by Robert Boren
“Piece of cake,” he said. “Let me know when you want it out of there.”
“Thanks, my boy,” Deacon said.
Caraway nodded and walked away.
“Thanks, Deacon,” I said. “Talk to you later.”
“You’re welcome, Cappy.”
We went back to the bridge. I sat in the Captain’s chair and looked at JJ. “Okay, tell us what the capabilities of the Tristar are, just in case she’s hostile. Don’t hold back. We all have a need to know.”
“I agree, Captain,” she said. “It’s got an enhanced Samson Drive. It’s untraceable while in a wormhole, like the drive on this ship, but it doesn’t have Nolan’s module on it, so running in stealth mode all the time is dangerous. There’s no obstacle avoidance circuitry.”
“That could still be effective,” Nolan said. “You could throw a pursuer off the track, and they’d have to take some time to re-acquire you, which in many cases would be enough for you to evade capture.”
“Exactly,” JJ said. “We planned to put your module on that ship. I’m sure we’ll do that eventually.”
“If the Corporation still exists,” I quipped. “What else?”
“It’s significantly faster than this ship, but you knew that already. It’s also got the same cloaking capability that the Zephyrus now has, but there isn’t someone like Nolan on board who can shut off the tracer functionality.”
“So, they might be leading a third party to Aurora Calista,” Tim said. “Great.”
“If it’s being followed, whoever is on their tail had better have good shields,” JJ said. “It’s got a new form of plasma weapon with a burst mode. It’ll fry through normal shields in a few seconds. There’s also the enhanced Mark 7 shields, which can withstand pretty much anything the Central Authority has at their disposal. There’s a cost in fuel economy, though. When the shield is on maximum, it’ll burn through a year’s supply in several days.”
“No battle is gonna last that long,” Nolan said.
I shook my head, my heart beating faster. “Here’s what I’m getting from this. If she wants to take us out, she can.”
“Most definitely, Captain, but it’s not that bad,” JJ said. “Thanks to Nolan’s drive module, if we’re quick enough we can escape, and she won’t be able to track us.”
“Do we really want to be going to Aurora Calista?” Izzy asked. “Maybe we ought to change course.”
“You read my mind,” I said. “We can communicate with that ship, correct? What if we go someplace else, far enough away that she can’t destroy us, and start up a conversation? If she’s hostile, we just jump someplace else and leave our shields on.”
“I think that’s the best course of action at this point,” Nolan said.
JJ nodded. “That is the best strategy, I’m afraid.”
“How will we be able to tell if the Tristar is hostile?” Izzy asked.
JJ was silent for a moment, looking down.
“Uh oh, what?” Nolan asked.
“Oh, it’s nothing bad,” JJ said. “Quite the contrary. The Captain of the Tristar is my ex-husband.”
Nolan laughed. “Hopefully you parted ways on good terms.”
“We did, but that’s not what’s important. We know each other extremely well. I’ll be able to tell if he’s under duress. He’ll make sure I know.”
I turned to Nolan. “Plot us a course someplace else.”
“Yes sir,” Nolan said. “Want it to be in the general area of Aurora Calista?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Yes, since it’s a two-day trip. Find something similar to Cremonia if you can.”
“I’m on it,” Nolan said.
“What if the Chairman is trying to get ahold of you through the holographic device?” JJ asked.
“As soon as we see the Tristar come out of the wormhole, I want to send a transmission. Let them know we’re all right, and ask them about Vermillion.”
“What if he’s on that ship?” Tim asked.
“Then I’ll talk to him,” I said. “He was already out of the base before the Tristar left, though.”
“The Tristar might have picked him up from the water, Captain,” JJ said. “If they cloaked, they’d be hard for a Centurion class ship to hit.”
“I hope that’s the case, but we just don’t know. I’m suspecting he’s still on Earth.”
“How would that be safe for him?” Izzy asked. “No place on the planet is safe from railgun attacks.”
“True, but the railgun has to hit a target where he’s located,” I said. “I’m sure he’s got several safe hideouts spread around the planet.”
“Wonder if there are bulletins out about the Zephyrus and the Tristar?” Nolan asked. “There was one out on the Zephyrus after we left for Valla Cappos, remember?”
Tim laughed. “Yeah, and you were mentioned by name as I remember.”
“Thanks for reminding me,” Nolan said, shaking his head.
“Take us out of the wormhole for a few minutes and check,” JJ said. “We can be cloaked now, and you’ve got to change course anyway.”
“That’s a capitol idea,” Nolan said. “What do you think, Captain?”
“Yeah, do it,” I said. “Go ahead, Izzy.”
Izzy nodded and shut down the Samson Drive, dropping us in the middle of deep space. Static filled the room for half a second. “There you go, Captain.”
“Do your scan, Nolan.” He nodded, turning to his screen.
“I’d hurry,” Izzy said. “We’re cloaked, and this is close to a major shipping route. Somebody could hit us.”
“There was a bulletin from the Central Authority,” Nolan said. “There’s also a document from the Overlords, and several news reports. I’ve downloaded them all. Izzy, the new coordinates are on your PA. Let’s get out of here.”
Izzy spoke into her PA, and we all got hit with the faintness as the ship took off again.
“You haven’t looked at the documents yet?” Tim asked Nolan.
“Just the headers,” Nolan said. “Want me to put them on screen?”
“Yeah, most important one first,” I said. “From the Central Authority.”
Nolan nodded and spoke into his PA, the document showing on the big screen. We all got closer to read it.
“I knew it,” Tim said. “The Zephyrus and the Tristar are both ordered to report to the space dock at Mars immediately.”
“At least I’m not mentioned by name this time,” Nolan said.
“This doesn’t say what happened,” JJ said. “There’s no explanation about the lack of traffic.”
“There’s a second page,” Nolan said. “Everybody done with the first?”
“Roll it, Nolan,” I said.
The second page appeared on the screen.
“Holy crap,” Izzy said as she read. “Chairman Vermillion is wanted for high treason?”
{ 12 }
News Reports
W e were on the bridge, reading the bulletin from the Central Authority off the big screen.
“Was Vermillion involved in something he shouldn’t have been?” I asked JJ.
“Not that I know of, Captain,” she said. “It’s not like he tells me everything, though. I didn’t know about the holographic COMM unit, for example.”
I laughed. “Well, we’re in the same boat there. I didn’t know about the Tristar’s enhanced weapons and shields. I thought it was mainly just a speedster with cloak capability.”
“Treason’s a pretty stiff charge,” Nolan said. “One that still carries the death penalty.”
“They wouldn’t dare,” JJ said.
“The Central Authority is being controlled by the Overlords,” Nolan said. “That’s why I’m fighting them. I considered Vermillion to be an ally, but I never trusted the Corporation at large.”
“Put the Overlord’s document up there,” I said.
Nolan sent it to the screen. He laughed when it came up. “Hell, why didn’t they put mug shots on this?”
/> “My God, all the principals are on there,” JJ said. “The entire board of the Corporation.”
“Principles hell, I’m on there,” Tim said. “I’m a nobody. What the hell?”
“We’re all on there,” I said. “It lists no crime, though, only wanted for questioning.”
“They’re trying to clean up everybody who knows of the latest capabilities the Corporation has been experimenting with. Notice that the entire bridge crew of the Tristar is on there too.”
“Well screw them,” Tim said. “They have no right to do this.”
“Yes,” Nolan said. “Anybody they manage to capture will never see the light of day again.”
My anger was rising fast. “This can’t stand. Where the hell is the Senate? The Court system? The Chief Executive?”
“They haven’t ruled the Central Authority Zone for years,” Nolan said. “Elections mean nothing now.”
“What news reports did you download?” I asked.
“One official, one not so official, but much more trustworthy,” Nolan said.
“All right, let’s see them. Official first.”
“Yes sir,” Nolan said. He put it on screen, and we read silently.
Chairman Vermillion, the mercurial head of the Samson Corporation has disappeared, after the Central Authority released a warrant for his arrest. The charge is Treason, most specifically lying to the Supreme Court and the Senate about Overlord Leader Simone Alaster III, who was suspended over an attempt to capture a rogue Corporation prototype. Included in the indictment are charges that Vermillion was sharing advanced technology data with Clan operatives. Simone Alaster is now back in charge of the Overlords, and is leading the search for Chairman Vermillion, his board, Corporation upper management, and all personnel working on the prototype ships Tristar and Zephyrus. While the search is proceeding, the Overlords have suspended all space travel, and all starships having Samson Drives have been required to submit to inspection. Ships are expected to be grounded for up to a month.
“Holy crap,” Tim said. “Really?”
“I expected this,” Nolan said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“There’s been rumors that the Samson Drive destruct capability has been compromised. The Overlords are going to use this to place their own controls on the drives. They will disband the Corporation and move to take tighter control over the Central Authority Zone. We are heading into dark times.”
“Not if I can help it,” I said. “Put that last article up there.”
“Yes sir,” Nolan said. The last article appeared on the screen.
Well, all, it’s started. The Central Authority and their Gestapo… er… The Overlords have moved to take ultimate power over the Zone away from the Samson Corporation. The Government media has told you a tale, meant to outrage you all, with hints of collaboration between Chairman Vermillion and the evil Clan, who have problems of their own so disastrous that their fleet of warships are beginning to desert, to the Free Zone and apparently to certain backwater parts of our Zone as well.
It’s certainly not hard to determine that they’re hiding a lot of this rapidly moving story. We have eyewitness accounts of railgun attacks on all of Earth’s major Samson Corporation facilities, starting with their undersea research base in the South Pacific. Since they can’t kill everybody who’s seen these events (we hope) there will have to be a story put out eventually. Or maybe the Overlords don’t care. Stalin and Mao did plenty of outright lying to their population, and it didn’t make a bit of difference for them. They just wiped out anybody who suggested they weren’t telling the truth… and in many cases everybody that the truth-teller knew. I fear that’s the world we are drifting into.
Meanwhile, where are the Zephyrus and Tristar? Nobody knows for sure what their exact capabilities are, but sources have told us that attempts to explode their Samson Drives have failed. What does that little tidbit of information tell us? It tells us that the Overlords had operatives within the Samson Corporation, because they hold the keys to the remote destruct capability. You all know I’ve had big problems with the Samson Corporation for years. It’s an un-elected group of rich and powerful people who have the ultimate veto power over our elected officials. Yes, I know they’ve kept the piece for the last three-hundred and eighty years, but is this really different from Pax Romana, where Roman Emperors ruled with an iron fist and did what they liked to the population, allowing slavery and other horrors while the elites enjoyed the luxurious fruits of increased commerce?
Hopefully whoever ends up running the Central Authority Zone takes a long, hard look at the current problems in the Clan Zone. Their recent actions don’t give me much confidence. If you see my stories being suppressed in the near future, fear the worst.
Hamilton Zenos
I shook my head after reading it. “This is a little too conspiratorial for my liking, Nolan.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Captain,” Nolan said. “Hamilton got a lot of things correct. Who else has mentioned the fact that Clan ships are sneaking into our zone?”
“Do you know this man personally?” I asked.
Nolan chuckled. “You want to know if I planted the Clan story. Nope, it wasn’t me. Honest.”
I stared at him for a long moment, then sighed. “All right, it is good to hear both sides of the story, and we know the official story is propaganda.”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I concur,” JJ said. “There’s something I left out about the Tristar. Nobody else in the Corporation knows. Vermillion swore me to secrecy.”
“Aw, crap, here it comes,” Tim said.
“What is it?” I asked.
“The Chairman knew that the Samson Drive remote destruct capability has been compromised. Somebody on the inside made some changes to the program and sent a patch to all the Central Authority ships.”
“Wait, you mean that capability doesn’t exist anymore?” Izzy asked.
“That’s not what I said,” JJ said. “We developed a work around. That’s part of what the Tristar has been working on.”
My head started to throb with a near blinding headache. “So the Tristar can be blown up?”
JJ shook her head no. “Not unless somebody re-connects the self-destruct module to the Samson Drive, and that would have to be done manually on the Tristar. We ran a successful test last week, though. The new program was able to trip the destruct device. I’d be interested to know if the Overlords have found that out.”
“Does it work on this ship while it’s cloaked?” Nolan asked, his brow furrowed.
“No, but we were working that situation. The lab that was involved was at the South Pacific base.”
“Wonder if the brain trust for that survived?” Tim asked.
“That’s what we need to find out,” I said. “If they did, they might be forced to complete their work, but that only gives them the capability to blow up this ship and the Tristar.”
“As far as we know, Captain,” JJ said. “You know how Vermillion is. I can’t guarantee that there are no other prototype ships out there with the new cloaking technology. Are you okay?”
“Splitting headache,” I said. “Nolan, where are we headed?”
“Someplace nobody will expect.”
“Level?”
“Seven,” Nolan said.
I froze, eyeing him. “Are you nuts?”
“We can’t do that,” Tim said. “It’s nearly impossible to hide ourselves there.”
“We’ve got cloaking capability, remember?” Nolan said.
“What’s level seven again?” Izzy asked.
“In Earth terms?” Nolan asked. “From the Renaissance through the Industrial Revolution.”
“Actually, he’s right, our cloaking capability does change things,” JJ said. “Certainly no ship other than the Tristar would follow us there.”
“I’m not suggesting that we land in an inhabited area,” Nolan said. “The planet I selected has an un-explored south
pole.”
I thought about it for a moment. “What if we run into the Clan there?”
Nolan chuckled. “For now, I’m not targeting based on proximity to natural worm holes. Since Vermillion and some of his staff were aware we planned to check those worlds out, I think there’s a high probability that such worlds are being monitored. This world is in the middle of nowhere. Many light-years from the nearest natural wormhole.”
I thought about it for a moment. “Okay, you’ve got me interested. We’ll only stay there until we can reach the Tristar. Won’t be that long.”
Izzy’s brow furrowed. “And if the Tristar decides to target us?”
“We jump,” Tim said. “They can’t track us in a wormhole, and they can’t see us when we’re not in a wormhole either, since Nolan got rid of the trace capability in the new cloaking software. This is making sense to me.”
“So we have agreement?” Nolan asked.
I laughed. “You already have us going there.”
“We had to change course. I knew we’d have this conversation in plenty of time to change course again. Hell, we could get right on top of the planet and change course.”
“You still could have proposed it,” I said, “but it makes no difference. In this case you would’ve convinced me. What does the latest survey say about this planet?”
“The name is Amberis. I didn’t spend time looking at anything other than the situation at the poles. Seemed like a good bet after our experience at Cremonia.”
“It doesn’t have the weather problems, I hope,” Tim said.
“That I checked on,” Nolan said. “It’s not perfect, but it’s a lot better than Cremonia.”
“We need to look at the survey in detail,” I said. “If they’re in the later part of that timeframe, they probably have a robust merchant marine and more than one powerful navy.”
“Yeah, it’ll be harder to take a quick dip to ride out a storm,” Tim said.
“If it’s that bad we’ll just jump off the planet,” Nolan said.
“Is the Tristar still on the way to Aurora Calista?” I asked.
