Gibraltar Sun (39 page)

“How many more times are we going to be able to say that, Admiral?”

Landon shrugged. “They’ll discover what we are doing sooner or later. Let’s make it as later as we can, shall we?”

“Aye aye, sir,” Mark replied with a smile. If it were up to him, the Broa wouldn’t find out what was going on until they had human warships in their sky. “When are the scientists going to be ready to review the database?”

“They’re already hard at it.
Chicago
got back yesterday. They downloaded what you transmitted to them. We received a couple of copies of this,” he said, gesturing with the original record cube, “a few hours ago. The astronomers are already pulling out data on the stargate network. It is, I’m led to believe, quite extensive.”

“I hope they find something we can use,” Lisa said.

Landon guffawed. “Don’t worry about that! We’re learning plenty. Haven’t found the Broa home world or worlds, yet, but we’ve discovered a lot of useful information. In fact, you got back just in time. We were about to send out a couple of survey missions.”

“Survey missions?” Mark asked, perplexed.

“Ask your wife. It was her brainchild.”

Mark turned to Lisa, who seemed nonplussed. She was even blushing.

“What have you done now, my love?”

“It was just an idea I had while on the Gamma expedition. Watching all of that traffic through the system, I wondered if we might send some ships to join them. They wouldn’t make contact with the locals, merely look around while en route from one gate to another before jumping to a new system. We could check out a dozen stars in one trip. It seemed good way to learn about the Broa quickly.”

“It seemed that way to us, as well,” Landon replied. “That’s why I have authorized a couple of ships to give your idea a try. One Type Seven and another cargo craft. They were going to sneak back to Gamma and jump through the Nineveh and Tyre gates a day apart. We’ll see what they discover. With the information you brought back, they won’t have to jump blind. We can give them an idea of what to expect at each of their target stars.”

“Can’t we learn what we need to know from the Pastol database?”

The Admiral shrugged. “Maybe yes, maybe no. One thing we need to know is the location of their stars. Not where they are in the stargate network, but where they are actually located. The first thing our ships will do when they pop out of a stargate is a sky survey. We need to answer a question that has come up recently.”

“What question?” Lisa asked.

“We need to figure out how close the Sovereignty comes to Sol.”

“I thought we had decided that there are thousands of light years between Broan space and our own.”

“We did. Now it’s undecided. Ask your husband.”

Now it was Lisa’s turn to look quizzically at Mark, who said simply, “Gravity waves.”

“What about them?”

“They aren’t omni-directional like we thought. Not waves focused through gates. That means we can’t rely on the fact that Earth has never seen one to estimate how far it is to the closest Broan world.”

“I hadn’t thought about that,” she said.

“Neither had anyone else until Dr. Brainard mentioned it in passing the other day,” the Admiral said with a grimace. “Scientists!”

“Sounds like you’ve been busy while we’ve been gone, sir.”

“You don’t know the half of it, Lieutenant. We’re working on our master plan to steal a stargate. Now that we know where they are, we can pick out the best one to purloin.

“But enough work for one day,” Landon continued smoothly. “You two need to get settled. Have you been assigned quarters yet?”

“No, sir.”

“Check with central housing. I think you will find they are more efficient than when you left. Get cleaned up, rest a bit, and then make sure that you are ready by 18:00 hours.”

“Ready, sir? For what?”

“For the party, man!”

“What party, Admiral?” Lisa asked.

“The ‘Welcome Home’ party in your honor. It’s going to be quite a shindig. I’ve even authorized the alcohol to be broken out, so long as no one has more than two drinks. Now go get settled. That’s an order!”

“Yes, sir!” they both exclaimed in unison, then snapped off exaggerated salutes.

Mark grabbed their bags and threw them over his shoulder before grabbing his wife’s hand. The two of them set off down the long passageway leading to the interior of the underground base. They were in a hurry to occupy their quarters.

There was something they needed to do before they dressed for the party.

#

“Was it worth it?” Lisa asked lazily. She and Mark were both sweating, out of breath, and entangled in the sheets. Beneath them lay a pad of what appeared to be packing material. The bright blue rectangle lay on bare rock in one corner of their one-room cave. This was what passed for a bed in Sutton’s low gravity. If somewhat rudimentary, they could testify to the fact that it served one of a bed’s primary functions.

Lisa lay with her head resting on Mark’s shoulder, basking in the afterglow of their lovemaking. She was conscious of his hard body pressed against her soft one and of the pressure of his fingertips resting at the base of her spine.

“Well?” she asked when her question was greeted by silence.

“Sorry,” he said with a start. “I must have drifted off for a second. Well, what?”

“Was it worth it?”

“Always!” Mark replied with a leer, moving his hand to a protuberance and squeezing.

“Not, that, silly. Do you think the expedition to Pastol was worth it?”

“Sure. Don’t you?”

She shrugged half-heartedly, a gesture he felt more than saw as he nuzzled her hair.

“What’s the matter? Got the post-action blues?”

“No, I’ve never been happier. It’s just that I was thinking about the enormity of the task in front of us. Do you really think we can pull it off? Beat the Broa, that is?”

“What did your mother tell you about eating elephants?” he asked.

“…One bite at a time?” she laughed.

“Exactly. So what’s bothering you?”

“We traveled 7000 light years… almost 8000 if you count up all of the side trips… visited two enemy suns, risked our lives, and all we have to show for it is a little bit of sparkly crystal. It doesn’t seem enough.”

“I would remind you that sparkly crystal has all of our enemy’s secrets in it.”

“There is that,” she agreed. “Compared to what is in front of us, however, it seems such a small thing. How can one small planet hope to prevail against a million star empire?”

“By stealth, cunning, smarts, grit, bravery, and just a little bit of luck,” he replied. When he saw that she was not convinced, he rolled onto his side and propped himself up on one elbow. “Look, my dear. We didn’t ask for this. I could have lived my life drinking Gunter Perlman’s beer and racing his solar yacht with him. In fact, I thought I liked
being a ne’er-do-well playboy. I was good at it.”

“Not to mention the perks.”

“Perks?”

“Moira Sims!”

“Oh, her. Yeah, she was nice, but not as nice as someone else I could name.”

“You’d better say that,” she growled, digging him in the ribs.

“Truthfully, with the settlement from my parents’ estate, I had everything… and nothing. Life didn’t mean anything to me. Now, here I am a gazillion kilometers from home, sleeping on the modern-day equivalent of a horse blanket, in a room carved out of bare rock with wires hanging from the ceiling, and I’m happy. Do you know why?”

“Because of what we just did?”

“That goes without saying,” he laughed. “I’m a man, after all. I love you more than anything, my nude love. However, what I was speaking of was the fact that Sar-Say gave meaning to my life.

“When he popped out of nothing in the New Eden System, he gave me the chance to make a difference, to be of service to my clan, nation, and race. Lotus eating is overrated. Give me something important to occupy my time.”

“Don’t forget the danger,” Lisa said quietly. She had attempted a bantering tone, but it hadn’t come out that way. She sounded like a little girl asking her father about the distant thunder.

“I can’t say that I enjoy that,” Mark said, enfolding her in his arms once more. “Hell, I almost wet my pants when that Avenger took out after us.

“Still, it looks like danger is going to be an unavoidable part of life from now on. We have no choice. We either win this fight or we die… all of us. It is something we just have to do. We can neither shirk our duty nor hide from it. Humanity is counting on us, and I don’t plan to let them down.”

Lisa was about to respond when he silenced her with a kiss. When it was over, he delivered a light slap to where it would do the most good, eliciting the expected squeal.

“Now, Wench, roll out of bed. We have a party to attend, and later, some Galactic Overlords to slay. To quote a wise man, “Whatever else the future brings, it ain’t going to be dull!”

#

The End

Author’s Biography

M
ichael
McCollum was born in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1946, and is a graduate of Arizona State University, where he majored in aerospace propulsion and minored in nuclear engineering. He is employed at Honeywell in Tempe, Arizona, where he is Chief Engineer in the valve product line. In his career, Mr. McCollum has worked on the precursor to the Space Shuttle Main Engine, a nuclear valve to replace the one that failed at Three Mile Island, several guided missiles, Space Station Freedom, and virtually every aircraft in production today. He was involved in an effort to create a joint venture company with a major Russian aerospace engine manufacturer and traveled extensively to Russia in the last decade.

In addition to his engineering, Mr. McCollum is a successful professional writer in the field of science fiction. He is the author of a dozen pieces of short fiction and has appeared in magazines such as Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, Amazing, and Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. His novels (originally published by Ballantine-Del Rey) include
A Greater Infinity
, ,
Procyon’s Promise
,
Antares Dawn
,
Antares Passage
,
The Clouds of Saturn, and The Sails of Tau Ceti,
His novel,
Thunderstrike!
, was optioned by a Hollywood production company for a possible movie.
Several of these books have subsequently been translated into Japanese, German, Russian, and the Queen’s version of English.

Mr. McCollum is the proprietor of Sci Fi - Arizona, one of the first author-owned-and-operated virtual bookstores on the INTERNET, which first published
Gibraltar Earth
,
Gibraltar Sun,
and
Antares Victory
. He is currently working on the conclusion to the Gibraltar series,
Gibraltar Stars.
He also runs Third Millennium Publishing, an INTERNET site that provides web and publishing services to independent author/publishers.

Mr. McCollum is married to a lovely lady named Catherine, and has three children: Robert, Michael, and Elizabeth. Robert is a financial analyst for a computer company in Massachusetts. Michael is a computer technician, having completed a stint as a Military Police Specialist with the Arizona National Guard, which included a year in the lovely land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Elizabeth is married and living with her husband, Brock, a computer programmer, in Washington, D.C.

Sci Fi - Arizona

A Virtual Science Fiction Bookstore and Writer’s Workshop

Michael McCollum, Proprietor

WWW.SCIFI-AZ.COM

If you enjoy technologically sophisticated science fiction or have an interest in writing, you will probably find something to interest you at Sci Fi - Arizona. We have short stories and articles on writing– all for free! If you like what you find, we have full length, professionally written science fiction novels in both electronic form and as hard copy books, and at prices lower than you will find in your local bookstore.