Lens of Time: Book 06 - Star Rover-Running Out of Time (30 page)

“And how wide is the beam they fire at the ground?”

A Madator at the back of the group said, “I looked at the place where Charlie was killed and the burned area was about thirty feet across.”

The female looked at the gathering, “I will do this the first time to see if it can be done.”

The Leader said, “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to take one of those blasters and kill a Servant with it.”

“And just how will you escape the follow up beam from orbit?”

“The ship will not see where the blaster was fired from in its scan. It will only see the direction it came from.” The other Madators thought a moment and moved their heads in agreement. I will extend one of my arms to its maximum length and fire the blaster from it at that point. I will be located to the side of the line where I fire the blaster. I suspect the beam will probably move along the line it saw the beam come in from. I’ll deactivate the blaster and move directly away from that line as fast as possible. I don’t believe they will blast the entire field to kill me. They will have no way to see if the beam had failed to hit me without an investigation. Even then, not much evidence is left behind from a beam strike. Even if they choose to blast the entire field, I’ll be out of the field faster than they can imagine.”

“Using blasters is against our beliefs.”

The female looked at the Leader, “And we will stop using them when they stop acting in an unacceptable manner.” The group just stared at her. She stared right back and said, “If I can’t kill them inside our restrictions, I’ll kill them anyway I can.”

The Leader’s head rolled around his body twice. “Come back and let us know how it went.”

“I’ll be back tomorrow. I’ll tell you then or you can devise another way to kill them. They should not be allowed to act in such a despicable manner. If necessary, we’ll use our dots to blast them into dust. Shooting at us from orbit is the highest form of cowardice. They need to be taught that method will not work.”

• • •

The next day, the first killing of a Servant by a blaster took place. A week later, more than a thousand more had died. Soon, the Servants wouldn’t leave their buildings to enter the fields. The Madators then stared, killing them inside their buildings. The ships in orbit were frustrated to a level that was monumental. Not long after that, the fleet blasted every Servant building on the planet hoping to catch the Madators inside. The Madators waited and the beam shocked surviving Servants on the ground were still being killed two days later. The fleet leader took his fleet to another planet and left the planet as wasted effort.

• • •

The Madators soon found that they were no longer being fired on from space. They gathered the surviving Servants and herded them into a central location and made sure they understood the boundaries of their domain. There was a huge field to feed them and they were left alone to live in peace. The local inhabitants were warned to stay away from the Servants domain but there were always the ones that refused to believe the danger was real. They were the ones the Servants used to reproduce. They were even smart enough to allow some of the inhabitants to escape unharmed. It always lead to others tempting fate. The Servants also discovered that a host could be used to hatch several of their larvae. Whenever a Servant grew old, they would sting themselves and allow their bodies to be the host for their young. The Servants’ population stabilized and a natural order was achieved. The Madators had their prey and they settled in and made the planet their home.

T
he Grillen Fleet Admiral was charged to defend a deserted planet in his galaxy. He had agreed to the exercise to see how his fleets measured up to the Union’s ships. All of his ships had their beams reduced to training levels and would be little more than bright lights. However, the training computer would notify any ship that was hit with one of them that they were out of the exercise. He knew in reality that one beam hit wouldn’t eliminate a ship from fighting but it was necessary to conduct training exercises. He was somewhat shocked at the number of ships requested to take part in the exercise. He had called in five fleets to provide the numbers requested. He knew there were far too many to organize them to work together. However, they were pretty good at working within their main units. “Are you ready for the exercise to start, Admiral?”

“I am.”

“The clock will start in one minute.”

“We’ll be ready.” The Grillen Admiral was wrong. He was totally unprepared for what followed one minute later. Shane had chosen a coordinate in the middle of three of his fleets and the Union Boxes appeared and the millions of ships blew through the Grillen Ranks faster than he could comprehend.

The other two fleets jumped to defend the three fleets being attacked but were unwilling to jump into the middle of space filled with so many ships moving through it. The globe of Rovers surrounding the Union Boxes flew into the ranks of the two fleets coming to assist the three being attacked and caused havoc in their ranks. Thirty minutes later the box formations appeared around the remaining two fleets and the exercise was over in less than an hour. The Grillen Admiral looked at the computer’s report and saw that he had lost ninety five percent of his ships. The Union had lost a little over six hundred thousand; most of them were Rovers in the defense globe. He activated his communicator, “What just happened!?!”

Shane smiled, “We’ve developed a weave where we can use all of our forces working together in a very small volume of space.”

“What you just did is impossible. That kind of coordination is beyond anything I’ve ever seen.”

“We are only able to pull it off due to our advanced computers.”

“Do any of your ships have the flexibility to attack random targets?”

“Each ship is assigned a corridor to fly. They can fire at anything within that corridor as long as they don’t venture more than a quarter of a mile from their plotted path.”

The Grillen Admiral stared at the replay of the exercise on his display and said, “I was hoping we could assist you…there’s no way we could do this.”

“There are a couple of things you could do to help.”

“What?”

“The only thing that will disrupt this pattern is if enough enemy ships jump in and move inside our formations. The corridors would become so full that maintaining the integrity of the weave would be impossible. Collisions would take place at an incredible rate.”

“I can see that.”

“You’ve seen the number of major warships the Servants possess; we can’t afford to fight a pitched battle. We’d be overwhelmed. We may have to flee before we complete the maneuver if large numbers of their major warships jumped in.”

“So you want my fleets to keep any new ships jumping in to the battle site off your back?”

“You’ve seen the globe of Rovers we’re going to have surrounding the center of the fighting, and you could form a globe with them and attack any ships moving in on the weave.”

“How long will we have to hold them off?”

“Our average time of clearing an area of ships has been thirty minutes.” Shane looked at his chronometer, “That’s about as long as our initial exercise took to complete.”

“Our ships do not match up well with their major warships.”

“I don’t want you to fight a pitched battle with them; just maneuver your fleets around them so that they can’t only focus on us. I hope you’ll force them to change their formations to meet your units.”

“How do I get my fleets organized into your defensive globe?”

“That’s easier than you think. We’ll have a pattern of the globe sent to you with all the slots a ship needs to be in. Some of the slots will already have our Rovers in them and you’ll just need to assign a slot to one of your ships.”

“And what happens if you decide to move the attack to another place?”

“You’ll receive the coordinates of the center of our attack and the coordinates for each of your ships will be sent to them. All they’ll need to do is jump to the new set of coordinates.”

“Can your computers send coordinates that quickly?”

“More than a million of our major battleships have had two additional computers installed to send out the coordinates for a section of the globe. All those computers will need is the communication channel of each ship assigned to each slot in their section.”

The Admiral thought about the idea and slowly shook his head, “We won’t be flying in a formation like your battleships. We will be moving into the Servant formations attacking targets of opportunity. We’ll be completely disorganized.”

“That really won’t matter. Just make sure your jump officers are looking for the next set of coordinates and immediately jump to that location when they see the jump button illuminate. They’ll arrive at their proper coordinate in the globe.”

“We’ll need to practice this before we attempt it in combat.”

“I’m sending you the pattern. Send me the communication channel of each ship assigned to a slot. We’ll trial it as soon as you make the assignments.”

“I’ll start my staff working on it. I’ll start sending you the assignments as soon as they’re made.”

“That would be good.”

The Grillen Admiral ended the connection and felt fear at the new power of the Union. He thought a moment and released his fear; they could be trusted. His civilization was much better off working with them than being an outsider. He called in his staff and War Admirals and started filling in the pattern Shane had sent him.

• • •

Four weeks later, the formations were formed in space. The Grillen Admiral looked at Shane on his display, “How do you want to do this?”

“First, we practice jumping the entire formation from one location to another. I’ll choose the set of coordinates we’ll form around and the computers will send the new locations to all of the ships in the formation. Jump will happen four seconds after the new coordinate is selected.”

“And your computers can send that many messages out within that time?”

“We’re here to see. Are you ready?”

The Grillen Admiral looked at his ship’s Jump Officer and saw him nod, “Start the exercise.”

Every ship in the giant formation received a new coordinate along with the four second countdown. The huge formation hung in space for a moment and then it disappeared…and entered normal space a moment later with every ship in place. The Grillen Admiral was shocked at how smoothly every ship appeared in their slotted place. Shane appeared on his display and said, “I am now going to choose two locations quickly and jump the formation twice.” The Admiral nodded and watched as the giant formation jumped twice. Both times it arrived at the new location with every ship in place. Shane said, “We will jump our formation for the rest of the day until all of your Jump Officers get a feel for the pattern.”

• • •

The giant formation jumped, jumped, and jumped again; over and over. Soon the Grillen got a feel for how to make the jumps and started to relax at their panels. After six hours, Shane contacted the Admiral, “Now, when we emerge from the jump, our ships are going to start the weave. I want your ships to fly out of the globe as if they were attacking an incoming fleet of enemy warships. Have your ship’s Commanders fly their ships like they would during combat. All the jump officers are going to do is focus on the next coordinate.”

“Give me a moment to pass these instructions to my ships.”

“Let me know when you’re ready.”

Thirty minutes later, the Admiral contacted Shane, “They have their instructions.”

“Good, I’m sending the jump coordinates….NOW!”

The giant formation jumped and looked like it exploded with the huge defensive globe, surrounding the two boxes moving away from them as the two boxes moved into each other. Thirty minutes later Shane sent the next set of coordinates and the huge formation appeared intact hanging in space. The Grillen Admiral watched his ship’s commander maneuver his ship to line up an imaginary enemy vessel and suddenly the ship was back in the huge formation. He shook his head. This was incredible! Shane appeared on his display, “Let’s do this three more times.” The Admiral nodded and the formation jumped and started their mock attacks again.

Finally the formation hung in space and Shane said, “This time, I am going to jump the formation in the middle of the weave.”

“Why?”

“There may come a time where the Servants bypass the globe and just jump into the space we’re attacking. We’ll have to get out quickly.”

The Admiral nodded and said, “Lead the way.”

Two hours later Shane called a halt to the operation. He looked at the Admiral and said, “The final jump we’re going to practice is where I jump the formation into deep space. I want all of your jump officers to program in an escape route. They should have a series of jumps preprogrammed into their panels where they could quickly jump fifty times to escape a Servant pursuit.”

“That will require some time.”

“If you don’t mind, my computers can send a series of jumps to all of your ships so that none of them jump anywhere near each other.”

“You never cease to amaze me, Admiral. When would you see the need for this?”

“When the Servants jump a billion ships in on our formation.”

The Grillen Admiral’s expression changed instantly, “Do you anticipate them doing that?”

“One never knows. I think they have the ships to do it. I don’t know if they have the organization to pull it off. Either way, I don’t like taking chances.” Shane paused, “Of course I’ll be dropping a probe when we jump away and if they leave ships at a location that we can handle, I’ll send the attack coordinate and all of our ships will just jump to that location in formation ready to fight again.”

The Grillen shook his head, “I wish we could use all our ships. We have a huge number not being used.”

Shane smiled, “Oh, I didn’t tell you that we have more formations training? We expect to have three box formations ready to go within the next year.”

“No, you didn’t tell me.”

“One other thing Admiral; we’ll continue training with our group but I would highly recommend that you have your ships in the globe to fly directly away from the center so that they won’t be firing on each other. As they move further away from their starting locations, their room to maneuver will increase.”