Gate Crashers

by Patrick S. Tomlinson

  Now the humans were advancing faster than anyone could have guessed, and the wheel of history threatened to complete another cycle. The window for preemptive action was closing.

  “May I assume,” Noric said, “that you wouldn’t be sharing this with a Vel you only intend to mount in the hall outside your door?”

  The voice paused before answering, probably for dramatic effect. “You may.”

  Noric’s crest regained some of its lost altitude, but only for a moment. He felt a swirl of air on the scales of his left arm and instinctively turned to face the disturbance.

  Twin pinpoints of red peered down at him. Noric was not a small Turemok by any measure; his position as a Vel was enough proof of that. But the Kumer-Vel was the single tallest man he had ever seen, towering a full head and crest above him. Noric had to beat back a sudden urge to run for the door.

  “You can be useful to me, Vel Noric. The Assembly clips our claws, preventing us from attacking this threat while it sits in its nest. I require an excuse, a pretense to act before the humans come crashing our gates. Your … rehabilitation … will be to provide me with one. Execute this assignment, and you might find yourself in line to command the Xecoron.”

  Noric’s pulse raced. The Xecoron. The flagship of the Turemok fleet. The namesake of the ship that had finally crushed the Lividite menace centuries before, and the single most prestigious command in all of Assembly space, of any species. He could scarcely believe what he’d just heard. But he couldn’t let the ambition show, so Noric centered himself before continuing.

  “And you have a plan to create this … pretense, Your Superiority?” he said at last.

  “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  * * *

  The enormous door closed as the Vel departed.

  “Light,” the Kumer-Vel said, and then there was light. Standing in the middle of the room, a long robe flowing over his towering body, he smiled to himself.

  “That went well,” he said quietly. “Wouldn’t you say, big brother?”

  “Yes, splendidly,” said a voice from his waist. “Now will you kindly get down from there? Your claws are digging into my shoulder plates.”

  “Certainly.” The folds of the robe parted, revealing the smallest adult Turemok anyone had ever seen, or would have, if he had ever been seen. Jak’el disentangled himself from the rig atop his larger brother, Grote, himself no giant.

  Nature had not bequeathed either of them with the stature that was a prerequisite for success in the Turemok’s warrior society. In fact, she’d gone out of her way to place them at the far left of the bell curve.

  The brothers were too small and too weak for anyone to take notice of them. Taken together, however, they had created a persona so intimidating that no one dared challenge it. Even many years into the ruse, Jak’el and Grote could hardly believe it continued to work. Nor could their younger, slightly larger brother, J’quol.

  “Are you sure Noric will play his role?” Grote asked. “He’s hardly the model of reliability. I mean, how incompetent do you have to be to have your ship knocked out by burgeron glot?”

  “I’m sure.” Jak’el removed an enormous prosthetic crest from his head. “He’s exactly what we need. Reflexively xenophobic and too karking stupid to realize that he’s the branch that will be pruned when the windstorm picks up.”

  “How certain are you that he will overreach in the way we need him to?”

  “Well, you know how persuasive our little brother can be. J’quol is in an excellent position to give Vel Noric a helpful push off the cliff when the time arrives.”

  “And the humans? Why involve them?”

  Jak’el clicked his teeth together. “I’m surprised at you, Grote. We need the barbarians to gin up a healthy panic. Coups are so much simpler if you wait until the population demands one.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Felix tried to force himself to relax. Eventually, he gave up as the butterflies massed in his stomach like the Mariposa Monarca Reserve. It was 0530 in the morning, and he hadn’t slept a wink. The moment Felix had been working feverishly toward for the last three years, and in a sense his whole life, arrived in two hours.

  His assignment as chief hyperdrive technician had afforded him the luxury of a private room. Small as it may be, Felix was grateful to have a “fortress of solitude” for the duration of their mission.

  However long or short that proved to be.

  “You’d better be awake, Felix,” Harris’s voice came through the com by the door.

  “I never quit being awake!” Felix shouted in the direction of the com.

  “Oh, sorry. Are you dressed?”

  “I’m not naked, if that’s what you mean.”

  The door hissed open, and Lieutenant Harris turned sideways to step through. He took a look at the barely touched meal sitting on the small table, the remains of a red uniform unceremoniously rumpled on the floor, and an old, battered beanbag chair in the corner. Perched atop the chair sat Felix, looking like a scarecrow with half its stuffing missing.

  “Damn, son, you look like hell,” Harris said helpfully. “We’ve got to be dressed and on the bridge in thirty minutes.”

  “Can we launch tomorrow instead?”

  “Would you like me to ask the captain?” Harris shot back.

  Felix rolled out of the beanbag chair and made a grunting sound that could nearly pass for human.

  “Why couldn’t you sleep?” Harris asked.

  Felix picked a tablet off his nightstand and waved it around absently. “Preparations,” he said. “I’m still trying to fine-tune the settings for the hyper window under local conditions.”

  “We’ve opened dozens of them by now. What’s different about this one?”

  “Oh, lots of things. The local gravity is different, for one. Ceres is tiny compared to Earth, and we’re much farther up the sun’s gravity well,” Felix said. “Add to that the lack of the Earth’s magnetosphere, stronger solar wind, any time dilation effects of our velocity at entry—”

  “Okay, I get it. God is in the details, eh?”

  “Yeah, sitting right next to Mr. Murphy,” Felix replied.

  “How bad could it be?”

  “Best case, some glitches with the ship’s electronics. Worst case, we blow up like the first few prototypes.”

  “So anywhere from minor inconvenience up to utter catastrophe.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Does Captain Tiberius know?”

  Felix’s eyes rolled. “His response was less than encouraging.”

  “Why? What did he say?”

  “He said, and I quote, ‘Don’t sweat the small stuff, kiddo.’”

  “Blowing up is small stuff?”

  “Apparently so.”

  Harris smirked. “C’mon, get in the shower. You’ve got a long day ahead of you.”

  “Or a very short one,” Felix muttered.

  After depositing Harris at his post, Felix strode down the narrow hallway toward the bridge. Double doors parted, inviting him through. Between the holographic displays, pulsing sounds, and bustling crewmembers, it had more in common with a Berlin discothèque than the quiet space Felix had toiled in only days before.

  On top of everything, the air carried a diffuse, musky smell. Felix looked around to identify the source, only to find himself in a staring contest with a silverback gorilla. Buttercup took up two chairs at the back of the bridge.

  Captain Tiberius sat in the center of the managed chaos, as confident as he was comfortable, confirmation that every hurricane has an eye.

  “Glad you could make it!” Maximus announced with outstretched arms. “Mr. Fletcher, I assume my engines are purring like kittens by now?”

  “Except for all that ‘small stuff’ we’ve already talked about.”

  “Oh, that’s exciting. Listen, Felix, I want you to play up that angle when the cameras start rolling. Drama makes for good vids.”

  “I don’t think drama will be in short supply
,” Felix said, still staring at the gorilla. “Um, Captain?”

  “Yes, Mr. Fletcher?”

  “Can I ask why the Branches & Fruit reporter is in uniform?”

  “You mean Mr. Buttercup. After that unfortunate … misunderstanding at the presser yesterday, the AANHP demanded representation on the crew. Mr. Buttercup was the only one that wasn’t two weeks away, so he got the berth by default.”

  “What’s his assignment?” Felix asked, positively terrified of the answer.

  “Press liaison.”

  “That’s … actually not a bad idea.”

  “Thank you,” Maximus said with a glimmer in his eye. “Now, if there’s nothing else?”

  “I’ll go to my station.”

  “Good man. Just see to it this wormhole doesn’t cave in on us.”

  “Actually, Captain, a wormhole is a tunnel between two points in space. What we’re doing is opening a window into a higher dimen—” Felix recognized the blank look on Maximus’s face. He’d seen it on his classmates whenever he got excited about quantum mechanics. “You’re not listening, are you?”

  “Details are what delegating is for, Mr. Fletcher. I’m more of a big-picture guy. Helm, prepare for departure. Com, alert Ceres command and the chase yank that we’ll be cutting the umbilicals in ten minutes. Engineering, you’ve got ten minutes to secure the fusion plant for independent operation. Security, double-check that everyone has locked the doors and rolled up the windows. The worlds will be watching, people. It’s got to be perfect!”

  Outside, the bright spotlights that illuminated the Bucephalus’s construction for the last two years went dark. For a handful of seconds, only the ship’s silhouette could be seen against the construction gantry. Then her hull lights sparked to life, bathing Bucephalus in a white glow, punctuated by red and green navigational lights.

  A series of explosive bolts disintegrated with a flash but without a sound, disconnecting the ship from the spidery gantry for the first time. The only connection that remained was a trio of segmented hoses snaking from the dockyard into the Bucephalus’s reactor bulb. These umbilical cords had provided the ship with power until now, to prevent unnecessary wear on the fusion plant.

  That was about to come to an end, as the Bucephalus’s chief engineer busied himself jump-starting the universe’s newest star. This fusion reactor was an advanced design, utilizing a battery of Felix’s miniaturized gravity generators instead of a magnetic bottle to crush the plasma, creating pressures close to those found inside a real star.

  This had two advantages. Higher pressures meant plasma temperature could come down from one hundred million degrees to a relatively chilly ten million, increasing reactor life expectancy. Even more important, this reactor didn’t need the neutron in deuterium to burn. Plain hydrogen would do, meaning Bucephalus didn’t lug around the gas separators of older ships. She could just siphon atmosphere from any old gas giant to top off the tanks.

  Felix nervously watched the reactor’s progress on his console. Even though he’d helped design it, there were always hiccups with new equipment. Regardless of size, when a sun hiccups, it’s usually bad for the neighborhood. His anxiety proved to be misplaced. After a few minutes, the ball of plasma was fusing nicely.

  “Fusion bottle is stable, Captain. Power is leveling off at just over two hundred megawatts, as expected,” Felix said.

  “Excellent,” said Maximus. “Com, get on the QER to Earth and alert the Unicycle that we’re on schedule to meet their beam. Engineering, cut the umbilicals.”

  An almost unperceivable shiver ran the length of the ship, accompanied by a flicker of the internal lights as she was weaned off external power in the blink of an eye. For the first time, Bucephalus was floating free under her own power. On board the Skunk Works orbital yard, twenty-one hundred proud parents watched the birth with moist eyes.

  “Helm, move us away from the yard on full starboard thrusters, and ready the gravity well.”

  “Starboard thrusters to full, ready the well, aye,” repeated the helmsman.

  Bucephalus pushed away from her womb at a snail’s pace, riding jets of supervelocity helium ions. The thrusters would be replenished with helium exhaust from the fusion reactor. Now plank owners, the bridge crew shared a moment of anticipation.

  Maximus’s voice broke the silence. “Helm, set course for our rendezvous with the beam.”

  The helmsmen massaged holographic icons in front of him. If he was nervous, it didn’t show. “Course is set, sir.”

  “Floor it.”

  The helmsman cranked a virtual dial to eleven, and Bucephalus started to free-fall under 112 gravities. At the Unicycle millions of kilometers away, Renée Lemieux pushed a button and sent a three-terawatt beam of charged particles toward a point a hundred kilometers ahead of Ceres’s orbit.

  Even at light speed, the beam would take fourteen minutes to reach the Bucephalus. During the trip, it vaporized a long-forgotten GPS satellite in Earth orbit, a stray comet trailing Mars, and a bag of microwave popcorn lost by an asteroid prospector two centuries earlier. A few kernels popped, but they were really stale.

  “Beam is on the way, sir,” the com officer said.

  Maximus nodded in approval and turned to the helmsmen’s station. “Are we on time for intercept?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Steady on. Engineering, deploy the receiver array.”

  At the aft end of the Bucephalus behind the reactor bulb, an enormous mirrored flower blossomed. Folds of silvered polymer drew taut against the expanding framework. When the last creases smoothed out, it formed a nearly perfect parabolic mirror a kilometer across, but only a few molecules thick.

  The mirror would catch the Unicycle’s beam and focus it onto a collector made of youmustbejokium, so named for the first thing the material scientist said when the temperature and conductivity requirements were explained to him, transferring the energy into the ship’s power grid and allowing Bucephalus to conserve fuel while accelerating out of the system.

  A chase yank kept alongside the mighty ship at a respectful twenty-kilometer distance. It was little more than a reactor, gravity drive, and a warehouse of sensors to record everything the Bucephalus did.

  Once under way, the bridge became almost peaceful. The crew buckled down and became lost in duties or private thoughts. Felix caught himself staring into the master holo-plot daydreaming. He felt serene. It wouldn’t last.

  Tense hours passed as the Bucephalus accelerated out of the asteroid belt. Navigational lasers in the bow dish destroyed incoming micro-meteors with dismissive ease.

  A heavy pall fell over the bridge as the clock ticked toward the hyperspace transition. The crew contemplated their survival prospects in silence.

  “Com, give me ship-wide, please,” Maximus said.

  “Live mic, sir.”

  “Thank you.” Despite the fact the com was audio only, Maximus felt the need to straighten his gleaming white collar. “Attention, Bucephalus crew. In five minutes, we will either be the first people to travel faster than light or the first to die in the attempt. The good news is we’re in the history books either way. Secure all loose material and put on your glasses for transition.” Maximus made a cutting gesture at his throat.

  “Mic cut, Captain.”

  Maximus turned to Felix. “It’s your show, Mr. Fletcher.”

  Felix was already buried in his console, powering up the hyperspace generator and making last-minute adjustments. There wasn’t much left to do that hadn’t already been done in his two weeks of preparation, but he looked busy. That was the important thing.

  On the face of the Bucephalus’s shield dish, three small portals slid open, exposing the projector heads of the hyperdrive system. Unlike the ship’s gravity generators, the hyperspace system required line-of-sight to work, which meant the armor plating protecting all of the finicky electronics and biology inside the hull had to move out of the way.

  “Hyperspace projectors are warme
d up,” Felix said.

  Several members of the bridge crew let out slow sighs to ease the tension.

  “Window is forming. Ten meters. Twenty. Fifty meters. Window reads stable. One hundred meters. Still stable. Ramping up power. Three hundred meters.” Sweat beads as big as pearls formed on Felix’s forehead.

  “Mr. Fletcher,” Maximus said.

  “What?” he snapped.

  “Your glasses.”

  Felix’s hand shot to the top of his head. He’d forgotten to drop them over his eyes in the excitement. “Oh. Thank you. And, sorry.”

  “Don’t mention it. Can’t have you flying blind,” Maximus said. He looked completely nonplussed, as though he either didn’t comprehend the danger they were all in or simply didn’t care. Felix wasn’t sure which was more unnerving.

  “Six hundred meters and growing,” Felix reported. “Seven hundred.”

  “Helm,” Maximus began. “I bet you can’t thread this ship through a twelve-hundred-meter needle.”

  “Sir?”

  “With the receiver array deployed, we’re a thousand meters across. I bet you can’t slip through with two hundred meters of clearance.”

  “And if I can?”

  “There’s a bottle of thirty-year-old Jack Daniel’s in it for you.”

  “And if I can’t?”

  Felix broke in, “Then we’re all dead, and the captain won’t be around to collect on the bet anyway. Nine hundred.”

  “You heard Mr. Fletcher, everyone; no point making side bets,” Maximus said with a snort. “So, helm, what’s it going to be?”

  The young man at the helm station set his jaw and nodded.

  “Good man. Mr. Fletcher, lock in the window at twelve hundred meters.”