Cradle of War (A Captain's Crucible Book 3) (5 page)

J
onathan looked at his tactical officer. “And what are your thoughts, Miko?”

“If we give up their eggs,” Miko said. “We give up the only thing preventing them from firing on us. Like you said, we don’t know the range of their weapon systems. They could fire the moment we release the cargo.”

“Maxwell?” he asked the AI.

“I would recommend a compromise,” Maxwell replied. “Tell them we will give them what they want, but first they must return to the immediate vicinity of the Slipstream. Only then will we dispatch a craft containing their eggs.”

Jonathan tapped his chin.

“So?” Robert asked.

“I’m going to go with Maxwell’s suggestion,” the captain said. “It seems the best option. Assuming the Elder go for it.” He unmuted the line. “Barrick, have the Raakarr tell the Elder we agree in principal, but we will launch the craft only when they’ve returned to the immediate vicinity of the Slipstream. Surely they’ll excuse us for not trusting them entirely.”

“I will inform Valor,” Barrick replied.

“Also,” Jonathan continued. “It seems obvious the Elder altered the properties of the farther Slipstream to allow the other Raakarr to return to Vega 951, otherwise why else would the enemy fleet be traveling toward the wormhole at maximum speed? We need assurances the Elder will keep the Slipstream pointing to Vega 951 so that we too can return to our own space. And also, I want to know why they brought us here in the first place. Since it seems fairly obvious that it was them, or another member of their kind.”

Barrick’s reply came a moment later. “Valor is fine with sending everything you’ve said. The Zarafe are formulating the transmission as we speak.”

A moment later Ensign McNamara announced: “I’m detecting a gamma ray communications burst from the
Talon
. It’s directed toward the Elder vessel.”

Jonathan nodded absently, then muted the connection to Barrick.

“I wonder if the Raakarr will transmit our terms without making changes,” Robert said. “And I thought trusting the telepath to translate between the two of us was a big leap of faith. Now we have to trust Barrick
and
the Raakarr.”

Jonathan smiled bleakly. “Let’s hope the two of them don’t bring new meaning to the phrase,
lost in the translation.
”

It took the gamma ray signal six and a half seconds to traverse the two million kilometer distance to the Elder vessel. The signal remained active for approximately eight seconds, until the
Talon
ceased sending it.

Several minutes passed. Jonathan thrummed his fingers impatiently on the armrest.

“They’re sure taking their damn time,” the captain commented to Robert.

“For good reason, I’m sure,” the commander responded sarcastically.

“Indeed,” Jonathan said. “They want to make us squirm. I’ll be sure to return the favor.”

“The simple explanation could be that the Elder are having difficulties translating it,” Maxwell commented.

Finally Ensign McNamara announced that the Elder ship was dispatching a gamma ray transmission.

“By the way, Ensign,” Jonathan said. “Does the CDC have any guesses where that ray is sourced from, yet? You said there are no obvious turrets or weapon mounts on the hull...”

“Well,” McNamara said. “One of the specialists has done some digging into the archives, studying data collected from the ruins of crashed Elder vessels humankind has found in its space. Along the outer portion of the Möbius strip, near the bottom, are several small openings. They run along the entire lower rim. While those openings were empty in the ruins we encountered, the specialist is guessing they housed beam emitters at one point. That lines up with where the beam is emanating from the current vessel.”

“I see.” Jonathan leaned back. “Any idea why we never found any actual emitters in the ruins?”

“The current theory is that most of the Elder technology liquified upon crashing,” the ops officer answered. “Similar to how the insides of the captured Raakarr fighters turned to gel when broken open.”

Jonathan glanced at Robert.

“It would certainly be a good anti-theft measure,” the commander said. “Just as good as rigging our own tech with explosives, anyway. If not better.”

Barrick’s voice came over the comm, ending their discussion on the alien weapon systems.

“The Elder have agreed to your conditions,” Barrick said. “They will return to the Slipstream, and allow you to remain in your current orbit above the gas giant. When they reach the wormhole, the Elder will wait there while you dispatch their offspring in a shuttle whose climate and atmosphere have been tuned to match the surface of the greenhouse planet where you found them.”

All of that was doable, of course, especially considering the embryos were already stowed within containers that matched the planet’s atmosphere and temperature profile.

Jonathan unmuted the line and asked: “What about our second request? Will they keep the outermost Slipstream pointing to Vega 951? And were they the ones who brought us here or not?”

“The Elder have admitted to bringing us here,” Barrick said over the comm. “They made the modification to the Vega 951 Slipstreams a little over six months ago, after we detonated the planet killer there.”

“It was the first detonation of a planet killer ever,” Jonathan mused.

“Yes,” Barrick responded. “It seems the Elder can use Slipstreams as telescopes of sorts to peer into star systems—it allows them to keep tabs on the various systems under their dominion. They haven’t been paying us much attention over the last few millennia, but the detonation of that planet killer really caught their attention. Apparently the powerful gravity waves from the detonation propagated through the network of Slipstreams, eventually reaching them here in this galaxy. They immediately turned their eyes on our space and were able to determine that we, the humans, possessed more of those planet killers.

“They altered the Vega 951 Slipstreams to lead here and waited patiently for those who had apparently detonated the bomb—us. When the Raakarr vessel arrived, the Elder remained in hiding. When we did not arrive after four months, the Elder craft departed, called away to deal with another matter. But when we interfered with the offspring on the planet, they returned as fast as they could.”

“Why would they abandon their offspring in the first place?” Jonathan asked.

“That wasn’t clear,” Barrick said. “Maybe they thought the guard contingent they had left in place was sufficient to watch over them. Or maybe they did it as a sort of test, to see if we would try to take them, I don’t know.”

Jonathan took a sip of the strong coffee the robot assistant deposited at his station. “So they brought us here because we detonated a planet killer in Vega 951.”

“Yes,” Barrick said. “Apparently they want to issue a stern warning regarding those planet killers.”

Jonathan frowned. “They’ve been gone half a million years, and yet they still think of themselves as custodians of our galaxy?”

“You forget, they weren’t entirely gone,” Barrick responded. “I don’t know their entire history, but some of them stayed behind, eventually evolving into the Raakarr.”

“Those who stayed behind were the more progressive types, I’m guessing, judging from the Raakarr ship design,” Jonathan said.

“Yes,” Barrick responded. “And that progression extends outside of ship design. Off the record, I have reason to believe the Raakarr employ some sort of accelerant to increase mutation rates. They’re trying to evolve into what they believe is a higher species—the species they were meant to be. It’s part of their religion, I think, and the two major factions in the Raakarr follow different variations of that religion, and hate each other for it. In any case, because of those accelerants, I suspect at this point they look nothing like they’re Elder ancestors.”

“We’re digressing a bit,” Jonathan said. “You said the Elder have a warning to give us. And you still haven’t told me if they’ll agree to leave the farthermost Slipstream pointing to Vega 951.”

“The warning...” Barrick replied. “The Elder have been watching us since we took their offspring, and they saw us battle the Raakarr. Originally they only intended to give the warning to us, but after seeing the two of us war, they’ve decided to warn both of our races.”

Jonathan felt his patience growing thin. “And the warning is...?”

“Only, be careful.”

Jonathan frowned. “Be careful...”

“Yes,” Barrick replied. “They are going to be watching us in the coming months and years, to determine if we’re worthy of wielding the power of the planet killer. You see, the Elder nearly destroyed themselves when they discovered a similar weapon five hundred thousand years ago.”

Jonathan glanced at Robert uncertainly. “And by what criteria will they determine our worthiness?”

“They haven’t said. Only that they will be watching us as part of some grand test. And to answer your last question: yes, they’ve promised to change the endpoints of both Slipstreams to point to Vega 951 so that we can return to our own galaxy.”

Jonathan had to suppress a laugh. “This is ridiculous. What kind of warning is that? They’re going to be watching us... are you sure there was nothing more specific?”

“No,” Barrick said. “Only that we must use the power of the planet killer wisely.”

Jonathan finally chuckled aloud. “And if we prove ourselves unworthy and fail this so-called test? A test whose metrics of examination we know nothing about?”

“The punishment for failure was not mentioned,” Barrick responded.

“Well get Valor to ask them for clarification,” Jonathan ordered brusquely.

Barrick gave the response two minutes later. “If we fail the test, they promise to knock one or both of our races back to the dark ages, if they don’t obliterate the two of us entirely.”

“Nice guys,” Robert said. “Promising to obliterate their own descendants...”

Jonathan nodded distractedly. He thought of the vision he had seen and wondered if the Elder had somehow used their offspring to send that warning directly to him. Because that was what it had to be... a warning only, not a guarantee of things that would come to pass.

He glanced at the 3D display.

“One thing,” Jonathan said. “I’m looking at my tactical display, and it’s obvious the Raakarr fleet is going to exit the system before us. Ask the Elder what they’re going to do to ensure the Raakarr don’t ambush us when we pass through to Vega 951.”

“You mean the Elk faction?” Barrick asked.

“Yes yes,” Jonathan said. “The Elk faction.” He didn’t really approve of any of the names Barrick had come up with for the aliens and their factions, but Jonathan supposed humanity needed to call them
something
.

The prerequisite exchange of gamma rays occurred before Barrick replied.

“The Elder claim they have given the Elk faction the same general warning as us,” the telepath said. “That they are watching them, and if the Elk do anything the Elder deem ‘unworthy’ over the next few months or years, the Elder will return to wipe them out. Obviously that worthiness is open to interpretation, but according to the Elder, for the short term the Elk faction have promised to leave the wormhole open to us.”

“So all we have to go on is a promise,” Jonathan said.

Another gamma ray arrived from the vessel, and Barrick spoke again.

“The Elder want confirmation that you understand and agree to all of this,” the telepath said.

“Yes yes, we understand,” Jonathan said. “And I suppose we don’t have any choice.” At that point he would have agreed to almost anything to get his fleet home; he felt a mixture of both triumph and suspicion for having gotten off so relatively lightly. Still, the promise of destruction if humanity ever proved itself “unworthy” was more than a little unnerving. “Have Valor tell them we will launch the shuttle as soon as the Elder ship returns to the Slipstream.”

The
Talon
dispatched the gamma ray response. The communication arrived six and a half seconds later, and a minute later the Elder ship began moving away.

Watching it retreat on his tactical display, Jonathan slumped. He was suddenly very weary.

“Why do I feel like I’ve just run a marathon?” the captain said.

“Probably because you have,” Robert said. “Mentally, anyway. We all have.”

“I’ll be in my office,” Jonathan told him.
Lying down.

J
onathan awakened, expecting to be greeted by the tight confines of his quarters, but instead finding himself in his office. He knew because of the steel desk that greeted his vision, rather than the nightstand. Other than the desk, and the couch, the two compartments were basically the same.

He sat up and rubbed his eyes. He only intended to nap a few minutes, but from the groggy way he felt, he knew he had been out for hours.

Forgot to set the alarm again.

He stared at the bulkhead beside him. The metal was bereft of any decorations or windows, and so close as to be claustrophobic. His gaze drifted to the steel desk; the only item on it, personal or otherwise, was an uncleaned tea cup. Behind the desk was a safe that contained a centuries-old bottle of Scotch, among other things. Atop the strongbox was a high speed convection kettle and a tin of green tea. Other than the couch and two chairs, there was nothing else in the cabin.

He shook his head slightly. It never ceased to amaze him how bare the compartment seemed when viewed without an aReal. Even the colors seemed muted.

He grabbed the spectacles from where they rested on the desk and slid them on. Immediately the hues became warmer as the lenses applied a chromatic filter to his vision. A virtual bookshelf had appeared, along with a sword-wielding Caravaggio on the far bulkhead. These were virtual adornments created by his aReal, existing solely within the cloud computing resources of the
Callaway
. These adornments would be shared with the aReals of any other person who visited the office so that they, too, would live the illusion.

In big cities on Earth or colony worlds, most of the streets were so cluttered with virtual overlays that Jonathan often had to turn off sharing, or at least selectively limit it—all of those embellishments interfered with his concentration. So many overlays turned reality into a video game of sorts. An unwelcome one at that, where every shop was trying to compete for his attention by constantly offering sales and points. Pop-ups and jump scares were banned on most worlds, but even so people still died due to improperly placed overlays, walking into traffic or off cliffs because a virtual augmentation obscured their vision. 

Starships were a nice break from all that clutter, though occasionally Jonathan still encountered crew members who littered their offices with virtual adornments to the point of distraction—something that was quickly remedied with a few choice words from the captain.

Overhead, the HLED lights flickered on and off faster than his eyes could detect: that flickering transmitted data to and from his aReal at terabit per second speeds, facilitating the shared virtual overlays as well as keeping him connected to his crew and the captains who served underneath him.

He stared at the false portal his aReal had created on the far wall. It currently displayed the feed from an external camera on the starboard side. The gas giant resided in the distance below and to the left, while a thumb-sized moon floated in the upper right, almost out of frame.

“Maxwell, status on the Elder vessel?” Jonathan asked.

“The Elder vessel is approximately four hours away from the Slipstream,” the AI returned.

“Four hours? I was out for eight, then.”

“You were,” Maxwell agreed.

He glanced at the tactical display overlaying his vision. Jonathan had ordered the
Callaway
,
Salvador
, and
Talon
to assume a high orbit around the gas giant. Jonathan had instructed the rest of the fleet to remain hidden behind the moon for the moment, in case he needed to fall back on his previous strategy. Several moons orbited that giant, and as far as the Elder were concerned, the remaining ships might be behind any one of them.

He supposed it was possible the Elder had deployed the equivalent of scouting drones throughout the system already, allowing them to see behind most of the planetary satellites. The moon in question was out of sight of both Slipstreams at the moment, however, so at least Jonathan didn’t have to worry about the Elder discovering the hidden task unit from that avenue.  

“Do you believe the Elder are traveling at their full speed toward the Slipstream?” Maxwell asked, rousing him from his thoughts.

“Doubt it,” Jonathan said. “Just like us, they’d want to hide the full extent of their abilities as long as possible.”

“Why would they transport us all this way, simply to issue a vague warning?” Maxwell said.

“I don’t know,” Jonathan said. “Maybe they wanted to see what humankind had evolved into. Humankind, the creators of planet killers.”

“It doesn’t seem like that great of an achievement,” Maxwell said.

“Why not?” Jonathan said. “The ability to destroy an entire planet-sized object seems like a big deal, to me.”

“Not in the cosmic scheme of things,” the AI responded. “The death of a planet is a small thing.”

“Even a planet with a population of over fifty billion?” Jonathan said.

“Well yes,” Maxwell replied. “If it is a key planet, then obviously it is a problem, and the affected governments would take many decades, even centuries, to rebound. But a remote colony world? While it would mean the loss of tens of trillions of dollars in terraforming costs, and one hundred thousand to a million lives, it is not something the overarching government could not recover from.”

“Well, I disagree of course,” Jonathan said. “Once one planet killer is used, even on a remote colony world, the doors open for more usage of the bomb. Soon its application becomes routine. When does it stop? When finally we destroy one of those key planets you mentioned? Perhaps Earth itself? We almost destroyed a star in our original mission, if you’ll recall. What a disaster that would have been. We’d be facing a war on two fronts, one against the Raakarr, and another the Sino-Koreans.”

“But we will eventually sign a peace treaty with one of the Raakarr factions,” Maxwell argued.

“So what?” Jonathan said. “That doesn’t change the fact that the rest of the Raakarr are still against us. When that enemy fleet gets home, their government isn’t going to be too happy when it discovers we’ve shot down more than thirty of their ships. Even though we
were
acting in self defense.”

“Perhaps they’ll realize they are outclassed, if not outmatched, and they will proceed to engage in a peace treaty.”

Jonathan chuckled softly. “I hope you’re right, Maxwell. But I somehow doubt it will be as easy as that. Since when did you start wearing rose-colored glasses, anyway?”

“A peace treaty would seem the logical solution at the moment,” Maxwell pressed. “At least from the alien point of view.”

Jonathan sighed. “When dealing with alien ways of life, logic often doesn’t factor into the equation. Besides, you’re forgetting the human point of view, which is equally irrational. Our government won’t be too pleased when they learn of the attacks, which are, all things considered, acts of war. The president will consult his military advisors. Most will urge caution and restraint I’m sure, but there are always a few hotheads among the bunch who will sue for all out war. And it wouldn’t surprise me if the president agreed with them, regardless of any overtures of peace from the Raakarr.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me, either,” Maxwell said.

F
OUR HOURS LATER the Elder ship reached the Slipstream.

“I’m picking up a gamma ray transmission from their ship,” the fifth watch ops officer reported.

A minute later the comm officer tapped in Barrick.

“They’re waiting for us to dispatch the shuttle,” the telepath announced.

“Ops, launch the Dragonfly,” the captain ordered.

After the unmanned craft departed, Jonathan retired to his quarters. It would be a few days before the Dragonfly was scheduled to arrive.

The next day the CDC reported that the enemy Raakarr fleet had passed through the far Slipstream. All six ships had left the binary star system.

While no longer a threat for the moment, Jonathan wasn’t entirely thrilled at their departure: he would have preferred to leave the system first. Because despite the reassurances from the Elder, the enemy Raakarr might decide to forgo their promise and camp out on the other side to ambush them. Or perhaps the Raakarr fleet would heavily mine the endpoint. He could easily determine if either was the case by sending probes through after the Builder finished creating the return Gate, but the knowledge wouldn’t help his fleet very much. The task group would be trapped either way.

Jonathan made sure he was on the bridge when the shuttle was due to arrive. He watched the blue dot halt next to the red that represented the Möbius strip of the Elder vessel.

The blue dot abruptly vanished, leaving only the red.

“Well, we just lost a perfectly good shuttle,” Jonathan said.

The commander shifted beside him. “You should have told them to leave it behind.”

“I don’t think they would have, either way,” the captain replied. “Would you, if you were them?”

“Probably not,” Robert admitted.

“Now we see if they live up to their end of the bargain,” Jonathan said.

Several tense moments passed.

“This is odd,” Ensign Lewis said from the ops station.

“What is it?” Jonathan asked.

“Well, it’s so subtle that our sensors almost didn’t pick it up, but... well, it looks like we’re being bombarded with gravity waves.”

“Gravity waves?” Jonathan said.

“Yes,” Lewis replied. “Sourced from the Elder ship. And now I’m picking up a focused gamma ray. It seems destined for the
Talon
.”

When the beam finally reached the aforementioned vessel, Barrick tapped in, voice-only.

“Captain Dallas,” Barrick said. “The Elder wish to know where the fourth suit is.”

Jonathan had left that suit aboard the
Dagger
of course, which was still hidden behind the moon of the gas giant with the
Marley
,
Grimm
and
Aurelia
.

He swallowed nervously, unsure if he would get away with what he planned.

Well, I’ve come this far...