Solbidyum Wars Saga 9: At What Price

by Dale Musser

  “So the computer can verify that you are alive, meaning someone hasn’t killed you, removed your eye and placed it before the scanner.”

  “Oh!” I said, shocked at the reply. “I hadn’t given that scenario a thought.”

  I’m not exactly sure what I envisioned for the Station Control Room, but whatever it was, what I found was far removed from my expectations. First of all, the room was much smaller than I anticipated, no more than ninety square meters. Console units surrounded the circular room and in the center was the raised main circular console unit with a single chair, where the officer in charge was seated. The console units lining the wall sat twenty technicians who scanned dozens of vid monitors. Two of the individuals wore what I recognized to be virtual reality headsets that served a function similar to the War Room holographic displays on the carriers.

  “Wow! I’m impressed,” I said. “You run everything from here?”

  “We monitor all the areas of the station and the surrounding space from here and we can control most functions on the station remotely from here if need be. However, under normal operating conditions, routine station functions are actually handled by the engineering departments and other divisions from their own control stations located elsewhere onboard. The primary roles of the Control Room are to issue orders and monitor all station activity. We are somewhat of a communications and dispatch hub.”

  “Is security run from here also?” I asked.

  “Only in times of emergency. Our security team has their own Control Room where they monitor security and enforcement issues for the entire station. Of course the space and resources they require are much greater than what you see here. At any given time, their Control Room is staffed by several hundred people. However, during the attack, we took over all security functions and overrode the security team’s control. We gave a five-second warning, and then all gates were closed automatically.”

  “Five-second warning?” I asked curiously.

  “Yes, to prevent someone from being right in the threshold of a Cantolla Gate during a closure. We wouldn’t want to sever a passenger and divide them between this place and their destination on the other side of the gate. It wouldn’t be pretty.”

  “Right. I trust no one was caught in your gate closings.”

  “Fortunately not. However, we do have a lot of angry people who ended up trapped here while the battle went on.”

  “How many civilians are still aboard the station?”

  Captain U’Dingan glanced at one of the consoles before answering. “At the time of the attack there were nearly half-million people in transit that were held in lockdown. We’re down to less than twenty thousand now. Within the hour they should all be gone.”

  “What happens then?” I asked.

  “The CGS will be closed to civilian use until the station has been repaired and thoroughly inspected. Of course, it will be relocated while all that is going on. Then, once everything is cleared and all scans and analyses have been passed, the station will be reopened. In the meantime, CGS-1 and CGS-2 will need to handle the extra traffic. It will cause some delays and general congestion that would otherwise not be experienced in the other two stations, but that can’t be helped.”

  He was about to say more when one of the men at the consoles turned to him and said, “Captain, the men in the Freight and Cargo Pod have completed the security sweep and are ready for you and the admirals to proceed with your tour.”

  “Ah, thank you, Corporal. Admirals, if you’re ready, we can proceed to Freight and Cargo for your inspection.”

  “Yes, as fascinating as this is here, I don’t think my presence helps much. Let’s see what happened in the cargo hold.”

  We returned to the Central Core, where we traveled via a different lift to the cargo level. I have no idea whether that was up down or sideways, as there was again no sense of motion in the lift. I guessed that the same technology was at play with motion dampening devices, but when I tried moving my hands about, I didn’t feel the restriction of movement like I did when riding the transports. I was about to ask Captain U’Dingan about it, when the lift door opened and we found ourselves looking into the main concourse of the Freight and Cargo Pod.

  “This way, Admirals. We’ll need to don space suits in the airlock before entering the hold… and again I would recommend that most of your guards remain behind the airlock and wait for us to return.”

  Inside the airlock, which was larger than I had expected, we found spacesuits and helmets sized to our needs. I was surprised to discover that our suits also identified us by rank, as indicated by the appropriate stripes and colors. It was apparent the suits were new, and I wondered at the time how they had prepared them so quickly, when I realized that they would have replicators on the station and that it probably only took minutes to get our size data from the Federation computers and manufacture the suits to our specific fittings. This was common knowledge, of course, but my cognition was beginning to suffer some significant gaps at this point, so I knew I’d be relying more heavily on Marranalis as the day wore on.

  After we suited up and checked our gear to make sure there were no leaks or improperly sealed panels, one of the station troopers activated the airlock and we passed into the cargo storage and gate area. I was completely unprepared for what I saw next. I had anticipated seeing rows and rows of shipping containers and neatly organized crates of goods. Instead, the area was filled with clutter, most of which seemed to be accumulated at one end of the room near a gaping hole in the station’s wall. The sudden evacuation of air into the vacuum of space had pulled the containers and crates in that direction. Outside, I could see the containers and goods that had been sucked out as they drifted away from the station.

  “I’m sorry for the mess, Admiral,” Captain U’Dingan said in mocked humor. “We’re normally more organized down here.”

  “I assume the explosion that ruptured the hull occurred over there,” I said, stating the obvious. “I’d like to have a closer look.”

  “I recommend you secure yourself on one of the pre-installed safety lines, if you’re going to venture out there, Admiral,” said U’Dingan. “Even though we have artificial gravity turned on in here, there is always the risk it could fail, in which case you might drift out into space.”

  “Yes, I guess that’s a good precaution. Thanks for the recommendation.”

  “Be careful climbing over things to get over there,” said Marranalis. “The way things are stacked and jumbled about doesn’t look too stable. If something shifts, you’ll find yourself crushed or pinned under something.”

  “Yes,” added U’Dingan. “In fact, it might be a good idea to reduce the gravity slightly to make climbing easier and also make the pile of materials more stable. I would think about half a G reduction should suffice.”

  With the gravity reduced moments later, we began our climb across the stacks of goods toward the explosion area. After some careful navigation, we reached the site of the explosion. As Captain U’Dingan had said, it was clear on close inspection that the damage had originated from an explosion occurring inside the cargo hold rather than from an enemy shot that penetrated from the outside. I looked about trying to determine what had concealed the explosive device. The likelihood was that whatever it was had been sucked out into space with all the other items.

  “It must have been quite an explosion,” said Marranalis. “Look up above. There’s a piece of debris embedded in the decking.”

  I looked up where he indicated and saw what appeared to be a piece of metal protruding from one of the structural members. There was some lettering on it, but not enough to read from our vantage point.

  “See if you can get that down,” I said to Captain U’Dingan. “I have a hunch that the explosive device was hidden inside whatever container that piece of metal was a part of.”

  “Yes, sir. As soon as you finish your inspection, I’ll get someone up there to remove it.”

  “Once you have that pi
ece down, I want you to send it, along with any other items you may find that look significant, directly to Admiral Wabussie at the FSO. Be sure to number the items and send them with holographic images of this room, top to bottom, documenting where you found each item within the room. No doubt Wabussie will send a team of FSO agents to look over the damage, so you may as well also send him all the pertinent manifests, staffing schedules, and the results of your truthband tests, including your own. I’m sure you understand this is of the highest priority and security.” I thought for a moment as I looked at the damaged hull. “I want to know what kind of explosive device they used and just how they got it aboard. It’s obvious from the way the plates are buckled outward around the blast hole that the explosion occurred inside the station and that it wasn’t from an externally fired torpedo. I just hope the Brotherhood hasn’t managed to get another such device aboard one of the other Cantolla Gate Stations.”

  “That’s not necessarily true, Admiral,” said Captain U’Dingan. “The pressurization of the station would cause any kind of penetration to ultimately force the structural members and shell to blow outward. However, in this case I would say you’re correct. I think we’d see more folding and twisting of the plates and members if the penetration was an initial inward force, like that of a torpedo, followed by a secondary outward force, like that of an explosive depressurization.”

  As an engineer, I should have known this without giving it a second thought, but my cognitive processes had obviously become compromised beyond what I had realized. “Right. I hadn’t thought that through. I’d best stop speculating and leave it to Wabussie and his FSO team to determine the facts.”

  One thing was certain. The Brotherhood had found a weakness in our CGS security and had exploited it. Had they used a stronger explosive, they could have destroyed the entire station. They most certainly had the know-how and materials and had chosen not to use them, which indicated it was more their intent to capture the station than to destroy it. Maybe they thought the explosion would knock out the RMFF or cloaking device, but neither of those had happened. Nonetheless, they had somehow learned the location of CGS-3. I began probing the possibilities in my mind as to how the Brotherhood would have achieved such a feat without the use of an inside spy. Was there possibly a tracking device inside a piece of cargo that gave away the station’s location? Carrying or placing a tracking device in the passenger gate concourse area was virtually impossible, as the security scanners would have identified and neutralized such an instrument immediately, but doing so in the cargo hold was not so straightforward due to the nature of the materials that were transferred between gates. Beyond that, it seemed an unlikely scenario, as it would require a very sophisticated device to transmit the station’s location quickly over the vast distances of space and the Brotherhood lacked that technological capability… or did they? They had managed to figure out the Cantolla Gates and the instant communication system. Had the Brotherhood discovered a long-distance tracking technology as well?

  With my inspection of the damage completed, I transferred back to the GLOMAR ROSA. The ball was in Wabussie’s court now and unless something new happened, I would need to wait for the FSO to complete their investigations.

  Our attack on Ming’s asteroid-ship production site netted us some damaged and destroyed asteroid-ships as well some prisoners. Normally, Ming blew up any of his ships that were disabled, especially those that still had their crews intact, rather than letting them fall into our hands. Apparently, we had captured some ships before the Brotherhood had been able to install the self-destruct mechanisms. The prisoners were temporarily transferred to the Lunar Prison. These would be the first new prisoners to enter the facility in some time. All the remaining prisoners had been finally processed out of the facility and reintroduced into society. Some were determined to no longer be a threat to the Federation or they had their memories wiped and had been released onto some world in non-Federation space far from Brotherhood influence to live out their lives with new identities and hopefully new frames of mind. These prisoners would probably have their memories wiped and be processed quickly in the same manner, unless they died of drug addiction complications like those of the earlier God’s Sweat panic.

  A’Lappe was eager to look into the technology we found at the Brotherhood fabrication site. With the high-level clearance that had been granted him by the Federation, he could access all the data the FSO was collecting in real time. He was even allowed to have samples sent to his lab on the NEW ORLEANS for analysis. In all the years since I had first met A’Lappe, he had left the NEW ORLEANS only a handful of times and most of those instances were to travel to the mysterious site where he collected the solbidnite that we relied on to fuel most of our ships. The initial supply of solbidyum had long since been depleted – or, more accurately, distributed – and no new deposits had been discovered. Fortunately, there had been enough solbidyum to disseminate to all the Federation planets; but since then, the Brotherhood had captured many of the Federation worlds and the solbidyum grains once intended for use as power sources for these worlds were now being used to power Ming’s ships of war. Solbidnite was nearly as powerful as the solbidyum and though it was available in substantial amounts, the only one who knew its location was A’Lappe. He alone controlled its distribution.

  A’Lappe supplied the solbidnite to the Federation for use in their military ships and supplied some to me as well for use in my personal ships. Money seemed to have no value to A’Lappe. All he asked in return was the security of my ship as his home and access to the laboratory to do what he called tinkering and what everyone else called miracles. With the assurance of these things he was completely happy.

  I asked him once why he didn’t just make the location of the solbidnite available to everyone, instead of doling it out the way he did. He said, “If its whereabouts was known to everyone, there would always be people like Ming who would try to take control of the supply and use it to gain wealth and dominance over others, and the amount of energy contained within that field is too much power for any one humanoid to have at their fingertips.”

  I wanted to point out that he was one person with all that power at his fingertips, but instead I asked him, “Just how much energy is in that solbidnite field?”

  “Well, let me put it this way,” he began. “With a PLABE you can destroy an entire world with a single shot. With just a few grains of solbidnite, you can destroy or create entire solar systems.”

  “What do you mean create entire solar systems?” I asked, but before A’Lappe could answer, I had been called away to deal with some military matter and the subject never came up again. I often wondered where he kept the stuff. I suspected for a long time that it was stashed away on the NEW ORLEANS in some ultra-secret compartment that only he could access. A’Lappe had designed the NEW ORLEANS and he was the only one alive who knew all the ship’s secrets. But if the solbidnite was that powerful or potentially devastating, I wasn’t entirely sure that he would keep it so close at hand.

  I had planned to bring up the matter anew that evening when I saw A’Lappe for my next treatment, but before I could broach the subject, A’Lappe brought up an issue of his own.

  “Tibby, I’m afraid I have some bad news. I’ve been going over test results from the blood samples I take with each of your treatments and I regret to tell you that your condition is slowly worsening. I’ve been trying to find some way of halting the degeneration, but nothing seems to work. I have discovered, however, that stress aggravates and accelerates the degeneration. What I’m saying is, one day of stress is taking weeks off your life, Tibby.”

  Kala squeezed my hand and gasped at this revelation.

  “How long do I have?” I asked. “I mean… before I lose my mind?”

  “That’s difficult to say. The treatments help to maintain your mental functions, but physically you're burning out rapidly. I’d like to tell you that you have many years ahead of you, but honestly, you may not have m
ore than a few years, if you keep functioning at this level of daily stress. You’re pushing it mighty hard and it's taking its toll on you. Surely you recognize this.”

  “What am I supposed to do? I can’t just walk away from my duties, especially now that Ming is gearing up with these major assaults. If I could just find him and take him out once and for all, I’m sure the Brotherhood would collapse overnight. Then I could relax and I wouldn’t have to deal with the constant stress. Maybe I could even retire.” I suddenly noticed that I was trembling and with my realization, A’Lappe stared at me a moment, then dropped his head silently and stared at the floor.

  “You’ve been getting those tremors like you have now more frequently, haven’t you?” he asked in a quiet voice.

  I glanced at Kala, who stared at me and said, “Tib? Have you?”

  “Only on the day of my treatments… usually just before I’m due,” I said.

  A’Lappe nodded knowingly. “But they have been occurring more often and earlier each time, yes?”

  “Uh, yeah, I guess so. I haven’t actually been paying attention,” I lied.

  “Tib, you have been. I’ve noticed it several times lately, “Kala said. She turned to A’Lappe, “There must be something you can do.”

  “Right now, the only thing we can do is to space the treatments closer together. Instead of every seven days, we’ll need to do them every six days. In the meantime, I’ll try to see if there isn’t something we can do to help the situation. Tibby, I know you want to keep all of this secret, but I really could use Cantolla’s help on this. She is a specialist in the human nervous system, you know, and she understands it better than anyone else alive. She might be able to find something to help that I would never think of.”

  “No, I don’t want anyone else knowing,” I stated flatly.

  “Tib,” Kala began sternly. “If Cantolla is an expert, we need to let her try. Keeping this a secret serves no purpose if you’re going to get worse anyway. It’s better that Cantolla is brought into this now if there’s a chance she can help.”