Zed returned the salute. “Farewell my friend.” His voice broke at the end, and the screen went blank. “Why didn’t you tell me, Lola?” Behind him he heard Katherine weeping quietly.
“Captain Bentax had cut off his ship-board AI from contacting me. Besides…” Lola paused. “He is right. If he can disable one battleship by sacrificing his frigate, you will have a much better chance of destroying the station. I’ve calculated that our fleet stood only a twenty percent chance of disabling a single Creednax battleship, and then the cost would have been astronomical.”
Zed sat in silence for several minutes. “God I hate this job. I was happy as a Flight Engineer working on scrap satellites in Earth orbit.”
“Your own crew abandoned you to your death, if you remember.” Lola replied angrily. “You lived in a dump in Miami and had a militantly unfaithful girlfriend. Your life expectancy on Earth would have been eighty, if you didn’t get knifed in an alley first. Should you survive this encounter, your life expectancy will be significantly greater. Here you have a family. Isn’t THAT worth fighting for?”
Zed was silent as he sat, watching the small dot of the Frigate Ba-sing dwindle. “Back on Earth.” He said quietly. “I didn’t have to watch those I care for die one by one.”
“But…” Lola began.
“However…” Zed cut her off. “You are right. My friends, my family...” He glanced at Katherine. “And those I love are worth fighting and dying for.” He noticed that the speck of the frigate had disappeared back into the stars. “You should wake the other ship captains, Lola. They should watch this.”
“The other ship captains have been watching and listening since you first entered the bridge, Zed.” Lola said very softly.
“Thank you for that news.” Zed said dryly, thoroughly embarrassed.
“The Frigate Ba-sing has just launched her full complement of one hundred probes toward the Creednax fleet and the Creednax homeworld.” Lola’s voice was once more professional. On the screen the images of the enemy fleet suddenly resolved into startling clarity. “The Ba-sing is accelerating away from us. She will turn to begin her final run in sixty minutes.”
“Thank you Lola. From the time she turns, how long until final impact?”
“Forty minutes, Fleet Captain.”
Zed sighed. “Please have all bridge personnel report to their stations at the Ba-sing’s turn-around. Run a feed of this to all ship-board monitors. Let the crew remember Jerlan Bentax as the hero he is.”
“Yes Fleet Captain.” It might have been a glitch in Lola’s audio, but he could have sworn he heard a catch in her digital voice.
CHAPTER 13
PLAN B:
“Time to impact is five minutes.” Zed sometimes envied Lola’s ability to sound so inhumanly calm, but then she wasn’t human. Other than the distant hum of ventilators, the bridge, despite the crowd, was silent. Everyone seemed to want to be there, rubbing shoulders with their fellow humans for the thin comfort of that momentary contact. Zed stood beside Katherine, his hand on her shoulder; she resting her cheek on his hand. He too would take all the comfort he could get. He wondered if the ghost of Sindiix Tran stood beside Jerlan Bentax, as the frigate plummeted into battle. “Time to impact imminent.” The Frigate Ba-sing was suddenly behind the huge battleship pouring a blinding cascade of fire into her stern. An eye-searing flash blanked the screen, and when video returned the battle was over. Remote drones zoomed their cameras on the stricken behemoth, to show the watching crews that the entire stern of the battleship had been reduced to a smoking ruin. Flashes from lesser explosions lit the twisted interior, and as they watched the battleship drifted sideways, engines dead and out of control. Already tugs were pouring from the first Creednax battleship to prevent her stricken sister from ramming the station, while smaller warships provided layer after layer of defense.
“Captain Jerlan Bentax has bought us the time we needed, ladies and gentlemen.” Zed said softly to the people on the bridge, and the other captains in their various ships. “We will meet in eight hours to discuss how best to use it. Think hard. We don’t want his death to be in vain.” Every eye followed Zed as he stood and left the bridge.
Katherine found him in the observatory, sprawled in his casual slacks, ‘jeans’ he called them, and a warm flannel shirt drinking a large glass of blood-red wine. She was worried for a moment before she noticed that the bottle was still half full.
“How did you find me?” He didn’t even bother looking around. He knew the ‘feel’ of Kat by now and could pick her out of a crowd in a dark room.
Her laughter was low. “How do you think?”
“I told you it wasn’t good to drink alone.” Lola commented formally as a second glass materialized on the table next to the bottle.
Zed sighed, picking up the bottle and pouring Kat a glass full. She wasn’t much of a drinker, and one glass was always her limit. Zed lifted his glass. “Lola, could you please forward this to all the ship commanders who are still awake.”
“They are all awake, Zed.”
“Thank you. I just remembered this old poem I once heard from a German Luftwaffe pilot who was very very drunk. Germany is a small but fierce country on the planet I came from. Written, by the German poet Ludwig Uhland many years ago, it’s still applicable today, and goes like this:
Ich hatt' einen Kameraden,
Einen bessern findst du nicht.
Die Trommel schlug zum Streite,
Er ging an meiner Seite
In gleichem Schritt und Tritt.
Eine Kugel kam geflogen:
Gilt’s mir oder gilt es dir?
Sie hat ihn weggerissen,
Er liegt zu meinen Füßen
Als wär's ein Stück von mir.
Will mir die Hand noch reichen,
Derweil ich eben lad'.
"Kann dir die Hand nicht geben,
Bleib du im ew'gen Leben
Mein guter Kamerad!"
I once had a comrade,
You will find no better.
The drum sounded for battle,
He walked at my side,
In the same pace and step.
A bullet came flying towards us,
Is it meant for me or you?
It tore (swept) him away,
He now lays at my feet,
As if he was a part of me.
His hand reaches out to me,
Meanwhile I am reloading (the rifle).
"I cannot shake your hand (farewell),
You must remain in eternal life (heaven),
My fine (precious) comrade."
“It’s a good epitaph for our friend Jer, don’t you think?” He looked at his watch. “We’ll have our meeting in four hours in the conference room of the Rose.”
Katherine had set down her full glass and was crying softly. Zed wrapped his arms around her. “I think, my friend.” He said to the air around him “That it’s time to think about PLAN B.”
“I will NOT.” The voice of Lola was adamant. “Have you throw your life away like Jer Bentax.”
“I don’t plan on throwing any lives away, Lola.” Kat was frowning at him. “Pull up the tactical map of the Creednax fleet in its relation to the red supergiant. The air in the observatory flickered and then glowed with the tactical map. Zed finished his wine in a swallow and set his glass down “This is what I was thinking…” Halfway through his informal presentation, Lola interrupted him.
“Zed, remote probes have detected the Creednax main fleet departing their homeworld. There are eight battleships, a score of cruisers, and a thousand smaller warships and support vessels.” Kat thought him crazy when Zed smiled.
The faces that turned toward him in the conference room were grim, gray faced ghosts of their former owners. Although he knew otherwise, the air in the room smelled of the grave. Zed listened attentively to the different plans proposed. Most employed evasion and deception to achieve their goal, some depended on elaborate decoy runs again. All the plans sub
mitted had no better than ten percent chance of success with an eighty percent mortality rate. Zed just smiled and nodded. When Lola broke the news of the approaching Creednax fleet, the faces of the ship captains fell to despair. Zed smiled and Katherine frowned, knowing he was up to something.
Alina DeThomaso, former Air Force Major and now Captain of the Battle-cruiser Formidable looked first at Katherine, and then at Zed, and her despair lifted a little. “Ok Zed, out with it.” Her NASA aplomb went entirely out the window as she gripped the table. “You have something up your sleeve.”
Zed’s grin widened. “I call it PLAN B.” He looked around the table. “I really am disappointed in you, ladies and gentlemen. You’re supposed to be bright people, but perhaps you’ve never learned to think outside the box.” He steepled his fingers, looking at each face in turn. “In the lifecycle of a sun, what is the next stage past red supergiant?”
Michael Flaherty, a seasoned combat pilot and Captain of the Frigate Bonhomme Richard answered slowly, running his hand through his short sandy blond hair, realization dawning on his face. “A super nova.” It came out a whisper, and the sound ran around the table like wildfire.
“And what was the original classification of the Heavy Destroyer 7651 Rose of the Dawn?” Zed was staring at Michael as he asked the question.
“She was classified a Planet Destroyer… Oh My God!” His eyes became very wide and all at the table were staring at Zed now. “You plan on forcing the red supergiant to go super nova.” There was an excited buzz of talk.
Zed leaned forward. “Better than that. I plan on making the red supergiant go super nova, taking the Creednax fleet, the rescue fleet, and the Creednax homeworld with it.”
Elizabet Diss, an experienced Frigate Captain from Dramul and now Captain of the Frigate Constitution gave him a level look with cool gray eyes. “The explosion from a supernova propagates in all directions, Fleet Captain. What will happen to Chamdar and Dramul?”
“Lola.” Zed murmured. “Please shrink the display” Pinpricks of light on the map before them represented suns. Zed touched a red one. “This is our supergiant.” He moved the map slightly, placing the red dot on the far side. He touched a small white dot on the opposite side of the map. “This is Chamdar. Dramul is beyond it.” His finger touched one of several nebulous glowing patches between the red and the white dots. “These are gaseous nebulae. Lola please give us an animation of the super nova.” The red sun swelled and burst. The edge of the blast raced outward, struck a nebula and attenuated somewhat, struck another and attenuated more. The atrophied blast finally struck Chamdar first, and then shortly after Dramul. “What will happen to those planets, Lola?”
“Chamdar will be the most severely affected. Electronic communication will probably be disrupted for the better part of a year as the blast and radiation wavefront passes. During that year people should probably stay inside as much as possible. Computers will have to be shielded or they will be damaged. The planetary radiation belts will glow like a light bulb. It is a very good thing they are no longer involved in a war. Dramul will have significantly less disruption. Communications and navigation will be cut off sporadically. The aurora will be spectacular.
“But why didn’t you tell us this sooner?” Elizabet gave him a slightly hurt look.
Zed sighed. “There were a number of reasons. I guess the first is that I didn’t know about the imminent arrival of the Creednax rescue fleet until a short time ago. Second reason is that I really didn’t know if it would work until Captain Bentax demonstrated that it would by nailing down the Creednax fleet. Lastly…” He gave them a long look. “It would have been difficult to tell you that this plan will cost you one and possibly both of your capital ships.”
They were all on their feet, glaring at their Fleet Captain. He waited for three full minutes before he said anything. “This plan has a fifty percent chance of success. If you can submit a plan that has better chances I’ll be willing to listen to it.” He crossed his arms. “You have eight hours. After that we begin to make preparations for PLAN B.”
“How many people will actually be involved in PLAN B?” Alina asked slowly.
Zed looked at a white faced Kat sitting next to him. “Two; three if you include Lola.”
The room exploded with sound, everyone trying to have his or her say at the same time, and everyone calling Zed absolutely insane. Lola, Katherine and Zed sat quietly, saying nothing. Finally the uproar died down, and the battle-cruiser Captain looked at the two principal players of the plan. “What is the plan?” She asked Zed simply.
The Fleet Captain smiled. “It is really very simple. We have a week to get ready before the Creednax main fleet arrives from home. During that time Lola will scrap every one of our sub-light craft and turn them into planet destroyer missiles. We have six in inventory now. I would like a full dozen. While we do that every person and all the cats will be evacuated from the Rose of the Dawn and from the Formidable, and transferred to the two transports we captured, to the remaining frigates, and to every other ship capable of supra-light travel. When that is done and the fleet is well away from danger, I’ve not forgotten that the transports are slow, we will grapple the two ships together magnetically, and arm all of our planet destroyer missiles. Formidable will be cloaked and run beneath the Rose of the Dawn, on the side least likely to draw fire. As we pass QX’an tril Station Lola will put the Rose of the Dawn into an out of control spiral toward the sun, as if her drives have been destroyed. The Creednax should waste no more effort to destroy what they think is a dying ship. The Rose herself should survive the passage through the sun’s chromosphere to the photosphere, where the planet destroyer missiles will detonate. Somewhat before that.” Zed gave the crowd a lopsided grin. “The cloaked Formidable will slow down and pass under QX’an tril Station, gathering as much information as we can from her computers. We will then slingshot around the sun and punch our supra-light drives before the sun goes super nova. Simple.”
Alina gave Zed a long look, and then turned to Katherine. “Do you agree with this?”
Kat returned her a sad little smile. “It’s the only plan that has any chance at all of pulling this stunt off. The physics works. Yes I agree.”
“If you would like, I could take your place.” She offered graciously.
“Thank you, but Zed is taking me because I will not let him go without me. He and Lola could do it alone, I’ve been told.”
The former NASA pilot gave her a small nod. “And you, Lola. What will happen to you?” She said to the air.
“Zed told me a long time ago to prepare an escape plan for myself. You may have wondered why a ship as complex as Formidable has no AI of its own. My personality is bootstrapped to the computer in your ship. When I put the Rose of the Dawn into her final spiral, I will transfer myself to the battle-cruiser. We have a better chance of getting out alive with me at the helm.”
Alina DeThomaso stood and bowed formally to Zed and Katherine. “When do you wish me to begin transferring personnel?”
“Immediately.” Zed replied without hesitation. “Tell them to take only small things that they can carry easily. Get them loaded onto the transports first.” He gave Kat a lopsided grin. “The same goes for you, dear one; get your people moving. We don’t want the blast wave or the Creednax catching them in those slow transports.”
Kat gave him a long look, then leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I like the sound of ‘dear one,’” she purred as she stood. “Launch the transports in three hours?”
“Sounds good to me.” Zed agreed. “How close is the Creednax relief fleet, Lola?”
“Six days Zed.”
“We’ll want to hit them in five days then, before the relief ships get here. Will that give you sufficient time to get the missiles prepared?”
“Barely. Twelve should be adequate for destabilizing the sun and causing a super nova. Less would be problematic.”
“Good. Send a message pod back to Thal’ark Station, a
nd inform Cybele of what is going on. If we should fail, she will be the final line of defense.”
“Ahhh.” Lola hummed in thought. “The inevitable PLAN C, for Cybele. Are there any more plans hidden in the back of your mind?”
Zed glowered. “Just one: PLAN D for Dunkerque.”
“Dunkerque… I don’t understand the …” Lola stopped abruptly. “I understand now.” Her voice was sober.
“Have you tested your bootstrap program?” Lola hesitated, and Zed frowned. “First priority. Get the bootstrap operational. Period. If we have to go with eleven missiles we will, but we will not go without you.”
“I…” Lola paused. “Thank you Zed. Having someone care about me is a new experience.”
“Get used to it — you’re family now Lola.” In the distance Zed could hear alarms ringing and the sound of numerous voices. He felt a sudden pang. “I never even had the chance to get to know her, Lola.” He reached out and caressed a bulkhead. She is a good ship, and it’s too soon to see her go.”
“It is just a box of metal that moves through space, Zed. The people, and the attitudes are what bring her alive. Those will survive, thanks to you and Katherine.” Zed stood speechless, and Lola laughed. “You should get something to eat. You are still trying to recover from that damned spider bite, you know.”
“Yes mother.” Zed turned and left the empty conference room, just behind Kat. Silently the lights turned off behind him.
“Are the cats taken care of?” He watched the bulky troop transports moving out of the main hangar. It was going to be a long flight for the passengers, even with stops at Chamdar and Dramul. Cybelle would welcome them on Thal’ark Station and on the planet Cybele both. The problem, he imagined, would be getting them to leave.
“The cats have been split up one per ship, with Ralph remaining on the Formidable. She seems to have formed this attachment to you. Strange…” Kat had a sad little smile on her face as she told him.
Zed didn’t say a thing, thinking instead of the attachment Sindiix Tran had with him, and what it had cost her. “How are the other transfers coming?” He muttered just to change the subject.
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