McCollum - GIBRALTAR STARS (45 page)

Below the armored fortress atop the East Tower was a restaurant with a panoramic view. Mark and Lisa Rykand were seated next to a floor-to-ceiling window, gazing down toward the Harbourfront and Lake Ontario. Both found pressing their foreheads against the glass and looking straight down the wall made them dizzy. Vertigo, it seems, is primarily caused by having a visual connection with the ground.

“We ought to try the glass balcony if we have time,” Lisa said, as she chased a bit of scrambled egg around her plate with a fork. Her reference was to a gallery with glass walls and floor that jutted out the other side of the building. Rumor had it that people fainted when they looked down.

“No thanks. My heart had enough of a proof test at Sabator. I don’t want to drop dead sightseeing,” Mark answered, sipping his breakfast coffee.

“Chicken!”

“You go. I’ll hold the stimulator hypo.”

The time was 07:30 on a Monday morning. They had been on Earth just over a month and flown in from Europe late the previous day.

Most of the time, they’d been buried in European-H.Q., supporting the attack simulations. Lieutenant Cruz hadn’t been kidding when he said they would have to study
all
possible variations in planning their campaign. They tried several hundred thousand permutations.

Not that it had been all work. At least one day each week, they went sightseeing or picnicking in the Baden-Württemberg and Bavarian countryside. The small, picturesque villages and vineyards were as they had been for centuries, the result of Earth’s most draconian land use laws. Lisa opined that they reminded her of a neater version of the South of England. Mark found the rolling hills with their geometric rows of vines reminiscent of parts of Northern California.

This time it was Lisa who spotted their visitor first.

“Oh, my god! Look who is here!”

Mark turned to see Mikhail Vasloff approaching. At Meersburg, he had been all hail-fellow-well-met as he pumped them for information. Here, he looked worried.

 “Hello, Mikhail,” Mark said, as Vasloff closed the distance to their table. “Are you following us?”

“Not this time. I just came in to eat and saw the two of you sitting here. May I join you?”

“Certainly. Care for a cup of coffee?”

“Tea, please,” he said as he pulled out a chair and sat down.

Mark signaled the human waiter — the prices were that high — and Vasloff ordered. When he had prepared his tea, foregoing milk, but drowning it with sugar, he sipped noisily and replaced the cup on the saucer with a clink.

“You look troubled,” Lisa said.

“I am,” he replied. “What am I doing here?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“As I mentioned the last time we met, I have resources. We’ve been tracking your efforts since our last meeting. I know you have been running attack simulations at Meersburg.”

“Have we?” Mark asked.

“Don’t bother to deny it. The news is hardly a revelation. The shipyards are going full blast, we have ten different academies pumping out spacers and officers, and God only knows what percentage of industry is involved in the war effort. In fact, we are manufacturing very little else. Did you know that there is a two-year wait to purchase a ground car?”

Mark laughed. “Sorry, I haven’t been in the market lately.”

Vasloff continued: “The grand strategy required a human stargate network to ease the logistics problem, and
voila!
, there it is. We have a new base described as ‘impregnable’ somewhere out in deep space, and we seem to be flooding it with war materiel. At last tally, we had a ship departing for there every three days.

“Obviously, all of this preparatory work is to support a general offensive. The fact that you two and the Admiral are back here tells me that we’re just about ready. How am I doing so far?”

“Not bad,” Lisa replied. “But all of this has been in the news, so it isn’t exactly secret.”

“You finished your simulation work three days ago. Was that in the news?”

“No,” Mark answered. “That is supposed to be secret.”

Vasloff shrugged. “Given all of the above, I would say you are here to report your conclusions. What I don’t understand is why I am here.”

Mark smiled. In truth, he liked Mikhail. They had gotten to know one another on the first expedition. Spending two years sealed inside a sardine can in vacuum with someone will do that. You either like him or hate him by voyage end. Save for his quirk concerning interstellar exploration, he was a pleasant enough fellow.

“We’re giving you just what you asked for,” Lisa said. “We’re going to preview our results for a select group of movers and shakers. You were invited because you are leader of the opposition.”

“You mistake me for John Hargrove.”

“Not the political opposition,” Lisa replied. “The anti-war opposition.”

“Are you trying to co-opt me?” Vasloff asked.

Mark shrugged. “We can only give you the facts and let you come to your own conclusions.”

“What facts?”

“Sorry, but you’ll have to wait until the briefing, just like everyone else.”

#

The meeting hall was a soaring auditorium with seating for two hundred. Only about half the seats were filled. The World Coordinator and three of her advisors sat at a table on the raised platform, huddled over a printout of the agenda. Admiral Landon, Admiral N’Gomo, and Mark and Lisa sat at a second table. Between the tables was a podium. Above and behind that was a holocube even larger than the one they had used at Fleet H.Q.

From his position, Mark could see Vasloff in the back of the room conferring with four others, three men and a woman. From their gestures, the conversation was heated.

As the chronometer counted down to the appointed time, the auditorium began to fill. The process was slowed by Security. Marines were checking credentials, running bio scans, and searching for weapons. Two members of the press were turned away, to loud objections.

At 09:00, the amplified sound of a gavel echoed through the auditorium. The doors were closed a few minutes later and the walls began to emit the quiet hum that indicates a privacy field in operation. Simultaneously, several people on communicators put their instruments away. With the privacy field energized, all connections to the outside world were severed and no electronic device not built into the hall’s suite of instruments would function.

Nadine Halstrom rose from her seat and moved to the podium. “Good morning. Thank you for coming. We’ve invited you here today because you represent a broad spectrum of political thought and public opinion. This morning we are going to report on the progress of the war, and of the next phase in our fight against the Broa. I would swear all of you to secrecy, but as we all know, politicians aren’t very good at that sort of thing.

“So, ladies and gentlemen, let your consciences be your guide. Some of you are opposed to our policies and I respect your opinions. All I ask is that you hear us out. I believe the facts may change some of your minds. At the very least, I ask that you not engage in reflexive opposition. We all want the same thing… to keep humanity safe. We merely disagree on the best way that is to be achieved. Admiral N’Gomo. Would you like to make any remarks?”

“No, Madam Coordinator. Let’s get to it.”

“Very well. Admiral Daniel Landon is the commanding officer of all Terrestrial forces beyond the Crab. Admiral Landon, the floor is yours.”

Landon rose and moved to the podium. Like the other Navy people on the dais, he was resplendent in full dress uniform, a striking figure in silver-and-black, with three stars on each shoulder.

“Thank you, Madam Coordinator. I will begin today with a progress report. Please hold your questions until I finish.”

Landon quickly sketched out the progress they had made in the six years since a majority in parliament voted to take the fight to the Broa. He spoke of the return to Brinks Base and of the mission to Pastol.

“We succeeded at Pastol where we failed at Klys’kra’t. Commanders Mark and Lisa Rykand, seated here on the dais, were instrumental in obtaining a planetary database, a compendium of information the Broa feel safe giving their slaves. Think of it as the Library of Parliament Collection.

“The database was everything we hoped it would be. It has diagrams of stargate interconnectivity, economic data for a million different worlds, biological and cultural data for those worlds’ native species, and more. There are even tide tables for planets with large moons and landing instructions for just about every spaceport in the Sovereignty.

“Of course, the first thing we used the database for was to assess the size, location, and extent of the Broan domain. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to introduce you to our enemy.”

The holocube lit up to display a three-dimensional view of the Milky Way viewed from above. In addition to the massive black hole at its center and the long bar that bisects the galactic core, the diagram labeled the four major arms and a number of lesser arms spiraling outward from the central bulge.

Sol was a bright emerald star halfway between the edge of the core and the rim. It was perched on the inside turn of one of the smaller arms, labeled the Orion Spur, an offshoot of the Sagittarius Major Arm. Seven thousand light years outboard from Sol lay the Perseus Major Arm, in which an irregular blob of yellow stars floated.

Landon continued: “The Sovereignty measures five thousand light-years along its major axis and two thousand across the minor. It contains approximately one hundred million stars, one million of which are inhabited.

“Since the Sovereignty occupies the next galactic arm out, the good news is that the separation between the closest Broan star and Sol is over five thousand light-years. This means that our early fears that they might intercept our radio signals were overblown.

“Our next major operation against the Broa was in the Vrathalatar system. The species there was exterminated by the Broa about a century ago. Having come across the record of the atrocity in the data base, our researchers noted the system still listed as having a stargate. We sent an expedition to salvage the gate and return it to Brinks Base for study.

 “The gate proved to be fully operational, with computers chock full of useful information, including complete technical specifications. When combined with what our physicists here on Earth were learning, the information allowed us to build our own gates.

“Our biggest problem in taking the fight to the enemy has been the year-plus it takes to travel from Hideout to Sol. With the Vrathalatar gate at our disposal, we were able to shorten the trip to less than a month. We now have eight stargates in operation in the New Eden system, paired up with eight more in an empty patch of space we call Grand Central Terminus. Our logistics problems have been solved.”

Landon went on to speak of the Q-ship missions and then the Sabator mission. A low muttering washed through the audience when he spoke of the disaster there. Landon waited for them to quiet before continuing:

 “You are right to be concerned, ladies and gentlemen. However, even with what befell us, the mission was ultimately successful. Following the rescue of our stranded crew, we noted a Broan courier departing the system at high speed. One of our cruisers trailed it all the way back to their home system.”

“Which brings me to the reason we are all here this morning. We have been running simulations of various strategies we might use to bring the Broan Sovereignty to its knees. Let me show you one of them.”

The holocube switched to a new view. It was the diagram of the Sabator system with its six stargates. Landon explained what they were about to see and keyed the simulation to begin. Once again, green blips materialized at the edge of the system, fired their SMs, and were gone. Elapsed time: 4.7 seconds.

“That, ladies and gentlemen, is a real time depiction of how long it will take us to destroy the Sabator stargates.”

This time the buzzing was leavened with claps and cheers. He waited for the crowd to grow silent a second time. While he waited, Landon glanced to where Mikhail Vasloff and his friends were seated. They did not look happy.

When he began again, he said, “Next, you will see the results of a full-scale attack into the heart of the Sovereignty.”

The diagram changed to show the overall stargate network. The egg-shape of the Broan region of space was apparent despite the stylized format of the diagram. The view expanded to drill deep into the fog of hourglass symbols and dimly glowing red lines. As the view expanded, System X and its surrounding stars came into view. Landon keyed the simulation.

There was the sudden flash of magenta in the center of the cube as more than one hundred stars simultaneously lost their stargates. Then came a steady expansion of the affected zone. When the timescale showed 500 ‘days’ and the simulation halted, the count of neutralized stars stood at 12,000.

“That is how we plan to attack our enemies. We will launch a coordinated initial assault against every point of Broan power of which we are aware, including the home star. Once we’ve disrupted their trade routes, a small contingent of ships will tarry in important systems to deal with any replacement of gates. The rest of our ships will disperse on a carefully calibrated mission of destruction. Our xenologists project that by taking out the most important enemy stars, we will trigger a general political collapse throughout the Sovereignty.

“Are there any questions?”

#

Chapter Forty-Six

“I have a question, Admiral!” Mikhail Vasloff said, climbing to his feet. He was one of dozens, but Landon had his eye on his one-time teammate.

“Mr. Vasloff. Somehow I thought you might.”

“Could you put up that diagram of the galaxy again?”

“Certainly.”

“You say that the nearest the Sovereignty comes to Earth is 5000 light-years. In fact, it’s in another arm of the galaxy altogether, is it not?”

“It is.”

“Then there was never any possibility they would somehow stumble over Earth.”

“Never
any
possibility? The probability is not as high as we feared, but it is not zero.”