Victory at all costs (Spinward Book 3)

by Rupert Segar

  In orbit above Chimera 6, Carole discovered the disabled alien Ship. She and her fellow escapees went aboard and tried to wake the autonomous robotic pods which together made-up the entity called the ‘Ship.’

  The pods were finally reactivated by Mr Angry, who was with the aliens on the planet below. However, as the collective entity awoke it was ambushed by three Imperial warships. The Ship tried to escape but before it could raise its defensive shields it was badly damaged by an ion blast. Stuck in orbit, the Ship’s entity went offline.

  Carole hurried up the ramp to the control cabin and stood facing the pilot’s panel.

  “Einstein damn it!” she swore. “There must be something we can do. Can’t we contact the planet below?”

  There was a pause, the striped holosphere flicked on and off a couple of times before firming up in mid-air besides the pilot’s seat.

  “I am sorry, we have all been involved with the reconstruction,” said the sphere in a mechanical voice. “Some of the gravity engines are badly damaged.”

  The holosphere flicked on and off again in a worrying manner.

  “To answer your question: one pod is on board a shuttle hiding on the far side of the planet. It is unlikely it could take off without attracting the attention of the enemy.”

  “What about this Art King who could wake Yelena?” asked Gill

  “Art and the rest of my Human friends, along with another pod they call ‘Mr Angry,’ are directly below, in a mountain range just north of the equator. They too are hiding. They are protected by a multi-dimensional interference field put in place by Creators.”

  “Who on Earth are the Creators?” asked Gill.

  “They are not on Earth, not at the moment. They are my makers, or, at least, they are related to them. They are what you would call an alien species.”

  “Then they should be able to help us, if anyone can.”

  “I could send a signal down but it would disrupt the camouflage field and make everyone below visible to the imperial forces who have us trapped up here in orbit. Mr Angry, the pod says we are not to interrupt the field, on any account.”

  “Then what do we do?” asked Gill, exasperated.

  “We wait.”

  +++

  The planet below had been called Devastation by generations of voyageurs and Last Haven by the Creators, who had lived there in hiding for centuries. The Ship’s friends had been guided there by the aliens. The bright red pod, called Mr Angry, had caused dismay among the Creators by arriving uninvited at their mountain retreat. From geosynchronous orbit, the alien ship had managed to see though their multi-dimensional camouflage field. Asclepius, an alien scientist, used his mental powers to turn off Mr Angry and all the other pods. He only relented when he was told that his actions had further imperilled the future of both Creators and Humans.

  The three Humans and Mr Angry sat around a long low table. The setting sun was attempting to send orange and red rays into the room but scudding clouds kept getting in the way. Lea Whey, the ex-librarian, was glad of the impediment. Every time he looked directly at the reddish orb, he saw little dots flicker all over the disc as if it was a poorly pixilated picture. If you looked anywhere in the sky for more than a few seconds, you would notice a quivering of detail. The multi-dimensional camouflage field subtly distorted and twisted every photon or electromagnetic wave that passed through it.

  The humans and the floating red pod had sought out the aliens. They had wanted to find out why the majority of the Creator race had fled to the future. They also wanted to know why the aliens had built the entity called the Ship. The inception of the entity, which was formed when all seven pods coalesced, was marred by the arrival of the Great Plague. The Ship had successfully fought off the human created infection but had lost some of its memories in the process. The entity felt it had been designed to help the human race after the end of the Great Plague but had no clear idea of how it was supposed to do so.

  “I am afraid I have no more idea of what I am supposed to do than before,” said Mr Angry. “In fact, all I have learnt is that my makers fear me.”

  “That’s not strictly true,” said Art. “These Creators are not the same as those aliens who built you. Like many humans, these particular aliens fear machines that can think. Hey, even I used to be in that category, before I met you.”

  “But still they cannot tell me what I am supposed to do.”

  “They have confirmed your mission.”

  Art explained to the others how Asclepius, Zeeann’s father, had said the Ship’s purpose was to unite the human race, forming a compassionate and connected, galaxy wide society.

  “That’s a tall order,” said Becky Bhuna, whistling. “As a reporter, I can tell you, calling for universal peace is pretty pointless.”

  “Human history is one long struggle over power or territory. How can the ship reverse that tide when we’re all under siege?” said Lea Whey the ex-librarian.

  “Indeed, I admit we do not know where to start,” said the red pod.

  “Let’s take it one step at a time,” said Art.

  +++

  The observatory stood on the other side of the narrow valley. For hundreds of years, it had been impossible to use the building for its original purpose. All sight of the night sky through telescopes was twisted and distorted by the multi-dimensional interference field. Instead, an altogether different device placed inside the building was used for looking into the future.

  Asclepius and his assistant stooped over the basin, atop a cylindrical machine. The two Creators were watching the patterns sweep across the surface of a green liquid. The omniocular registered changes in the entropy fields throughout the galaxy. Changes in the future created entropy echoes travelling backwards in time. The omniocular caught these vibrations, analysed them and replayed the time-line, allowing the experimenters to predict the future with a high degree of accuracy.

  For over a millennium, the omniocular had predicted a cataclysm destroying every civilisation across the galaxy. For many centuries, the Creators assumed the Human race had caused the disaster. Initially, the blame was put on the Great Plague, which had been deliberately released by a group of Human scientists.

  The response of most of the alien race had been to flee into the far future. They created a system of wormholes connecting solar systems right across the galaxy. Using black holes they created two temporal effects: firstly, the builders went back in time, so finishing the network of gateways, even before the first one was built; secondly, the temporal tension in the portals allowed the aliens to be catapulted forwards in time.

  Some Creators like Asclepius remained behind. They tried to change the course of history by sending back a colony of Humans to ancient Greece on Old Earth. This only made the crisis worse. The calamity moved closer in time. Once again Humans were blamed.

  The arrival of the three Humans on Chimera 6 had proved a revelation: the Creators had got it wrong. The ex-librarian Lea Whey proved that it was not Humans who had caused the cataclysm but the Creators themselves. By refining the Omniocular and looking at smaller timescales, Lea showed it was the construction of the portal network itself that triggered the disaster.

  For the aliens, however, the omniocular still had one important use. It offered a way to avoid the forthcoming catastrophe. It predicted that if Creators and Humans could work together they might avert the worst of the upheaval.

  Zeeann, Asclepius’ daughter, mated with Art King. As soon as she was pregnant, the omniocular registered a dramatic shift. There were signs that both Human and Creator civilisations would survive the cataclysm. Then Asclepius had switched of Mr Angry and his siblings in orbit above and the omniocular went black again: all hope was dashed. Against his natural instinct, Asclepius was persuaded to re-activate the mechanical intelligence.

  “Re-awakening the pod and allowing it to contact its siblings in orbit, dramatically improved the time-line,” said Asclepius’ assistant, Hari, without a hint of admonition
towards his master.

  “Thank you for your intervention, Hari, my friend” said Asclepius. “Once again, I am proved wrong. We Creators must reassess our position of assumed superiority.”

  “These pods must have a pivotal role in the crisis to come,” said the kindly assistant.

  “And I must also overcome my prejudice against mechanical intelligence.”

  “If you wished,” said Hari, smiling. “We could begin by bringing one more pod here along with the human accompanying it. They are both on the other side of our planet.”

  “Yes,” said Asclepius, placing the tips of his fingers on his brow. “I will ask the Sisterhood of Entropy.”

  +

  Vice Admiral Putin ordered two of his officers to take a shuttle back to Chimera One using the gateway. This was the only way the imperial vessels could send messages across interstellar distances.

  “You have a complete record of our encounter with the alien craft,” he told the pair. “I need orders, urgently.

  “Who from?” asked the lieutenant.

  “From Fleet Admiral Cumnock, of course. Does he want us to bring the alien ship back to Chimera One or will he send a backup force here?”

  The two officers left the deck. Once more Vice Admiral Putin rubbed the collar of his tunic between finger and thumb, feeling his promotion to full admiral was only a matter of time.

  +

  Art sat on the low wall at the edge of the terrace. Looking across at the fast moving clouds that hid the peaks on the other side of the valley, he was aware that a force field protected him and Zeeann from the strong winds.

  “I don’t wish to sound coy and I’m not trying to reverse the sexual stereotype,” said Art, “but, I have to admit, I don’t understand what happened last night.”

  “That is easy. You made me pregnant, three times,” said Zeeann grinning broadly and pressing his left hand against her stomach.

  “No, I mean, beyond the physical. What happened between us?”

  “We became linked. In the Pool of Conjunction, we were mentally naked. We saw each other’s frailties as well as our strengths. You helped me to overcome my xenophobia, my fear of strangers. And, in turn, I helped you.”

  “How?” asked Art thinking he already knew the answer.

  “I showed you how to overcome your fear of commitment.”

  “I’m not frightened of commitment.”

  “Then how is it you never embrace it?” said Zeeann. “You always walk away. You rejected enlisted life and gave up a commission as a navy pilot. You turned down offers of employment and worked as a freelance pilot instead. You had no home and no family until you teamed up with the Ship.”

  “I have been committed to the cause of the greater good,” said Art. “Although I haven’t done any more than any right minded individual would do.”

  “Indeed, the Ship chose you as its moral compass because of your altruism. My father says it has a higher opinion of your judgement than of ours. That is not an easy admission for a Creator. However, that is not the issue. Art, you can only commit to vague universal values like galactic harmony and human cooperation. You have relationships with ideas not people.”

  “I have loyalty to my friends.”

  “Do you?” asked Zeeann, sitting down on the wall next to him and holding his hands in her long fingers. “What about Yelena?”

  Art was silent.

  “I seduced you in the Pool of Conjunction,” said Zeeann, “but afterwards you were willing, I would even say eager.”

  “I may not have been faithful to Yelena, but I still love her.”

  “Is that why you deserted her to come hunting aliens with a computerised intelligence?”

  “Using the word ‘deserted’ is a bit harsh. We both had our priorities,” said Art, feeling as if he was being picked on. “Zeeann, did you go rummaging through my mind yesterday to find things to undermine me? Every criticism you have made has an element of truth but it is not the whole story.”

  “No, but I do want to be sure.”

  “Sure of what?”

  “You need to choose between us. Yelena is in a coma on board the ship. The ship is trapped by enemy forces. I am pregnant with your offspring: three children that could help save the galaxy for your kind and mine.”

  “Are we in a relationship,” said Art.

  “Oh, you silly Human male, we are Conjunct: we are linked. Can you not sense my emotion?”

  Art looked at the alien, staring first at one eye then the other, as he face drew nearer. He could feel something: he sensed from her a mixture of good will and fondness mixed in with a measure of lust.

  “Is that you?” he said.

  “Yes,” she said kissing him in the way he had taught her with her tongue playfully licking the inside of his upper lip.

  He felt his own sexual urges mixing with hers. The bedroom was temptingly close. However, Art resisted. He felt her awareness of his rebuff and her reaction which was to sever the link between them.

  “All this emotion sloshing around is a bit much for this Human male,” he said apologetically, letting go of Zeeann’s fingers and standing up. “Zeeann, we undoubtedly have a relationship. You are carrying my children. But I also have a duty to Yelena. I truly love her and must try to rescue her.”

  Zeeann looked down at the floor for a while then stood slowly.

  “Thank you for your honesty. I was deliberately tempting you. I wanted to be sure about your commitment. Perhaps, I also wanted to win you over, but it is not to be.”

  “I must get to Yelena.”

  “Then my Sisterhood can help.”

  Chapter 2: Attack on Fair Isles

  High above the ocean world of Fair Isles, a space dock large enough to berth two cruisers stood empty. All around the deserted platform, a fleet of small gull winged fighters soared and swept. The flock of small vessels did not fly in formation. Every fighter was controlled by its computer, which seemed to choose a random path. They weaved and wheeled around each other. The miracle was that none of the fighters collided.

  Collectively, the flotilla was defence control for Fair Isles. Every command officer, from cannon and missile control to communications and sensors, had his or her own flier. They were connected by an information web allowing them to control nearly every part of the planet’s defence force. All the fighters had a specialism but they could change roles. There was built in redundancy. In battle, if some of the vessels were destroyed, others could take over their functions, so defence control continued unimpeded.

  In his fighter, Commander Bazza Foster sat waiting anxiously, pinned in by his instrument board. The enemy were in control of the nearest gateway, four light years away. Guardian vessels with their improvements, courtesy of the alien ship, could fly to the portal in only three-and-a-half hours. Imperial vessels would take at least five hours. What is more, thought Bazza, as he registered a scout ship rematerialize from hyper flight just 200 kilometres away, the guardian vessels could fly faster-than-light right inside the solar system. As far as Commander Foster knew the imperial warships could not enter or come out of hyper flight anywhere near a planetary mass. This meant Fair Isles was safe from a sneak attack by a bomber dropping down into normal space at close range.

  The scout ship which had just arrived reported a large invasion fleet being amassed at the portal above the planet Marylebone. The latest intelligence said there were more than 100 battleships and 500 cruisers waiting to set sail for Fair Isles. Without the alien enhancements, the invading fleet would need to travel nearly one hundred million kilometres away from the planet Marylebone before the warships could go to hyper flight. On arrival in the Fair Isle system, the process would be reversed. In theory, Bazza would have hours to arrange a defence. I might have all the time in the cosmos, he thought, but the problem is when the attacking armada eventually gets here it will be huge.

  Another scout ship dropped out of hyper flight just 50 kilometres away. The pilot flashed an urgent message. He repo
rted that half of the invading fleet had moved away in the opposite direction from Fair Isles; shortly after, the remaining half of the fleet had set off directly towards the guardian stronghold.

  “They are roughly an hour-and-a-half behind me,” said the pilot.

  “Damn Einstein’s eyes,” said Bazza over his comms link. “At best it’s a pincer movement but they could be aiming to englobe the planet.”

  Despite the exotic sciences involved in traversing the Upper Realm and achieving faster-than-light travel, the physical laws of normal space remained obstinately conservative. Spaceships emerged from hyper flight with more or less the same momentum they had when they entered it. Of course, directions could change, especially near black holes or neutron stars where space time is distorted. However, travelling between solar systems usually meant vessels dropping out from the Upper Realm had the same vector of kinetic energy as when they went in. Those ships travelling towards or away from the Fair Isle system would still be doing so when they emerged. The trick was where you dropped out of hyper flight. Bazza suspected they would emerge from hyper flight in a region of space on either side of Fair Isle. However both halves of the invading armada would be travelling straight back towards the guardians’ planet.

  “Whatever they do, we are ready.” It was the voice of veteran explorer Suxie Wong over a comms link. Her words were a statement, not a question. “We are sowing the predicted approach zones with gravity bombs and flux mines.”

  “Squadron A is at six o’clock,” reported in one leader.

  “Squadron B at twelve,” said another.

  The sphere of space surrounding the planet of Fair Isles had been sliced into segments like an orange, each slice at right angles to the elliptic plane. The segment facing the source of the attack, the neighbouring system Marylebone was designated as 12 o’clock.

  “Squadron C, on standby to intercept.”