Authors: Doug J. Cooper
Jack stepped into a shadow and,
recalling Cheryl’s comment about the degraded concealment of his ghost suit, kept
his back to the road. He waited for the cart to pass, watching over his shoulder
as it went by. He was surprised so see that it held only one Kardish. He
expected them to be traveling in teams.
Acting on impulse, he turned, lifted his arm and fired a
bolt, hitting the driver in the back. The alien slumped forward, and the cart
slowed to a stop. He ran over and confirmed that the fellow was dead. Pushing on
the frame of the cart, he discovered that it rolled easily, so he kept pushing
and moved it onto a side street.
He studied the driver’s clothing, considering taking his
outfit and attempting an impersonation routine, but discarded the idea. With
their pale skin and blond hair, the Kardish all seemed to be created from the
same pool of DNA. Anyone who saw him would know he was an imposter.
The alien’s boots had sturdy laces. Jack didn’t understand their
culture of ornate clothing and didn’t dwell on it. He bent over, pulled the
laces off both boots, and tied the ends together to fashion a longer cord. He then
hefted the driver upright, looped the cord around the driver’s chest, and tied
him to the seat support.
Standing back, he surveyed his handiwork. The driver’s head
hung awkwardly to one side, and his body slumped in the seat in an unnatural
fashion. But from a distance and overhead, the charade might hold up. Jack got
in on the passenger side, slid close to the driver, examined the cart controls,
and found them to be simple and intuitive.
Using one hand to prop up the driver’s head, Jack engaged
the cart. “Off we go, mate.”
He drove around the block, back onto the main road, and
turned toward the near dividing wall. A few blocks ahead, the environment
seemed somehow brighter. He was trying to decide what specifically was
different when it became obvious. The road led straight into a huge open area.
He swerved the cart onto a side lane, followed by a quick
turn into an alley, then hopped out. “You stay here,” he said to the driver.
“I’ll be right back.” He updated his body count as he walked.
Four to three.
Definitely moving in the right direction.
Staying to the backstreets, he worked his way to the open
area. A wide road ran down the long border where the box city ended and the
open area began. He didn’t cross it, but stayed back in a sheltered spot where
he could study the scene in front of him. As the details of the site registered
in his brain, he became increasingly alarmed.
It was an airfield, or perhaps more accurately, a space
port, and it was so astonishingly large, he was having difficulty judging its
size. He guessed that a dozen Blackworks hangars could fit inside it.
It extended the entire width of the Kardish vessel and was
at least as long as it was wide. He could see the curve of the vessel hull in
the distance as it rose from the field deck on his left, arced up overhead, and
descended down to meet the deck on his right. The most prominent features in
the vessel’s hull were massive hangar doors overhead. And because they were
fitted into the hull, when the hangar doors opened, it would be to the vacuum
of empty space.
The reason for the hangar doors was sitting right in front
of him. Military craft. Row upon row of weaponized death machines. With no
place for a pilot to sit, these small, agile craft could only be drones.
The drones were parked in an immense garage-like shelving
unit that was five tiers high. He looked left to right and tried to count the
rows of shelves. There were too many, but his rough tally reached two hundred.
He looked down the row in front of him, and it faded into the distance. He
guessed two hundred deep, but that was just a guess. Two hundred rows that were
two hundred deep and stacked five high meant two hundred thousand drones. Two
hundred thousand war craft, each a mobile arsenal.
The drone garage was huge, but it occupied only a fraction
of the total expanse in front of him and was positioned in the center of what
was an otherwise open, empty deck. On either side, two vast fields ran from the
drone garage all the way out to the hull. He presumed these open fields were to
provide for an orderly passage of swarms of drones as they flew in and out
through the hangar doors above.
As Jack moved back to the cart, he mentally processed his
discovery. It was clear he had to reorient his thinking about the Kardish.
Could such an assemblage of armaments be something a passive culture would
create for self-defense? No, he concluded, these were the trappings of a
warrior race. The drone armada was a tool they used to attack and conquer, or
perhaps simply to attack and destroy.
He tried to imagine the Union going into battle against such
a force. It seemed clear that Earth would be defenseless against a sky
blackened with these drones. Given what he now knew, he was glad that Fleet Command
had stood firm on the notion that Earth shouldn’t provoke a confrontation.
He reached the cart and climbed back in. “Move over, mate,”
he said to the dead driver. “You’re hogging the seat.” He drove out of the
alley and stuck to smaller lanes as he made his way back to Cheryl, Cait, and
their hideaway.
As he purred along, he thought about how few Kardish he’d
seen since their arrival. A warrior race would have legions of soldiers. The
streets should be full of search parties hunting them down. Granted, this
vessel was huge. Many thousands of troops could appear as sparse numbers if
spread out. But it was still hard to square up the idea of a warrior race with
the apparent absence of troops.
The drones might tell part of the story. Maybe there was so
much automation embedded in their society that they were able to conquer
planets with a small crew. Or maybe this was a forward ship designed for a
first attack, with troop ships following later. Yet the Kardish had remained in
Earth orbit for twenty years, the whole time carrying the means to destroy the
planet many times over, and had never shown any signs of aggression.
He slowed when he came to a large street, his thoughts turning
to the logistics of how the three of them would advance to the dividing wall.
If they were to continue their push to the ship’s bow, they needed to make it
across that open field. If he were on Earth, his go-to solution was tried and
true. Create a diversion. Lacking a better idea and feeling the pressure of
time, he decided to stick with the method he knew.
He changed course and drove at an angle away from the
hideaway. He continued for a number of city blocks, and when his intuition
signaled, he stopped. He fished inside the ghost pack and pulled out a
demolition square. Scanning the box-buildings around the intersection, he spied
a crevice running horizontally along one. He bent the square in half and slid
it into the crevice, stepped back to confirm it wasn’t exposed, and clambered
back inside the cart.
He purred on, moving in a large semicircle that curved
around the hideaway, placing two more demolition squares in places he believed
would create an impressive show. With his diversion preparations complete, he
turned the cart back to Cheryl and Cait.
He negotiated onto a main drag and spotted a cart coming
toward him. He grabbed a handful of his cart’s driver’s hair and pulled up as
hard as he could, drawing the dead Kardish to a mostly upright position. The
other cart drew closer. His heart was pounding.
The only way this is going
to work,
he thought,
is by increasing the body count.
He liked the
sound of that and found renewed strength to keep pulling on the driver’s hair.
He lifted his free arm and took aim.
When the two carts were half a block apart, the other cart
turned and headed up a different street. No wave or nod of the head. No outward
sign of curiosity or concern. Jack let the driver slump back down and flexed
his aching arm. “Not such a friendly chap,” he said to the driver.
When he was within walking distance of the hideaway, he
pulled into a sheltered slot between two box units, jumped out of the cart, and
moved toward the tracer signal. He saw one more cart driving across an
intersection in the distance during his walk but couldn’t tell if it was the
same one he’d seen earlier. He stuck to shadows where he could, crossed the
large roads quickly, and stayed vigilant. The place remained eerily quiet.
He picked the tracer off the box-building as he passed.
Moments later he turned into their alley. Ducking into a crevice across and a
few boxes down from their hideaway, he watched the entrance gap. After a short
wait, he gained confidence that there would be no surprises. Cheryl hadn’t
contacted him, so he assumed she was still asleep.
He crept into the gap, peeked around the corner, and saw the
two snuggled together in deep slumber. He checked the time and realized he
hadn’t slept in more than thirty hours. He knew this wasn’t a good time to nap,
but couldn’t imagine that there would ever be a good time on the foreseeable
horizon.
Lying down and curling up facing the entrance of their
hideaway, he cradled his head in his arms, then remembered that the cloaking on
his back was in better shape. He rolled over so he was facing inward. Either
way, anyone coming in or out would trip over him. He thus acted as both a
shield and alarm of sorts for Cheryl and Cait. He put his head back in his arms
and was asleep in minutes.
* * *
The helmsman of the Kardish vessel was
tasked with tracking the two Earth ships that were pursuing them. Both were
tiny things that had recently docked together to become one. The consensus was
that they were more like bugs to be squashed than threats in any real sense.
His orders were to monitor the pests and report new
developments. The assignment was tedious, and he struggled to maintain his
concentration. And then he saw that the ships were moving apart. He blinked his
eyes several times and reviewed the display, worried that perhaps he’d been
daydreaming. He verified the movement and was about to call out the news when
both ships disappeared in a brilliant conflagration.
“Your Excellency,” the helmsman called to the one sitting in
the captain’s chair. "The Earth ships have exploded.”
“Show me,” he said as he stood, his robes rustling softly
with his movement.
The helmsman enlarged the projected image to such an extent
that he had to step back to see it clearly. He played the event in a slow-motion
loop, and they watched it again and again. They saw the smaller ship undock,
move off from the larger ship a short distance, and then ignite in a tremendous
eruption. A ball of flames that began in the smaller ship burst out and
engulfed the larger one.
The larger ship faded away in its death throes. It seemed to
reemerge briefly from the flames, and then it disappeared for good.
“I didn’t see the larger ship explode,” said the helmsman.
“I saw it disappear in a ball of fire. Didn’t you?”
“Yes, Your Excellency. It most certainly disappeared in a
ball of fire.”
“Let it play forward.” The leader pointed at the image.
“What are all those pieces?”
“Fragments from the exploding ships,” said the helmsman.
“There is a cluster of them headed right for us. Should I move to avoid them?”
“Will they cause any harm?”
“No, Excellency. We may hear them, but they will cause no
damage.”
The prince stood silently. “Your assignment here is
finished,” he said. “Go help kill the rats scurrying around my ship.”
“Yes, Your Excellency.” The helmsmen hurried off the bridge.
The prince watched the explosion again and displayed a
cheerless smile as the destruction unfolded in slow motion. He sat back in his
chair, reached to his side, and lifted the scepter from its stand. Lost in thought,
he held it in his lap and stroked the royal emblem.
Juice followed Sid to the tech shop
and stood in the doorway. She leaned against the frame and watched him yank
open one drawer after another. Apparently not finding the object of his quest,
he methodically rifled the cabinets. Finished with the lot, he walked in her
direction. She stepped back to let him pass and watched him enter the exercise
room. There he repeated his rapid-fire drawer and cabinet search.
He stopped looking inside things and moved to the middle of
the room. He studied a wall, looking it up and down, made a quarter turn and
examined the adjoining wall, and continued until he finished the room. Returning
to the tech shop, he slipped past Juice yet again and inspected its four walls.
“Hmm,” he said, folding his arms across his chest.
Juice desperately wanted to ask, but when Sid was improvising,
she knew that wasn’t the best way to work with him. She walked over to a
drawer, pulled it out, and dumped it on top of the worktable, pretending to
study the pile.
Glancing over, he said, “No, too small.”
“That’s what I was thinking.” She used her arm to sweep
everything back into the drawer, then looked in a few more until she found one
that held an organized collection of brackets and braces. She paused to study
them.
“Right size,” he said, “but too regular in shape.”
Still guessing, she said, “I wonder if the collection of
tools near the bottom hatch would work?”
He shifted his gaze in her direction, but his eyes weren’t focused.
Then he nodded and their eyes connected. “Not bad. I’m guessing we’ll need more
than that, though.”
“Criss,” said Juice. “Where on the ship can we find
irregularly shaped objects the size of hand tools?”
“The tech shop, galley, and recreation areas all have items
that can contribute to such a collection. For example, add two forks, two
spoons, and two knives and you will increase the size of the pile without
adding to the repetition. The scout and racer have a great many pieces that
would fit the category.”
“That’s good,” said Sid. “We can work with that.” He resumed
studying the room. “Now we need a sturdy pipe about as tall as I am and maybe
as wide as my leg.”
Criss was the one to ask. “Sid, if you tell me what you are
trying to achieve, I can help with the design.”
“I told you,” said Sid. “We’re going to blow ourselves up.”
He picked up a bucket and started his collection of
odd-shaped objects. “Criss, do you believe the scout’s cloak will work?”
“My confidence level is very high.”
Juice noted that he didn’t simply say “yes,” but she didn’t
say anything to Sid.
“So let’s have the Kardish think we’re dead. We’ll push off
from the racer, blow her up, and at that moment of distraction, we turn on the
cloak. We disappear in a ball of fire. Bing, bang, boom—we’re gone.”
“And what’s the collection of cutlery for?” asked Juice.
“When the racer explodes, there will be a natural cloud of
fragments. We’ll fire shrapnel at the Kardish during the explosion. If we do it
right, the shrapnel will appear to be a result of our disintegration. With
luck, they’ll be hitting their vessel at the same time we land.”
Juice nodded. “So the impact from our landing grapple will
get mixed in with the pitter-patter of falling forks.” She reached out and
rubbed his arm. “Very creative.”
* * *
Criss embraced the spirit of Sid’s idea
but redesigned the implementation. Juice was assigned those duties that could
be performed from inside the scout. Sid donned the space coveralls and took up
station in the
Lucky Lady
. Criss kept them hustling as he directed them
through long to-do lists, feeling he was achieving success in being a patient
but demanding taskmaster.
Criss used the dots the two were wearing to help them
understand his version of the plan. He showed Juice what a good fragment looked
like. As she scavenged items, he guided her on how to cut some of the larger
pieces into appropriate sizes and shapes. He had her stack these into piles
outside the hatch so Sid could load them into the launcher in the proper order
when he was ready.
At Criss’s direction, she opened a row of wall plates and pulled
out a long, flexible hose that brought drinking water to the exercise room. She
drained it, coiled it, and carried it down to the hatch where she connected one
end to an outlet on the wall and arranged the remainder in neatly stacked loops
near the hatch door.
Following Criss’s instructions with care, she prepared the
explosive mixture they would be feeding through the tube. For safety, Criss’s
recipe created it as two separate chemicals that would flow individually out to
the racer. Neither was explosive by itself. When combined in the propellant
tanks of the
Lucky Lady
, the mixture would become a potent and
spectacular pyrotechnic.
Inside the racer, Criss maintained an ongoing dialogue with
Sid as he pulled down every wall plate from inside the cockpit and the life
support area behind it. Guided by Criss, he tiled the pieces together to form a
cylinder centered directly under the docking ring. Using multiple rolls of
fiber tape, he wound loop after loop around the outside of the plates. The
first roll worked to hold the wall plates in position. The rest gave necessary
structural strength to the assembly.
He fitted a washbowl pulled from one of the scout’s crew cabins
into the base of the makeshift cylinder. The bowl material was strong enough to
withstand the pressure of an explosion, and its shape would direct the
discharge as the fragments were propelled upward. Criss’s creation wasn’t a
cannon as Sid imagined it, but it was well designed to launch a collection of objects
out through the racer’s docking ring.
Sid next worked on loading the launcher for business. He cut
a demolition square into small pieces and followed Criss’s guidance as he arranged
them in a pattern inside the bowl. After checking with Juice that it was all clear,
he opened the hatch and retrieved the fragment piles. Criss showed him how to
arrange the pieces inside the bowl for maximum effect. Criss remained silent while
Sid picked out the mallet from one of the fragment piles and set it aside,
leaving it inside the scout.
With the fragment launcher completed, Sid grasped the end of
the hose Juice positioned for him. Pulling it gently to avoid snags, he wormed
his way behind the racer’s cockpit, paused to snap the safety tether to the
loop on his coveralls, then floated out the access hatch. Coils of hose floated
behind him.
Gaining access to the fill spout of the propellant tank
proved to be more challenging than either he or Criss had anticipated. After a
session of swearing, grunting, and more swearing, Sid finally succeeded in
forcing it open. He snaked the hose inside and held it while the two chemicals
flowed, one after the other, into the tank. He dropped a trigger circuit inside,
sealed the spout shut, and returned to the scout.
Before Sid closed the scout’s hatch, he picked up the
mallet, studied the docking ring, and smacked the latch. The tab bent from the
blow, but it moved. He smacked it a second time and it popped free. Like a cork
in a bottle, the two ships were again held together only by friction. Carrying
it like a boy with his toy, he brought the mallet with him when he returned to
the scout’s bridge.
“How are we doing for time?” asked Juice as she took her
seat.
Sid wanted an update as well. “Please step us through it, Criss.”
“The scout will pull away from the racer in a manner that
causes it to rotate. After the two ships have gained sufficient separation and
the racer is properly oriented, I will fire the fragment launcher and shoot our
spoon shower at the Kardish vessel.”
Juice giggled at the “spoon shower” reference.
“I will immediately follow this with a detonation of the
chemicals in the propellant tank. The sequence will be so close that it will all
appear as a single event. The racer will be oriented at that point so almost
all of the real fragments will travel away from us. There is some risk here.
There is a small possibility that a random fragment will hit the scout and
cause damage.
“Assuming the scout is unharmed, I will activate the cloak
and the scout will appear to vanish when the flames are at their brightest. While
still engulfed in flames, I will initiate a thrust burst that will send us on
an intercept course with the Kardish vessel. We will arrive above the vessel
hull at the same time the scrap storm reaches maximum intensity.”
This time both Sid and Juice laughed. Sid finished the plan.
“And our grapple will sound like one of the impacts.”
Juice beamed. “Nice teamwork, guys.” After a pause, she
asked, “So how do we get inside their vessel?”
“I have three ideas,” said Criss. “But we won’t be able to
test any of them until we are attached to their hull. Our best hope is that our
stealth communications link works as designed. If it does, we will coordinate
with the crew of the
Alliance
and see if we can help them open a hatch
from the inside. A second option is that we burrow through the rubbery outer
layer and make firm contact with the surface of the hard hull. I may be able to
connect through it to the subsystems of the Kardish vessel, override protocols,
and open a hatch myself. The last idea is to entice the Kardish to come after
us. They will have to open a hatch to do battle. We will then have a physical
opening and can attempt to fight our way in.”
“I don’t like that third one at all,” said Juice, shaking
her head. “Let’s do one of the first two.”
Sid and Juice engaged their seat restraints, ready for the performance
to begin. Criss pulled the scout away from the racer, doing so in a fashion
that caused it to turn end-over-end in a lazy spin. Sid brought up an image projection,
and he and Juice watched as the
Lucky Lady
drifted away.
“Ten seconds,” said Criss.
Their eyes were glued to the image display as the nose of
the racer rotated upward. “Here we go,” said Criss. It happened so quickly that
neither Sid nor Juice saw it as individual events. They saw a brilliant flash
and then the scout shook violently. The shaking passed quickly and transitioned
into a brief pressure as the scout accelerated to become part of the projectile
cloud that would provide cover as they approach and attach themselves to the
Kardish vessel.
Criss spoke with urgency, “The cloak has engaged, but it is going
to fail.”
“How can I help?” Sid asked.
“The shock wave has loosened a link where Juice connected
the cloak to the main power unit. I cannot pinpoint the precise circuit, but something
is not seated properly. We will lose the cloak in moments.”
Sid disengaged his seat restraints, jumped up, and ran toward
the rear of the scout. He’d taken only a few steps when he saw his mallet
hanging on a rail. He snatched it up and accelerated toward the operations compartment
where Juice had been working.
Stepping inside the small room, he ripped the plate off the
wall, yanking it with such force that it flew out the door, bounced into the
passageway, and started spinning. He was on his back, his head inside the partition,
before the spinning stopped.
Both Criss and Juice viewed the connections and circuits
through Sid’s dot. He reached up and fiddled with this and that.
“Could it be the central spline?” Juice asked.
Criss didn’t answer as he shifted ever more resources into
identifying the failing circuit. He watched Sid wiggle bits and pieces as he
struggled for a solution. And then a piece he touched caused a change Criss could
detect. “It’s near there.”
Sid backed up in his progression and again jiggled the items
he was working on. He was on his second jiggle when Criss said, “That’s it.
That’s the problem piece.”
It was a small gray box. Sid pushed it, pulled it, and twisted
it, hoping for an
all good
signal from Criss.
“Your efforts have not solved the issue,’ said Criss. “We
are losing the cloak.”