McCollum - GIBRALTAR STARS (19 page)

“What are we going to do today?” he asked his wife as she finished breakfast.

“I thought we would get into our snuggies and hike the trail to Ribbon Falls. It’s supposed to be beautiful in winter. Then it’s back here for a sauna, a late lunch, and an afternoon air tour of the park.”

“Do you have this schedule broken down minute-by-minute, or will we use our intuition to fill in the gaps?” he asked, laughing.

She shrugged. “We can’t very well roll around in bed twenty-four hours a day, now can we?”

“Speak for yourself, wench!”

“Methinks you more ambitious than able, sir.”

They bundled up in their electrically-heated snowsuits, and three hours later, were seated on a stone bench beneath an ice cascade frozen in mid-tumble down a spectacular rock face.

They sat in a pool of cold sunshine, sides pressed together with arms intertwined. This time of year, the park was vacant save for the hardiest of tourists, giving them the solitude that made the moment just that much better. Lisa rested her head on Mark’s shoulder.

Lisa stirred, lifted her head and turned to her husband. All Mark could see of her features were her eyes behind snow goggles. Her face warmer covered the rest.

“I’ll be sad to see this end,” she said.

“Me, too,” he replied, feeling his own warm breath spreading across his lips and cheeks beneath a muffler.

“Have you considered what we will do when our leave is up?”

“Not particularly.”

“I’ve been giving it some thought,” she replied in a tone that made him understand that she meant she’d been thinking about it
a lot
.

“Spit it out.”

“This has been pleasant, Mark, but I think it’s time we got back to the war. The stargate test is imminent. I thought we could volunteer to go with the ship that makes the first jump.”

“Back to Brinks?”

“It’s where we belong. This rear echelon stuff gets old after awhile.”

“We’d need permission from the Stargate Director and the captain of whatever ship goes.”

“We can get it.”

“Oh?” he asked, sensing a setup. “What makes you think that?”

He couldn’t see her mouth, but he could hear the grin in her voice when she answered: “It’s going to be
Amethyst
.”

He gestured at the beauty around them. “Are you that desperate to give up all of this?”

“Not for three more days,” she replied. “Still, it has to end some time.”

He sighed, knowing that she was right. “Do you want to call, or shall I?”

“I already have. Dr. Shepard is waiting for our official request.”

“Then let’s get it over with.” He reached up to pat his shirt pocket through the snow suit. “Damn, I left my communicator in the room.”

 “Me, too. This afternoon will be soon enough.”

He pulled her close. “In the meantime, let’s soak up the scenery while we can. It will be back to ship corridors and Brinks’ tunnels before we know it.”

“Yes,” she agreed, wriggling in his embrace. “It will be good to go home.”

#

The New Eden sun could well have been a twin of Sol, which of course, was what had attracted the Stellar Survey to the system in the first place. Had the star been one of the big blue-white bruisers like Rigel, or a red giant such as Antares, or anything other than Sol-like;
Magellan
would not have been in position to witness Sar-Say’s arrival, in which case, humanity would never have learned of the Broa.

And, of course,
Mark thought,
Jani would still be alive.
He immediately pushed the thought back down into the dark recess where he kept it caged. He didn’t need to be distracted by morose thoughts of his dead sister at the moment.

He was once again strapped into
Amethyst’s
Auxiliary Control Center. The last time he’d been here, he’d been
Amy
’s
Executive Officer.

Not this time.

That billet had gone to an officer being groomed for his first command. However, his replacement was in engineering, supervising the gaggle of technicians who would record every aspect of the coming jump. The mission plan called for the recordings in case something went awry. Assuming the ship wasn’t vaporized or flung off somewhere in the trackless reaches of space, the recorded data might show the scientists what had gone wrong.

With so many scientific types onboard, Captain Borsman was short of trained officers to supervise them and assigned Mark his old duty station.

Mark and Lisa joined
Amethyst
at High Station. The ship and three others were there taking on consumables. Two of the other ships were fleet freighters. Each carried a disassembled human-designed stargate in its hold. The fourth ship was the cruiser
Saladin.
Once
Amethyst
jumped, it would be
Saladin
’s job to make sure nothing unexpected popped out of their new stargate, headed in the opposite direction.

“Going back to Brinks so soon, Captain?” Lisa joked as she floated out of the mouth of the transport tube connecting
Amethyst
to High Station. She was surprised he had come down to the suiting chamber to meet them.

 “
Amy
is too new for overhaul,” Borsman replied, “and I didn’t want to take a chance on being assigned to the intra-system customs patrol. So I volunteered to make the return jump. We are, after all, the pioneers of this particular technology. What about you two? I didn’t expect to see you back this quickly.”

“We got tired of beautiful sunsets, soft beds, good food, and showers with as much hot water as we liked,” Mark answered. “It’s back to the Spartan life for us.”

“Don’t torture me, Commander,” Borsman groaned, “especially about the shower. You know where your cabin is. Get settled in and then report to me in my cabin.”

Shortly afterward, they’d departed High Station with their small flotilla. In addition to their cargo, each freighter carried a team of scientists and technicians to assemble and calibrate the gates. If all went as planned, the second freighter would follow
Amethyst
through the gate and offload its cargo on the other side. The twin gates would be the first of dozens that would become humanity’s superhighway into the heart of the Sovereignty.

Amy
arrived at New Eden ten days after departing High Station. It took another ten to unpack the stargate, reassemble it, and get it calibrated. Finally, however, they were ready.
Amethyst
slid forward to enter the focus of the gate.

Mark watched as the gate’s ring expanded until it flowed off the edges of the viewscreen, leaving only a black firmament and the bright glowing ball of New Eden’s sun. He, like everyone else onboard, was encased in his vacuum suit... just in case.

The new gate was larger in diameter but thinner in cross-section than a Broan model. The difference tended to make it look spindly.

 
“Prepare for jump!”
The astrogator’s words echoed in Mark’s earphones, along with breathing sounds of the rest of the crew.

“Generators online,” came the response from engineering. “Stargate is responding. The field is building in strength… We have reached critical curvature. Ready to jump now.”

“We are ready to jump, Captain.”

“You have the conn, Astrogator.”

“Aye aye, sir. All Hands, final jump warning! Thirty seconds. Twenty… Ten… five, four, three, two, one, Jump!”

There was a strange sensation, a momentary tug at the innards. Mark had never experienced anything like it using a Broan gate. It distracted him for an instant. When he looked up, the spindly ring was gone, as was New Eden’s star.

In their place, neatly bisecting the forward viewscreen, were the decorated hull plates of a Broan stargate.

#

Chapter Nineteen

Admiral Dan Landon sat at his desk.  He lounged in a spindly wrought iron chair that should have been uncomfortable (but wasn’t) as he watched the morning report scroll up his workscreen. His right hand rested lightly on the controller to regulate the speed. It was part of his standard morning routine.

After rising at 05:00, he exercised for half an hour before a quick sponge bath and the usual early morning maintenance routines. He donned shipsuit and boots, checked to make sure everything was correct, and left his quarters promptly at 06:00. With Marine guard in tow, he stopped by the commissary for a steaming bulb of coffee; then entered the rough-hewn cave that was his office at 06:10. The bulb went on the cast iron desk next to the hologram of Cara and the kids. After a few sips of hot black elixir, the bulb went back to its resting place and he brought up the morning report.

The ritual had been the same for so long that he could barely remember a time when he’d begun his day differently. Running a war, it turned out, was far more routine than commanding a starship. He envied those officers he ordered into the deep black.

The morning report was a compendium of the previous 24 hours, items his staff thought it important for the boss to know. His aide added to it throughout the day. It was edited and finalized by the Officer of the Watch on midwatch. The format was as stylized as one of the long-dead newspapers of legend.

The first section was devoted to comings and goings.
Congress,
one of the Q-ships, had departed Sutton-orbit last evening at 24:00 hours, en route to the Sovereignty. She was accompanied by the Cruiser
Atalanta
, which would provide overwatch protection.
Congress
was the first of the ersatz Broan craft equipped with the new simulacrum software.

Next, Landon turned to the list of new arrivals. A quartet of freighters dropped out of superlight at 03:50 and announced their presence via comm laser. It would be two weeks before they reached Brinks. Their journey was extended by the fact that the big world was currently on the opposite side of Hideout from the breakout point.

He anxiously scanned the summary of their cargo. The freighters were crammed to the hull plates with all manner of things Brinks Base needed, but it was their load of foodstuffs that caught his eye. Most were standard rations, of course. However, each ship carried an allotment of luxury goods. Scanning the list, Landon noted that the commissary would be expanding its menu for awhile. That was the best news he’d had in weeks. Even a minor increase in selection would cause an uptick in morale.

Nor were the freighters the only new arrivals. Two hours ago, a cruiser with a familiar name made Sutton orbit. The ground-to-orbit tugs had wasted no time beginning the offloading process. The first of these was probably grounding even as he read.

After
Comings and Goings
came the
Personnel Status Report
. The welfare rating was down again today. The cause was concern by the medical staff over an outbreak of the common cold aboard
Crispin
, a newly commissioned cruiser that had completed the Long Jump the week before. Somehow a petty officer had managed to come down with the disease after a year in vacuum. The doctors were still trying to figure out how he had been exposed, and had quarantined the ship.

The first thing on Landon’s list was their request to extend the quarantine another seventy-two hours. He checked the action block without hesitation. Respiratory illnesses were especially worrisome in a closed space habitat and any officer willing to overrule his doctors’ recommendations ought not be in command.

Next was a gratifyingly short list of disciplinary actions. Most were minor infractions. One storekeeper had been discovered operating a vacuum still. He would have thirty days of waste reclamation duty to reconsider his actions. A couple of vacuum monkeys fought over a woman in their section. They were confined to the brig until their section leader convened article hearings. They would both likely lose one stripe.

Finally, Landon came to the most important, if also most mundane, part of the report. This one was devoted to statistics. A series of columns related the name, catalog number, quantity on hand, and number of days’ supply of the most critical needs of the fleet. The list went on for several pages and usually required twenty minutes or so of his time to give it proper attention. He was halfway through when the annunciator on his desk buzzed.

“Yes?” he asked without taking his eyes from the workscreen.

“Commander Rykand to see you, sir,” the Marine guarding his door announced.

“Which one?”

“Both of them, Admiral.”

“Send them in.”

He rose from behind his desk, taking care not to launch himself in Sutton’s low gravity. The door opened and two familiar figures skated through.

“Mark, Lisa, welcome back! I didn’t expect to see you again so quickly, or at all for that matter.”

“We got lonely for the monastery,” Lisa said, reaching out to take the Admiral’s outstretched hand. “The rich living was getting to our waistlines.”

“I wondered about that when I saw your names on
Amethyst
’s roster. Congratulations on your promotion, Lisa. It must feel good not having to salute this ape.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good to see you as well, Mark.”

“Good to see you, Admiral.”

He ushered them to the two visitor chairs in front of his desk. They were more wrought-iron products from the local solar smelter. When the three of them were settled, Landon said, “I’ve read Captain Borsman’s report about the jump to New Eden, and back again. It seems to have gone surprisingly well. Tell me about your trip. How was Earth?”

Mark and Lisa took turns recounting the events of their visit home, and of the return through the human-produced stargate. They finished with, “The second gate is being assembled at Grand Central as we speak.”

Landon’s puzzlement was evident in his expression.

“Grand Central Terminus,” Lisa explained. “Someone started calling The Void that and it caught on.”

“How soon to go operational?”

“They said three weeks. That was ten days ago.”

“Hallelujah!” The Admiral exclaimed. “I’m not sure we could have kept this base running much longer via the Long Jump. Most people don’t realize how tight we are on supplies here.”

Mark gave Lisa a concerned look before turning back. “Is the war going badly?”