Solbidyum Wars Saga 7: Hunt for the Reduviids (11 page)

“Have they met Jenira?” I asked.

“Yes, sir, they’ve met her twice,” he answered a bit nervously.

“Padaran, tell me, are you and Jenira ever going to become bondmates?”

Instantly Padaran’s face flushed and he became very nervous.  “I don’t think so,” he said slowly while avoiding my gaze.

“Why not?” I asked.  “It’s obvious to everyone the two of you are in love and everyone thinks you make a perfect couple.  Are you afraid to bond with her?”

“Oh no, sir, it’s nothing like that,” Padaran gushed.  “It’s Jenira; she declares she will never take a bondmate so long as the Brotherhood survives.  She has gone as far as to taken a solemn oath to remain single, so long as they exist.”

“I see,” I sighed, “like her refusal to speak until they are gone.”

“Yes sir,” Padaran answered sadly.

“That girl puts too much responsibility on herself.  She needs to have some fun.”

“Oh, she has fun, sir.  However, her ideas of fun aren’t quite the same as everyone else’s.”

“Well Padaran, hang in there.  I’ll try to do my part to end the Brotherhood as quickly as I can so you can get her to agree to be your bondmate.  How does that suit you?” I asked.

“That would be great, sir,” he said with a smile.

Despite our best efforts, we weren’t winning the war against the Brotherhood, even though we won most battles where we actually engaged them.  However, we had lost a lot of the outer worlds and had no way to recover them.  If we tried, the Brotherhood would raze the planet before departing, leaving nothing but smoldering ruins and dead bodies behind.

Since the development of asteroid-ships, losses to the Brotherhood became even greater.  One of the highest priority objectives of the war was to discover where they were building these ships and stop their production.  Another primary objective was to learn what exactly was needed to enhance our GW technology and bridge the gap in ship speeds between the Brotherhood and the Federation.  Essentially, Kala was right; we needed to capture one of their ships.

After I finished sparring with Padaran, I went to see A’Lappe and Cantolla.  I hadn’t seen much of Cantolla in the lab lately, and I was starting to wonder if she and A’Lappe had a squabble about something.  I stopped by my office first to pick up an item before heading to the lab.  When I arrived, A’Lappe was there alone.

A’Lappe greeted me with his usual cheer.  “Tibby, good to see you.  Is there some way I can be of service today?”

“Yes, there are several things.  But first, where is Cantolla?  I haven’t seen her around lately.  Is everything all right?”

“Oh my yes, everything is fine.  Cantolla has been back on Megelleon for some time now, working with the science team to launch the cloning project for the genetic materials you brought from Earth’s genome and seed banks.”

“Oh.  Why is she helping them instead of working here on something else?” I asked without thinking.

“Tibby, you did make her the boss, remember?  You put her in command of all your science teams.  At the moment, that’s the largest project your science people have going on, so of course she’s there overseeing the work.”

“Oh yeah... right!  You’ll have to forgive me, A’Lappe.  I have so many things going on that I forget sometimes what I’ve said and done in the past.”

A’Lappe chuckled, “I understand, Tibby.  Now how can I help you?”

“A’Lappe, we desperately need to realize a breakthrough that allows us match or even exceed the speed achieved by the Brotherhood ships.  And now that they’ve discovered how to detect our cloaked ships, we need to develop a counter technology to solve that problem as well.”

“I’m working as hard as I can on your first request, but I’m stymied as to how to make our ships go faster.  As for the second request, I need to know what means they are using to detect our ships.  If it’s a Gravity-Mass Detector like we use, I may be able to create something that distorts the field.  However, it’s more likely that they’re using a completely unrelated method, in which case field distortion wouldn’t work.”

“So you have reason to believe they’re using something other than Gravity-Mass Detection to spot our cloaked ships?”

“Yes.  If they were, they would have figured out, almost by necessity, how to distort the fields around their own ships, rendering them more difficult to locate and target.  They haven’t done so thus far – to my knowledge, anyway.”

“Well, I guess that’s good to know, but it doesn’t solve our problem,” I said.

“Bring me one of their devices or ships, and I’ll figure out what they’re doing, but until then, I’m as lost as you as to a solution.”

“You’re the second person to tell me we need to get our hands on one of their ships.  I guess that’s what we’ll have to do," I said resolutely, thrusting my fists into my jacket pockets.

I then pressed the button on the cloaking device I had picked up from my office on the way to the lab and I vanished before A’Lappe’s eyes.  A’Lappe looked startled for a moment and then howled with laughter, for I had used the same ploy on him that he had been playing on me and others in the crew for years, disappearing abruptly at the end of a meeting or conversation.

“Well played, Tibby!  Well played indeed!” he called out as I left the lab.

Instead of returning to the
MAXETTE,
I went to my study on the
NEW ORLEANS
to stare into the giant aquarium from my office chair, while I sorted through my thoughts.  Every major technological obstacle we were encountering was pointing to one solution – we had to get our hands on a newly built Brotherhood ship so we could reverse engineer their GW enhancements and cloak detection system.  There were two ways to accomplish that goal – capture one in battle or steal one from a hangar or enemy base.  Both methods involved extreme risk.  It was a pointless exercise to assess degrees or likelihood of failure;
failure
meant almost certain death to anyone involved in the operation, and the
likelihood
of failure was absolute if there was any failure at all.  We had no choice but to take action before the Brotherhood amassed enough ships to decimate the Federation entirely.

I found myself spinning inside an equation that Earth engineers used to calculate Risk Exposure:

The RISK EXPOSURE of any given risk equals the Probability of risk occurring multiplied by the total loss if risk occurs
.

Between capturing and stealing a ship, stealing probably entailed the least
immediate
exposure, in terms of probability of risk occurring and the associated loss of resources.  But if the risk occurred
at all
, either approach would bring about the same
overall
exposure and, ultimately, the same results – utter destruction of the Federation.  No matter how I did the math, the answer was the same; we had to rise to the occasion and get that technology, or die at the hands of the Brotherhood. 

My thoughts were deeply entrenched in the bleakness of the situation when my com link beeped.

“Tibby here,” I answered.

“Admiral, sorry to interrupt you, but Admiral Wabussie is here on the
MAXETTE
and wishes to meet with you,” said Marranalis with some urgency.

“Very well, I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

I did my best to shake off the heaviness that gripped me and hurried out of my study, startling my bodyguard, who finally figured out where I’d gone after disappearing from A’Lappe’s lab. 

When I arrived at the War Room on the
MAXETTE
to meet Wabussie
,
I discovered that Admiral Regeny was also in attendance.  It was just as well, because he always had a fit if Wabussie and I discussed something without involving him. 

We entered my office next to the War Room; after foccee was poured for all, I looked at Wabussie and asked, “So, what news do you have?”

“You wanted to know what information we have on where the Brotherhood is having their ships built.  There are several locations we are relatively sure about; all of them a good distance outside the Federation and weeks away from our nearest Cantolla Gate.  However, we have learned recently that the Brotherhood has set up a base and supply depot on a planet immediately outside the border in S 5.  It sounds like it's relatively new and not heavily manned yet.”

“Do you think they have any of their new fighters or other ships there?”  I asked.

“Our last information was that they are expecting a shipment of fighters within a few days.”  Wabussie said.

“So if we hit this planet and hit it hard, we can possibly get a fighter with their latest technology and wipe out a supply depot as well?”

“It looks that way,” Wabussie said.  “However, their next nearest base is only about three days away and it’s huge and they have a lot of ships there.  You’ll need to get in and out quickly before they can call in reinforcements.”

“Let’s go out to the War Room and look at this information in display.  I’d like to see where these planets are in relation to other known Brotherhood bases.  Marranalis, call Slater, wherever he is and ask him to join us.  I think we may need his input as well on this one.”

Once we were all assembled in the War Room, Admiral Wabussie brought up the information he had on places the Brotherhood was having ships built or based.  It presented an interesting picture as it was obvious, that while these bases were scattered around the universe, the bulk of them were located nearer two sectors of the Federation than others.  At one area, five planets believed to be producing ships for the Brotherhood were clumped together, with two of them circling the same star.  I sat there staring at the holographic display for a few minutes until my thoughts were interrupted by Admiral Regeny.

“Tibby, what are you thinking?”

“Excuse me, sir,” I said?

“What are you thinking?  You’ve not moved or said a word for nearly five minutes.”

“I was thinking that with all those ships and bases there in a group like they are, that a major offensive strike could do them some serious damage.  I was trying to figure out how we would pull it off without getting our own butts handed to us on a platter. The problem is our ships aren't fast enough to get away safely.”

“If you could get several Cantolla Gates inside their perimeters and bring ships through in a hard attack and make a hasty retreat, you might be able to pull it off,” Admiral Slater said.

“Perhaps, but the problem is getting a ship inside their perimeter to set up the gates.  Now that the Brotherhood can detect our ships, there is no way we could get in there undetected and set up a gate.”

“What if you don’t use one of our ships?  What if you used one of theirs to go in there and set up the Cantolla Gates?”  Admiral Wabussie interjected.

“And where would we get this ship from?”

“I seem to recall that you captured several Brotherhood ships at Alle Bamma and also at Goo’Waddle.  I believe you still have the ships you captured in operation defending Alle Bamma and the other ships are in the hands of the Ruwallie Rasson.”

“Yes, but those ships are old.  I don’t even know if the old security codes still exist in their data bases, besides, I’m sure the Brotherhood has changed their codes many times on their ships since,” I answered.

“Not as often as you might think,” Wabussie said.  “Based on the intelligence we have been getting, the Brotherhood is quite lax about their security codes because we have never tried to exploit them.  We have a listing of a number of their codes that you could use with some of the Markazian ships; ships you’ve captured and you could probably get them through the outer perimeters at the very least, if not all the way into the heart of Brotherhood territory.”

“Wait, you’re saying we HAVE Brotherhood security codes?”  I exclaimed.

“Yes, we’ve had them for quite some time,” Wabussie said.

“Why wasn’t I informed about this?” I asked with dismay.

“I put it in my reports to you several months ago,” Wabussie said, “I was surprised you never responded to it, to be honest.”

“What?  When?  How did I miss that?”  I asked.

“Let me check,” Wabussie said as he fumbled with his vid pad.  “Ah, yes here it is; I sent it nineteen weeks ago, its message ID number 006-RAB-00377.”

I typed the message number on my vid pad and sure enough the message popped up on my screen and to my dismay, it was labeled as
unread
.

“By the stars,” I exclaimed, “It’s here all right and it was marked as
unread;
how did I miss it?”

“Sir,” Marranalis interrupted, “that was the day you and Admiral Regeny went to Megelleon to meet with Leader Tonclin and the Senate Arms Committee to discuss the funding for more ships.  You left early that morning before reading your reports.  You spent the night at your estate and returned to the ship the next afternoon.  You must have skipped over it.”

“By the stars, you’re right.  This is not good.  I can’t afford to miss any reports.  I want security to set up a system with the computer where you will receive notification if I’ve not read any messages sent to me within 24 hours and I want you to make sure I read them.”