Lens of Time: Book 06 - Star Rover-Running Out of Time (29 page)

“Like I said earlier, you know me better than I know myself.”

Both of them watched the operation continue in silence. Much was communicated without words. They both knew each other’s expressions. At one point Blacky issued a loud hoot and was answered by a hoot high overhead. He hooted louder and the Madator began dropping toward him. Dat saw the Madator was smaller than the others. Blacky hooted at the Madator and it lowered its head and remained silent. Blacky pointed behind him and the Madator moved and sat down on the ground.

“What was that all about?”

“She knows she is too young to do this.”

“Then why was she attempting to go?”

“She’s being silly. She wants to be with one of the males assigned to the fight.”

“Would Ringie allow you to leave her behind?” Blacky’s head rolled down to his chest instantly and he stared at Dat. Dat tilted his head, “I suspect if she was forced to remain behind, her life would be filled with sorrow without you.”

Blacky remained silent and just stared at Dat. His head slowly moved up to the top of his body and he looked at the young female weeping quietly behind him. He blew out the air in his body and Dat’s hair was ruffled. He made a small hoot and the female walked slowly over to them. Blacky looked at her, “I’m telling you this in my friend’s language because he had made me see this differently. You may go with the one you have chosen.” The female’s head rolled completely around her body. “However, you will not participate in any kills until you achieve your full size. That is a supreme order and you will obey it.” The female hooted her agreement. “Go to your shuttle.” The female put an arm on Dat’s shoulder and said, “Thank you so much.” She ran forward and converted to the wing shape faster than Dat had ever seen. She flew low over the ground and flew into a shuttle that was starting to close its door. Blacky heard a loud hoot as the door stopped and he answered it. A moment later the door closed and the shuttle lifted. Blacky shook his head, “That female can fly!”

“What was the hoot about from the shuttle?”

“The mission commander wanted confirmation that I approved her going.”

“I suspect she will be a good asset to the mission with her flying skills, Blacky.”

“I think you’re right.” Blacky paused and finally said, “It was the right thing to do.”

Dat smiled, “Indeed it was.”

Later the next day, when Blacky told Ringie about what he had done, she snatched him off his feet and showered him with caresses. “Hey, hey.”

“My mate is romantic. I love you so much.”

Blacky gave in to Ringie and decided it was a good thing to have allowed the young female to go. It was that young female who ultimately became the leader of the community. Her bravery shamed them all. Her spirit is what drove them to victory on one of the Servant’s Minor Planets. She was the one that killed the planet’s ruling Lord and escaped to continue the fight. One of her descendants would one day return to rule the home world.

• • •

The Madator pilot went to the bridge of the large yellow ship and set the jump drive. He activated the automatic missile launchers, force field, and self-destruct circuit. He checked to make sure everything was operating and then activated the two minute countdown. He rushed off the bridge to the landing bay where he was the last to enter his drop globe. He flowed into it and saw the red light on the landing bay door start flashing, indicating there was fifteen seconds until jump.

He closed his globe and suddenly the entire load of drop globes was blown out of the ship into green space for a moment…then they emerged into normal space and saw the planet below them. There was a bright flash over the planet’s horizon and they began falling toward the surface. An hour later, they were on the ground and moving into the soil at their assigned locations. More than a thousand Servants were killed on the planet that first day.

• • •

Dat sat in the second scanner chair on board the Saturn. A year had passed and Shane’s four fleets had finally reached full strength. Dat saw a bright signal appearing on the scanner display. He knew it was a probe and it was located at the center of the area in space that Shane was going to demonstrate the maneuver he had been working on while his fleets were being built. He saw the four fleets surrounded the probe at a distance of more than a million miles with a formation that placed the globe inside what looked like a huge box. Shane looked over at Arvolo, “Are you ready, Sir?” Dat nodded and moved his head to the huge monitor on the wall that would track the training maneuver. He saw the four sides of huge box facing each other with the probe in the center. Shane said, “Please understand that, normally, we would just jump to this location with pre-assigned coordinates and start the process immediately.” Dat nodded and Shane reached forward and pressed a button. Dat felt the Saturn leave normal space and reappear suddenly. “What are the bright lines that left your ships before you jumped?”

“Those are four penetrators that each ship launched before starting the maneuver. Our brief jump through the barrier will put us ahead of them until we arrive at the probe’s location where we’ll see the penetrators launched by the other three sides moving ahead of us looking for targets.”

Dat watched the display and the four sides rushed forward at an incredible velocity. The four sides began intersecting each other immediately and ships passed other ships moving in a perpendicular direction from above and below and head on. He watched the millions of Jukeboxes passing each other at an incredible velocity and wondered how they avoided hitting each other. All four sides of the huge box came together at the probe’s location and then moved away from each other as they moved across the space designated for the exercise. Trying to follow the exercise on the display was impossible. The four sides arrived at the opposite side from where they had started and stopped. The ships disappeared briefly as they flipped in green space to orient themselves back toward the center of the box.

Dat stared at Shane and released the arms of the chair he was sitting in, “How do you avoid collisions?”

“The ships look like they’ve moving close to each other but the sides are offset from each other such that the path each ship will take through the box is half a mile clear of any ships approaching it. The ships are allowed to veer either left or right for a half mile to avoid a collision or to fire on a ship in their line. The computer will automatically return it to its assigned vector when the pilot releases the manual controls.”

“And you think the penetrators won’t hit your ships?”

“The computers will be tracking them as they move across the box. It will automatically leave normal space as the ship approaches an incoming penetrator.”

“That’s why each ship only launched four instead of a full barrage.”

“Yes Sir, a full barrage would overload the system.”

“I would think we might have our own ships firing at each other.”

“That’s why each side of the box had only one layer. There will not be one of our ships in the assigned path of another ship. All our pilots have to do is follow their vector and fire at anything in front of them. As long as it is within the half mile area around their ships, they will not fire on each other.”

“How long will it take for you to organize your ships into this formation? It looks like it could only be used once.”

Shane pressed a button on his panel, “Sir, I have the coordinates of four more probes; all of them are more than four light years from this location. I want you to pick one and send it to my jump officer.”

“Why?”

“I think you’ll find it enlightening.”

Dat looked at the four coordinates and chose the second one. He sent the coordinates to the jump officer who entered them into his board. The ship’s lights went to combat level and he heard, “Three, two, one…”

Dat looked up at the large display and saw the four million ships instantly appear in the box formation and immediately accelerate. He saw the red lines that represented the launch of the penetrators and the ships went through the space in less than ten minutes. Dat knew this was an entire new order of using major battleships. He shook his head and looked at Shane, “This is incredible; it’s hard to believe you could make this happen. I guess I was wrong about needing the Rovers.”

Shane smiled and said, “Pick another coordinate, Sir. This time I’m going to delay the assault until you have time to see our formations.”

Dat stared at Shane and wondered what he was planning. He chose the fourth and the jump officer loaded it into the system. He heard, “Three, two, one…” and suddenly he felt the ship jump and appear in normal space. What he saw on the display was incredible. The four million Jukeboxes were formed up in their box formation but surrounding the formation was another box formation of Rovers that was offset from the Jukeboxes. Dat turned to Shane, “How many Rovers?”

“Sixteen million, Sir.”

“That’s half of your full complement; and just what are they going to be doing?”

“We’ve expanded the area between the Jukeboxes to about two miles and the Rovers will be passing through the formation on their own vectors that will keep them clear of the Jukeboxes firing lanes.”

“You’re going to send twenty million ships through that space?”

“Yes, and if you’ll expand the view you’ll see the rest of our Rovers.”

Dat nodded at the Scanning Officer and the view on the display expanded. He saw the remaining Rovers were in a huge globe surrounding the two boxes in the center. He looked at Shane who said, “I expect that once we start this formation moving, our friends will invite other ships to the soiree. The remainder of our ship’s complements of Rovers will be used to hold off any uninvited guests in the event we have to run.”

“Do you honestly think you’ll have to run?”

“Sir, I saw half a billion major warships when we looked at the trackers’ downloads in just one of their Major Planets systems. I do expect that we will have to run…probably more than a few times until we can even the odds.”

“I need to get Admiral Gibbs’ and my Fleet trained on this maneuver.”

“I will send the Second-in-Command from my ships with the computer downloads to your ships to initiate the training.”

“Shane, I want to place those Seconds in command of the new ships coming online. Would that be possible?”

“They deserve the promotion, Sir.”

“I’ll start Fleet Personnel making the assignments as soon as the new ships are modified.”

“Yes Sir. We’re going to continue to train. I wish we had some way to make it more realistic.”

“What if I asked the Grillen to allow you to use their fleets to practice on?”

“Do you think they’d do it?”

“I suspect they’d jump at the opportunity to see what we’ve developed.”

“Please make the request, Sir.” Dat nodded and watched the two boxes blow by each other.

• • •

The Senior Advisor Lord rushed into the Supreme Lord’s chamber. The Lord saw him coming and knew he wasn’t bringing good news. “Lord, more than four hundred thousand of our invaded planets have been attacked again by the Yellow and Violet colored ships!”

The Supreme Lord was stunned, “How many?!?”

“Four hundred thousand or more; every enemy ship used in attack was destroyed.”

“By our ships?”

The Advisor hesitated, “No, Sire; they self-destructed in the upper atmosphere of the planets they attacked.”

“Who are these creatures?”

“We’ve not been able to locate them.”

The Supreme Lord hesitated but knew he had to ask, “Were any of those creatures dropped on the planets?” The Advisor was silent and the Lord knew the answer. “How many?”

“We have reports of more than a hundred thousand deaths in our forces on the planets they attacked.”

The Supreme Lord’s expression turned nasty, “I want all our ships sent to those planets and I want all of our personnel on the surface locked in on their scanners with a laser targeted on their location. If any of them appear to be in distress, I want the laser fired at that location.”

“We will kill the personnel.”

“They’re dead anyway. Make it happen.”

• • •

The Madator moved through the soil and approached his intended target. He smiled and sent his arm out and wrapped the Servant around the neck. It squeezed and the Servant’s head fell away from its body. It didn’t have time to feed; a bright blue beam flashed out of the sky and the Servant’s body, the Madator, and fifty of the local inhabitants were burned into ash. All around the planet, blue beams lanced down to the surface and the surviving Madators knew a new means of attack would have to be used. However, what they needed to accomplish was done. The Servant’s fleets were locked down defending their planets. The Supreme Lord didn’t think about the former ally for more than two years. Even then, it knew it couldn’t think about expansion until the current threat was eliminated.

• • •

The Madators gathered in a dense forest and looked at each other as they felt each other’s anger at the unsportsmanlike conduct the Servants were using to kill them. “Do any of you see away around this?”

They stared at each other and none of them responded. A young female listening to the conversation said, “They lose the protection of our codes.”

The Madators turned and looked at her. The Leader rolled his head down, “What do you mean?”

“They do not deserve the protection of the codes we follow concerning our prey. They have forfeited their protection.”

Another Madator said, “I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.”

“How many Servant blasters have we collected?”

The Leader looked at one of them and he said, “About a thousand.”

The female looked up at the sky, “Alright, this much we know. If the ships in orbit have their scanners focused on each Servant on the ground, how much ground are they able to see around the Servant?”

The Leader thought back to when he commanded a battleship and said, “From orbit they would have to focus the scanner to its highest resolution. To see it clearly, they could only observe about ten feet around their target.”