McCollum - GIBRALTAR STARS (41 page)

“That’s not very logical,” he countered.

“I’m not feeling logical. I just want my husband.”

There was another long pause. Mark said, “You know, you are much more valuable than I am in the scheme of things. I’m just one of thousands of naval officers, and not even a properly trained one at that. You are the premier Broan translator alive.”

“Don’t put yourself down.”

“It’s not just my opinion,” he replied. Then he told her about Admiral Landon offering him his own command, and the other things the Admiral had told him.

“They’re wrong,” Lisa said, reacting like a wife whose husband has been insulted. “You may not have gone to their academy, but without you there would be no war. We would all be wearing the Broan yoke by now.”

“You’re prejudiced.”

“Yes, I am. Not because I am your wife, or rather, not the way you mean it. I don’t believe in you because you are my husband, Mark. You are my husband because I believe in you.”

“Why, thank you, Wench! I married you because of last night. You are one handful between the sheets… or on them.”

His jest earned him a punch in the ribs. He was moving to grab hold of her arms so she couldn’t do it again when he noticed that Lisa was looking over his shoulder, their conversation forgotten.

“What is it?”

Before she could answer, a male voice said, “Commander Rykand and Commander Rykand, glad I found you. The Admiral has been looking for you. He wants to see you right away.”

Mark turned to see Corporal Bennett, one of Landon’s guard detail, standing behind him.

“What about, Corporal?”

“The Intelligence types worked all night. So did the Admiral. He says that you need to get packed soonest and meet him at the spaceport at 09:00.”

Mark groaned. “Where are we going now?”

“Earth.”

#

PART Three:

LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR

Chapter Forty-One

With Grand Central Terminus in operation, the voyage to Earth seemed almost a commute to two people who had endured three Long Jumps.
T.S.N.S. Bushranger
matched orbits with High Station twenty-two days after leaving Brinks Base.

It was a busy twenty-two days.

“What’s the rush?” Mark asked the Admiral when the two of them hurried into the spaceport assembly hall only twenty hours after leaving it. His wife carried their kit bags while Mark lugged two vacuum suits piggyback.

“We spent all night reviewing what happened at Sabator,” Landon answered. “I find I have need to consult the brass at home. You two are coming along as my technical experts. We have a ship leaving orbit for the monthly courier run in two hours. I see no reason to keep them waiting. Are you ready?”

“Yes, sir,” Lisa replied.

“Then let’s get to the boat.”

Bushranger
was a destroyer modified for courier duty. Like the Broan speeder
Galahad
had chased to Planet X, it was dominated by its engines and reactors and designed for continuous thrust to and from the critical limit. The courier carried an eight man crew and its accommodations for passengers could charitably be described as “Spartan.”

If the Lieutenant commanding was unhappy to have the Fleet Admiral aboard as a passenger, he did a good job of concealing it. He directed Landon to a tiny cabin on the port side of the ship and the Rykands to a marginally larger one starboard.

Any thought Mark and Lisa had that this voyage would be a pleasure cruise (eat, sleep, and make love) was quickly disabused. The Admiral informed Lisa that she would assist him in preparing his presentation. To this end, the two of them huddled in the wardroom eight hours every day, going over recordings, intercepts, and translations, breaking only for meals. This latter was a necessity as the wardroom was also the mess compartment.

Landon had other work for Mark. He pointed out that this would be an excellent opportunity to brush up on the myriad small details a ship captain needs to know. To that end, he assigned Mark to learn the jobs of each of
Bushranger’s
officers. In addition to reading the technical specifications and operating manual for Destroyer/Courier class ships, Mark stood watch, assisted in cleaning out the waste system piping, and helped with any dirty job that arose.

As on most small ships, evening meals were a family affair. Save for two watch standers – one on the bridge and one in the engine spaces – the crew ate together. The first half of the meal was taken up with ship’s business. The captain briefed everyone on what he expected, handed out praise and criticism, and solicited suggestions.

After official business, they talked about anything of interest: what they were going to do on Earth, the enemy, what was wrong with the Navy. Admiral Landon’s presence made this last subject especially popular. It wasn’t often the commanding admiral is a captive audience to hear one’s gripes.

And, of course, there was the nightly poker game. After Lieutenant Barstow got over his reticence, he proved a cutthroat player. He and the Admiral went after each other’s blood, leaving Mark, who prided himself on his own skill, outclassed.

It took nine days to reach Grand Central Terminus. There were now eight stargates in operation, along with a large habitat to house technicians and other support personnel. Mark marveled at the number of ships in transit.

The gates were arrayed in a rectangular two-dimensional grid with an empty spot where a ninth gate was under construction. On the display, they looked close together, but the distance between gates was the same as that from Earth to Luna. The arrangement kept wormholes from interfering with one another and placed each gate in the gravity wave shadow of all the others.

Of course, the jump to New Eden took no time at all. Then it was nearly a week in superlight to Sol and another three days to parking orbit at Earth’s High Station.

The engines had barely shut down when they said farewell to
Bushranger
’s crew and transferred to an orbit-to-orbit boat for the trip down to Equatorial Station, and then to a winged ferry. Two hours later, they were in Toronto.

#

“Welcome,” Nadine Halstrom said as the three entered her office. They were in formal dress uniform, having changed out of their shipsuits at the airport.

“Thank you, Madam Coordinator,” Landon said.

She ushered them to her conversation area where three others were waiting. One of them was Admiral N’Gomo. Landon shook hands with his immediate superior, who turned to Mark and Lisa.

“Welcome home, again,” N’Gomo said in his bass rumble.

“Good to see you, sir,” Lisa replied.

Turning to Mark, he said, “I understand we almost lost you.”

“It was touch and go for awhile, Admiral.”

Nadine Halstrom introduced the other two men as Lor Carnahan, political adviser, and Gareth Barnett, current Majority Leader in Parliament. She invited everyone to sit, making sure her three visitors sat across the low table from her. Her assistant took drink orders and placed the requested refreshments in front of them before withdrawing.

 “All right, Admiral,” Nadine Halstrom said. “We were all intrigued by your message when you dropped sublight. What brings you back to Earth so unexpectedly?”

“The situation has changed, Madam Coordinator,” Landon said. “I thought it wise to return to Earth and brief the General Staff in person.”

She nodded. “It’s your show, Admiral.”

“Thank you. Commander Mark Rykand will begin by briefing you on the Trojan Horse mission to the Quadrant Capital of Sabator. Mark, when you’re ready.”

Mark cleared his throat and spoke of the plan to trick the Broa into leading them to Planet X. He recounted their preparations, the too-quick attempt to make their escape, and the resulting explosion. As he spoke, he noticed the look in Admiral N’Gomo’s eyes. Someone was going to get his ass royally chewed.

“So you found yourself on a damaged ship, barreling straight into the heart of enemy space?” Barnett asked. “What did you do?”

Mark told of the frantic preparations to get the weapons back online, and how he rigged the mess compartment for use as a crematorium following mass suicide.

“You were planning suicide?” the parliamentarian asked in an astonished tone. “Wasn’t that a bit extreme?”

“No, sir. General Order Seven requires us to avoid capture at all costs.”

“What’s that?”

Nadine Halstrom broke in. “Gareth, you know that the location of Earth is our most important secret. Our standing orders are for our people not to be taken alive and to keep human remains out of the hands of the Broa, even at risk to their own lives.”

“I assumed our troops would follow the Fifth Geneva Convention if captured. Name, rank, and serial letters only…”

“No, sir. If the Broa capture a live human being, they will not treat their prisoners humanely. The first thing they will do is dissect a few specimens to see what makes us tick. Even our dead bodies give them clues to the location of Earth.” He gave a few examples of why the human body was a road sign to the planet on which it evolved.

“Then you weren’t working to get your weapons online to fight off the Broa until help arrived?” Barnett asked.

“Our communications were down. We had no idea help was on the way. I wanted the missile launchers operational so I could piss off the Broa. With luck, they would take us out with a nuke.”

“Continue your briefing, Commander,” N’Gomo ordered.

Mark told them of detecting the approaching Broan ships and of his attempts to put a superlight missile into one or more of them, concluding with, “Unfortunately, our fire control system wasn’t up to the task. We missed every time. I expected the avenger coming up from the planet to make short work of us. Imagine my surprise when all three enemy craft spontaneously exploded!”

There were a few more questions concerning the number of survivors, etc. Landon turned to Lisa, “Commander Lisa Rykand will now take up the story.”

Lisa told them the same tale she had recounted at Brinks Base, ending with their tentative identification of a supposedly uninhabited system as the home star of the Broa.

“Has this been verified?” Nadine Halstrom asked.

“It is being checked as we speak, Madam Coordinator,” Landon answered. “Before our departure, I gave orders for the fleet to saturate the region and get it mapped as quickly as possible. Our ships will stay at least one light-year distant from Planet X. They will set up gravtennas. By observing which surrounding stars emit a steady stream of gravity waves, we will identify the other gateway stars besides Orimanda.”

“What then?” Lor Carnahan asked.

Taking a deep breath, Dan Landon put down the glass of sherry he had been nursing and said, “Once we have the home world and its subordinate capitals plotted, I recommend we hit them immediately with everything we have.”

#

There followed several seconds of silence. Both Carnahan and Barnett sipped their drinks, while Nadine Halstrom regarded Landon with a penetrating stare.

“Perhaps you had best explain your thinking, Admiral,” she said finally.

“Yes, Ma’am. At Sabator, we destroyed three of their ships with SMs. That is the same missile we used to distract them when our Q-ship evaded their naval craft while ex-filtrating Pastol. They have full audiovisual records and medical scans of our people from that mission and from Klys’kra’t. They know who we are.”

Lor Carnahan said, “What you are telling us, Admiral, is that we should never have authorized the Sabator mission.”

“Actually, no,” Landon replied. “It was a poorly thought out fiasco, I’ll grant you. However, I believe we learned something critically important.”

“What was that?”

“We discovered that the Broa are vulnerable.”

“Aren’t you forgetting their million star empire, Admiral?” Carnahan exploded.

Landon was unfazed. “No, sir. The impressive size of the Sovereignty proves my point. Whatever the reason, the Broa suffer from a low birthrate. This, in turn, causes them to be perennially shorthanded. Even more than Rome at its height, the slaves outnumber the masters.

“Add to that their ruling ethic, if you can call it that. Any time a new, technologically advanced race is discovered, they can’t leave it alone. They
must
conquer it because they do not allow potential competitors. They are like a wolf with an appetite that can’t be turned off. They gobble up everything within reach regardless of their capability to digest it.

“The Sovereignty is marked by two characteristics: One, their stars are weakly held. Two, their conquered subjects have no reason to remain loyal save fear. Those are the two conditions we hoped to exploit with Trojan Horse.”

 “That program hasn’t worked out the way we planned, has it?” the coordinator asked sardonically.

“It hasn’t had time to work out. We’ve been launching our Easter Eggs into enslaved systems for little more than a year. Most species haven’t even finished reading the instruction manual yet. What we discovered at Sabator suggests that we are being too subtle. We don’t have time to allow Trojan Horse to mature.”