Alien Assassin (30 page)

“One of the battlecruisers just activated a well.”

The Juireans moved quickly to stand behind the tech. “Which ship?” Yan’wal asked.

“It was last in the line. And it’s gone now.”

“Call the ship, immediately!” Siegor commanded.

After a few attempts, the tech turned to the assembled Juireans. “They are not answering.”

Yan’wal gritted his teeth. “Track their gravity wave. Siegor, send three ship after them. It must be the Humans.”

Chapter Thirty-One

A half hour later, Adam had Kaylor dissolve the well and initiate a ninety-degree turn to port. They proceeded on chemical drive for another five minutes before Adam commanded the ship to go dark, including internal gravity.

As they waited in the dim emergency lighting, holding onto whatever they could to keep themselves from drifting around the compartment, Kaylor noticed an approaching gravity wave. Class Fives were fast and powerful vessels. They disturbed the space around them for hundreds of kilometers. Then the wave streaked by. In fact, all they really knew was that a gravity wave appeared, and then began to quickly dissipate.

After another half hour, Adam had Kaylor initiate another well, and they bolted off. They repeated the maneuver three more times before Adam began to feel confident they weren’t being tracked.

“What now, boss?” Sherri asked after most of the Humans had left the bridge to find sleeping accommodations, the galley or the head.

“I need to see Jym, in private. Keep Riyad occupied.”

Sherri lifted an eyebrow. “I’ll tell you later if anything promising comes out of this.”

Jym met Adam on the bridge. After he entered, Adam shut the door and pressed the security lock. Jym looked at him nervously.

“Relax, buddy. I just need you to plot a location for me.”

“For Earth?” Jym exclaimed, suddenly excited.

“I don’t know. It could be of any place. And I only have a partial.”

Jym sat down at the massive navigation console, marveling at its sophistication. “Can you operate this?” Adam asked.

“Sure. This is all wonderful stuff.” For the first Adam could remember, Jym smiled.

Adam gave him the coordinates. “You know this doesn’t help much?” Jym said.

He was right. All coordinates for locations in the galaxy consisted of four points. The first was the distance from Juir. The next was from the galactic core. These two sweeping arcs would intersect at certain points depending on which direction one was looking. Since Adam was hoping the coordinates were for the Far Arm, he had Jym plot them out in that direction.

The next part of the coordinates was the direction. This was mainly determined by which section, out of 92, that the destination was in. Adam knew that the last digit was “1.” The Far Arm took up twenty-four sectors, ranging from 12 to 48. That would leave three sectors ending in “1.” As Jym plotted the possibilities, Adam’s heart began to race. A cross section of the Far Arm
was
materializing. These distances and sectors were definitely in the Far Arm.

But just to verify, Adam had Jym plot out the coordinates in another direction. The reference points fell apart. On the other side of the galaxy the distance from Juir and the Core never intersected. They only did on this side of the galaxy from Juir. These HAD to be the coordinates for Earth.

But now they had three points. More correctly, they had three
arcs,
moving from high to low. Missing from the plot was the degree from the ecliptic plane. Zero-degree was a straight dissection of the galaxy, and then points were plotted as either positive or negative as you moved above or below the plane. Of course, the arcs continued in a full circle, yet the galaxy was a not a sphere. The higher or lower you went, the further from the ecliptic you would go, and soon you would be out of the galaxy altogether. Still, limiting the arcs to only twenty-degrees up or down left a lot of space to cover.

Adam stepped back and considered the screen. A spasm of pain shot through his side. He knew he had to get Sherri to patch him sooner rather than later. He had no idea how much blood he’d lost. But looking at the screen gave him renewed energy.

Three arcs. And a possible twenty degrees or so up or down along the arcs. In there, somewhere, was Earth. Somewhere along those red lines was his home.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Marishal was a planet at +24 degrees above the ecliptic and located in Sector 9 of the Juirean Expansion. Positioned on the opposite side of the Core from Juir, it had been incorporated into The Expansion almost six hundred years before. But since the planet was not located along any major shipping lanes, or possessing any great natural resources, Marishal was granted membership into The Expansion, and then promptly forgotten.

Four hundred years before the Juireans swept through the region, the Klin had already established the Marishal system as their sanctuary base. The gravity was very similar to Klinmon, their homeworld, and a neighboring planet provided a sufficient gravity where the various heavy-worlders they tested could be housed.

The natives of the planet accommodated the Juireans when they first arrived, yet kept secret their knowledge of the Klin. The Klin were much more generous than the Juireans, and over the centuries, the Marishallese prospered as master ship-builders for the ever-growing Klin fleet.

The yellow sun was setting over the western mountains, while brilliant flashes of orange reflected off the clouds and the surface of Lake Serenity, filling the room with a soft and soothing glow.

Senior Fellow Limmore stood before the great window and reflected on the scene. It was beautiful here, and it was his home. He had been born here; he would die here as well. But the thought of home often left him feeling hollow inside. Like all Klin, Limmore no longer had a home
world
, only a home, a place to be born, raised and to die. After four thousand years, the sense of not belonging to any one place still burned deep in the hearts of all Klin.

And yet the time for their own act of reckoning was near…

The Human stood behind Limmore and respected his silent revelry. Without turning, Limmore finally said, “The Juireans should be sufficiently apprehensive of your race by now, even if it has not gone completely according to plan.”

Nigel McCarthy, native-born Human, simply shrugged. “The fleet is more than prepared,” he said in a sharp British accent.

Limmore grinned. He turned to face the tall, muscular Human with the reddish hair. “Your race is so impatient, my friend.”

“Your race often over-plans,” was McCarthy’s retort.

“When you’re facing the greatest power in the galaxy, it pays to be cautious. But you’re right. The fleet is ready.”

Limmore turned back to the window. “You may send the beacon. Let the Juireans know the location of Earth.”

Sending transmissions through intergalactic space is fairly simple – if relay stations have been set up ahead of time. Throughout the Expansion, communication was fairly efficient. A message could be sent from Juir to any of the Sectors, and it would be received in a matter of hours.

Yet messages sent into non-Expansion space were a different matter. With faster-than-light travel, it was often quicker just to hand deliver messages. But rather than physically carrying messages from one destination to another, most messages were placed in compact message pods with massive gravity drives. Since no flesh and blood being were aboard the tiny pods, these drives could travel at hundreds of times light speed, creating deeper wells than even the most powerful starships.

So when the remaining Klin in The Fringe were given the order to send the beacon, they sent the pod out in a direct line for the current location of Earth, its encrypted signal broadcasting out along the entire route. If one looked through an optical telescope at the location it pointed to, there would be nothing there to see; the planet had not yet moved to this position, based upon the limits of visible light. But nevertheless, the beacon was sent straight for the planet Earth, pinpointing its location for anyone willing to follow the track.

The truth was, the Klin had long ago set up a series of relay stations in the Far Arm, but these stations were known only to them. Yet this beacon was sent out not utilizing this series of relays. Instead it was sent in the open, and conspicuously past a Juirean monitoring station at the edge of the Barrier.

Although the message was encrypted, the Klin did allow for the Juireans to break the code in a relatively short period of time. And when the words
Earth, Humans, Klin, Juireans
and
invasion
were deciphered, the message was sent immediately to the highest authority in The Fringe.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Yan’wal called an emergency meeting of his staff as soon as the message was received.

“Giodol, what else have we learned of this message?”

“It originated here, in The Fringe, and we have a reliable track as to its destination. The translation is reliable.”

“The translation may be reliable, but can the contents be accurate?”