Gibraltar Sun (29 page)

“Not just the hair on your head. They want us to depilate our eyebrows, the hair on our arms and legs, even our ‘you-know-what’ hair.”

“I suppose they want us to dye ourselves blue this time!”

“Tiger stripes,” he replied. “We’ll each carry an individualized pattern of black and yellow stripes over a base of tan. Our lips will be dyed black and our earflaps red. It isn’t much, but it just may confuse them enough to keep them from identifying us as the visitors to Klys’kra’t.”

She was silent for a long time, then smiled impishly. “I suppose we can make tiger stripes chic, and checking to make sure we’ve gotten rid of all of our body hair might be fun.”

He leered at her, “I may just have to check you over several times.”

“Ditto,” she replied.

#

The bridge of
New Hope
was once again a tense place as they prepared for breakout on the edge of the Etnarii System. It had been six hours since the expedition’s four ships rendezvoused well beyond the target system. In addition to
New Hope
, there were the Q-ships
Revenger
and
Allison
, one a Type Seven Freighter, the other a Bulk Transport, and the blastship
Chicago
. The three other vessels would remain hidden in the Oort Cloud unless needed. Then, depending on circumstances, either one of the Q-ships would mysteriously appear in the system and voyage to Pastol to aid their brethren, or else
Chicago
would break from hiding and rush to the rescue.

Of course, ‘rescue’ might involve bombarding the planet from space to ensure that any captured human agents were not left alive to be questioned about their origins.

The entire bridge crew was decked out in their disguises, each with a distinctive black and yellow stripe pattern that covered their bald pates, faces, necks, and hands, the only parts of their bodies that stuck out of their skin-tight, yellow shipsuits. Had one cared to investigate further, they would find the stripes traversed every part of their skin save for the palms of their hands and the soles of their feet. In fact, a couple of the crewmen – one male and one female – had become masters at body painting before preparations for the masquerade were complete.

The shipsuits were of standard human design, but the individual names embroidered in Broan script above the right pockets were aliases. Captain Harris was Hass Vith, Mark Rykand was Markel Sinth, and each of the rest were other nonsense syllables that could not be found in any Earth dictionary. This close to the target world, all of the displays in the ship had been switched over to the Broan dot-and-swirl script to get the crew used to using them. Nowhere in the public areas of the ship (those not given over to hidden weaponry and additional engines unknown to the Broa) was there any indication of the ship’s true origin. Even the astronomical data onboard had been converted to correspond to a Sol-like star system a thousand light-years from Etnarii, and in the opposite direction from their true home.

Back on Earth, some of the most creative minds had spent years thinking about the masquerades needed during the initial contact missions. Many of those minds were now headquartered at Brinks Base, where they continued their quest to ensure that no telltale detail betrayed the fact that Earth existed, or where it was to be found.

It wasn’t that they were trying to masquerade as another species. That would have been impossible. Even if they had used prosthetics to improve their disguises, the bio scanners that checked them for infectious diseases would clearly show the extra features to be fakes, leading to unwanted curiosity. Some body modifications could have been explained away as mere fashion, but questions would have formed in alien brains that they did not want asked.

So, other than the lack of body hair and the different coloring, they were still human beings. The disguise was intended to confuse the enemy, but not to the point where anyone would wonder why their visitors were obviously in disguise.

The other expedition that had been dispatched from Brinks Base would also be in disguise, but not the same one. Having Trojans show up in two different systems simultaneously might also generate interest at some future date. The plan was to slip in like ghosts, transact their business, and then slip out again.

Unfortunately, there was one risk they hadn’t figured out how to abate. Every vessel entering the Etnarii System via stargate generated a gravity wave. Their arrival via stardrive would not. In fact, the only way to actually generate an arrival wave would be to discover the system the Etnarii gate connected to, travel superlight to that system, and then jump through to Etnarii as though they were regular Broan traffic.

At Klys’kra’t, they had waited for a Broan ship to jump outbound through the gate before pretending to be a new arrival. The thought had been that anyone monitoring the gravity waves might not notice that one wave seemingly had spawned two ships.

If they discovered any starships in the Etnarii System, they would pull the same scam, assuming they could get themselves into position in time. If the system were empty, then they would have to go in and brazen it out.

#

“All Hands, Breakout Complete!” Mark announced over the ship’s annunciator. His words echoed back at him, making him sound as though he were at the bottom of a well.

“Where are we, Astrogator?” Captain Harris demanded.

“Midpoint of the Oort Cloud, sir. Right where we want to be.”

“Any debris close enough to be a danger?”

“Checking now, sir,” Emily Sopwell, the sensor operator answered. She was sweeping circumambient space with the comm laser, making sure that it did not point anywhere near the planet or star.

This time they had popped out of superlight moving tangential to Etnarii so that they could safely sweep the volume of space in front of them, secure in the knowledge that their presence would not be detected.

Half an hour after breakout, Ensign Sopwell announced, “I have a laser beacon, Captain. It’s
Chicago
.”

“How far?” the Captain asked.

“I make it six million kilometers, sir.”

“Not bad, considering how far we’ve come since rendezvous,” Harris announced to no one in particular. “Astrogator, plot us a course for rendezvous.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

In this case, they would be making all of the course corrections to join up with the big blastship. Fleet orders were to home on
Chicago
immediately after breakout, and that was what they were doing.

Two days later, they pulled alongside of the oversize cylinder. It was festooned with gun mounts, laser mounts, and particle beam accelerators. Around the waist of the ship was a string of hemispherical shapes that were its superlight missiles, ready for launch.

A hundred thousand kilometers or so beyond
Chicago
were two other laser beacons.
Revenger
and
Allison
were also making their approaches to rendezvous.

“Captain Symes has sent a message to you, Captain,” the communicator on duty announced. Symes was
Chicago
’s commanding officer.

“Read it.”

“His compliments, sir. You and the ground party are to join him inboard the blastship for dinner and a pre-mission briefing.”

“Time?”

“19:00 Hours, sir.”

“Signal him that we will be there.”

#

Chapter Thirty

New Hope
’s landing boat was partially filled as they made their way across the void to
Chicago
. This time Captain Harris and Commander Vanavong,
Hope
’s executive officer, were ensconced on the forward acceleration bench. Mark and Lisa were relegated to the second row, where the view was not nearly as good. Behind them were Bernard Sampson, Alien Linguist, and Seiichi Takamatsu, Alien Technologist, the other members of the expedition ground party. Takamatsu was a specialist in Broan computer technology, having spent the last five years studying the
Ruptured Whale
’s computers. It would be his job to validate the Pastol database when they obtained it.

Their approach to
Chicago
was uneventful, even dull, for those in the rear seats. They could see little beyond the backs of the captain and exec’s heads. What little of the view the two officers did not obscure was taken up by the pilot. As they made their approach to the blastship, they made out an occasional dull lump on a hull painted to match the blackness of space. Unlike the Q-ships, the human designs on the expedition incorporated full stealth capability, including a surface finish designed to make them difficult to see, even at close range.

There was an increase in the cabin lighting as the big ship’s hangar bay doors swung open to admit the small landing craft. After that, it was a series of bumps and grinding noises as the landing boat was secured to the deck, followed by the inevitable hissing roar as the blastship’s hangar bay was repressurized.

A light on the forward bulkhead turned green, followed by the pilot’s voice announcing that it was safe to disembark.

The blast ship’s rotation had been halted to bring the boat aboard. Thus, they were in microgravity. Mark and Lisa unsnapped their seat-belt-for-two and waited for Sampson and Takamatsu to lever themselves to the boat’s aft airlock. Sampson palmed the control that opened both doors simultaneously, something impossible to do had the sensors detected a pressure differential between the inside and outside. He then disappeared head first through the open lock, followed by Takamatsu.

Mark let Lisa go first. She deftly levered herself out of her seat with her arms, pivoted in place, then pulled herself hand over hand, using the seat backs as grips. He followed her, conscious that he wasn’t nearly as graceful – a fact he put down to both larger size and the presence of a Y-chromosome. When he reached the airlock, he jackknifed through it like a diver entering a sunken wreck, to find an oversize steel compartment beyond.
Chicago
’s landing bay was brightly lit by overhead flood lamps. Scattered around the bay were the blastship’s attack boats. A double line of Marines stood at attention, blast rifles at ‘present arms’ and boots hooked into the hexagonal deck grating, giving the illusion of gravity. An orange cord had been strung from a hook above the boat’s airlock to a similar hook over a nearby hatch. A clump of blastship officers awaited them just inside the hatch.

Mark followed the others along the guide line, halting to hover at its end where
Chicago
’s welcoming party waited. No one said anything until they were joined by the captain and the exec.

“Captain Harris?” a pert middle-aged woman in the uniform of a commander inquired.

“Yes.”

“Commander Butterfield, sir.
Chicago
’s exec. Captain Symes asked me to meet you.”

“Good of you to come, Commander. I fear we would have become lost in this big old beehive of yours.”

“It does take some getting used to, sir. If you will follow me, I’ll take you to the Officer’s Mess where the captain will join us. Oh, and we should have spin back on the ship in another ten minutes.”

“Thank you, Commander. Lead the way.”

With that, Commander Butterfield pulled herself along the guide rope until she reached the hatch. There she transferred to the ubiquitous guide rail attached to the overhead that ran the length of every corridor in the ship. The rail was used for locomotion when the ship was in microgravity, and the party from
New Hope
was soon strung out behind her like beads on a string as she swiftly moved through a seemingly endless sequence of corridors. Several of the blastship crewmen observed their passage, many attempting unsuccessfully to hide smirks as their visitors passed.

The expressions baffled Mark the first time he saw them. Then he realized what they were smirking about. Everyone aboard
New Hope
was already in disguise. Trailing the blastship’s executive officer were six completely hairless, monkey-like figures covered in black-and-yellow tiger stripes.

They must have looked damned incongruous against the blastship’s gray bulkheads as they imitated the monkeys they resembled, pulling themselves hand over hand along the guide rail.

#

“Captain Harris, ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce Captain Wellington Symes, commanding officer of
TSN Chicago
.”

They each shook hands in turn with
Chicago
’s commanding officer. By the time they had reached the mess hall, sufficient spin had been placed on the ship that they did not float off the deck. Mark Rykand estimated the pull at about one-tenth gee. It would be raised shortly to one-third gravity, the shipboard standard.

Symes was a bear of a man with a hulking look and a grim expression. Unlike most of the expedition’s officers, he had been a member of the Space Navy even before its recent massive expansion. His seniority and record had given him command of one of the half-dozen most powerful ships in the fleet. Prior to this command, he had skippered nothing larger than a frigate for the simple reason that prior to Sar-Say, the space navy had possessed nothing larger.

“Mrs. Rykand,” he said after being introduced to Lisa. He surprised everyone by leaning over and kissing her hand. The custom had seen a revival in the previous generation, although it was again dying out.

“Captain Symes, thank you for your kind welcome aboard this magnificent ship.”

“Think nothing of it. We didn’t get a chance for a pre-mission briefing back at Brinks Base. I thought it an excellent time to mix business with pleasure. Besides, I don’t think I have ever seen a more beautiful bald and striped woman in my entire life.”

Despite herself, Lisa blushed under the body paint.

Symes bounced a couple of times on the balls of his feet. “We seem to have enough gravity to begin. Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. You will find nameplates on the table. Several of my officers will be joining us shortly.

As predicted, a number of figures in formal black-and-silver showed up while stewards poured wine into tall, low-gravity glasses. Each new arrival was introduced, which in turn slowed conversation as the six visitors introduced themselves. Mark noted several officers, male and female, glancing surreptitiously in his direction. One small blonde wearing the bars of a Lieutenant seemed especially intrigued. He asked her if she liked his paint job.