by S. H. Jucha
After the first evening’s barely passable performances, crew members became energized to compete and win the opportunity to sit at the head table. The competition was launched at full power.
Inventiveness was at the forefront of the crews’ efforts. Both clothing fabricators were in great demand, as crew set about creating costumes, recut from worn uniforms and then colored.
Hitherto unknown talents were uncovered, singing voices, musical instruments, and the odd but entertaining skill.
Nearly two months into the competition, the audience was stunned when a broad-chested New Terran crew chief appeared in a flowing gown and a handmade hat, complete with fine wire molding that imitated feathers. When he opened his mouth, he sang a tune in a wonderful falsetto voice. After the chief finished, the crew saw the actress, whom he had imitated. They broke out with whistles and stamping, standing to deliver their applause for the flawless performance.
The crew chief had the gumption to curtsy to his audience, although it wasn’t the most graceful of motions. Awarded the evening’s prize, he selected the right to listen to the head table’s conversations for a week.
When it became known that crew members were banding together to support someone they thought could win, Renée added a second competition. She allowed two or more crew members to compete for the prize, and those groups alternated with the single performances.
The contests were the hit of the journey and were still ongoing, when every human felt the exit from the third and final leg of the journey.
-31-
Knock Knock
Alex sent to his entertainment committee.
Ellie replied, when Julien brought the warship to a stationary position. Julien followed Ellie, as she met with Alex and Renée in their cabin.
“Early telemetry indicates that we’re sitting outside a dead system,” Ellie said to Alex, but glancing toward Julien.
“That’s accurate, Captain,” Julien said.
“Now what?” Ellie asked, waving off Renée, who was indicating the thé brewer.
Julien sent privately.
“There’s a probe in this system, Ellie,” Alex said. “It’s probably been here forever or at least a few eons. It’s had nothing to report simply because this system was devoid of significant life forms or activity. You’re about to correct that. I want you to cruise this system. Check out some middle planets. Fly a few travelers to investigate them … that sort of thing.”
“Then what?” Ellie asked.
“Then launch a banisher and destroy the probe,” Alex said.
“It’s active?” Ellie asked, glancing toward the SADE.
“Yes, Captain, it’s transmitting,” Julien replied.
“If I understand your strategy, Alex, isn’t this like waving a flag at an enormous predator and saying, ‘Hello, look at us. We’re timid herbivores. Come eat us’?”
“I like the imagery, Captain,” Alex replied, chuckling. “I don’t intend to engage whoever comes out to meet us after we’ve destroyed their probe. I’m merely interested in seeing who shows up and how long it takes them to arrive. There’s a great deal that we can learn by letting the Nua’ll show their hand first.”
Ellie left the meeting feeling unsettled. She instructed the second shift pilot to pick a central orbiting planet and make for it.
“Any one in particular, Captain?” the pilot asked.
“Your choice, Lieutenant. Surprise me,” Ellie replied. Afterwards, she unpacked her present from Commandant Dorian.
When Ellie had a private moment with Robert on Bellamonde, she asked, “Do you have the original evasion and escape routines that were embedded in the Daggers?”
“Those routines have long since been upgraded to work with the travelers and Tridents, Ellie. Why would you want them?” Robert had replied.
“I have the feeling, Robert, that I’ll need them for my ship.”
“You want to treat your warship as if it’s fleeing from a superior force?”
“That’s exactly right, Robert. There’s the distinct possibility that I might not be able to offer an offense of any sort. Purely evade and retreat in the face of the enemy.”
“Is that where you’re going, Ellie? Someplace dangerous and alone?”
“If I’m reading Alex right, and he hasn’t disclosed this to me, I think we’re about to do something incredibly risky.”
Ellie sent, as she marched toward the bridge.
Julien replied, pinging the controller for Ellie’s location.
* * *
Ellie outlined her request to Julien, left the details in the SADE’s hands, and crawled into bed. It was late in the evening, but sleep was slow to come. When it did, it was full of strange dreams. In most of them, she was seeking Étienne, as events sought to overtake her, but her partner kept slipping away from her.
After a few hours of tossing and turning, Ellie rose and spent a prolonged time in the refresher, until even she got a warning of shut off unless she reactivated it. Immediately after morning meal, Ellie joined Yumi on the bridge.
“Lieutenant, I want you to study some routines that Julien worked up for me,” Ellie said, sending a link to Yumi. “Study them carefully. Select the ones that best suit a maximum opportunity for us to evade without any celestial bodies around us.”
“Captain, I don’t understand,” Yumi replied. “Are there adversaries in this system? I looked at the telemetry after I woke up. It appears quiet.”
“That’s right, Lieutenant. There’s nothing to interest us here but an active probe. We’re going to make like explorers and traipse around this system before we eliminate that probe. Then we’re going to park out there in the dark and see who comes in response to our knocking, according to Alex.”
“Who do you think will come, Captain?”
“I have no idea, Lieutenant. Maybe no one, maybe a sphere, maybe the entire Nua’ll space fleet. If I’ve learned anything from Admiral Tachenko, it’s don’t expect a good outcome from your actions. Anticipate the worst you can imagine, and then prepare for something twice as bad as that.”
“I’ll get on these routines, Captain” Yumi replied, her eyes wide.
“You do that, Lieutenant. Your skills might be the difference between us becoming space junk and returning to Omnia.”
Ellie had proved she was one of the best fighter pilots. But where she had spent years training to become that good, Yumi had proved early on that she was a natural, effortlessly wringing the most out of a Trident’s maneuverability. Ellie thought there might be only one person, make that one entity, who could best her pilot, and that would be a SADE, one who had previously piloted a starship and worked with the Omnian squadron.
The Liberator toured the dead system, stopping to orbit several planets and launch the travelers to investigate moons and asteroid belts. It might have been exceptionally boring, except everyone knew what Alex was planning to do and tension was elevated.
After twenty-one days of playing explorer ship, the third rotation pilot came on duty and waited several hours until the travelers were aboard. Then a course was laid and activated. It drove the warship toward the outermost planet, where the probe hid among a collection of moons.
Days later, Yumi halted the Trident at a distance many times farther than what was normally reserved for destroying a probe.
“Alex, the banisher can’t get a clear shot at the probe. It’s embedded among the moons,” Ellie said. “If the probe detonates, the explosion is liable to create a significant disruption in that gas giant.”
“More than likely, it will, Captain,” Alex replied.
With that being the extent of Alex’s answer, Ellie sent, She waited, watching the controller confirm what she heard from the crew chief, as a bay was cleared, decompressed, doors opened, and the banisher launched.
“No use waiting around for a day or so, Captain,” Alex said, adding, “Julien, final destination, if you please.”
The SADE sent a curving vector path and a set of coordinates to the controller. Then he sent links to Ellie and Yumi before messaging both of them.
The Liberator had passed the outer planet’s orbit, when telemetry registered a massive explosion.
“The probe detonated on contact,” Julien said, during the evening meal.
“Was that expected?” Sherilyn, a traveler pilot, asked. She was the most recent winner of the single’s performance and had elected to ask questions for the day.
“This probe, so close to the Nua’ll territory, was considered to be an early model,” Julien replied. “Therefore, no evasion techniques were expected, but it was highly probable that it would detonate when the banisher’s clamshell claws closed on it.”
“Won’t the probe’s detonation cause a surface eruption on the gas giant?” Sherilyn asked, eyeing Alex.
“Yes,” Alex replied.
“This means that we’ve communicated our presence in several ways,” Sherilyn mused. “We’ve sailed around the system, which the probe communicated. Then the probe’s broadcast was abruptly ended, when our banisher destroyed it. Finally, this planet’s expulsion of a huge hot mass will create an extraordinary signal flare that you’re expecting the Nua’ll not to miss.”
When Alex shrugged his shoulders in response, Sherilyn nodded her head thoughtfully. She was intrigued by the strategy’s boldness.
The following day, Ellie began running emergency drills, including fast launches of the travelers. The pilots recognized that they wouldn’t have a significant gravitational field for their shells to intercept. They would exit the warship with the charge they carried, which meant the four fighters were expected to be a blocking force that would allow the Trident to escape.
In addition, Ellie had Julien create hundreds of scenarios of attacking forces. These enabled the traveler pilots and Yumi to practice various simulated evasion and escape tactics. The better the pilots got, the more Ellie had Julien increase the attackers’ numbers and velocity advantage. Eventually, she expanded the attackers’ degrees of approach until the escape avenues were minimal and required coordination with the travelers to open a route for the warship.
The entertainment and exercise routines ground to a halt and were curtailed as part of the ship’s daily life. The entire crew was on edge, waiting for the arrival of whoever was coming.
However, the intensity could only be maintained for so long. Eventually, the anxiousness slid into boredom, as the days rolled by. Besides, the incessant number of ship drills and tactical simulations on escape scenarios by the bridge crews were leaving too many crew members exhausted and able to do no more than fall into their bunks after rotation.
* * *
One late evening, thirty-five days after the Liberator had taken up its stationary position outside the system, Alex located Julien. The two wandered down to the ship’s bay level. At this hour, the corridor was deserted. Alex slid down to the deck and Julien joined him.
“You’ve not been yourself lately, Julien,” Alex said. “Not much repartee between you and me, and you’ve exhibited a lack of patience with the young ones. What’s on your mind?”
Julien raced through a nearly innumerable list of potential answers, and then he halted all kernel response activity. When did I start conditioning my replies to Alex? the SADE asked himself.
“The data we’re collecting on the Nua’ll indicate they’re more formidable and dangerous than we could have perceived,” Julien replied.
“We’ve been seeing this coming for a while, Julien. Why the change in your attitude now?”
Julien reached back through his memories from the moment of his inception to the present and considered the reasons for his algorithms’ priorities.
“When all you perceive is an endless repeat of your days, there’s not much to hold dear for the future,” Julien replied. “Without hope, dreams dwindle and die.”
“And now?” Alex asked, realizing Julien was referring to the period before he was freed from his box.
“Year after year, for more than two decades, my future has grown richer. For all the processing power I possess, I couldn’t have imagined the life I have today, and I owe its start to you.”
“I thank you for that thought, Julien, but you’ve given me as much as I’ve given you.”
“I would deem it impossible to compare our lives, Alex. They are what they are. What’s important is our future, and I sense that it grows short for both of us. Humans and SADEs represent a small population. The probabilities are high that we won’t be able to compete against the likes of an ancient and vast alien civilization.”
“Who says we have to compete?” Alex replied. “You, my friend, are holding on to the moment too tightly. That has to restrict your thinking.”
“What are your intentions, if not to compete, Alex?”
“Julien, how great would you estimate the Nua’ll territory to be?”
“If I were to extrapolate from the wall’s curvature and form a virtual sphere, it would encompass thousands of stars, possibly more than ten thousand.”
“And how many races do you think the Nua’ll subsumed during their expansion?” Alex asked.
“That would be impossible to calculate, Alex, but, certainly, numerous intelligent species were either coopted or destroyed.”
“And how many races do you think came knocking on their hatch?”
Julien had to smile at the question. “The probabilities are that it’s only one, led by a foolish human.”
“And what do you think this ancient race will think of a species that doesn’t exhibit fear at the sight of them, has destroyed two of their spheres, and not only located their hidden probes, but destroyed them?”
“A civilization this old would have a well-established order, and we would be disturbing it.”
“One last question, my friend. What do you think is the ultimate purpose of the probes?”
“Ah, an easy one,” Julien replied. “The Nua’ll have taken the long view. They’re keeping an eye on worlds with developing species, and they’re sending out spheres to remove any races that have attained or are capable of attaining space travel. The Confederation encompassed the first human worlds to attract their attention, and, most likely, our starships were death sentences for our colonies.”
“Now, Julien, I want you to believe that you won’t live to see Omnia again, so that your mind is clear of worry about the future. How would you put all this together?”
“The Nua’ll have size and power on their side, but they’ll have become accustomed to having their way. Everything and everyone has succumbed to their advance. We show up, disrupting their habits, their protocols, which will confound them. They’ll want a closer examination.”
Alex raised an eyebrow, as if to say, “Precisely.”
Julien smiled in return. “We’ll intimidate them with our single ship, sitting stationary at the edge of their territory, and they’ll be asking themselves endless questions and debating possible actions before they decide what to do.”
“We don’t have a choice, Julien. We can’t move our populations, and we can’t wait until the spheres arrive en masse at our systems. Like you say, the Nua’ll have the power. That means that we have to be clever and proactive.”
Julien nodded in agreement, and said, “And if I’m to be of help, then I must accept that the future is unknown and be at ease with what I have attained.”
“Just so,” Alex replied.
Julien stood and extended a hand, easily helping Alex to his feet. “You will have my every ability, Alex. Of course, it will be difficult to follow you, as I lack the benefit of your formal jester training.”
Julien’s hand was locked on Alex�
�s, when he froze. “We have company, Alex. Third watch is notifying the Captain. I suggest we attain the bridge.”
* * *
By the time, Alex and Julien walked through the bridge passageway, Ellie was present, buttoning her jacket and smoothing her short hair. The holo-vid displayed several ships.
“The telemetry view is pushed in for a closeup, Alex,” Ellie said. “They’re a long way out and decelerating rapidly.”
“Continuing their present rate of deceleration, Alex, these ships will come to a stop an estimated 20 million kilometers from us,” Julien said.
“They’re being cautious,” Alex said, grinning at Julien.
Julien caught Ellie’s quizzical expression, and he sent privately to her,
Ellie asked.
Julien sent.
A jacquard print cap, peaking in a small gold sphere, appeared and disappeared so quickly from Julien’s head that Ellie wasn’t sure what she saw until she replayed her visual recording.
Ellie sent.
“Julien, my guess is that we would be signaled or, perhaps, investigated in some manner,” Alex mused.
“Undoubtedly,” Julien replied.
“I’d like to capture the raw transmissions.”
“Not recommended, Alex. Whatever we record will pass through our controller, and we have no idea of the enemy’s signal capabilities. Conceivably, they could render our ship inoperable.”
“What if we interrupted the signals directly after our comm receptors and delivered them to secondary memory crystals, thereby protecting our controller? It’s not like we need to talk to our people or them,” Alex said, pointing at the display.