• • •
Everyone turned to face him as the Admiral stepped through the sliding doors onto the bridge. Zach was back at the helm, wearing a small bandage on his forehead, but still sporting his trademark smirk. “You okay, Zach?” asked the Admiral.
“Me? Oh, I’m fine, sir,” he said flippantly. “Just a scratch.”
“Glad to hear it,” Daniel replied. “By the way, that was some pretty nice flying back there.”
“I told you it would be a piece of cake,” he said smugly, his smirk somehow growing just a tad wider. “And I saw the replays from after I was knocked out,” he added belatedly. “Was that really you doing all that flying, old man?”
The Admiral allowed himself a slight smile. “Nah … the ship must have been on autopilot,” he joked. Adding an elderly warble to his voice, he quipped, “These dadgum reflexes just aren’t what they used to be, you know … .”
The crew chuckled lightly. The Admiral was glad that they were still able to laugh even amidst the rigors they were facing. After all, in the most trying of times, often one’s only options were to laugh or to cry.
Daniel turned to look at Anastasia, and, though she was smiling, he could sense something deeper, a juxtaposition of conflicting emotions stirring within her. He saw genuine happiness in her eyes—a lighthearted mirth mixed with relief and joy over her recent visit with her loved ones. He did not need Anastasia’s advanced degree in psychology, however, to tell that there was also something hidden just beneath the surface of her emotional well—as her smile slowly faded, he could see that she was also silently somber and afraid, afraid that this had been her last visit with those she loved.
Not that the Admiral could blame her. Not that he could blame any of them for being afraid. He could scarcely have blamed them if they had gone AWOL and left on the next shuttle to the Outer Rim, which was no doubt part of the reason he had been lambasted so thoroughly for granting them leave by the Fleet Admiral after his deposition was completed. Daniel knew, however, that his crew’s loyalty was unflagging. If not to the Confederation, then certainly to him.
“Dex, have you completed the shield diagnostics?” he asked as he sat in his captain’s chair, knowing that he would have already done so no less than three times.
“Yes, Admiral,” came his expected reply. “Shields reading at 100 percent, 6.3 terajoules. The techs at the station were able to boost them four percent.”
“Excellent,” he replied. Every joule they could get between themselves and the enemy was welcome. Of course, the Indomitable's total shield output from its three planetary-class generators was several thousand times that number, and it had proved as useless as a soap bubble against the Lucani Ibron’s fantastic weapon.
“Do we have new orders, Admiral?” asked Zach eagerly. “Did they give you a hard time down there?”
“It wasn’t too bad. They were too worried about our problems to spend any time scolding me.”
“Problems?” asked Anastasia perceptively, picking up on his use of the plural. “What else do they have to worry about? You’d think the Lucani Ibron would be enough to keep them busy.”
“Normally they would be, Anastasia,” he replied. “But they have other things to worry about as well.”
“Other things?” Dex interjected. “What in the hell else could they possibly be worried about? We even took care of the only Vr’amil’een Battlecruiser for them.”
“I’m afraid we didn’t, Dex,” responded the Admiral gravely. “ConFedIntel has just received reports that, as we speak, they’re massing more hidden Battlecruisers for an assault on Earth.”
There was a short silence as the crew considered the implications of a hidden Vr’amil’een force coming to attack Earth in her weakened state. “So are we supposed to stop the Vr’amil’een, or the Lucani Ibron, Admiral?” asked Nathan.
The Admiral sat silently for a moment as he looked at the faraway stars peppering the viewscreen. Sighing imperceptibly, he turned slowly to Lieutenant Latimer. “Yes, Nathan,” he said wearily. “We are.”
CHAPTER 8
Daniel had always marveled that the layout of the Apocalypse somehow crammed amazing technologies like the Quantum Refractor and the Omega Cannon, advanced systems like the powerful engines and the shield generators, and enough room for the crew into such a relatively small vessel. After all, there were living quarters for eight people, the main bridge, the engineering section, the fighter bay, and a central chamber that alternated between serving as a briefing room, a “recreation” area, and a dining room. Though the rooms and hallways were far from spacious, they were also far from being unbearably small. The central chamber, known as the Hub, was the largest room on the ship, and it was there that the Admiral addressed the members of his crew, all of whom were to be assembled except Nathan, who remained on the bridge—just in case.
The Admiral surveyed the room, quickly noting that Assistant Engineer Ryan Taylor was not yet present. A moment later, however, he rushed in, his glasses bouncing where they rested atop his bald, coffee-colored head, devoid of hair by choice and not by age. Ryan was only in his thirties, well built and muscular, a firm believer in health of both body and mind.
“I was just finishing up some quick adjustments on the engine control subsystems, Admiral,” he explained, taking his seat. “Thought I could get us a little more speed.”
The Admiral nodded. After all, it was just like Ryan to loathe being torn away from his engineering duties for a meeting, or anything else, for that matter. Daniel had never met a man so in love with his work, and had routinely found him studying some new computer configuration well past the end of his designated shift. Ryan’s specialty was computer engineering, and before joining the Apocalypse's crew, he had worked on the notorious Implanted Microprocessor Project. The IMP had been an attempt at attaching a nanocomputer to the human brain, an attempt that had been technically and surgically successful, but ultimately canceled for other reasons.
The “other reasons,” Daniel remembered morosely, were that, within a month of the implantations, the test subjects had all developed acute complications. The majority of subjects abruptly “burned out,” their brains physically unable to keep up with the vast amounts of information and computing power now made available to them. Once they had “short circuited,” they regressed to a permanent vegetative state, no longer able to communicate with the outside world. The remainder of the subject group, however, those whose brains were physically able to handle the information, fared far worse.
This group, those with superior or genius mental capability to begin with, was physically able to withstand the deluge of information and corresponding exponential increases in synaptic activity that came with the procedure. The psychological effects of the operation, however, were considerable. The nanocomputers, like the ubiquitous wrist-worn models they were modeled after, were fitted with wireless modem devices, and enabled the subjects to tap into a literally infinite wealth of information, communications, and power. With a simple thought, the subjects could now talk to each other—as if through telepathy, learn anything they wanted—instantly, and remember everything—indefinitely. The psychological stresses of this omniscience turned out to be too much to bear. Every one of these subjects eventually developed disorders, which ranged from paranoia to depression to God complexes. Within a few months, they had all been declared clinically insane. Not a single one of them had recovered before their eventual deaths.
Purging his mind of the troubling history of the IMP, the Admiral turned his attention back to Ryan’s previous comments.
“Good, Mr. Taylor. It seems as though we’ll need all the extra speed we can muster, as our new orders now require us to basically be in two places at the same time.”
“Is that all?” asked Alexis sarcastically. “We got off easy.”
“Well, not too easy, Alexis,” he replied. “Fleet Admiral Le Jaunte in particular was rather annoyed with me. And now they want us to both continue our cu
rrent mission of searching for the Lucani Ibron, and also to investigate the Vr’amil’een fleet buildup.”
“‘Investigate?’” asked Anastasia skeptically. “Is that what they said?”
“Well,” admitted the Admiral, “perhaps I am paraphrasing just a bit.”
Anastasia smiled. “So which one are we going to do first?”
“I think—” began the Admiral, only to be cut off by Nathan’s voice coming over the intercom. “Admiral,” he began, “I have found something I think you should probably take a look at.”
“Good,” said Ryan from the back of the room, smiling. “I love short meetings.”
• • •
“I have some good news,” ventured Nathan once the Admiral had returned to the bridge, “and some bad news, I am afraid.” Daniel knew the Fedoran’s voice well enough to sense his trepidation.
“Figures,” sighed the Admiral.
“Which one would you like to hear first?”
“I think I could use some good news right now, Nathan.”
“Well, sir, the good news is that while the ship was being repaired, I stayed aboard to play a hunch I had.”
“A hunch?”
“Well … more than just a hunch, I suppose. You see, using data I requested from the Arcadians, which just arrived a short while ago, I began calculations on the interferometry readings of the Lucani Ibron’s hyperspace field inducer trails. Using our readings from their appearance a week ago as a baseline, and extrapolating the quantum coefficient from the combination of that data and—”
“Mr. Latimer?” interjected the Admiral cordially. “What have you come up with?”
“Yes, sir,” he continued. “I believe I have found a way to at least roughly track the Lucani Ibron’s hyperspace movements.”
“That’s outstanding, Nathan!” Daniel exclaimed. Sobering quickly, he added, “What’s the bad news?”
“Well, sir, if these calculations are correct …” Nathan paused, pretending to study the numbers flashing by on his display panel. “They will be here in just under six hours.”
“Figures,” sighed the Admiral again.
• • •
Hastily closing the book, the Admiral rubbed his eyes and fought to concentrate. His mind was certainly not on the novel he was reading now, a vain attempt to distract himself from the imminent confrontation that awaited him, the specter of which loomed over the entire ship. Though he had been strongly advised by Anastasia to get some rest before they intercepted the Lucani Ibron ship, he was, predictably, completely unable to sleep, kept awake by a potent combination of adrenaline and fear that overcame his nagging and ubiquitous weariness.
Suddenly, there was an abrupt jolt as the Apocalypse was wrenched out of hyperspace. The jarring tone of the alarm klaxons rang out belatedly as the Admiral leaped to his feet, racing out the doorway that led directly from his personal chambers to the bridge. “Warning,” trilled the monotonous voice of the computer. “Unanticipated hyperspace termination; reason: unknown.”
The Admiral rushed onto the bridge and into his command chair. “Dex, status report!” he called.
“Sir, we’ve been knocked out of hyperspace somehow,” Dex replied, studying his instruments. “I don’t know how or why.”
“Admiral,” added Nathan, reading his displays, “There do not appear to be any gravitational anomalies that would have pulled us out of hyperspace. There are no—”
Nathan stopped in mid-sentence as the eyes of the entire bridge crew became transfixed on the viewscreen. Abruptly appearing in a flash of light was the ovoid alien ship.
The thought that struck the Admiral first was how dauntingly large the ship seemed at this range, unexpectedly pouncing within a few kilometers of the startled Apocalypse. Its surface was composed of nothing the Admiral had ever seen, a semi-reflective, semi-translucent silver material that seemed to be more fluid than metal. It reminded Daniel of nothing so much as the surface of a placid lake on an overcast day, when the reflection of the drab gray sky overhead mingled with the murky water underneath the surface, creating the illusion of peering into the depths of infinity.
Mesmerized by the convolving surface of the ship filling the viewscreen, the Admiral almost failed to notice the white pinpoint of light that had appeared in the center of the writhing mass of liquid metal, the pinpoint that was growing larger by the instant.
“Evasives!” roared the Admiral, and Zach’s keen reflexes jerked the ship violently to the right. An instant later, a thin white beam of light shot out of the alien ship, passing through the spot inhabited by the Apocalypse a moment earlier. The Admiral quickly called up the astrometric displays, which pinpointed their location just at the fringe of the Creelar System. A system, the Admiral realized with horror, inhabited by more than two billion sentient beings.
“Damn!” exclaimed the Admiral as Zach sped away from the alien ship. “Aren’t they still supposed to be two hours away?”
“Yes, sir, they are supposed to be,” replied Nathan, perplexed. Looking down at his console, he added, “Admiral, I have an incoming message from ConFedCom, Priority One.”
“Figures,” groaned the Admiral. “On screen. Zach, get us some distance, please, and Dex, raise the shields.” Grumbling under his breath, he added, “… for whatever they might be worth.”
There was a short crackle from the bridge speakers as the viewscreen reformed to reveal the visage of President Stadler himself. “Admiral Atgard,” he began hastily, “you are ordered to destroy the alien ship immediately. You are authorized to use whatever means necessary.”
The Admiral’s face hardened noticeably. “May I remind you, sir, that there are two billion sentients in this system?”
“Two billion, one hundred fourteen million,” added Anastasia rebelliously.
The ship continued to lurch violently as Zach eluded the alien vessel in an exquisitely haphazard pattern. The rest of the bridge crew awaited the President’s reply, slightly delayed due to their distance from Earth. A quick glance by the Admiral at the tactical display showed that the alien ship was slowly but undeniably gaining on the swift Apocalypse.
The viewscreen showed the President shift in his seat, his brow furrowed. “The President is aware of that fact, Admiral,” he retorted. “May I remind you that I have just given you a direct order?”
Daniel did not flinch. “The Admiral is aware of that fact, Mr. President,” he hissed.
For what seemed like a long time, no one spoke. The periodic lurching of the ship went almost unnoticed as the crew sat in stunned silence. Turning away from the Admiral, President Stadler leveled his gaze at Dex. “Lieutenant Commander Rutcliffe, I hereby place you in command of the Apocalypse. And I order you to fire the Omega Cannon at the alien vessel immediately.” His lip twitched angrily.
Dex’s muscles tensed as he flicked his gaze down to his weapons panel. A short moment passed before the Admiral spoke up. “Belay that order, Mr. Rutcliffe. Nathan, end communication.” The President’s mouth began to open in outrage just as his likeness disappeared from the viewscreen and was replaced by the external view of the Creelar System. “And, Zach, get us the hell out of here. I want hyperspace right now!”
There was an inertial rush as the ship surged into hyperspace, temporarily leaving behind the alien ship and the Creelar System, but not the Admiral’s imminent court-martial nor the ire of his commander, the President of the Confederation.
• • •
The bridge was unusually quiet, even by recent standards. The only sound was the gentle throbbing hum of the engines as the Apocalypse raced away at maximum speed—away from the Creelar System, away from Earth, and away from the Lucani Ibron ship. It was a ship, the Admiral lamented, that seemingly had the power to pluck them from the safety of hyperspace, a ship that still chased them through the endless reaches of the cosmos. It was a space-age game of cat and mouse, mused the Admiral, a game whose winner would determine the fate of humanity.
They had
no real destination, as the Universe, for all its infinite vastness, ironically offered no place to hide. They were traveling roughly away from Earth, though the Admiral could not dispel the nagging notion that all that might accomplish would be a short reprieve in the Earth’s death sentence once the Apocalypse was eventually caught and destroyed by her unrelenting pursuers.
But the Admiral, as usual, did have an idea.
“Can’t you make this thing go any faster, Darren?” asked the Admiral through the intercom. “Can’t we divert all that new shield energy to the hyperdrive? They’re still gaining on us.”
“I already have, Admiral,” he replied through the speaker. “Believe me, if I could think of anything else to coerce so much as another drop of speed out of this thing, I would do it.”
“Nathan, call up the astrometric charts for this sector. How close are we to the Eagle Nebula?”
“At this speed … 2.4 minutes.”
“Zach, alter course to the nebula,” said the Admiral.
“Aye, sir.”
“What is it?” asked Anastasia. “What are you trying to do?”
“The nebula will offer some sensor interference,” Dex interjected. “But I would think the Lucani Ibron’s sensors would be able to penetrate it.”
“We’ll find out soon enough how good they are,” replied the Admiral. “Nathan, would you transfer me our exact speed and heading, please?”
Nathan dutifully transferred the readings to the Admiral’s display console. “Also, Nathan, I would like you to locate the section of the nebula with the highest interference, particularly in the upper Z-bands. Calculate a course to that point, and give me an exact ETA once you are finished. Zach, adopt the new heading as soon as Nathan determines it.”
“Right away, sir.”
“Admiral,” asked Nathan uneasily, “is it not generally considered a bad idea to travel in hyperspace in close proximity to gravitational fields? Like inside a nebula, for example?”
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