"Tell Delta to find out. If they can. It's time to stop screwing around. Why are they doing this? What's the motivation? I want to know!"
"Yes ma'am," Wester said. "You'll recall we agreed to take unilateral action first, and not to raise the subject of Pacifica unless the Brights did so first."
"You told me the Brights agreed to open an embassy in Quaba."
"A liaison office. Not an embassy."
"When is that going to happen?"
"Soon. According to the Brights."
"Are we in touch with them via that quantum thought link or whatever it’s called?"
"Yes. We are. And they're answering."
"All right. If we can get through this Pacifica mess without touching off a war, I want Delta to point blank ask the Brights why they are targeting Earth for extinction. You hear me?"
"I hear you, Tara."
Tara looked up at the ceiling and slowly raised her arms.
"Deadman!" She shouted it, startling the others. "The people of ConFree are in your hands." She looked up to an unseen world. "Give us a good result! For the Legion, for all the dead, for the past, for the future. Bless this endeavor, bless our troops and bless the Brights and let both sides survive this confrontation without bloodshed. Bless them, Deadman! And let Earth be spared!"
"Divine help." Dragon smiled grimly. "We're all set."
"Just make sure that Fleetcom task force is in place on time, and I'll handle dispatches to Deadman," Tara replied.
Chapter 12
Demonic Lovers
"All right, first look. Here goes!" The Prof was excited. I was by his side on the Vampire's bridge. The place was like a cathedral to the Gods of space, quiet, peaceful, perfectly organized, glowing a pale red – almost holy. We were still in vac run red – the panoramic simports were black. The captain was glacially calm. Tech Central's gang of probes had arrived and their eyemotes had deployed by the hundreds. The Vampire's own probes had also just arrived there and were deploying. The screens flickered and filled with images.
Pacifica could be seen from a distance, a jagged, pale brown rock cast in starlight and deep shadows. It slowly grew larger as we watched. The screens filled with data.
"Probes show no intruders detected," the captain summarized. "No starships, no shuttles, no fighters, no probes except our own. Could be they're cloaked. No life."
We waited as the probes shot towards the asteroid. The Prof had again chosen me as his Number Two. Who the hell was I? The Director General of ConFree was undoubtedly watching as events unfolded. And I was Number Two for Delta! Unbelievable. Five years ago I was a teen fool focused entirely on himself and any girl that strayed within range. And now, if anything happened to the Prof, I would be dealing directly with the Director of ConFree. And the fate of an entire planet and maybe even all of ConFree, maybe even all of humanity, was to depend on my judgment.
"All right, let's just see about this," the captain said. The probe went careening into a tight orbit around Pacifica, bringing it all right up close. The target was the two sites where Saka had seen portmods and one giant plasma deflector. The faint red crosshairs shot in there, and the site leaped towards us – three pressurized living or cargo mods, linked together. Scores of massive dropboxes were stacked nearby, and the powdery terrain bore the marks of plenty of low overflights by vac cargo haulers.
"Yes!" I shouted.
"No life," the captain confirmed. "Structures are sealed and abandoned."
The probe led them to the second site, about three K away – a giant black metal tower, grounded in the rock, pointed skywards, topped by a mysterious opening. It appeared dead and dark. The deflector. The screen filled with data.
"The plasma pulse generators are live," one of our engineers interrupted on the tacnet. "Standing by for any further adjustments."
A hail of eyemotes hit the deflector tower, spinning around it wildly, seeking access, then finding it and penetrating.
"All right, we'll have the interior plans soon and Prophet, we won't have much time to come up with a tac plan. Coordinate with the engineers on exactly where to place the antimat charge."
"Yes sir."
"Attention all hands. This is the captain. We are about to exit stardrive. We have scanned the target asteroid and located and confirmed the deflector device. So far we have detected no enemy presence in the tac area. However, we are going to battle stations as a precaution."
The insane whooping warble of the general quarters alarm echoed through the ship. "GENERAL QUARTERS! GENERAL QUARTERS! ALL HANDS MAN YOUR BATTLE STATIONS!
ALL HANDS STAND BY FOR STARDRIVE EXIT! CLOAKING AND SHIELDING DEPLOYED WITH BATTLE STATIONS READY STATUS. STARDRIVE EXIT UNDERWAY!"
"Attention Delta, proceed to the boarding dock," the Prof ordered. I hustled there by the Prof's side through corridors that were full of crewmembers running to their stations.
"Prof, do you really think there are no Brights out there?"
"No, Prophet, I don't think that." The Prof was a man of few words but he could sure get your attention with what he did say. Damn it!
Δ
We dropped away from the Vampire in the phantom Mary, soundless and invisible. The forward simport revealed the asteroid Pacifica, coming right at us. It appeared cold, lifeless and dead. Dead for millions of years. It had never been alive. Just dead, hurtling through the cosmos, splattered with the dust of the stars.
"Saka, you got that antimat?"
"Got it."
"Show me." He opened his ratpack and showed it to me. It was a little rectangular device in an armorite container. You didn't need a lot of antimat to make a real big bang.
"Let me have it," I said. He handed it over. I slipped it into my own ratpack.
"What's that all about?" he asked.
"I had this awful dream last night. We enter the deflection device, crawl all the way down, and I reach for the antimat charge and realize that I left it behind on the Vampire."
"Sounds like a good reason for me to have it, not you," Saka replied.
"I just want to make sure we got it!"
"Still no sign of opposition," the Prof said. We were armored and armed, ruby red faceplates and black A-suits with the White Hand and the Legion Cross prominently displayed. Smiley had our manlink and the rest of us had E's. I knew we had plenty of backup. The Atom's Road cruiser CS Spawn and a whole task force were out there somewhere, fully cloaked, just waiting for trouble. If we unleashed them it was going to be one big, bad fight.
"Prof, are the B's out there?" I asked again.
"Don't know."
"If they show up to defend their turf, do we fire?"
"Prophet – and Delta –" the Prof replied, patiently. "You all know our motto is 'Do the right thing'. If the Brights appear, we talk. We try to persuade them to hold off on striking at Earth with Pacifica. We do all we can to accomplish that. But we don't disarm. And we don't surrender. Bottom line, our mission is to turn Pacifica away from Earth. That's the right thing. If the Brights attempt to stop us from doing that, we defend ourselves, antimat their device, install our own device and turn the asteroid away from Earth. Turning the asteroid away from Earth is the mission. That is not subject to compromise. But everything else is."
"Delta," I said, "the interior of the cargo mods and the plasma deflector device are both now on our tacmaps. Doggie, first step is to secure those cargo mods before we enter the deflector tower. You all set?"
"We're ready."
"Big Boy, Bad Kid, how you doing?" the Prof asked on the tacnet. Big Boy was the engineers who were to blast a deep hole in the rock not far from the deflector tower, and then install our own tower. Bad Kid was Delta.
"Bad Kid, Big Boy. We're on our way and we got everything we need. Should be fun." They were speeding towards Pacifica in a giant cargo shuttle from the Vampire that was loaded with the individual sections to be coupled together to form the new plasma tower.
"Bad Kid, Spawn. Our fighters are arriving on-si
te. You're covered." The Spawn's fighters were sliding into combat orbit around Pacifica, deadly little red dots on our sensors, four, eight, twelve, and more coming – they were invisible to everyone else. A plague of wasps, easily irritated, spoiling for a fight. I felt a lot better knowing they were there.
"Bad Kid, Vampire. Our phantoms are also with you and will remain overhead while you're down." The Vampire's remaining two starfighter phantoms were accompanying us to the target, invisible angels. Anybody who bothered us was going to run into a whole lot of trouble, mighty fast. Good!
"Prep for insertion, gang. Depressurization now," Bird said. My adrenalin did the usual explosive routine but it didn't bother me.
"Confirm all set for depressurization," Prof said.
The Mary was floating eerily down towards the surface of the asteroid, kicking up a huge cloud of grey dust as we hovered over the site. I could barely see the portmods through the dust cloud.
"Insertion," Bird said. The assault doors snapped open and Doggie and Scout and Smiley and Arie leaped out and sprinted towards the portmods and the assault doors snapped shut again and the Mary shot skywards and hovered overhead like a murderous, invisible guardian angel, all its phantom senses focused on our assault team.
"Entering portmod one," Doggie reported. The eyemotes had preceded them, doing an outside scan of the interior. The place was pressurized so they could not get in. They reported no life inside – but we had to be sure.
We had the view from Doggie's helmet. We watched him trigger the vac door and enter with Arie as the door closed behind them. Scout and Smiley were outside, just in case, but the interior door snapped open on command. The view showed piles of equipment, full and empty dropboxes and a whole lot of trash. There was no light. The team was cloaked so they didn't use spotlights but they could see just fine.
"Come on in, guys, looks all right here," Doggie ordered. Scout and Smiley joined them.
"All right, what is all this crap? What a mess!"
"We're recording it all for the record. Let's go through as fast as poss. No life, no life. There's nobody here."
"Doggie, Prof. What does it look like? Any clues who built this place, who was working here? Any info on the equipment or the dropboxes?"
"We don’t see anything to ID the stuff, Prof."
"There must be something! Try to find it."
"There's no life here."
"Man, what a filthy mess. Whoever they are, they're really messy."
"What do you mean?" Prof asked.
"There's this thin film of…kind of a crud – over everything."
"Take some samples, Doggie, then get into the other portmods," Prof said. "We need confirmation soon as poss that it's all abandoned, then we'll proceed to the tower. Move it! Spawn, Vampire, any sign of bad guys anywhere?"
"Bad Kid, Spawn. We appear to be alone. Nothing detectable within operational range. However, we cannot rule out cloaked ships."
"Bad Kid, Vampire. The same with us. It looks good, but it's not a guarantee."
"Thank you, Spawn and Vampire."
Δ
Doggie's security team went through the portmods in record time, and found no life. That was the first step. We picked them up again in the Mary in a blinding cloud of rock dust and then we shot over to the target tower, about 3 K away.
"Big Boy, Bad Kid, progress report, please," the Prof ordered.
"We've got our location, we're down and unloading equipment. We will begin blasting soon."
"Thank you, Big Boy. We are arriving at the target right now." Another huge dust cloud arose as we hovered before that giant black tower. It loomed above us, an alien colossus that we planned to erase. My heart was pounding.
"All right, insertion," Bird said from the cockpit. The assault doors snapped open and Doggie and Scout and Smiley and Arie once again leaped out to secure the area for us. We followed, immediately – the Prof, Bees and Ice and Saka and I.
The gravity was so light I immediately flew away from the dusty surface as soon as my boots struck down. I floated for a bit, then settled back.
"Easy, easy," the Prof said. "Proceed slowly and carefully, one step at a time." We were almost on the tower. It was a colossal inky black cylindrical slab of metal, open at the top, pointed to the sky. All the stars of creation were spangled over that dark sky, but we ignored them as we tiptoed gently forwards, floating lightly between steps. Doggie and Scout and Smiley and Arie were already in position, near the main access door.
"We're going in," Doggie said. The vac door popped open.
"The inner door is open, too," Doggie said. "The site is unpressurized. Looks like they didn't want any company. All right, let's clear this sucker."
We waited outside, near the entrance, while Doggie and gang did the security check on the tower, heading up and downstairs to clear it chamber by chamber.
"Nan, Prof. How is Big Boy doing?" Nan the Man was accompanying the engineers at the future site of our own tower, not far away.
"About set to do the initial blasting. Stand by for some big bangs."
"Will do, thanks."
Δ
"Prof, Doggie. All right, the site is clear. There is no life. We didn't discover any nasty surprises. Although I can tell you it was not much fun. Man! It's all yours. We checked out the bottom chamber where you will place the charge. The device is sealed off there so nobody can get at it but it's active and awaiting commands, as you know. But we don't know what kind of commands. Just blast it to hell and all will be well."
"I love the poetry, Doggie," the Prof said. "I had no idea you were such a sensitive soul. All right gang, let's get in there."
The Prof went in first and we followed. It had been almost an hour since the security team had entered the tower. Every once in awhile the asteroid would shudder as the engineers set off another charge to power their way into the hole they were making to house their tower. My heart was hammering. Where the hell were the Brights? Surely they were watching us. Surely they would intervene soon. Damn it! I would almost welcome their appearance, just to get the tension over with.
Although most of the tower was above, we did not head that way. Doggie and crew had checked it out – there was nothing up there except deserted levels built around the sealed blast exhaust shafts that directed the plasma pulses that guided the asteroid towards its target. The laser trigger and electromagnetic field mechanism that produced the plasma pulses were located deep below, in the bowels of the device.
We paused briefly on entry level. The deck was a rough metal slab, scarred with square patterns that may have been meant to assure solid footing. A dark ceiling overhead was lined with mysterious ridges that may have concealed power lines. The center of the roughly conical tower was taken up by the sealed blast exhaust shafts, and there was no evident access available. The outside walls were of a dark, rough metal. It appeared stained and dirty – it could have been a million years old.
We bunched up. The Prof had paused at the first hatch that led down to the lower levels. I could only see the rest of the gang courtesy of Honey, who outlined their positions on my faceplate. We were all still on cloaking.
"Doggie, Prof. You on your way?"
"Yeah, we’re on our way up. Come on down, we're a bit tired of this place."
"Anything wrong?"
"Yeah, it's kind of grim. You'll see."
"All right, Delta, deactivate cloaking," Prof said. "There's evidently nobody here, and this is going to get tricky. I want everyone to see exactly what they are doing, at all times." Good idea, I thought. It was hard to do delicate work when you were cloaked. And setting up an antimat charge was definitely delicate work. We deactivated cloaking.
I followed Ice down the first stairway. In Fleetcom they call them "ladders". This one was slightly slanted but very steep and called into question who had actually constructed it. Perhaps they were modified because of the light gravity of this world but it seemed unlikely they had been custom-made for this particular
asteroid.
"Don't even use the steps," Prof advised. Just hold on to the rails and slide down." I tried it, sliding down the rails with my back to the steps. It worked just fine in that light gravity.
The second level was similar to the first. We sought out the next ladder.
"Have fun," Doggie said as he appeared from below. "We'll watch over the upper levels."
Δ
Time was ticking on, and I was sweating inside my A-suit. Saka and I were still screwing around with the antimat device timer and those maddening instructions which we had evidently completely misunderstood.
"Shit!" Saka said. "Let's try over. Go back to Step Ten."
"Why the hell is it so difficult?" I bitched.
"There's something wrong here," Bees said.
"Why is it so damned hot in here?" Ice asked. Ice and Bees and Saka and I were crouched in an enragingly small room at the very bottom of the tower, facing the sealed EM field mechanism. The Prof was one level up, because there was no more room down here. The place was dark and filthy and the ceiling was so low you could not stand fully upright. We had our spotlights on, glaring everywhere, revealing dark scarred metal walls and a featureless floor. This was the site for our antimat blast, carefully chosen by our engineers from the eyemote diagrams for maximum destruction potential.
"It’s hot because we're standing next to a plasma generator. What the hell do you expect?" I asked. Sweat was pouring off my brow, stinging my eyes. I could barely see what I was doing. "Honey, turn the cooling up, damn it! What's the matter with you?"
"Turn it up yourself."
"What?" I was stunned.
"Turn it up yourself."
I was so amazed I did not at first know what to say.
"Saka, did you hear that?" I asked.
"I told you, you have terrible girl-handling skills. She's just another bitchy female. Tell her to get her ass in gear."
"If you two arrogant male goons had let Ice and I do it, we'd have been finished an hour ago," Bees said. "What the hell's the matter with you two?"
"Honey, turn my cooling up. Now!" I insisted.
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