Exploration (24 page)

"Roll us as we go through. Keep the shields balanced."

"Roger that, rolling now."

"Sir," Commander James yelled. "The
Intrepid
is in position. The
Yorktown
was delayed by a
Dreadnaught
that wanted to play tag. The Admiral has dealt with it and is on its way."

"Give me an ETA."

"Thirty seconds," James yelled back.

"Mr. Martinescu...I need you to get me thirty seconds. Can do?"

"Can do, Sir. Our SJ flash-bang is ready as soon as the
Yorktown
is in position."

"Very good. Everybody stay sharp. Timing is going to be critical."

No sooner were the words out of his mouth then the ship bucked wildly. An anti-proton beam had finally breached their shields. The lights flickered as emergency bypass circuits immediately rerouted severed power conduits.

Commander James slapped the comm button on his console. "This is the First Officer, medical and damage control teams report to astrometrics, ASAP!"

Jason nodded his thanks as he continued to scan the tactical display. He knew people had probably been hurt but there was nothing he could do at the moment to help. His first priority was taking out those two lead ships. Ricky Valen and his AI, Honey, had identified them as the managing directors of this battle group. Other teams were actively pursuing the leaders of the other battle groups. Modos corporate policy required a CEO level appointment for battle group leaders. That meant a minimum twenty-two hour delay should the GCP be successful in neutralizing the current leaders. The fact that the two
Dreadnaughts
were operating in close support of each other was both a curse and a blessing. They were harder to defeat but once one was defeated the other was immediately vulnerable.

"The
Yorktown
reports she is in position," Lieutenant Zimmerman reported from communications.

Jason signaled the
Mador's
AI to synchronize with the other ships.

"On my mark, engage the SJ...three, two, one...MARK!"

Commander Martinescu pressed the detonation button on his console. Immediately a series of closely synchronized events occurred.   The active shielding on all three GCP starships extended and briefly overlapped. The shields were tuned to reverse momentum. In addition, secondary cloaking shields nearer the individual ships were energized. These shields were designed to route radiant energy around a vessel to hide it. This had a second advantage in that it rendered weapons like Lasers and the radiant component of SJ rounds ineffective.  

At the same time, a cloaked SJ round opened a hyperfold conduit to a space just outside the galactic core. Like all supermassive black holes the rotational axis were points where matter streams were ejected at near relativistic velocities.   The hyperfold conduit opened near one of the streams. The energetic backwash through the conduit enviably destroyed the probe; thus the name "Suicide Jumper," or SJ. Anything near the original entry point to the hyperfold conduit would be bathed in massive amounts of radiation and proto-plasma. The first time such a weapon had been used by the GCP against the D'lralu, Pluto and it's moons had nearly been destroyed. The beam lasted for mere milliseconds but that was typically enough.

The SJ round opened the conduit and immediately a massive wash of energetic subatomic particles and radiation flooded out of the hyperfold. The wash struck the shields of the two Modos
Dreadnaughts
.  The shields crumpled, but before the ships could be destroyed the particle wash hit the intertwined shields of the GCP ships. Set as they were to invert the momentum of anything hitting them, they reflected the beams back to hit the Modos ships a second time.

In 34.6 milliseconds the atomic cohesion of their hulls was completely disrupted and the ships were utterly and spectacularly destroyed. The highly extended and linked shields of the three GCP ships collapsed. They had done their work. The SJ round would have done untold friendly fire damage to the GCP fleet in and around SgA had the technique of linking the shields not been developed.

The bridge of the
Mador
broke out in cheering. The GCP had already lost six capital ships, due in large part to the overwhelming number of Modos ships entering GCP space. This was the first significant victory in the counter offensive.

Over the next several hours the feat was duplicated more than a dozen times by various ships within the fleet. Each time, because of critical intel provided by Ricky Valen and Honey, the targets were the ships containing Modos Managing Directors. The result was a large number of ships exiting GCP space and heading back to the Beta-verse.

Jason was pleased with his ships performance. Unfortunately his gut was telling him they were not going to be able to spend much time enjoying it. As was typically the case, his gut was correct.

Sixteen hyperfold conduits opened in the space near SgA. At the same time every Modos ship in and around SgA engaged in a microjump that effectively phased them out of local time-space for a few milliseconds. The sixteen trans-dimensional hyperfold conduits bathed the surrounding area in massive amounts of radiation as sixteen more battle groups composed of well over three thousand Modos ships and fighters emerged to join the fray.

Chapter Twenty Four: Salvation...

Cat suddenly stood up with an alarmed look on her face. The effect on the people gathered in the conference room onboard the
Final-Freedom
defense platform was pronounced. Commanders Ken Kirkland and Ben leaned back with similarly alarmed and glazed looks in their eyes.

Elder Farnin and Captain Running Stream, who were also at the table, looked at each other in confusion. Clearly something had happened but neither could fathom what was going on. It was not always easy for them to read the expressions on the faces of humans and the D'lralu.

The representatives of both the GCP and the Modos rebels had been meeting with the ancient Suhtian delegation for several hours. It had taken that long for He-Who-Speaks, the Suhtii host that carried Running Stream, to convince his Suhtian relatives that he was no longer a slave but a partner. Running Stream had detached while his friend made his case. He-Who-Speaks made his case that, while he was among the brightest of his generation, he was as a child compared to his Suhtian brothers. He wanted his people to be smart again.

Elder Farnin leaned forward. "Something was said that causes our cousins from the Galactic Coalition distress?"

Cat glanced at the elder Bearephant with a quizzical look on her face before recognition dawned on her.

"Please accept my apologies, Elder Farnin. I have a communication device embedded in my body that uses entangled quantum qubits to communicate at FTL speeds with members of the GCP. It has been of little use since we traveled to what we are calling the beta-verse.

That said, I had suspected we had transitioned back to our universe during the escape from your original home world. That suspicion has been confirmed. My officers and I have just received a general distress signal from our fleet. They are battling the Modos Syndicate, who is striving to enslave members of the GCP."

"Then by all means, let us discuss this common enemy," Farnin said in a stern voice.

***

Ricky Valen was sweating bullets. The
Honey Dipper
was once again free in space. That was the good news. The bad news was how she got there. Honey and he had spent the last several hours throwing every monkey wrench they could think of into the inner-workings of the battle group that the
Vengeance
was a part of. This had worked well until Ricky had the brilliant idea to mess with the internal chronometers.

The initial result had been quite satisfying as attempts to engage in highly coordinated maneuvers instead resulted in utter chaos. One such maneuver turned out to be problematic. The
MS Vengeance
and her entire battle group did a preprogramed microjump a full two minutes early. When they emerged they found themselves caught with the GCP fleet in a massive trans-dimensional hyperfold backwash. The Modos shields were far less effective than those used by the GCP. The
Honey Dipper
survived only by virtue of the fact that the
Vengeance
had become a very large and very expensive ablative shield. Once the
Honey Dipper
had cleared the wreckage that had been her home for the last several weeks she was faced with another problem. She now looked like a GCP ship in a time and place where there were a lot of people shooting at GCP ships.                    

"I don't suppose we can cloak yet?"

Honey shook her head. "The blast pretty well saturated local space with dust. Just traveling through it leaves a wake. Cloaking wouldn't help."

"We don't have to hide, we just need to look like something a little less threatening."

Honey continued to shake her head. "Any ship we look like will be fired on by one side or the other."

"Ah," Ricky said, "but will they fire on a big dumb rock?"

***

Yhsif stood alone in his cabin on the
4400
. A view-screen mounted on the wall and made to look like a window gave him an impressive view of the planet below. These were the Suhtii or rather the Suhtian. The true Suhtian, not the genetically tampered-with and dumbed-down creatures that he was familiar with. His life had been a lie. He had believed the corporate propaganda that had said the rebels were playing fast and loose with history. His family was his bond for service. If he failed in his mission to supply data on rebel activities, the Syndicate Security Forces could and would take action against his mate and his children.

Now that he knew the rebels had been right all along, now that he knew there were Suhtians every bit as intelligent as a Modos, he was faced with a moral dilemma. Did he continue to support a company who was lying to him and everyone else; or did he 'do the right thing'?

If he 'did the right thing' by admitting his role as a spy to Captain Running Stream and the GCP Admiral, then his family would pay for his betrayal to the Syndicate. If he failed to 'do the right thing' the entire Suhtian race would pay for his betrayal of their most basic civil rights.

In the end, he knew what he had to do. He hoped his wife and kids would someday be able to forgive him.

***

The Chairman was hypoxic he was so angry. Battle group after battle group had returned to Syndicate space. Their managing directors dead. The first battle group coming back had been viewed as an unlucky break for that battle group and the Syndicate's board of directors had quickly appointed new managing directors. By the time six groups had come back it was obvious that there was a mole leaking sensitive information to the opposition forces.

The board had started asking some hard questions. How had the chairman let this happen? Was he not in charge of overall corporate oversight? As the saying goes; 'At the end of the day he eats the last minnow.'

The board had made it abundantly clear. He fixed the situation or they would. Ancient tradition held that a new chairman was to dine on the corpse of the old chairman. Thankfully that was a tradition that had fallen by the wayside. That said, being replaced would be, at best, exceedingly unpleasant.

He looked at the chronometer mounted on his desk. Operation 'flood-gate' should be underway. That would secure his future. He was sure of it.

***

Jason Ruck ran through the smoke-filled corridor of the
GCP Mador
. It didn't seem fair. Every time they got this ship fixed somebody would go and try to blow it up again. The
Mador
had been caught, along with most of the GCP fleet, in a massive trans-dimensional backwash. Her shields had held...barely; but there were plenty of overloaded power conduit and relays. The Modos who had jumped into local SgA space through those conduits had taken advantage                 of the confusion by unleashing a powerful barrage of weapons fire.

The
Mador
had been holed more than a dozen times. Only the superlative nature of her Heshe inspired automated repair systems kept her going. Over two dozen of the crew had been placed in a state of medical morbidity. Their medical nanites kept their bodies on the very edge of death until their damaged tissues could be repaired. Rescue crews had pulled many of them from areas of the ship that had been exposed to vacuum. Unfortunately for several of them, the damage, especially to the cranium, had been too severe. They, like his predecessor Captain Roberts, were well and truly gone.     

Both the
Mador
and the
Yorktown
had been forced to withdraw from the active battle to lick their respective wounds. The
GCP Intrepid
had not been so lucky. Her hyperdrive had failed and she was stuck in the battle zone. The Modos swarmed the ship and her captain, Hikaru Takei, was forced to surrender or watch his crew be killed. Fortunately the Modos rarely killed when they didn't have to. They were, after all, a slaver society.

As Jason made his way back to the bridge from Engineering where he had been helping Chief Montgomery get things back in order, his commlink signaled for his attention.

"Ruck here," he said as he activated it.

"Jason! Good to hear your voice son. This is Admiral Faragon. What's your ship's status?"

"We got hit pretty hard, Sir. We have one reactor left and partial batteries. Shielding is gone. The nanites are rebuilding the nodes from the ground up but it will be at least another twenty minutes before we can even think about raising minimal shields. Weapons are in better shape. The railguns are gone but my beam weapons are all online. We can still pack a powerful punch."

"How long before minimal repairs are done?"

"Realistically sir...we are looking at a minimum of at least half an hour. I'd take a full day if I could."

"I'm afraid I'm going to be hard pressed to give you the thirty minutes. Our fleet was pretty much decimated. I'm trying to get as many of our ships back into formation as possible, but the Modos are continuing to push through the SgA corridor and there is not much we can do to stop them. I have WhimPy's deployed and guarding each GCP member world, as well as several near emergent worlds like the Agur, but that leaves dozens of pre-space-flight civilizations in our controlled space that are going to fall prey to the Modos if we don't get a handle on this."

"Understood, Sir. I'll do what I can. What are your orders?"

"As soon as you are able, I need you to jump to sector 43. I'll already be there by the time you jump. I have the
Bowman
, the
Avenger
and the
Hawking
already in place. We are going to try and place a defensive ring of orbiting SJ's around SgA. The Modos are knocking them down as fast as we can put them up but at least we are keeping them occupied while we try to get more ships in theater."

***

Thirty-eight minutes later the still cripple but marginally functional
Mador
jumped into the space near SgA.

"Give me shield status as well as a tactical display on the forward view screen," Jason barked.

"Shields are holding Captain," Commander James reported. "Tactical on the forward screen. There are 142 Modos heavies in theater, along with the
Yorktown
,
Hawking
, and
Bowman
. The
Avenger
is down. Most of her hull is open to space and there are minimal life signs."

Lieutenant Zimmerman spoke up. "Sir, I have ship to ship traffic coming in. The
Yorktown
is running on batteries only and cannot jump. The
Bowman
and
Hawking
are attempting to shield her."

"Helm! Make course for the
Yorktown
. Best possible speed."

"Aye, Sir!"

"Weapons. Commander I want you to target the next ship that fires on the
Yorktown
with a full spread of lasers and partial beams. Load the two working missile tubes with cloaking Sandies. I want you to drop them between those ships and us...far enough out that they will have to travel through them to get to us."