by B. V. Larson
They looked baffled, but they did as I’d ordered. A moment later, we were a ghost in this universe.
“Any incoming fire from the battle station?” I asked.
“No sir, but Ursahn has opened the rift and she’s approaching it.”
“Follow her through,” I said. “Stay right on her tail.”
They did as I asked, and we watched as the rift grew to enormous proportions, dwarfing our view of space.
At last Ursahn’s ship vanished, and we followed her moments later.
=36=
We found ourselves circling what had to be the least interesting star system I’d ever seen. It contained a brown dwarf—a star so dim and cool it was the size of a dozen Jupiters crunched together—and some dust and rocks. There were no planets, nothing really of interest.
“What are we doing here, Captain?” Miller asked immediately, studying the scopes.
I sighed. “I don’t know, but Ursahn is quite literal. She’s probably taken us to the star system that is the closest to Ral.”
“But there’s nothing here of consequence.”
“Right—Gwen, contact Abrams. He needs to start doing a scan and identifying promising targets.”
“He wants you to go down to his labs and discuss it, sir. Also, Ursahn wants to know what Fex intended our next move to be…?”
Dalton gave a dirty laugh. “Sounds like we’ve been doing a little fast-talking! Is that it, Captain?”
I glanced at him, but I didn’t answer. My skull still hurt from my recent adventures aboard Killer.
“Samson, get to Medical. You look like hell. You too, Miller. Gwen, you have the watch again.”
“Yes sir,” she said.
As I headed below to meet up with Abrams, Miller caught up with me.
“That was all bullshit, right?” he asked me.
“Which part?”
“Back there with Ursahn. When are we going to shake the Rebels and head back to Earth?”
I stared at him. “We’re not. We’re going to find the Imperial controllers who are pulling that Hunter’s strings, and we’re going to cut the line between them.”
Miller looked aghast. “Blake, you do know how big space is—right? We have no idea how far away the Imperial ships are. Hell, they could be sitting in hiding inside the Ral system, laughing and toasting one another. Or, they could be anywhere else along the Orion Front.”
“What’s your point?”
“We’ve escaped Fex—that was brilliant, by the way. But, we’re still saddled with Ursahn. If we can figure out a way to get her to take us somewhere sane…”
I shook my head. “We’re going to save Ral, Miller. Don’t go getting any wild ideas.”
He snorted. “Look who’s talking.”
“I thought we had a mutual respect building.”
“We do. But no one is listening now, and we’re talking about the death of everyone aboard this vessel. I feel justified in speaking openly one-on-one.”
“All right. You’ve said your piece. I’m going to talk to Abrams. We’ll come up with a plan. We’ve only got about five standard days to figure this out, anyway.”
I left him and found Abrams. He wasn’t in his primary lab, he’d staked out a workstation in the forward observatory instead.
The room was dark, with stars hanging outside the viewports. The brown dwarf glimmered and wavered. It was a variable star, with uneven output and a constant parade of sunspots in evidence.
“You can almost look at it with the naked eye,” Abrams marveled. “Have you come to join me in marveling at the universe?”
“No,” I said. “I need your brain. Where do you think the Imperial operating crew is?”
“You mean for the Hunter, correct? An interesting question… unknowable, but possibly deducible.”
“Let’s start deducing then.”
“All right. Where’s the most obvious spot?”
I thought about that, and considered what Miller had said. “They could be quietly sitting in the Ral system somewhere, watching the show.”
“Very good!” he said. “I didn’t think you’d get that one—but it’s obvious they aren’t there.”
“Why?”
He threw up one skinny finger between us. “Because, if they were, the Hunter would have headed directly toward Ral. Why direct your Hunter to fool with the outer planets when a juicy inhabited world is only a few AU distant?”
“We don’t know much about the Hunter’s programming, but I’m willing to give you that one. So, they aren’t in the system, or they’d be directing it more intelligently…”
“Exactly. It’s following its basic, methodical programming routine. I’d say it might not even be all that smart.”
“Where does that leave us?” I asked.
He threw up his hands and gestured toward the forward view ports. “Out here. We’ve been left with the task of searching all of space instead of the Ral system. We’ve crossed off two systems so far—a solid beginning. But unfortunately, infinity minus two is still infinity.”
“I’m beginning to regret coming down here,” I said. “Why don’t we begin with a pattern of concentric rings, jumping from star to star and moving outward one lightyear at a time.”
“I’ve done the numbers on that. Want to see them?”
He swiped at his tablet, and mine dinged. I looked over his data.
“Thirty nine systems…” I said thoughtfully. “Forty one in all. That’s what you think we can cover?”
“It’s conjecture, but achievable. I’ve calculated time for rifts to be generated, and a projected average search time. We’d only have about two hours to scan each system—crude guesswork, but I’m gifted when it comes to such things.”
I studied his data then set it aside. “Not good enough,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Your algorithm sucks,” I said. “It’s brainless. Besides, infinity minus forty-one is still infinity. Let’s come up with a smarter game plan.”
“Time is wasting…” he said, sipping a beverage. “Soon, we’ll be reduced to an estimated search zone of forty.”
I wanted to strangle him, but I kept my cool.
“Hmm…” I said. “I think that’s enough from you, Doc. I can see your heart isn’t in this. You’re relieved.”
“What?”
“You can’t do it—don’t worry, I understand. Not everyone can think creatively when the pressure is on. I don’t want you to blame yourself—”
He produced a nervous twitter. “I assure you, I won’t.”
“Good,” I said, standing up. I slapped him on the shoulder, making him wince. “I’ll move on. There are some real thinkers on the navigational team. They might come up with something better.”
“Preposterous!”
“You relax right here. If inspiration comes to you, give me a call.”
I walked away, and I could feel his eyes burning into my back. I’d stung his ego, which was about the size of the Hunter itself.
“Hold on…” he said. “We could eliminate numerous worlds. Places like this that have no planets, for example.”
I paused and shrugged. “A target profile of the kind of system we’re looking for? Might help.”
He stood up and began pacing. I didn’t leave, but instead watched him quietly from the doorway.
“Navigators… Absurd!” he muttered to himself. “But profiling…? We do have one positive case study, and two negative.”
“I’m listening. What system was the positive case?”
“The system where we met up with the three Imperial carriers, of course.”
That got me to thinking. “Yes… what were they doing out there? There are only two reasons I can think of that would place them in that system. Either they were advanced scouts looking for target systems later, or they were operating a Hunter somewhere nearby.”
“We can easily figure out which was the case,” Abrams said. “Follow me.”
I did a
s he asked. His eyes were bright and intense. I’d gotten him fully engaged despite himself.
He led the way to his labs and began searching after-action reports from the Rebel Fleet. When we’d visited Fex’s battle station, we’d been provided with a database dump of such documents from all over the Orion Front.
“No,” Abrams said, “my first hypothesis failed, therefore the second is implicitly proven. Not really proven, mind you, but we have to take some things on faith due to our time limit.”
“What are you talking about, exactly?” I asked.
“There are no reported Hunter attacks within a thirty lightyear range of the system where we met the Imperial patrol. In other sightings—there have been several—there were Hunter attacks closer than that. That brings me to the shaky conclusion that they weren’t there to direct an attack, but rather to scout, or to perform some other—”
“Hang on,” I said, snapping my fingers in front of his face. “You did a search on sightings, and you found attacks were within thirty lightyears?”
“Closer.”
“What’s the average distance?”
He tapped at his tablet. I could see he was thinking hard, and following my line of reasoning.
“About sixteen lightyears.”
“How many stars are that close to Ral?”
We kept working, and we soon had an answer. Using the after-action reports, and general sightings to go on, we found the enemy ships were always seen at inhabitable systems in a range of ten to twenty lightyears out from where the Hunter was doing its deadly work.
“It makes sense…” I said, staring at the bulkhead and thinking hard. “The Imperials are scouting for their Hunter’s next meal. That’s why the Imperial ships are spotted at inhabited systems—why bother consuming a bunch of uninhabitable planets?”
“Hmm…” Abrams said. “I think I may have exceeded my capacities this time! The profile is building itself rapidly. We need to come up with a series of stars with inhabitable worlds about ten to twenty lightyears out from Ral.”
“Let’s come up with a list,” I urged him.
“I’m working… silence is appreciated… thank you.”
He worked his computer with rapid, fluttering motions and touches of his long digits. He was new to his sym, which could have more directly and swiftly handled the input, but I didn’t suggest it. I was happy to wait a few minutes.
“There…” he said at last. “Three systems. That’s all the matches we have, even given a twenty-percent error ratio.”
“Good enough. Send me the coordinates. I’ve got to forward them to Ursahn.”
He looked morose.
“What?”
“I would prefer to pass them to Captain Ursahn directly, from my account to hers.”
I studied the ceiling for a second, then smiled at him. “Certainly. Add a note informing her that you are a member of my team, and I approve of the transmission.”
He pursed his lips in disgust as he followed my instructions.
“What’s wrong now, Doc?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Nothing. It’s just that I find people who take credit for the work of others to be objectionable.”
“Me too,” I said, walking away.
I left him with a puzzled look on his face. I don’t think he’d gotten the meaning of my jab—but I didn’t much care.
=37=
Two jumps. That’s what it took to catch up with our survey team. I was surprised we’d nailed it that closely—but then, maybe we’d gotten lucky.
Whatever the case, we popped into existence, exiting a rift into a quiet system with three jewel-like worlds.
The closest to the binary star in the center of the system was a hot world, full of steaming oceans, a thick cloud-layer and lots of fast-growing life forms. According to our data core of planetary surveys, the planet’s biosphere consisted primarily of algae and molds that could consume flesh and grow exponentially if conditions were right.
The second world was hot too, but covered in deserts. The only water was found under the surface, and few people lived there.
The third planet was a blue-green gem. It was small, about eighty percent the size of Earth, but it was paradise. There were cold poles, shining oceans of liquid water and a dozen craggy mountain ranges boasting peaks taller than Everest, all frosted with snow.
“Such lovely worlds,” Gwen said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like them.”
We searched quietly, scanning passively at first and actively when we found nothing—but that stage didn’t last long.
“There’s an emergency call coming in, from the third planet,” Gwen told me.
“Can you connect them to my sym? What are they saying?”
“It’s primitive… binary-based—I don’t think these people are very technologically sophisticated.”
“Chang? Get out the dictionary on these guys.”
The “dictionary” was what we called the data core we had from the Rebel Fleet Command. It was a database of known worlds, membership status and much more. The Rebel Kher were far from meticulous in their behavior, but they’d seen the value of maintaining a repository of information on worlds in their sphere of influence.
The data records weren’t written the way humans would do it. Each entry consisted of a very long list of numerical values in fields. Some of these were hard measurements, like the gravitational pull of each local planet, while others were subjective classifications about things like culture and advancement. There was no descriptive text narrative.
“Hmm…” Chang said, going over the pages of fields and ratings. “I’d say they’re something like Earth from a century ago.”
“But they have radio, and an encoding system. Break their code.”
Chang looked at me, startled. “Um… maybe Abrams would be up for the challenge?”
I grinned. “I’m sure he would. Pass it to me.”
Frowning, Chang did as I asked. I typed a note, and sent it to several people, one of them being Abrams. The rest on the list were much less accomplished people.
Miller looked up, startled. “You put that in my lap?” he asked.
“Read the message. I sent it to everyone. I’m just asking people to take a look. The first one back with a response gets a cookie.”
He looked at me as if I was insane. “I’m not interested in phantom cookies.”
“Nevertheless, help me out. Come up with a lame theory, the first one that comes to mind, and fire it out in a general reply to the whole group.”
“How in the hell will that help anything?”
“Humor me.”
Shaking his head, he did as I asked. The results were almost immediate. Abrams didn’t just respond, he came up onto the bridge in a fury.
“What are you playing at, Captain?” he demanded of me.
I had my fingers knitted behind my head. I nodded to him in a friendly fashion.
“What do you think of Miller’s idea?” I said. “Parallel development of Morse code on another planet? That’s got to be pretty close.”
“Insanity! What have I done to be saddled with such an assortment of hopeless cretins? Captain, I implore you to wait before you embarrass Earth by trying to respond to these people. Give me an hour. That’s all I ask.”
I studied the planets hanging outside the windows, and I considered my options.
“All right,” I said. “One hour.”
He rushed off the bridge, and everyone stared at me in bewilderment.
“That nerd is sooo irritating,” Samson said.
“He means well,” Gwen said.
Miller approached my command chair, where I lounged.
“You made me the fool on purpose, didn’t you?”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
“Why would such a thing motivate him to work harder?”
I squinted, trying to put it into words.
“Pride,” I said at last. “He has great pride in his mental capacities
, and he also can’t stand to see someone else perform a mental task incorrectly. All I did was engage his natural obsessions and put them to use.”
Miller nodded. “That’s pretty clever,” he said. “And I think I understand you better now, Blake. You’re a manipulative son-of-a-bitch.”
“It’s called getting things done, Miller. Look into it. How’s that survey going?”
He began reciting his report, but I barely listened. It wasn’t important. What I wanted to know was what those people on the third jewel-like world had to say.
We had the answer forty-nine minutes later. Abrams rushed to the command deck, his hair in disarray, his eyes red and bleary.
“I think I have it,” he said. “It’s a warning of some kind.”
“What’s it say?” I asked him.
“Open your eyes, ship of the sky. The enemy is close.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Samson asked, having overhead.
I sat up and stared at every instrument. I felt my mouth go dry. The message was an hour old. If the enemy had been close then—how close were they now?
=38=
I contacted Ursahn on an open channel—I felt I had to.
But instead of Ursahn’s odd face, I was confronted by Shaw. He talked to me through my sym, like a ghost in my mind.
“Blake?” he asked. “Why are you revealing your position this way?”
“We believe we’ve deciphered the transmissions from the locals. They’re warning us that the enemy is close.”
Shaw examined his instruments. “I wasn’t aware these primitives were hailing us... Are you sure you understand their language?”
“Well enough. What have you seen with your superior sensory array?”
“The Imperials have been here,” he said. “That much we’ve confirmed. There are tritium trails all around the orbit of the inhabited planet.”
“They were out here, scouting,” I observed. “That must be why these people warned us—they have radio, obviously telescopes… Do you think they might be a target for the Imperials?”
“Not unless they’ve changed their own standards. Imperials have never attacked planets that have no significant presence in space. It wouldn’t be sporting, you know.”
