms. Very shortly a somewhat rumpled looking hologram of Mark was standing with them. He was wearing sweatpants, and it was clear he had been sleeping.

  "What's up, John?" he replied and yawned.

  "I'm very sorry to wake you, Your Majesty, but I have a problem with former Admiral Thomes," John replied.

  Mark cocked his head to one side. "Former Admiral? Maybe you should tell me everything."

  John told him about the last few minutes, and when he finished, Mark was pissed. He turned, and seemed to speak to the ceiling. "Who's on duty?"

  "Ford, Majesty. How may I serve?" a man's voice replied.

  "Thanks Ford, could you please get me former Admiral Thomes, priority two," Mark asked.

  "At once Majesty." Ford replied.

  "I'm sorry you had to deal with this shit first thing when you get back here, John. This was supposed to be finished by now. Considering the effic
iency of our ATC folks, I'd bet my crown we are about to deal with the reason it hasn't been," Mark replied.

  "Uh, Majesty, I have Main ATC on another channel," John said.

  "Good! They should know I think they're doing a great job, and that I know none of this mess is their fault!" Mark said.

  "Thank you Sire! We were worried that this nightmare might get blamed on us," the woman said.

  “The shame of it is, if John hadn't gotten me involved, it probably would have. We've been collecting far too many connected politicians here lately. Maybe I can do something about that," Mark replied.

  "Majesty, Admiral Thomes was on the comm with Senator Jenkins, and had put our call on hold to end his other call. Considering it’s the middle of the night for you, I thought you might like to know that." Ford said.

  "Ford, you are a devious saint, and I'm glad you work for me. Good Work," Mark replied.

  "Admiral Thomes for you, Majesty," Ford announced.

  "Thank you, Mr. Ford. Please put him on," Mark replied.

  "Majesty! I appreciate the honor, but you need not have contacted me directly. The matter is already being handled," Thomes replied.

  "Call your Senior Captain into your office, Commodore," Mark said in a flat voice. When the man looked confused, Mark let his irritation show and raised his voice. "Now Captain! Or would you like to try for Commander or lower?"

  The man must have quickly called in the officer, because he arrived rather quickly. When he saw Marcus, he bowed.

  Mark told him to rise. "Captain, have two marines escort your former Admiral to a shuttle and have him brought down here to the palace brig. Then contact the system ATC and very nicely request her forgiveness for the intransigence of an old fool. Then I want you to follow their instructions to the letter, and to the best of your ability. Is this understood?"

  "Of course, Sire. Do you wish us to proceed to our recall point when the switch over is completed?" The man asked.