A Call to Arms (17 page)

A light came on at the console. His first officer’s voice announced, “Captain, we’ve managed to get a clear signal through to Earth.”

“Good,” Anderson replied. “Put it through.” The woman from the photograph appeared on the screen, looking a few years older but no less attractive.

“Hello, Lynne,” Anderson said, his voice husky.

“Leonard? My God, where have you been? They’ve been calling, saying you’ve deserted---”

“I haven’t deserted,” Anderson said reassuringly. “Let’s just say I’ve... been transferred by a higher power. I can’t really talk about it on an open channel. I just wanted to see if you and Sarah were okay.”

“We’re fine,” Lynne said. “I’m just worried about you.”

“I’ll be fine,” Anderson said. “You know how I am.”

Just then Sarah, impudent and beautiful, jumped up into the camera range.

Anderson said, “Hey, Sarah... You okay?”

“I’m okay,” Sarah said. A serious expression crossed her face, and she added, “But I had a bad dream. I dreamed I was being chased by monsters and they ate me.”

Lynne said, “She’s saying she won’t go to sleep tonight because the monsters will get her.”

“They will!” Sarah insisted.

“No, they won’t, Sarah,” Anderson said gently. “I’ll make sure of that. Doesn’t matter where I am, far or near, I’ll keep the monsters away from you, Sarah. I promise.”

The first officer’s voice broke in on the conversation. “Captain, they’ve got the Drazi data crystal decoded.”

“On my way,” Anderson responded. To Sarah he said, “I have to go. Now get some sleep, Sarah.

“I love you, Lynne.”

“I love you, too, Leonard,” Lynne said.

Aboard
Excalibur
, Sheridan was playing the recording the Drazi had made on the data crystal. The image was broken by static, apparently the result of damage to the crystal itself. Beside him, Dureena was also watching with great interest.

The image showed Ni’im in a standard Drazi cockpit. He was saying, “... and the dreams spoke to me. They called to me, to come to this place. When I arrived, the destroyer was here. I sent a probe in to examine it. It looked like this.”

Ni’im’s image faded out and changed to a distant view of Daltron 7, apparently taken as Ni’im was coming in for a landing. It showed a beautiful world, green and blue like Earth, the sky dotted here and there with small clouds. Creeping in from the edges, though, from the depths of space, there was a great cloud, a sinister shadow that seemed made of sentient matter.

It descended slowly, sending out tendrils of darkness that reached toward the planet. As they watched, the entire sky was engulfed. Through the darkness, flashes of brilliant light could be seen. Each lasted no longer than a moment, coming from the dense mass that hovered above the surface of the planet. Nonetheless, there were many of these flashes. The view shifted, offering close-ups of the planet surface. That, too, was lit luridly by the continual flashing, which seemed like a frenzy of fireflies gone mad. The planet seemed to shudder as it took multiple hits. Great sore spots opened in its surface. Cities and farmland disappeared under the bombardment and were replaced by gaping craters as raw as wounds on a leper’s skin.

Dureena seemed intoxicated by the image, staring at it wide-eyed. Watching her eyes, Sheridan was sure she was reliving the destruction of her own planet. His heart went out to her.

He said, “Perhaps you should---”

“No, I am all right. But promise that someday you will let me kill that thing.”

“It isn’t alive,” Sheridan said.

“No?” Then she turned back to the screen, because the Drazi was speaking again.

“It is a terrible thing,” Ni’im said. “A slayer of worlds. An echo of the darkness we thought had finally left us.”

More scenes of the destruction of Daltron 7 followed.

When the image focused once more on Ni’im, he said, “When it was finished, the others who were with it took it away. I followed them to this location.”

There flashed on the screen a series of triangulation grids and locater figures.

“I would have investigated further,” Ni’im went on, “but there were too many. So I am returning to Daltron 7 to see if there are any who can be saved. Then I will wait for the others in my dream to come. With luck, the Dark Ones will not find me before they can arrive.

“End message.”

The image broke up in static. Sheridan toggled the device, turning off the recording. He and Dureena stared at the blank screen, neither saying anything.

From the bridge on
Victory
, Anderson was trying anxiously to get through to Sheridan on
Excalibur
. Finally he succeeded.

“Mr. President---“

Sheridan seemed to come back from a long way away. “Yes, yes, Captain, what is it?”

“Check your long-range scanners,” Anderson said. “We’ve got company.”

Sheridan snapped at a crew member, “Show me.” On both ships, the display changed to a distant shot that revealed four Drakh warships. They were still too far away for the scanners to pick up much detail, but their shapes were unmistakable, and evoked a terror reminiscent of an ancestral memory. This was one of the faces of evil, and even at a glance it could be identified as such.

The first officer said, “Are those Drakh?”

Anderson said, “They’re either Drakh or the weirdest-looking pizza delivery trucks I’ve ever seen. And we’re a
long
way from pepperoni, son.”

On
Excalibur
, Sheridan asked communications, “Have they taken any hostile action yet?”

“Negative, sir,” communications replied. “Picking up scanners; I think they’re trying to figure out who and what we are.”

To Anderson, Sheridan said, “They don’t recognize our ships. Good, that’s what I was counting on. Let them get closer, Captain.”

“Understood,” Anderson said.

“We’ll lay low until we can see right down their gun ports.” He turned to his first officer. “Keep a finger on the trigger. If they do anything suspicious, knock ‘em down.”

After a few moments, communications reported to Sheridan, “Sir, getting a transmission from the Drakh ships.”

“Receive transmission,” Sheridan ordered. “But do
not
respond, video or audio. If we can get a look at them without them getting a look at us---”

“Message coming through,” communications said. “Message is in Interlac, using an autotranslation system.”

And then the display lit up with a full image of a Drakh ship, the first they had seen close up.

Once you saw a Drakh ship, you never forgot it. It had a central mass like an elongated egg and, surrounding that, long, building members that suggested insect legs. It was a shape born of an alien nightmare, a shape whose very proportions spoke of an unnatural evil. Shapes like this seemed to stimulate some dim center in Humankind’s collective mind, where evil was stored, as a frog might store in its ancestral memory the supple flicking movement of an attacking snake.

“You have no business in this area,” the Drakh voice said, and somehow the automatic machine translation conveyed some hint of the sinister nature of the creature speaking. “Who are you? Identify yourself.”

“The voice of the enemy,” Sheridan remarked to his crew. “Don’t respond.”

“Wait,” Dureena said. “I have a better idea.”

She turned to communications. “Send them a reply in Interlac, audio only. Tell them, `We came to attend to our enemies, but found that someone had already dealt with them. We were hoping to thank whoever was responsible.’ “

She turned to Sheridan. “Doesn’t matter how powerful they are, they’re going to need all the allies they can get. Let’s see if we can convince them we could be such an ally and see what happens.”

Communications looked at Sheridan; the decision was his to make. It was a chain-of-command thing. Sheridan nodded. The idea sounded good to him.

“Send it,” Sheridan said.

Communications acknowledged, selected the translating program, and sent the message off.

They waited.

Suddenly the room was wracked by a high-pitched sound from the com system. It was like nails on a blackboard, loud as a siren. The com officer shut it off as fast as he could.

“What was that?” Sheridan asked.

“Transmission coming in on the Drakh frequency.

Extremely powerful, tachyon-enhanced. It definitely came from outside the system. No way to trace it.”

“You’re sure it was meant for them?”

“Positive.”

“What’s their position?” Sheridan asked.

The navigation officer said, “They’ve stopped their approach. Holding steady.”

“I don’t like this,” Sheridan said. “Any further communication?”

“No, sir,” communications said.

“Damn,” Sheridan said. “I
knew
this was too easy. All hands man battle stations. Communications, start jamming their transmissions. Navigation, give me full power to the engines as soon as---”

The navigation officer cried, “There they go!”

In the view screen they could see the four Drakh ships break into two groups. One pair raced toward Sheridan’s position, the other broke away at a right angle. Sheridan said, “Anderson, you take the two on approach, I’ll go after the others!”

“We’ve got’em!” Anderson replied. He checked his console. “Forward guns, prepare to fire!”

“Aye, sir,” control said. “Targets coming into range.”

The
Victory
’s first officer announced, “Enemy ships are locking on, firing!”

In the next moment, Anderson was looking straight down the path of incoming fire. Beam projection for the most part, propagating along the line of attack faster than the eye could see. Anderson barely had time to think,
Now we’ll see how good this new ship is at preserving herself.

Then the ship was rocked, and for a moment the lights dimmed.
Victory
had taken dead-on hits. But it was apparent a moment later that the hits had been deflected off the hull, dispersed in a rainbow of diffusion.

“Damage report!” Anderson said.

“Minor damage to outer decks,” the first officer responded. “The hull appears to be refracting away most of the energy.”

“Outstanding!” Anderson said. “Weapons control--
fire
!”

The
Victory
’s big forward guns let fly in a soundless bellow. One of the Drakh ships managed to get out of the line of fire, fluttering away like a wounded moth before it could pick up speed again. The other one, trying the same tactic, zigged the wrong way. It was caught full in a blast and was obliterated.

Now it was the other Drakh ship that Anderson was concerned with.

“She’s making a run for it!” the first officer said.

“Stay with her,” Anderson instructed.

The
Victory
wheeled and set off after the Drakh.

Excalibur
, moving in the opposite direction, was in pursuit of the remaining two Drakh ships.

There was silence on the bridge as the stern chase continued. Sheridan had the impression, from visual evidence, that they were gaining.

“Distance to target!” he demanded.

The navigation officer responded, “Two thousand miles to optimum firing range, closing fast. Sixty seconds to target acquisition. Fifty-five. Fifty...”

Just then something came up on the display, and looking out the window, Sheridan saw something he couldn’t identify.

“What in hell is that?” Sheridan asked.

Several of the crew crowded to the window. The spray of stars that covered the sky, like points of light of differing sizes, had been interrupted, broken by an area, kilometers across, where the stars simply didn’t seem to shine. Something was in the way-a perfectly square something that blocked out everything in view. The Drakh ships were running toward that void.

The navigator reported, “We’re getting nothing on the scanners. It’s like a null field out there, absorbing everything, even the light.”

“And those ships are headed right for it. How long before they enter the field?”

“Thirty seconds,” the navigator said.

“Prepare to fire main guns,” Sheridan said.

“Warning!” control said. “If main guns are fired---”

“I know,” Sheridan said. “Stand by to fire. Stand by... Fire!”

The lights went dim as
Excalibur’s
main armament erupted in a stupendous explosion. If Sheridan had had any lingering doubt as to the efficacy of his main weapons, it was dispelled now. The energy bolt, by far the largest he had ever delivered, hit between the two Drakh ships. The resulting explosion vaporized them both.

Milliseconds after the blow had been delivered, all the lights on
Excalibur
went out, then came faintly back on as power began rebuilding.

“Temporary power loss,” navigation reported. “Fifty seconds to rebuild.”

“Distance to null field?” Sheridan asked.

“Ten seconds,” navigation replied.

Sheridan stood in front of the port, waiting.
Excalibur
was heading straight for the center of the null field. It loomed ahead of the ship, an apparently solid obstacle, black, impervious-looking.

They were hurtling full speed ahead into a gigantic black object in space, but there was no time to panic, even if someone had wanted to.

Dureena’s expression was characteristically unreadable as she watched the ship rushing toward the vast darkness. The navigation officer was making a low sound in the back of his throat, and seemed to be unaware he was doing it.

The black wall loomed up ahead of them, given apparent curvature by the speed they were traveling and the angle at which they were encountering it. Sheridan braced, as did the others, as they plunged into it, expecting, perhaps, an impact, a moment of explosion, after which the ship would be broken down to its constituent elements.

No such thing happened. There was no impact, no discernible change. One moment they were in normal space, the next moment they were within the null field. It was darker than space had ever been, with a darkness that seemed to suck away any source of light, leaving only the black nothingness behind.