The med-evac ship entered the planet’s atmosphere and spiraled to land at the same dock where Rachel had disembarked on her previous trip. She aroused as the ship touched down on the water, stretched, yawned and turned to look at the co-pilot’s seat. “Did you have a nice nap? I certainly needed one.”
Curra merely growled.
Once the ship had been tied to the dock by the marina crew, Rachel turned to her passenger and said, “I will exit the ship. Once I am clear, your restraints will release. Do not attempt to do anything other than exit the ship in a slow and deliberate manner. Should you attempt anything else, the results will be painful or fatal.”
The locks on the restraints popped free. Curra slowly exited the ship with his hands away from his sides. A squad of four security personnel backed up with four marksmen with their rifles pointed in his direction waited on the dock. He slowly raised his hands over his head. Rachel sat in an open sided security vehicle with her hands bound behind her back. Without being told, Curra slowly turned around with his hands still in the air. One of the security personnel grabbed his hands and bound them behind his back and then patted him down. As he was brusquely shoved into the seat beside Rachel, he noticed that one of the guards in the front seat held her crystal clear polymer throwing knife. He shook his head, secure in the knowledge of what was about to happen.
“I told you this was a bad idea,” Curra said.
“You are going to give the performance of you life to get us out of here,” Rachel charged.
“I did that twenty years ago. Nope, we’re stuck here.”
They rode the rest of the way to the council chambers in silence. They drove directly into the building through a security entrance. They were escorted into the council chambers.
The man who was at the podium on their first visit greeted them from the podium. “Welcome back to Everest. Security, please untie Captain Solomon. You may return her knife to her as well. She knows better than to use it here.”
When Rachel had been untied and her knife returned he continued. “Captain Solomon, please have a sat over there.” He pointed to an empty row of chairs to her right. Rachel silently sat.
“Mr. Angus Witherspoon, it is a pleasure to see you again. What brings you? Is it your precious lumbering operation or your clandestine prison on the other side of our planet? Or, perhaps is it this nonsense about this comet hitting our planet?”
Curra / Witherspoon stood defiant. “Is this any way to treat your guests, especially one who has funded this silly experiment of yours for the last twenty years?”
“This is how one deals with a liar, cheat, thief and murderer. This is how we deal with you.”
“Regardless what you think of me, you should listen to her. She may have killed men in combat, but she is not a murderer, liar, cheat or thief. She really has come to do what she believes will save your pathetic undeserving population from annihilation. You can do with that what you please.”
“Lock him in solitary. The high court will try him for his crimes.”
“I told you this was a bad idea,” Curra said.
The security officers hauled him off.
“Captain Solomon, please come to the podium. Please explain how you came to be hoodwinked by this nefarious creature and why we should believe you?”
Stunned by the sudden turn events, Rachel stood slowly. “Yes, thank you.”
She gingerly made her way to the podium. “Gentle sirs and ladies, I don’t know where to start. I could start with the Academy research project that led me to believe that the best thing we could do with aging obsolete battleships was to turn them into self defending hospital ships. Would you like me to start there or would you like me to start with my assignment to the Albert Schweitzer? Would you like me to start with my assignment to this mission? How much time would you like to spend?”
A woman in the center of the room stood, “Captain Solomon, you are a famous person. Some of us know some of what you would tell us. We would like to hear it in your words. Please start with your Courts Marshall at the Academy. We will take all day if necessary.”
Rachel took a deep breath. A pitcher of ice water and a glass were passed to the podium. The story took well into the evening due to the number of technical questions members of the council asked that required detailed explanations. When pressed, she revealed how she became suspicious of the man she knew as Curra and they knew as Witherspoon. She stopped short of revealing her other crew members who were complicit with him. When she was done, the assembly rose in applause.
“Captain Solomon, we have prepared dinner for you in the next room. When you have had time to finish it, we will ask you back and let you know the results of our deliberations.”
An hour later, she was called back into the assembly chambers.
“Captain Solomon, we are a reasonable people, but we have elected to stay. We place our trust in you to do everything in your power to keep us safe. We have no illusions. Frankly, we are not convinced that your plan will work. Even given that, we are sure that we would rather die here on the planet we call home than wander around the cosmos rootless and homeless as your people, the Jews, have done for thousands of years. Please understand we recognize that you had the best of intentions. If you fail to save us, we will not hold you accountable. We will neither obstruct you nor will we help you. We will keep a flight of ships observing your activities from a safe distance. If you wish to communicate with us, please do so through them. If you succeed, we ask only that you remove the blight of a prison foisted on us without our knowledge. We will be forever in your debt if you clean that bit of trash from our midst. Any member of your crew who wishes to settle here will be welcome to do so. Do you have any questions?”
“What about my exec?” Rachel asked.
“Captain Curra AKA Witherspoon will stay with us pending trial on civil matters. Military courts do not have jurisdiction in these matters and we will try him in civil court. We will, of course, wait for a proper defense attorney to be dispatched from Earth to represent him.”
“That could take months,” Rachel said.
“It’s the only way he will get a fair trial.”
“I see. Thank you for your time. We will do everything we know how to do to save you from the comet. I understand your feelings having had the planet I called home destroyed from underneath me. I disagree, but I understand and acknowledge your right to do as you wish. Ladies and Gentlemen, I hope in eighty days or so to return and host a party of thanksgiving. Let us all pray to those who claim our loyalty that we will all see each other again. Thank you.”
Rachel returned to the ship and taxied out to clear water. “Command Mode!”
“Command mode, Aye!”
“Let’s go home.”
“Aye, Aye Captain, plotting most efficient path to the Albert Schweitzer.”
“Thank you, Elizabeth.”
“You are welcome, Rachel. Filing flight plan with traffic control. See you when you get here.”
“Oh, Elizabeth, please alert the crews to resume Operation Nemesis as soon as the path is clear.”
“Aye, Captain. The path is already clear. Anything else?”
“Please invite Captain Bozak to dinner. I hear he’s quite a chess player and I’ll bet he and Reuben would be an even match.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Rachel passed out in her seat not long after the ship became airborne.
DEPLOYMENT - CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
OPERATION NEMESIS CONTINUED UNABATED for thirty two days. Captain Bozak roundly trounced every chess opponent who had the courage to stand against him. Reuben was the closest to his skill level, but even he lost at the rate of three games to one. Rather than challenge him, Rachel elected to cajole him into instructing her on the finer points of the game. Rachel and Captain Bozak were in Rachel’s conference room working through a chess strategy when her comm buzzed. “Captain to the bridge, please.”
“Acknowledged. To the bridge,” Rachel replie
d.
“Captain, you might wish to bring Captain Bozak with you. We have visitors.”
“Right behind you,” Captain Bozak said.
Tactical Officer Lt. Cho Mae Chin and Sensor Analyst Lt. Jane Tyndall had the bridge watch. When Rachel and Captain Bozak arrived at the bridge, Lt. Tyndall handed Rachel a printed report from the sensors.
Rachel scanned the print, turned to Captain Bozak and handed him the page, “Tobias, do you recognize any of these?”
He studied the page for a moment. “Nothing I’ve ever seen.”
“Were you expecting guests?” Rachel asked.
“No,” Captain Bozak said perplexed. “We should check them out.” His eyes betrayed his worry.
“Who do you think they are?” Rachel asked.
“They’re not the Third Force. I’ve seen enough to recognize them. They’re not Federation and they’re not Swordsmen. Swordsmen have no reason to be in this part of the galaxy. I only know one other group of people who might want to come here.”
“And perform a rescue?” Rachel asked.
“That was my thinking, yes. But I’ve never seen drive signatures like these. How do we know they’re not some peaceful alien civilization we have not previously encountered? Shooting at them would be a bad way to welcome them.” He knit his brow in concern.
Rachel called Reuben. “Reuben, please come to the bridge. Bring Rashi and your drive specialists. We need you to look at some sensor readings.”
Reuben and company arrived on the bridge and Rachel ushered them to her conference room.
After they had a chance to review the data, Specialist Level Six Zachary Caruso, one of the drive specialists said, “It’s a fusion drive. Supposed to be experimental, but this one is obviously working. The containment bottle must be huge. I saw a report on one at Nuclear Power School the last time I was there. Amazing.”
“Who was experimenting with the fusion drive?” Rachel asked.
“P A F,” Spec 6 Caruso replied.
“Do we know who’s funding them?” Rachel asked.
There were blank stares all around.
Rachel called Suwanee. “Bring Lt. Martini, Faye Ann and Lt. Hammersmith to the conference room.”
“Restrained?”
“No.”
“Aye, Captain.”
There was more than a hint of sarcasm in Rachel’s voice as she addressed the three dishonored but only moderately repentant intelligence officers. “All right Military Intelligence,” she made it sound like a slur, “You get an opportunity to redeem yourselves. Look at these drive signatures. Whose ships are they and what tactical advantages and disadvantages will we have if we have to fight them? If I have any reservations about your honesty, I will send you as passengers on the destroyers. Do I make myself clear?”
“We don’t know much,” Lt. Hammersmith started. “These are P A F ships. We know they are funded by Valiant Industries. Valiant is trying to overtake Saturn’s lock on Federation ship building by developing the fusion drive. They appear to feel that the fusion drive will give them a competitive advantage over Saturn.”
“Maybe if their ships were any good, the Federation would buy them.” Rachel commented. “At Homestead we had Valiant 86’s and Saturn P I’s working together. The 86 couldn’t hold a candle to the P I and that was the best ship Valiant made.”
“Valiant doesn’t have a ship in the destroyer class and their cargo ships are notoriously unreliable.” Reuben added. “They do have a fighter-interceptor that has good reports.”
Rachel held up her hand. “Am I to understand that the P A F movement and all the terrorism it has spawned and all the innocent people who have been killed is really at its most basic about who makes the best warship?”
“Yes,” Lt. Hammersmith said.
“Exactly,” Faye Anne added.
Lt. Hammersmith continued his narrative, breaking the silence. “We have seen stolen partial plans for what I believe is the ship on our sensors. Theoretically, in a large ship, a functioning fusion drive has immense technical advantages over fission drives. The biggest advantage is fuel. Free hydrogen is plentiful and easy to collect. Radioactive isotopes are much harder to find and process. Then there is the issue of nuclear waste. Not everyone is comfortable throwing nuclear waste into the system primaries. Theoretically the amount of mass we are pushing into the stars is infinitesimal, but there are so many things we don’t know.”
“You sound like you’re on their side.” Rachel prodded.
“Physics is on their side, right Lt. Abrams?” Hammersmith said.
“I’ll give him that one,” Reuben answered.
“The problem,” Hammersmith continued, “is their tactics to get their point across. They are sabotaging fission facilities all over the galaxy causing tremendous loss of life. They claim that it is merely a demonstration of the rightness of their position. However much we might agree with their goals, we can never agree with their methods.”
“Tactically,” Faye Anne offered when Hammersmith paused, “if this is the ship I think it is, the ship is extremely dangerous. It is reputed to be well armed with lasers and other energy weapons that we are only now hearing about. We believe that their fusion system is capable of producing more peak power than the fission systems we use, but we don’t know that for sure. The Disruptor is the only missile that we think will get through the energy weapon defenses, but since no one has ever tried it, we can’t be sure. We are reasonably confident that regular missiles will not get through due to the vulnerabilities caused by the nature of their surface treatments, but we only guess that a Disruptor can penetrate the defenses. We are confident that they do not use fission in any of their ships. That means that their smaller ships are chemical driven and not hyper capable. We know that they carry Disruptor missiles and other chemically driven missiles. We believe that the smaller ships carry more armament than our ships do since they are designed to operate at shorter range from the mother ship.”
Rachel turned to Lt. Martini who sat with her hands folded neatly in her lap. “Do you agree?”
“Yes, Captain, I do. Captain, if I may offer a suggestion.”
“Please do.”
“Captain, they know we’re here. It’s impossible for them not to know we’re here. It has been suggested they might even know some of our personnel. I agree. If they know as much about you as everyone else seems to know, we should think about using a tactic they do not expect. Perhaps it would make sense for us to hyper over in force and greet them en-mass. That way we will know their intentions quickly and they will know ours. They will expect you to either come in wide or probe first. We need to do neither of those things.”
Rachel turned to Captain Bozak. “Captain, what is your opinion.”
“I agree. If your battle strategy is anything like your chess, you are too predictable. Someone who believes you command this ship would not expect a full force head-on attack. For our part, my ships are hyper capable, but I am reluctant to commit large numbers of them to this engagement. I would prefer to keep my ships closer to home.”
“What about the four ships standing watch with us? Would you commit them?” Rachel asked.
“Yes,” Captain Bozak replied.
Rachel took a deep breath. “Sound battle stations. Pause Operation Nemesis.”
Using the tight beams of the targeting lasers, Rachel briefed the pilots of the other ships that along with the Albert Schweitzer had been running continuous passes at the comet in order to force it out of its impactful trajectory. Once briefed, the ships assembled into formation and linked together.
The Albert Schweitzer led the formation. The two destroyers flanked it a quarter of the way back from the battleship’s rounded armored mushroom shaped head. The four P I ships, with their weapons pods deployed, formed a ring half way back and further out from the central core of the large ship. The four fighter interceptors from Everest commanded by Captain Bozak held the rear guard. Linked together by fiber optic data li
nes, the ships hyper jumped toward the incoming stranger.
The formation dropped out of hyper drive on a course perpendicular to the one the stranger was taking. The ships in the formation quickly separated their fiber links and the non-hyper capable pickets split off from the Schweitzer’s docking ports to move into position to guard the big ship’s propulsion system. Rachel had learned her lesson. No one was attacking her from behind.
The stranger immediately opened fire with a massive broadside. Unlike the battleship Rachel commanded, this ship had its weapons arrayed along its side like the great wooden sailing ships that plied the Earth’s oceans until the turn of the twentieth century. The Albert Schweitzer’s heavy weaponry all faced forward. This meant that the Albert Schweitzer presented a smaller target, but it could deliver fewer missiles in a volley. Part of the disadvantage was compensated for by the fact that the missiles leaving the Schweitzer were traveling in the same direction as the ship and had the advantage of the ship’s momentum to give them greater speed toward the target. Missiles leaving the other ship had to compensate for the ship’s perpendicular trajectory and the fact that they were starting from a relative standstill.
“Time to impact?”
“Twenty minutes to impact, Captain,” Lt. Chin answered.
“Please identify missile types.”
“They appear to be Disruptor missiles, Captain,” Lt. Tyndall said.
Rachel grinned. “Please make sure there is nothing else hidden in there.”
A moment later Lt. Tyndall reported, “The drive signatures and optical reflectivity indicate Disruptor missiles. I can find no other readings.”
From his station as ship’s engineer monitoring the ship’s status, Reuben asked, “Why are they only throwing Disruptor missiles?”
“Because we’re worth more to them alive than dead. You can’t ransom dead people,” Faye Anne answered.
“Folks,” Rachel said to regain control of the bridge crew. “Let’s put on a show, shall we?” She keyed her comm to address the entire ship. “Battle stations. All personnel to battle stations. This is not a drill. All personnel including civilians don and seal your flight suits. Battle stations. All personnel to battle stations. This is not a drill. Please be alert for additional instructions. As soon as you are in your flight suits, use your suit communicators only. Do not use any ship board systems. Repeat, all personnel report to battle stations with your flight suits sealed. Use your suit communicators only. All personnel battle stations. This is not a drill. We will be dropping the atmospheric pressure to one fifth of normal and changing the composition to 100% nitrogen. This will reduce the risk of fire, but will mean you cannot remove your helmet.”
Solomon Family Warriors II Page 81
