by Saxon Andrew
“I see it. Why is it important?”
“Because the Legends, and I suspect some of their tools, are telepathic. You can shut down your broadcast mechanism and listen in without your thoughts being heard.”
“Cool.”
“The third circuit allows you to transmit thoughts you hear electronically so Jan or anyone you want to send them to can hear them over a loud speaker.”
“Just a moment.” They waited and suddenly heard multiple voices coming out of the wall speaker.
Michael said, “As you become familiar with the system, you can focus on just one thought stream and eliminate the others.” Suddenly, one voice was heard over the speaker. Michael looked at Jan, “I’ve never seen a computer adapt this fast to the transfer.”
“Langley is a pretty special computer, Sir.”
Michael stood up and turned toward the port. He smiled and said, “Just like his pilot.” Michael walked off the bridge and left Jan with her mouth open. Jan caught up with him before he exited her ship and said, “Sir, I didn’t think anyone would see me like this.” Michael looked at her in silence. “It’s just after you said you saw I was hiding, it occurred to me that I really didn’t remember what I looked like. I took all the dye and contacts off and then put on a uniform that fit. I don’t remember looking like this.”
Michael smiled, “The butterfly has emerged from the cocoon. How do you see yourself?”
“I see a stranger in the mirror, Sir. I didn’t have time to change back before we were ordered to launch.”
Michael smiled, “Jay became something he wasn’t while he suffered from Eric’s death. I don’t know what drove you into hiding but the world is less beautiful because you do. I apologize for putting you in this position and I won’t reveal your secret to anyone.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
Michael walked through the port and Jan closed it. She saw her reflection in the stainless steel covering over the port and stared at it. She shook her head. What had she become? She was less than plain when she dyed her hair and put on the oversize uniforms six years earlier. What she saw looking back at her was…was…someone else. She reached around to untie her braid and stopped. She was a living, breathing, walking lie. She could see the Commander’s expression when he saw her and he was amazed. Heck, she didn’t even have any makeup on. She released her braid and sighed. Should she come out of her cocoon slowly? She continued to stare at the reflection and she turned around and looked at her back. Oh my! She had curves she didn’t remember either. She took a deep breath and said, “Today is the first day of freedom. I will hide no more.”
She went to the bridge and activated her monitor. She often turned it off when flying with Jay and Josey so she could do it wearing little or nothing. They were used to it. Jay appeared on her monitor and said, “This new system is…”
Jan saw him staring at her and she said, “Issssss?”
“Who are you?”
“Come on, Jay. It’s me.”
“Josey you need to see this!”
“See what?”
“Link with me.”
Jan saw Josey appear beside Jay on her monitor and Josey’s mouth fell open. “Who are you?”
Jan blew out a breath, “IT’S ME!”
Josey stared at her and said, “Oh…my…God!”
“WHAT?!?”
Jay said, “Jan, I never suspected you were this gorgeous. But I should have known.”
Jan softly said, “Why?”
“Because someone with the gentle and beautiful spirit you possess would have to be beautiful.” Josey sighed, “There’s goes my attentive audiences.”
“Josey, you know you’re prettier than me.”
“Oh, if that were only true. However, I am so proud of who and what you are. Why did you…”
“Come out of my disguise?”
“Yeah.”
“The Commander pointed out to me that he saw I was hiding. I wanted to see what I looked like. When I started hiding, I didn’t look anything like this.”
“What did you look like?”
“You know the too large uniforms I’ve been wearing?”
“Yes.”
“They were a snug fit. My hair was frizzy and wouldn’t hold any kind of shape. My eyes were constantly red from allergies. I guess I…I don’t know…changed.”
Jay laughed out loud, “Boy, have you ever! I’m going to personally thank the Commander for pointing it out to you.”
“Why?”
“Do you have any idea how much jealousy Josey causes from hanging out with me? Now with you, I’ll be insufferable.”
Jan laughed out loud. Josey smiled, “I’ll tie a rope to you at the next dance and throw you out on the dance floor. I’ll grab those that fall off.” The three went back and forth and laughed for an hour. Jan was indeed free.
Chapter Eight
Michael listened to the scouts reporting in to Hengel and so far nothing out of the ordinary had happened. A conversation was intercepted between two scientists and Michael focused on it. “It appears that the new space is too small for any of the Director’s ships to enter.”
“Fifty feet is not much room to work with.”
“The new probe with its disruptor beam barely fits. So far, we have not detected anything near our galaxy.”
“Do you think that the attackers use this space?”
“We’ve been given the recordings of the last battle and the ships the enemy used were only forty five feet in diameter. They could fit inside it.”
“But the least little wobble and they would be thrown out.”
“Then where do they go?”
“I have no idea. Could there be another space we don’t know about. Some kind of no space of something?”
“Your imagination is running wild. No space would be no distance. If there’s no space, there isn’t anything.”
“I know. This new space we’ve found must be what they use to disappear.”
“If that’s the case, firing a disruptor in it will cause a major disruption of it.”
“How major?”
“About a third of a light year.”
“Would it affect the void or normal space?”
“No, at least it hasn’t in the experiments we’ve done.”
“So if they attack again, we fire a disruptor in that space and they can’t use it to avoid our weapons.”
“That’s how I see it.”
“We need to contact the Director and see if he wants us to start building those probes.”
“Has the Director approved building a small ship to go into that space?”
“He has not! He doesn’t see any benefit a small ship would give him.”
“Those small ships that attacked were pretty deadly.”
“I know, I know! But the Director is of the opinion that they were only successful because they could use that space to avoid our weapons. If that space is removed, the enemy’s ships won’t stand up against our larger battleships.”
• • •
“Angelo, send a transcript of that conversation to Amanda and Trevor’s attention. I want a copy also sent to Budge asking if he knows of any way to prevent the Barrier from being disrupted.”
• • •
Jan listened to the two Scientists and shook her head. The only way their attacks were successful was due to their being able to go into the barrier when too many beams or missiles hit them. And this new Monster had planet-sized disruptors. Langley had linked the conversation to Josey and Jay and they were just as concerned as Jan. “Does this end our previous tactics?”
Jay slowly nodded, “We can’t avoid being hit. The barrier allows us to control the number of times we’re hit before we are damaged.”
They looked at Jan and saw her resting her head on her hand. Jay said, “What are you thinking?”
“The real issue is time.”
“What do you mean?”
“We skip in among the enemy formations and open
fire with our DE Beams and missiles. While we’re firing at them, they fire back at us, right?”
“Your observation is impeccable.”
Jan looked at Jay, “Don’t get cute. I was just thinking that one of the things our new ships can do, well, even the old ones could do it too, is fly faster than the speed of light in normal space.”
“How do you fire a weapon at a target moving that fast? I’m good but I don’t have near the reflexes to pull that off.”
“Why would you have to fire?”
“Excuse me? But WHAT?”
“What would happen if you locked the disruptors down to constant fire and flew through their formations at light speed?”
Jay stared at Jan on the monitor and then he looked at Josey who could only shake her head. “Jan, I don’t know if something like that is possible.”
“I don’t, either.”
“Then why in a drunken barmaid’s apron would you suggest it!?”
“I was just thinking that if most of the reactor’s power was sent to the disruptors, and the rest to the thrusters, we would blow by them too fast to be targeted. If the DE Beams are at close to full power, they should slice a ship in half as we passed. If all three of us were stacked on top of each other…”
“If a DE Beam can be fired with any focus at that speed, you might have something. But trust me on this, avoiding anything in your direct path might be a problem.”
“I keep thinking about a little fact that was in Boy’s Life fifty years ago.”
“Boy’s what?”
“It was a magazine that was written for Boy Scouts.”
“Where in seven hells would you see a magazine written for Boy Scouts that is fifty years old?”
“I had a lot of time to look at things in the Fleet’s data banks while cleaning bathrooms, Josey.”
“What was the fact, Jan?”
“A weather announcer on a TV station showed a photograph after a hurricane of broom straws that were blown through a telephone pole and into the wall behind it.”
Jay looked at Josey and then at Jan, “Maybe I’m just dense; how does that relate to what we’re discussing?”
“The straws went through the telephone pole without leaving a hole.”
“Say what?”
“The pole was right up against the wall and the broom straws were sticking directly out of the bricks in the wall. The only way they could have come in at that angle was to have come through the telephone pole. The pole had no holes in in and x-rays showed that there weren’t any, even small ones.” Jay and Josey stared at Jan and she shrugged, “If something is moving fast enough, it will go through an object without leaving a hole.”
Jay’s eyes narrowed and he began doing some mental calculations. “I guess the molecules just pass through each other without making contact.”
“I’ve also read in Astronomy Today, May issue 2015, that the space between an atom’s nucleus and its electrons is actually, relatively speaking, greater than the distance between the sun and its planets.”
Jay stared at Jan and leaned back in his chair, “I’ve often looked at finding a novel way to end my life and now I know I should have come to you for suggestions. This is crazy!”
“Jay, what happens to a physical object that is moving at or close to the speed of light?”
“It becomes little more than an energy wave.”
“And energy waves can pass through…”
Jay rolled his eyes, “Pretty much everything. But this would be an energy wave with more than a hundred tons of mass.”
“What will the gravity compensators do?”
Jay rolled his eyes again and said, “I saw a bug on the ceiling.”
Jan giggled and Jay said, “You need to give me some time to think about this.”
• • •
“Commander!”
“Go ahead, Hengel.”
“I’ve just intercepted a communication from a ship’s pilot that he was moving out of orbit and headed out of the galaxy.”
“Notify every scout to keep an eye and mind out for that ship.”
“Are you going to attempt to intercept it?”
“No, I want it followed.”
“They can detect us in the barrier.”
“We’re staying out of the barrier and following it in the void.”
“Sir, a ship that large can carry a sensor array as large as those used on a planet.”
“Just give me the line it takes and I’ll get ahead of it.”
“What if there are ships waiting for it to defend it against discovery.”
“What are you suggesting Hengel?”
“I didn’t hear a direct thought but I sensed the pilot was moving to meet something or someone.”
“Hengel, what would you do if you were moving that ship?”
“Sir, if it were me, I’d have one of those ships that launches barrier probes and I’d have one disrupting the barrier all the way to its destination. I would also have ships hidden behind a black cloud in the void along its path.”
Michael shook his head, “I suspect it will change course at some point before moving toward its final destination. Its initial line of departure will be a decoy.”
“I was going to say that. The course change wouldn’t happen until I was absolutely certain no one was following me.”
“Hengel, scatter the scouts. Get them away from here before we can no longer use the barrier.”
“Where do I send them?”
“As far away as possible where they can still detect a thought.”
“Angelo, do you have anything?”
“No.”
“It makes me wonder why we were able to hear that pilot and nothing else.”
“Do you think they’ve developed a thought blocker?”
“THAT HAS TO BE WHAT’S HAPPENING!”
“If that’s true…”
“The first line is set up to be an ambush.”
“Commander, I’ve determined the line of departure is 270 degrees from the galaxy’s central core.”
“Get all of your scouts off that line. The reason we’re not hearing them is that they must have developed a thought blocker.”
Hengel thought, “GET OUT OF HERE NOW!”
Michael wondered if one of the giant warships was actually present in this galaxy. All of this may be a subterfuge to ambush his ships, “Put a chart of that galaxy on the display, Angelo, showing the stated line of departure.” Michael looked at the map and saw the line was directly away from the Virgo Cluster. He pressed a button and saw his three guards appear on his display, “Here’s the situation. I still don’t know if one of those new warships is in this galaxy but I am convinced that the Legends have developed a thought blocker. They’re only communicating what they want us to hear.”
Jay tilted his head, “Are you sure about that?”
“Jay, no Legend I’ve ever encountered has ever remained silent this long. They constantly communicate.”
“This one could be doing it deliberately to prevent us knowing exactly what it is doing.”
Michael nodded, “But if it suspects we are out here, there is no way it would allow others to direct its fleets.”
Jan looked at the map and said, “If it is present, it has already moved to the edge of the galaxy and is waiting for the decoy to make its way out. It will leave before the decoy arrives at the edge of the galaxy.”
“Angelo, get an antenna in the barrier and see if you detect anything on the opposite side from the stated line of departure.”
“I have a small energy signature at the edge of that galaxy directly across the galaxy from where the scouts were located.”
“All three of you go to full thrusters and stay out of the barrier. Spread out ahead of that disturbance and we’ll triangulate it as it moves away from that galaxy. Angelo, how far away can you detect that disturbance?”
“About a million light years.”
“Alright, you have your limitation
on distance, move out now!” The four ships went in four different directions from above the giant galaxy and staked out the void on a ninety-degree heading. “Do we use the Dark Matter Screen?”
“No, just turn down all your systems to their lowest settings and use minimal thrusters to keep it inside your detection range.”
Jan said, “You know they will have ships out looking for anything suspicious.”
Michael smiled, “They are just learning about the barrier and I suspect they have no idea how far we can detect their antenna. No scanner is capable of seeing a ship a thousand light years distant, much less a million. Only move enough to keep it inside our detection range.”
“I want all communications ended and use your computers to send quick thoughts if absolutely necessary. Turn off your computer’s thought broadcasters and only use them if absolutely necessary. Computers, scan the area of space we’ll be watching to see if you detect any thoughts ahead of that ship.”
Jan looked up, “Langley?”
“I’ve removed the power from the broadcaster.”
“Do you have that energy source plotted?”
“It’s stationary at the moment but yes, I do have it.”
“Good.”
“Jan.”
“Yes.”
“I was just thinking that perhaps the Legends aren’t as bright as we think.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think they use thought blockers on those that are telepathic. I don’t think it occurred to them that beings that are not telepathic can still be heard.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I can hear thousands of thoughts close to where that energy source is located.”
“We need to tell the others.”
“I’ve detected a telepath who is not broadcasting but I can feel its thoughts looking for us.”
“Does it know we’re here?”
“It just went active in its search a moment ago after the Commander issued his instructions. There’s no way we can tell them without it hearing us.”
“Do you think the others hear them?”
“Their movements don’t indicate they do.”
Jan sighed, “We’ll have to follow it even if the others lose it.”
“I suspect that will happen shortly.”
“Why?”
