Morgan's Return (38 page)

Davaskar shook his head. "Why would you do that?"

"I've been messing about with shift drive technology," Morgan said softly. "When I was building the shift drive for
Vulsaur
. What you want to do is build something small that will make the jump, then it sends you back a signal to tell you it worked. Maybe this is one of those, and it has gone somewhere it shouldn't have."

Davaskar shrugged. "Easily settled. Admiral Makasa can have his people blow the place up."

Makasa pulled a face. "We can try contacting Ushas."

Ravindra glanced at Morgan, giving permission. She could use
Vulsaur's
multi-dim capability to contact the equivalent receivers at Ushas.

Makasa shoveled more food into his mouth. The heat of the spices didn't seem to bother him much. He'd nearly finished the whole plate.

"No response from Ushas," Morgan said.

Makasa pushed his empty plate aside. "So we must assume the mother ship has destroyed the planet's communication systems, at the very least. Well then. This ship carries missiles, and energy weapons, does it not? What chance of returning, and doing the job ourselves?"

"Ourselves?" Davaskar couldn’t keep the scorn out of his voice. "This is a very well-armed yacht, but it's not a warship." He waved an arm, indicating out there nearer the sun. "What if that mother ship is still there?"

Makasa placed his palms flat on the table. "Captain, I appreciate your situation, but I'm sure Admiral Ravindra will agree that you bear some responsibility for the position we're in—"

"No." Davaskar slammed his hand on the table. "That fool there is responsible."

Glaring at the captain, Eastly sat up straighter. "I'll accept I was stupid. But the fact is we wouldn't have been there, it wouldn't have happened, if we hadn't gone looking for your ancestors. Admiral Makasa is right. Some of the blame is yours." His brown eyes glinted as he fixed Davaskar with an unapologetic stare.

Scowling, Davaskar switched to Manesai. "Admiral, this is not our problem. I'm happy to help where we can, but going back there is suicide. These aliens are no threat to us, to our people. Let them fix their own mess."

"For how long, Captain? How long do you think they will be no threat to us?" Prasad spoke softly. "Do we go home, and hope they don't have plans to eradicate all of us from the galaxy? Remember Artemis? We're descended from these people. The aliens probably won't be able to tell us apart."

"Except by dissecting us," Jirra murmured.

Ravindra was reminded yet again why he admired Prasad, ever calm, ever logical.

"I doubt we can blow the place with a missile," Morgan said. "We'd have to avoid their fighters, as well as the mother ship, find the right spot, and send a missile deep underwater. Even then, we couldn't be sure we'd succeeded."

Davaskar's jaw clenched. "Admiral, this is madness."

Morgan looked into all their faces, and said in Standard, "These are my people. I'm willing to try, and I'll try to avoid involvement from any of you, beyond getting me there."

"I take it you want to help, Morgan?" Makasa said.

"Like I said. I think I've got to go back there, back to that lab." She wasn't happy about it, her eyes sad.

What were the options? What else could they do? How was she proposing to get down there? Ravindra raised a hand. "Wait, wait, wait. What is your aim? What must we achieve? Morgan?"

"We have to do two things." She held up a finger. "One, we have to stop that signal, that transmission. After I've found out what I can about it, because it might be a clue to our alien friends." She held up a second finger. "Two, I want to send something after that model ship to destroy it."

"Then we have to hope they're using that as a channel to get to here." Jirra pushed food around her plate.

"We have to hope that somehow these signals have opened a gateway, some sort of portal, which will close without that energy," Morgan said. "If not… well, the more we can learn about them, the better we can fight them."

Damn
. She was right. "So. We go back."

Eastly stood. "I want to go with you. I'm to blame and I want to help fix it." His eyes held a feverish glitter.

To hell with that
. "No." Ravindra skewered the man with a stare. "You've done quite enough. If there is no other option, then I'll go with her." He raised a hand to shut them up. "I've been there before. And Morgan and I have faced some daunting odds in the past. We work together well."

Under the table, Morgan put a hand on his thigh. She didn't say anything, but she didn't need to.

Tullamarran , soft-footed, appeared to materialize at his side. "Let me go for you. Please."

Ravindra's heart warmed. There was nothing this man would not dare for him. "No, Tullamarran. Thank you, but it must be me."

Makasa couldn't keep the glimmer of a smirk off his face. "What do you propose?"

Morgan shrugged. "There's still a sub parked under the Temple. Even if the island has been destroyed, I expect the sub will still be there."

"Do we need a submarine?" The very thought of going back to the submarine was enough to have Ravindra's pulse hammering.

"What, you mean get in there from somewhere else? If there's a gateway into the laboratory from the island, it's been hidden for millennia. I don't think we have time to find it."

"The first issue will be getting you there," Davaskar said. "
Vulsaur
isn't atmosphere capable and you can bet the space station has been destroyed."

"We'll take the lander," Morgan said. The vehicle sat in
Vulsaur's
bay, a sleek, atmosphere-capable flyer. They'd used it already, several times, to visit planets on their journey.

Davaskar rolled his eyes. "You'll be target practice."

"Not if you can pretend to be something you're not," Prasad said.

"What, pretend to be a jellyfish?" Morgan waggled her fingers. Jirra giggled, but stopped as soon as Davaskar frowned at her.

Ravindra stared into the lieutenant's intelligent yellow eyes. "Explain."

"There will be junk in orbit. Be a piece of falling junk."

Morgan grinned, gazing at a spot above his head. "Not bad, Jirra. Good idea."

"The lander floats, I know. But how do we get down to the entrance?" Ravindra said. The very thought of all that pressure at the bottom of the ocean brought sweat to his forehead.

"Easy. Spacesuits. We just go over the side, drop down to the tunnel and walk up it. Then we get the sub, do the job at the lab and go back to pick up the lander." Grinning, she folded her arms. "Anybody got a better idea?" She scanned the faces.

"You want us to swim? In space suits?" Ravindra shook his head. Sometimes she was just plain silly. "We don't have any fins."

Her eyebrows jagged so briefly only he would have noticed. She hadn't considered that.

"Jetpacks," Eastly mumbled.

Everyone looked at him.

"You can get around underwater using jetpacks. They're built into the wetsuits. They suck in water, then fire it out behind. Can't you do something like that? You being so smart and all?"

"Basic thruster technology with a different propellant." Morgan's voice trailed away, then she was on her feet. "Right. I've got a lot to do. First, come up with something for you, Makasa, to send to the Fleet. Then I need something for propulsion while we're in the water, and I need to create a device to follow the model ship and blow it up. Jirra, I'm going to need your help."

Jirra rose to her feet.

"If anybody wants us, we'll be in the maintenance block."

Chapter 33
 

M
organ slipped into the cabin she shared with Ravindra, her night eyes set to max. He wasn't asleep. A sleeping man made noise, that rhythmic breathing, while a man awake made no noise at all. She undressed, dropping each garment on the floor. He'd complain in the morning, but that was too bad. When she slid into the bed he had his arm out, ready to gather her up and draw her against his skin. She snuggled into his warmth and the musky, spicy scent of him.

"Are you ready to go?" he asked. "Are you fully recovered? Your arm? Your head?"

"The arm is fine. My headache is wearing off. I'll be all right." She hesitated. He wouldn't like this, but it had to be said. "Ashkar, you don't have to come. Eastly—"

He snorted. "Eastly is a spoiled boy. I will come with you."

Yes, but Eastly wasn't afraid of the water, of being in the sea. And, ashamed as she might have been to say it, he was expendable, at least more so than Ravindra, especially if there was a war.

"Diving in space suits isn't like diving in wetsuits. We won't have rebreathers."

"So we'll have a fixed air supply, just like in space. But then, your intention is just to use the space suits to get the submarine. We'll only need the suits for the short hops."

She should have known he'd work out the logistics. "Yes."

He ran his fingers down her face, his touch little more than a tickle. "Yes, Morgan, I'm afraid. I don't like being underwater. But I'll do it, anyway. There is no-one else better suited. If there was, I would gladly delegate."

Her heart thudded. He'd never, ever admitted to fear before. She reached around for his face, angled his head down and kissed him, a deep, passionate, demanding kiss which he returned in kind.

He shifted his weight in the bed, so he lay over her. "And you? You're not afraid?"

"Of course I am. It's madness, but if it works, if we pull it off and stop an invasion…" her voice trailed off. What were the chances? She hadn't computed them, based as they were on guesses and estimates. Who wanted to know the odds if they weren't favorable?

He brushed her lips with his. "And if we die, we die together."

There was nothing more to say. His hands moved over her, sure and possessive, exciting every nerve they touched. She moaned, sliding her fingers into his hair. He trailed kisses from her mouth down to the hollow of her throat and lower to her breast. She savored him, remembering, recording every caress, his smell, his touch. Her hands lingered on the hard muscle of his back, trailed over his shoulder where the vulsaur's outstretched wings and claws flexed with his skin.

I love you, Ashkar
. This was the difference between sex and love, this feeling of being two parts of a whole, fitting together as one. This was what love felt like.

***

Vulsaur
came out of shift space behind the next planet out from Ushas, a rocky world with three small moons. Morgan set the ship as close to the largest moon as she could, and turned on the cloaking arrays, then set about checking where the aliens were.

Blast. "The mother ship is still there." The dark shape floated against Ushas's daylight hemisphere, a bloated black slug, huge in comparison to a multitude of smaller shadows.

"Looks like the planet has been hammered," Davaskar said. "No lights."

True. Only a smattering of telltale pinpricks of light brightened the darkness.

Morgan zoomed in on the smaller orbiting objects. Debris. Shattered fighters, a few large pieces of larger ships, and the space stations, and tiny, floppy objects. Bodies or body parts. The larger fragments would eventually fall, dragged to a fiery end in the planet's atmosphere but these others, the mortal remains of men and women, they would circle the planet for so much longer. She mourned for them.

"Any jellyfish?" Ravindra leaned over her shoulder, his breath warm on her ear.

"Some. Some were destroyed. Looks like they're collecting pieces." She showed him a thing shaped like a scoop, sweeping up bluish jelly.

"Waste not, want not," Davsakar murmured. "It looks like they may be busy with ordinance, too."

"We would have been," Ravindra said. "It's going to be dangerous."

"Which is good, in a way." Morgan smiled up at him. "The fewer jellyfish the better. And I'm good at dodging."

Timing was the thing. They needed to be out of sight of the mother ship if possible and yet be in a position to angle into the atmosphere in the correct place to drop next to the temple. This was the worst part. The waiting, when everything that could be done had been done and all you could think about was what might go wrong. What if they 'saw'
Vulsaur
? Who knew what sort of sensors they used? What if they 'saw' the lander? What if the aliens had taken over the planet?

Makasa sat in the common room, nursing a cup of kaff, his round face inscrutable. Why he needed to have the button done up on that high collar in a place like this was beyond her, but he'd always been like that. She'd never seen him out of uniform.

"Tell me about Cruickshank," Morgan said, sliding into a seat opposite him.

He almost started. "What do you want to know?"

"You destroyed more than one suspect Supertech. How did she get through?"

Makasa's mouth worked as if he was chewing on something. "A very good question. I can honestly say I had my doubts. But it's not just my decision. She seemed to be good at her work, malleable." He grinned. "Topped the class at the Academy."