by Jim Rudnick
Gillian rose, nodded, and said, “And so it shall be, Ma’am,” and she turned to leave the lady’s quarters.
At the door, she paused and looked back at Helena. “Ma’am, is there to be any way ‘out’ of this for him? Can he say ‘uncle’ and come home, Ma’am, and if so, can I pass that along, Ma’am?” she asked quietly.
“He knows the only way out of this for him—for us,” Helena said, and she watched as her Adept officer left her quarters, and she sipped again from tea that now didn’t taste bitter at all…
#####
Tanner had an idea that he somehow had stumbled on in the Atlas officers’ mess, and it had been bugging him for a full day now.
Last night, he’d been in line for what was supposed to be a dinner of Chicken Kiev—a specialty of his chef’s team and he loved that meal. It was a big, fat Garnuthian chicken breast that was then pounded and rolled around cold garlic butter with herbs, then coated with eggs and breadcrumbs, and either fried or baked. His chef used the baked method, but Tanner knew that both were good, and as he passed down the serving line, he asked for same, and the serving steward lifted a big, fat breast off the hot table and onto his plate.
He passed on the veggies tonight though, as they had carrots in them, and after a lifetime of hating that orange vegetable, he still couldn’t stomach them. Something about the taste and texture of cooked carrots reminded him far too much of Branton, his home world, and that was just too much at once.
He wandered over with his tray to sit with a team of techies who were being treated to dinner by their department head up here in the officers’ mess, and he smiled at CWO Hartford.
“Permission to join you all, Chief?” he asked as this was a strict rule in all messes—one had to always ask to join a table that had seated diners.
“Love to have the captain join us,” the chief said, and Tanner sat down at the same end as his chief, unwrapped his cutlery, and prepared to try his Chicken Kiev.
As he cut down into the large breast, a jet of cheese burst out along with what looked like the edge of a slice of ham.
He stopped.
Chicken Kiev was not filled with ham and cheese but held only butter and herbs. No ham. No cheese.
He looked around him at the table, and every other plate he could see that held the same dinner all had butter and herbs flowing from inside the chicken. No ham. No cheese.
Ham and cheese was the stuffing for Chicken Cordon Bleu, he well knew.
But this was supposed to be Chicken Kiev. That’s what the menu board said, and that’s what the place cards said on the serving line.
He frowned, picked up his tray, and waved off the questions from his chief as he went back to once again stand in line with the other diners. Eventually, he got to the entree station, slid his tray over to the serving steward, and was about to ask what the hell when the steward held up his tongs and answered his query.
“Ah, heck, you too, Captain? We made up both the Kiev and the Cordon Bleu this morning and put them on their own trays and into the fridge ‘til dinner tonight. They all look exactly the same on the outside, Sir, so someone made a mistake when they loaded one of the trays in that they put Cordons on the same tray as the Kievs. Sorry, Sir—will replace it right away—know you love your Kievs, Sir.” A brand new plate made it to his tray, and he walked back to the techie table.
He thought about that for a moment as the butter and herbs slowly leaked out of his newly cut chicken breast, and he spread some on his rice to flavor same and enjoyed the dinner immensely.
Thinking back on that now, sitting in his ready room off the Atlas bridge, he mapped out in his brain one more time what he thought might be an insurance plan should the invader ship turn aggressive.
Insurance was always a good thing, he thought as his mind churned around how he could arrange this to happen and STAT too.
Many items to line up, ducks in a row he thought, but yes, that could work maybe—just like a Cordon Bleu looking like a Kiev. He smiled.
CHAPTER NINE
The invader ship over Memories was making a change, the mission ships noticed, and the incoming STAT Ansible message from the admiral made the noted summary. Each of the four massive ocean-draining ships had been called in, and none came back out. Each of the mining and exploration shuttles also had come in but not singly as per normal when they were full but all at once.
“Changes are happening,” the admiral said, “so look alive here, lads.” McQueen’s voice was loud, and every eye on all ten of the Team Memories ships were glued to their bridge view-screens.
And nothing happened for almost six full hours since the last of its minion ships had come home. Then the mother ship slowly turned to its port side and began to rise up and out of Memories’ atmosphere.
When it reached low orbit, it paused to take readings of some kind and then turned outward, toward the RIM Confederacy, and suddenly went to FTL.
Like the rest of the galaxy, it too used two of the ubiquitous Perseus engines to push the TachyonDrives faster than light, and it was good to note, Tanner thought, that its technology did not seem much ahead of their own.
But outward, toward the Confederacy, was not good news, he thought, as he looked over at his Ansible officer on the bridge.
“Lieutenant Irving, can you get any kind of a heading on where they’re going?” he asked but didn’t really expect much of an answer.
“Sir, yes—she’s headed directly for KappaD. No attempts at hiding that at all; the mothership just dialed up KappaD on Ansible, adjusted her helm setting, and took off under FTL, Sir,” she said. The wonder of it, Tanner thought, was there was no attempt to hide their chosen destination. That was not a good sign, he figured, and he noted that the invader ship was traveling at regular FTL speed for their twin Perseus engines at two lights a day. And with KappaD only six lights away, it’d take the mother ship only three days to arrive.
Tanner quickly asked his Ansible officer to get him the Admiral and on screen was fine.
Moments later, Admiral McQueen’s face lit up the bridge, and he nodded to Tanner.
“Sir,” Tanner said, “our figuring is they’re going to KappaD—reason unknown, Sir. But at two lights a day, they’ll arrive in three days. We can be there a full day earlier with the Atlas, Sir. Permission to forge ahead and take up a station over the KappaD north pole, Sir?” he asked.
It made good sense. As the Atlas would be there a full day ahead, that’d give them a day to prepare for the arrival of the invader ship, and that was just solid engagement thinking.
The Admiral nodded his agreement too. “Captain, ensure that you stay away from the gerent and all state departments. This is a military mission, so you’re excused from any kind of political machinations. Take up station on the pole and wait. That’s an order, Captain,” he said, and the screen went to black.
Tanner immediately directed the XO to take her out and jump on the throttle to get to KappaD STAT, and he watched for a moment as he made a couple of calls himself from his own console. They’d be over KappaD in about two days—and he had more of those ducks to get into a row to try to get that insurance into place.
#####
It had taken almost a whole day for Tanner to work his magic to try to get that battle insurance policy into effect. It had happened first over at a small mining compound where his XO said rare earths were found and mined extensively. The Atlas had done its work there first and then had moved back to Capuli, the capital city of KappaD, and had landed on the landing port but had neither asked to land nor followed any directions either from the landing port authority.
The CWO had taken off immediately with a small group of Provost guards as well as his own techies and had gone immediately to the naval base quartermasters stores to expropriate equipment—extremely important to the plan that Tanner had in the works.
The real delay down on KappaD with more bureaucrats happened, of course, right on the tarmac at the foot of the Atlas landing deck,
and he’d finally blown his top.
Barking at the host of men in suits with name-tags and clipboards to get the hell out of the way, he’d finally been forced to hit his PDA and get some of the Atlas marines down to the tarmac to get some order to the chaos. Major Stal had been polite, but when one looked at a marine who was holding a Merkel carbine pointed in your direction, it was surprising how that could help grease the wheels of Customs and Health and yes, even port authority minions too!
Tanner completed his tasks, and the horde of those bureaucrats was left sputtering on the landing tarmac, and while it was still serious business, almost all the navy and marine crewmen had a smile on their faces.
“Might get your picture up on the local post office wall, Captain!” Alver said and that too got another laugh.
They waited and in another hour or so, Chief Warrant Officer Hartford made it back from his scavenging mission, and once his items were stowed away too, the Atlas lifted off and went north to sit over the pole.
Taking up a station just a couple of miles from true north, Tanner cautioned the bridge crew—all crew really—as he made his engagement tactics a public address so all would know what they were facing.
“If the mother ship comes looking and wants to talk—we talk. If she comes to reap and harvest and will not talk, then the admiral has declared that as grounds to engage. We will engage, so a reminder that ‘battle stations’ might come with not much notice, so be prepared and ready at all times,” he said, and his face grew tight as he said that.
Notifying crew that the ship might be facing an aggressor was always a tough job, let’s just hope we win this one, he thought.
And they waited. At the four-hour mark, the earliest that the mother ship might appear, they waited. Five hours. Six hours. Seven hours, and then suddenly, the invader ship blinked into real space out of FTL a few thousand yards away and again just sat there for more than an hour.
It moved eventually to sit right over the true pole, all ice floes and bergs and thousands of square miles of nothing but snow and ice. It sat there, Ansible said, and did nothing, Lieutenant Irving said. The mother ship was conducting no scans, no diagnostics, no repairs, and not a single thing that could be detected, Lieutenant Irving relayed with a bit of exasperation in her voice.
Tanner nodded at that. An invading ship had a duty, did it not, to let others know what it was up to—at least in my world, Tanner thought, that’d be a rule. Like rules in battle exist. He shook his head at that dumb thought.
So they waited. An hour passed and then another hour, and then almost a full twelve hours after the ship arrived, something happened.
Around them, other ships of Team Memories were arriving too. The Nugent with the admiral was one of the first, along with the Duchy d’Avigdor’s cruiser, the Alex’n sphere ship, and the Barony destroyer, the Gibraltar. Nice to have company, Tanner thought, and as they passed over to the admiral what little they had for intel, it quickly made its way to all the ships. The balance of the team would soon arrive as well as they were slower ships, and in the next nine hours, the full ten ships of Team Memories had taken up stations around the invader ship.
Which still just sat there, plainly doing nothing.
Intel was skimpy too. There was little that one could share when the information was nonexistent.
“We wait,” Tanner said to himself, and he left the bridge to go to his quarters as the shift ended on the bridge for the day and new crew took over.
Up in his quarters, he stripped off his uniform, left it in a heap at the side of the toilet, and quickly went straight to bed to try to get some sleep as he knew that tomorrow was going to be a doozy.
Sleep came early to him that night … and he fell into a dreamless state quickly as the Team Memories ships sat and waited for something—anything—to change with the invader ship.
#####
The Atlas AI said it started about an hour before daylight came to Capuli, but of course, sitting over the pole, one wouldn’t know that. But the pink force fields on one side of the mother ship dropped off as out came the four massive ocean-draining ships that once again took a ninety-degree heading and went down a thousand miles or so to begin taking on water.
Nothing different there, the AI recorded to the intel file and shared it instantly with all of the Team Memories ships at once.
Of course, on each ship, klaxons were sounding as each ship went to battle stations and crews were roused. They jumped into their uniforms and prepared for the day.
Tanner struggled with his uniform shirt, and tucking only a partial tail into his pants, he hotfooted it out his door, down the corridor a few feet to the stairs down from Deck Four to Deck Five, and then to port to run right into the bridge as the klaxons still sounded ship-wide.
“Lieutenant, you’re relived,” he said to the night-shift duty officer who nodded and said, “Captain on the bridge and he has the comm,” and he stepped away as quickly as he could.
More and more of the normal day bridge crew showed up over the next few minutes, and in less than five minutes while Tanner was busy reading the intel reports and such, the normal shift crew were present and had relieved their outgoing counterparts.
Lieutenant Irving spoke first. Her hair hadn’t seen a brush today, and like him, a tail of her uniform shirt hung over her belt.
“Sir, Ansible is quiet. The invader ship has not sent anything to us—to anyone in fact from what our records show since they got here to KappaD. Sir, I also have an urgent incoming request to speak to you—to anyone really—from the gerent here on KappaD. Sir?” she said, and she paused with a finger over the top of her keyboard on the Ansible console station.
He shook his head. “No time now for politics, Lieutenant—the admiral will look after that, I suspect,” he said, and the whole bridge crew smiled. The klaxons shut down and the crew was ready and able to work on these latest developments.
“Helm,” he said to Lieutenant Cooper, “on screen one of those ocean-reaping ships, please?”
Moments later, the view-screen was full of the large diamond-shaped ship that hovered a few hundred feet of the water. Some kind of a tractor beam, or something similar, was sucking up a huge spout of water from the ocean below directly into the ship itself. The sidebar on the view-screen said it was in the area of a thousand gallons a second. And if things here were the same, then that would go on for more than a week, meaning that the storage space on that ship would have to be enormous.
Tanner turned to his Science officer and said, “Thoughts on the storage for that amount, Karl?”
“Sir, yes, we’ve been noodling that around now for a few weeks, I’d guess. In our way of thinking, unless the laws of physics do not exist on that ocean-reaping ship, there is no way to store that much water onboard. So something else must be happening, which to our way of thinking would be simple molecular storage. Water is—as we know—H2O. So if you break that down, into hydrogen and oxygen, the water disappears and storing those simple elements becomes much simpler. What that would mean is that this invader needs either hydrogen or oxygen, and reaping water—seawater, fresh water, river water—it wouldn’t matter from where—gives them what they need. I’d think it was the oxygen that was the prize here, but pure hydrogen is also an asset too. So no water at all is being taken, Sir,” he said, and that made sense.
The XO spoke up. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just suck in atmosphere from a planet and use it?” Kondo said.
“Not really, XO,” the Science officer said, “as the atmosphere could have other items that would need to be tested for, then filtered out, and more. The simplest, cheapest, and purest way is to break down water, and you end up with just the two component elements—pure elements too, hydrogen and oxygen.”
“So, they’re trying to get either hydrogen or oxygen. Okay, can we use that against them?” Tanner said as he continued to look at his Science officer.
Sheldon looked deep in thought for a moment and then his face lit u
p. “Maybe, Captain. Hydrogen is a flammable element—with an oxidizer like pure oxygen—it will explode if an electric current can be somehow induced into the storage container area. Maybe. Perhaps. At least that’s the science, Sir,” he said, and while Karl sounded sure about the science, the ‘“how to get an electric current and resulting spark” into range was something else.
Tanner shrugged and said, “Plan B,” and nodded to them all.
The ships were still reaping the oceans hours later when the incoming Ansible message filled the screen on the Atlas bridge.
“For your information, we have been trying, as you well know, to talk to these invaders since their water-reaping ships began their taking of water more than six hours ago. We have worked out what we think might be a way to show these aliens that we mean business, that we are a formidable force, and that they should be willing to talk to us at least.”
As the admiral was talking, on the far side of the mother ship, the pink force field screens went down, and out came a dozen of those land-based reaper ships. These ships had the duty to hover over mining and metallurgical sites to tractor up ores and metals and the like. They dispersed quickly, and judging by the slow speed that they were using, this too was not going to be a quick single task either. Like back on Memories, this would again probably take weeks for the mother ship to gather what it wanted to take and just take it in.
The admiral turned back to face the Team Memory ships once again. “As you can now see, the invader ship has released once again its land-based reapers, and they are making their way to what I’d surmise would be spots it’s determined hold ores and metals that it might need. We really have no idea, but we do have a plan of attack,” he said quietly.
