McCollum - GIBRALTAR STARS (40 page)

“Now then, let’s get this briefing underway. Lisa, please come up and tell us what you’ve found.”

“Yes, Admiral,” she said, climbing to her feet. As she did so, she casually ran her hand through Mark’s hair, a gesture that caused an electric spark to run down his spine.

Standing in front without notes, she said, “Where would you like me to start?”

“The beginning is traditional.” Landon replied.

“Yes, the beginning,” Captain Cavendish echoed.

“Well, we were monitoring Sabator traffic control, preparing to get underway, when Gerry Swenson asked me to listen to an intercept, which I did. It was an ordinary traffic order warning ships near the Gamma Stargate to steer clear for priority traffic.

“We checked and identified the traffic as a small speeder, a class of ship that is mostly engines and reactors.
There was nothing unusual about that. The Broa use these small ships to carry the mail between star systems. What was unusual was that they were giving it priority over everything else in system, and that it was approaching the Gamma Stargate only three days after leaving Karap-Vas.

“This particular speeder was pulling 3.5 gees on a constant boost trajectory direct for the gate. I remember thinking how curious that was. Then I wondered what I would do if I were a government bureaucrat and aliens had just shot up my system. Answer: I would want to alert H.Q. as fast as possible.

“I began wondering if this speeder might be carrying an emergency dispatch detailing the Battle of Karap-Vas, and if so, where he was most likely headed. That is when I went to see Captain Cavendish.”

#

The captain was busy when Lisa floated onto the bridge with her news. It had taken him a few seconds to understand the import. When he did, he wasted no time in changing priorities.

“Ops, get those damned antennas stowed right now! Exec, tell the department heads they have exactly ten minutes to report ready for superlight. Move it, people!”

“How long until the speeder reaches the gate?” he asked Lisa.

“Two hours.”

“And where does the Gamma Gate lead?”

“A small star named Orimanda about eighty light-years from here.”

“Then we just might make it.”

What Captain Cavendish referred to was one of the central tenets of the Sabator mission. While interstellar travel via stargate is instantaneous, getting from one gate to another through normal space takes time. In fact, on average, Broan ships spent about as much time between gates as human ships did between stars. The plan was to track the freighter carrying the Trojan Horse across several star systems by racing to each new system as they identified the gate the freighter was headed for. Hopefully, they would get there before the Broan target made its next jump.

Of course, the assumption was based on the Broan ship coasting for much of its journey. The speeder was a different proposition. On a constant boost trajectory and with a high acceleration rate, the speeder might well clear the Orimanda system before
Galahad
arrived.

It took
them four days to reach Orimanda. A quick survey revealed no sign of the speeder. Had it been bound for the lone inhabited planet all along? Or did it make it to one of the other stargates before their arrival? And if so, which?

Luckily, they had a means to answer the question. Since Orimanda was one of the six destinations from Sabator, three cruisers were already staked out, waiting for the ship carrying the Trojan Horse make an appearance.

Terrestrial Space Navy Cruisers
Dante
,
Corwin
, and
Quebec
were still patiently scanning space traffic from hidden positions in the system’s Oort Cloud. To find out where the speeder had gone, all
Galahad
needed to do was contact one of the hidden ships and ask.

Like
Galahad
, the three hidden cruisers were equipped with the new sensors capable of tracking stardrive generators at low power. All that was necessary was for
Galahad
’s
engineers to bring the cruiser’s engines to the same quiescent state as those of the destroyed Trojan Horse.

Four hours later, a comm laser found them. It was from
Quebec
, which was only three light-minutes from
Galahad
. Over the next two hours, two more spots of invisible light ‘illuminated’ the firmament. The two other ships were both nearly one light-hour distant in opposite directions.

“Hello,
Quebec
. This is
Galahad
,” Cavendish sent as soon as his own comm laser locked on. “Trojan Horse mission has been scrubbed. We are tracking a Broan speeder believed to be en route to Planet X. He is using constant boost at 3.5 gravities. Urgent that you provide recordings of ship traffic over the past four days so that we can track him.”

An answer came back twenty minutes later. “Recordings attached. However, the subject speeder was observed departing the Beta Stargate seven hours ago.”

“The Beta Gate?” Lisa muttered. She was seated on the bridge, observing. “That doesn’t sound right.”

“Why not?” Cavendish asked.

“The Beta Gate leads to Kelsen, a cul-de-sac system, one we haven’t explored. You wouldn’t expect to find the seat of power in a cul-de-sac, would you?”

“Maybe that is why they put it there.” Turning to his comm officer, Cavendish ordered, “Order the cruisers to break off and follow us to Kelsen. We’ll rendezvous ten light-hours due galactic north of the star.”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right, astrogator. Let’s chase after that damned speeder. How far?”

“One hundred and twenty light-years, Captain.”

“Crank her tail, although with only one stargate in the system, it isn’t like he will be going anywhere else.”

“Yes, sir.”

Six days later, they dropped sublight on the edge of the Kelsen System and erected their listening antennas. It quickly became apparent that the inhabited planet was not the Broan home world. For one thing, it seemed sparsely populated and the majority of comm traffic was in an alien tongue – that is, one other than Broan.

However, the system had a first-rate traffic control system. Lisa and the monitoring team set up shop to learn what could be learned. As soon as they copied the list of ships currently in system, they found a mystery. The speeder wasn’t on the list.

They found themselves faced with the same question as at Orimanda. Had the speeder been en route to this backwater world all along? If so, it must have landed before their arrival.

Lisa was having a conference on the subject with Captain Cavendish in his ready room when the intercom buzzed.

“What is it, Sparks?”

“Sir, we’ve picked up a gravity wave from within the system.”

“Someone just use the stargate?” he asked, referring to the small golden symbol on the main viewscreen.

“Someone just used
a
stargate, Captain, but it’s not the one on the charts.”

#

“You found
another
stargate?” Admiral Landon asked Lisa.

“Yes, sir. Despite what it says in the Pastol database, Kelsen is not a cul-de-sac. It is a way station on a highway into uncharted territory.”

“Planet X?”

“That was our supposition. The problem is that we didn’t know where the other terminus for the Kelsen Beta gate was. So, we let discretion be the better part of valor and awaited the arrival of our other ships.

“They dropped back into normal space over the next two days. We used the same method as before to find one another. That works very well, by the way. All ships should be equipped with the new sensors. Anyway, our scatter wasn’t too bad, so we met at the rendezvous and planned our next move.

“From the gravity wave data, we established the orientation of the second gate and found four stars that were good candidates for the other end of the wormhole. While we were doing this, we detected two more waves from the Beta Gate. Apparently, there is a lot of traffic through the Kelsen system en route to or from the other end.

“We had four candidates and four ships. We split up and each took one. Captain Cavendish set up the mission parameters. He should really tell you the rest.”

Landon turned to Cavendish. “Let’s hear it, Captain.”

“We were getting pretty excited by this time,” he said. “The plan was for each ship to approach their candidate suns no closer than twelve light-hours, drop into normal space, and listen for electromagnetic and gravity wave emissions. We agreed to rendezvous at Kelsen in seven days. None of the candidate systems was more than two days from Kelsen.”

“Who won the jackpot?” Landon asked.

“
Galahad
did, Admiral. We started picking up massive radio traffic as soon as we dropped sublight. It’s all in High Broan. We’ve got recordings for Intelligence. We also detected gravity waves from at least three stargates. There may be more, but if so, they weren’t oriented to put us in the gravity wave expansion cone.

“Planet X?”

“We can’t prove it conclusively, but everything we heard fits the hypothesis. What convinced me was an observation Lisa made.”

Landon swiveled around to look at Lisa, his eyebrows raised in a silent question.

“I checked the database, Admiral. The star in question has no name, just a reference number, and the system is listed as uninhabited, with no useful planets or resources. It would seem we aren’t the only ones who value anonymity when it comes to revealing the location of our home world.”

#

Mark Rykand slowly drifted upward out of sleep. Beside him, Lisa’s body was warm and soft, her breathing slow, with that funny little snort at the beginning of each inhalation that she adamantly refused to believe she was capable of emitting.

Despite Admiral Landon’s promise to keep the briefing short, it had gone on interminably until mid-afternoon. It had been end-of-watch before they arrived at their assigned quarters and began the truly important business of the day.

Their first round of lovemaking was hot and impatient, an explosive dance of thrust and counterthrust, a ritual to drive away the bad memories of the past month. The second time was slower, but still vigorous, after which they dressed and went to the Sutton Bistro for a late supper. To Lisa’s delight, a small band was playing live music while couples twirled about a dance floor covered in non-slip tile.

After dinner, they joined a dozen other dancers. Their gyrations were akin to their lovemaking: two bodies pressed together as tightly as human geometry will allow. Around the floor, spectators shielded their mouths with hands as they commented to their partners. The comments were invariably followed by a knowing nod.

Later, they returned to their quarters. The third round was slow and languid, with pauses to rest and cuddle, before building to a final climax that was more intense than any that had gone before. Afterwards, limbs still intertwined, they slipped into blessed slumber.

All was once again right with the universe.

Mark propped himself up on one elbow and watched Lisa in the dim blue light as she slept. Her right arm was lifted and flung over her eyes while she lay on her back and snored. The sheet was nowhere to be seen, revealing every curve of her body. Breasts rose and fell in slow rhythmic waves, topped by nipples standing erect in the cool air. The hills of her upper torso gave way to the smooth plain of the lower and the shadowed well of her navel. From there, the plain narrowed as the continuous curve flowed smoothly between the Pillars of Hercules that were her pelvic bones, to the swelling of her pubis, with its crown of golden (now bluish) thatch.

Lisa moaned in her sleep and pursed her lips in a movement he found fascinating. There was something primal about the pleasure of just watching her in repose; a product of four million years of evolution. As one of his college professors noted while lecturing on the visual attraction the female form holds for the male libido, “If women were square, we men would go around lusting after cubes!”

Perhaps there is an innate sense that tells a woman when she is being admired. Within five minutes, Lisa stirred, stretched, and yawned before turning to her husband.

“What time is it?”

“Oh six thirty,” he said, glancing at the wall chronometer.

Rolling over to face him, her hand reached down to take hold of him. She frowned, “This doesn’t seem very encouraging. Would you like me to make it better? Ready for another round?”

He leaned forward and kissed her. “Always ready for that, my love, although it isn’t necessary. I am sated… for the moment.”

Releasing him, she placed her open palm on his bare chest. “In that case, let’s have breakfast. I confess to being a little sore this morning.”

“I have no idea why,” he laughed.

They rose. Lisa disappeared into the small curtained alcove that served as their bathroom to perform all of those after-sex chores that women require, while Mark sponged off in front of the mirror, taking special care to reach all of those hidden cracks and crevices where sweat accumulates.

They soni-cleaned their teeth in turn, Mark depilated while Lisa brushed her hair, and then both of them slipped into uniform. Smiling, Lisa lifted her face to kiss him, and they departed for breakfast. The chronometer on the wall registered 07:30.

#

“Do you have to go in today?” she asked after biting into a piece of toast at breakfast. The butter and marmalade that coated one side squeezed out and made a small mess at the corners of her mouth.

“If I do, I’m not going to. Let the Admiral court-martial me. It will be worth it.”

She was silent for a long minute while he finished his eggs and yeast. Finally, she said, “This is pleasant, isn’t it?”

“Almost like that morning we ate breakfast on the terrace at Yosemite, remember? The only thing missing are the trees, the snow, and the majestic mountains in the background.”

“I don’t ever want to be separated from you again,” she suddenly blurted out.

“I don’t either. Unfortunately, the Navy may have other plans.”

Her eyes filled with fire. “I’m serious, Mark. I almost died when I saw that explosion. I thought you were dead. I don’t ever want to experience that emotion again. If you are assigned somewhere, I want to be there with you. If either of us is destined to die in this war, I want us to die together.”