“Glad I stopped you before you left,” Perkins said, out of breath.
“You could have simply contacted me via comms. What is it?”
“Admiral’s orders … he wanted me to get this to you in person.”
“Well, what is it … we’re on a schedule—”
“You can’t go. At least not right now. Multiple communications are coming in. The Craing are on the move.”
Billy joined Jason’s side and immediately took advantage of the opportunity to light a cigar.
“Some fleet or other of theirs is always on the move. Tell the admiral we’ll be extra careful.”
“No, that’s not his concern. He wants you here. It’s not one fleet, or even ten … it’s all of them. From our latest intel, it’s hundreds of thousands of warships, Captain. Ot-Mul’s amassed his Drac-Vin forces in their entirety and they’re on the move … headed toward Allied space … including Earth.”
Jason let that sink in for a moment. Hundreds of thousands of warships? Ot-Mul was either totally batshit crazy or a lot smarter than any of them counted on. In retrospect, his move made sense. Without having the support of his home—the Craing worlds—Ot-Mul had nothing to lose. Why not make the ultimate power play and show everyone up?
“What do you want to do, Cap?” Billy asked.
Jason’s eyes were still on Perkins. “What’s the time frame? How long before they reach the first Allied star system?”
“Two days … maybe two and a half before they exit the closest loop wormhole. The admiral wants you back on The Lilly when they arrive. Here, within the sector. He told me to shoot you if you even think about leaving.”
“What the admiral isn’t comprehending is when you’re talking hundreds of thousands of warships … it’s all moot, anyway … it’s game over … we’re totally fucked,” said Bristol, chiming in. Standing next to Billy, he looked pissed off.
Bristol was right. It was ridiculous to even hope for a positive outcome with that massive war machine headed their way. Jason’s thoughts returned to Ot-Mul and he tried to think of a way—something to slow his progress. It sure wouldn’t be going head-to-head with him in space. “Do we have the coordinates where that loop wormhole’s located?”
Perkins shook his head and shrugged. “I don’t know, Captain. I’m sure we can find out.”
“Why are you asking him? Why ask him anything?” Bristol queried matter-of-factly. “I can have those coordinates for you in thirty seconds. Even the Starlight’s probability matrix can offer you up that information.”
“What are you thinking?” Billy asked, flicking a long ash off the tip of his stogie.
“Theoretically speaking, can a wormhole be destroyed? Or made impassible?” Jason asked Bristol.
“Theoretically, yes.”
“What would we need to do to bring down Ot-Mul’s intended loop wormhole?”
Bristol laughed out loud. “The Craing use naturally occurring loop wormholes that were discovered, then mapped, over hundreds of years’ time span. Keep in mind, these wormholes aren’t the same as the little interchange wormholes we’re used to, which can be turned on and off at will.”
“So, there’s no way—”
“No. Well, I guess anything’s possible … if it falls within the laws of natural physics. But here’s your problem: Depending on the size of this particular wormhole, and I’m assuming it’s a big ass mother, like most of their loop wormholes are … you’d need a comparable mass. You’d need a small planet, or moon, and, from what I know, it’s impossible to maneuver …” Bristol stopped mid-sentence and stared back at Jason. “Wait. You’re not thinking …?”
Jason continued to stare at the pimply-faced genius. Bristol looked away and began chewing on the inside of his mouth. No one wanted to interrupt his thought processes, and what might, potentially, save their bacon.
“If the wormhole is small enough, relatively speaking, in size, and the prison barge has adequate mass … we might have something to work with. It’s all conjecture at this point … basically fart-matter.”
“What do you need to be certain? How can we help you?”
“You can stop talking for two seconds while I think,” Bristol snapped back. He squatted down where he’d been standing. Then, sitting cross-legged, he rested his chin on two fists. He closed his eyes. No one made a move. No one spoke.
Two minutes later, movement caught Jason’s eye. The admiral emerged from the flight DeckPort and, by the expression on his face, he was fuming. He strode up to Perkins, who remained silent.
Jason held up an index finger, a gesture indicating for his father to stay quiet.
“I’ll snap that finger right off at the knuckle. Now tell me what the hell’s going on here?” He turned to Perkins. “I told you to hand-deliver my orders and get your ass right back to the bridge.” He looked at Jason. “This mission is scrubbed. Why I’m having to explain my orders is beyond me.”
“Your orders are stupid,” Bristol said, getting to his feet. “You need to listen to the captain … he’s come up with a ridiculous idea that might just save us all … at least for a while.”
Chapter 18
It took another ten minutes to get the admiral fully on board with the possibility, the prospect, of turning their intended rescue mission into becoming more than that. Jason suspected the admiral had already come to terms with the coming space battle’s inevitable dire end; the futility of making any kind of stand against the Drac-Vin forces. So changing gears—allowing hope to resurface—took him some time.
They called up an interchange wormhole within five minutes after leaving the Minian’s flight deck. Jason and his handpicked team found themselves transported thirty-two light-years into deep space in less time than it took for a thought to fire across the synapses of a brain. Now less than a light-year from the best-guess coordinates supplied by the Starlight’s probability matrix, they were pushing the technological limits of the Starlight. After a series of deep space phase-shifts, each one to the farthest parameters the little ship would allow, they let the Starlight’s internal, micro phase-synthesizer components cool back down to minimally safe levels. In the meantime, Grimes pushed the little ship’s antimatter drive to its limits, and probably well beyond.
Bristol sat next to Grimes in the cockpit, while Jason knelt between their seats. Hunched over a virtual display mere inches from the tip of his long nose, Bristol shook his head.
“What … what’s wrong?” Jason asked.
“We just got close enough to acquire a lot more data. Here’s the Dreathlor prison barge, meandering along at a snail’s pace.” Bristol leaned back to let Jason look over his shoulder. Sure enough, there was an oblong vessel, in the middle of the holographic representation, in that section of space. Bristol adjusted the view’s dynamics and they could now see a wider-scale perspective of space. An undefined blob of solid red took up the top third of the display.
“What is that?” Jason asked, leaning in.
Bristol used his fingers to zoom in on the blob. What first seemed solid was an illusion: They now saw, instead, thousands of smaller dots that were actually warships. Bristol said, “Drac-Vin.”
Seeing it, the magnitude of what Ot-Mul had amassed filled Jason with an overwhelming feeling of dread. Dread he’d have to keep to himself. “So … it looks like they will be converging about here,” Jason said, pointing to a location in front of where the two symbols would intersect—moving along their relative vector angles. “How long before they converge?”
“Eight hours,” Bristol said.
“And our ETA?”
“Four hours.”
“So we have four hours to reach Dreathlor, get on board, rescue Ricket and Gaddy, and take control of the vessel’s helm,” Jason said.
“Yes, and get that thing over to the loop wormhole. In essence, we have to get in front of Ot-Mul’s forces and beat them to the wormhole.”
“Is that even possible? Is that old barge capable of that kind of spe
ed?” Jason asked, realizing implementation of his plan might not be feasible.
“No.”
“So how?”
“The prison barge isn’t traveling alone. There’s an armada of old Craing heavy cruisers … her protection detail … a detail that goes wherever she goes. I count ten ships encircling Dreathlor.”
“Is that supposed to be encouraging?” Jason asked.
For the first time Bristol smiled. “In time, you’ll be glad those big cruisers are there.”
Jason still didn’t get it. Sure, the Starlight, with her Caldurian technological advancements, could probably put up a good fight against those heavy cruisers. But he didn’t see … “Wait … added propulsion?” he asked, seeing now what Bristol realized sooner.
“Each of those heavy cruisers has multiple high-yield drives. Land those big pigs at just the right location, secure them to the outer hull, and we’ve got ourselves a hot rod.”
Jason continued to stare at the display as Bristol brought up an even wider perspective.
“Here is the loop wormhole, our ultimate destination.”
Jason took it all in—the Drac-Vin forces, the prison barge, and the loop wormhole. “So exactly where does that wormhole exit, come out?”
Bristol tapped at the console until the display changed again. Two wormholes appeared—one showed the location into it, and the other showed its exit location, at the farthest sides of the display. He manipulated the display and like bending space when folding over a piece of paper, the two points were now virtually on top of one another. Bristol zoomed into the right-hand point and a grouping of several distinct star systems came into view.
“What am I looking at here, Bristol?”
“The beginnings of Allied space. Earth would be somewhere around here … obviously not in view; too many light-years away from this perspective.”
Jason now recognized the section of space Bristol was zooming in on. He stared at one point of light in particular: Jhardon. Her sister planets were now gone. Destroyed earlier by Ot-Mul’s Vanguard fleet. He continued to stare at the small, flickering point in space and thought of Dira. His mind filled with that last image of her standing in her majestic gown … looking so lovely … and the futility of their situation continued to permeate his thoughts. God … How she’d looked at him, the sadness in her eyes.
“They’ll plow through this corridor of space like—”
Jason cut Bristol off. “That’s not going to happen. That wormhole’s got to be destroyed. That’s all there is to it.” He looked over to Lieutenant Grimes, who’d remained quiet for the last few minutes. She turned her face toward him, her expression hard to read.
“What is it?” Jason coaxed.
She let out a long breath. “This is what it’s all come down to, isn’t it, Captain? Years spent fighting the Craing for the survival of our Allied worlds; for our own existence … Earth’s existence. It all comes down to this—what we can, or cannot, accomplish over the next few hours. I guess, I’m just sad that humanity … our history … might be coming to an end.”
Jason wanted to tell her to keep the faith, take stock in the fact they always seemed to find a way to pull another rabbit out of the hat. But there were no more rabbits. She was right. This was it. Everything hinged on the next few hours. Dreathlor was their last hope.
* * *
“Captain, we’re coming within phase-shift distance,” Grimes said.
Jason, seated next to Traveler, got to his feet and approached the cockpit. “Are we visible to them?”
Bristol said, “No. We could be right on top of them and we’d still be invisible. Dreathlor’s got ancient technology. The tech on those heavy cruisers is just as archaic. We’re safe, in that regard.”
“Life signs?”
Grimes checked her console readouts. “Each heavy cruiser has a minimum of three hundred crewmembers. As for the prison barge, I’m having difficulty getting an accurate true reading.”
May as well get the show on the road, Jason thought. “Go ahead, phase-shift two hundred miles behind the prison barge armada, Lieutenant.”
The bright white flash came and went. Grimes adjusted the primary virtual display, manipulating it with her fingertips to hover high enough above the console for Jason to see the Dreathlor prison barge in all its glory.
“What a piece of shit,” Bristol said, glancing up at the ass-end of the biggest ship any of them had ever seen. Virtually every inch of the vessel was coated with streaks of what seemed to be orange and brown rust—something not possible in the vacuum of space.
“What’s with the rust?” Billy asked, now standing at Jason’s side.
“Rust is the conversion of a passive-eating ferrous oxide layer on iron,” Bristol said. “This ship isn’t made of iron. What you’re seeing is Galitamide mineral deposits. Similar to diamond crystals forming on the outside of the hull. One more example of why this prison barge has never been breached. Hull’s coated with an impregnable layer that only gets stronger over time.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not interested in blowing a hole in it,” Jason said. “How come I’m not viewing any of the heavy cruisers?”
“That’s because at this view they’re too small. Depending on where you’re looking, the barge spans up to eight hundred miles,” Grimes said. She manipulated the display again, bringing into play the zoom factor. Sure enough, one of the cruisers appeared, its bright blue thrusters on two aft drives.
Seeing Jason’s expression, Bristol said, “I know the cruisers look insignificant compared to the barge in size. Just remember, there’s no resistance here in space; their combined thrust will do the job.”
Jason nodded. “Can you bring up an internal layout of the prison barge?”
Grimes pulled one of the smaller displays forward and expanded it out. It looked like an intricate maze of both small and large compartments, with intersecting corridors. But the bulk of the internal space, Jason determined, was holding cells. The closest thing he could compare it to was the thousands of small indentations found on the surface of a golf ball. Somewhere in the vastness of that internal space were Gaddy and Ricket.
“Captain … we’re being scanned.”
Chapter 19
“Didn’t you say there was no way these older vessels would be able to detect the Starlight?”
Bristol was looking at the console; his fingers moved in a blur over the input device. “I didn’t say the scan was generated by any of these ships.” He scratched at a row of fresh pimples on his chin—one was beginning to ooze. “It doesn’t make any sense.” He continued to stare at the lines of code on his display.
Grimes and Jason exchanged a quick glance. Grimes said, “Sometimes it helps to talk things through … even if we don’t fully understand what you’re saying to us.”
Bristol looked up at Grimes with a furrowed brow. “No, I was wrong.”
“We’re not being scanned?”
“Yes, we are being scanned, but not by any ship in this vicinity. That’s what threw me. The scan has all the markers of a local nature, originating close by. Ingenious really … one of the heavy cruisers is being used as a proxy to retransmit the scan.”
Jason shook his head. “I’m not following.”
“It’s got to be coming from the Drac-Vin forces. Looks like there’s a vessel back there that has some kick-ass tech on board.”
“You’re telling me Ot-Mul knows we’re here?”
“Definitely,” he said, turning back to his display.
“I doubt the detection of one tiny, fairly insubstantial ship will divert the course of the Drac-Vin forces,” Jason said.
“There’s no need for conjecture, Captain. Thirty heavy cruisers and two destroyers just broke away from the fleet,” Grimes said. “They’re on a direct intercept course for Dreathlor prison barge.”
“How much time do we have before they get to us?”
“An hour, maybe an hour and a half. But if we can halt the forward progress of
the prison ship, we can dramatically extend that timeframe … make it more like two or three hours.”
“The problem will be phase two. We need time to get the prison barge configured with those heavy cruisers … to build our hot rod. Adding thirty more heavy cruisers to the mix and the potential for a battle in space—”
“Maybe we can cross that bridge in several hours, Cap?”
“You’re right, Lieutenant. We need to get our ass over to the barge,” Jason said.
“Bring up the prison diagram again.”
Grimes did as he asked.
Jason scanned the thousands of lines. “I looked for a central bridge location before. It’s an unconventional configuration.”
“I suspect it’s like that for a reason,” Bristol said. “There’s probably an AI that pretty much controls every aspect of the ship, including all navigation. Another reason this ship has never been hijacked, they’ve removed the personal … organic … element. Dreathlor’s AI takes its orders from high command; everyone on the ship is only along for the ride. There is no ship’s bridge, per se.”
“There is this,” Grimes said, pointing to a compartment larger than any around it. “There’s significantly more conduits … cabling, coming out of there.”
“Maybe a warden’s office,” Jason said. “Can you separate the life form readings in the prisoner holding cells from the rest?”
Bristol turned back to his console. “Yeah … I was looking at this before. With the exception of about fifty organic life forms, the holding cells are empty.” Bristol brought up a new layer to the ship’s diagram. Yellow icons came to life at various points within the vessel. “I’m assuming these are prisoners, since they’re situated within these indentations, the holding cells. Exactly fifty. These others, I guess, are prison personnel … administrators, maintenance workers, and guards. All in all, about one hundred.”
“Can we pinpoint Ricket and Gaddy’s location?”
“Not through that massive hull. The materials it’s made of, its thickness … there’s just no way. The good news is it looks like all the prisoners are clustered together, here in one section.”
Scrapyard Ship 7: Call to Battle Page 10
