Twilight Serenade, page 22
part #6 of Earth Song Series
“Damned fortress,” Aaron said under his breath.
“We hit the jackpot,” Minu said. “Can we go aboard?”
“I’d advise against it,” Lilith said. “We’d have to take the station out of power-down mode to bring atmosphere and gravitics online. Perhaps we should wait.”
“I’ll follow your lead on this,” Minu said. “Aaron, let’s get back to the fleet.” She changed to her comm. “Minu to salvage fleet.”
“Cherise here,” came the familiar voice. “You about done playing down there?”
“Been a long day,” Minu said. “We completed our survey of the planet. It’s simply amazing! An entire world set up to operate an arm’s span from one of the deadliest interstellar phenomena, and it’s teeming with life.”
“And, while you played, we’ve been busy up here,” Cherise joked. “Ready for the ghost fleet breakdown?”
“Please proceed,” Lilith said.
“We found twelve Fiisk in various states. The best is in better shape than the best one we currently have operating. It looks like it took a hit to its main computer. Our Kaatan CI is as excited as a computer can get.”
Aaron gave a low whistle.
“We found another five Ibeen, mostly in pretty bad shape. Bakook thinks we can put together two more, with some spare parts left over.”
“Good,” Minu said. She had her tablet out, and she was taking notes. “What else?”
“There are 60 more Eseel, and most are almost perfect. Don’t understand that one.”
“They may have been used to maneuver the ghost fleet to the rendezvous with the magnetar,” Lilith postulated.
Cherise continued, “There are also four more Kaatan. We were waiting for Lilith, but the CI thinks two, maybe three can be salvaged. One looks like it had its brains blown out. The CI says it could be a candidate to become an operation at Kaatan again. I think it’s getting tired of playing brains for the Fiisk.”
Lilith shrugged.
“The last you are going to have to see to believe.”
Lilith acknowledged a data transmission and brought it up on the cockpit’s holographic display. The object that floated past a nearly shattered Ibeen was longer, and it looked like no Lost ship Minu had ever seen.
Lost ships always consisted of balls and spears or variations thereof. This was reminiscent of that theme but in an offhand sort of way. It looked like five elongated cylinders, flattened and aligned on their long orientation, thin sides connected to form a pentagon. The center appeared to be hollow, and the size of the design was deceptive.
“How big is that?” Aaron wondered.
“Just under two kilometers long,” Lilith said, her eyes wide.
“Do you know what it is?” Minu asked.
“That is a Guul Dreadnought. There were only four built. They were the core of the People’s defenses. Do you know what condition it’s in?”
“The flyby we did with an Eseel revealed some damage, but nothing massive,” Cherise reported. “Frankly, none of us have any idea why it’s here.”
“How badass is that thing?” Minu asked her daughter.
“You remember the T’Chillen world killers?”
Minu nodded. Who could forget the sight of millions of Rasa being slaughtered from orbit?
“The Guul were an order of magnitude more powerful. And, yes, they could also devastate worlds.”
* * * * *
Chapter 28
June 22nd, 535 AE
Ghost Fleet #3, Aether System, Aether Nebula, The Frontier
Aether fundamentally changed the rules of the game. Minu had kept them moving as quickly as possible while they salvaged the ghost fleets in deep space. Their energy emissions were a beacon that would eventually draw attention. Lethal attention.
Aether changed that. There was no way anyone could notice them. Deep in the nebula, with the magnetar sending powerful waves of magnetic energy and gamma ray bursts, the ghost fleet was unnoticeable. Invisible. Utterly undetectable. The salvage fleet took a much-needed breather, slowing their pace and consolidating their prizes.
During the first week, everyone wanted to visited Midgard. Many found it strange and exotic. Its perpetual darkness and animals that lacked fear disturbed the Beezer. They retreated to the vastness of space and returned to work after a single visit.
In response to Minu’s calls, another Ibeen full of human and Beezer personnel arrived. She’d left with a few people several months earlier, and she had more than 1,000 beings in her fleet operations. Cherise was not only a huge help, she was essential.
Their stores were depleting rapidly, Minu sent Cherise planetside to investigate the vast caches of foodstuffs. She brought a Ranger medical technician and a pair of crystalline medical bots with her. She returned with tons of grain, tubers, and carefully frozen seafood, including fish and several varieties of exotic and delectable crustaceans.
“There are dozens of warehouses full of this stuff!” Cherise explained as they sampled the food.
“And it’s all edible?” Aaron asked, trying bread made from some of the grain.
“Except for a fungus and some kind of sea slug. And the medical database says the Rasa will eat those.”
“They are delicious,” Kal’at hissed around a mouth of fungus slug stew. “It will go wonderfully with the squidge we harvest on Romulus!”
By the end of the second week, the evaluation of the ships had been completed. It went much quicker than Minu hoped, as they encountered none of the booby-traps found on the second ghost fleet.
Their efforts yielded them two more Ibeen for a total of five, three more Fiisk for a total of six, and three operational Kaatan. The best news came when Lilith pronounced the Guul viable.
“As we thought from our initial examination, the dreadnought is substantially undamaged. It saw extensive combat during the retreat. I believe it was brought along to act as the main siege engine against the enemy’s home world, but it never reached its intended target.
“The Guul is designed for assault, not defense. It depends on squadrons of fighters and Eseel to keep enemies at bay. It would only enter a system once space superiority was assured. Its primary weaponry is energy based, and its defenses are missile based. Forced to retreat, the Guul expended its defensive missile magazines and became progressively vulnerable. Then it ran out of fuel.”
“All ships use EPCs for fuel,” Aaron pointed out. “Why didn’t they refuel it?”
“Because the Guul doesn’t use replaceable EPCs. It uses fusion power plants, 20 of them, four per section, to recharge massive banks of EPCs which, in turn, power the offensive armaments and propulsion. Those reactors operate on deuterium, and the Guul’s deuterium tanks are empty.”
“They mothballed it here,” Minu said, half to herself.
Lilith nodded in agreement. “That is my theory, yes. The People planned to come back and salvage these losses. Except for some of the debris fields, most of what we found was either salvageable or could be used to cobble together operational ships. The Guul would have been the center of a new fleet of ships.”
“Can we use it?” Minu asked.
“Like all the ships we’ve come across, except for the one Kaatan, it does not have a Combat Intelligence,” Lilith reminded her.
“I know, but besides that?”
“The Guul uses the same defensive missiles I do. We have adequate stores to give it a basic loadout. Kal’at assures me he almost has the fabrication plants on Kiile Alpha operational, at which point we could fabricate unlimited amounts of missiles. The combat damage is negligible. The only real problem is the deuterium.”
“Fusion reactors are used for limited purposes by some species,” Kal’at interjected. “It is often a tradeoff. Buying charged EPCs might be expensive, but so is deuterium. It is a matter of your sources and general resourcefulness.”
“So, we can purchase deuterium?” Cherise asked.
Kal’at nodded.
“Will it draw attention to us?”
“Perhaps some, but humans are a minor species, so it’s not as uncommon as you might think. However, there are not many reactors for sale. If you don’t purchase one, people might be curious why you are seeking fuel for one.”
Minu considered. “If we buy the fuel, maybe they’ll think we’re stockpiling it prior to buying the reactor.” Everyone agreed that was a possibility. “So, the ship is viable if we can get the fuel. As soon as the fabrication plants are up and running, let’s start feeding armament to the Guul.” Cherise made some notes.
Finally, as the week came to an end, they began moving the ships they were planning to activate into Midgard’s direct orbit, and they brought the firebase online.
The huge facility’s wide promenade of living and working quarters was filled with atmosphere and reconfigured to work for humans and Beezer. They opened the long-preserved stores, and, in less than a day, the firebase’s powerful gravitic systems maneuvered the ships into the docks, so work on them could begin.
“It isn’t a full shipyard,” Lilith said as she watched the firebase’s systems begin maintenance work on one of the already operational Ibeen, “but it’s a million times better than what we had.”
“Lilith, we need to make a run home.”
“We can request whatever you need from the next Ibeen run which is due in a week.”
“Not this time,” she said. “I need to go back. I’ve been gone far too long, and what I need to do will require my presence. Before you ask, I cannot explain right now. But I will, in time.”
“As you wish.”
“The problem with leaving is the time it will take to get out of the nebula and far enough away to use the tactical drive,” Minu said. “And every time we leave, we risk being spotted.”
“I have a solution to that problem,” Lilith said. “I’ve been slowly building hyper-accurate gravitational maps of the nebula since we arrived. It is unusual in many ways, not the least of which are the regularity and narrow angle of its gamma ray bursts. It turns out those weren’t the only unusual things about it. The star has an extremely high gravitational field. Since it is essentially a neutron star, that is not surprising. However, the proximity of Asgard to the orbit of Midgard is. It doesn’t make sense. Like the rest of the system, its orbit has been modified. I didn’t see that until I finished my gravitic system maps. There is a LaGrange liberation point between the star and Asgard.”
“Why is that significant?” Minu asked.
“Because such a gravitic eddy is essential within a system if you wish to employ the tactical drive.”
“You mean we can use the tactical drive in Aether?”
“At that one point, yes, but nowhere else within the nebula. It is truly astounding. I assumed it would be impossible, thus I never looked for such a place.”
Minu smiled as she considered the implications. The climb out of the nebula, limited to less than a few multiples of the speed of light, took weeks. Now they could disappear and reappear 100 light years away in the blink of an eye. Using the Kaatan, she could be back on Bellatrix in a of couple days!
“Good job, baby,” Minu said and touched her gently on the arm.
“Thank you, Mom. I am only sorry it took me this long to see the opportunity.”
Minu gestured dismissively. “Forget that. Get the senior staff together. I need to tell them what’s going on, so we can prepare to leave.”
* * * * *
Chapter 29
Julast 1st, 535 AE
Bellatrix Star System
Leaving was not easy for Minu. It wasn’t her style to delegate anything so important to someone else to complete. Since becoming Chosen, she’d done almost everything she could herself. It was her ideas, her planning, her implementation, and most importantly, her hard work.
Packing up and leaving the salvage operations in Kal’at’s hands, even as capable as those clawed hands were, went against every instinct.
“There is more than enough to keep your people, Bran’s team, and the Beezer completely occupied for the foreseeable future,” she’d told the scientist.
“We will take care of it,” Kal’at told her, nodding. Minu smiled. She’d come to respect the Rasa as much as she respected most humans and more than some. Kal’at’s brother, Var’at, was one of her best friends. Once her most bitter enemy, she now depended on him like few others.
“He is most capable,” Lilith said. “I have given him command authority of the Fiisk. It will follow his orders for security. I believe, however, now that we have a tactical drive location, there is no danger of this site being found.”
“Get this mess organized and get ready to start relocating materials,” Minu instructed Cherise, who said she would. “More importantly, be ready to hand this project off to your subordinates as soon as possible. My Commander of Logistics shouldn’t be out here ramrodding this herself.”
The Kaatan, with a dozen Eseel gunboats tucked in a meter from the hull, jumped with a hulking Ibeen, piloted remotely by Lilith, only meters behind it. Selain and his squad went with them. The further training of the Rangers was left to Captain Pape, who would also provide security.
“It’s a risky move,” Lilith admitted. “The area of effect only extends so far from the ship. If we’re off either way, we could collide or the Ibeen could be cut in half.”
Minu approved though; it was too important that trade continue. She planned to rendezvous with a pair of Beezer-crewed Ibeen on her return. Bringing two in would be even more difficult than taking one out. She decided to cross that bridge when she came to it.
They’d appeared almost a hundred light years outside of the nebula at the edge of a supermassive blue-white star. The interference behind them from the star made them nearly invisible. The Ibeen departed immediately through the star system, escorted by a pair of Eseel, while Lilith stayed and scanned the area with the ship’s sensors. The other ten Eseel floated motionless around the Kaatan like a glimmering neckless.
After a few minutes, Lilith spoke.
“I have found some neutrino traces in the vicinity,” she reported.
“Other ships?” Minu asked.
“Yes,” she confirmed. “Multiple ships at various times.” A display in the CIC illuminated showing crisscrossed paths all around the region.
“They’re looking for us,” Minu said.
“I agree,” Lilith said. “It’s a textbook search pattern, and it confirms your suspicion that they were following us. I was wrong about that.”
“Call it a mother’s intuition.”
Lilith looked at her for a long, measured moment. Minu nodded in further affirmation and Lilith’s expression became suspicious.
“Better walk away,” Aaron advised his daughter.
“I’m floating, walking would be impractical.”
They waited for several more hours, until the two escort Eseel returned. Lilith then brought them about and moved away at a relatively slow speed to avoid drawing attention. They took a vastly different course as they left the system, and a few hours later, they came to the next point where a tactical jump was possible.
It took a minute for Lilith to get the Eseel in position so they could jump.
“I might have to consider a modification to the hull if this becomes standard operating procedure,” she said after the discontinuity of the tactical jump. “The battle riders make more sense to me now.”
“Later?” Minu suggested. “We have things to do.”
The rest of the trip home went quickly. Minu used the quantum communicator to make some arrangements while they traveled. By and large, they averaged a day between jump points, but sometimes only hours. Mindy didn’t seem bothered by the tactical jumps. She slept most of the time, and the one time she was awake, she looked around in confusion, then went back to nursing.
And then the sun of her birth shone in the CIC’s simulated windows. It was the morning of Julast 1st, and Minu realized how much she’d missed her home.
“Has it only been five months?” she wondered.
“Almost to the day,” Lilith confirmed.
“It’s been a lot longer for me,” Aaron said. “The closest I’ve been was almost a year ago when I was taken by the Tanam on Coorson.”
“There will be a reckoning for that,” Minu said, more to herself than to anyone else.
It only took them a few minutes to get from the arrival point to Bellatrix. As they approached lunar orbit, Lilith dispatched all but two of her escorting Eseel. They moved out to just beyond Remus’s orbit where they would act as a defensive perimeter for the world from then on. Ten unsleeping guardians ready to fight to the death.
They swept past the tiny dark moon of Remus and into orbit with Lilith’s usual cool precision. As they slowed, they got a wonderful look at the fist Highguard station, now well under construction.
“That’s really coming along,” Aaron marveled.
“It was only an idea when you left,” Lilith said as she viewed the construction. They were building the station according to standard Concordian designs the Chosen had observed for over a century, concentric rings around a central hub, spun for artificial gravity.
“How many are we going to build?” Aaron asked.
“Phase One includes three, arranged at equilateral points in geosynchronous orbits. Phase Two, if we get there, will include two more in polar orbits and three more between the initial three. None will be as big as the first three, though. They will be working stations for freight transfer and ship maintenance. The other five will be defensive,” said Minu.
“Orbital forts to go with the groundside ones,” Aaron remarked and nodded in appreciation. “My wife doesn’t think small.”
“With the Phoenix shuttles, it’s actually pretty cheap. And we’ve had crews doing a lot of the work manually. It’s our version of Earth’s Civil Air Patrol. They’re being trained to work on starships and don’t even know it.”
