Beyond the Shroud of the Universe (2 page)

“That concludes my report,” Calvin said for the second time in three days. “Are there any questions?”

Unlike the chaos that followed this question in the governmental headquarters building, the mood in Fleet Command was somber. Everyone in the room could see the magnitude of what the fleet had been tasked with. How could you defend an entire planet, much less its individual cities, when aliens could emerge anywhere, at any time, and attack? What did they have that could stop an Efreeti ship from appearing and conducting an orbital bombardment of Earth before any of the Terran forces could stop it?

Nothing.

It could happen in the next five minutes, and the military would be completely unable to prevent it. Everyone knew it, and no one had a solution. All the eyes in the room turned to Fleet Admiral James Wright, the head of the Terran Navy, who sat at the head of the table.

For his part, the admiral looked out the window at the Terran Governmental Headquarters, visible across the lake, deep in thought. Finally, nodding to himself, he returned his gaze to the podium. “So Calvin,” he said, “you’ve had the longest to think about it, what are your recommendations?”

Although the question might have seemed out of place to some of the non-American members of the staff, Admiral Wright had a long, personal relationship with Calvin, going back to the Sino-American War of 2018. Although their working relationship had been strained at first, the admiral had come to count on Calvin’s decision making. That trust was rewarded with a string of Terran victories across a number of systems in two universes. And, more to the point, Calvin had more off-world fighting experience than any other Terran officer.

“I don’t think we have a lot of choices,” Calvin said. “We have to take care of Terra first. Don’t get me wrong; I’d love to help the Aesir, and they need all the help they can get. Even with the information we gave them, they are going to be overwhelmed by the combined forces of the Efreet and Jotunn if they don’t get any help. Still, we have to take care of Earth first.”

“I’m sorry,” Admiral Ackermann said. “Who were the Jotunn again?”

“The Jotunn are frost giants allied with the Efreet,” Calvin said. “They stand about 16 feet high and weigh over a ton. Not only does their size make them difficult to stop on an individual basis, their ships are similarly oversized. For example, their battle cruisers are about the size of a Mrowry dreadnought.”

“That is about 1.5 of your miles in length,” Captain Andowwn, the Mrowry attache to the Terran military, replied. A felinoid race, the Mrowry were the Terrans’ closest allies on the galactic stage, with the elven Aesir close behind.

“That is…quite large,” the German admiral said. “We will need more ships if we are to meet them in combat.”

“That’s the problem,” Calvin said. “Well half of it, anyway. As much as I’d like to help the Aesir, I don’t think we can. Unless something changed while we were gone, we barely have enough ships to defend our own planets in the face of this new threat; if we send some to aid the Aesir, we are leaving ourselves perilously open to attack.”

Admiral Wright’s eyes found the only civilian in the room. Not surprisingly, he was tapping on a data pad. “Mr. Brown, could we get a status on ship production?”

Andrew Brown jumped as his name was called. Brown ran the Fleet Material Management Network, or ‘Replicator Command,’ whose sole purpose was to ensure the Republic of Terra’s replicators ran as efficiently as possible. Products of advanced alien technology, the replicators could take raw materials and turn them into any finished product for which they had a blueprint. The biggest replicators could even produce super dreadnoughts, the largest class of ships.

Calvin had first met Andrew Brown when he was the plant manager for Boeing’s Airplane Programs Manufacturing Site in Renton, Washington, during the war with China. Brown’s experience managing aircraft production facilities had been instrumental in his success with Replicator Command…although it looked to Calvin like Brown’s hairline was rapidly receding, probably due to the stress involved.

“Ah, yes,” Mr. Brown replied. He tapped the pad two more times. “Our fleet remains at three ships, the cruiser
Vella Gulf
and the battleships
Terra
and
Domus
. We also have the former Efreeti cargo ship
Spark
that Lieutenant Commander Hobbs brought back, if you count it. Although we do not have many active ships, our ship building facilities are just beginning to hit their stride.”

He looked at his pad. “The republic is up to five replicators—”

“Excuse me,” Calvin interrupted. “Did you say
five?
You’ve been busy.”

“Yes, we have,” Brown replied with a smile. He looked around the room and saw questions on several of the faces. “For those of you outside of Replicator Command, replicators range in size from Class 1, which can only make minor items, up to Class 8, which is capable of producing a super dreadnought. Class 1 replicators are found on some of the medium-size and larger ship classes where they are used to replace equipment that breaks. Class 8s are enormous in size, and are relatively static.”

Brown’s focus returned to Calvin. “In addition to the Class 2 replicator on the moon and the Class 6 we got from the Mrowry, we also towed the Class 8 you captured back to our asteroid belt. I knew that wouldn’t be enough, so we made a Class 5 replicator with the Class 6, and another Class 6 with the Class 8. We sent the Class 5 to Domus so they could begin shipbuilding, and we stationed the new Class 6 in the asteroid belt with the Class 8. It took some time to do all of this, as well as to create the infrastructure required to operate them effectively.”

He smiled. “I’ll tell you what, though,” Brown said, pausing for effect; “once you get a Class 8 set up, it can generate infrastructure
fast
. The amount of material it consumes in a day is nothing short of staggering…but you wanted to know about our ship status. All five replicators are now in operation making ships, and you will see a number of new ships very soon.”

He motioned, and the lights dimmed. “If you look at the screen, I can show you what I mean.” He tapped on his pad, and a picture of a tube in space appeared on the screen. “This is the Class 8 replicator four months ago. For scale, do you see these little points of light?” He indicated a group of about 50 small dots. “Those are
Reliable
-class shuttles, and each is over 200 feet long. The replicator is over two
miles
long.”

There was a collective intake of breath. Even though the officers knew the replicator was big, few realized just
how
enormous it really was.

“For the record,” Brown continued, “the dots represent one
day’s
worth of production.” The crowd gasped again. “Of course, that was one day’s worth before we had all of them to help tow asteroids to the replicator. We actually ran out of raw materials at 8:00 in the morning. If we hadn’t, we could have built several hundred more that day.” Another gasp.

“Here’s the Class 8 today.” The picture changed, and the crowd had its biggest gasp yet. Emerging from the replicator was a ship that dwarfed it. “The super dreadnought
Thermopylae
should be ready next week. It is fully three miles long and masses over 10 million tons.”

“Oh, man,” Calvin said. “I am soooo ready to have that on my side.”

“In addition to the
Thermopylae
,” Brown continued, bringing up the next picture, “we also have the battleship
Hood
within a week of completion at one of the Class 6s and the battleship
Yamato
finished at the other.” The picture changed to a battleship alongside one of the replicators. “Now that we have everything in place for mass production, we will have the makings of a fleet soon, but even with a Class 8 replicator and two Class 6s, it still takes time.”

“Time we don’t have,” Calvin said. “And, even when we get them, they won’t be able to make the jump to the Jinn Universe until we get the metal required to make their jump modules…and the time required to refit the modules into the ships. Also, we’re still working on developing effective weapons and tactics for fighting the Efreet, but we haven’t figured
them
out yet, either. And even with implants, training the crew isn’t going to happen overnight. The bottom line is we simply aren’t ready for a fight with the Efreet.”

“Speaking of which,” Admiral Wright said, looking at Brown, “Do we have a source for getting the unobtanium, or whatever the hell you need to make the jump modules?”

“The caliph in the anti-Keppler-22 system has said he would be happy to let us mine it there.”

“Anti-Keppler-22?” one of the wet navy admirals asked.

“Anti-Keppler-22 is the system in the Jinn Universe that corresponds to Keppler-22 in our universe,” Brown explained. “The problem with getting the needed material from there is the system isn’t close to here, and the material decays in this universe if it’s untreated. Somewhat explosively. If a ship left anti-Kepler-22 with 100 pounds, there would only be 10 pounds remaining by the time the ship arrived here, if the ship wasn’t destroyed in the attempt. It has to be kept very closely confined and processed immediately, or it is quite dangerous.”

“How much do we need for a jump module?” Admiral Wright asked.

“We need a little more than a pound of the metal for each module,” Brown replied, “and the larger a ship is, the more modules it needs to be able to jump; for example, battleships need eight.” He sighed. “I hate to suggest it, but I think the best thing we could do would be to send the Class 2 replicator from the moon to Keppler-22 ‘b,’ or, even better, to jump it into the Jinn Universe and have it make the jump modules there. It could also fashion more of the transportation rods needed to jump people between the universes while it’s there.”

“What about the indigenous people on Keppler-22 ‘b’?” Admiral Babineaux asked from down the table. “Will they mind if we set up on their planet?”

“I doubt it,” Calvin said. “The people there are the equivalent of the Mayan Indians of a millennia ago. They still think of us as gods or demi-gods when we go there. They shouldn’t be an issue. I don’t think there’d be a problem with running the replicator in the Jinn Universe, either. I’m sure the caliph would love to have us there to help defend the system while his nation learns to defend itself.”

“As I understand it, we can’t stay in the other universe long-term, though, can we?” Admiral Wright asked. “Isn’t there some sort of disease or something you get?”

“Yes sir,” Calvin replied. “The two universes aren’t completely compatible. Just like some of the metal we need from their universe breaks down here, silver and gold from here break down in their universe. Something also happens to people who stay too long in the opposite universe. Eventually, they sicken and die. We can operate the replicator in the other universe, but any Terrans manning it will have to come back to our universe periodically, or they will die. One of our pilots, Lieutenant Dan Knaus, was trapped in the other universe for a couple of months, but he crossed back and forth several times and doesn’t appear to have any long-term health issues.”

“Got it,” Admiral Wright said. “Although the situation won’t be remedied within the next couple of months, we’re making progress on our lack of ships and jump modules. But I think you said that was only half the problem?”

“Yes sir,” Calvin replied. “In addition to not having enough ships capable of taking the fight to the enemy, the other part of the problem is that we don’t know the nature of our enemy; we don’t know what we’re trying to defend
against
. We don’t know for sure what’s on anti-Earth and anti-Domus although we have anecdotal evidence that the Efreet are across the shroud of the universe from Earth.”

Admiral Wright raised an eyebrow. “Shroud of the universe?” he asked.

“Yes sir,” Calvin said. “That’s what the Sila call the boundary between our two universes. They think of it as a veil that can be pierced, and, to answer your earlier question on what we ought to do, I think we need to pierce it here on Earth and find out what the hell’s on the other side.”

“Wouldn’t it be better not to antagonize them?” Admiral Babineaux asked. “Perhaps they don’t know we exist. Shouldn’t we build up our strength first and then cross over in force?”

“No sir, I don’t think so,” Calvin replied. “Captain Nightsong, one of the Aesir, was here several hundred years ago, and he said there unequivocally
are
Efreet on anti-Earth. Even worse, they already know we exist too, because some of them have crossed over in the past. If anti-Earth is really the Efreeti capital, as we’ve been told, then it’s better if we find out first, before they find out about us. I’d rather negotiate with our ships holding their orbitals than vice versa.”

“They may know we exist,” Admiral Babineaux said, “but it is unlikely they know we are the same people who destroyed their ship. They probably don’t even know about the attack. How could they? Wouldn’t the Efreet have to use our stargate to get to their capital to tell them?”

“We have been
told
the Efreet don’t have faster-than-light drives, but we don’t
know
that for sure,” Calvin replied. “Are you willing to bet the future of the Earth on that, sir? I’m not.” He turned to Admiral Wright. “Honestly sir, I think we need to mount a small operation across the boundary to find out what we’re dealing with, not only here, but on Domus, too. That is the
only
way we’re going to be able to prepare for them.”