Invasion Force (The Human Chronicles Saga Book 21)

by T. R. Harris

  Sharp grit his teeth. “Sierra one, one four,” he groaned. He was in no mood for protocol.

  “Yessir. Just a moment, sir.”

  The air traffic control officer came back on the line. “Yessir. One vessel, a non-designated freighter called the Nautilus. Landed sixteen forty-five yesterday afternoon, departed twenty-one eighteen the same evening.”

  This was information the general already knew. “Where did it go? That’s what I want to know.”

  “System Control had the vessel following prescribed course out to marker forty-two, at which time it initiated an unauthorized class one gravity-well and left the system.”

  “Did they maintain the course?” For a millisecond after a gravity-well was established, a tiny streak in the space-time continuum was created, indicating the direction of the well.

  “Course was consistent, sir. A violation has been charged for the early well creation and has been posted in the log, should the vessel enter any Union-controlled airspace.”

  “Thank you, Chief.” He cut the line and made another call.

  “Union Space Command, senior watch commander Captain Randal Simms speaking.”

  “Captain, this is General Sharp.”

  “Yessir, pleasure to speak with you again.”

  “This isn’t a social call. Alert outer perimeter security to be on the lookout for an old Expansion freighter that left the system along the alpha-two corridor at around oh-two hundred. They will more-than-likely be using evasive maneuvers by this time. This is a T&D Alpha-One emergency. The ship is believed to be carrying stolen technology vital to the Union.”

  “Yessir. I’ve sent out the alert. Probable destination?”

  “Formil. The planet’s supreme leader is aboard—”

  “Arieel Bol?” asked the Air Force officer.

  “Yes, that’s the one,” said Sharp impatiently. “She was pressing for us to release certain classified material to her for transport to the planet. Captain Adam Cain is with her.”

  “Adam Cain!”

  “Captain, dispense with the hero worship. Concentrate and do your job.”

  “Yessir, sorry, sir.”

  “Place watches along the route, and revoke all privileges for Captain Cain. He is to be stopped and confined at the earliest opportunity.”

  “Sir, we’re restricted from direct security operations within Juirean territory at this time…but I will ask for cooperation from local sources.”

  “Very good, Captain. Also, send a tracking unit out to their well-entry point and attempt to track the gravity wave. Formil may be their advertised destination, but there’s a good chance it was only a diversion.”

  “I have assigned this a top priority, sir. We’ll find them.”

  Sharp cut the link before letting out a deep sigh. He was frustrated and angry. He really liked Adam Cain, and now he saw he’d been played for a fool last night, lured into giving Cain and his team access to all he needed. It was never the Najma—whatever he was after. He wanted the TD module and a clone of the TD ship. And as for Sharp and his team…without the TD module, they had nothing.

  Yet Sharp’s greatest fear wasn’t that Cain had the module and a starship to stick it in. It was that he might make it work.

  25

  “You cannot make it work?” Jym repeated, looking up at his illustrious leader. It was not a look of admiration, but one of frustration. “I thought that is why we went through all that trouble.”

  “I’m working on it.”

  Adam’s answer didn’t appease the tiny Fulquin, or anyone else in the hangar bay for that matter.

  The team had moved a spare battery pack into the XR-3 and wired it to the generators. If need be, they could jumpstart the generators and get the gravity drive working. But if they shut it down for whatever reason, there would be no restart, not without the proper batteries. The rest of the power to the sleek, new starship was provided by a direct link to the Nautilus. It was fully powered, but just like with the scientists on Earth, the TD module sat idle. The indicator gauges were lit, but nothing was happening inside, not like before the Najmah Fayd had been torn apart.

  “We’re four weeks out, Adam” said Riyad. “Do you think you can figure it out by then?”

  Adam shook his head. “Let’s face it. If I can’t do it in four weeks, then another four years won’t make a difference.”

  “Have you considered that the module may have been broken in the crash?” Sherri asked. “It may be impossible to make it work again.”

  “That’s a possibility,” Adam admitted. “But that’s not how Panur built things. He made them to survive, even what the Najmah Fayd went through. But if something is broken inside, we need to find out what it is and fix it.”

  “So where do we start?” asked Kaylor. He and Jym were anxious to get their hands dirty making the trans-dimensional starship operational. The only problem was they’d done everything they could to this point and still the damn thing didn’t work.

  “Let’s go back to the beginning,” Adam began. “When Panur made his modifications, he only had the limited resources found on that planet where he and Lila were hiding.”

  “Panur’s World,” Kaylor said.

  “It had another name, but that’s what he called it. Knowing Panur like I do, most of his inventions were simple, built from things you can order on Amazon. That was his true genius. He took complicated concepts and found simple solutions to them. For the TD ship, he added some power components in the engine room, which the scientists were able to reverse-engineer. Then he built the module and slipped it into the control compartment. That was about it, and the thing worked. He was then able to create a small tear in the fabric of space and move between dimensions. It never seemed that complicated or stressful on the ship or the power systems. Now we have a brand new replica of the Najmah Fayd and the TD module inserted. We’ve all traveled by TD drive before. We know the signs and the flight indicators. We know when the system is operational and when it’s not. And right now it’s not.”

  “That was a very good summary of the crap we’re in, Captain Cain,” said Sherri Valentine. “Now how about a solution?”

  “That’s going to take some time,” he said. “And it certainly doesn’t help having the six of you standing around watching my every move. Scram, give me space. I have some mutant-enhanced thinking to do.”

  Arieel stepped up to him and took his hand. “I have confidence in you, Adam. You’ll make it work…or we will all pay a terrible price for your failure.” She smiled and walked away.

  The Nuorean Yonin Cavins (984) walked into the Master-Player’s compartment with purpose and approached the basic table Qintis Bondo (435) used as a desk. Yonin was second-in-command of the Nuorean force in the Kac, and therefore had authority to do so.

  “Something important, Yonin?”

  “It is not the Klin,” Yonin assured his superior. Both Nuoreans were ultimately concerned that their fleet may be discovered by the Klin. Because of this concern, Qintis had his people evacuate the planetside habitats they’d settled and re-boarded the nearly nineteen hundred starships making up their fleet. This allowed them to stay mobile and hidden between star systems, within the great void of space.

  “No, this concerns our Great Nemesis.”

  “Adam Cain?” Never in the history of the Nuoreans had one player acquired the status of a title. Adam Cain was the first. “What of him.”

  “A curious development. There is a galaxy-wide watch out for him, with an apprehend-on-sight order.”

  Qintis grinned. “Yes, we have tried that strategy ourselves, with disastrous effect.”

  “This is different, Qintis. This order was issued by his own people, the Humans of Earth.”

  “Now I am truly confused. Why has he fallen out of favor with his own kind?”

  “I asked the same question,” said Yonin. “Before coming to you with this news, I applied some of the confiscated wealth we still have from our colony worlds and made in
quiries. It appears he has absconded with some very important artifacts from Earth, items of military value.”

  “Such as?”

  “Information is not firm, but he has with him a transport module from his prior starship, the one that entered the Suponac and allowed him to wreck such havoc.”

  “The trans-dimensional vessel? This is a module from that ship?”

  “Yes, although it is rumored to be non-operational at this time. The Humans have been trying in vain to make it work.”

  Qintis was excited. For nearly two years, the Nuoreans had studied various data involving Adam Cain and his miraculous starship. Yes, they knew of the capacities of the ship, and regretted the fact that those in the Suponac had been unable to acquire the vessel. With news of its near-destruction upon returning to the Kac, Qintis believed that to be the end of the story. Apparently it was not.

  “He would not have jeopardized his fame and status unless he believes he can rebuild the device.”

  “Qintis, can you imagine what we could do with a vessel such as that?”

  “Yes, we could return to our galaxy—at least a small contingent of us—enough to inform others of our existence. It could spur accelerated action on building a new link with the Kac.”

  “Yes. And we could be going home in a few decades, rather than lifetimes.”

  Qintis thought for a moment before speaking again. “Gather all information regarding the location of Adam Cain.” He held up his hand to cut off the protest. “I know others are doing the same, but it must be we who succeed. Use our wealth to collect all information. There can be no higher priority than to find Adam Cain.”

  26

  For the second time in less than two years, Adam and his team were being hunted across the galaxy. However, redemption this time would only come if he got the TD module working and Lila and Panur on his team to help defeat the Klin. Nothing short of saving the galaxy—again—would save them.

  Adam had locked himself away in the starboard landing bay, spending hours on end trying to solve the problem with the TD module. He’d come to the conclusion that unit was the issue and not some other component within the power line.

  Panur’s mysterious black box had been off limits to researchers. They refused to break it open to learn its secrets, afraid they might not get it back together again. They tried x-raying it—and other more exotic alien technologies—to look inside. It was as if the irascible mutant had anticipated their efforts and placed shielding inside to confound their efforts.

  He scrounged the Library for all the information it had on dimensional travel, as well as topics surrounding Panur and Lila. Yet in his quiet moments, his new ability at near-total recall brought up vivid memories of his past interactions with the short, gray alien.

  Several years back, he’d left Panur alone for a week at his Lake Tahoe home. During that time, the mutant managed to completely rebuild the Pegasus into a supership, as well as construct a personal trans-dimensional portal in his garage. He did all this with components he bought online or at the local Home Depot. Panur was not about complicated. He was about simplicity—the simplest solution to a problem was the best.

  So would he have converted the Najmah Fayd into a dimension-hopping starship by making the power supply something impossible to duplicate? Or would he have tried to do more with less…as he did everything else?

  The question sparked a revolution in Adam’s thinking.

  Using his enhanced ATD, Adam attempted to break through the barrier keeping him out of the module. Yes, even his ATD couldn’t trace the inner workings of the TD module. This was strange, since he’d never been blocked before from any system he sought to scan. How could Panur have known of the mental scans, and more importantly, why would be want to block them?

  It wasn’t technically true that he couldn’t scan the unit. He hooked up an oscillator to the leads and ran various tests, using step waves, sine waves, box waves and more. Current was traveling through the unit, but having no effect on any of the components inside. He could follow this current with his mind, but it made a simple pass through the box without interacting with anything inside. It was as if the TD module was empty, except for a single power line running through it.

  Could that be it? Could the box be a decoy, placed there by the mutant to confuse and confound anyone trying to duplicate his work? Adam couldn’t rule it out. Panur was a bastard that way.

  Adam went back to the leads, forcing his mind to slow down as it entered the box. The power coursing through the unit was steady and unobstructed. He had to find some way to stop and look around, just to make sure there was something else in the box.

  It was strange, fighting a current with his mind. Then he changed the frequency of oscillation, increasing the frequency so it would pulse at a much quicker pace. This didn’t affect the current running through the box, but it did give his mind less resistance, making it possible for him to linger a fraction of a second longer just inside the box.

  And that’s when he noticed the bump. In reality, it was probably a relay of some kind. But in his mind it was a tiny hump off the main power line, an almost imperceptible bump in the smooth flow of electricity. Something was there, something that was closed.

  Adam tried to place his mental probe into the tiny alcove, pushing out to see what was there. His mutant brains cells kicked into overdrive, both collating information while also refining the definition of this mental signal. He was in a trance, oblivious to everything except the tiny channel. He pushed even harder.

  And then it opened.

  It was as if he’d been pressing on a stubborn door that suddenly gave way. His mind fell forward, racing along streams and rivers of electricity, riding a crest that eventually escaped out the other side of the module.

  He awoke from his trance to see the gauge on the unit reading a series of numbers he hadn’t seen in a couple of years. The unit was working.

  And all he had to do was hit the reset button.

  Adam ordered Kaylor to dump out of the gravity-well and the team raced to the landing bay in anticipation of the big reveal.

  “I’m taking her out for a test.”

  “Let me come with you,” Riyad said.

  “It’s too dangerous. What if it jumps to another dimension and I can’t get back.”

  “Yeah…what if?” Sherri protested. “Then you’d be lost, too. I don’t think we’d be happy if that happened.”

  Adam smiled. “I appreciate your concern, sweetheart. But if something goes wrong, I’ll have the best chance of fixing it. I’ll load the ship up with spare parts, batteries—and food—just in case.”

  “Is there not another way of testing it?” Arieel asked, concern on her face. “With the ATD, for instance?”

  “ATD’s don’t work across dimensions. If it jumps, I’ll lose contact. Don’t worry. I’ll just pull back the curtain a little and take a peak on the other side. It should only take a few seconds to see if it works.”

  “Then let’s get it over with,” Copernicus Smith said, bored with the whole we’re-so-concerned-about-you-Adam scene. “Even if it works, there’s still a lot to do. We don’t even know if we’ll be able to find the mutants.”

  “You say the word mutant as if it is a bad thing, Copernicus,” Arieel said in defiance. “My daughter is a mutant.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way. Mutants are good. They’re the greatest thing since sliced bread.”

  “Yes they are—what?”

  “All right,” Adam said, breaking up the minor dispute. “Let’s get the Defiant loaded and ready to go. This is the moment of truth.”

  It took thirty minutes to pack the starship with all the tools, spare parts, batteries and other equipment Adam might need to correct anything that went wrong with the trans-dimensional jump, although no one knew what could go wrong. They were being overly cautious.

  The external power lines were uncoupled and the rest of the team retired to a control room with a view of the bay. Adam
entered the shiny new starship and sealed the hatch. His ATD was already linked into the controls, ready to serve as his co-pilot. The air was evacuated from the room and the aft door was opened.

  The aft internal gravity-wells were dialed back, making the ship virtually weightless. Adam then gave a few small bursts of chemical propellant to lift the ship and send it floating out the back of the Nautilus tail first. When it was clear of the freighter, Adam spun the ship around and took her out a few thousand yards before matching the relative momentum of the Nautilus.

  He was ready.

  As Panur had explained long ago, trans-dimensional travel wasn’t so much a matter of distance but one of access. There were an infinite number of dimensions, all separated from each other by the width of a hydrogen atom—the first and most-basic building block of creation. Gaining access to these other dimensions was the trick. A disruption of the space-time continuum was required, and this was achieved through a series of counter-acting vibrations produced by the TD module. They were channeled through the ship’s systems utilizing the focusing ring setup. But rather than creating an intense point of gravity resulting in a miniature blackhole, the waves separated space to form a tear in the fabric of space.

  The Klin had built massive land-based wave generators that tore open space across a wide swath, large enough to send entire fleets of ships between dimensions. This alerted the Sol-Kor and their genius scientist Panur of the existence of the Milky Way Galaxy and a level of technology which they could exploit.

  But then Panur miniaturized his invention, bringing it down to a size where it would fit on an individual starship. This is what the leaders of the galaxy feared, a time when every ship had the capability to jump between dimensions, either to stay there, or to jump back in the Milky Way thousands of light years from where it had exited. Such vessels would be impossible to track or defend against. They could simply appear above a planet or behind a defensive line. No one would see them coming…until it was too late.