Declination

by David Derrico

  “It was not able to defend against both attacks at once,” Daniel concluded.

  Anastasia leaned back again. “So, as I said before, I especially don’t like the idea of the two of us splitting up now.”

  “The orders have already been given.”

  “Don’t you think, if we explained your new findings to Admiral Wright, he would change his mind?”

  “Not likely. Besides, which planet would we defend, and which would we leave helpless? And, it’ll take me too long to reach Cordova. It may be all over before I ever get there. Charnus Prime is much closer.”

  Anastasia sighed, the thrum of her ship’s powerful subspace engines reminding her that he was right. “Yeah, well, the only problem is that, once I fire the SDU, the entire ship is useless for 90 seconds. Unless I can get out and throw rocks at them, I’ll need some help.”

  Daniel nodded solemnly. “I haven’t quite figured that part out myself. But we had better get underway. We don’t know how long until the ships will be back.”

  “You’re right,” she admitted. “But I still don’t like it.”

  “Neither do I, Anastasia,” Daniel replied. “Neither do I.”

  . . . . .

  Though he had been unable to move for some time—how long, Zach had no way of guessing—he still strained against his unseen bonds. He felt no discomfort, but he was held as if his entire body was bonded to the table.

  He looked around him for the hundredth time, suddenly aware that he had no idea how large his prison was. In fact, what he had assumed was a plain room with perfectly white, featureless walls, suddenly appeared to be infinite in size. Upon further reflection, he could not even positively claim that the room had walls.

  Zach jerked his head to his right to see a Lucani Ibron appear, seemingly from nowhere. As much as he strained, he could not turn his head more than a few degrees.

  “What do you want with me?” Zach asked, aware that a soft, almost inaudible hum had begun to resonate throughout the space. “What do you plan to do with me?”

  The light-being floated closer, until it was only centimeters from Zach’s face. At this distance, Zach could see through squinted eyelids that the light energy that comprised it was not uniform. Areas of varying luminescence roiled within the being’s body, and small flashes of light could be seen, as if miniature thunderstorms had erupted beneath its surface. The Lucani Ibron was smaller than a man, and roughly circular in shape, though Zach could see that the being’s shape, too, was elastic. Zach reasoned that he was probably the first human to see a Lucani Ibron at this distance.

  A jolt of electricity suddenly arced forth from the alien, striking Zach’s forehead and coursing through him. Though its abruptness elicited a gasp of surprise, the sensation was not overly unpleasant, merely a faint tingling that permeated Zach’s body and reassured him that he did indeed have feeling throughout.

  “You must be very proud of yourself, human,” came the being’s thoughts, projected directly into Zach’s mind. “But know that your actions are futile. Your race will be destroyed for its transgressions.”

  Zach tried willing his body to move, his body quaking with the effort. He imagined that he could see the Lucani Ibron smiling.

  “Your species has an amazing unwillingness to accept the inevitable,” his captor continued. “It is one of the more fascinating aspects of human psychology. It is regrettable that your species will not be subjected to further study.”

  “No?” Zach asked, peripherally aware that the hum had grown louder. “And why is that?”

  The being’s response was without emotion, as if stating a simple fact. “Because your species will soon be extinct.”

  “We’ve beaten you before,” spoke Zach, defiantly. “We’ll beat you again.”

  The phosphorescent undulations within the being’s body intensified. “That was an aberration. Your punishment has merely been delayed.”

  Zach strained to face his captor more squarely. “And who gave you the right to mete out punishment?” he asked, raising his voice to counter the ubiquitous rumbling. “What makes you the arbiters of justice for the entire Universe? Why do your judgements come before those of any other race?”

  The light-being inched closer to Zach’s face. “The precept that our judgements receive ultimate primacy is not an arbitrary one, human,” came its voice in Zach’s mind. “Whose judgements should come first in the Universe,” it entreated, “if not those of its first inhabitants?”

  * * * * *

  CHAPTER 17

  The conversation was going nowhere, and Anastasia was growing more and more frustrated.

  “Isn’t it possible,” she asked, “to section off a portion of the energy reserves, so they’re not drained by the SDU when it fires?”

  “Captain,” Vance replied apologetically, “it just won’t work. First of all, we need every drop of energy we have to cycle through that thing. Second, other than the emergency generators, which can’t power anything more taxing than emergency life support, there’s no way to partition the ship’s energy banks. It’s all interconnected.”

  Anastasia sighed heavily.

  “I’m sorry, Captain. Once we fire, there’s just nothing we can do offensively for the next 90 seconds. Even worse, we’ll be without shields or engines as well. We’ll be almost completely defenseless.”

  “So throwing rocks appears to be our best option, then,” she muttered.

  “I’m sorry?” asked Vance.

  “Nothing,” Anastasia replied. “Thanks for your help. Let me know if you think of anything.”

  “Sure thing,” he answered, turning back to his diagnostics. “I’ll be optimizing the power grid if you need me.”

  Anastasia spun around and headed back to the bridge. She entered to find her crewmembers in the midst of a discussion.

  “Captain,” Lieutenant Matthews asked as soon as she entered, “couldn’t we fire just before the Wind of Death engages, and have them both reach the ship at about the same time?”

  Anastasia shook her head as she slumped into her seat. “We can’t even fire while the SDU is charging up. I already had Vance go over the numbers. If we fire at the last possible moment, charge the SDU and fire immediately, the effect wave wouldn’t reach the enemy until almost thirty seconds after the lasers hit.”

  “Do you think that would be close enough to disrupt their hull?”

  “No, Cody, I told you,” interjected Victor, “I’ve been analyzing the data from our encounters with the Lucani Ibron. Their hull can reform in much less than that time. Almost instantaneously. A few seconds, tops.”

  “I’m sure you’ll think of something,” chimed Ariyana from her navigation console. “We still have a couple hours before we even reach the planet.”

  “I wish I shared your optimism,” Anastasia replied. “Maybe when we get out of hyperspace we’ll have enough time to contact Admiral Atgard.” More quietly, she added, “He could always think his way out of situations like this.”

  Victor flashed her a warm smile. “You haven’t needed him for the past six years. He’s been back on Earth, and you’ve done just fine for yourself. ConFedCom wouldn’t have given you the Inferno if they didn’t have confidence in you.” He looked his Captain directly in the eye. “And none of us would have signed up if we didn’t, either.”

  “Thanks, Victor,” Anastasia replied. “But I’d still feel better if Daniel and the Apocalypse were on their way to meet us.”

  Victor stifled a chuckle. “You know what, Captain?” he asked. “You know what I bet Daniel’s saying right now?”

  Anastasia rolled her eyes. “What’s that?”

  “He’s saying, ‘I’d sure feel better if Anastasia and the Inferno were on their way to meet me.’”

  Anastasia laughed the Commander’s comment off. But it did make her feel just slightly better to realize that it was, most likely, true.

  . . . . .

  No matter how long he stared at the screen, it did not chang
e. Fifty-two dead, over one hundred injured. Dex replayed the video of the explosion for the hundredth time. Snake-like girders trailed from the nose of the incomplete ship like the tentacles of some great space-faring jellyfish. The movements of space-suited construction crews could barely be seen at this level of magnification, but Dex knew they were there. Completely unseen were the scores of technicians already aboard the completed portion of the vessel.

  The explosion ripped the ship’s nose from its unfinished frame. In the debris, thankfully too small to make out, several bodies spewed forth in every direction. Many of them burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere before they could be recovered.

  On the viewscreen, the two halves of the incomplete Categorical Imperative began to drift slowly apart.

  And ConFedIntel had traced the attack to Charnus Prime.

  In a sudden fit of fury, Dex hurled a datapad across the room, shattering it against the far wall. He smashed the viewscreen on his desk, splintering the plasticite and acutely deforming the image. He raised his hands above his head to crush it again, but slumped into his seat instead. He found himself quivering with rage.

  I was such a fool.

  Dex’s stomach churned at the thought that he had sought to defend these madmen, that he had put forward the idea that anything less than complete annihilation of the bastards responsible for such acts was called for.

  The door chime snapped the Commander back to the present.

  “Enter,” he growled.

  Zip rushed in, phaser drawn, and surveyed the room quickly. He returned the weapon to his holster and picked up a chair that had been knocked over. He straddled the chair and faced the Commander.

  “What do we do now, sir?”

  Dex stared past his Lieutenant, his eyes burning a hole into the far wall. “Prepare the squad. We hit the base tonight.”

  Zip nodded, and rose. Halfway to the door, he paused, turning back to the Commander. “Standard combat equip, sir?”

  A faint, cheerless smile found its way to Dex’s face. “Full tactical,” he replied. “We’ll leave the gas bombs at home this time.”

  Wordlessly, Zip nodded, and left the room.

  . . . . .

  The Inferno dropped out of hyperspace barely fifty thousand kilometers from the nearest planet, and barely a minute from the orbital refueling station. Anastasia realized that time was of the essence, and had utilized the Inferno’s impressive new hyperspace capabilities to shave almost an hour from the refueling stop. It was unfortunate that the ship had to stop at all, but its prodigious rate of Duopasqualonium consumption over the past few days had totally depleted their reserves.

  Cody sidled the ship up to the fuel depot, expertly docking with the fuel pod, and with a resounding thud the docking clamps snapped into place. The Captain monitored the fuel flow from her console, the gauges filling rapidly. The whole process would take about five minutes.

  Anastasia idly looked out the viewscreen at the planet of Boreal below. A barren world, it was used mainly for energy production and as home to several shipbuilding facilities. Most of the habitable portion of the planet was covered by nuclear power stations, and, as such, not many civilians made their home on the planet.

  Captain Mason jerked back as an alarm rang out and the viewscreen changed its view to an area of space beyond the planet and the system’s feeble orange sun. Several flashes lit the screen, and a formation of military vessels appeared. “Byron,” she snapped, “what the hell is going on?”

  “Scanning,” he replied, his eyes darting around his console. “Captain, the vessels are of human origin, but they are not broadcasting Confederation military identification codes.”

  “SPACERs?” ventured Commander Zeeman.

  “They must be,” replied the Captain, straightening in her seat as she checked her own tactical console. The SPACER attack party consisted of four capital ships, several Corvettes, and about two dozen fighters. Not especially large for an attack party. “Byron, scan the rest of the system for Confederation military presence.”

  Byron complied with the order. “There are a trio of gunboats on the far side of the planet, and a pair of Corvettes flanking a larger Cruiser on the near side. Half a fighter squad is refueling here at the depot.”

  And the Inferno. That was all.

  The Captain cursed under her breath. She had not realized just how thinly the Confederation’s defense forces were spread. But the defense of seventeen systems and countless shipping lanes, combined with evacuations of several major planets, had left only the skeleton force Anastasia saw here.

  “Cody, disengage us from the fuel pod. Form up with the Cruiser, all possible speed.”

  “Aye,” replied her pilot, punching in the command to disengage from the depot. There was a whining sound, and an awful screech of metal on metal, followed by an ominous crack.

  “Captain,” he shrieked, spinning in his seat, “the docking clamps have failed. They are not disengaging!”

  Anastasia cursed under her breath. “Can we shoot the clamp off?”

  “Negative,” Victor quickly replied. “With fuel flowing, we could detonate the entire ship, not to mention the fuel depot. We’d have to at least wait until we’ve finished refueling.”

  Anastasia looked back to her console, at the SPACER ships screaming toward the horribly outmanned defense force. “How long until fueling is complete?”

  Victor checked his console. “Three minutes, fifty seconds.”

  She pounded her fist into her armrest. “Damn! This could all be over by then!”

  Victor shrugged helplessly. “The mechanism is completely disabled. It won’t even let us interrupt the fuel flow, and we can’t break free until it’s finished.”

  The Captain’s eyes flashed back down to her console. “The Confederation ships are engaging the enemy,” Byron reported.

  Visible on the viewscreen were the opposing fleets, which erupted into a hailstorm of battle. It did not take long before it became apparent that the incomplete Confederation defense force would not withstand the barrage for long.

  “I feel so damned helpless,” Anastasia spat. “With us in there, it could be a fair fight.” She looked over to the Commander, his face contorted by tightly clenched teeth. “They don’t stand a chance.”

  Before he could respond, the battle stopped, almost as soon as it had begun. The Confederation ships had stopped firing.

  “Captain,” asked Ariyana, “why have they …”

  It soon became clear. The Confederation forces had surrendered.

  The SPACER ships, calmly, and with more organization than Anastasia had thought they would possess, rounded up the remainder of the Confederation forces. A Cruiser and a pair of Corvettes broke formation, and headed straight for the depot.

  Anastasia checked her console. The whole halfhearted battle had taken just over two minutes. Nearly ninety seconds still remained on the countdown.

  “Incoming enemy vessels,” Byron reported methodically. “ETA: sixty seconds.”

  “Captain,” warned Victor, “one good shot would take out that depot. And if we’re still attached …” He glanced at his chronometer again, rechecking his math.

  “I know,” Anastasia replied, the nape of her neck tingling with fear. “We go with it.”

  . . . . .

  Daniel sat alone on the bridge of the Apocalypse, the familiar whine of the hyperspace engines faded to the point where he hardly noticed the sound. It was cold on the ship. Cold, and silent, and dead. Like a tomb.

  Normally, of course, there would be seven other people on board, and the Admiral would probably be passing the time before his arrival by reading a book in his chambers. But with no one else to monitor the ship, he was forced to remain on the bridge. Somehow, he knew that even were he in his chambers the ship would feel uncharacteristically empty.

  He had faced death many times over the years, but he could not shake a feeling of dread as he watched the starlines hurtle toward him on the main viewscree
n. He soberly realized that, as captain of a starship, he had never before faced death alone.

  Daniel leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers before his chin. He did not think often on the subject of death. The Eugenics Movement of the late 23rd century had not only increased humans’ life span, but had, more importantly, improved the overall health of the species, and had the effect of making people born after the Movement feel literally “half their age.” That, combined with advances in medicine, had increased the average human life span to over 130 years, a number that had remained steady for over two centuries now. It was, in fact, the opinion of the scientific and medical communities that the human body simply was not designed to live longer than a century and a half, and that anything past a century was more the result of life-sustaining medicine and technology than the inherent will of the human spirit to continue life in a material form.

  Most people, however, had become spoiled by their increased average life spans. Forgotten were the days when seventy and eighty years were considered a full and healthy lifetime. Indeed, most people seemed to think of a century as their God-given minimum allowance of life, as if the Universe inherently cared about humanity or their arbitrary base-ten numbering system and capricious method of dividing time into units based on the revolutionary period of their insignificant planet. Today, anyone who lived less than the magic 100 years was considered unlucky, and their deaths were universally mourned as a great tragedy.

  Daniel Atgard, for one, was happy with what was behind him, whatever lay ahead. If this, his seventy-fourth year, was to be his last, he would have no great complaint to take before God or nature or the Universe. Though he still felt strong and reasonably able-bodied, and would, like everyone else, like to get in his requisite 100 years or more should he continue to feel that way, Daniel had no great desire to live forever. Unlike the Universe he lived in, man was mortal, given life for only a relatively meager period of time. The jaws of time always nipped closely at man’s heels.

  But that, thought Daniel, was precisely what made mankind great.