in0 (35 page)

“Once started it might not be
stoppable,” Ronnie told him. “It might be a Doomsday device.”

“All the more reason we need to
know how to stop it,” Park maintained, “Because if we cannot stop the Dark
Ships, stopping this weapon might be Earth’s only hope.”

“Any chance I could go down to
the surface and collect samples?” Ronnie asked.

“Down there?” Park asked,
gesturing at the screen in Ronnie’s lab cabin.

Ronnie took another look just as
region of volcanoes erupted spectacularly. “Maybe not,” she shook her head. “I
could use a lava sample, though.”

“Too dangerous,” Park told her.
“That’s not Hawaii where you can sometimes walk right up to a lava flow if
you’re careful. Those volcanoes are all going up like Yellowstone and I think
it’s getting worse down there.”

“Whatever those Dark Ships used,
they aren’t done melting this world yet,” Ronnie told him. “Another few days is
my guess, then they will shut down and the place will start to cool off again.”

“Won’t that take years?” Park
asked.

“Years,” Ronnie echoed, “Maybe
decades or even centuries, but I think a crust will form over the magma fairly
shortly and will get thicker gradually as the cooling continues. This won’t be
a habitable world any time soon, though. Studying the lava might be useful.”

“I’ll ask around to see if anyone
was taking souvenirs,” Park promised, “but don’t get your hopes up.”

Tawatir
was not equipped for search and rescue on the doomed world,
being unable to land and her fighters unlike the full-sized ship that other
Alliance carriers hauled, had no room for passengers. “I’m doing no good here,”
he explained to the admirals of the First and Second Fleets. “And with the
reports of a real siege at Kertream, my ship is needed there. I’m hoping the
Fifth Fleet will be able to join us there.”

 
“Aren’t they supposed to be in the Bourralenk
system?” Admiral Yorro asked.

“This just came in,” Park
replied. “Bourralenk is no more. The Fifth and Sixth Fleets arrived in time to
see a completely melted planet already cooling down.”

“How can that be?” Yorro
demanded. “The reports from Bourralenk came in last.”

“I wondered the same thing,” Park
admitted. “However, the initial report was by a merchant ship that was passing
through two months ago. They reported to their own corporate headquarters and
they, in turn, told the local authorities on Garranet. I think that’s where the
bottleneck was.”

“The locals on Garranet saw it as
someone else’s problem and sat on it until Owatino was attacked?” Yorro
guessed.

“I believe so,” Park nodded. “And
when we got the word, we scrambled before we had all the details. There were
only ten thousand survivors. The Sixth Fleet is taking them to Earth for now.
Bourralenk sounded similar to conditions on our smaller continent, Australis,
so if they want to colonize, there’s plenty of room for them there along with
groups of other refugees if need be. If they aren’t in a colonial mood, we’ll
find them a new home later. Actually, I suspect they’ll be landing at Van
Winkletown first.”

“Earth?” Yorro asked. “No
disrespect, but you do realize your world is the prime target for the Premm.”

“I didn’t make the decision to
send them there,” Park replied, “They were invited by the Council of Primes. In
any case, I’m moving on to help in Kertream System. You all can certainly
handle the Search and Rescue here. These refugees are, for now, to be sent to
Vrenth System. They’ll be resettled when things calm down. Once you’re clear of
that, pop back over to Felina for further orders.”

“Aye aye,” Yorro and his fellows
responded.

By the time Park had finished
conferring with his admirals, he was already well underway, so the Stierdach
limit, closer to the Zartilenx primary than to Sol, was only another two days’
journey for
Tawatir
at three
gravities’ worth of acceleration.

Park spent most of the time
pacing through the large ship, visiting the Engineering deck, getting practice
on the gunnery simulator and sitting in the assistants’ chairs at every station
on the bridge. Cousin frequently joined him in his wanderings and some of the
crew speculated that he might have had Marisea’s pet grafted to his arm. Only
two days but, as always, they were interminable until, finally, they reached
the Stierdach Limit beyond which the star drive suddenly became something more
than a heavy piece of ironmongery that took up valuable cargo space.

The star drive was activated and
the world got wrenched around and felt like it was being turned inside out. A
moment later the wrenching sensation stopped but all the colors on the ship
looked wrong. Beige carpeting turned bright blue, green lights on the control
panels looked orange, brushed metal fitting were blinking back and forth
between a variety of colors and so forth. Outside, the blackness of space had
become a swirling palate of pastel colors with black spots and inside the
people were glowing a bright fluorescent red. By now everyone on board was used
to the unpredictable color shifts and since they only lasted a few subjective
seconds, crewmen and women had learned to just pause in whatever they were
doing and wait for the ship to break back out into normal space.

The transition in normal space,
they had learned, was instantaneous even though there was a definite and
measurable pause for those making the voyage. The star drive, Ronnie Sheetz had
developed appeared to be an improvement over the standard Alliance drives,
which frequently took several subjective hours to go from one system to
another. No one had been able to tell why the Sheetz star drive cut down
subjective travel time, however.

The world turned inside out again
and the visual colors returned to normal and suddenly
Tawatir
was dozens of lightyears away from her previous location.
She was also not unobserved.

“Dark Ships on the scanners,”
Iris reported almost immediately. “About twenty of them are turning to meet
us.”

“We should have brought the other
Earth ships with us,” Park decided.

“They were needed for the
humanitarian effort,” Iris reminded him.

“Sir, I think we can evade these
ships and join forces with the Third and Fourth Fleets,” Garro Tinns suggested.

“Can we come just within long
range for the missiles, without getting within range of their weapons?” Park
asked.

“Calculating,” Tinns replied as
he worked. “Oh, this is interesting. If they cooperate, I think we can do it
twice and then lead them straight into the gap between our two fleets.”

“Sounds good,” Park nodded.
“Let’s try that. Or should I have said, ‘Make it so?’”

“Jean Luc stole that catch phrase
ages ago,” Iris snickered.

“Yeah,” Park nodded, “from
Cleopatra.”

“Seriously?” Iris asked.

“Well she said it, sort of, two
millennia before Picard did,” Park chuckled. “There was an obscure papyrus
found in which she granted a tax exemption to one of Marcus Antonius’ buddies.
At the bottom and in a different hand than the rest of the document was the
single Greek word ‘ginesthoi’ or ‘Make it so.’ There’s a fair chance the word
was written by Cleopatra herself.”

“Interesting,” Iris admitted.
“Where did you hear that?”

“I saw the papyrus on display at
the
Ägyptisches
Museum und Papyrussammlung
in Berlin,” Park replied. “It’s the
closest thing we have or had, I suppose, to her autograph.”

“It might still exist,” Iris
shrugged, “Depending on how it was stored.”

“After this long?” Park asked. “I
doubt that. We haven’t even found the remains of any of our cities. I doubt
that one museum or any of its contents have survived even if they were placed
in a helium-filled case.”

“Who was Cleopatra?” Marisea
asked.

“I’ll tell you about her later,”
Park promised. “Right now I need you to let our ships know what we’re doing. I
really hope the Dark Ships haven’t broken our encryption algorithms.”

“A fine time to bring that up,”
Marisea told him.

“If they know the only difference
will be when we fire our missiles,” Garro told them. “They can avoid being shot
at, but unless they plan to cut and run, they still need to engage our fleets.
All we’re going to do, if they follow us is lead them right between the two
fleets. If it doesn’t work, the rest of their ships are still headed toward
ours anyway.”

“I should have asked this
earlier,” Park commented. “How many Dark Ships are there?”

“Fifty-three,” Iris replied. “I
have the first eight of our twenty targeted. As things stand we have five
minutes until we are in range.”

“Fifty-three?” Park echoed, “I’m
flattered. Marisea, can you open a channel to the Dark Ships?”

“I can broadcast on the
frequencies we have known them to communicate on,” Marisea replied. She turned
a few dials and flipped a switch. “Go ahead.”

“Enemy ships,” Park began, “this
is Black Admiral McArrgh. Surrender now and we shall let you go in peace.”

“There’s a forty-one second light
lag,” Marisea told him as she turned off his microphone. “You aren’t expecting
them to surrender, are you?”

“Not hardly,” Park scoffed. “But
I was hoping this might place a seed of doubt in their minds. No harm done when
it doesn’t work.”

There was a blast of static over
their speakers. “Is that a yes or a no?” Park wondered.

“I think it was laughter,”
Marisea told him.

“Either way or both,” Iris
remarked. “They aren’t changing course. They’ll be in extreme range in three
and a half minutes.” Iris managed to fire off eight missiles before they passed
out of range again. “Not bad,” she remarked. “Six out of eight hits. Remind me
to send Ronnie a present. Oh, too bad. They’re turning back and rejoining the
rest of their fleet.”

“Well, I’m sure it was obvious
they couldn’t catch us until we had reinforcements,” Park told her. “They can
navigate in three dimensions just like we can.”

“Call coming in from Admiral
Gilatino of the Third Fleet,” Marisea announced, “no image.”

Park shrugged. He had learned
years earlier that experienced spacers in the Alliance usually did without
holographic images in their transmissions. “Admiral,” he greeted Gilatino.

“Nicely done, McArrgh,” Gilatino
told him, “and good timing as well. We’ve been dancing back and forth with
these Dark Ships since we got here.”

“Have any of them gotten near
Kertream?” Park asked.

“Not yet,” Gilatino responded,
“They turned to fight us as we entered the system. Casualities have been high.
Twenty of our ships destroyed in two waves of attacks, including the flagship
of Admiral Toosec. I’ve been commanding both fleets. Another fifty of our ships
are badly damaged and in orbit around Kertream as a last defense for the
planet. Mostly we’ve been doing our best to keep them busy while waiting for
reinforcements. All seven of your Pirate ships are intact, however, with only
minor structural damage. What do you build those things out of? Neutronium?”

“If we did, they would never get
off the ground,” Park laughed. “You’ve put our ships at the front of your
formations?”

“I did after the first
encounter,” Gilatino responded. “They had a wing of ships hiding
 
behind one the system’s gas giants. Took us
by surprise, but we scored some good shots at them too. But we only managed to
get six of them, so you just doubled the score,”

“Looks like you’re trying to take
them from two sides at once,” Park observed.

“Trying, yes,” Gilatino nodded,
“They didn’t fall for it last time. Instead, they just split their force in two
and came at us.”

“Let’s try splitting in three,”
Park suggested. “Send one third of the ships from each fleet to meet me
 
about midway between the rest of your ships.
I suspect the Dark Ships will split in three too, then they’ll come at me too.
The next part will take some coordination, but if we all trade targets, maybe
we can come up on their flanks.”

“We’ll be exposing our flanks as
well,” Gilatino pointed out.

“True,” Park agreed. “It’s a
calculated risk. Put the Earth ships on the exposed sides. It might help.”

“Uh…” Gilatino hedged.

“If you have a better idea,
Admiral,” Park encouraged, “I’m open to suggestions.”

“No, Admiral,” Gilatino admitted,
“I wish I had one, but you just took me by surprise.”

“Hopefully we’ll take the Dark
Ships by surprise too,” Park grinned.

“All right. You’ll have your
ships waiting for you,” Gilatino promised and signed off.

Everyone on
Tawatir’s
bridge spent their spare moments watching the flickering
movements of the Dark Ships on the sensor displays. “How accurate are these
readings?” Park demanded half an hour before their scheduled rendezvous with
the fleets. “Looks to me like those ships are jumping all over the place.”

“The new and improved Dark Ship,
Park,” Marisea told him. “As bad as this is, it is still better than how the
Alliance ships saw the first Dark Ships. You remember how hard it was to spot
that ship we followed to Iztapel? We could barely see it with our sensors. Well,
this is the best we’ve been able to improve the view.”

“What does this do to weapons
tracking?” Park asked.

“Fine time to wonder that,” Iris
chuckled. “We’re hitting less than half our targets with the phasers and the
gravity cannons compared to seventy-three percent accuracy last time around.
The missiles autocorrect in flight, so they all hit unless the Dark Ships shoot
them down in flight.”

Park nodded and continued to
study the screens. “Huh!” he noticed, finally, “They’re breaking up into three
groups like we hoped. Marisea, tell the others ships to stand by for that
planned maneuver.”