HADRON Chaos

by Stephen Arseneault

  Mace stood. “I forgot. We left the Kohamians out in their shuttles. I need to jump back to Canto to bring them home. I’m sure they’re quite unhappy with us at the moment.”

  Jeff said, “Couldn’t be helped.”

  Mace walked toward the door. Still, it needs to be done. I’ll be back when I’m finished. Should be able to collect them all in a day.”

  Mace hurried back to the shuttle and was soon aboard the Rogers. “Mr. Hobbs, set a jump point to Canto and take us there.”

  Liam replied, “We only have half a dozen people aboard. And we’re down a gravity drive.”

  Mace nodded. “I’m aware of those facts, but we need to bring those UF people back. Can’t leave them stranded like that or they’re gonna be miffed at us.”

  Liam turned to his console. “Should we inform someone?”

  Mace opened a comm. “Mr. Collins, we’ll be gone for the day. Need to finish up our work at Canto. If we’re needed, leave a message with them as we’ll be jumping back and forth bringing those shuttles home.”

  “Take your time. Things will be a mess here for the next couple weeks as we get our fleet back in order. We lost a lot of good commanders out there.”

  Mace nodded. “I just hope we can make their sacrifices worthwhile. We’ll be back shortly.”

  Bontu Montak walked onto the bridge deck as the Rogers slipped through a wormhole to Canto.

  “Wasn’t aware we were going anywhere.”

  Mace asked, “Who else is aboard besides you?”

  “Five of my crewmen. Is there something you need?”

  Mace gestured toward the exit. “Have them monitor the reactors, drives, and other stations. It’s just us aboard.”

  Bontu frowned. “What if we have trouble? Is this wise?”

  Mace leaned back in his chair. “We need to do this to save face with the UF.”

  Bontu nodded. “I will have them cover the stations, Mr. Hardy.”

  The captain of a UF dreadnought hailed the Rogers. “Captain, first, my apologies. Second, we’re here to collect the shuttles that were stranded. If you could give me the coordinates for the first two, we’ll be on our way.”

  Two additional dreadnoughts moved in close. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hardy. We’ve been asked to detain you for breach of contract. The Adjutant General will be here in two days for your preliminary hearing.”

  Mace returned an irritated look. “There won’t be any detention, Captain. You either allow us to retrieve your people or we leave and they remain where they are.”

  The captain returned an angry look. “You would defy the United Front? In our own space? You realize this gives me authorization to shoot, do you not?”

  A hail came in from Frado Knuttin. “Mr. Hardy. I am sorry, but you will have to comply with the council’s demands.”

  Mace let out a deep sigh. “No, it’s I who am sorry, Mr. Knuttin. Sorry I got involved with trying to assist your people. We were called away to war. That war is ongoing. I have a short amount of time available to collect your people. You need to allow me to do that before I have to leave again.”

  Frado replied, “You must allow me to talk with my connections, Mr. Hardy. Perhaps I can smooth things over.”

  Mace replied, “How long will this take?”

  Frado shook his head. “I couldn’t say, but you must allow me to try. And I’m looking at the image of your ship. It looks as though it was a fierce battle. Can I assume you were victorious?”

  Mace scowled. “Hardly. They kicked our asses. They are wiping out an entire species as we speak. In six months they’ll be wiping out a second one. After that, our heads will be on the chopping block again.”

  Frado bowed his head. “I can see the concern in your eyes, Mr. Hardy. Know that I shall do my best.”

  Mace sighed. “I know you will.”

  Mace returned to the captain. “Sorry to make you wait. That was Frado Knuttin. He’s attempting to speak with your command.”

  The captain replied, “In the meantime, Mr. Hardy, I’ll be sending a detachment over there. We wouldn’t want any incidents to happen so near to our colony.”

  Mace shook his head. “Yeah. No. We’ll be waiting for word from Mr. Knuttin.”

  The captain leaned toward his comm camera. “I’m afraid you misunderstood, Mr. Hardy. My people will be there momentarily.”

  Liam Hobbs attempted a power-up of the starboard gravity drive. Plasma spewed from the directional funnel into space. Liam jumped from his console frantically, running in front of the comm camera. “We have a breach of the hydrogen store! The ship is about to blow!”

  Mace stood. “What? How?”

  The comm channel closed. Liam returned to his station.

  “What’s going on?”

  Liam replied, “I’m trying to buy us some space … and… yes! There they go!”

  Liam slammed a button on his console. A micro-wormhole opened in front of the Rogers and her functional gravity drive pushed her through. In an instant, the Rogers was back in Targarian space.

  Liam turned, “Sorry, Mr. Hardy, we needed a way out of there and that’s all I could think of.”

  Mace grinned. “That was brilliant! And an excellent job of acting. I thought we were about to blow!”

  Liam nodded. “They were being a bit beastly. We were only attempting to make right on our pledge.”

  Mace thought for a moment. “We know where those shuttles are supposed to be. How about we go get them anyway. We can drop them off a couple hours out from Canto and not have to mess with those… beastly people.”

  Liam smiled. “Have I ever said I liked you, Mr. Hardy, because you always try to do the right thing? Most would just abandon the mess and move on, but you persist, in an attempt at least, to do what’s proper.”

  “If I didn’t try, as a kid my mom would give me the belt across the back of my legs, Mr. Hobbs. I learned early on it was worth avoiding the pain.”

  “First jump coming up,” said Liam.

  Nine hours passed before the last of the shuttles were dumped into Canto space. The Rogers returned home and a secondary skeleton crew was brought aboard.

  Mace turned to Bontu Montak as he walked up the ramp of a shuttle. “You sure you won’t join us, Mr. Montak? It’s nice down there. We have the run of the compound.”

  Bontu nodded. “The crew and I prefer to stay here. This has become our home.”

  “Last chance…”

  Bontu slowly shook his head. “They have no desire to set foot on any planet that is not Rhombia, Mr. Hardy. They are no longer comfortable on Earth either. As I said, this is our home now. And do not worry, we have plenty of entertainment with watching your Human movies.”

  Mace chuckled. “Just don’t watch too much of that stuff. It’ll rot your brain.”

  Mace was soon on the surface. Zax and Fina raced out to greet him as Johnny followed.

  Zax said, “Mr. Hardy, welcome back to Divinia!”

  Mace laughed. “Well, thank you for welcoming me. I take it you like being back on-planet?”

  Zax nodded. “Fina has been teaching me how to fish.”

  Mace looked up at Johnny. “Maybe they aren’t adopted after all. You sure you weren’t a donor for those embryos? They did have you on that drug for a few days.”

  Johnny nodded. “I’m sure. Besides, I try to catch fish on a hook. These two are catching them with their teeth. I’ve tried to tell them that’s not the proper way, but they won’t listen.”

  The two kids darted off across a blue-green Targarian lawn and Derwood shot out of the building after them.

  Mace laughed. “At least they’re keeping Derwood healthy.”

  Johnny chuckled. “That dog used to get up several times in the middle of the night to check on us. He sleeps solid through now. They’re constantly giving him and Molly a good workout. I take it the Canto mission was successful?”

  Mace frowned. “Yes and no. We got the explorers back to Canto, but we had to sneak them back. The UF
wanted to arrest and hold me for some adjutant general hearing. Liam managed to spook them far enough away that we could make a jump. He put on a pretty convincing show in front of the comm camera. For a moment I thought the Rogers was about to blow.”

  “Hmm. He’s always been kinda by the book. Good to know you can count on him in a pinch.”

  Mace nodded. “I feel like that with most of our crew. They keep giving and giving, no matter what I ask.”

  Johnny patted Mace on the shoulder. “You treat them like family, and they’re acting like family. You’re just getting back what you’ve given.”

  Two wet kids, each carrying a fish in their mouth, raced past Mace and Johnny and into the building.

  Johnny sighed. “Gotta see to this or Jane will accuse me of teaching them that way on purpose.”

  Johnny approached the door, rubbing the sides of his head as a scowling Jane came out to stand in the doorway.

  Chapter 16

  *

  The coming threat of the Karthians loomed over every activity. Weeks passed before the last of the Sarkesian colonies fell. Healthy males were packed onto ships and sent away to be worked to death in Karthian mines. Women, children, the elderly and the infirm were mercilessly butchered. The once great Sarkesian species, an original founder of the Galactic Union, was rapidly on its way to extinction.

  As Mace sat in a long chair with Jenny, overlooking the lake at the compound, a comm came in from the Quelli Alpha, the leader of their species.

  “I must humbly ask for your assistance. King Collins has refused our pleas. We cannot defend our worlds on our own. The Karthians will be coming this way next. I beg you to convince the King we need his support.”

  Mace sighed. “I feel for you, I really do. But if we are to stop the Karthians, it will have to be here at the Targarian worlds. The defenses here at least give us a fighting chance. I would offer this—see if you can convince one of the other Union members to allow you to move your people to their worlds. That would at least force the Karthians to fight us here at Divinia first. If we then lose here, we will all know that our time is very limited.”

  The Quelli leader stroked his mane in thought. “To abandon one’s home is a difficult task to contemplate. And to accept another into your home, when you aren’t prepared, is another difficult task.”

  Mace said, “I’m afraid those are your only options. Stay and fight, or convince another species to take you in, at least temporarily.”

  The Quelli Alpha bowed as the comm closed.

  Jenny said, “He needs to be talking to Stark. The Zinka have the space, but they don’t have the infrastructure to support billions more people.”

  Mace nodded. “If we all pooled our resources we could make this happen, but it would be at the expense of us building ships, which are required for our survival. Unfortunately, I think the Quelli have no choice but to make the toughest of choices. They’ll have to choose who gets moved to someone else’s colonies. And that depends on someone accepting them.”

  Jenny frowned. “War… I like it less every day.”

  A frantic comm came in from the Quelli leader. “They are here! The Karthians! How is this possible? You must convince the king to come!”

  The comm channel closed.

  Mace opened a comm to Jasper. “The Quelli say the Karthians are there. Do you have any people there?”

  Jasper replied, “Let me… wait, I have an incoming message. Karthians at Talicon.”

  Mace said, “How? Do they have wormhole generators?”

  Jasper scowled. “They’ve destroyed or disabled enough our ships. They may have acquired it from there.”

  Mace shook his head. “This changes everything.”

  A comm came in from Stark. “I can see by the look on your face you’ve already received the news.”

  Mace replied, “They must have the wormhole generator. Did the Quelli see how they arrived? Were wormholes detected?”

  Stark shook his head. “We don’t know. I’ve just sent a scout ship to gather information. I should have an idea of what we’re looking at in a few minutes.”

  An aide to Stark walked into camera view, whispering into his ear. Stark nodded as he opened a holo-display over his arm.

  “It’s the full force, including that station. The Quelli fleet has pulled back. Military posts on the ground are being wiped out.”

  Mace moved Jasper’s comm into the channel. “We should begin our preparations. If the Sarkesian worlds only took a few weeks to overrun, the Quelli will likely be the same. Mr. Stark, try to convince the Quelli to move their ships here. Jasper, we need to be prepared to move those microwave stations as we talked about before.”

  “They’re ready to move,” said Jasper.

  Stark said, “This creates a new problem for us. We will only have a few minutes advance warning before the fighting begins. All strategies and tactics must be fully defined before they arrive.”

  Jasper replied, “What would you suggest? For us, we plan to stay as close to our microwave stations as possible. Not sure what else we could do.”

  Mace said, “We’re just a single ship. We’ll just do what we did last time. We managed to knock out seven of their ships. Two thirds of those kills came from our extra weapons.”

  Stark replied, “How many of those can be produced in the few weeks we might have?”

  Mace shook his head. “Zero. We don’t yet know how the wormhole weapon works. And the green wave generator took months of tweaking to get it to work at the level it does. And it’s really only been useful when following one of those wormhole shots, which is difficult to coordinate at best.”

  Jasper huffed. “So we’re reduced to just clubbing each other over the head until only one side is left standing. I’m not placing a lot of confidence in our chances.”

  Mace stood and paced. “I have one other potential option. The United Front.”

  Jenny scowled. “They want to arrest you.”

  Stark asked, “What do we have to offer?”

  Mace stopped. “Territory. We have the Sarkesian worlds, and soon the Quelli worlds. And we’ve posted mining claims on about two hundred other worlds. We could offer the UF part or all of those territories in exchange for assistance.”

  Jasper scowled. “I understand where you’re coming from, but I can’t say I fancy that option. We may be trading one aggressive species for another.”

  Mace nodded. “That may be true, but to my knowledge, the UF at least allows second class citizens. And that’s only an issue if they decide to take over all the other territories here.”

  Jasper replied, “I’ll have to chew on that idea for a bit.”

  Stark said, “For the moment at least, we keep that as an option. All the uninhabited territories in the galaxy don’t do us any good if we’re dead.”

  Jasper asked, “What about the Dellus and Gorange and other Union members? Will they join us here in a grand defense?”

  Stark replied, “I will be addressing them shortly. It may be difficult to convince them of the benefit of an allied defense. If they hold back and we are victorious, they are sitting with a still powerful fleet. If we fight the Karthians to a stalemate, again they have an advantage. If we fight and lose, they will in turn lose.”

  Mace said, “Maybe we could entice them with promises of territory. Expansion is their ultimate goal. We have worlds identified that we could offer.”

  Stark nodded. “Another excellent suggestion. I’ll use that if my other efforts fail.”

  Mace crossed his arms. “Should I make a trip to Canto to discuss that option with the UF? Time may be of the essence.”

  Jasper said, “How many ships do they have guarding that planet?”

  “Last visit it was eight. Why?”

  “If you jump there by yourself they are likely not to let you leave this time. If we send thirty of our Collins ships, they might just listen to your offer. And if they refuse it, you’ll still be able to come home.”

  Mac
e nodded. “I like that idea. The Kohamians respect strength. When can we go?”

  “Give me an hour.”

  Mace shook his head. “Actually, the Rogers won’t be ready until tomorrow. And I’d rather make the trip in my own ship.”

  Jasper said, “You do realize that if they have the wormhole generators they could be here tomorrow, right?”

  “I do, and if that turns out to be the case, none of this will matter anyway.”

  The following Yentis morning, the Rogers jumped through a wormhole to Canto. She was met immediately by three dreadnoughts.

  The captain Mace had talked to previously was no longer in charge. “Mr. Hardy, prepare to be boarded.”

  Mace held up a hand. “Not so fast, Captain. I need to speak with your superiors about a very lucrative deal.”

  The captain shook his head. “I have no time or patience for your games, Mr. Hardy. Stand down all weapons and shields. You are under arrest for crimes against the United Front. You will comply or face the consequences.”

  Mace smiled. “Sorry, Captain, it is you who will comply with my request. I need to speak with your superiors about an urgent matter.”

  The captain stood from his chair with an angry expression on his face. “My next warning will be in the form of weapons fire. Stand down or—”

  A micro-wormhole opened with thirty Collins class warships came streaming through.

  Mace said, “Again, I would like to speak with your superiors.”

  The captain scowled. “This is an outright act of war!”

  Mace leaned forward. “Contact your superiors or I’ll make it an outright act.”

  A Kohamian admiral was patched into the comm. “You have invaded United Front space. I advise you to leave immediately.”

  Mace said, “Admiral, I apologize for this intrusion, but I must speak with someone in command. It’s urgent. And I’m not talking about the command here at Canto. I need to discuss a potential defensive alliance with the United Front and I don’t have time to dicker with lower level field commanders. This is an urgent matter and requires higher up attention from people with authority to make such alliances. You know my history. You know for whom I speak. Please connect me with your superiors.”