Authors: Doug J. Cooper
Criss, seated at the scout’s ops
bench, studied a projected image of the Kardish dreadnaught. Its black
featureless hull offered no hints of the world inside. Exhausted from their
recent travails and bored from the monotony, Cheryl and Juice slumped in the
chairs behind Criss in a restless sleep.
A hatch needs to open at some point
, thought Criss. It
might be for the passage of drones, supply ships, or troop carriers. They may
be leaving the Kardish vessel to continue the campaign against Earth, or
returning from the surface after a period of deployment. Whatever the event, Criss
waited, poised to act, certain an opportunity would present itself.
Hours passed and still he waited. A flicker drew his
attention, and a slit of light signaled the rise of a hangar door. He executed
a thrust-pulse, and the scout started a slow drift toward the opening.
“Rise and shine. It’s show time,” he called back to his
leadership. Cheryl popped awake, eyes alert and ready for action. Juice yawned
and stretched, then leaned back and closed her eyes.
“C’mon, sleepy head,” said Cheryl, reaching over and shaking
her forearm. Juice sat upright and rubbed both eyes with her palms.
As the hangar door rose, the growing flood of light darkened
with shadows, and then like a beehive emptying in attack, small craft poured
out of the opening—dozens, then hundreds, then thousands. Instead of a swarm,
though, the stream of craft formed a line that stretched from the Kardish
vessel and began to encircle Earth.
Criss’s plan had been to sneak in on the heels of a small pack
of craft either entering or exiting through the vessel opening. He hadn’t
anticipated a procession of ships filing out for such an extended period.
“Whoa,” said Juice, digesting the scene. “Criss, you need to
stop this.” She brought her knees up under her chin and hugged her legs. She
looked over at Cheryl and back at the image projection.
“If stopping them is possible at all,” said Criss, “our best
odds lie with the original plan of fighting from the inside.”
Tap.
The
scout moved forward below the line of Kardish craft.
“You’re going under them?” asked Cheryl.
Criss nodded. “They move in a predictable formation.”
Swipe
.
“Or they have been, anyway.” The stream of Kardish transports flowed outward,
and as long as they continued their current pattern, a safe margin existed for
the scout to slip beneath.
Criss’s decision matrix sprouted branches suggesting he stay
outside to see how the threat developed. But the strongest branch, his pathway
forward, concluded that the coordination of this remarkable deployment consumed
the attention of the gatekeeper crystal and the Kardish support crew remaining
on the dreadnaught. His best opportunity lay inside, now, and he acted
accordingly.
The scout drifted through the hatch below the exiting craft.
When it crossed the threshold of the hangar opening, the gravity of the Kardish
vessel grabbed the scout, tugging it downward toward the deck below.
Tap
.
Criss slowed the scout’s descent but let it drop as fast as he dared.
To avoid the line of departing craft, he directed the scout
toward the outer hull of the vessel, staying near a huge wall that divided the ship
into sections. The moment the ship touched, he powered down the engines and all
peripheral subsystems.
Tapping in front of him, Criss projected a panoramic image
of the scene outside the scout. To the right of the display, a string of Kardish
craft rose one after another from a vast, open deck.
They watched the hypnotic scene in silence until Cheryl broke
the spell. “How do we know if they made it? And how do we find them if they
did?”
As he panned the inside of the dreadnaught in a slow sweep,
much of what Criss saw echoed an eerie familiarity with the time he’d spent on
the other Kardish vessel two years earlier. An expanse of open field deck
spread out in front of the scout. A huge wall dividing the ship into sections filled
the view to the left. The drone garage rose on the horizon straight across the
field, and the vista of the gray-white box city showed in the distance to the
right.
He centered the image on the line of departing Kardish
transports. Only one row of craft remained and the exodus would be complete. A
movement behind the last craft drew Criss’s attention, and he shifted focus to
view an imposing flatbed truck driving out from the main thoroughfare of the
box city.
Continuing past the last of the transport ships, it headed
across the deck in a straight line toward the scout. It stopped near the center
of the field, well away from their position.
Criss’s interest wasn’t in the truck, but in the awkward
contraption the vehicle carried. It had a spherical head about as wide as the
truck bed and a collection of long, thin spider-like legs folded at unlikely
angles underneath. The result was a compact clump. He dug deep into his
knowledge record and couldn’t associate this device with anything that hinted
at its purpose or function.
“What the hell is that?” asked Cheryl.
Before Criss could speak, Juice added, “If we destroy it,
will we stop the attack?”
Criss answered in reverse order. “We can destroy it if we
act now, but it will be suicide for us, and I am confident the Kardish would
replace it with another in short order.” He zoomed in for a closer view. “As
for what it is, I don’t know.”
The last troop transport lifted from the deck, and as soon
as it cleared the overhead hangar door, the contraption rose from the truck bed
and followed.
They tracked it as it floated up to the hatch in the dreadnaught
hull. When it passed through the opening and out into space, the legs beneath
the head unfolded. Criss decided they looked more like the tentacles of a
jellyfish than legs of a spider.
What is your purpose?
It moved out of view, and the hangar door closed. They were now
shut inside the dreadnaught, while outside, invaders were preparing to attack Earth.
Criss swiveled to face Cheryl and Juice. “That deployment is
an overwhelming military force. Earth will suffer tremendous destruction and
loss of life, and perhaps even the annihilation of human civilization. I agree
with Sid’s instinct. The way to stop them is from here, inside the Kardish
vessel.”
Rising from the pilot’s chair, he continued. “Given the
number of craft involved, the gatekeeper must focus resources on coordination
and management. I’d say we have five or six hours before it’s too late to stop
them. What can we achieve in that time?”
“You have an idea.” Cheryl’s intonation made it a statement.
“I killed the Kardish prince. I’ve known they’d come for
retribution, and I’ve been open and honest with you about that. Surrender me to
the Kardish on the condition that this end.”
Juice let out a gasp. “No.” Her chin quivered, and she looked
at Cheryl. “The leadership will not consider this option for the next five
hours, if at all.”
Cheryl started to speak, flashed a shadow of a smile, and
continued. “We have three people, two objectives, and one ship.”
Criss’s crystal lattice experienced a new stimulation.
You
count me as a person!
Then he focused on her message. “You see our two objectives
as discovering a means of stopping the Kardish and of finding Sid, who may have
discovered such a means.”
Cheryl nodded. “Let’s devote our first efforts to finding
Sid. If he and Lenny made it here, they’ve had time to hatch a plan. While we
look, we’ll brainstorm. If we don’t find them, we’ll act on our best idea as time
runs out.”
“I agree,” said Juice. “But it needs to be a better plan
than tossing Criss to the wolves.”
Criss sensed that Juice’s affection for him and Cheryl’s affection
for Sid colored this decision. Protecting them—his leadership—dominated his existence.
If Earth dies, they will too, and I’ll have failed.
While he was willing to save them and Earth by sacrificing
himself, he didn’t yet know how to surrender in a way that would guarantee such
an outcome. He’d experienced the Kardish gatekeeper’s savage cruelty when it
attacked him in his vault under the mountain. He didn’t trust the powerful
crystal.
* * *
“Where are you off to?” asked Cheryl
as Criss made for the rear of the scout.
“To get some gear. Might you search for Sid’s mark until I
return?” He disappeared down the passageway.
Cheryl slid into the pilot’s chair and toyed with the image
projection system as she considered a best approach.
“What’s he talking about?” Juice perched on the edge of her
seat and leaned forward to be near Cheryl.
Cheryl zoomed in for a close-up of the drone building visible
from the scout. “We assume that Sid and Lenny made it on board, landed
somewhere in this section of the ship, and haven’t been captured. If any one of
those aren’t true, we won’t find them in our five-hour window.”
And those
conditions alone put any hope of finding them at astronomical odds.
She stopped zooming when the image of the front drone
building filled the view from top to bottom. The projection was wide enough to
see a hundred or so drone cubicles. She started moving the image along the
length of the building.
“If they made it safely, Sid will have left some sort of
sign for us so we can find him.”
“What did he say it’d look like?” asked Juice.
“We didn’t discuss it.” Cheryl’s eyes remained forward as
she spoke. “But soldiers have been leaving signs since there were armies. Leave
a trail of breadcrumbs for your buddies to follow. That sort of thing.”
“Geez. This section of the ship alone is the size of a small
city. We’re looking for a needle in a haystack.”
“I know.” Cheryl could feel her voice crack and hoped Juice
didn’t notice. The projected image reached the end of the garage near the
dividing wall.
“There!” said Juice, pointing.
Cheryl froze the view. “What?”
“That spear thing? It points right at a door.”
Cheryl zoomed in on a long pole where the shaft had a
curious-looking hook and spear combination attached to the tip. It hung between
two drone cubicles near the end of the garage. Cheryl’s pulse quickened.
The
spear points right at a door in the dividing wall.
“Criss,” Cheryl called as she pulled back on the view so the
door and spear were both visible.
Criss came up behind Cheryl, set down a pack he was carrying,
and looked over her shoulder. “May I?”
Cheryl leaned back so Criss could tap and swipe. He moved the
view back along the drone garage in the direction away from the wall and stopped
panning when an identical spear with hook, also hung between two cubicles, came
into view.
Swipe.
He continued along the building and located another
spear.
“You have the right thought process, but given that a number
of these are positioned the same way, I don’t think it’s a sign from Sid.”
Criss stepped back, Juice let out a sigh, and Cheryl resumed
her search.
“Let’s do a complete three sixty,” Juice said. “He’d want to
make his sign visible from this deck. Let’s see his options.”
Cheryl began panning in a circle around the scout. The image
shifted from the drone garage onto the dividing wall, and as it tracked the wall
surface near the deck, they saw lots of big and small doors at irregular
intervals, but few other features.
As they neared the end of the dividing wall, a small
facility came into view that included a row of drones lying end to end on a
track. Cheryl backed up and gave the facility a second look and then continued the
scan, moving to the outer hull of the dreadnaught.
The hull wall looked like an overgrown slide circuit. Jam
packed with objects of different shapes, thousands of items were attached to
the hull and connected together with a tangle of lines, conduits, and ducts.
“What a mess,” said Juice. “If I were Sid, this’d be my last
choice. It’d be too hard to leave a sign and think we’d see it without the
Kardish noticing.”
Cheryl continued the scan with a turn onto the front of the
box city. Off-white buildings of different widths and heights, all with
featureless facades, extended for block after city block. A final turn brought
them full circle to a view of the front drone garage.
She pulled back on the view so they could see the garage in
its entirety. “There are a hundred or more drone buildings behind this one, and
we can’t see any of them from here. If Sid and Lenny had flight control and
chose where to land their drones, they wouldn’t pick the front building. It’s
too exposed. And if the Kardish gatekeeper crystal controlled their landing,
the odds of it putting them in one of these front cubicles seems, I don’t know…unlikely.”
She sat back and looked at Juice. “This section of the
dreadnaught loses pressure every time that overhead hangar slides opens, so I’m
thinking they’d try to get through a door in the dividing wall. On the other Kardish
vessel, we found that the next section over always had air.”
Resuming the search, Cheryl scanned down the dividing wall
for a second time, slowing every time she came to a door.
I’d put an
X
or
an arrow on the wall near the door latch.
Together they studied each door, and
she zoomed in on anything that might be the sign they sought.
After five minutes, they’d searched a dozen doors for signs
or markings from Sid. Cheryl pulled back on the view. The dividing wall with all
its doorways stretched into the distance, and the drone garage structure blocked
their view of any doors that might be located in the far portion of the wall.
“At this rate,” she said. “It’ll take hours to check the
doors we can see. And if I’m right about them parking in one of the middle garage
buildings, then they’d use a door farther down that’s close to their landing
point. We can’t see those doors from here.”