Crossroads of Fate (Cadicle #5): An Epic Space Opera Series (17 page)

“Elise…”
It’s not difficult to read between the lines.

“I know what you’re going to say,” she continued, “I’m doing my part and all that. But, we should be out there helping!”

“I know,” Michael started to write, but a string of messages from Elise streamed in before he could finish.

“I don’t even think they want to keep Headquarters functioning. Students are at about half course-load, since there are so few instructors. We can’t do any proper training. And, with so few of us here, they don’t even serve dessert anymore! What I wouldn’t do for a cookie…”

“Actually,” Michael finally managed to interject, “I was just going to say that I miss being with my friends, too. And you’re one of my friends now.”

The statement must have caught Elise off-guard, because it took several seconds for her to respond. “Sorry. It’s silly of me to complain about anything, compared to what you must be going through out there.”

Michael smirked. “No, it’s kind of refreshing to hear about a travesty like a cookie shortage, for a change.”

“Admittedly, that has made for a pretty bleak scene. People waiting in the buffet line for a dessert tray that will never come…”

He laughed. “The poor Trainees! They must be so lost and confused.”

“I can see it in their eyes. The devastation… No words can possibly describe it.”

They jested back and forth about life for a while longer before a wave of tiredness finally overtook Michael. He suppressed a yawn. “Hey, I should really get to sleep. I need to be back on duty in six hours.”

“Of course. Sorry to have kept you up!”

Michael smiled. “I’m happy we had the chance to chat properly.”

“Me too. I hope you’re able to come home soon.”

“And have a proper face-to-face conversation,” Michael ventured.

“I’d like that,” Elise’s responded, to his relief. “Good night—and take care.”

“I will. Good night.”

To have Elise seek his company was a foreign feeling, but he was grateful to, for once, have someone looking out for him. Her small bit of support from afar moved him more deeply than he anticipated; in all his years with the TSS, no one else had ever made such a gesture. As he drifted off to untroubled sleep, he took comfort knowing that Elise was thinking about him, too.   

*       *       *

All the skirmishes were starting to feel like the same, never-ending battle. Wil held in a yawn as he finished his review of the morning report about fleet positions.

TSS forces were advancing toward the Bakzen Defense Barrier at a steady pace, and all but three of the known Bakzen supply lines had been cut off from the Bakzen’s main planetary base. They were getting close, but victory wasn’t assured. They needed to stay focused.

“What’s on the agenda for today?” Ethan asked, pulling Wil from his thoughts.

“Another border post assault,” he replied. He set aside the report, seeing that his officers were already done with their own reviews.

“Thrilling,” Saera commented from her station with thick sarcasm.

“Oh, so Saera,” Michael began, “I got a message last night from—”

The alarm sounded a single shrill chime.

Wil jumped to attention. “Report!”

“We lost our connection to the SiNavTech network,” Rianne replied. “Signal corruption, no apparent cause. I’m trying to reestablish—”

“Wait,” Wil cut in. “The system is programmed to disconnect automatically if there’s an anomaly. Stay disconnected and run a network diagnostic.”

“I’m on it,” Saera confirmed.

Preliminary results from the scan appeared on the front of the viewscreen overlaid on the surrounding starscape. Red error indicators flagged at least a quarter of the beacons.

Shite, what’s going on?
Wil frowned. “Overlay the errors on the network map.”

Saera complied. A moment later, the viewscreen morphed into a map of the SiNavTech network for the surrounding sector. The errors were localized around Bakzen territory, but some beacons connecting to distant colony worlds along major transportation routes were also registering errors.

“Fok! Tell the entire fleet to disconnect from the network,” Wil ordered.

“Yes, sir,” Rianne confirmed while the others glanced at Wil with sudden alarm.

“Whatever the error, it looks like it’s spreading like a virus,” he continued. “Notice the distribution pattern—it’s along the routes that have registered a beacon ping in transit.”

“What’s it doing?” Ethan asked.

Wil shook his head. “Saera, any thoughts?”

She looked up from her analysis at the front console. “I can’t be certain, but I think it’s rewriting the beacon lock protocol, preventing any ship from being able to get a fix. There’s some kind of cipher running in the background.”

“Can’t get a lock unless you know the secret password,” Wil muttered.

“Fok, the Bakzen hijacked our nav network!” Ian exclaimed.

“That’s my best guess right now,” Saera confirmed, her face drawn.
“That was the flaw in our workaround for the independent jump drive. The fleet can’t coordinate without the beacon network,”
she added telepathically.

“I should have anticipated this contingency.”
Wil rubbed his eyes. As he pulled his hands away, he noticed that everyone was looking at him, awaiting his orders.
What can we do? Half the fleet already can’t move without risking getting trapped in subspace. We need to act before the whole network is down.
“Do we have any ships currently engaged in combat?”

“Two cruisers and their complement are assisting defense of a border post,” Michael replied.

“How strategic is the position?” Wil asked.

His friend frowned, anticipating where he was going. “It’s a significant supply cache. And, Connor is with them.”

An unacceptable loss.
“All right. Saera, calculate a manual jump. We’ll give them backup. Tell everyone to stay put and keep a low profile until we figure out a solution.” His officers telepathically relayed the messages to their contacts throughout the fleet.

“I have the coordinates,” Saera stated after a minute. “Do you want to check—”

“No time.” Wil grabbed the podium and telepathically reached out to the ship. The jump drive charged in response to his unspoken command.

A blue-green cloud overtook the Conquest as the ship slipped into subspace. Wil bolstered his connection with the ship, ready to draw it back into subspace if they emerged in the wrong place. The vibrations softened as the ship arrived at the destination. Objects began to take shape on the viewscreen through the cloud. He spotted the asteroid well out of harm’s way, but one of the cruisers was directly in their path.

Wil extended himself in an instant, enveloping the ship in a subspace bubble to prevent it from materializing inside the other ship. At the edge of his consciousness, curses sounded around the Command Center as the others realized what had happened. He felt his officers coming to his aid. Together, they sustained the subspace bubble as they drew the Conquest away from the ships around the asteroid. Once clear, they released the ship into normal space and took in their surroundings.

The two TSS cruisers formed an inverted V around the outpost on the asteroid, which was protected by a shield. Jets deployed from the cruisers were engaged with three squadrons of Bakzen jets, along with a heavily armored warship and four battlecruisers.

“Shite!” Ethan breathed.

They were completely out-gunned any way Wil looked at it. Further, without witnessing the preceding action, he was blind to the Bakzen’s strategy and behavior patterns for the battle. Brute force was the only option.

“Let’s take them out!” Wil declared.

He gripped the podium and established his link with the ship. His officers followed his lead.
“Time to see what kind of damage the telekinetic amplifier can do. This’ll be our one chance to catch them by surprise with it,”
he told them.

“Ready,”
they confirmed in unison.

Together, they channeled telekinetic energy through the relays within the ship. The podiums hummed and warmed to the touch as the ship charged. A buzz filled the air until the ship could hold no more. They released the charge—aimed directly for the warship.

A beam of white light shot from the bow of the Conquest, striking the warship almost instantaneously. The target was enveloped by the white light, each feature of its hull standing out against the blackness of the starscape. For a moment, it shone brighter. Wil squinted against the light replicated on the viewscreen, noticing that the TSS jets had fallen back toward the TSS cruisers. Then, the Bakzen warship disintegrated in a spectacular flash, as though each molecule vaporized from the center outward. A shockwave radiated from the destroyed vessel, hurtling the two Bakzen cruisers closest to the warship and their jets to the side.

The TSS jets darted behind their cruisers just in time to avoid the wave of debris as it collided with the shields protecting the TSS cruisers.

“Don’t give them time to regroup! Finish them off,” Wil ordered.

He sensed Ian connect directly with the Conquest and target the ship’s weapons on the stunned enemy cruisers. The Bakzen ships’ shields were disabled in the blast, and the Conquest’s rail guns sent fatal shots cleanly through their hulls. The TSS jets reemerged from behind their cruisers and opened fire on the Bakzen jets drifting through the scraps of the former warship.

Though the TSS fleet made quick work of the two cruisers that had been next to the warship, the two remaining cruisers were relatively unscathed.

“Again!”
Wil commanded. He poured energy into the Conquest, charging the telekinetic relays. The air hummed with the stored force waiting to be released.

His officers joined him in the charge—filling the ship near capacity.

“Divide,”
he instructed.

Two beams shot from the ship, one heading for each of the Bakzen cruisers. Both ships disintegrated on impact, releasing a burst of white light.

Wil let go of his handhold, his breath labored and heart racing. Next to him, his officers let go of their own podiums, looking equally fatigued.

“I don’t think we’ll be able to do that too often,” Wil said as his heart rate settled.

“No joke,” Ethan replied. “But talk about effective!”

Michael surveyed the destruction on the viewscreen. “I never thought I’d see anything like it.”

Saera studied Wil from her position at the front console.
“Are you okay?”
she asked telepathically.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. Just a little more exertion than I’m used to at once,”
he assured her.

“Incoming communication from the Victory,” Rianne announced as a chirp echoed through the Command Center.

Wil turned his attention to the viewscreen. “Accept.”

A holographic image of a middle-aged Agent appeared on the screen. Her face was tense below the tight bun of blonde hair on top of her head. “I’m Agent Drenda, in command of the Victory,” she said.

Next to her, Connor sat in the First Officer’s chair. “Thanks for stopping by! That telekinetic amplifier is really something.”

“Yes, it is,” Wil replied. “Captain, is your ship damaged?”

“No, nothing more than cosmetic. You showed up just in time. All the jump drives in our unit were acting up.”

“Unfortunately, the issue is network-wide,” Wil told her. “Everyone is to hold their current location until we can identify the cause of the issue.”

“I got the order after we were already engaged,” Conner said. “Is it something the Bakzen did?”

“Most likely,” replied Wil. “We’ll stay here with you, for now. I don’t want to make any unnecessary manual jumps.”

Agent Drenda nodded. “Happy to have your company, sir. Let us know if you need anything.”

“Thank you.” Wil ended the transmission. “All right. Any other distress calls, Michael?”

“We’re good for now. I’ve been able to account for the entire fleet. We were really lucky.”

“Good thing we programmed in those failsafes.” Wil exhaled with relief. “Okay, now let’s figure out what’s going on.”

Saera pulled up the network map again. “Your initial assessment of a virus seems pretty spot-on. The origin was this beacon near the Defense Barrier, as far as I can tell,” she said, highlighting the beacon in question. “It’s targeting the nav computers in the TSS fleet and seems to transmit from ship to ship as soon as a course is locked in.”

“So the more jumps, the faster the whole network will go down,” Wil realized. “What about civilian transit?”

“For now, it appears to be limited to the TSS fleet. It was calibrated to our long-range jump systems. I can’t say whether or not it could spread.”

“Bomax.” Wil groaned.
If the civilian network goes now, we’re foked.
“Ideas? I’m open to anything.”

“System reset?” Saera offered.

“Won’t do any good if the underlying code is corrupted,” Wil replied. “The backups are located at specific hubs rather than in each individual unit; the resets are designed to just reboot the beacons.”