Tachyon Web (19 page)

“
He is not
,” Vani said.

“
Child
,” the old woman began.

“
Let her speak
,” Rak interrupted. He turned to the young girl who had lifted her head from its humble position. “
You are Vani?
”

“
Yes, my Councillor. I have been with Eric. He knows our sorrow over Kashi and over the length of time we must spend in space before reaching Lira. He has striven against the desires of his closest friends to try to help us.
”

Rak considered for a moment. “
Eric, you are young to command a ship. Is that not unusual with your people?
”

He debated telling him he was much older than he looked but he suspected Rak would know he was lying.

“I am not really a commander. A few of my friends and I, we borrowed the ship in your docking bay. We’re…ah…on vacation.”

A stir went through the Councillors, except for Rak, who smiled faintly. “
I regret that my people are no longer allowed vacations to far-off places.
” He paused, said seriously, “
Our time is almost gone. I waver. You ask me to risk a great deal.
”

At that instant Eric almost backed down. Rak’s last words cut deep. These were his people that were being gambled. He looked to Vani. She could practically read his mind.

“
I am not the only one who wants to walk in a real forest
,” she said.

Eric cleared his throat. “First Councillor, do you know for a fact that Lira has inhabitable planets circling it?”

“
The star has planets, two approximately the size of Kashi. But we do not know if we can live on either of them.
”

“And if you can’t, will your descendants have the fuel to go elsewhere?”

Rak saw his point. He came to a decision. “We will wait.”

Exactly thirty minutes after issuing its demand, The Patrol vaporized one of the Kaulikan ships.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The shuttle belonged to The Patrol. They had sent it over empty. They didn’t want any Kaulikan craft entering their battle cruisers. Eric knew how to pilot it but wasn’t given an opportunity to display his skills. The moment he cleared the flagship bay doors, with Rak as his only passenger, The Patrol locked onto them with a tractor beam. Perhaps there was a subliminal message in the action: we are the power here, not you. Then again, The Patrol had already made their message painfully clear.

Eric peered through the shuttle window toward the remains of the Kaulikan vessel, a faintly glowing red smudge against the black of space. He shuddered at the memory of the screens in the flagship war room switching suddenly to the imploding ball of energy. The cry of anguish bursting from those present had almost sent him into a swoon. He might have given up right then and there had he not known that things could get much worse. With the exception of Rak, the Councillors had immediately shouted for retaliation. It had been Eric’s task, fighting his radically tarnished credibility, to convince them that they would lose a hundred ships as quickly as they had lost the first one if they so much as fired a single missile. Rak had listened to him. Speaking to the frantic control center without the aid of a PA, he had managed to restore a semblance of calm. Then the good news, if it could be called that, came through. The target had been one of the fleet’s ten fully automated factory vessels. No one had been killed.

The Patrol had made their point. They weren’t bluffing. Again Rak had sent a message requesting a meeting. This time it was accepted. The Patrol was obviously willing to sit down and negotiate as long as the other party was convinced that the gun being held to their heads was loaded. The reply also contained a stipulation. The Patrol wanted – not ‘wanted to see’ or ‘wanted to talk to’ just ‘wanted’ – the captain of
Excalibur
. The individual sending the reply had been General Griffin.

Hearing the fearsome name, Eric had barely had the presence of mind to scribble out the sequence of notes to give to Vani that would hopefully find their way to Strem, should he be unable to talk to him again. Before leaving, he had made sure she would be allowed to remain in the Councillors’ room while Rak and he were with Griffin. He had not known until then that Kaulikans could cry. She had not believed he would return. She was a smart girl.

“
Do you know this General Griffin?
” Rak asked, sitting beside him in the ten-seater shuttle, looking remarkably calm.

“I know of him. He is occasionally interviewed on our news network. He is a cunning man. He has always impressed me as someone who was capable of doing anything to reach a set objective.”

“
Is he a truthful man?
”

“He won’t have any need to lie to you,” he answered with a trace of sarcasm.

Rak was regarding him curiously. “
You are blaming yourself for the destruction of the factory?
”

“I gave you bad advice.”

“
That has yet to be seen. One thing you have tried to do was give us something we desperately need. For that alone, I owe you a great thanks.
” Rak’s eyes strayed to the nova.

Since the time they had jumped outside the web it had begun to fade slightly, the shells of plasma cooling toward the lower end of the spectrum.

The two of them were of separate origins, together in the middle of nowhere, and yet, for a moment, they shared the same thought. Rak spoke it aloud. “
Soon it will burn less than it has in billions of years. Our grandchildren will have trouble finding it in the sky. I wish, if we are to be given this chance that you bring, that it could have been a year ago, or even a day before the nova. Then, at least, those left behind on Kashi could have known that we would be safe.
”

“The nova was what allowed me and my friends to sneak past The Patrol’s security screen, what we call The Tachyon Web.” Eric glanced toward the growing silver cluster of battle cruisers looming in the midnight like icy needles waiting to impale them. “When I think about it, I see that the web must have been built because of your people, to keep a stray trader from finding and helping your world.” Concern had driven him into his predicament, but also bitterness, and it was the latter that he tasted in his mouth. “I’m sorry I was late.”

Even with his words going through the translator, Rak was sensitive to his tone. “
Third Councillor Maga told you we are a peaceful people and this is true. But it was not always so. I have the sense that our race is much older than yours. We spent many of our early years, too many, fighting amongst ourselves. Sometimes I have thought that our sun, watching from its place in the sky, grew tired of our foolishness, of the many chances we did not take, and decided enough was enough. And then when we started to live as we should, when the light of our sun began to change and deepen our shadows, it was too late.
” He took Eric’s hand and pressed it between his. Like Vani’s, his touch was warm and soft. “
Son, you can help us without hating them.
”

Eric shook his head. “They saw the nova coming. They did nothing.”

“
Had we come together as a people sooner, we would have had time to develop ships as strong and fast as your Patrol’s. What we have suffered as a people, it was our own doing.
”

“I can’t see how that makes them any less guilty.”

Rak let go of his hand. “
We will be there soon. Is there anything you wish to tell me now, anything that I could do for you?
”

“Yes. Whatever is decided, when the time comes for you to return to the flagship, ask to speak into that room where we left Vani. Make sure that I am by your side.”

Eric saw no one during his first hour aboard the battle cruiser. Immediately upon being taken inside, the shuttle opened on both sides, and Rak and he were ordered by a young indifferent male voice to exit in opposite directions. At that point he tried to call Strem and Sammy, using his implant. He had spoken to them via the communicator just before leaving the flagship and had wanted to see them again, but Griffin was not one to be kept waiting.

Eric had told them of the vaporized factory ship, and Strem had sounded uncharacteristically upset at the news. Or maybe it had been the fact that Griffin had specifically demanded to see his best friend. Neither Strem nor Sammy had been able to offer any advice. And now, Eric was not surprised to find that his implant signal was being jammed.

The young indifferent male voice spoke again. “Remove all equipment from your person.” That was just the beginning. He was directed to a decontamination chamber where he had to strip naked and sit for ages in a chemical-smelling steam under a glaring purification beam that swelled his sinuses and made his entire body itch. If they were trying to cut him down to size before they stepped on him, they were doing an excellent job. It annoyed him even more that they were undoubtedly doing the same or worse to Rak.

The voice finally permitted him to leave the chamber. He was blow-dried in an adjoining room and he found a bland green shirt and pair of pants waiting on a hanger. Once dressed, two expressionless ensigns appeared, smartly attired in the standard black and orange-lined Patrol uniforms; the fleet emblem, a single descending white triangle dotted in the center with an orange star, was pinned to their left breasts. Neither had their pistols drawn but Eric received the distinct impression that they would whip them out if he so much as coughed. They marched him into a small elevator and then down a narrow hall. The air was clean but lifeless, and he longed for the fragrances of Vani’s garden.

They came to a stop outside a closed metal door. A button was pushed. A gruff voice responded. “Send him in and then get the Kaulikan.”

The door opened and Eric stepped forward into a personnel quarters that was sliced in half by a floor-to-ceiling black grill, a bed on one side, a desk fitted with a holographic globe on the other. The trimmings were sparse: a couple of plants, a shelf packed with old-fashioned
paper
books, a family portrait hanging on one wall. But there was a decoration of note – a large intricate wooden model of a sixteenth century naval vessel rested atop a cabinet. Eric knew his history; it was a representative of the Spanish Armada that bad weather and a swifter English Navy had crushed. He was surprised that Griffin would have a loser in his own room.

“Have a seat,” General Griffin said without looking at him. The Commander was shorter than he appeared on news programs, stockier, his heavy face hard and lined, sitting atop thick shoulders with nary an inch of neck showing. His thinning hair was cut short, silver bristles, and he was a far from handsome man. Most would have quietly thought him ugly. Yet he reminded Eric of Rak. Each had an innate aura of authority about him. Eric sat down and waited.

Griffin was sitting behind the desk, studying the personnel file of Eric T. Tirel as if the actual article were not present. His blunt fingers and flat black eyes sped through the early years, finally halting on what must have been a relevant note. Then Griffin looked at him, his expression impassive, impossible to read. “You applied to the academy and were rejected,” he said.

Eric kept his voice even. “Yes, sir.”

So much for his personal history. Griffin turned off the globe. He wasn’t going to tell him why he had been rejected.

“Have you zeroed out
Excalibur
’s computers?”

“No, sir.”

“Have you melted down its graviton drive?”

“No, sir.”

“Have you sabotaged its hyper drive?”

“No, sir.”

Griffin leaned forward, his uniform stiff and tight, clasping his stubby hands atop the desktop. He was not a young man, Eric thought, but he looked like he had the strength to throttle a teenage traitor. “You are saying in effect that the Kaulikans are in possession of a fully operational starship?”

“Yes, sir.”

Griffin took a breath, narrowed his gaze. “Why are you here, Tirel? We expected Strem Hark or Sammy Balan. Checking backwards, we have determined that it was originally their idea to penetrate the web.”

“None of my friends wanted to give
Excalibur
to the Kaulikans. It was entirely my idea.”

“Did they try to stop you?”

“Yes. But I was holding a gun.” He added, “I gave the Kaulikans the ship not because I was rejected by the academy, but because I wanted to help them.” Griffin was not impressed. Eric felt anger on top of his fear. “Don’t you want to help them, sir?”

A light blinked beside the globe. “Yes?” Griffin said.

“We have the First Councillor, sir,” an ensign outside the door said.

Griffin stood, “Send him in.”

Eric also stood. “I guess I’ll wait outside.”

“You’ll stay,” Griffin said, straightening his uniform.

Rak strode into the room, the door closing behind him. He presented his palm to the General and then to himself in the traditional Kaulikan greeting. To Eric’s surprise Griffin imitated the gesture perfectly, something that should have required practice. Then the General stepped forward and offered his hand. Rak shook it firmly, and it was true – the two were from different primordial seas, but they had something in common that went deeper than appearance or manner. They were both powerful individuals. Nevertheless, the comparison did not improve Eric's appreciation of Griffin. There were no two ways about it – the man was responsible for genocide.

Griffin activated a translator and offered Rak a chair. Eric took his seat without waiting for permission.

“This is a secure room,” Griffin began. “This conversation is not being overheard by anyone else aboard this ship, or by anyone in any of the other ships under my command. This conversation is not being taped. All that is said in this room, can stay in this room.” He paused. “First Councillor, I take it none of your people were killed or injured in the destruction of your automated ship?”

“
Nobody was physically hurt.
”

“Is it now clear to you that your fleet could not successfully engage in a battle with our fleet?”