Her posture dissolved into a relaxed stand. “Good of you to remember me, sir.”
“How could I forget? You were one of my best astrogator trainees aboard
Magellan
.”
“I’m glad to hear that, sir.”
“I want to hear of your observations of the Sovereignty. How many additional star systems have you located?”
“Five, sir. One just a month ago.”
“Five? How does that equate with our initial projections?”
“Lower than projected sir; but considering how big space is, a respectable number.”
Landon nodded. “Any hard data on these systems?”
“A couple of them seem to have quite a lot of stargate traffic, judging by the number of gravity waves emanating from them. Also, there is one thing you should know.”
“What is that, Jennifer?”
“Four of the five are located back the way you just came. If these are representative of how Broan space is laid out, you may have just flown through the heart of the Broan Sovereignty.”
Landon frowned. “Now that is a sobering thought, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
#
The party was laid on for the fifth day after the fleet began transporting supplies and equipment down to Sutton’s surface. With so many newcomers in the base, the party would essentially take place just about everywhere.
Mark and Lisa had come down from
New Hope II
the day before to organize the transfer of scientific information. They were sleeping on the floor in the library since every other bed in the base was occupied, many by more than one person. After four years of the same old faces, the original inhabitants of the base were anxious to make the acquaintance of their replacements. Several temporary relationships were consummated in that 120 hours.
When they arrived at the mess compartment, where the party was centered, they encountered an interesting dichotomy. The space had been divided into two separate social functions. On the starboard side sat various single crewmembers of the departing ships, invariably surrounded by newly arrived spacers. Surrounding the male departees were mixed male and female groups, usually talking shop. Around the female crewmembers were clustered all male galleries.
“I don’t think I’ve seen that many horny females in one place in my entire life,” Mark whispered as he scanned the crowd.
“What about the men?” she whispered back.
“Not even close to a record for the men,” he responded. The jibe earned him an elbow to the ribs.
On the port side of the compartment, a completely different party was in progress. Here could be found the married couples from the two fleets. They were seated on chairs, cushions, or the bare floor A number of women from the relief fleet were holding the babies of departing fleet members, cooing to them and trying to get them to laugh. The older children seemed shy, understandable since they had just been descended upon by five times the population they had been born into. The sight of so many unfamiliar faces must have been frightening to a three-year-old.
“Which side do you want to join?” Lisa asked.
Mark, having been married just over two years, nonetheless knew the response required of him. “Let’s join the married folks.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t want to hang on every word of that blonde bombshell in the corner?”
“Not me,” he replied, only half insincerely. “I’ve caught my limit and I’m happy.”
“Good answer,” she replied.
They joined the couples and soon Lisa was cooing to a baby not six months old.
“Steve Simms,” the baby’s father said, holding out his hand.
“Mark Rykand,” Mark replied.
“I know who you are, Lieutenant. I remember you from the first expedition. You’re the one who got everyone stirred up.”
“I did at that,” Mark agreed. He gestured widely with his hand, taking in the bacchanal in front of him. “Who would have thought of this scene that day we returned from Klys’kra’t with our tails between our legs?”
“It’s hard to believe, all right,” the other sighed. “At times I thought this day would never come. Can’t say I’m looking forward to the voyage home, I’ll tell you that. Another year in vacuum and I may lose it.”
“It’s hard,” Mark agreed. “This is the third time I’ve made the transit. It seems as though I’ve spent half my life between Earth and Brinks Base. It will be better when we figure out the stargates.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Simms said. “In fact, I’ve been thinking about it for most of four years. Are we still planning on stealing a gate from the Broa?”
“We’ll have to,” Mark replied. “They are trying to develop stargates on our own back on Earth, but with us a year from Earth, even if they succeed, we won’t know it.”
“It’s liable to rile the Broa up when we do.”
“I know it. Unfortunately, we don’t have much choice. Without stargates, the logistics just don’t work.”
Simms nodded. “Have you considered that there may still be gates in abandoned star systems?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Look, Lieutenant, my job was to catalog that shit pot full of data you brought back. Captain Heinrich thought it would give us a clue as to where to point our telescopes to see if we could detect the emissions of a Broan world.”
“A good plan. Did you detect any worlds?”
“A couple of probables, but without gravity waves we really can’t be sure. Still, I’ve spent a lot of time with the Voldar’ik data, and found several references to worlds that have been destroyed by the Broa. Do you suppose they went to the trouble of dismantling the gates after destroying those systems, Lieutenant?”
“I don’t know,” Mark replied, suddenly intrigued. A system with a dead planet and a stargate was something he had never considered. It might make sense for the Broa to leave a gate in such systems. There would be salvage and mining operations, possibly survivors to enslave and cart off. Besides, how did one get the
last
stargate out of a system anyway? You could jump in without a stargate, but you couldn’t jump out.
If such a gate disappeared, the Broa might never notice the loss. Even if they did, they would be faced with nothing more than a mystery. A little careful preparation might even convince them that the gate had fallen victim to a natural disaster – a wayward asteroid, for instance.
“An intriguing thought, Mr. Simms,” Mark replied. “I will report it to the admiral and make sure he knows who thought up the idea.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant.”
#
Chapter Twenty Five
Hideout, the star, was just peeking over the horizon as Construction Specialist Grant Papadelous aimed his big cutting laser at a gray outcropping of lava and switched on the power. His goggles instantly darkened as the bright, violet laser spot formed on the surface and immediately began vaporizing the rock. A heavy incandescent plume fountained skyward as the spot disappeared into a glowing, 5-cm diameter hole.
Despite the fact that his tractor cabin was pressurized, Papadelous worked from inside a heavy, armored vacsuit. Safety was paramount when the job took place on an airless, primitive moon some seven thousand light-years from Earth.
As the spot disappeared down the incandescent hole, Papadelous scanned his instruments with the boredom of someone who has performed the same task a thousand times. The work order called this a 200-meter long communications channel from the surface into the new gallery they had hollowed out of Sutton’s interior. Cables would be strung through the channel and then the whole thing would be filled with vacuum setting epoxy to seal it up again. After that, the gallery could be pressurized and interiors installed to make the new volume livable.
What the cables would be used for, he had no idea. That wasn’t his problem. Boring the hole was his task, after which he would bore another, and another, and another, ad infinitum. As a boy in Greece, his mother had told him the tale of Sisyphus, condemned by the gods to ceaselessly roll a rock to the top of a mountain each day, only to have it fall back of its own weight every night. Somehow, his current job put him in mind of that myth, except that he had been condemned to dig endlessly until he carved away the whole of this ugly moon.
Nor was he the only vacuum jack at work on the surface while others busily carved new tunnels and living galleries below. With eighty ships in orbit about the airless moon, Brinks Base had just suffered the largest population explosion in its brief history and an expansion of living and working quarters was the first order of business.
The sudden appearance of the system primary above the jagged horizon put the sun directly into Papadelous’s eyes, which in turn caused his head to throb. The star wasn’t the culprit in producing his headache. Rather, the send off they had given the crews of
Ranger
and
Vaterland
the previous evening was the primary cause. The party had been a raucous one, a bash that Grant had enjoyed immensely, especially the latter part.
He smiled at the memory of the bacchanal. He had found himself conversing with a female lieutenant for the first couple of hours. Him and about half the men in his construction battalion… at least those who had been shuttled down from the heavy equipment carrier. It had been just past midnight when he finally managed to talk her into accompanying him back to her soon-to-be-vacated compartment. What had followed made the interminable voyage from Earth almost seem worth it. His new found, and very transient, friend had made love with an urgency that spoke of her excitement at having someone new in her life. His memory of the night had been marred only by the realization that he hadn’t gotten her name the next morning. All he remembered was that she said she was an astrogator aboard
Ranger
.
The laser drill cut off automatically when the sensors detected a slight weakening of the incandescent plume, indicating that the drill beam had penetrated a cavity in the rock… presumably Gallery A-17 in the new annex if Grant’s three dimensional diagram was correct. The computer shut down the laser quickly enough that there would be little more than a scorch mark on the opposite wall where the drill beam had focused momentarily after breakthrough.
With his current hole drilled and another one facing him in a few minutes, actually a series of holes into which would be anchored the foundation of a communications tower, Grant paused to scan the horizon and sky.
In the distance was the sharp, black outline of a mountain. It must be a tall one, he thought, since its lower slopes were hidden somewhere over the horizon. It had been the mountain that had kept Hideout’s rays out of his eyes as long as it did. Nearer to him, he could see two other yellow construction tractors hauling equipment to various spots around the rugged black plain.
The amount of equipment they had hauled out from Earth was staggering. Of course, it had to be. Brinks Base would become the headquarters for humanity’s war against the Broa at least until they got the human stargate network up and running. Even then, Brinks might not be graced by a stargate. It all depended on how distant the nearest Broan world was.
If only a few light years separated the base from an enemy world, then it would be too risky for ships to jump directly to the Hideout System. Their secret base would remain a secret only until the first gravity waves reach Broan-controlled space. After that, someone would wonder why an uninhabited system possessed an unregistered stargate, they would send a ship to investigate, and the jig would be up.
Overhead, several bright stars strung out in a single line crossed the sky with visible motion. These were humanity’s ships in orbit. One need gaze skyward only a few minutes to see dimmer lights detach from the brighter ones. These were the landing boats that were shuttling supplies down from the freighters. In addition to all of the Q-Ship holds stuffed to their hull plates with necessary equipment, six large colony ships had accompanied the fleet. It would take more than a month to unload these behemoths of their treasure.
Beyond the moving ships was Brinks itself, an oversize Earth. The blue-white world was currently in half phase, with a very indistinct terminator line marking the transition from light to dark.
The black line of the horizon with its mountains beyond, the ships overhead, the blue-white ball as a backdrop… all should have combined into an awe-inspiring view. Perhaps it would have had not Papadelous’s head been throbbing so.
Giving in to the inevitable, he muttered the command that would cause a small white pellet to appear on the shelf of his helmet in front of his chin. Leaning forward, he tongued the pellet into his mouth and grimaced at the tart taste before rotating his head to get at the drinking nipple. He washed the pain reliever down with a mouthful of tepid water and began counting the seconds until it began to work.
Having done the only thing he could at the moment for his headache, he checked his workscreen for the next job and put the tractor in gear. As it bounced over the uneven ground en route to where the communications mast lay prone on the surface, Grant Papadelous contemplated the fact that the jouncing wasn’t doing his headache any good.
#
“Everyone have a good time last night?” Dan Landon asked his staff. The dozen officers gathered around the long table constructed of locally quarried nickel-iron all looked as though they wished they were somewhere else. Most were listless, while a few glanced nervously at the open doorway, as though visualizing the quickest route to the local head. Their condition answered his question more eloquently than words ever could. It was with a certain malicious mischief that he boomed out, “All right, enough fun. Let’s get down to business. Commander Aster. What did you learn yesterday?”
Aster, a small intense man with an unruly shock of blond hair, leaned forward and planted his elbows on the table while keying his datacom to life. After a second, he responded to Landon’s question.
“Just what you heard, sir. The caretaker staff discovered five possible Broan systems during our absence. Four of them are back in the direction of Earth, one is due galactic north.”
“Analysis results?”
“Two of these contacts have issued a single gravity wave apiece. Two others have issued three waves, and one has issued more than a dozen.”